Chapter 5:

Chapter 5:

First Contact

The scanner door opened to a panting Carl. "Holy sh- crap. What was that? Crawlers?"

"Sorry, guys," Jeremy said. "I didn't see them coming. I was trying to figure out how we could see those other people."

The elevator took Carl and Ulrich up to Jeremy's level. "You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" Carl asked. "Carthage is shared in both Lyoko and Regalis. They must overlap, but there isn't enough connection to provide audio."

"So Carthage connects the two places?" Ulrich asked.

"Oh, I get it now," Jeremy exclaimed. "Carthage is the basis for both worlds. You're saying that, if we can get both Carthages together, then we should be able to hear them."

Carl nodded, "And possibly go between the two worlds."

Ulrich interrupted, "But why couldn't we see them before today?"

"I think that the other Carthage noticed Carl in our Carthage and tried to strengthen the bond to find him." Jeremy started doing some stuff on the computer. "I think I can enhance the connection manually. But the others would have to do the same thing at the same time."

Carl walked closer. "I can get a chat line going, but I think that we should wait 'till tomorrow. It's really late."

"Good point." Jeremy shut the interface down with a yawn and walked out with the other guys.

Carl turned out to be quite a smart guy. The next day progressed fairly uneventfully after Jeremy explained all to the girls. Carl did get a laugh, though, when Sissy made a joke about Ulrich and Yumi, causing them both to blush.

That night, they all met again in the factory. Since they were currently in France, and having to make up for the time difference, they waited until 9 o'clock. Jeremy let Carl onto his seat. "Let's see if we can get this connection up."

Carl pulled up an internet window and accessed . Odd laughed. "You're joking, right?"

Carl glared at him. "Safety precaution. We don't want anyone tracing us, so we set up a Tribolt web system." Odd's face didn't move. "Would you mind explaining Jeremy?"

"Sure. Basically, you create a user name in one place with two or three false names. Then, at each of those places, you create links to even more names. The process continues through a couple hundred sites with only one correct access line."

"Oooooookay…"

"Just watch this," Carl said. He typed in a line on the search bar. 'RC ZENOS BETA' "You have a mic here, right?" he asked Jeremy. He nodded and Carl turned back to the computer. "Alpha Zen Code Theta Delta Uno." The white screen disappeared and a single dot glowed in the center of the screen. Slowly, four lines drew out and ended at more dots. Then sixteen lines spread from those dots to even more dots. The web expanded as the picture zoomed further out. After fifteen seconds, there was an impossibly intricate web of thousands of points and millions of lines. One of the original lines slowly filled blue. Then another, adjacent one. Carl pointed at the screen as the color drew a path across the web. "This is the actual access path." It passed through twenty more points before stopping. The screen flicked black and then turned a slight blue. "Can you hear my Zen?"

"Carl!" A female face appeared in the top right corner. She was about in her mid-twenties, with blonde, shoulder length hair. "It's good to see you again."

"Same here. Are Evan and Brad there?"

"Just a moment." A second later, two more screens opened, one under Zen showing the monk-like boy from Carthage and a larger one to the left with two human boys.

Carl held up his hand. "Hey, guys. You getting' this signal all right?"

"We hear you and see you," one of the two boys said. He was clearly the blonde from Carthage. "What's going on over there, Carl," the other guy asked. He must have been the other character, but his human size was smaller than his Lyoko version.

"You're not going to believe this, but there's another team here in France. They've been fighting Xana, but in a different Regalis." He continued his story, ending with "We can probably get the two places together."

The lone Lyokian kid finally spoke. "It must be done from the Carthage interface at the same time in both dimensions."

Carl looked at his screen. "How do you know that?"

"I'm not sure."

Carl then remembered that he was with others. "Oh, I almost forgot. This is the new team." He went through their names, pointing each one out. "Ulrich, Aelita, Jeremy, Yumi, and Odd."

The blonde laughed. "That's obvious, but what's his name?"

Every laughed, hearing the joke again. Carl was the first to recover. "Anyway," he said pointing to the screen. "This is Bradley," the big hammer man, "Evan," blonde, "Kreilin," Lyoko monk, "and our computer whiz, Zen."

Carl dismounted so Jeremy could get back to his post. "So, Kreilin, right? What were you saying just now?"

"I'm not sure. It just popped into my head. I don't know what it was."

Jeremy thought for a moment. "I think we can do it, but I would need to take some time to isolate the connection and find the right file to strengthen it."

Evan's eyes bulged a bit. "You can do that?"

Jeremy smiled. "I'm a bit of a whiz. I even made vehicles for our team."

Brad stepped forward slightly. "No way! I tried doing that but I had to have Zen make them instead. How did you adjust the lockup matrix?"

Jeremy's smile grew bigger. "Well, I first had to bypass the modulation generator, then override the computer's self-adjustment protocols and…"

"Uh, Einstein," Odd butted in. "As much as we love your very exciting story, we would like to know, how long?"

Jeremy's smile disappeared. "Well, if I work as much as possible, then maybe a few weeks. But if Zen were able to help, I might be able to do it in a couple of days."

Zen nodded with "I do not require sleep, so I can work 24/7."

Carl also nodded. "Excellent. Oh, by the way," his face loosened, "how was the service the other day?" he asked in a soft voice. Everyone on the other end fell silent.

Brad stepped back slightly. "Uh, I've got to go. Homework and…stuff." He turned and walked off screen. "See ya."

"Still sensitive about it?"

"Yah," Evan nodded. "It was a good service, though. The family must have gotten a dozen or so bouquets."

The Lyoko gang produced questioning faces, but Yumi was the first to ask. "What service."

Carl moved front of Jeremy. "I'll explain in a few minutes," he said as he punched in another command. "Zen, start working on that connection and I'll talk to you guys later." Zen, Kreilin, and Evan both said goodbye and Carl hit 'Enter'. Everything returned to Jeremy's normal screen as if nothing else had ever been there. He then turned to everyone else and sat down. "Alright, now I'll tell you. The people on the screen weren't the only other members of our team. We had one more teammate, Sarah. She was our surface contact. Whenever the three of us would go to Lyoko, she would stay on earth and make sure nobody got hurt. Until she ended up getting hurt. It was a night attack. Xana tried taking over a few cars and destroying a few homes. We ended up stopping him, but not before he pinned Sarah to a tree." Everybody gasped. "She died just before the return-to-the-past. The next morning, she was found dead in her bed. Everyone thought that she simply died in her sleep." A tear fell slowly down his cheek. He wiped it before continuing, "Brad was the one that took it the hardest. Sarah was his first girlfriend. They had been going out for a few months. Apparently he still hasn't gotten over her. The funeral was a few days ago. And I couldn't be there." A silence fell over the group. Was this why Carl was so silent all the time? "That's why we keep fighting. We wanted to shut down the computer, just to keep Xana from killing anyone else, but we couldn't leave Zen and Kreilin."

Ulrich put on a happy face. "We can help there. Jeremy made a program to materialize anyone in Lyoko. That's the only way we got Aelita here." She nodded to confirm his point. But then Carl asked why they didn't shut Xana and Lyoko down. "Well, she's still connected to him by a virus, so if he goes, she goes."

Carl hung his head again. "So it's still no use."

Yumi knelt beside him. "It's o.k. We'll help you get Kreilin and Zen onto earth. But until then, you've made some new friends who can cheer you up."

Then, Carl formed a smile. "Thanks."

"Uh, sorry to interrupt this lovely moment," Odd said. "But if we don't get back soon, the lack of sleep is going to mess up my afternoon nap."

The whole gang laughed with him this time. Jeremy let out a yawn. "Alright, I'm with you. I'll start on the program tomorrow." And so, the new friends walked back to school, eager to begin yet another interesting adventure.