quiet.
I looked to the phader. He was crying.
“What happened?” I asked.
Aja stared ahead blankly. Her voice was calm and even. “We just suspended the grid.”
“You mean, you shut it down?” I asked.
“No, the jumpers are still in Lifelight, but the jumps are frozen. Nothing will happen to them. All over Veelox. Millions of people are lying in the grid, waiting.”
“For what?”
Aja then looked at me. Her eyes were red and frightened. “They’re waiting for me to figure out what went wrong.”
(CONTINUED)
VEELOX
“How could you do that?”
“What happened?”
“This is impossible!”
Aja was in the center of a storm of phaders and vedders, all screaming at her, wanting to know why she suspended the grid. Whatever that meant. No sooner had the two switches been thrown, than the blue- and red- suited technicians came flooding into the control room, demanding answers. Most of the computer screens now showed live images of phaders and vedders from all over Veelox who were demanding to know what had happened. It wasn’t until those faces started showing up on all those screens that I realized the full deal.
Aja hadn’t only suspended Lifelight here in Rubic City, she had suspended the entire territory. At that moment millions upon millions of people all over Veelox were lying in suspended animation.
“Everybody, listen to me!” shouted Aja. Nobody did. They were too scared. I can’t blame them. Their world was on the verge of crashing. Heck, if they weren’t scared, they should be.
“Please, let me speak!” Aja begged. But the questions kept coming.
“My whole family is on a jump!”
“We’ve got to get back online and get them out!”
It was borderline chaos. All I could do was stay out of the way and hope that Aja could handle this. Finally she went to the control panel and with a look of pure determination, pressed a large green button. A screeching horn sounded that forced everyone, including me, to cover their ears. I saw that the technicians on the monitors were cringing as well.
After a few seconds Aja took her finger off the button and the horn fell silent. The phaders and vedders went silent too. They must have been afraid Aja would blast them again. Aja hit another switch and spoke into a microphone on the console. Her voice was amplified throughout the pyramid and heard by the technicians on the monitors.
“My name is Aja Killian,” she said calmly. “I’m the senior phader on duty here in Rubic City. I’m the one who authorized the suspension of the grid.”
Everyone started shouting again.
Aja jammed on the horn. Again, everybody quieted down. She released the button, but kept her finger close, ready to blast it again if anybody got out of hand.
“We had an emergency,” she explained. “Jumpers were in trouble throughout Veelox.”
I looked at the wall of monitors and saw several of the technicians nodding. For the first time I noticed how young they all looked. I scanned the monitors, searching for at least one gray-haired, wise scientist who would save the day. There weren’t any.
“As best as I can tell,” Aja continued, “the processing code has been corrupted.”
People gasped. Whatever that meant, it must have been bad.
“How can that be?” a phader shouted, risking another blast from the horn. “That’s never happened before!”
I looked to Aja. This had to be one of the toughest moments of her life. She knew exactly how it could be. Things had gone whacko because she had introduced a bug into the system. A Reality Bug. Worse, it was a bug that Saint Dane had somehow made even more powerful than it was supposed to be.
“But it has happened,” Aja said firmly. “The jumpers are in danger. Suspending the grid was the only way to buy us time to solve the problem.”
Everybody seemed to agree. Score one for Aja.
“With the grid suspended, the jumpers are totally safe,” she continued. “I’ve been monitoring the situation and I believe I can ferret out the problem.”
“We can’t leave them inside like that,” a vedder called out.
“We don’t have any choice,” Aja shot back. “If we go back online without solving the problem, we’ll be back where we started and the jumpers will still be in danger.”
I saw a lot of nervous heads nodding in agreement.
Aja then said, “Who is the senior vedder on duty?”
A guy stepped forward who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “I just came on duty when the alarms started going off,” the guy said softly.
I’ll bet he wished he had overslept.
“How long are the jumpers safe with the grid suspended?” Aja asked.
“Theoretically, forever,” the senior vedder answered. “But it’s never been tried before, so who knows?”
“That’s okay,” Aja said confidently. “It won’t take forever
151 160 to fix the problem. I’m going into the Alpha Core to start unraveling this.”
“What do we do in the meantime?” the senior vedder asked.
“Nothing,” Aja answered. “Just don’t go far from the pyramid. When I crack this, everyone should be ready to go back online.”
She then looked up at the faces on the monitors. “The same goes for all of you,” Aja said to them through the microphone. “Let me work on the processing code. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.”
It was a great performance. Aja had shown total authority, and from the looks on everybody’s faces, they believed she was going to solve the problem. The question was, did Aja believe she could solve the problem? I wanted to think so, but when she flipped the switch to turn off the microphone, I saw that her hand was shaking. Oh man. She was barely keeping it together.
She then glanced at me and we made eye contact. There was no mistake. She was scared. I hoped nobody else saw it. She then looked to the senior vedder and said softly, “You’ll take care of Alex, right?”
The vedder nodded sadly.
Aja gave me a quick look and said, “Let’s go.”
She then walked away from the console, through the crowd of technicians, and out of the control room. I’m sure she felt the heat of everyone’s eyes on her, searching for some sign of assurance that she would solve the problem.
I followed her to the far end of the glass corridor and up to a solid door marked alpha core-authorized personnel only. She took the same green card from around her neck and inserted it into a slot near the door handle. A metallic clicksignaled that the door was unlocked. Aja entered and I followed right behind her.
Inside was another control room that was a little different from the others. This one felt more important. Maybe it was because it was behind solid walls instead of glass. There was only one large monitor on the wall, and one control chair facing it. Beneath the monitor was a vast array of switches and knobs and lights, just like in the other control rooms. One arm of the control chair was extra long and held a silver keypad that looked way more complicated than the ones in the other control stations. I had no doubt that this was where we would have to undo the damage and save the territory.
Aja fell into the chair and started to cry.
Uh-oh. Not a good start. It must have taken every ounce of willpower she had to hold it together in front of
