contained sent the territory on a path of ruin. No, that’s not right. It wasn’t the fault of the technology. It was the fault of the people who became slaves to it.
Lifelight.
“What is it?” was all Siry could say.
How was I going to explain this incredible virtual-reality generator to a guy who grew up in a grass hut?
“You should see inside first.” I figured it would be easier to explain if he saw it for himself.
The pyramid was so huge that Siry and I had to jog several more blocks before we got to it. I remembered the pyramids having shiny black skins. But that was long ago. Time had done a job on them. The many places, revealing the framework. The shine was long gone, probably from being exposed to the elements. But for how long? When had I been there before? Decades ago? Centuries? Back then, Rubic City had already begun to decay. The city had been technically still alive, with running water and electricity, but the people had already turned their backs on their homes by leaving reality and entering the fantasy world of Lifelight.
This was the very same Lifelight pyramid I had entered on my first trip to Rubic City. By my own clock that had been only a few years earlier. My memory was still pretty fresh. The base of the pyramid was trashed with the fallen remains of civilization. Mounds of debris were piled several feet up the sides of the structure. Luckily, the revolving-door entrance was clear. It was one of the few bits of good luck we had that day. It was a regular-size revolving door, but it looked like a speck at the base of this massive structure. I gave the door a shove. It didn’t budge. Siry joined me, and we both put our shoulders to the door while pushing with our legs. Slowly, painfully, the door let out a screech as the metal gave way. It didn’t swing smoothly, but we were able to move it far enough to squeeze ourselves inside.
We were faced with a long corridor. It was the sterilization corridor where long purple lights had killed any microbes that might have hitchhiked their way in on people. The purple lights were now dark, which meant the corridor was too. I couldn’t see more than a few feet into the pyramid before daylight gave way to a big, black nothing.
“What do we do?” Siry asked.
“There’s another room on the far end of the corridor. Hopefully, there’s light in there.”
I took his hand. The corridor was narrow enough that. while holding hands, we could reach the side wall with our free hand. We each kept one hand on the wall while moving slowly forward, shuffling our feet in case something was blocking our way. The corridor was dead black. Something could have been two inches from my nose, and I wouldn’t have known it until I walked into it. We had gone only about ten yards when I kicked something. It felt kind of like a pile of hard sticks.
“Kick them aside,” I instructed.
Whatever they were, the sticks swept away easily, and we continued on. As we got closer to the end of the corridor, I could make out the doorway on the far end. Light was coming in from somewhere. We were able to move a little quicker and made it into the large ready room of Lifelight. Daylight was seeping in through holes that had been eaten out of the pyramid wall. It wasn’t bright, but we could maneuver. The room was as I remembered it. This is where Lifelight jumpers checked in for their jumps. Behind the reception counter I saw something that made me smile. It was a faded oil portrait of a sixteen-year-old guy.
“Who’s that?” Siry asked.
“Dr. Zetlin,” I answered. “The guy who invented all this.” “What exactly is this?”
“I’ll show you some things first. It’ll be easier to explain then.”
Beyond the reception area was a door that I knew would lead to the core-the central control area of the pyramid. The door was halfway open. It was easy to push it the rest of the way. I saw the familiar long corridor with glass walls. Most of the glass was still intact, though several large sections were shattered. Or missing. On either side of the corridor, behind the glass, were the control stations where the phaders worked to monitor the Lifelight jumps. The sight brought back a lot of memories. Not all of them were good.
There was barely enough light to see. We passed a few of the stations and the hundreds of screens that the phaders used to watch the various Lifelight jumps. The screens were dark of course. I wondered how long it had been since the last person had jumped. Siry stared at the technology in wide-eyed wonder. We took a few more steps, then something caught my eye. Ahead of us in one of the control stations, the quality of light was different. Up until then we had been relying on whatever sunlight leaked through the damaged pyramid. The light up ahead seemed warmer. We entered the control station. It looked exactly like the others. Dark, dead, dusty. Except for one thing.
“What is that?” Siry asked.
The control chair was empty. As I remembered, the control panel for each workstation was in the arms of the chair. There was nothing unusual about this one, except that a light was glowing. One single light. It was a small, orange circle that surrounded a silver button. It didn’t give off all that much light, but it was enough to create the warm glow that had gotten our attention.
“If that’s glowing, there’s power,” I declared. “Maybe we can figure out how to turn on a couple of lights.”
The Lifelight control station was complicated. I could have been flipping switches for a month without finding the light switch. Still, I had to try. I figured the best place to start would be with the button that was glowing. Made sense, right? I leaned over the chair and touched the glowing circle.
A single monitor in front of us flashed white.
“Wha-” Siry shouted in surprise and jumped back. This was a guy who’d never seen a TV.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s supposed to do that.”
We had power. My first thought was that I could now explain to Siry about Lifelight and Dr. Zetlin and the Reality Bug. I figured that seeing the hardware would make it easier to accept. Or at least understand. Or at least not think I was a total nutburger who dreamed the whole thing up. The screen flickered and fuzzed. I figured if I could turn enough of them on, we’d have light to get around.
I never got the chance.
The screen flashed white, followed by a swirl of colors that formed themselves into an image. The sight actually made me go weak. I had to sit in the phader’s control chair or I would have fallen over.
“What’s the matter?” Siry asked. “Who is that?”
I couldn’t talk, but it didn’t matter. The image on-screen was about to say enough for both of us. Just like old times. The screen showed a close-up of a girl I knew very well. She had long blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail, deep blue eyes, and yellow-tinted wire-rimmed glasses. She had on the same dark blue jumpsuit of a phader that she was wearing the last time I saw her. She stared right at us with the same intelligent intensity I remembered so well.
“My name is Aja Killian,” she said sharply and precisely. That was Aja. No nonsense about her. “I am the chief phader here in the principal Lifelight pyramid in Rubic City. I am also the Traveler from the territory of Veelox. This is my Journal Number Twelve. It may be the last journal I will get the chance to make. I hope someone, someday, will hear it.”
That day had come.
VEELOX
“Hello. Whoever you are. If you’re watching this, I’m hoping you already know of the desperate situation we face on Veelox. The virtual reality simulator called Lifelight has proved to be far more tempting a pastime than its inventor, Dr. Zetlin, ever anticipated. People come to these pyramids, slip into their Lifelight jump tubes, enter their own personal fantasies, and choose never to come out. The imaginary worlds that Lifelight creates are too real and too perfect for them to want to leave. It’s why I invented the Reality Bug. I tried to make the fantasies less appealing. It failed. My friends Bobby Pendragon and Loor helped avoid a major disaster by destroying the failed bug and saving thousands of lives. It only prolonged the inevitable. Veelox has since died a slow, agonizing death. I’m not sure which would have been worse.
“First to fail was the infrastructure of our cities. Drinking water became scarce because there was nobody to service the pumping and filtration facilities. Roads crumbled. The sewage system wasn’t far behind. As pipes burst,
