The Pilgrims of Rayne

by D. J. MacHale

  “I can show you proof that what I’m saying is true. That’s what you wanted from the start, right? The truth? If you want to learn the whole truth about Veelox, you’ve got to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Have you ever seen a pyramid?” I asked.

  Minutes later we were carefully making our way deeper into the city. I knew exactly where to go. When I’d seen it earlier, it hadn’t registered. Now I knew. It was the black wall. It had given me an uneasy feeling and now I knew why. Siry and I jogged quickly toward it. We reached the end of one block and stopped, ready to turn the corner.

  “If we’re going to guide the future of Veelox,” I said, “we first have to unravel its past.”

  We turned the corner. Siry gasped. I would have too, except I knew what to expect. It still gave me a shiver. It was a giant black pyramid. It stood out in its surroundings not only because of its size, but because it didn’t look anything like the architecture of the rest of the city. Not even close. I knew there were many more like it all over the territory. These dark monoliths were the cause of the Travelers’ loss on Veelox. The incredible technology they 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 black surface was peeled back now in 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.

  AJA KILLIAN’S JOURNAL #12

  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, raw sewage fought with garbage to claim the streets. The cities slowly went dark as dwindling power supplies were diverted to keep the Lifelight pyramids functioning. Fresh food was unheard of. Our main sustenance, gloid, became a valuable commodity. Vast stock piles were used to feed the millions of people during their jumps, but the manufacturing of gloid ended. There was nobody to do it. Everyone assumed there would always be someone else to take care of business. There wasn’t. Everyone was in Lifelight.

  “Most everyone.

  “I’m proud to say that many phaders and vedders worked tirelessly to keep Lifelight functioning and the jumpers safe. The hope among all of us was that someday, somehow, enough people would come to their senses and abandon Lifelight. At first we imagined enough people would rejoin reality so that we could revive our world. But time is merciless. The cities decayed beyond repair. Hope then became that enough people would eventually abandon Lifelight so that we could begin anew and create a new society. That day never came. It all happened so impossibly fast. I never appreciated how much effort it takes to keep society functioning, and how quickly it can all come crashing down.

  “The inevitable finally happened. The jumpers in Lifelight began to die off. First it was the elderly, then those who already suffered from some sickness. All over the territory, the jump screens went dark. We stopped removing the bodies from the tubes. There weren’t enough of us to bury the dead. The Lifelight pyramids became tombs. The deaths actually prolonged the decline. Fewer jumpers meant less energy use, but it was only a matter of time. We soon reached the point of no return.

  “Eventually people began leaving Lifelight to discover the horror that their collective neglect had caused. They left their perfect fantasy lives to re-enter a reality that had become a nightmare. Some chose to jump right back into Lifelight to live the rest of their days happily, no matter how short a time that might be. Many decided to stay away from the jump tubes and rebuild their world. It was an impossible task. It had been too long. The city had become a dangerous place. Wild animals stalked the streets, foraging for food. They first attacked children and the elderly. People went missing. Nighttime was filled with the screams of victims as they were dragged off by savage creatures in search of meat.

  “Something had to be done. Desperate measures had to be taken. We knew Veelox was doomed. At least, the Veelox we knew. We couldn’t rebuild society, so we chose to create a new one. The remaining phaders and vedders banded together to start a new life.

  “The island of Ibara has been chosen as the birthplace of a new civilization. It is a beautiful, tranquil place that was once used as a military base. There hasn’t been need for a military force for generations, so the island is now empty. Our plan is to take as many of us as possible and move to Ibara. There we will build a new and simpler society. We are determined never to allow technology to rule our thinking and control our lives. A pact has been made between us all to keep Ibara as a place of harmony and growth. Most important, it will be a place where people interact with other people, not with technology.

  “There is a powerful, frightening element here in Rubic City that will try to stop us. We’ve split into two different groups: those who want to leave and begin anew, and those who want nothing to do with a reorganized society. These are the outlaws, the mercenaries who have ransacked the city for anything they need to survive. They are bound by no laws. There is no police force to stop them. I guess you could call them pirates. Or thieves. Or looters. They feel as if they were born from Lifelight, so they call themselves…‘Flighters.’ They are a danger to all of us who want to start anew. That’s another reason why the island of Ibara has been chosen as our refuge. There are defenses there. We will be able to keep the Flighters away. It truly is a perfect place to try to salvage a society. Or rather, to create a new one.

  “Will we succeed? There’s no telling. Maybe creating this idyllic society is nothing more than a desperate dream. Those who are about to leave for Ibara have made a difficult choice. We have decided to give up on the Veelox of old, which means we must abandon Lifelight and the remaining jumpers. Those who remain inside are doomed. The only consolation is that they are already doomed. Our leaving will only make the end come sooner. We are also abandoning an entire world. Rubic City will be left to the wild animals and the Flighters. There isn’t much difference. I can’t speak for the rest of Veelox. Perhaps other groups are making similar plans. I hope so. If not, it will be up to us to survive long enough so that someday, somehow, we can leave Ibara safely and bring the rest of Veelox back to life. One thing we know for sure, for Veelox to be reborn, it first must die.

  “One more thing. I don’t know who will be watching this journal, or when. If you are from Veelox, this will serve as a brief explanation of how our world died. If you are a Traveler, I am now speaking to you.

  “I too am a Traveler. My responsibility was to protect my territory from Saint Dane. I failed. Miserably. Saint Dane has won. Veelox has fallen into chaos. Now my only hope is to salvage what I can from the remains of a once-great society. Saint Dane has beaten the Travelers on Veelox. He has beaten me. I don’t know what his plans are for this territory, and how he intends to use it in his quest to control Halla, but there is one thing I do know: The fight isn’t over. I told Pendragon that I wanted another shot at Saint Dane, and I believe that by creating a new world on Ibara, I’m doing just that. Time will tell how successful I am. I hope that Pendragon and the rest of the Travelers are having more success against that monster than I had on Veelox. But I promise, I’m not done yet. Veelox is not done yet. Whoever you are, know that Veelox is not dead. It’s alive and living on Ibara. One day the brave people who are about to make this trip will bring Veelox back. Maybe it will be their sons and daughters. Or their grandchildren. However long it takes, they have not given up. As the Traveler from Veelox, I’m going to do everything I can to help them.

  “This is Aja Killian, recording what will probably be my final journal. I hope that whoever is watching this, is doing so in better times than the ones we now face.”

  JOURNAL #30

  IBARA

  Aja’s image disappeared. I sat staring at the blank, white screen. Everything that she said confirmed my fears. Saint Dane had succeeded in destroying a territory. Was this what he had in mind for Halla? He said Halla needed to be torn down before it could be rebuilt. I didn’t see a whole lot of rebuilding going on with Veelox. How long would it be before Quillan was turned to rubble?

  “You knew her?” Siry asked.

  I no
dded.

  “So did I,” he said softly.

  I spun to look at him.

  “I didn’t really know her,” he said quickly. “I knew of her.”

  “What the heck does that mean?”

  “I’ve seen the archives of the tribunal. There are ancient letters that outline how Ibara should be built and governed. Aja Killian’s name was everywhere. She had a strong voice—one that didn’t always take the popular route. She was a rebel in her own way, fighting for the rights of all the people. That’s why we took her name.”

  “I don’t get that,” I said, totally confused.

  “The map. I didn’t find it on the beach. I stole it from the tribunal archives. I think she made it. Some letters were worn off, but I was pretty sure what it said.”

  “Aja Killian,” I whispered. “Jakill.”

  “She’s a legend. We wanted to be legends too.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Just like Aja. She’s not here, but she’s still taking charge.”

  “She was a Traveler?” Siry asked.

  “Yeah. We lost the territory, but she never gave up.”

  “Neither should we,” he said with authority.

  I liked that. It was the first positive thing he had to say in a while.

  “Aja and the people back then gave Veelox a second chance,” I said. “That’s why Saint Dane is here. He’s afraid to lose what he gained. Veelox has another turning point.”

  Siry nodded. “Seeing what happened to Rubic City…” He took a deep breath. It looked like he was holding back tears. “I don’t know. Maybe I understand a little of why life is the way it is on Ibara.” This was tough for him. He sighed and said, “I wish the others were here to see this. It’s the truth we all wanted so badly.”

  “That island is all that’s left of your civilization,” I told him. “It’s the future of an entire world. I guarantee Saint Dane has his sights on it.”