The Reality Bug

by D. J. MacHale

  The black cat beast then mutated. It folded in on itself, once again becoming a formless mass. But there was a difference. It was subtle, and I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it at first, but once the goo started to squirm again, there was no mistake.

  The thing was growing.

  “The firewalls have collapsed,” Aja said. “Huge amounts of data are streaming into the alpha grid. It’s feeding that thing.”

  The growing black clay then squirmed and grew, and took on the form of another animal. It was now the size of a small dog. The creature was still solid black, but when it turned toward us, its eyes flashed yellow and my knees went weak.

  It was a quig from Denduron.

  “I know what this is,” I said, barely able to get the words out.

  “It is a quig,” Loor said.

  “No,” I said soberly. “It’s the Reality Bug. It’s taken physical form.”

  And then it attacked.

  The black little beast sprang.

  We scattered. The odd creature missed everybody, and when it hit the ground, its legs collapsed. It reminded me of Bambi when he didn’t have the strength to stand on his own legs. But this little demon was no cute Disney deer. My guess was, it was going to get the strength to stand up pretty quick, and when it did, we’d be in trouble. Already the black skin was transforming into the dirty-brown fur of a quig. And it was still growing. In just a few seconds it was the size of my golden retriever.

  “You’re done, Pendragon,” Aja demanded. “Get out of the jump.”

  There was nothing I wanted to do more than press the bailout button on my wrist controller and kiss this fantasy good-bye, but we couldn’t leave yet.

  “You first, Dr. Zetlin,” I said. “Time to abandon ship.”

  Zetlin looked like he was in shock. He stared at the groggy quig, not believing what he was seeing.

  “This can’t be happening,” he said, stunned. “The jumps don’t allow it.”

  “They do now!” I shouted. “You’ve got to get out.”

  “You go,” he said. “I’ll be right after you.”

  I didn’t believe him. I was afraid he would stay here and try to do damage control.

  “Come on, Doctor, let’s go!” I shouted.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Pendragon,” Aja corrected. “When he leaves, the jump is over. You and Loor have to go first.”

  I looked at the mutant quig. Its body shivered as hair grew from the oozy black mass.

  “Promise me you’ll leave the jump, Doctor,” I begged. “You can fight this thing from the Alpha Core.”

  “I will,” he assured me. “Get going.”

  The quig slowly rose to its feet. It was now twice the size of my dog, Marley, and getting stronger. I looked to Loor. She had moved behind the control chair and was holding tight to the back of it. She was ready to move if the quig attacked again.

  “We should go,” she said to me without taking her eyes off the quig.

  “With pleasure,” I said, and hit the right button on my control bracelet. “We are outta here.”

  It didn’t work.

  “Why are we still here?” Loor asked.

  “Aja?” I screamed.

  “I don’t know,” Aja’s image answered. “Loor, try yours!”

  Loor poked the right button on her control bracelet, but nothing happened. No! I tried hitting the button on mine rapid-fire, like one of those idiots who keep hitting the elevator button, thinking it will make the elevator come faster. That never works, and hitting my wrist controller didn’t work either.

  The quig stood on shaky legs, reared back and pounced.

  Loor pulled the control chair right out of the floor and heaved it at the charging beast. The black chair nailed the quig, knocking it back to the floor. It lay there, breathing hard, still growing.

  “Aja!” I shouted. “Get us outta here!”

  “Hang on,” she called back. “I’m going back to the Alpha Core.”

  Her image disappeared.

  “C’mon!” I shouted at the others.

  Until Aja figured a way to yank us out of this jump, we had to stay alive. Hanging around with this mutating, growing monster wasn’t the best way to do that. Loor grabbed Zetlin by the arm and the three of us ran across the floor and through the doorway that led to the big kitchen. When we entered, the first thing I noticed was that the chefs were gone. Can’t say I blame them. They may have been fantasy creations, but they were smart enough to beat feet when there was trouble.

  Loor saw the empty kitchen and had a different thought. “Weapons,” she exclaimed.

  She vaulted over a stainless-steel counter and ran to a table that held several nasty-looking kitchen knives. She quickly tested the weight of a few and picked two that she liked.

  “If that quig gets any bigger,” I said, “those knives won’t do squat.”

  “You doubt me, Pendragon?” she asked, pretending to be insulted.

  She flipped a knife into the air, spun it a few times, then plucked it in midspin with the blade ready to go. She looked like a gunslinger. Or knifeslinger. Loor had been off balance ever since she arrived on Veelox. She had to deal with technology and events that were impossible for her to understand. But now we were in a battle. Now we were in Loor land.

  The mutant quig leaped into the kitchen. It had become the size of the quig from my fantasy of Davis Gregory High. Worse, it had gotten stronger. It stood in the doorway and let out a grisly bellow. The mutant quig was officially ready for action.

  So was Loor. She quickly threw a knife, then another while the first was still in the air. I never should have doubted her. Both knives found their mark. The first hit the quig in the shoulder, the second in the neck. It was kind of gruesome, but I didn’t care. Better him than us. The beast reared up on its back legs, bellowing in agony. I thought this fight was over before it could get started.

  I was wrong.

  The quig reached for the knife in its neck with a paw, and brushed it away. It didn’t pull the blade out, it pushed it out of its body, as if its flesh were made of Jell-O. It did the same with the knife in its shoulder. Both knives clattered to the floor. No blood. No wounds. Whatever damage the knives had done to the beast’s body, it had regenerated.

  We were in serious trouble.

  “That cannot be,” Loor said, stunned.

  “Yeah, it can,” I said. “That’s not a quig, it’s the Reality Bug.”

  As if to prove my point, the mutant quig growled, shuddered, and grew bigger. This thing was now getting close to the size of the quigs on Denduron.

  “Outta here!” I yelled, and grabbed Dr. Zetlin.

  The three of us ran for the doorway that led to the video game room and charged through. This room was empty too. The cleanup crew had fled.

  “Perhaps it will grow too large to follow,” Zetlin said hopefully.

  Crash!

  The quig smashed through the doorway behind us, taking out a piece of wall as it forced its way through.

  “Let’s not count on that,” I said, and kept running.

  We made it through to the giant Skittles game. Standing in the center of the court was Aja’s image. We all ran up to her.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “I can’t stop it,” she said nervously. “Data is flooding in from everywhere on Veelox. It’s feeding the Reality Bug and making it stronger.”

  “Yeah, we see that,” I said. “Can you get us out of the jump?”

  “Everything is frozen,” she complained. “The grid is totally overloaded and I can’t take control.”

  “So we are trapped in here?” Loor asked.

  “I’ll alter the jump,” Zetlin offered. He lifted his arm to reveal his control bracelet and pressed the center button.

  I winced. But nothing happened. Good news, bad news.

  “We have no control,” Zetlin said softly. He then looked at Aja and said, “You must try to isolate the alpha grid. Perhaps you can fool the virus by
creating a duplicate program.”

  “Duplicate program?” I asked.

  “Back up the alpha software,” Zetlin explained. “Then make that back-up the default. The virus may recognize it and attack both.”

  “Divide and conquer,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Zetlin added. “Can you do that?”

  “I can try,” Aja said, and disappeared.

  “And all we have to do is stay alive,” I added.

  “I do not know how to fight this beast,” Loor said.

  “I do,” I offered. “Quigs hate loud, piercing sounds. Their ears can’t take it. We gotta find something to make a sharp sound, like a whistle. If this thing is just like a quig, it’ll send it reeling.”

  “I know something!” Zetlin announced, and continued running across the court.

  We followed him through the next doorway into the odd basketball court with the four nets. Zetlin ran right for a metal equipment locker. “We use whistles for the games,” he announced.

  I could have hugged the guy. We joined him at the locker and flipped it open. As he searched for the whistles, we heard the sound of the quig tearing through the doorway to get into the Skittles room.

  “Not much time,” I cautioned.

  Zetlin found two whistles that looked like kazoos. He gave me one.

  “We’ll take turns,” I said. “I’ll blow until I run out of air, then you blow. The louder the better.”

  “What then?” Loor asked.

  “We’ve got to get out of the Barbican,” I said. “We’ve got a better chance of hiding from this thing out in that city than in this building.”

  We then heard a horrifying roar. All three of us looked to the doorway of the Skittles room to see …

  The beast had grown. It was now way bigger than a normal quig. Its head was almost as wide as the doorway. I hoped these whistles would be loud enough to do a number on something that big.

  “Please use the whistle,” Loor said calmly.

  I took a deep breath and blew into the kazoo thing. The sound it made was awful and perfect. It was a totally annoying, loud shriek—exactly what quigs hate. The beast lifted its head and bellowed in agony. It was working! We had power over the monster. My mind raced ahead, already calculating how we would take turns blowing our whistles to keep the quig away from us long enough to escape.

  Our victory didn’t last long.

  I had run out of breath and Zetlin was about to take over, when the quig stopped hollering. That’s because it was changing. Through the doorway we watched in horror as the quig’s head began to grow and squirm and change shape. The fur disappeared and it once again became the slick, black color it began with. Zetlin took a deep breath, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s not a quig anymore.”

  The shape of the head flattened out. The black, oily skin took on a new texture that looked like scales. The eyes changed from having the round pupils of a quig, to the vertical pupils of a snake. I hate snakes. Suddenly a pink tongue flicked into the room. It had to be three feet long.

  The Reality Bug had changed itself into a snake, and snakes weren’t bothered by whistles.

  “The elevator!” Loor exclaimed.

  We all ran to the door that led to the blue elevator. Zetlin pulled, but it didn’t open. “It’s not here,” he announced with dread. “The players must have taken it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and immediately wished I hadn’t. What I saw made my stomach dance. The snake’s head was too wide to fit through the doorway, but that didn’t stop it. It simply turned sideways and slipped through. I stared in awe as this giant black snake slithered onto the court. Its eyes were focused on us as the rest of its long body slid in.

  “Can we get the elevator here? Like soon?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was about to panic, which I was.

  “It’s coming,” Zetlin answered.

  “So is the snake,” Loor said.

  The mutant snake slid to the center of the court and stopped. At least its head stopped. The rest of its snaky body kept coming.

  “It is coiling,” Loor announced.

  As the long body slid through the door, its head rose as it formed a coil. That was bad. When snakes coil, they strike.

  “How much longer?” I asked.

  “Almost here,” Zetlin answered.

  “Almost might be too late.”

  The snake must have been twenty feet long, the body four feet thick. It was now in a perfect coil. Perfect for striking. It dropped its jaw and hissed, revealing a couple of nasty-looking fangs that had to be a foot long.

  “Dr. Zetlin?” I urged.

  “It’s here!” he exclaimed, and pulled the door open.

  That’s when the snake pulled its head back, opened its jaws, and struck.

  We dove into the small, blue elevator and I quickly pulled the door behind us. At that exact instant the snake hit with such a force that it slammed the door shut the rest of the way, knocking me into Loor and Zetlin.

  “Look!” Zetlin shouted.

  Imbedded in the door, having cut clean through, were two snake fangs. A second later a stream of liquid shot from each of the huge teeth.

  Venom.

  We all scrambled to the side of the elevator to get out of the way. Zetlin’s hand was splashed with the poison and he screamed in pain.

  “Get us out of here!” I shouted at Loor.

  She reached for the control buttons. I don’t think she knew which was the right one, but it didn’t matter so long as we got moving. The elevator lurched and we were on our way. The fangs didn’t move, though. The snake was hitching a ride. Luckily the flow of venom had stopped. It must have shot out all that it had.

  “We’re moving sideways,” I announced. “Why aren’t we going down?”

  “Because the Barbican is horizontal,” Zetlin winced through his pain. “All the floors are on the same level.”

  Oh, right. I’d forgotten.

  Loor took Zetlin’s hand and wiped away the venom with her sleeve. I saw that the poison had left a nasty-looking red slash on the back of his hand.

  “I’m fine,” Zetlin said.

  “How do we get out of here?” I asked, deciding to save my sympathy until after we were safe.

  “We’ll take the elevator across to the jungle where you first entered,” Zetlin answered. “I can right the Barbican into a vertical position from there, and we can walk out the door.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, then pointed to the fangs that were still imbedded in the door. “But as long as that thing’s got its jaws in us, we won’t even get out of the elevator.”

  Suddenly, the car shuddered and stopped.

  “Is that normal?” I asked.

  “No,” answered Zetlin. “It must be—” Before he could finish, the elevator began to shake. I looked at the fangs of our hitchhiker and saw them moving. The snake had decided to take control. A second later the fangs pulled out, leaving two holes in the door.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  The elevator began to rock. It felt like we were inside a small ship in rough seas. Zetlin looked at the control panel and announced, “We’re in the weight room.”

  Weight room? Did Zetlin have a personal gym? He threw open a panel below the elevator controls to reveal a compartment with a series of odd-looking devices like the slippery skate pads we used to race across the ice. They had the same kind of wire frames that fit over shoes, but there was only one pad on the heel. It was a thicker pad, with a hole in the center. Zetlin pulled out three pairs quickly and handed them to us.

  “Put these on your shoes,” he commanded.

  We did as we were told. The elevator was now rocking so hard, we couldn’t stand up anymore. The Reality Bug was trying to pull the car off its track. He was doing a good job. The three of us were being tossed around like kids in a carnival bounce. Only it wasn’t soft and fun. It hurt.

  “What are these?” I managed to ask while
struggling to pull the wire over my shoes.

  “It’s the only way to get around in the weight room,” Zetlin answered.

  That didn’t explain anything. He then handed us each a small controller and showed us how to slip it over our middle finger like a ring. There was a button attached to the ring that rested in the palm of your hand.

  “Once we’re out,” Zetlin instructed, “press the button. It’ll activate the inertia jets.”

  “Inertia jets?” Loor questioned.

  She never got an answer because the elevator toppled and started spinning. The Reality Bug had pulled it from its track and tossed it. It felt like we were inside a washing machine as the little car rolled over and over on its side. I braced myself as best I could, waiting for an impact. But it didn’t come. We just kept spinning. It seemed impossible, but the rotating elevator didn’t slow down.

  Zetlin went for the door handle. “Follow me!” he ordered.

  “Don’t!” I yelled. I thought he’d kill himself for sure. But he had no fear. He pushed open the door and heaved himself out. Loor followed right after him. I figured if we were going to go down, we should do it together, so I dove for the door and launched myself out.

  “Launch” was the perfect word to describe it. As soon as I cleared the door I covered my head and curled up, ready to land hard. But I didn’t. I realized after a few seconds that I wasn’t going to, either. That’s because I was floating. I took a cautious peek out from between my arms to see it was pitch black, with stars everywhere. I was drifting in outer space! This wasn’t a weight room, it was a weightless room. Far off to my right, the elevator car was still spinning out of control. I watched it in wonder for a second, then felt something touch me on the shoulder.

  “Ahhh!” I spun around fast, expecting to see the fangs of the black snake about to close on my head. But it was Dr. Zetlin. He was hanging next to me with Loor. He held her hand. They were both upside down. Or maybe I was the one upside down.

  “The inertia jets shoot from your heels,” he explained. “Point your body where you want to go, and touch the button in your palm. You can maneuver by adjusting the direction your heels face.”

  I touched the button in my palm … and rocketed up. Whoa! These things were powerful!