The Reality Bug tpa-4

by D. J. MacHale

  “There’s gotta be another way to end the jump,” I said, gulping for air.

  Aja once again hit a series of buttons on her wrist controller, then grunted in frustration. “This can’t be happening!” she shouted. “I have no control!”

  There was no way around it. We had to figure a way to get past that quig, or at least distract it long enough to get Alex’s controller.

  “You know this place,” Aja said. “Are there any weapons?” “In a school? Yeah, right.”

  “Think, Pendragon! Is there anything we can use as a weapon?”

  My first reaction was to say no, but that wasn’t helpful. I had to give it some thought and be creative. Was there anything in this school we could use as a weapon to beat a quig? Uncle Press had killed some quigs with spears, but there was nothing like that here at Davis Gregory High. We had also blown up a quig using the explosive tak, but there was none of that stuff around. What else could we use?

  That’s when an idea started to form.

  “These quigs,” I asked. “Lifelight created them, but are they real? I mean, are they just like real quigs?”

  “They’re as real as you remember them,” Aja explained. “Lifelight took them from your mind. It doesn’t matter what real quigs are like, only what you remember about them. If you believe they can sing a song, they’ll be able to sing.”

  “Then we need a dog whistle,” I announced.

  “A what?”

  “Quigs are incredibly sensitive to high-pitched sound.

  They go nuts when they hear it. If we can find some kind of whistle, we can keep that quig back long enough to get to Alex’s controller.

  “Perfect!” Aja exclaimed. “Where can we find a whistle?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Ugh!” Aja exclaimed in frustration.”Think! Is there anything we can use to make that kind of sound?”

  We heard something that sounded like the rumble of thunder. I took a quick look around and saw movement outside the windows. I wanted to scream. The quigs outside had found us! They were peering in through the windows, staring at us, probably deciding the best way to attack. Suddenly I wished that I could find a hundred whistles.

  A hundred whistles.

  An idea was sneaking around the edges of my brain. “Pendragon,” Aja whispered. “We don’t have much longer.” I had it. A hundred whistles. Plan B was starting to take shape.

  “This way!” I shouted, grabbed Aja’s hand and ran off. I led her through the student center to the wing housing the school offices. It’s where the principal hung out and where the secretaries worked. If I was right, we’d find something there that would help us stop the quigs.

  The office was dark and deserted. I made my way toward the long reception desk when suddenly… crash! A window blew out. Aja and I jumped in surprise and looked to see that a quig had smashed it and was now crawling in. Crash! Crash! Two more windows blew, followed by more squirming quigs. They knew exactly where we were. Either my idea was going to work, or Plan B was going to put us on the quig menu.

  “What are we doing in here?” Aja asked. I could hear the growing terror in her voice.

  “A hundred whistles,” I answered while continuing on toward the reception desk. “We may not have a single whistle, but I might be able to come up with a hundred.”

  I was looking for the public address system. Every school had one for announcements and whatnot. I really hoped that Davis Gregory High was one of them. It was our last, best hope.

  Crash! Crash! Two more windows shattered and glass rained down. The quigs were coming from all over. It was now or never. I found the PA system under the long reception desk. Now the trick was to figure out how to use it.

  There was a power switch that I immediately threw. The lights on the machine blinked to life. There was a long row of buttons that I guessed operated the speakers throughout the school.

  I was about to turn every one on, when I saw a toggle switch marked “All speakers.” Duh.

  I flipped it on.

  The first quig had gotten inside and was now standing up. It would charge in seconds.

  I cranked the volume knob to fifteen. If it had gone to twenty, I would have cranked it to twenty. I then grabbed the microphone. It was on a stand, with a trigger to turn it on. With a quick look at Aja, I hit the button and turned the microphone toward the amplifier.

  They call it feedback. We’ve all heard it before, a thousand times. I’m not exactly sure what causes it, but it always seems to happen when the volume is turned up too high on something that is amplified. I think it has to do with an overload that the system can’t handle and… to tell you the truth, I didn’t care how it happened. I only cared that it happened now.

  It did. The piercing sound screeched out from the speakers. It was horrible… and beautiful. The quigs began to bellow, just as they had on Denduron when I blew the dog whistle. It was perfect. They couldn’t function. I quickly took some Scotch tape and wrapped it around the microphone to keep the button depressed, then leaned it against the amplifier. Unless it blew a fuse, we had our hundred whistles.

  Aja grimaced in pain from the horrible sound, but still managed to smile.

  “Can we go now?” she shouted.

  The two of us ran out of the office, headed back toward the gym. The horrifying sound was piercing the entire school. As we ran, I looked outside and saw quigs fleeing in terror. Compared to a little old dog whistle, this feedback was monstrous.

  Aja and I ran through the student center and down the long corridor back to the athletic wing. I had no doubt that the quig in the gym was in just as much agony as the rest of them. Now all we had to worry about was whether poor Alex’s wrist controller would work.

  We made it back to the gym and peered inside. Sure enough, our friend the quig was on its back, writhing in pain. With a quick look of relief to each other, Aja and I started into the gym.

  And the screeching stopped.

  Just like that. Maybe the amplifier blew. Maybe the power went out. Maybe, maybe, maybe. All that mattered was that our hundred whistles had fallen silent.

  And the quig was back on its feet, ready to roll.

  (CONTINUED)

  VEELOX

  Aja and I froze. The quig didn’t. It was back in control and madder than ever. It saw us and started to charge. All we could do was run.

  That’s when I saw it. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before, and didn’t care. I saw it now, and we had nothing to lose by giving it a shot. So before we ran from the gym, I reached out next to the door and pulled the fire alarm.

  Instantly the grating horn sound filled the gym, louder than the feedback from the PA system. Question was, would it be enough to bother the quig? Aja and I both turned to see…

  The quig had fallen back down, clutching its head. We were back in business. Without stopping to think, Aja took off toward Alex. I was right after her. We dodged the squirming quig and made it to the body of the poor phader. I couldn’t bring myself to look too closely at him. His body was still. Blood pooled on the gym floor. That’s all I needed to know.

  Aja quickly reached for his arm and pulled it toward her so she could have access to his elaborate wrist controller.

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  “We’ll know in a second.”

  She expertly hit a few keys, and the strangest thing happened. I felt dizzy. It was like the whole gym started to spin. I wondered if all the sound of the feedback and the blaring fire alarm had finally gotten to my inner ear.

  The next thing I knew it was pitch black. Was I back in the Lifelight pyramid? The odd thing was, I still heard the fire alarm blaring. But that didn’t make sense. Either I was back or I wasn’t. A second later I was bathed in light. The next thing I saw was my black boots. I was lying inside the Lifelight tube. I was back!

  But why was I still hearing the alarm? The table slid out of the tube and I looked quickly to my left to see Aja was already jumping
off her table.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Come on!” she shouted.

  We ran outside the cubicle into the center of the pyramid. One look around told me the problem. There were hundreds of lights flashing red outside the cubicles. Phaders and vedders were running around like crazy. The alarm sounding here had nothing to do with the fire alarm I had pulled in my fantasy. This was a full-out emergency… for real.

  “We gotta get to the core!” Aja exclaimed, and ran for the elevator tube. We sprinted over a bridge, jumped in the tube, and flew down.

  In the glass corridor of the core, things were frantic. There were alarms blaring and red warning lights flashing everywhere.

  A phader grabbed Aja and yelled, “We’ve got hundreds of jumps going bad!”

  “Contact the directors!” Aja shouted at the phader, and ran past him down the by the control stations! saw that several of the screens showing jumps were flashing off and on. Phaders were in their control chairs, desperately hitting buttons on their arm controllers, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. A few seconds later I saw where Aja was heading. She threw open the door to Alex’s control station.

  ‘Alex! What happened?” she yelled.

  Alex couldn’t answer. He was sitting in his chair with blank eyes still staring at the screens.

  Alex was dead. On his neck were bite marks. There was no mistake. The quig in my fantasy jump had somehow killed Alex out here in reality. Whatever the Reality Bug had done, it had turned Lifelight inside out. Right now, in cubicles all over the pyramid, all over Veelox, people were in mortal danger as they faced their worst nightmares in their own fantasies… for real.

  “Shut it down,” I said.

  Aja continued to stare at Alex, unbelieving. She couldn’t move.

  “Aja, shut it down!” I shouted. “You gotta save those people!”

  “This can’t be happening,” she said, stunned. “They’re just fantasies”

  I grabbed Aja and forced her to look at me. “Not anymore they’re not!” I shouted.

  “But it’s illusion!” Aja argued. “It’s not real!”

  “Is that real enough for you?” I asked, pointing at poor, dead Alex.

  “There must be some other explanation,” she argued.

  “Yeah?” I shot back. “Then how do you explain this?” I let her go and turned my back to her, shoving out my arm. What I wanted her to see was proof positive that what was happening inside Lifelight was no fantasy. I showed her my arm. It was the arm that got sliced by the claw of the quig when we escaped under the bleachers. My jumpsuit was cut, with dried blood around the edges.

  “That blood is real,” I said. “It hurts, and so does my nose. My injuries didn’t go away when we got back.”

  Aja stared at my arm as if her brain wouldn’t let her accept what her eyes were seeing.

  “Aja,” I said softly. “It’s not a fantasy anymore.”

  She looked at me with confusion. Her orderly world had just been blown apart. Then the door to the cubicle flew open and a phader ran in.

  “Aja!” he shouted with terror. “It’s happening all over Veelox. Lifelight has been totally corrupted.”

  Aja forced herself to think. She blinked once, then her eyes focused. “Did you contact the directors?” she asked.

  “They’re all jumping!” the phader answered. “Every one. We can’t get to them!”

  Aja looked to Alex’s control board.

  “Shut it down, Aja,” I said again.

  “I can’t,” she finally answered. “There’s no such thing. People would die.”

  “But we have to do something!” I demanded.

  Aja was thinking fast. I saw a spark in her eye. An idea. She turned back to the phader and said, “We’ve got to suspend the grid.”

  “What?” the phader shouted. “We can’t!” “Do you have a better idea?” The phader didn’t.

  “Get your key!” Aja commanded him. She reached around her neck and pulled out a black-cord necklace from under her jumpsuit. Attached to it was a large, green card.

  The phader hadn’t budged.

  “Move!” Aja commanded.

  The phader was shocked back to reality. He hurried to the control panel while pulling out his own cord necklace. He had a green card on it, just like Aja’s. The two stood at opposite ends of the complex array of controls.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the phader said softly.

  Aja shot the guy a look. “Insert!”

  They both took their green cards and inserted them into slots on either side of the control array. Aja then flipped about a dozen switches, the last of which was behind a clear, plastic cover. She lifted the cover to reveal a red toggle switch. The phader was working a duplicate set of switches, with the final being a similar red toggle switch.

  Aja took a breath and said, “On my mark. Three, two, one… suspend.”

  They both flipped the red switches.

  Instantly all the monitors went blank. The thousands upon thousands of images that were being displayed had been replaced by the same single, flat color of green. The alarms all stopped as well, leaving everything eerily 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.
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  “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