The Reality Bug tpa-4

by D. J. MacHale

  Zetlin glanced back at the beast. I saw something change in his eyes. He became focused and alert. He looked back to me and nodded.

  “Go,”said. “I’ll be right behind you.” This time I believed him. I looked to Aja’s image. “I’ll see you in the Alpha Core, all right?”

  “Hurry,”he said, and disappeared.

  “I’m gone!” I said to Zetlin, and hit the right button.

  The world went black.

  I had enough sense not to move right away. The last time I did that, I slammed my head on the inside of the jump tube. But was I back? Had I finally returned to reality?

  My answer came quickly. Light crept into my jump tube as the silver disk slipped sideways into the wall. The table slid out of the tube, and all I saw was Loor. She stood over me, looking like an angel that had been sent to my rescue.

  ‘Are we back?” I asked. “For real this time?”

  “I believe so,” Loor answered.

  I hopped off the table and ran out of the cubicle, headed for the Alpha Core. Seated in the control chair was Aja. When she saw me, she jumped out of her chair and threw her arms around me in a huge hug. I half expected her to fly right through me like a ghostly image. But she didn’t. She was solid. It was her. The real deal. We were back.

  “I never thought you’d get out of there,” she said.

  I hadn’t expected this big welcome, but I wasn’t complaining. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Aja pulled away from me and sat back in the control chair. I was happy to see she was focused again.

  “As soon as Dr. Zetlin left his jump, everything stopped,” she explained while pointing to the monitor, which was black. “The pounding stopped too. I think when he ended his jump, the Reality Bug ended with it.”

  Loor had joined us. “Could it be that easy?” she asked.

  Aja hit a few buttons on her console. A data stream appeared on the monitor. She scanned it, then announced, “I think so. Lifelight is back to normal.” She turned to me and giggled. “It’s over.”

  “So where is Zetlin?” I asked.

  Aja leaped out of her chair and ran into the jump cubicle. The center disk was still closed. Aja hit a few buttons above it, but then hesitated. I could guess what was going through her mind, because I was thinking the same thing. Opening up this jump tube felt like we were unsealing a tomb. Zetlin hadn’t been out of there in years. It was exciting and creepy at the same time.

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “It’s time for him to come out.”

  Aja nodded, then hit the last button. The silver disk slid back from the center tube, and with a soft hum, the table emerged. The three of us stood together, nervously waiting to get our first view of Dr. Zetlin. The real Dr. Zetlin.

  Lying on the jump table was an elderly man with closed eyes. He wore the familiar green jumpsuit and had his hands folded in front of him. His skin was pasty white for lack of sun. His head was bald, and he had a scraggly beard. That made sense. He hadn’t shaved in three years. There was a definite Rip Van Winkle vibe going on. He even had his round glasses on. I wasn’t sure why he needed those in the jump tube, but who am I to judge? It was incredible to think this was the same guy we had just been racing through a fantasy with… when he was sixteen years old. The only proof was the red slash mark on the back of his hand, where he had been splashed with venom. This was Dr. Zetlin all right. In the flesh.

  For a second I feared he was dead. He sure looked dead. But then he slowly opened his eyes and squinted from the

  340 348 light. After all, his eyes had been closed for a long time. “My head hurts,” he whispered.

  I guess he was still hurting from his collision with the web. He began to sit up, so the three of us quickly helped him. The guy felt frail. No big surprise. He was seventy-nine years old and hadn’t had any exercise in a while.

  “I’m as weak as a kitten,” he announced.

  We got him up straight, and he took a deep breath. He felt his beard as if it were an alien attachment. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He then took his first look at all of us. I now recognized the guy we knew from inside the fantasy. He may have been in an old body, but his eyes were the same. He looked at each of us in turn, then asked, “What is the status?”

  Aja took a step forward and reported, “We think that when you ended the jump, it destroyed the Reality Bug. There’s no sign of it anywhere. And may I add, it’s an honor to meet you in person. Dr. Zetlin.”

  Zetlin looked Aja up and down, then said, “Yeah, whatever.”

  He slid off the table onto wobbly legs. We all rushed to keep him from toppling over, but he pushed us away. “I’m a little rusty,” he said gruffly. “Not feeble.” We backed off.

  Zetlin took a couple of unsteady steps, then stopped, and stood up straight. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be in this body,” he explained. With every step he took, he got more sure of himself. He made his way out of the jump cubicle and headed for the Alpha Core. By the time he made it to the control chair, he was looking pretty steady. Suddenly, seventy-nine didn’t seem so old anymore.

  Zetlin dropped himself into the chair as if he owned it.

  Actually, he did. He glanced up at the data on the monitor, looking for something. I’m glad it made sense to him, because to me it was nothing but a jumble of numbers and symbols. “Killian!” he barked.

  Aja ran up to him and stood at attention. “Yes, Doctor?” she said professionally. She was now working for the master.

  “You’ve examined the entire alpha grid, and the main grid?” Zetlin asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Lifelight is back online. The jumps are performing normally. I don’t see any sign of the Reality Bug. Anywhere.”

  Slam!

  The entire room rocked. It was such a strong, sudden impact, I lost my balance. Loor had to catch me and hold me up. Slam!

  The room was jolted again. I heard something crash to the floor in the jump cubicle. What I saw through the door was impossible, yet there it was. A hole had been blasted into the ceiling beyond. Debris covered the floor. But it wasn’t the damage that rocked me. It was what I saw peering down from the hole above.

  It was the hollow socket of a giant skeleton head. The bug wasn’t dead. It had just broken through to reality.

  None of us could move. We were frozen in shock. The head moved away and a second later a massive, black fist slammed into the hole again, smashing it open wider.

  I looked back to the control console where the monitor was suddenly going haywire. Numbers flashed by incredibly fast. Aja and Zetlin were furiously hitting buttons, trying to get control.

  “Where did it come from?” Aja screamed.

  “It must have fled to another part of the grid when my jump ended,” Zetlin said quickly. “But it found its way back.”

  Oh, yeah, it found its way back, all right.

  The pounding continued. The ceiling was collapsing and the hole was growing wider. The monster now started grabbing at the damaged area, ripping up pieces to make its entry way into our world bigger.

  Loor glanced around the room, searching for a weapon. But it was futile. There was no weapon any of us could use to stop this thing.

  Another crash. I looked into the cubicle to see its fist had broken all the way through. It wasn’t going to take this beast very long to tear apart the entire pyramid.

  “Look,” Aja said, pointing to the data on the monitor. “It’s drawing data from all over Veelox. That’s how it got so powerful. It’s still feeding on the fears of all the jumpers.”

  “Then stop feeding it!” I shouted.

  Aja and Zetlin shot me a look like I was crazy.

  “It’s feeding itself, Pendragon,” Aja answered impatiently. “We don’t have a whole lot of say in the matter.”

  I heard a guttural growl and turned toward the cubicle. What I saw made me forget to breathe. The giant skull had pushed its way down through the hole and was peering at us. Being
so close, I could smell its decay. We all watched in stunned fear as flesh began to grow on the skeletal head. Eyes grew from the sockets and oily skin spread out over the face to form features. In seconds, the beast had become a hideous baboon-looking head with white, pupil-less eyes. The monster grunted, and pulled back up into the ceiling. It was about to start its final assault.

  If we were going to do something, it had to be now.

  “There’s gotta be a way!” I argued. “Can’t you cut off the power supply?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? It’s coming from every jumper on Veelox,” Aja answered.

  “So what!” I shouted back. “Shut it down! Shut it all down. If people aren’t jumping, the Reality Bug can’t feed on their fears!”

  “I told you, we can’t do that!” Aja shot back. “It’s too dangerous!”

  “More dangerous than this?” Loor asked calmly. Boom!

  A foot crashed through the ceiling. It was birdlike, with huge saber claws.

  “That’s why we suspended the grid before,” Aja argued. “We can’t shut Lifelight down.”

  “But if we don’t stop it, it’s going to destroy the pyramid and turn on the rest of Veelox,” I yelled. “If it’s getting strength from the jumpers, we’ve got to cut it off!”

  “The grid cannot be shut down, Pendragon!” Aja shouted back.

  Crash!

  The huge bird leg was now kicking at the doorway into the Alpha Core, smashing it wider, opening the portal between fantasy and reality.

  “Dr. Zetlin,” I screamed. “It’s a machine! There’s gotta be a way to shut it down.”

  Zetlin didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. He was hiding something.

  “Dr. Zetlin!” I screamed. “Can we shut this down?”

  The beast kept kicking at the doorway, cracking it open. Chunks of material flew across the room. Zetlin was hit by a flying particle. It jolted him and made him look up at the horror that was fighting to get at us. To get at Veelox.

  “My whole life has been about Lifelight,” he said in a daze.

  “If I shut it down, my life will have been worthless.”

  “That means it can be shut down?” Aja asked with surprise.

  “Dr. Zetlin,” Loor said calmly, “your life has not been worthless, and it is not yet over. But unless you do all you can to stop this horror, it will be over and you will forever be known as the man who let Veelox die.”

  Zetlin winced. Loor’s words had gotten through to him. But he continued to stare at the beast that was nearly on us.

  “Doctor,” I said, trying to will him to listen to reason. “If you can do something, you have to do it now.”

  Zetlin gave me a quick look, then spun back to the control console. He had made a decision. He was shutting down Lifelight.

  “What can I do?” Aja asked.

  “Nothing,” Zetlin said with sadness as he made some rapid-fire entries on the console.

  “Will this cut off the data feeding the Reality Bug?” I asked.

  “Theoretically,” Zetlin shrugged. “But I truly don’t know. I’ve never encountered this situation before.”

  Yeah, no kidding.

  The Reality Bug began mutating again. The giant birdlike leg began to twist and mold until the foot transformed into a repulsive insect head. Most of the head was made up of a round mouth that was ringed with multiple rows of gnashing, pointed teeth. The leg itself grew into a snakelike body.

  In this form, the hole from Lifelight was now big enough for the Reality Bug to slither into Veelox.

  “Hurry!” I shouted at Zetlin.

  Zetlin was calm. He reached around his neck and pulled out a red plastic card on a chain, like the green one Aja had used to suspend the grid.

  The Reality Bug dropped farther into the jump chamber.

  Its snaky body made wet, squishing sounds as it hit the floor.

  Aja, Loor, and I huddled together near the control console as the nasty-looking creature slithered into the Alpha Core, its teeth making a revolting sucking sound as it sought its prey. Us.

  Zetlin stayed focused. He jammed the red card into the slot and made quick keystrokes on the control pad.

  “Do you need verification?” Aja asked, without taking her eyes off the bug that was slipping closer.

  “No,” he said sadly. “I have control.”

  He then reached up to a clear plastic cover that protected a red toggle switch. He flipped the cover up to reveal the switch, and glanced back at the Reality Bug.

  The bug opened its round, evil mouth, ready to descend on us.

  Zetlin closed his eyes… and threw the switch.

  The Reality Bug froze. In that single second, it went from a living entity to an immobile statue. It was like a freeze-frame in a movie.

  Every light on the control console went dark. It was as simple as that. Lifelight had been turned off.

  The four of us stared in wonder at the frozen Reality Bug, waiting for the next move. It stayed in that same, rock-solid position for a moment, then its skin began to change. The entire surface of the beast became a vast series of numbers. It was as if we were looking at the raw data that had been gathered to create the monster. The shape of the creature remained, but every bit of detail was replaced by numbers. Billions of green, glowing computer numbers.

  The numbers then began to count down. Each set of digits sped on a freefall to zero. As each numeral reached zero, it disappeared, taking a small chunk of the was like the beast was decaying, bit by bit, number by number. The Reality Bug was being deleted before our eyes. The whole process took no more than thirty seconds. But when it was done, there was nothing left. The only sign that it had ever been there was the gaping hole left in the ceiling of the jump cubicle.

  The Reality Bug had been starved to death.

  And Lifelight was dead.

  (CONTINUED)

  VEELOX

  The next few days were spent in a blur of activity. Because Lifelight had been shut down, thousands of jumpers had no choice but to leave the pyramid and return to their lives in Rubic City. It was a strange thing to see.

  People wandered out of the pyramid, hiding their eyes from the bright sun. Most seemed dazed, as if they weren’t sure what they should be doing or where they should go. I saw a few people arguing with phaders, demanding to be put back into their jumps. But the phaders could only shrug helplessly. Lifelight was dead. Whether the people of Veelox liked it or not, they had to deal with real life once again.

  While the jumpers had to come to grips with the reality of reality, there were big doings among the people who ran Lifelight. Bottom line was, Lifelight had been shut down and the directors wanted to know why. Most of what happened over the next few days I couldn’t take part in, because, well, I didn’t belong. But there was a major inquiry and poor Aja was at the center of it. Luckily for her, she had a pretty good ally… Dr. Zetlin. Together the two of them faced the directors to answer the tough questions about why Lifelight was no more.

  There was nothing Loor or I could do to help, so we went to stay with Evangeline and wait for news. But rather than sit in the quiet old mansion, wondering what was going on at the pyramid, Loor and I took a pedal vehicle and toured Rubic City to watch it come back to life.

  It was pretty cool.

  The streets were now full of people. Stores reopened for business. Once-grimy windows were washed sparkling clean. People even began to change out of their green jumpsuits to wear normal clothes again.

  As we rode through the streets we listened in on people’s conversations. Of course the number one topic was Lifelight. People wanted to know what went wrong. But as the hours passed, we began hearing other conversations. People spoke about normal things like wanting to repaint their houses, or when they might expect fresh vegetables at the market, or about how much they missed seeing each other. I could only imagine that the same things were happening all over Veelox.

  It was all good. The territory wouldn’t be reborn overnight
, but it was definitely on its way. As happy as I was for the people of Veelox, this news had much bigger meaning for Loor and me. It meant that Saint Dane had been turned back once again. He thought he was in a no-lose situation. He wasn’t.

  I have to admit, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Yeah, it was great and important to beat Saint Dane. That’s the main thing. But after having been embarrassed on First Earth, I felt that on Veelox I was able to pull the Travelers together and get the best from all of us. Aja was certain she had beaten Saint Dane before I even showed up, and make no mistake, she played a huge part in our victory. Maybe the most important part. But without the help of Loor and myself, it would have been a disaster.

  As Loor and I pedaled around the reawakening city, I was actually beginning to accept the idea that maybe I was the lead Traveler. I still had no idea why I was chosen for the job, or who did the choosing, but my confidence was starting to grow. I went so far as to think that if I could continue to lead the Travelers the way I did on Veelox, then the ultimate victory over Saint Dane was possible.

  I had come a very long way from that night when Uncle Press first brought me to the flume.

  Aja didn’t return to her house for a couple of days. Evangeline was a wonderful host. She fed us gloid (we avoided the blue like the plague), and made up comfortable rooms for us. It was the first time I had spent with Loor when we weren’t in the middle of some crisis.

  I didn’t hate it.

  She told me about her life growing up as a warrior-in-training, and I told her about Stony Brook. Okay, my life wasn’t exactly as exciting as hers, but she listened and pretended to be interested. It was a great time. Loor and I had been through some hairy adventures, but we were now connecting on a whole new level. I think they call it “normal.” I always had a ton of respect for her. Now I felt as if I had found a friend.

  I could have gone on like this forever, but it wasn’t meant to be. For on the afternoon of the third day, while the two of us pedaled through a new neighborhood, Loor made an announcement.

  “There is nothing more for me to do here, Pendragon,” she said. “I need to return to Zadaa.”