When we arrived, we followed the same route as before. We went through the long hallway of freaky purple sterilization, then to the airlinelike ticket counter where I was fitted with another silver bracelet with three buttons. They didn’t take any blood this time, I’m glad to say. I was already in the system.
As I waited for my control bracelet, I looked at the portrait of the kid Aja called Dr. Zetlin. After having been in Lifelight, I had even more trouble understanding how a kid could have invented such an incredible device. But then again, didn’t Beethoven write symphonies when he was, like, four? I guess you’ve either got it or you don’t.
We left the bracelet counter and continued on through the core. This time Aja stopped at one of the control stations. A glass door opened and we stepped into the high-tech room. Sitting in the coolio chair was a skinny little phader who looked like he was around twelve. He was gazing up at the wall of monitors, scanning each, looking for signs of trouble on the jumps while slurping down some blue gloid. Ick.
“Hey, Alex, we’re doing a dual. I need you to phade for us,” Aja said.
The kid, Alex, didn’t take his eyes away from the screens. I noticed that he had a wicked case of acne. I wondered which color gloid caused that.
“I’m off soon,” he said with a high voice that sounded as if he were talking through his nose.
“But you’re the best, Alex,” Aja implored, sounding a little flirty. “I hate jumping with anybody else.”
Alex gave a little smile. Aja had him. She knew how to manipulate the guy.
“You need a vedder?” he asked.
“Nah, this is gonna be short and sweet,” Aja answered.
I liked that.
Alex then tore himself away from the screens and looked at us. He checked me out, then looked to Aja and gave a sly smile. “Careful what you do in there. I’ll be watching.”
“Do you have any idea how creepy that sounds?” Aja said to him coldly.
Alex instantly lost the smile and went back to watching the screens, embarrassed.
“Don’t be long,” he said while shoveling more blue gloid into his mouth. “When my shift’s up, I’m jumping.”
“Don’t worry” was Aja’s reply as she turned and left the control room. I followed right after her.
“He’s a jerk,” Aja explained. “But he’s the best phader there is. Next to me, of course.”
“So then why aren’t you going to be the phader for my jump?” I asked.
“Because we’re jumping together. Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that was possible,” I said with total surprise.
Aja didn’t explain. Instead she entered another control room. This one was empty. Nobody sat in the control chair and all the screens were dark. She gave a quick glance back to the corridor to see if anyone was watching, then sat in the control chair and expertly hit a few buttons on the control pad that was built into the arm. Instantly a small section of the console in front of us sprang to life with indicator lights. Aja reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and took out the tiny, silver computer disk she called the Reality Bug. After another quick glance outside, she stood up, went to the console, and inserted the disk into a slot in the board. She quickly sat back in the chair, hit a few more buttons, then ejected the disk and popped it back into her jumpsuit. Another few keystrokes and the console went dark. The whole event took a grand total of twenty seconds.
“It’s loaded,” she announced, and left the control room.
She either knew exactly what she was doing, or knew how to put on a good show.
“What did you just do?” I asked.
Aja shot me a quick look that had “Shut up, idiot” written all over it.
We entered the center of the pyramid and I was once again stunned by the enormous size of the place. We took the elevator up, made the scary walk across the bridge to the far side, and found an empty cubicle. This one was different than the others I had seen. It was bigger, with two silver disks on the wall rather than just one. Aja went right to the control panel and started to program our jump.
“How does this work?” I asked. “I mean, how can we jump together?”
“It’s your jump,” she explained while programming the panel. “Lifelight will take all of its cues from you. I’m just along for the ride.”
“Can you control anything that happens?”
“No, I told you. It’s your jump. We’ll experience everything the same way, though. We’ll be in this together.”
With a few more keystrokes, the two silver disks on the wall slid open, and the two tables slowly ejected.
“There’s something I don’t get—”
“There’s a lot you don’t get,” she interrupted.
I ignored the insult. “If people spend months and years in here, how do they eat? And go to the bathroom?”
Aja pointed inside the tube. “See those two pads?”
There were two black squares that were flush with the top of the white tube. “If there’s going to be an extended jump, those pads drop down and the vedders attach them to the stomach of the jumper.”
She showed me that there were two zippers on the front of our jumpsuits. They were about four inches long, the exact same length as the black pads.
“Attach? That sounds gruesome.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Aja assured. “They rest on the skin. One pad excretes a form of gloid that gets absorbed into the jumper’s system. The other pad removes waste.”
“So you eat and, well, do your, uh, business through those pads?” I said, totally disgusted.
“Business?”
“You know what I mean.”
“The system bypasses the body’s normal metabolic processes. It’s all about breaking everything down into its base chemical structure so it can pass through the skin. I’m not exactly sure how that happens. It’s not my field. But I do know this much: perfecting the feeding system was the last piece in the trouble puzzle. Once people could stay alive inside the tubes for long periods of time, they had no reason to come out.”
The idea of lying in a dark tube, being fed through my skin by a pad that took away waste was kind of gross. I was glad our jump was going to be quick.
“Let’s go,” Aja said, and climbed onto one of the tables.
“What do I do?” I asked while climbing onto the other one.
“Same as last time. Think of a place you want to be, and that’s where we’ll go.”
“But the Reality Bug is going to make it different?”
Aja chuckled. “Oh yeah.”
I didn’t like that. I wanted to know exactly how much different it was going to be, but I didn’t get the chance to ask. A second later Aja hit a few buttons on her wrist controller and our tables slid into the tube.
“You know what you’re doing, right?” was all I could get out before my head went inside.
Aja answered with a laugh. I hoped that meant yes. A second later I was all the way into the tube, and the door closed behind me.
I was in the dark again. In more ways than one. Where was Lifelight going to send me this time?
My body started to feel heavy, like I was being pushed into the table. I felt a little sleepy too. This was pretty much what happened the last time I was in here, so I wasn’t worried. But my heart was starting to beat faster with anticipation.
I felt something dry and scratchy brush against my face. It didn’t scare me or anything because even though I didn’t know what it was, it somehow felt … right. I reached up to find out what it was, and discovered there was something covering my face. It felt like a towel. How did a towel end up on my face? I grabbed hold of it and pulled it away as …
The roar of the gymnasium crowd came flooding back like someone had just swung open a soundproof door. I pulled the towel away to find myself sitting on the bench between Petey Boy and Jimmy Jag. I was back at the basketball game at the exact same moment where I’d left it. Yes! It looked like
I was going to get my extra twenty minutes after all.
It took a few seconds for me to get my head back into the situation. I glanced up at the scoreboard. It was all tied up at fifty-eight and we were headed for overtime. I had just sunk two free throws and the crowd was going ape. Coach Darula came over and knelt down in front of us.
“We’ve been here before!” he shouted over the noise of the crowd. “Five minutes of OT. We’ve got the experience, we’ve got the conditioning, and now we’ve got them scared. All we have to do is keep our poise and the game is ours. Bring it in.”
We all brought our hands together and Coach shouted, “One, two, three …”
We all answered with “Win!” then dropped our hands and jumped up to take the court. I was back up to speed, warmed up, and ready to go. Oddly, I even felt a little tired and sweaty, as if I had just played a full regulation game of basketball … which I had, in my fantasy. As we trotted out onto the court I heard a lone voice calling from the stands. Though it wasn’t very loud, it cut right through the noisy crowd.
“Good luck.”
I turned back and saw Aja sitting in the stands behind the bench, dressed like a high school kid with jeans and a sweatshirt. She was holding a red pennant that said “Cardinals” and waved it with absolutely no enthusiasm. She really stood out against the rest of the crowd that was going totally nuts.
There was something about the way she said “good luck” that gave me an uneasy feeling. There was more. I looked up into the stands where I remembered you guys, Mark and Courtney, were sitting. But you weren’t there. Odd. Everything was the same as when I left the fantasy before, except that the two of you were gone. Another look told me my family wasn’t there either. I figured this was the kind of thing Aja was talking about when she said the Reality Bug made the jumper’s experience less than perfect.
As soon as I got to the center of the court for the tip-off, I noticed something else had changed. The players from Easthill High seemed bigger than before. It wasn’t like they were suddenly giants or anything, but they definitely had more muscle and a few inches of height. They didn’t look all that tired, either. I wasn’t sure of what was going on, but there was one thing I felt certain about.
This was going to be a long overtime period.
The ref threw the ball up, it got tipped away from us, and the fun began. It was horrible. This was an entirely different game. I’m not sure if it was because these guys were suddenly better, or we had gotten a lot worse. Didn’t matter. The result would have been the same.
They ate us for lunch.
Skill-wise, they dribbled around us, passed behind their backs, and alley-ooped for a bunch of slam dunks. Physically, they pushed us around like we were little kids. I’d dribble to the top of the key with my back to the basket, and the guy guarding me would put a hand on my back so I couldn’t move. If I tried to pass, he’d swat the ball away and steal it for a fast break, followed by an easy layup on the other side of the court.
Three minutes into the overtime period and they had outscored us twelve to one. It was worse than embarrassing. The only reason we got a point was because I took a jumpshot and the center hammered the ball back into my face so hard that it bounced off my head and landed two rows deep in the stands.
To be honest, the rejection was clean. No foul. But the ref took pity and called it. Unlike the last time I stepped up to the foul line, the crowd had grown deathly silent. I didn’t think it was possible to have so many people in one place make so little noise.
I sank the first free throw, which was our one point. But I missed the second. It was a costly miss in more ways than one. The ball bounced off the rim and rebounded back toward me. I jumped for it. So did their big center. He grabbed the ball and came down hard … elbow first.
Yeow! He nailed me right in the nose. Man, I saw stars! I landed on my butt with the gym swirling around me. This might have been a fantasy, but that shot to the nose felt totally real. They had to stop the game and Coach Darula ran over to help me up. Blood was spurting from my nose like a lawn sprinkler. My head was spinning. I wasn’t sure if I could make it back to the bench. Crutch and Joe Zip had to help me get there.
The crowd gave me a decent ovation. At least that proved they were still alive. Then, just before I sat down, I caught a glimpse of Aja. She had a big smile on her face like she was all sorts of happy that I had gotten nailed. All I could do was give her a dirty look. She shrugged. I sat down on the bench with my nose bleeding and my head swirling. I was done for the day.
But the day wasn’t done with me.
Even though we were getting our butts kicked, Coach Darula was still coaching like crazy. He was running up and down the court, shouting encouragement, calling plays, crying foul when the other team got too rough (which was pretty much all the time). I had never seen him so excited. His face was all sorts of red. It worried me that he was overdoing it. As it turned out, I was right.
There were thirty seconds left in OT. We were down by fifteen with no hope of making a comeback. At this point our guys were only trying to survive. I had a moment of guilt, thinking that it was my fault they were getting beat up like this. I had to keep reminding myself that it was all a fantasy. But at that moment, it didn’t feel like one. I know my aching nose felt all too real. Easthill had just scored, again, and Coach Darula wanted a time-out. He jumped up from the bench, shouting at the ref, making the T symbol with his hands … and that’s when it happened. Coach Darula clutched his left arm, his face went blank, and he fell to his knees. I’m no doctor, but I was pretty sure of what was happening.
He was having a heart attack. The game was stopped. The referee ran over and laid him on his back. He then motioned for the timekeeper to get the paramedics. Seconds later two guys in uniform hurried over to the coach to take care of him. I didn’t think it was possible, but the crowd was even more quiet than before. Within minutes Coach Darula was on a stretcher, being wheeled out as the crowd applauded nervously.
Nobody wanted to play after that. There was no point. Everybody just kind of wandered away in shock. Even the Easthill guys didn’t celebrate their victory. It was all so very strange. I looked around for Aja, but she was gone too. Not knowing what else to do, I followed my team into the locker room and took a shower. My nose had finally stopped bleeding and the warm water felt good. I stood alone in the shower with my sore nose, washing the dried blood from my face and watching it swirl down the drain.
“Any questions?” came a familiar voice.
Aja stood in the entrance to the shower with her arms folded, looking smug. I quickly grabbed my towel and covered up. Sheesh, could this get any worse?
“I’ve got a ton of questions,” I said while turning off the shower. “But first I want to know why my nose hurts so bad if this is all happening in my head?”
Aja chuckled. “You’re not hurt, Pendragon. Not really. When we leave the jump, your nose will be fine.”
“Good. Would you mind turning around so I can get dressed?”
Aja rolled her eyes and looked away. I went quickly back to my locker and changed into the clothes I had put there in my earlier fantasy. The locker room was empty now. The other guys were long gone. As I tied up my hiking books, Aja came over and sat down next to me on the bench.
“Lifelight took your thoughts and created a perfect fantasy,” she explained. “The Reality Bug took those same thoughts and also found the flaws and fears. Rather than only pulling out the good, it also found the bad. Just like reality. Getting beaten like that was something you feared might happen. You probably even worried that one day your coach would overdo it and get sick. The Reality Bug found those fears and made them real.”
“But what’s the point?”
Aja stood up and paced. “Haven’t you learned anything? The people of Veelox will never leave Lifelight on their own. The territory is crumbling because nobody wants to take care of real life. Reality is too much trouble. People have to work and repair their home
s and grow food and have babies and deal with other people who might not agree with them, and basically do all the things that it takes to run a world. But in Lifelight they don’t have to worry about any of that. That’s why Saint Dane is winning. He’s got fantasy on his side. But my Reality Bug is the ideal solution. It makes Lifelight less than perfect so people aren’t staying in as long as they used to. It’s forcing them to return to real life.”
“So … you’ve already tried it with other jumpers?”
“A few. Every time they ended their jumps earlier than planned. It works, Pendragon. Once I’ve fully installed the bug, it will affect every jump in every pyramid on Veelox.”
Aja sat down beside me. It was the first time she seemed happy.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “The bug will make Lifelight more like reality, so it won’t be as attractive anymore. And nobody will know why. I’ve buried the bug so deep that no one will ever find it.”
I hated to admit it, but Aja’s plan made a whole bunch of sense. Still, there was something that bothered me.
“I think it’s great, Aja, I really do,” I said, still trying to form my thoughts. “If everything works out the way you say it will, then you did it. You beat Saint Dane.”
“Thank you!” she said with a big, dramatic breath, as if this were the one thing she had been waiting for me to say all along.
“But—”
“There’s no buts,” she jumped in.
“Maybe not, but you said the battle on Veelox was going to happen inside people’s imaginations. I understand that now. But aren’t imaginations hard to control? I mean, look at me. I got hammered. You said this came from my own fears. What if somebody fears something really big? I mean, the jumps could get dangerous.”
“So what?” Aja shot back. “It’s a fantasy. Nobody gets hurt. They’re all lying safely inside the pyramid.”
“So when we come out,” I asked, “my nose won’t hurt anymore?”
“Exactly!”
I wanted to believe her, but something else was bugging me, so to speak. The Reality Bug was nothing more than a really advanced computer virus. And computer viruses were scary. You never knew where they’d turn up or what damage they’d do. I once got a virus on my computer at home that trashed my hard drive. If a virus could wreck my little PC, I’d hate to think what it might do to a system as complex as Lifelight.