The next morning crept in with blustery winds throwing themselves against the house. Slowly cracking my eyes open, I saw that I was still in Veelox, in the opulent house Aja and her aunt were staying in. A thin blue light was edging in through the window, slowly illuminating the room. A brief look outside told me the sun hadn't risen yet, although it was very close to doing so. I had no idea of how long I had slept, as the exact cycles of day and night on this world were a mystery to me. I felt the same aching in my chest again, gnawing at me to return home, but I tried to suppress it as best I could. Right now, I had a job to do.

I slowly went down the stairs, to the first floor. Evangeline was up and fiddling with her own little mechanical device, but Aja was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Aja?" I asked.

Evangeline put her gadget down and glanced at me. "Why, you're up early! Aja is still sleeping. Her shift doesn't begin for another hour or so. Since you're awake, I guess you could help me make breakfast."

"Are you making gloid again?"

"Saying I make gloid is giving to much credit to me, I think!" Evangeline laughed. "Unfortunately, gloid is pretty much all we have left to eat these days. There aren't any people working to bring over real food from the farms to the city anymore. We still have gloid because it takes years for it to start rotting, and because they also use it in Lifelight. But there aren't any people making it any more, so we're going to run out of it too, soon enough."

I was beginning to feel hungry, but I still really didn't want to touch the gloid if I didn't have to. It just didn't seem at all like anything edible to me. Klees usually ate meat and eggs, and small, dry fruit if there was nothing else available, but not blue sludge that came wrapped up in little packages. Where did the stuff come from? Why was it blue? Blue was the color of the sky and of water, not of living things. Why did it not go bad after a few days, like actual food was supposed to? I just couldn't get over how strange this stuff was, and I wasn't even considering how different a typical human's diet might be.

I then recalled Aja mentioning that there were animals prowling about in the city, and decided that I'd rather take my chances hunting than with the gloid. I quickly went back to my and retrieved my spear (I didn't feel safe enough to sleep without it), and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Evangeline asked.

"Hunting. For breakfast." I nudged my spear a little.

"You'd best be careful. Some of the animals out there can be quite fierce."

"There's no way they're as fierce as me, I assure you."

I had no way of proving that, of course, but I had a hunch that I was right. Or perhaps I was just being arrogant.

As I stepped out into the cold city morning, I strained my senses to try and pick out any animals that might be stumbling by. All I could smell was garbage and all I could hear was the wind. I decided to head left, down a cracked and potholed road, to try and see if I could find anything there. I walked past more decaying buildings, noticing nothing new at first. Then I heard footsteps, softly ringing out in the distance. The sound came from the other side of a set of buildings, but there was an alleyway that cut between them. I slipped through it, taking care not to make much noise.

On the other side of the alley, I saw another human walking about. This one was clad in ragged, patchy clothes that didn't look like they fit it, and it was constantly glancing around and to the sides, which forced me to duck behind cover several times in the process of watching it. After nervously creeping around a bit more, it walked into one of the buildings by the street, which was a small little place with smashed windows and a door that seemed to be having trouble staying on its hinges.

What it intended to accomplish, I wasn't sure of, but it didn't get the chance to do so. A group of several other humans quickly arrived and headed for the same building. I heard shouting, and then a thunderous crack that echoed into the air and made me flinch. The group then dragged the first human out of the building, leaving a trail of fresh blood across the ground. There was little doubt in my mind that the human was dead.

Now the group was arguing, and I could pick out their voices from where I crouching.

"What the hell was he doing there?" an older male human said. "Everyone still walking in this city knows not to trespass."

"Maybe he's new here," another voice said.

"Nobody is new here. Nobody ever comes here. There's something more to this."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't think this has anything to do with the people he warned us about, do you?"

"No way. One straggler running into the stockhouse? That can't be it."

The humans started walking towards the alley, so I had to quickly move further back. One of them might have caught a glimpse of me as I scurried away, for he glanced in my direction and frowned, but he didn't feel the need investigate further. The conversation died off as the humans moved further and further away from me.

I felt oddly calm after witnessing what was probably a cold blooded murder. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the victim and the perpetrators still looked a lot like animals to me, although they certainly didn't behave like animals. I couldn't exactly figure out why that human had been killed just for walking into an abandoned house, or what the other humans were so concerned about, but I imagined Aja might be able to.

In the meantime, though, I still had breakfast to catch, and any of the animals that might have been hanging around the area had to have been scared away by the loud noises the humans had made. Grumbling to myself, I headed back the way I had came and tried sniffing around on the other side of the street.


I ended up returning empty handed, having only managed to catch a small, brown bird that I devoured on the spot. On the other hand, I had to question if Aja and Evangeline would have the stomach to see me skinning and cutting up a dead animal in their house. Based on what I knew of them so far, they seemed to be quite tame. If they were to be suddenly thrust into Leeandra, I doubt they would do very well for themselves, although there would certainly be a few klees who would be willing to take them in on the basis of curiosity alone.

Aja had already gotten up by the time I got back, and was busy fiddling away with her wrist device in the gardens in front of her house.

"Are you busy?" I asked, causing her to jump back in surprise.

"Could you not do that?" Aja grumbled, dusting herself off.

"Do what?"

"Sneak up on me without making a sound. Just stomp your feet a bit if you're getting close to me, okay?"

"Perhaps you should just work on your hearing."

"Hmph."

The sun had now fully risen above the dim blue horizon, faintly warming the blustery city in between the shadows of the enormous buildings. A flock of dark colored birds passed by overhead, before settling on a rooftop and crowing away. A brief blast of wind rushed past me and made me shiver a little. Although I was covered well enough by my fur coat, I still wouldn't have said no to a cloak or a scarf in this place. It was quite a contrast from Leeandra, where wearing anything on the ground was just asking for heatstroke. The only people who bothered with clothes there were those stuffy city council members who could spend all day in their windy tree houses enjoying their power and the view. Just thinking about it made me want to roll my eyes.

"I saw something strange while I was out this morning," I said. "Someone apparently went somewhere they shouldn't have, and got killed. Or badly beaten up. I wasn't close enough to be completely sure of the details."

"That isn't strange, that's just sad," Aja huffed. "With supplies dwindling across the city, gangs have been sprouting up and hoarding most of what remains. There has been fighting between them over their stockpiles, and innocent people have been caught in the crossfire. All the more reason for us to hurry and try and get this problem sorted out."

"You're not worried about what these gangs might be up to?"

"Not now. They wouldn't attack me unless they were really desperate. I do work with Lifelight, and most of the people outside of it have family or friends still plugged in there. As long as I'm still trying to keep them safe, I'm safe as well... when it's light out, anyway, and as long as I don't stick my head anywhere where it doesn't belong." Aja wrinkled her nose. "You, on the other hand... well, most people would just think you're a wild animal. I'd keep to the shadows and try not to be seen for now. You're good at that, right?"

I was quite good at sneaking around in Leeandra, as one had to be in order to be a successful hunter. It was harder here in Rubic City, with there being much less cover and many more loud surfaces, but I could manage. "Of course."

"Then let's get going. Follow me."

We set off on a path through the city that seemed, at first, to make no sense. I saw that Aja was glancing up at signs whenever we turned in a different direction, and figured that they must be some kind of navigational tool for the city. The names on the signs, however, still meant nothing to me.

"Did Seegan ever tell you about any of this before you left?" Aja said, breaking the silence. "Or did he really just let you stumble here, blind?"

"He might have mentioned details of it in some of his old stories. He was big on myths and fables and things like that. I never listened to them, though." Now I was wishing I had. I never imagined that thought would ever cross my mind.

"That's stupid, but it's also a rather common practice, believe it or not. From what I've read of Volom's old journals, there were at least two other Travelers who haven't bothered informing their successors of what they're in for. One of them hadn't even picked one, despite being close to sixty years old! It's crazy."

"Perhaps breaking the news that they have to be travelers isn't pleasant."

At that moment, we turned around a corner and were greeted with a strange sight. Standing amidst all the boxy steel towers and elegant smaller homes was a large, smooth black pyramid. The sides of it were dull and torn in a few places, but looking at it still gave the impression of seeing something utterly alien in a sea of normalcy.

"That," Aja said, "Is the main Lifelight center of Rubic City. Most of them aren't this extravagant, but this is where Lifelight was invented, so it got special treatment."

We continued walking towards a small notch at one of the edges of the pyramid, which turned out to be a set of dark glass doors leading inside of it.

"We're just going to walk in there?" I asked. "I don't think most people here would find my appearance... friendly."

"Don't worry about it. Most of the people working here are kind of out of it these days. Not that I blame them, really."

The doors opened to reveal a dimly lit interior, with walls of black trimmed with dark green lines that ran at precise right angles. The floor was a dark gray metal which had lost its luster a long time ago, that was covered with an unsightly brown rug. There were a collection of paintings that were hung up on the walls, and all of them were portraits of a human's face that grew older the further away from the doors you got. Another human was sitting at a desk that was clearly designed to be occupied by two more people, and he didn't bother glancing up as we entered.

"Morning, Setty," Aja said, finally causing it to look up.

Setty stared at me for a moment, then blinked and looked at Aja. "Are you bringing a friend?"

"Friend? There's no one here but me and you."

Setty looked at me again before shrugging and motioning for Aja to go on.

"'Out of it' is an understatement," I said, as soon as Setty was out of earshot.

"Well, it doesn't help that he keeps popping into Lifelight when his shifts are over," Aja said. "Going in and out of it too much can lead to some side effects. Hallucinations, phantom pains, things like that. He probably didn't think you were actually real."

"Good to know."

As we progressed further into the pyramid, the ceiling began to rise higher and higher, until we entered a more open area where we could see all the way to the top of the structure. The sides of each face of the pyramid were separated into little boxy rooms that were each marked with a number, with the highest one I could see being 388. Thin walkways reached out from each level of labeled rooms to the center of the area, which held a tower that rose all the way to the top of the building. Aja walked to the base of the tower and pressed a light green button next to a set of metal doors, which opened of their own will to reveal a tiny room.

"What's in there?" I asked, as Aja walked inside the room.

"It's an elevator, Kasha," Aja said. "It can take us up or down, to all the floors in this building. Come on in."

I followed her to the room, and the doors closed behind us. Aja pushed another button on a small terminal, and the room suddenly jolted to life. It was indeed moving, although I wasn't completely sure if it was going up or down. After moving for a few seconds, it stopped, and the doors opened again, revealing one of the upper level catwalks. Aja stepped out and headed to one of the rooms, which was labeled with the number 37.

The inside of the room was quite minimalistic in design. The walls and the floor were covered with a dark, felt-like material that was peeling away in places. A bright yellow light in the ceiling illuminated what few bits of furniture were present. There was a chair that sat next to a screen and terminal with various buttons that seemed to fold out of the wall, and an empty metal tube jutted out of another wall with a couple of spongy looking things on metal arms hanging over it. Aja hopped right over to the chair and took a seat, her hands firing away at the little buttons that plastered the terminal. The screen quickly came to life and played a soothing tone while big green letters popped up that said, 'Welcome to Lifelight.'

I waited for Aja to explain what she was doing, but she kept firing away at her little screen, paying no attention to me. I decided to cough loudly next to her ear.

"What is it?" Aja grumbled, not even bothering to turn in my direction.

"Are you working on that reality bug thing?" I asked.

"Yes."

"How long is that going to take?"

"Just give me a minute, alright?!"

I stood there with a sullen look on my face as Aja kept being engrossed in her own little world. Thankfully, it wasn't much longer before Aja put up her hands and sighed in relief.

"There, it's done," Aja said. "Now we can just sit and watch the carnage unfold."

"Carnage?"

"Well, the carnage is only going to be in people's heads, but I doubt it's going to be pretty. But it has to be in order for it to work. I need my program to make Lifelight seem so unpleasant for people that they would never consider using it again."

Aja pulled up a bunch of scenes on her screen, and focused on one in particular, which showed a human eating a large meal out in a sunny field.

"That guy just got his jump infected with the Reality Bug," Aja said. "Watch what happens next."

"His jump?"

"Yeah. It's your own Lifelight experience. Or your own dream, as Evangeline would say."

I watched as the human's picnic was ruined by a sudden rain overcoming him. A light green symbol appeared in the corner of the screen and began flashing, accompanied by an irritating sound.

"That means he's calling for help, asking for one of us on staff to help fix his jump," Aja said. "Of course, even if I wanted to help him with that, I couldn't. I designed the Reality Bug to be impossible to fix, short of physically replacing all the computers and starting all over again."

Soon all of the jumps had been hit by Aja's bug, and the screen was constantly chirping at us to fix them.

"How long do you think it will take for people to start leaving their jumps?"

"I'd say a few hours for most people. The longer people stay in Lifelight, the harder it gets for them to leave. They'd rather stick around in a nightmare instead of facing the real world. I'd imagine there will be a couple of early bloomers, though."

Aja let out a deep sigh and sunk into her chair. "I can't believe this is finally looking to be over. You couldn't understand, of course, but I've been having to watch my own world slowly dying, bit by bit, without seeing my actions doing anything to help it. Knowing that I'm finally changing all of that for the better really feels liberating. Veelox may look like a terrible place to you now, but things are going to get better. I swear that I'll make it happen."

"So you think we've already fixed the problems here? I mean, didn't you say there were other Lifelight... things besides this one?"

Aja grinned. "There are, but they're all hooked up on the same network, running the same software. My little creation is hitting them all as we speak. Which would technically make it a worm instead of a bug, but I called it a bug because I want the people here to believe that."

I doubted that Aja's project was, in fact, an insect. "What do you mean by that?"

"A bug is a kind of problem with the system that would have arisen naturally, while a worm would be manually injected into it. I want people to think that the problem came from Lifelight itself, so that they never trust it again. If they know that I was the one who caused the system to screw up, they might be willing to try it again once I'm out of the picture. So I set up the Reality Bug to look like it came from a problem with the source code. The only one who I figure could tell that it wasn't would be Dr Zetlin, and he's close to seventy years old at this point, and probably has dementia or something like that."

"Seventy years? That's a long time to be alive." Most people at Leeandra were lucky to make it to forty.

"Around here, it's average, although it would be higher if Lifelight wasn't part of the picture."

The screen suddenly emitted a different tone as a bright red, flashing symbol popped on the screen, which caused Aja to turn back and stare at it.

"What's that about?" I asked.

"Someone died," Aja said. "It's not so uncommon for people who spend a long time in their jumps. It turns out that laying down in a tube all day isn't that conducive to your health, and it doesn't help that a number of the people here are quite old. Volom was working on trying to keep people alive in the tubes longer before he went missing, but that wouldn't have fixed the real problem. Still," Aja rubbed her forehead, "I'm worried that this guy might have been pushed over the edge because the Reality Bug was too much for him. Fright can occasionally do that to people. I'm going to go and see what happened."

Having nothing better to do, I followed her to the dead man, who was in yet another dull, square room. A semicircular slab of metal had pushed out of the wall, which showed the body lying still on a smooth black cushion, naked save for a pad at its midsection, with a couple of tubes connecting to its wrist. Aja, of course, ignored it and moved right over to another screen, where she began typing away.

"Hmm," Aja muttered. "That makes no sense. How could..."

Another identical red symbol popped up on the screen.

"Okay, we definitely need to take a look at that one, too," Aja said, and headed out of the room at a much more hurried pace.

The next corpse would found was just like the last one.

"No way," Aja said. "This can't be right. This couldn't have..."

Three more red symbols had appeared on the screen.

"What's going on, Aja?" I asked.

"Something is seriously wrong here," Aja said, nervousness now creeping into her voice. "These people are all showing signs of being electrocuted, starting at the head, but the only way that could happen is if the actual hardware was malfunctioning. But there's no way the Reality Bug could have..."

The screen chirped as a new barrage of red icons slid onto it.

"It doesn't matter," Aja said. "We have to turn everything off. Now."

Aja rushed off back to the elevator. This time we headed down to the main level, where a couple of other humans were now running about frantically. Aja ignored them and ran to a heavy metal door, which slowly ground open of its own accord when Aja waved her wrist device at it. It revealed a set of grimy stairs heading downwards, which were dimly lit by old blue lights that flickered every few seconds. These ended at a medium sized room with a large set of buttons and knobs that twinkled and flashed, which were hooked up to a large screen showing all sorts of things. Aja immediately ran for one switch and pressed it, which did nothing.

"Damnit!" Aja shouted. "I forgot they disabled the manual shutdown after the riots. We'll have to stop the jumps." She then flicked a few other switches and turned a knob, which caused a few moving pictures on the screen to freeze.

I, of course, was still as lost as I was when the whole frantic business began. "Aja-"

"Be quiet!" Aja snapped. She then pressed another few buttons and typed something else in, and then began speaking. "This is a emergency broadcast by Lifelight Station 1. A serious problem has occurred that is causing the BTM devices to shock the people inside of them with lethal amounts of electricity as soon as they end their jumps. This is most likely related to another issue that was corrupting jumps that also appeared this morning, and was spreading to other Stations. All Lifelight Stations should manually terminate all jumps if possible, or freeze the jumps and then cut the power. Repeat, all Lifelight Stations should manually terminate all jumps or freeze them and cut the power."

I expected Aja to keep running around, acting like she knew everything and had the situation under control, but it seemed like her last burst of energy was her limit. Instead, she sunk down onto the floor and held her face in her hands.

"How could this have happened?" she said. "I didn't... I never..."

"Aja?"

"I never wrote a single line of code that could have done that. None of it is self modifying. I don't see how..."

"Aja, what happened?"

"What happened is that I screwed up, you stupid..." Aja sighed. "The Reality Bug. I must have done something wrong with it, because it's now killing people who leave their jumps. I didn't think the machines that did the neural interfacing had enough power to kill, but..."

I scratched my head. "Didn't you say you expected some kind of interference, though? From the intruder? What if this is it?"

Aja snorted. "Yeah, right. You're telling me he planned his little virus to activate at the exact same time as mine, while leaving no trace on the system before when it was implemented? Trust me, he isn't that subtle. Or good with computers. I've heard of some of the things he's done to the other worlds. No, this has to be my problem. Who knows how many people will be dead because of me when this is over?"

"Okay, maybe it's your problem. How do we fix it?"

Aja stood up and started running her hands through her hair. "There are two options. Right now, all the jumps are paused, so the people inside them are basically in limbo. That gives us a little time, but it was never designed to be used for extended periods of time. We can try and cut the power to the place, although I'm now afraid that won't work, given how things have been going. Or, we can try and dig out Zetlin."

"Zetlin again?"

"He invented Lifelight. But he also has been using it as an escape from reality longer than anyone else, so he wouldn't be happy to see that we woke him up. He might not also be in the best state of mind at his age, but it's worth a shot. First, let's check out the power."

Aja led me down another grimy hallway, which was filled with gritty metal tubes, constantly encroaching mildew, and the faint sounds of water dripping in the distance. She stopped at a door which was covered by a large sign which said, 'DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE'. Aja tried to pull it open, but it wouldn't budge.

"What the hell? This is never locked." Aja stepped out of the way. "Here, you try opening it."

I tried pulling on it like it was the only thing standing between me and a way home, but the door wasn't going anywhere.

"Do you know who has the key for this?" I asked.

"There is no key for it because it's designed to be always open!" Aja snapped. "This was probably sabotage. I bet the intruder barricaded the other side. Why he did that, I don't know, but it's bad luck for us. Or maybe the janitor just went crazy. So it looks like Zetlin is our best bet."

We left the dirty underbelly of the facility and headed back up to the green and gray corridors above. Aja led me away from the center and off to the side, where we found a room similar all the other individual rooms with occupants in the pyramid, which was numbered 0. This one didn't have a screen and terminal waiting for Aja to hammer away at, though.

"Yeah, I thought it would be like this," Aja said. "Zetlin really didn't want people messing with his fantasies. We can't manually end his jump."

"Wouldn't ending it, ah, kill him too?" I asked.

"Nah. His jump is special. It's not connected in any way to the others. There's no way the Reality Bug could have gotten here. I mean..." Aja frowned. "Well, just to be safe, it would be best to end his jump the old fashioned way."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll pull his tube out of the wall. Come help me grab this."

She motioned to a series of indents on a wall, which marked the circle that was the tube where Zetlin had spend so many years wilting away. The tube was fastened strongly to something, but not so strongly that it wasn't slowly giving way as we kept on pulling at it. After another minute, there was a harsh snapping sound, and the whole thing jerked forward. We pulled it all the way out.

"Oh no," Aja whispered.

Zetlin was dead, but it didn't look like the machine in the tube had been the culprit, for there was a knife sticking in his chest that was covered in blood that had long since dried.

"I think we need a new plan," I said.