Enter RAF

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Twenty-nine

Terenia flexed her fingers, staring down at her hands.  Words could not describe her elation, and relief, to have her old human body back.  She looked around at RAF with her own eyes.  Smiling her own smile.

Once the RAFians had figured out how to leave RAF without changing form, a process that several RAFians had now termed 'glitching, it was simple enough to then reverse the process.  To take forms from other websites on RAF.  Terenia had simply 'surfed to Facebook, and then 'glitched back to RAF.

And now, in addition to Cloaky's realm-walk 'glitch, Rad had been able to set up a working Stargate within one of RAF's roleplay threads.  Not all other websites had their own traversable Stargates, of course, but they'd been able to find places to put them in at least a fair number of sites.  Facebook now had one, thanks to one of its apps, as did Youtube, and DeviantArt.  RAFians could now travel to any of those sites whenever they wanted, without losing their forms.

As she walked along, Terenia instinctively ducked, as an Andalite fighter and Bug fighter roared past overhead.  They were flying low, only a few tens of meters above the ground.  Shockingly close to the ground, for spacecraft.

It had been a while since several RAFians had begun to discover the hangar in the armory.  And, more importantly, discovered the fact that that was where a lot of the vehicles associated with various RAFians and their RAFsonas were kept.

There were fighters, skimmers, Russell's Blade ship, Shorty's old Halberd, Yarin's Nyac ship, and some of Rukh's ships of his own design.  And then there was Ossanlin's Dome ship, the Tyrennian, which by itself was a staggering sight to behold.

In fact, part of the reason it had taken this long to find any of these ships, was simply because the armory's hangar had been such an absurdly vast space.  Which of course it needed to be, to accommodate something as huge as a Dome ship.  But that had also meant that, upon first glance, the vast steel plain of the hangar had looked completely empty.  It wasn't until you walked a good distance inside, and then craned your neck upward, that you could actually see any of the spacecraft.

The pilots of the two fighters above her had clearly been practicing, Terenia noted, as she watched them maneuver around the buildings of the forum.  They weren't flawless, of course.  Their ships wobbled back and forth as they tried to steer in three dimensions, and on the turns the ships seemed almost to 'skid' erratically sideways through the air.  But they seemed to be doing a lot better than almost anybody had done before this point.

When the first of the ships had been discovered, it had quickly become painfully obvious that most RAFians had no idea how to fly one.  There had been crashes.  And a few RAFians had even been pretty badly wounded.

But fortunately, they had discovered, RAF had some of the best healing facilities around.  There weren't many injuries that a Tok'ra, a half-phoenix, a sonic screwdriver, some magic and a blue box couldn't heal.  Even the damage to the ships had been easy enough to repair, using the wide array of tools in the armory.

Activity on the site had been steadily increasing over the past few days.  For one thing, more and more users had been finding out that, contrary to what everyone had initially thought, none of the innerworlders actually needed to sleep.  They still got tired at night according to their circadian rhythm, of course, but the desire for sleep seemed to be nothing more than an artifact of the human mind.

Some users had been awake now for more than one night, with seemingly no ill effects at all.  It was a freeing revelation to some, as they now had seemingly boundless time on their hands.  As much time as they could possibly want, to explore or to train or just to play.  Of course, Terenia wasn't quite sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  Some RAFians could do with a little less free time.

But it was hard to feel depressed anymore, Terenia thought, as she watched the two fighters wheel overhead, circling one another in a stomach-turningly erratic, almost reckless, aerial display.  Surely, it seemed, whatever the internet could dish out, the RAFians could take it, and dish it right back.  Even the monster in RAF's dark dungeon seemed almost a manageable threat.

And training had been steadily improving, as more and more RAFians began to fully unlock their skills in combat.  The general morale had been increasing, too, as the RAFians each watched their fellows improve.

And, best of all, at least one of the major worries on everyone's mind, the missing RAFians, was being dealt with at that very moment.  It seemed like it would be only a matter of time before the outerworlders in Switzerland would return with their missing friends.

For that matter, hey, while the outerworlders were there, perhaps they could find a way to just fix everything.  All of it.  Switzerland was where this had all started, after all.  Why couldn't they reverse everything that had happened?  Reverse, well, whatever process it was, that had taken them into the internet in the first place?  Bring life back to normal?

Yet . . . as Terenia thought some more about that particular possibility, she realized something that gave her a rather unsettling shock.  And that was that she didn't quite want it all to end.  This bizarre adventure, she had thought it had been a nightmare, at first.  But suddenly she wasn't so certain.

A normal life, with normal worries.  Free of terrible dangers and impossible horrors.  Back with her friends, and her family.  Back in the real world.  A world where she could feel safe and secure, without having to worry about the next catastrophe looming on the horizon.  She should want all of that.

But, she didn't.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty

The Swiss facility didn't look like much, Gaz thought, as the eight of them got off the bus that had taken them there that morning.  Other than a particularly tall and imposing fence around the property, it could have been any other office complex.  But there were a number of different buildings within confines of the fence, forming a blocky maze of drab grey.  In some ways, it looked almost a bit like a military base.

The eight RAFians walked cautiously up to the gate that blocked the road into the facility.  This was it.  No turning back now.  Goose gulped as he looked up nervously at the cameras that were staring down at the eight of them.  But Goom had promised that the video feed had been looped.  They should be invisible to those cameras.  They hoped.

Steph stepped forward.  She held up her smartphone up to the little box next to the gate, the place where a key card would normally be swiped.  After a moment, the box beeped, and the indicator light changed from red to green.  "Cool," Steph commented, looking appreciatively at her phone.  "It works."

"What is that?" Goose wondered as they all followed Steph through the unlocked gate.

"It's my phone," Steph replied.  "Goom uploaded some kind of passkey to it, so I can use it to bypass security."

"Neat," Nate commented, as he followed Steph across the asphalt lot towards the complex itself.  "This is so cool.  I feel like a spy."  He held his arms out like blades, as though preparing to karate chop an unseen opponent, and grinned.

"Someone's enjoying themselves," Gaz commented under her breath, talking to herself to try to ease the tension she felt.

They snuck around the building, avoiding the areas where Goom had mentioned that there were cameras.  Just in case something went wrong with the tape loop.  They found the back entrance, and Steph scanned them in with her phone.  The door beeped, and they all slipped inside.

The corridor was poorly lit and somewhat dingy, obviously a back passageway.  Nevertheless, Gaz snuck nervously along the wall, her heart thudding in her chest as she thought about the risk of being caught.  What would they do to intruders in a place like this?  She didn't want to think about that.

At a bend in the corridor, they came across a pair of locker rooms.  One room was for men, and the other was for women.  They split up, and each group quickly located several long white coats in a hamper in each room.  Within minutes, they were all dressed like they belonged there.

"Seriously, you guys, this is just like a plot straight from a movie," Nate commented quietly as he put on his lab coat.  "We're infiltrating the enemy's lab, and so we're dressing like a bunch of scientists?  There is no way this kind of thing ever happens in real life."  But still he was grinning, obviously enjoying the fact that he'd been suddenly cast into a stereotypical movie plot.

"Okay, guys, these outfits will let us pass mostly unnoticed, but if anybody asks for ID then we're screwed," Richard pointed out.  "So don't anybody do anything to attract any more attention than we need to."  The others nodded, and they all set out down the hall into the rest of the complex.

"Shouldn't we split up?" Gaz wondered.  "I mean, none of us knows where-"

"No!" Nate whispered sharply.  "Have you never seen a movie before?  You never split up.  Ever.  That's how people die."

"Well it's a good thing this isn't a movie, then," Gaz shot back.  "We'll be fine."

"To be honest, I think Gaz is probably right," Richard agreed.  "If we split into two groups, that's four people each.  We'll be fine."

"Just make sure we get at least one 'main character' in each group," Ash said.  "Oh, wait.  I guess we're all main characters, aren't we?  So yeah, we'll be okay."

"I reserve the right to say 'I told you so' if I die," Nate maintained.

"Look, Nate, dude, you're going about this all wrong," Cody commented offhandedly.  "The surest way to die is to comment that you think you're going to die.  See, because then it becomes ironic and comedic if you do.  If you'd have just kept quiet, you'da been fine."

"Let's see, the first group can be me, Gaz, Ash, and Goose," Richard said, ignoring the banter and getting straight to the point.  "The other would then be Steph, Nate, Myitt, and Cody.  That alright with everyone?"  The RAFians nodded, Nate sighed, and the two groups went their separate ways.

"Wait," Steph said to the first group as they drew apart.  "What are you guys going to do about locked doors?  Does anybody else get internet on their phone?"

"I do," Ash spoke up.  "Here, send me the whatever-it-is."  Steph pressed a few buttons on her phone's screen, and within moments, Ash's phone told her that she'd received an email.  She quickly opened the attached file and downloaded Goom's program.

Gaz walked along behind Richard, Ash, and Goose as they went back outside the first building.  They had seen from Goom's blueprints, the previous night, that the first building was just laundry and maintenance.  Nothing of importance there.  Once outside, the two groups headed for different buildings, deeper into the complex.

The second group, Steph, Nate, Myitt, and Cody, went around and behind a wall, and disappeared out of sight of the first group.  And, even though it had been her idea in the first place, it still made Gaz a little uneasy, not being able to see the other RAFians.  She assured herself that they'd be fine.  They could handle themselves.

Ash scanned her phone on a keypad to a nearby building, and the door beeped as it allowed them inside.  This hallway was nicer than the first building had been.  Gaz couldn't remember exactly what this building was, but this wing at least was obviously being used for something more important than laundry.

"Don't look like you're sneaking," Ash reminded, as she noticed that Goose kept walking along the walls, like he was trying not to be seen.  "Act like you belong here.  Nothing will make people think we're up to something more than sneaking around."  Goose nodded, and quickly straightened up and walked more confidently.

Up ahead, the hallway branched into several different rooms, like office cubicles or computer labs.  Richard led the way inside, deciding that would be as good a place as any to start.  He remembered Goom telling him to look for anything resembling a hard drive or storage device, but, well, who was to say that the missing RAFians might not be on a computer's memory?  It was worth a look.

They went inside one of the bigger rooms, where they found a bank of computers lined up on a long desk along the wall.  The room was mostly empty except for one lone scientist.  He was thoroughly engrossed in whatever he was doing, and paid the RAFians no mind.

Richard moved the mouse of the nearest computer, warming up the screen, as he sat down in the swivel chair.  Gaz sat down in the next chair over, while Ash and Goose stood behind the chairs, watching Richard's screen.

A login screen came up, and Richard froze, not knowing any usernames or passwords.  But he relaxed slightly when he noticed a slot that looked like it might be for a key card.  He pointed it out to Ash, who responded by waving her phone over the slot.  It worked, and the computer clicked as it logged on to the company server.  Richard breathed a slight sigh of relief.

He scanned for anything that mentioned the names Noelle, Estelore, Aquilai, Marie, or Tony, but it seemed there was nothing about the missing RAFians.  He clicked on one file after another, but still couldn't find anything that mentioned them by name.

After several minutes of searching, however, a familiar word jumped out at him from one of the files.  Out of the corner of his eye, he had spotted the name "RAF."

[Blazing Angel]

Sweet. Aircraft hanger baby!

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty-one

Richard opened the file and started reading, as the other RAFians read over his shoulder.  It didn't read like a scientific report, even though the language was still very technical.  It was more like a journal.  Perhaps even a memoir.  The scientist must have been a writer, Richard supposed.  This must be the writing style he was comfortable with.  Maybe he intended to edit it into an official report later.  Or maybe he just never intended to publish it at all.

It was all in English, which Richard thought seemed a little odd given where they were.  But as he thought about it, it made sense that there would be many different nationalities of scientists working at a place as extensive as CERN, and at least some of them would probably speak English as a first language.

Of course, as he read on, he realized that this particular scientist would have to have been an English speaker, after all.

"The RAF Anomaly"

by Frederick Regis

When we first began testing the teleportation technology, near the beginning of the malfunction that we observed (the malfunction which caused the half-finished teleportation sequence to cascade out of control), we were able to observe an anomaly, which seems to be entirely unique.

Across the majority of any given typical online population, results were scattered, with only certain individuals being affected by the teleport.  We've only been able to detect hints of patterns, certain sites more strongly affected than others.  Without going into detail (seeing as there are already other reports being written by other scientists on the subject of statistical variance of various websites), I will note that the baseline rate of effect is only about two percent.

However, the members of one very particular domain, a site known as "Richard's Animorphs Forum," or "RAF" (pronounced as one syllable, "raf," rather than spelled out like the Royal Air Force) to its inhabitants ("RAFians," as they call themselves), was almost unanimously affected by the malfunction.

I conducted a lengthy study, during which time I posed as their administrator (I was forced to alter my sleep schedule to accommodate the deception that I was living in the United States) and downloaded several affected accounts.

However, my presence was discovered during the course of my investigation, forcing me to abandon the account, so that my research could remain objective.  We have only been able to download one more account since then, and even that was only accomplished with painstaking effort, and with considerable distress to the affected user.  In the interest of causing as little damage to our subjects as possible, we will not be attempting another download until we can fine-tune our methodology.

Obviously, it is very unlikely that any virtual entity would have been able to retain self-awareness during the rendering process within a non-sentient computer matrix.  As such, we do not truly believe our subjects to possess true consciousness.  But some things are not worth that risk, and so we must still treat these virtual entities with at least some amount of care.

It should be noted, that several other sites were studied, by similar methods to that used on RAF, as control groups.  In only one of these control groups was the spy similarly detected.  And even on that site (the "Animorphs Fan Forum," which we chose specifically for its superficial similarity to RAF), the resistance opposed to the spy was almost negligible.  There was no coherent plan to track the downloaded users, and there was no elaborate subterfuge, as what was witnessed on RAF.

On RAF, a user known as Goom detected my presence during a test of another user's webcam invention, and managed to keep his knowledge secret from me, even despite my having easy access to detailed descriptions of any user's actions.  Then, with the help of an artificial intelligence called Ax, Goom constructed an elaborate plot to attach a tracking device to the next user to disappear.

Although I have since lost direct contact with the forum, I am certain that this last development would have necessitated the end of Goom's plan.  The tracking device would not have been able to receive a signal when disconnected from the internet.  There is no way that the RAFians could have made any kind of contact with their missing members.  Our research remains secure.

This intricacy of cooperation, unlike what we saw in any other forums, leads me to a possible hypothesis about the phenomenon that we have been calling the 'RAF anomaly.'  But before discussing any hypotheses, I must note one other very relevant piece of data.  We observed that, perhaps counterintuitively, RAFians were affected regardless of whether or not they were actually on the RAF website at the time that the malfunction struck.  Several RAFians were on Facebook, or Youtube, or other forums, and all these RAFians were still affected unanimously, just as the ones on RAF itself.  In fact, the only ones left unaffected were those that were not online at all, or who were only online via low-memory devices through which the teleport could not work.

It would seem that there is a factor within the character of a RAFian, and not within the site itself, that allows these people to be affected.  This would then also explain how they were able to work together, and empathize with their absent administrator, to such a high degree.

It is not implausible to believe that like-minded individuals may have sought one another out across the internet, and gathered conveniently together within this one site.  Whatever factor allows them to be so strongly affected by the teleport, it must be a personality trait of some kind, that has somehow drawn each of them to the same place.

In the interest of fairness, of course, there is an alternate possible hypothesis.  Other researchers have postulated that their high degree of interconnectedness, thanks to pre-existing similarities in character, may have allowed one user to affect the status of others, resulting in a sort of cascading effect from one to the next.  However, when the presence of RAFians who weren't on RAF at the time is considered, then this hypothesis leads to unsettling implications of psychic phenomena, which I generally prefer to avoid.

More to the point, both of the aforementioned possible hypotheses lead inevitably to the conclusion that a RAFian is somehow different from a typical user on the internet.  Or, at the very least, they must be very strong outliers on the normal bell curve.  And the difference must be some trait of the mind, for that difference to affect them regardless of where they are.  Perhaps they truly are connected in some way that we cannot even fathom.

So, then, the question remains.  What is the missing factor?  Creativity?  Camaraderie?  Compassion?  At this point in time, it remains impossible to say for certain.  More research will be required.

[Blazing Angel]

The secret is that we're completely off the rocker insane.

[Gaz]

Love the new chapters. This story is really fun to read.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty-two

Meanwhile, as the first group of RAFians read about the scientist's research, the second group, Steph, Nate, Cody and Myitt, had discovered a basement which they were pretty sure wasn't in the blueprints that Goom had found.  Steph pulled out her phone to talk to him, and he replied that nothing in any of his schematics said anything about a basement.

Which had to mean that they were on the right track.  Right?

The RAFians crept down a darkened corridor, moving cautiously as they wondered what they would encounter.  They couldn't help but feel they really shouldn't be there.  The hallway had the feel of a sinister place.  A place with terrible secrets.  What little light there was, glinted in vertical lines off of some kind of metallic structures that laced either side of the corridor.

Metal bars, Nate realized.  They were steel bars.  Like jail cells.  And within each cell, Nate was pretty sure he could hear breathing.  Most of it was soft, human breathing, but from one cell came a sound distinctly heavier, like some kind of a large animal.

"Hey," Cody whispered to one of the cells.  "Is somebody in there?"

"What do you want?" a hardened voice answered back, angrily, making the RAFians jump.  "Haven't you people already done enough?"

"Whoa, hey, we aren't scientists or anything," Nate said gently, taken aback by the harsh response.  "We're here to help."

"Yeah right," another voice answered, from the other side of the hallway.  "This is another test, isn't it?  You're gauging our reaction to positive stimuli, or some such pseudo-scientific bull.  Well I ain't playing!"

"No, no, this is for real," Steph whispered.  "Keep it down, okay?"  She held up her phone to one of the cells, waiting for it to open, but nothing happened.  She looked closer, and to her dismay she saw a keyhole in the cell door.  She needed a physical key, not a code.  "Where do they keep the keys?"

From the cell where Nate had previously heard animal-like breathing, he now heard heavy footsteps, as whatever was in that cage stepped forward, towards its cell door.  As the creature came into view in the dim light, the RAFians couldn't help but to gasp in horror.

The creature was almost human, yet not.  His face was distorted, almost apelike.  His nose was small, squashed into his face.  His jaws were heavy-set, to accommodate his dagger-like lower canine teeth, which jutted upward alongside his cheekbones.  His shoulders were massive, supporting his thick brutish arms.  The ambient light was dim enough that it was hard to judge color, but Nate could swear that his skin was green.

Yet, despite everything, when he spoke, it was with the well-spoken words of a native English speaker, impeded only by his long teeth.  The dissonance between his appearance and his demeanor was jarring.

"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, or anything," the brutish creature said, almost apologetically.  "But why do you want to help us?"

The RAFians took a moment to answer, still in shock at the sudden appearance of such a strange being.  What the heck was he?  What kind of terrible, nightmarish experiments were they doing here?

"Er, we, um, well," Cody stuttered, trying to find words.  "We're here to find our friends.  They were kidnapped.  They're innerworlders.  Would you know where they'd keep people like that?"

"Oh . . . you must be those RAFians," the creature said, a note of awe creeping into his voice.  "Whoa.  You guys came all this way for your friends?"

"Wait, how'd you know we were RAFians?" Nate asked, surprised.

"They said they were downloading some RAFisians or whatever," another voice answered.  Nate flinched slightly at the carelessly butchered pronunciation of 'RAFians.'  "Well, they were downloading users from other sites too.  But apparently these RAFeens, whatever you are, were particularly important.  Something about an anomaly, some weird thing about that RAF site.  That's all I know."

Myitt, meanwhile, tilted her head at the caged creature, obviously thinking.  "You were an innerworlder, too, weren't you?" she wondered.  "They found a way to reverse the teleport.  They got you out of the internet.  But how?"

"I don't know," the creature said, shrugging.  "All I know is, one moment I'm playing World of Warcraft, the next I'm back in reality.  Yet, I'm still an orc.  They never told me how that's possible."  He inclined his head sideways, indicating a cage at the end of the hallway.  "Heh, if you think I'm strange, you ain't seen nothing."

Curious, Nate wandered towards the cage in question.  It was still too dark to see inside, but as he listened, he could hear an odd quality to the sound of whoever was breathing in there.  It almost sounded like they had too many lungs.

"Hey, who's in there?" Nate wondered.  "Don't worry, I won't hurt you."

"Let me out of here," a female voice pleaded.  But it wasn't one coherent voice.  It sounded like dozens of voices blended together, some of them sounding sad and pathetic, but others seething with impotent rage.  The figure in the cage moved, and Nate could see some blurring around the edges of the shape, like a shadow cast by dozens of different light sources.

"Whoa," Nate commented as he instinctively backed away.  "It's like, I don't know, like she's a broken image.  Dozens of different people layered over one another.  What are you?" he asked the figure.

"She's a construct," Steph said grimly, as she suddenly understood what this meant.  "Goom described Pootang to me, and that's exactly what he looked like.  An interlayered mixture of images.  See, she's a user-created program, basically.  A fictional character."

"So, if these scientists can bring these programs, these constructs, into the real world . . . " Myitt said slowly, not really wanting to put the pieces together.

"Exactly," Steph said, clearly not happy about the fact.  "We've got way bigger problems than just saving our friends."

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty-three

The orc pointed the way to where the keys were kept, and the RAFians quickly released the prisoners.  There were five prisoners in total, three humans, the orc, and the construct.

But they all agreed that they would leave the broken program in her cage.  Nobody knew what she would do if they released her.  And nobody really felt any qualms about leaving someone's fictional character behind.

The other four led the way, knowing their way around the complex much better than the RAFians did.  As they entered well-lit areas of the facility, they began to look more and more nervous, particularly the orc.

"Er, I've got an idea," one of the humans, a dark-haired boy who was dressed in a flowing black robe, commented.  "Be right back."  He quickly ran back the way they had come, disappearing around a bend in the hallway.

After a few moments, he returned, carrying four rings about the size and shape of dog collars.  Each collar was angular and metallic, covered in wires, and had two blunt prongs sticking out of the inside of the rim.  One of the collars, obviously meant for the orc, was much larger and more sturdily built than the others.

"If you're serious about getting us out of here, put these on us," the boy said to the RAFians.  "They're, well, the scientists use them to keep us under control when they're running tests.  You can say that you're just taking us out for testing.  They aren't going to let us get by, otherwise."

"How can they do stuff like this to people?" Cody demanded, shocked and angry.  "Abduct you like this?  Hold you captive?  There's no way anybody can be that heartless."

The freed prisoners stayed silent, and one shuddered, as if at a bad memory.  Finally, the orc spoke up.  "They don't seem to really believe that we're sentient," he said sadly.  "They think that, because we were stored in a computer's database, our intelligence must have had to be compressed somehow.  They still think we can act smart, you know, act human, but they're convinced that it's only how we're, uh, programmed.  And, well, they seem to believe that they've been trying to find a way to decompress the information.  That's part of what the tests are for."

Myitt frowned, but nodded.  "It makes some sense.  Actually, how can something stored in a computer be sentient?  Computers aren't sentient, right?  So how could something that isn't self-aware, even store enough information to make self-awareness possible?"

The orc shrugged.  "I don't know.  You believe that we are, though, don't you?" he asked cautiously.  "You seem to think we aren't just artificial intelligences."

"I think we're pretty sure," Steph said, nodding.  "Most of our friends are innerworlders.  I think we'd know if they had been reduced to mindless programs."

"Innerworlders," one of the humans said, trying out the term.  "I like that word.  It's a good description."

Nate sighed, grabbed one of the collars, and began fastening it on one of the freed prisoners.  The other RAFians each took one of the other three and did the same.  "Let's hope that these don't get activated somehow," Cody muttered as he reluctantly strapped the thick collar around the orc's neck.

"Oh, hey, we've been rude, haven't we?" Nate suddenly said.  "We haven't been introduced.  I'm Nate."

"Myitt, er, Tara," Myitt said.  "Whichever you prefer."

"Steph," Steph said.

"Broken or Cody," Cody said.  "Take your pick."

"Call me Bloodbane," the orc said with a half-smile.  "I prefer to use my Warcraft username, these days.  Seems to fit better than 'Ralph' does."  Myitt was nodding, understanding the sentiment.  Steph tried to hide an amused smile at the thought of an orc named Ralph.

"Shade," one of the humans, the boy in the dark robe, said.  He had been the one who had found the collars.  "Call me Shade."

"Becky," a young and cheery blonde girl, and the only one in the group wearing modern-styled clothes, said.  She was the one who had said she liked the word innerworlder.  "I'm weird, I go by my real name."

"Kyris," the last one, a tomboyish and withdrawn brown-haired girl said.  She wore a medieval-styled leather vest fitted with brass rivets and seams.  She flicked a strand of hair from her face, seeming somehow bored.

"Nice to meet you all now can we please get moving?" Shade wondered.  "Even with the collars, they might realize that we're not supposed to be out and about.  Especially once they talk to that program we left behind."

"Good point," Bloodbane said.  "Come on, this way to the transference room.  Your friends might be there."

They followed the freed prisoners, while at the same time trying to look like they knew where they were going and were leading the way.  Couldn't make it look like the prisoners were calling the shots, after all.

"What else do you guys know about RAF?" Steph wondered, talking to fill the void while they walked, but also curious about what this lab wanted with the RAFians in the first place.

"Just what we've overheard," Shade said.  "Which isn't much."

"What about that first test of the teleport reversal?" Becky said.  "That had to do with RAF, didn't it?"

She turned towards the RAFians, and explained, "See, the scientists tried to bring an object from RAF the first time they tested the teleport reversal process that later brought the four of us out of the internet.  They didn't want to bring a user from RAF, or even a program or construct or whatever you call it, because they feared some kind of reversal of some cascading effect.  Er, something to do with that anomaly Shade mentioned.  I don't know much about that.  But I do know that that first test was supposedly a failure.  Supposedly."

She paused in the middle of her story as a group of scientists passed them in the hallway.  But the three scientists did nothing more than glance at the prisoners to check that they were wearing the collars.  Satisfied, they continued along their way.

"The funny thing was, though, all the data apparently indicated that something came through," Becky continued in a whisper, after the scientists were past.  She held up a finger, pointing at the RAFians for emphasis, as she went on.  "Nobody knows what it was, since the instruments weren't that finely tuned yet.  They knew it wasn't sentient or alive, because the coding was static, but they didn't have much idea what, exactly, it looked like.  Of course, they looked for anything that didn't belong in the lab.  But they never found any such thing."

"Good ghost story," Steph commented.  She pantomimed holding up a flashlight.  "And then, when they finally found it, it was a severed hand.  OooOOOoo."

"Fine, don't take it seriously," Kyris said derisively.  "Doesn't matter to me if you guys believe it or not."

"Never said I didn't believe you," Steph defended herself.

"Don't mind her.  She just likes to be sarcastic," Myitt explained.

"Nooo," Steph said sarcastically.  "Me?  Sarcastic?  Never!"

Eventually, the eight of them arrived at an open space, an octagonal room about two stories high and almost as wide, with doors in four of the sides, including the one they had just come through.  Other than a few sensors and readout displays, and some scaffolding and a few suspended tarps that gave the impression that the area was still a work in progress, the room was mostly empty.  Except for one thing.

At the center of the room was an ornate contraption built of dark silver buttresses and scafolds, with wires connecting the separated layers of metal.  It was about twice the height of a person, with wires dangling from it on all sides.  In front of the structure, was a long tube, like a telescope, but with the narrow end pointing outward from the center.

But what was really noticeable, was the object at the center of all that metal.  It was clearly visible in the gaps and voids in the structure, and its simplicity stood starkly out of place amidst the complexity of the machine that surrounded it.  Like a six-foot egg, nestled within a grid-matrix bed of metal straw.

It was perfectly smooth.  Spherical.  Off-white.

"No way," Myitt commented.  "That cannot be what I think it is."

It took the other RAFians a few more seconds for it to click, and they each gasped in sudden recognition.  An off-white sphere . . . but how was that possible?

"The Time Matrix," Myitt whispered reverently.  "But, I thought you guys said they never found the thing they brought from RAF?"

Becky looked confused.  "They didn't.  And that thing can't be from RAF.  That's the thing they've been using to reverse the teleport."

[Blazing Angel]

They probably used a stargate to get it...Those Swedish are crafty.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty-four

"Hmm, no," Myitt said after a moment of thought.  Then she snapped her fingers and pointed at Becky.  "No, this makes sense!  I mean, think about it.  It's the Time Matrix.  Why couldn't it have come through, during that false positive, went back in time somehow, and ended up being found and then used to power the whole process?  Becky, do you remember anyone talking about where, or when, that white sphere was found?"

"I think I overheard somebody talking about it, a while back," Becky said, furrowing her brow in thought.  "They said they found it in Egypt someplace.  They brought it here in 1988, I think."

"That's only a year before Goose said that they invented the internet at CERN," Steph commented.  "So, then, they used it to bring itself into reality?  Paradoxes.  Oy."

"If it's the Time Matrix, it's only natural that it would try to materialize in Egypt, and in the past," Myitt thought out loud.  "That's where it was, until the Skrit Na found it, in the series.  So it appeared where and when it had first been hidden.  Interesting.  You know, maybe it actually did that to avoid a paradox.  So that it wouldn't exist in two places at the same time.  Two Time Matrixes.  That probably would have ripped a hole in the universe or something.  I wonder-"

Suddenly, the RAFians heard a loud noise that made them all jump.  Red lights began to flash all around them, accompanied by the blaring 'whoOOP whoOOP' of an alarm.

"They must have talked to the program!" Bloodbane shouted over the noise.  "We've been made!"

"But why trigger such a loud alarm?" Cody wondered out loud as he started to nervously edge towards the exit.  "If you've got intruders, the last thing you want to do is let them know you know about them!"

"Maybe there's somebody else on our side!" Steph yelled back as she quickly followed Cody's lead.  "Maybe they were trying to warn us!"

Bloodbane, meanwhile, wasted no time.  As soon as he'd heard the alarm, he aimed his fist at his own neck.  He braced himself, and then he slammed his knuckles down with a staggering impact on his collar.  He grunted from the pain and gasped for breath, while the collar crackled with static.  The collar was bent inward on itself, its battery crumpled.  Slowly the indicator lights drained away, as the power faded.

And it was just in the nick of time, too.  The other three collars hissed fiercely, as their tazing static charge swiftly and efficiently knocked the other freed prisoners unconscious.  The three of them crumpled to the ground.  Bloodbane picked them up, slinging the three of them easily over his wide shoulders.

There was a flurry of footsteps, as the scientists rushed towards the room, blocking the RAFians' escape.  From four different entrances, people in white coats appeared in the doorway, but most of them stopped at the threshold to the chamber.  Only the most zealous among them went rushing inside.  A few of them were holding what looked like remote controls, and it was these scientists who seemed the most alarmed to see Bloodbane still conscious.

Bloodbane roared, and charged towards them, fists out at his sides.  His display was more about bark than bite, though, as he was out of breath and dizzy from the self-inflicted blow that he could still feel, pounding forcefully against his throat.  The crumpled collar was pressed against his windpipe, forcing him to gasp for air as he ran.

Of course, the scientists didn't know that.  Those who had rushed into the chamber now just as quickly scampered out of the orc's way, jostling past the RAFians as they went.

But one of the scientists, a particularly burly man, hesitated.  He looked down at the RAFians' coats, focusing his eyes on the spot where all the other scientists had their ID badges.

The RAFians' coats had no such ID.

"I found them!" he called out triumphantly.  He grabbed Myitt by the collar, holding up her coat.  "These are the ones who freed the prisoners!"

Myitt struggled against the man's grip.  But, as soon as he had pointed out the RAFians, and had made sure the other scientists could see who they were, he threw Myitt disdainfully back towards the center of the room, letting her go.  The other three RAFians ran to her to make sure she was okay.

The scientists vacated the room as quickly as they had arrived.  Nate caught a retreating glimpse of Bloodbane, still carrying the three humans draped over his shoulders, just as he disappeared around the corner.  The scientists dodged him as the orc barreled past.

The RAFians were alone in the room.  Before they could even collect their thoughts, the exits suddenly snapped shut, sealing them in.

"Oh, no, this can't be good," Nate moaned, quickly and anxiously glancing back and forth for a way out.  "Guys . . . whenever the bad guys lock the good guys in a room, that's when the nerve gases start."

They listened in silence, but heard nothing.  In fact, the whole room had gone eerily quiet.  The RAFians waited, on edge, for something to happen, their adrenaline still pumping through their veins.

The unsettling pause seemed to stretch on and on.  Still, nothing.  Nate was taking deep, halting breaths of air, as though preparing to hold his breath if need be.  Cody got up and started pounding on one of the doors, looking desperately for a way to open it, but it wouldn't budge.

The waiting was quickly fraying their nerves, the seconds ticking by like hours, as they powerlessly tried to anticipate the enemy's next move.

The RAFians jumped as they suddenly noticed movement behind them.  But before any of them could pinpoint what it was that was moving, there was a bright flash of light that seemed to fill the room.  Before their eyes could clear, there was another blinding flash.  And a third.

Myitt looked around, startled.  Without warning, she was now the only person in the room.  The other RAFians were nowhere in sight.

"Steph?  Nate?  Cody?" Myitt called out, feeling frantic.  Where could they have gone?  They had been right there, mere moments ago!

There was one last bright flash, which seemed to come from everywhere.  This one lasted longer, and was even brighter than the others had been.  She covered her eyes and looked away, but it was as if the light was shining right through her eyelids, through her hands, and nothing she could do would block it out.

Or was it her own body that was glowing?  Was all that light shining from her own skin?

She felt strange, as though she was no longer all there.  Like her body was fading, becoming incorporeal.  And then, after a few more moments, she felt herself breaking apart, into hundreds of tiny fragments of light.

She tried to scream, but at that point, she no longer had a voice.

When her senses finally cleared, she was surrounded on all sides by a blank canvas of white.

[Blazing Angel]

My brain is already exploding from lack of logic.

[DinosaurNothlit]

If you wanted logic, you are reading the wrong story by the entirely wrong author. 

Chapter Thirty-five

Richard sat back in his chair, staggered at what he was reading on the computer screen.  But also a little bit proud.

Yes, RAFians were connected in a way that no scientist could fathom.  Richard knew that already, of course.  It was the reason why they were here in Switzerland in the first place.  But it was nice to have somebody else glimpse, what he already so innately understood.

"I wonder if they'll ever figure it out?" Gaz questioned.  She looked around at Goose, Ash, and Richard, their knowing glances saying to one another that they all knew the answer to the big mystery.  "The RAF Anomaly.  I like that."

"Well, I think we've gotten all we can from this computer," Richard said, sighing as he got up from his chair.  "We should probably-"

He was interrupted by a loud 'whoOOP whoOOP' and bright flashing red lights, making all the RAFians jump.

"The other group must've gotten caught!" Ash cried.  "Come on, we have to move!"

The four of them jumped up from the computer, and headed swiftly out into the hall.  Already there was movement in the halls as scientists headed towards the disturbance.  The RAFians filed in with the scientists, moving with the flow.  Wherever they were going, the RAFians figured, was probably where they wanted to be.

The scientists ran outside, and the RAFians followed them into a different building.  The same building that the second group of RAFians had taken to explore, Richard noted.  The hallways in this building were darkened, as though they were keeping something here that they didn't want anyone to see.

Far away, and out of the corner of his eye, Richard thought he saw a creature that looked an awful lot like the Hulk.  At least, it was big and muscular and green.  But, by the time he focused his gaze on the figure, it was gone.  He shook his head, certain he must be seeing things.

They finally emerged into a small control room, where several scientists had already gathered around a viewscreen.  The viewscreen showed a large room.  In the center of the room was a metallic contraption of sorts, and nestled in the center of that structure was an off-white sphere.

They gasped in shock as they spotted the other RAFians in the room on the viewscreen.  Cody was banging on the doors of the room, Nate was breathing heavily like he was about to faint, and Myitt and Steph were both looking around anxiously for a way out.  Myitt was rubbing her neck, like she'd been hurt.

Most of the scientists seemed focused on the knobs and buttons below the viewscreens, as they adjusted the dials, carefully calibrating the equipment.  There was a progress bar on one of the screens, which was labeled 'Percentage power to reality converter.'  It was nearly full.

But one man had heard the RAFians' gasp of shock at the sight of their friends.  Slowly, he turned, to face the RAFians behind him.  The RAFians could almost see the wheels in his head turning, as he looked down at the place on their coats where an ID badge should have been.

"Voici les intrus!" he yelled, pointing accusingly at the RAFians.

The RAFians took off running down the hall.  They ran and ran, not daring to look behind them.  Fortunately, most of the scientists seemed occupied, and the hallways were empty.  For a while, at least.  But this was a big building, and they saw no sign of the way they had come.

The RAFians skidded nearly to a halt as they suddenly saw three scientists in the hallway in front of them, blocking their way forward.  The RAFians swiftly turned, their momentum carrying them forward, and continued to run down a side corridor.

As they continued to run for their lives, hunting for a way out, their path was blocked again and again, by scientists lying in wait to snatch the RAFians.  They always managed to dodge them, but every time, the RAFians were forced to follow a new path.

Each time this happened, one path would remain suspiciously clear.  If the scientists were trying to surround the RAFians, they were doing an incredibly poor job of it.

Richard dubiously chalked it up to good luck at first, but as they ran it became harder and harder to ignore the fact that they were being shepherded along a very specific route.

The others noticed it too.  Their strides became more and more uncertain, as they could all feel the fact that they were going exactly where the scientists wanted them to.

But, what else could they do?  They knew they weren't strong enough to overpower the people forming the blockades.  And there were no other openings in the hallways, no hidden side routes that they could take.  So they just kept running.

Suddenly they emerged into an open space.  It was the same room they had seen on the monitor.

"NO!" Gaz yelled, trying to turn back.  But she had been moving too fast, and before she could stop herself she rushed headlong into the room with far too much momentum.  She tripped sideways as she suddenly tried to turn.  Ash and Goose, inches behind her, plowed into her as she tripped, and they fell on top of her, adding their momentum to hers.  The three of them skidded almost to the center of the room, where they knew they would be too late to reach the now rapidly closing door.

Strong hands grabbed Richard by the collar, an instant before he could have similarly plowed into the others, and pulled him from the room.  He found himself in the adjacent hallway as the doors snapped shut.

"I mean you no harm," a deep voice quickly assured him.  "I want to help you.  And to atone for what I've done to you.  My name is Frederick Regis."

"You!" Richard sharply accused.  "You're the one who hacked my account!  You're the one who kidnapped my friends.  Let me go!"

"As I said, I mean you no harm," Frederick apologized.  "I only want to make it right.  I've seen your world, through your eyes, and I've finally come to realize that I was wrong about you.  All of you.  The RAFians.  We were all wrong about you, but the others haven't seen that yet."

"What are you talking about?" Richard asked, bewildered.

"I don't really have time to explain," Frederick whispered hastily.  "Take this."  He handed Richard an identification badge like the ones the other scientists wore, complete with a picture of Richard on it.  "Go.  Save your friends.  Your friends are the secret to one of the most powerful forces the world has ever known.  We tried to harness that force, without understanding it.  We underestimated you.  Because we didn't know.  We didn't know that the secret was you."

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty-six

"Myitt!" Steph called out, relieved.  She, Cody, and Nate approached one another, walking towards Myitt across the featureless plain of white.  "There you are.  Okay, then, that's all of us."

"Whoa," Myitt commented.  She was staring at something behind the others.  They all turned to look, and then they gasped too.

Galloping to a stop close to the four of them, was a female Andalite.  An actual Andalite.  An alien being, just like they were described in the books.  Except living and breathing.

They knew what was going on, of course.  Somehow, although they weren't sure how, they were seeing an innerworlder RAFian for the first time.  But even knowing what she was, did very little to lessen the shock at the sight of a creature that they had only read about.

<Hey,> Noelle said casually, sounding almost bored.  But then she tilted her head curiously.  <Huh.  They've never taken four people at once before.  That's . . . odd.  Hey Aquilai!> she called out, as a man in a suit coat and blue tie approached the scene.  <What do you make of it?>

"Whoa," Myitt commented to herself.  "So that's what thought-speak sounds like.  Cool!"

"Tara!" a familiar voice greeted, and Myitt smiled in recognition as she looked around for Marie.  But, she didn't see anyone in the direction the voice had come from.

"Ahem, down here," Marie said gently, and Myitt looked down to see a fox.  A talking fox.  And, once again, the shock of it was lessened only slightly by the fact that she already knew what was going on.  This was still a talking fox.

Marie grinned at Myitt's confusion.  An oddly human expression, on such a canine face.  "Hey there, welcome to RAF!  Well, technically not RAF, but you know what I mean."

"Hey, wait, aren't you . . . ?" Aquilai wondered, pointing a confused finger in Steph's direction.  "I recognize you.  You're Steph.  But, you're an outerworlder!  How did you get here?"

Steph shrugged.  "No idea.  There was a room, with a big fancy Time Matrix contraption, and a big flash of light, and poof here we are!"

"What was that about the Time Matrix?" Aquilai pressed.

Steph quickly explained what they knew.  Aquilai nodded as Steph spoke, as though he actually understood any of it.

"Well, actually, it kind of makes sense that they might use the Time Matrix to create this new reality that we seem to have found ourselves in," he pointed out.  "Keep in mind, that was one of its purposes.  Well, maybe not its intended purpose, but we all know that it can be used to create alternate universes."

Aquilai gasped, as something else occurred to him.  "To think!  All this time, the internet must have actually been its own universe.  All this time!  It's just that, until now, we had only been able to see just the very surface of it.  We've only been looking at the reflections of an inner world that's already been here for decades!"

"That would explain the link between CERN, the Time Matrix, and the teleport," Myitt agreed.  "CERN found the Time Matrix in 1988.  Just a year before they invented the internet.  Then, this other group, the teleport researchers, must have gotten more ambitious once they found out what the internet really was."

"That's all very nice, but what exactly does it all mean?" Cody demanded impatiently.  "What happened to us?  One minute we're in Switzerland, and the next we're here?"  He looked around at the featureless whiteness.  "Where is 'here,' anyway?"

"Oh, man, so you guys were in Switzerland?" Tony groaned in dismay as he walked up to the rest of the group.  He threw up his hands in exasperation.  "Our rescue party.  You were our rescue party.  Well, it's official, we're screwed."

As if to confirm Tony's pronouncement, three more people suddenly poofed into existence.  "Hey, that's Goose!" Tony exclaimed, waving to his shorm.  "It's good to see you!"

"Where are we?" Goose asked, bewildered.

The three new arrivals looked around.  Just like the first group, their eyes widened as they saw Noelle.  She held up her hands, a gesture of peace.  <Calm down, it's me.  It's Noelle.>

"An Andalite?" Ash wondered nervously.  "What's going on?  Who are you people?"

"What, don't you recognize RAFians when you see them?" Tony asked.  "Who else do you think an Andalite, a talking fox, a star and a Time Lord would be?"

"To be fair, of course," Estelore pointed out, gesturing to themselves and Aquilai.  "We look about as human as anybody."

"Wait a minute," Gaz wondered out loud.  "What happened to Richard?"

"Yeah, he was with us when we poofed, wasn't he?  Or whatever it was that happened," Ash agreed.  "Why isn't he here yet?"

"Maybe he got away," Gaz said hopefully.

"Come on, Richard, we're all counting on you, man," Cody said as he looked up into the sky.  There was no answer, of course.

But, perhaps that was fortunate.  An answer would have meant that Richard had failed.

The RAFians, innerworlders and former outerworlders, simply stood there for a few minutes in awkward silence.  The former outers trying to take in the shock of it all.  It was one thing to talk about and read about a world inside the internet, a world where Andalites and talking foxes and sentient stars and Time Lords were real living breathing people.  But it was an entirely different matter to actually meet those people.

Ash was looking back and forth between Estelore's human form, and the bright patch in the sky that she guessed was their star.  Wanting to ask questions about how that could work, but not quite knowing what questions to ask.

Myitt was cautiously lowering her hand towards Marie, wanting to touch her, but not quite sure if that would be an acceptable thing to do.  Marie nodded, and Myitt began to pet the fox's head, still feeling utterly incredulous.

Gaz was trying not to stare at Noelle's stalk eyes as she wondered what it would be like to try to process so much visual information all at once.  What must it be like, to see in all directions?

Nate was looking at Goose, wondering why he was still human.  They were supposed to turn into their RAFselves, right?  So why wasn't Goose a goose?  But, after thinking about it some more, he decided that it must be because none of them had actually set foot on RAF yet.

"So, what's there to do here?" Gaz wondered out loud, looking away from Noelle as the Andalite began to shift uncomfortably.  "Does this place just go on and on forever?"

"Well, yes and no," Estelore noted, showing a vague smile in response to Ash's curious glances.  "We've been able to find no boundary to this place, other than the floor."  They pointed up, towards their star.  "See us there?  We're actually several million miles away right now.  Perhaps billion.  We're not entirely certain exactly how far.  But, we're about as far from us as the earth from the sun."

"And when anybody tries to find the edges of the map, they always end up in the same place again eventually," Aquilai noted.  "Like a loop.  It's a big loop, several miles at least, but it's a loop.  There are no walls, it just repeats."

The former outerworlders wore strained expressions, trying to figure out the bizarre logic.  "So, it's upwardly infinite," Ash said.  "But, sideways, it's only a few miles?  How can an entire star fit within the space of a few miles, anyway?"

"No idea," Estelore admitted.  "We've all been puzzled by that one."

"More importantly," Goose said anxiously.  "How do we get out?"

"It would seem that's all up to Richard, now," Marie said solemnly.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Thirty-seven

Richard was still in a bit of shock at everything that was going on.  And he wasn't quite ready to trust someone like Frederick.  But it would seem that he had little choice.

"The storage device," Frederick told him.  "It's in the reception room, the third door on your right.  It's plugged in to a tripod, and it will look like a grey block the size of a gameboy.  That's where they'll have downloaded the others, too.  The ones who were here with you.  Take it, and escape.  I'll do what I can to cover for you."  With that, Frederick jogged down the hall in the other direction, quickly vanishing around a corner and leaving Richard in stunned silence.

Richard quickly shook himself from his reverie, and ran down the hall to the room the scientist had said.  The halls were oddly empty, the scientists having gathered to watch the spectacle of the captured intruders.  Would they notice that Richard was missing from the room where the other RAFians were?  Or would Frederick hold true to his word, and ensure that they didn't notice?

Richard couldn't take the chance.  He had to move quickly.  He just hoped that Frederick was telling the truth about where the storage device was, and he wasn't heading into some kind of trap.

Richard arrived at the room the scientist had described.  It was a plain, carpeted space, like an office or a computer lab.  Not much different from the room where he had read the report about the RAF Anomaly.  But, in the corner, was a tripod, just like Frederick had said.

Richard eyed the device, a grey thing that looked a bit like a flash drive, except that it was the size of small brick.  Yet the plug where it hooked into the tripod looked no different from a regular USB.  Next to the device was a display screen.  The screen was tiny, black-and-white, and with a low resolution.  Richard looked closely, studying the small pixelated readout.  It seemed to show the outlines of several humans, and the blurred but unmistakable shape of an Andalite.  That was what he was looking for, alright.

He could hear the object humming, like the noise a computer makes when it's loading something.  He waited for it to quiet down, before he slowly and carefully, almost reverently, unplugged it from its stand.  The device was warm, almost hot, to the touch.

Strange, that such a small thing, could hold so much.  Estelore, Noelle, Tony, Aquilai, Marie, Myitt, Steph, Cody, Nate, Goose, Gaz, and Ash.  All of them, all those people that he cared about.  And somehow the whole group of them could fit in the palm of his hand.

Cradling the device like a living thing, Richard quickly but carefully left the room.  So far, Frederick seemed to be holding true to his word, keeping the other scientists busy, because the hallways were still clear.

Richard quite easily found the way out, and stepped gratefully back into the sunlight.  It was only mid-afternoon.  Had all of this, everything that had happened, only taken place in a few hours?  It seemed impossible to believe that so much could have happened so fast.

Richard opened the chain-link gate that would lead back into the outside world, and stepped through, grateful to be away from that facility.  He headed back toward the bus stop, where they had first arrived.

He nearly laughed out loud as it occurred to him that he would have to wait for a bus back to the airport.  Waiting for a bus seemed so mundane.  Compared to everything else that had happened, something so ordinary just seemed silly and absurd.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for a bus to show up.  Richard paid the driver, and went to find a place to sit, trying to hold the storage device in a way that didn't attract too much attention.  He felt an uncomfortable twinge as the horrible thought occurred to him, that the device could, in theory, be stolen.  But he quickly pushed the thought out of his mind.  That was too awful to think about.  And, besides, he was more than ready to defend the precious object with his life.

After a trip that seemed to last much too long, the bus arrived at the airport.  It seemed odd to be back here all alone, he thought, as he stepped back into the building that he had emerged through with the other RAFians only the previous day.

Of course, he thought as he looked down at the grey device in his hands, he wasn't really all that alone.

Richard went through the check-in procedure on auto-pilot, thinking only of getting back home, where he could safely upload his fellow RAFians back to the site.  Goom had specifically warned him against using any kind of public computer for something so important as this.  Which was a shame, because Richard sorely wanted to get it over with, and make sure everyone was alright.

Richard was broken from his thoughts by the loud alarm of the metal detector he had just walked through.  "I'm sorry, you're going to have to put that through the scanner," an attendant told him, indicating the object that he was still carrying.  He had to fight the impulse to try to hide it from the woman, knowing that anything he did to conceal it would only make him look guilty.

"What is it?" a second attendant, a man, demanded, narrowing his eyes at the unfamiliar device

"It's my friends . . . uh, game," Richard stammered.  "My friend's game.  He's a programmer.  He designs video games.  That's why it looks so unusual.  It's a prototype."

"Uh huh," the first attendant said, still skeptical.  "What kind of game?"

"Sci-fi," Richard said, thinking quickly.  "It's about, uh, a research facility.  You have to break into this lab, you see, because the scientists kidnapped your friends.  Actually, they downloaded your friends onto this computer disk.  Sort of a Matrix-type deal," he went on, speaking more easily now that he'd thought of a story to use.  "And you have to hack their security online.  And then, after you get in, you have to find the disk, and get back out, before they can download you too.  It's a lot of fun."

"I dunno, it all sounds kind of unrealistic.  Don't you think?" the woman pointed out.  "I mean, getting downloaded onto a computer disk?  What's that all about?"

Richard had to hide a smile.  "Yeah, it's pretty out there.  Totally unrealistic.  That's why they call it sci-fi."

Satisfied that the grey block was not actually a cleverly hidden bomb, the two security officers finally let him through.  As soon as he was out of hearing range, he breathed a sigh of relief, and nervously prayed that the x-rays from the scanner hadn't done anything to the RAFians inside the device.

At last, it was time to board.  Richard picked up his carry-on luggage, and eagerly crossed the tunnel to the plane.

Even though he knew it would be a long flight, it was good to be heading home.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Hey, it's a quadruple-post!  New record!

Chapter Thirty-eight

Meanwhile, back on RAF, Parker was stationed with Phoenix, Seal, Blue, and Russell on guard duty.  During the absence of the outerworlders, the rest of the RAFians had needed to increase Pootang's guard.  The rationale was that it was even more critical than ever to keep him contained.  Now that the only eight RAFians who were completely invulnerable from dying, were gone.

Pootang was being quieter than usual.  It had drifted off into a fitful trance which seemed to be what passed for sleep for such a creature.  The relative silence, while much better than listening its feral screams, felt flat and hollow in the huge underground space.

The RAFians had recently noticed something worrying about Pootang.  And that was that it seemed to be growing.  Where, before, it had only been dozens or perhaps hundreds of versions of itself, it now seemed like thousands.  All the different versions of itself were so varied that it looked like a fractured yellow shimmer, a wildly flickering hologram, impossible to focus your eyes on.  You could only see the individual creatures out of the corner of your eye, like an afterimage, a split second after you looked away.

Just to look at the creature for too long would cause a splitting headache, while the mind tried to make sense of something that was simply beyond comprehension.  All told, it was a worrying new development.

The RAFians wondered if maybe the newbies and lurkers were the cause.  As each new person looked at Pootang for the first time, their fear might add to his power, as they unintentionally visualized the monster that he must be.  Their own thoughts spawning more and more fearsome versons of him.  Until, inevitably, he would become invincible.

"You know what?" Parker asked Phoenix, bored and trying to start a conversation.  "We really ought to let him out and kill him before he becomes any more powerful.  As soon as the missing RAFians get back."

"Absolutely not," Phoenix replied.  "It's way too risky.  Haven't you even heard accounts of Pootang's rampage in Classic RAF?  Or Blue's Animated Series?  Both versions took all of RAF to even fight them to a standstill.  And that's just two of them.  Against hundreds, we won't have a prayer.  No, we just need to find a way to keep him contained indefinitely."

"We don't know that that's how it works," Parker answered back, starting to get defensive.  "We're all just assuming that we have to defeat each version separately.  What if they're all just rolled into one, and that one still has all the weaknesses of its parts?  We could be all scared over nothing."

"Or what if it's the opposite," Phoenix countered.  "What if they have the strengths of all, and the weaknesses of none?  Think of that for a moment.  Imagine a being that can wreak the destruction of a creature hundreds of feet tall, but provides a target only the size of an infant?  How would we hope to defeat such a thing?"

"Pfft," Parker scoffed.  "Give me a little credit.  I can hit an infant, easy."

Phoenix gave Parker a concerned look.  The mod really hoped that the Spartan was only joking.

"Not that I would have a point of reference," Parker quickly added, laughing as he realized how bad that sentence sounded.  "I've never shot at an infant before.  I just meant a target the size of an infant.  Easy shot."

But Phoenix was still a bit nervous.  "Just promise you won't try anything, okay?"  He was pretty sure Parker was joking about the whole thing, but Phoenix didn't really know Parker all that well, so it was hard to be certain.  And the mod wasn't willing to take that risk, when all of RAF could be at stake.

The truth was, Parker had been mostly joking, but not quite completely.  He was bored of being on guard duty, and training.  He was quickly getting tired of being constantly on the defensive.  And if it was inevitable that Pootang would escape eventually anyway, why not get the incident over with, right when the RAFians could plan for it and would be ready for him?  It was what made sense.  Go on the offensive, and they could take control of the situation, rather than being surprised and caught off-guard when the inevitable escape occurred anyhow.

Parker was pulled out of his thoughts, when Demos appeared at the base of the stairs that led down to Pootang's lair.  That was his signal that his shift was over, and he gratefully waved goodbye to Phoenix and the others.

Parker sighed as he tried to think about what he should do next.  Fighting the Covenant had been interesting for a while.  But now he needed a new challenge.

So he would go and find one, he thought.  He grinned, an expression which went unseen beneath his helmet, as he suddenly had an idea.  Hey, the RAFians owed the Animorphs a huge favor, after all, didn't they?  Given what Ax had done for Goom to help locate the missing RAFians, they owed the Animorphs a lot.

So, naturally, it was only fair if a RAFian were to, say, take out the Animorphs' biggest foe.

After hours of searching, Parker finally managed to track down Visser Three's feeding grounds within the Animorphs Board.  He smiled as he watched the muscular Andalite run across the grass, wondering which monster he would morph when confronted with Parker in his full Spartan regalia.

Parker stepped from the shadows of the trees surrounding the meadow, clad in his trusted armor and sporting several different guns in his pack.  Visser Three quickly spotted him, slowing his run as he evaluated the new threat.  Several Hork-Bajir drew closer to the Visser that they were charged to protect.  Parker figured that the Hork-Bajir would be easy targets, of course.  Not even worth worrying about.

<Who are you?> the Visser demanded.  <Explain yourself.>

Parker stayed silent for a moment, enjoying the adrenaline rush of fear that he shared with his opponent.  This would not be an easy fight for either of them.  "I'm here to destroy you," he finally said, pulling out his battle rifle.  He cradled the gun in his arms, not pointing it at the Visser just yet, but making sure that the Yeerk could see the intended threat.

Visser Three's eyes widened with fear and anger, and he quickly began to morph.  Parker let him continue, of course.  He wanted a fair fight.

At first, Visser Three's morph looked like a flower opening its petals.  His Andalite form was the bud from which thousands of petals were slowly spreading.  Except that each 'petal' was a limb.  An arm, a leg, a head.  In all shapes and colors imaginable.  Parker had no idea what the Visser was becoming, but he took a step back, staggered and confused by the wild array of shapes.

After a while, the 'flower' effect began to look more like one of those tests they give you at the eye doctor, the one where you unfocus your eyes and one image slowly splits into two.  Only, instead of the same image repeated but separate, Visser Three was slowly splitting into many different images interlayered over one another.  Parker recognized the familiar monster with eight fiery heads, but he could swear he also saw also the purple monster with traffic cone hands, and the sea-horse alien with acidic spit.  And there were others he had never seen before.  Many, many others.

It was then that Parker realized what was happening.  Visser Three was not morphing any one monster.  He was morphing all of them.

At once.