Bryan pondered what to do... he was on an alien planet, with a once human- though rather alien looking little girl. The only two people on this entire world, where the remnants of their civilisation was barely tapped. He felt like an explorer... and the promise of an interesting future could await him here. "Astra? I... I think I want to explore here more."
"Huh? You're being silly. You can't breathe here. You will die without me."
"Well... why don't you explore with me? You can read this planet's language! If we find this wish machine... maybe we can build one on Earth. It could help a lot of people. Besides... I really want to get my wish done right." He clicked his fingers noting with some.. disappointment that there was no magic yet. But Astra said it would take time...
"Doesn't look like machine helped these people though," Said Astra sadly.
Suddenly they heard a sound and looked up. It was like the sound of a needle dropping across a marble surface. Something sharp hitting the surface tension of reality itself... and in front of them, was a ship.
An entire ship!
It looked like a galley... with wings?
A figure flew out from the ship... an angel with impressively large wings. She radiated a curious energy, that must be protecting her from the weird atmosphere of this world. "Guesssss who!" she said smiling.
Byran blinked... then blushed at seeing someone so beautiful just drop out of the sky like that. "Uh... are.. you an.. alien?" Bryan studied her beautiful features marred only by a single scar on her cheek. It did nothing to take away her looks though.
The angel girl gave a little smile. "Well, I suppose we all are aliens until we meet. Hold on let me think now... er... no. Definitely not alien. Just your guardian angel." She tapped Bryan with her strange sword. Curiously enough, Bryan didn't feel threatened by it. Probably still with dealing with the shock of everything."Okay, you can breathe the atmosphere here without a problem. Like me and that kid there- oh I'm Lucas. very nice to meet such fellow crazy people who walk without looking on an alien planet with no possible way home unless they just -happen- to find one."
Bryan was struggling to keep up with the situation. "There was a genie- I made a wish- I- there was a rainbow road- and er-"
Lucas groaned. "Yes yes, I'm sure it was a very strange experience. You really should use a ship to travel the rainbow roads. If you fall off, you can end up anywhere. So, who made the bridge here? I was sure Earth was still some years away from building it themselves."
Astra was still trying to fly. She jumped up a little, and floated very slowly to the ground. "The Machine of this world did I think. We can make wishes on it. I made my wishes. I want to go see my mother soon."
Lucas looked around. "A machine hm? You know I've been hoping to find a lost civilisation. Come on then."
"W-what?" Asked Bryan. "Aren't you afraid? though?"
"We're here now, lets go look around. I saw a temple or something over there. Some kind of alien city, just a short walk. Funny, it was definitely not there before... and I find that really curious."
"You've- you've been here before? You explore space?"
"Space, time, and non-space" Said Lucas dismissively. "All the interesting places are around Earth. Isn't that strange?"
Bryan stared at her. Then blinked. "Did... your scar just move to the other side?"
"Oh? Maybe. Maybe not. Well, come on then. Follow me, lets explore an alien city shall we?"
On a beach on another plane of reality... yet close to Earth all the same, lives continued as they did.
Hikari was dressed in a black Bikini, enjoying the warm, virtual environment of the pleasant beach. She watched the waves of the digital sea flow, exactly as she programmed them... the programs were perfect replicas of the real world, much of her own design. the clouds sparkled in glorious code, shifting randomly in fractals. The AI's programmed that bit but... but they could not compare to Hikari's own particular art- the connection she had with thought to program, and was able to get all the nuances of reality that can sometimes be missed by wholly digital systems.
The AI's programmed in numbers... Hikari programmed from the analogue mind directly.
Hikari was very much like Neo of the Matrix.. what she thought, became real. She could imagine just about anything on the virtual internet, and it only took a fraction of the time to build a virtualised structure or program to work with. She was very close to another more 'normal' programmer- an Amiga digital fairy, named Amy. Together, the two were architects of their new reality, helping those with lesser knowledge of this world.
However, as virtual beings they had severe limitations...
... but not Hikari. She was not just any digital fairy... she was also her own host. A cybernetic organism in the real world, part man... part machine. Yes- a man... He even had his own name.. Hiro. Hikari and Hiro shared their lives together, and yet were so far apart from the other. They thought of the other often- closer then brother and sister... they were the same person, yet distinct and different in the way they reached their conclusions. But regardless of how they get there, they inevitably have the same conclusion. It was all natural to their nature.
Another digital fairy appeared behind Hikari. His steps were soft on the sandy digital beach. He smiled to her to get her attention. He was a young man digital fairy, that went by the name of Nathan. He was a Playstation Three digital fairy... so had a rather sleek black hair. Tall.. dark and handsome. Sometimes he joked he was 'Nathan the Third'. "Hikari?" He called.
Hikari turned to look at him. Yes... she had to admit he was rather nice to look at. Objectively anyway. "Hello Nath," she said quietly then looked back to the ocean.
Nathan was not dissuaded by her apparent disinterest. "I was wondering... you know... a lot of people have hooked up and well..."
Hikari turned to look at him at that point, her eyes a little... sad.
Nathan turned bright red on his cheeks. "Well... do you think... you might want to have a few drinks? I really want to get to know you."
Hikari sighed. "Nathan... it's complicated. I can't do that."
Nathan had been putting moves on Hikari for quite a few days now. A long line of people, that were just instantly rejected by the girl. Hikari didn't seem interested in anyone. It felt like a crime. Everyone knew she was instrumental in many of the constructs of the world they lived in! Some people joked that it was because Hikari could create her own 'perfect' boyfriend, though none said it to her face. Nathan did not believe that though... he could feel the niceness in the girl, and the strange reservations she held whenever someone got close to her. Her mysterious nature made Nathan more curious. Nobody even knew what kind of digital fairy she was. "Why do you live so far away from a world you created?"
Hikari shrugged. "I created it for you... it isn't for me."
"That's just stupid! You're as much a part of this world as anyone else. Please just... let's have a few drinks and you know- maybe... even if you don't like me, you might find you will like someone out there. You've been here for years and you never..."
"Never what? Hooked up with someone? Last I checked, there isn't a law saying I can't be single."
Nathan looked a little shocked. Maybe he had pushed too far on what was a really sensitive subject for Hikari. "But... there's so few of us," he said meekly.
Hikari sighed. "I'm not like you... it isn't possible for me."
"How do you know if you don't try?"
Hikari got up, and with but a wave of her hand, was instantly dressed. She did not even need an editor to call up code and change it. It was almost... godly. Hikari was a digital goddess. "It just isn't possible... for me. It..." She glanced up at the clouds stopping. "That's.. not right."
"What's wrong?" Asked Nathan looking up.
"Errors... errors in the code. Glitches..." She then looked at Nathan and saw that the digital fairy himself was starting to glitch up. His features turning into random code then back to virtualisation as his core tried to make sense of something weird going on. Interpretors were crashing... compiling errors were starting to increase...
"W..what... h-hap-'ning." said Nath as he experienced the glitching.
Hikari ran an immediate check on the systems... it was horrific. It was the worst possible errors she could have ever considered. Even the backups were corrupted! "Get to the central Node," she said with eerie calm. "Move now!"
The central node was the very epicentre of the digital world. It was the major station of all digital life, and where they registered themselves so they could use a free peer to peer network for their required run-time. Everyone past by here, when they were born... and it had become a part of life for them.
Hikari saw a sea of digital fairies, swarming to the 'safety' of the central station up its monolithic stairs, as everything around them became corrupted in code.
Amy was already there, looking at the system with horror. "Hikari! Can you make any sense of this?" Amy herself was starting to glitch. It was apparent that the only entity that was perfectly safe, was Hikari. The world around her was starting to lose coherence.
Amy tapped a few buttons on a console and looked at her editor. "I've already tried protocol 1, but there was no effect. The World is still glitching. We're going to have a simultaneous world crash, in about 2 minutes."
Hikari gasped. Every... every system in the world is going to crash? Not just the digital world, but every computer on Earth? That meant nothing was safe. Planes could crash out of the sky! Hospital computers would be corrupted beyond repair. Financial records wiped. They had to fix this! It was like the digital world was under attack!
"What about the AI's?" asked Hikari.
"They are not affected." said Amy with relief.
Hikari carefully looked over it all, trying to stem the rising panic. "The codes have been re-written. Compilers are no longer working, and we're getting vast quantities of corrupted data from the real world slowing everything down. Activate protocol 2."
Protocol 2 initiated
Firewalls were built to segregate the digital world, just in case, from real world access... Hikari's systems quickly adapted to the firewalls, allowing her to continue to exist.
"No effect," said Amy. "The firewalls themselves have suffered corrupted data. They are starting to glitch out of existence."
"Protocol 3 then," said Hikari. "Freeze everyone."
Amy swallowed. This was the last protocol they could use. It would also leave Hikari on her own. "Okay... good luck e-sis."
Hikari gave just a slightly encouraged smile at that.
Protocol 3 initiated.
All digital fairies were suddenly frozen, their run times in a state of suspended animation. All except Hikari. She glanced at Amy locked in frozen stasis, as she continued to work on the central node... perplexed by what she saw. The suspension brought her time but... nothing was making sense! Every time she tried to re-create another program, it just instantly became corrupted in some other language! The only thing that worked was if she re-created another interpretor from Hiro's systems.
All computers in the world were about to crash simultaneously, and it it would create havok on any machine depending on it!
She quickly uploaded a fresh new Interpretor from her thought-code and provided it to all AI's to use, in an effort to protect as many programs and systems as possible. She prioritised anything in the real world that would safeguard the lives of people.
Hikari then started to port all the digital fairies to working AI's as quickly as possible as the internet crashed around them. But the AI's were also all busy trying to stop the world computer crash, as systems had to be re-tweaked to a new language. Worse, a lot of digital fairies had now had families... so their numbers were higher then the number of AI's to host them.
Hikari frowned. There were still 10 digial fairies left... and there was no more space that anyone had! "Damn it I need to send these fairies somewhere! Come on!"They... they were going to die unless she did something! Seeing no other option... She wrote one... very simple program.
"Activate protocol X," said Hikari.
Denied.
"Oh no you don't!" Said the young girl tapping furiously. "I don't know who or what you are, but I know you're in there... and unless you can give me an alternative, you activate this protocol now!"
An AI orb started to show itself on the central plexus. It was the one that everyone knew... some wondered if it was like a God... the geeks called it Sudo. but Hikari just thought it was a very powerful AI, that liked to help. It was close to a digital fairy named Effie, and her host... close to everyone with a mix of compassion and wrath at stupidity...
.. except Hikari. It never spoke to her... never said a word... that is, until now.
Hikari... I didn't really know what to make of you, when you first came here. I thought you a potential threat... I know your past. I'm sorry we never spoke.
Hikari shrugged. "Yeah well... I thought it was something like that. You know who I really am. I don't have a lot of time to argue this. I can't let a world I created glitch out of existence." She glanced at the ten remaining fairies. Nathan was amongst them. This was... going to be painful. "Tell them afterwards, I'm sorry... I didn't want them to find out like this." She did a few more taps on the keys to prepare herself."You can do me one favour. Send word Lilly Gordon okay? She's got magic allies... this has to be magic doing this. I can't stop a magic program."
The AI gave a light sigh. "Protocol X is initiated Hikari..."
Hikari closed her eyes... as she felt the ten digital fairies port... into within. All of them, right into Hiro's systems, using her own run time to flee the corrupted areas. Hikari herself, started to fade away, as her arm turned into code.. then her body... and finally her mind. Memory was deleted to make room for it all, systems were re-wired and major compression algorithms were used as every digital system found a safe harbour within Hiro...
... and Hikari, ceased to be.
