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Dot and Enzo met Bob as he came out of the Diner, letting the door close behind him before he leaned against the entranceway and sighed heavily, closing his eyes.
"What happened?" Enzo asked, anxiously.
Bob met the young sprite's gaze. "I just told a mother she had to say goodbye to her child."
Dot bit her lip. "You mean she...?"
He nodded, and pushed himself away from the wall. "Come on, guys. Let's end this. Glitch - locate power spikes!"
His keytool whirred and chattered. Bob called up a vidwindow, and transferred its output so all of them could see.
"I've had Glitch locate the largest power surges in the system, and triangulate probable power sources," he explained, as Dot scanned the map.
"Looks like there's at least three generators," she said. "They'd have to be big, to power this place." She frowned. "It's a *lot* of power. More than it takes to power the Archives. How in the Net did he get it?"
"How isn't as important as where," Bob replied.
"I think we'll do this faster if we split up," Dot said. "The sooner we're out of here the better."
The Guardian nodded, then glanced back inside the Diner at his counterpart. "Bob? Are you all right?"
"I feel like I just handed out a deletion sentence, Dot."
She looked sympathetic, and gently squeezed his arm.
"It'll be OK."
---
Adena slid out of the booth as Bob departed, and ran to her mother's side. Her face was buried in her hands.
"Mom?"
The Guardian started, sitting bolt upright and dropping her hands to see her daughter gazing enquiringly back at her with those violet eyes.
"Oh. I'm sorry, sweetheart."
Adena frowned. "What's wrong? What's going on?"
"Nothing's wrong," she replied, trying her best to put on a reassuring smile. The little sprite didn't look convinced. She sighed, and then recalled Bob's words to her: /Can you tell me when you first took Adena to Floating Point Park? When she spoke her first word? Coloured her first picture?/
She frowned. She could choose to sit here and feel sorry for herself, or she could do something constructive. She went with the latter.
"Adena, why don't you sit here with me and we'll colour a few JPEG's together?"
"OK." Adena went back to the other table, picked up her backpack, then returned to slide into the booth next to her mother. She settled in, and looked at her again. "Are you sure you're ok, Mom?"
The Guardian sniffed, and tried to ignore the pangs of guilt. "I'm fine, honey. Just fine." She took the backpack from the girl, and began rummaging through it, determined to make the most of these last nanos. She found the colouring pad and activated the paint program. As Adena searched through the list of templates, the Guardian glanced out of the window, and saw the three sprites splitting up, heading towards different sections of the system.
*I hope you're wrong about this, Bob,* she thought, turning back to her daughter and placing an arm around the child's shoulders. *User, let him be wrong.*
----
Enzo stared up at the huge power generator as it churned noisily. He guessed it must be easily three times his height... and four times as ugly.
"Take it out any way you can," Bob had said. "It doesn't matter how, just as long as you make sure Megabyte can't use it again."
The young sprite examined the machinery, taking in all the buttons, switches and gauges, the long snaking pipes pumping the energy inside and around. He rubbed his hands together and popped his knuckles, a huge grin spreading all over his face.
"Where to begin?" he mused aloud. "Let me see... Tiff, Targa, Bitmap, Ico... ah, forget it, let's just do this..."
With a grand maestro flourish, Enzo began hitting switches and buttons and pulling levers in quick succession. After a few moments of this random attack, the generator shuddered, coughed, and fell silent. Enzo stopped his assault for a nanosecond.
"Well, that was easy," he said, almost disappointed.
Suddenly, the game *rippled*. Enzo stepped back from the generator, watching the bizarre effect. "Coolness!"
As he watched, he slowly became aware of a high-pitched whine. He frowned, puzzled, as it increased in intensity.
"What *is* that... uh-oh..."
----
The explosion rocked the Diner. Adena looked up from her paint program, a confused expression on her round face.
"What was that?"
Her mother took a deep breath and smiled. "It's nothing to worry about," she said dismissively. She changed the subject swiftly; more for her own benefit than for the child's. "Hey, that's turning out really well..."
----
Dot looked up as she heard the noise, and saw the ripple effect trailing through the fake sky. She allowed herself to watch it for a nano, the very fabric of the system beginning to fade just a little.
"One down, two to go," she murmured, turning her attentions back to the huge grey generator that stood glowering at her with gauges for eyes. It was Megabyte's work all right. Nobody else would go to so much trouble. Nobody else, she thought wryly, could make such an inanimate object so intimidating.
She decided how best to go for the proverbial jugular as she eyed the large network of cables.
"Plate frisbee," she grinned, suddenly recalling the brief incident in the Diner. "Thanks for the idea, Bob."
Dot stepped off her zipboard and picked it up in one hand as it decompiled to a single slender disc. She stepped back, making sure she had enough distance to dive for cover if need be, and gauged the weight of the zipboard and her target.
"Well... easy come, easy go," she shrugged, telling herself she needed an upgraded 'board anyway to silence the protesting voice of reason in her head.
She stood a moment, sighted up, and then let fly with her improvised weapon. It was only after the zipboard left her hand that she realised she had never played Frisbee before.
She couldn't bear to watch.
----
It couldn't be brushed off this time.
Adena gasped, dropping her paint program as the entire Diner suddenly became semi-transparent. The pad clattered to the table. She looked immediately to her mother.
"Mom! Something's wrong!" she cried, seeing the Guardian's troubled expression. She didn't reply, but gazed through the ghost-image of the table. "Mom?" Adena frowned, "What's wrong? What's going on? You can fix it, right?"
The Guardian closed her brown eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath before turning to her daughter and speaking quietly.
"I'm sorry, Adena. I... I can't fix it this time."
She had to look away, unable to bear the shock that registered on the young sprite's face. She didn't want to realise that Adena was already beginning to disappear before her eyes; didn't want to admit that she was about to say goodbye...
It was a nano or two before she realised that the girl had climbed into her lap and wrapped her arms around her neck.
"I'm scared, Mom."
The Guardian took another shaky breath, then encircled Adena tightly in her arms.
"It's all right. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
*But you are, little one,* she thought. *And I wish... right now I wish I could go with you.*
She buried her face in the young sprite's hair and shut herself off to a world that was rapidly falling apart.
----
Bob watched the Game as it began to deteriorate. Part of him was relieved to know that this would finally be over. Another part of him was agonising over what to do about his counterpart once they were back in Mainframe proper. He knew Megabyte wouldn't go to all this trouble for no reason. There had to be something else...
He turned to the last generator. He'd been waiting for Enzo and Dot to accomplish their tasks first, using Glitch to scan the power emissions. It was fairly obvious now that the fake Game was dying, its energy reserves depleted. The almost-transparent Mainframe allowed Bob to see outside the cube, to the real system outside.
It looked quiet.
Too quiet.
He redirected his attention to the machinery. "Glitch - cutter!"
The keytool obligingly turned into a circular saw, and the Guardian made short work of cutting into the control panel. Prying the metal up, he could now see the wiring and circuitry that was the brain of the generator. This would take only a split-nano. Yanking a fistful of the wires out, Bob paused. This was it. The last threads of this bizarre reality. The last strands of a life.
He set his jaw, then sheared the wires with a single stroke.
End Part 8