Chapter 1

An electric current ran through the quartz crystal, causing it to vibrate. A program kept track of this vibration, updating the time data at a rate equal to the vibration of the quartz crystal. The time data increased from 6:59:55 AM to 6:59:56 AM, 6:59:57 AM, 6:59:58 AM, 6:59:59 AM, 7:00:00 AM. A second program was watching the time data. Because the time data had reached the point that the program had been set to keep an eye out for, it activated the alarm function.

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*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

Jason Bolland was shaken out of his sleep by the alarm. He opened his eyes and pressed the stop button on his alarm clock. He got out of bed. He was in his early 30s, around 6 feet tall, and a bit on the skinny side. He had dark brown, hair, almost black, and brown eyes. He stretched and yawned. “The best thing about waking up is looking forward to going to sleep again,” he mumbled. He went around his morning routine, shaving, showering, brushing his teeth, dressing, and all that. He ate a bowl of cereal, and then, just before going out the door, had a cup of coffee. He walked out of his apartment and down the stairs to the ground. He held the remote key up in the air and pressed the unlock button. His car’s headlights blinked twice and he got in.

He turned the radio on. “President Carlisle held his first rally yesterday, which means that the presidential campaign has officially started. In other news, Mcaffee announced that it will release its new virus protection software ahead of schedule in order to combat the virus Thorne.exe which resurfaced a few days after they reported they had found the source of the virus and destroyed it a week ago. It will be available for free download tomorrow.”

Jason pulled up to the Future Control Industries office building and got out. He stepped into the lobby, and the nearest security camera rotated to look at him. The security system took his face and ran a search for it on the database of employees until it found a match. It noted that he had arrived for work. By the time he reached the elevator and pressed the up button, the security system had already set it for the 7th floor. He was the only one in the elevator, so the system knew that anyone getting out of the elevator would be him. It ran a quick check on him anyway, just to be sure. Whenever a security camera saw Jason, it would update his position. He had been a little uncomfortable at first about the system knowing where he was at all times, but he had gotten used to it. And, besides, at work people could see him, and they didn’t put cameras in the bathrooms.

Jason made his way to his cubicle and started on his work.

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A few floors up, Alan Bradley arrived for work. He entered the digitization lab and checked the data on the computer. He checked it again. He ran a search for digitize on the computer. All of the data from his experiments, all of the functions that were used by Ma3a, everything related to digitizing, was gone, and he had a very good idea of who had gotten rid of it. He sat up from his chair and walked out of the lab. Not too far from the door were two of the thugs from Fcon. “Wondering where all that data went, Mr. Bradley?” one of them said.

Alan cut right to the chase, “if you think this is going to blackmail me into giving you Ma3a, you’re wrong.”

“It’s not just Ma3a, you have 3 of our best operatives, Mr. Crown, Mr. Baza, and Ms. Popoff, and we would very much like them back.”

“They got severely corrupted when they were digitized, it’ll take a while to correct them, and I don’t think your people are up to the task. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find out my new assignment.” With that, he walked past them and into the break room area.

This had been going on since he and his son, Jet had crashed Fcon’s mobile server. There had always been at least one of their thugs nearby, and they frequently tried to intimidate him i

Chapter 3

*Am I dead?*

Jason could still speak, that was good. His voice sounded like it usually did, but with a metallic undertone to it.

The strange people in front of Jason looked at each other, looking confused. Or as confused as they could look with a few shapes for a face. The two with the triangular objects pointed them at him, and one walked over to a glowing sphere floating a few inches away from the wall. It was light blue with intricate circuitry like designs on it. On the side facing away from the wall, it had a gray ring with yellow squares on it. The being touched the ring and it rotated around to the other side. A ring of blue shapes appeared behind the sphere. Above the sphere, a panel appeared, just hanging in the air. On the panel were several moving vertical yellow lines made up of characters Jason couldn’t decipher from this distance, and in front of that, a symbol made up of a purple oval with 3 black triangles going towards the middle.

The being spoke to the panel, and it spoke back, though it wasn’t any language he had ever heard. The best Jason could approximate it sounding like was this:

*Elo kervy on weqis.*

*Lon oles es poort?*

*Elto ifun ition ificid vorty erwes utiz ifun yuniris.*

*Riyhe woleg isutret.*

The voices had the same metallic quality his voice had, but the voice coming from the panel was also had some slight static. The ring of blue shapes and the panel disappeared, and the grey ring pivoted back to its earlier position. The being turned to the rest of the group and told them something in the same language. They nodded. One of the ones with a triangular object lowered it. Then he suddenly turned transparent and moving much faster than he had seen anyone move, ran toward him, leaving a line of purple energy in his wake. The being turned opaque again when he was a few inches in front of Jason, then grabbed him with one hand and lifted him up. He pressed a shape on his chest and then spoke to Jason. This time Jason could understand him perfectly. *Okay, what kind of stunt did you pull, how did you manage to get here without turning green?*

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Mercury stood with her back to the wall and looked around the corner. There were only 2 ICPs, she could take them. She took out her rod primitive and stepped away from the wall and into the sight of the ICPs. One of them already had his disk out, he tossed it at Mercury. She quickly swatted it out of the way and sent it bouncing around the room. The other ICP charged toward her. She ran up to him and shoved her rods so that they were on either side of the ICP’s head. Then she pressed the Start button on both. Energy surged between them and into the ICP. He writhed around and then disappeared into a mass of sparks.

The other ICP was concentrated on getting his disk back. He finally succeeded, then turned back to Mercury, only to find a Suffusion rod pressed against his chest. It fired and the energy pellets tore through him. He fell back and disappeared, leaving behind his shields which faded a few seconds later.

*ICPs, they’re getting worse every cycle,* Mercury quipped. She had been searching FCon’s server for the last few nanocycles, looking for anything related to digitization. She was now at the entrance to the digitized data receiving node. She walked in and through a corridor. There was an archive bin nearby and she accessed it. It contained a log file of the digitizations, which she downloaded. At the top was the digitization of Alan, followed by many Datawraiths, followed by many dedigitizations of Datawraiths, followed by the digitization of what became the Fcon Monster, and finally the dedigitizations of Alan and Jet. Wait, there was one more entry. Jason.exe? And it was dated just a few nanocycles ago. The log file showed it was not corrupted.

They can’t have gotten the correction algorithms back already, could they?, she thought. She started t

*I was wondering around. when suddenly, the Avatar appeared*
BHK: GHA! Hey, you've scared me! What the f*ck are you?!
Avatar: I am CyAdmin. An avatar of destiny. You have a message from the CPU. Listen:

In a time, the Internet was a peaceful place. As Jet defeated and the Corruption, total peace has returned. But as the doctor met with a survivng member of Thorne's Corruption, I'm afraid that if Thorne lives, that could mean one thing: total annihilation of the Internet. Your mission: to destroy the remaining Zealots, find Thorne's Shrine, and destroy the Corrpution Lord once and for all. I will give you the Antivirus card that is vital to this mission. If you find Thorne's shrine, use this to demolute it.

BHK: *gets the card* Neat.

CyAdmin: Off you go now. Remember, young member of the , the future of the Internet depends on you.

And so I'm gone on a quest to destroy all of the Zealots.
All this and more will be found out in:

3.0!