The "little sprite" was zip boarding over to the group as fast she could, apparently. She leapt off the board when it was still something like five relative feet off the ground. She ran over to the sprite whom the wolf had just knocked out. She knelt down hurriedly beside the male. Another female joined her after a few nanoseconds. She found herself kneeling down beside Wire, closer to his head. They both fussed over him for a time, at least in the viral's perception.

Suddenly the smaller one's head jerked up, as if she remembered something. She fixed her eyes on the wolf and began tapping her older friend faster and faster right up to a frantic pace.

"What?" the older snapped irritably. The wolf was surprised to find out that it understood what the word meant. The brown sprite looked in the direction the other one was already looking. "Just stay there," she muttered, knowing the creature couldn't understand her. She stood very slowly.

Suddenly, the general stirred and nearly dislodged the wolf perched on him. The beast, temperamentally took a great paw and slammed it across the side of his head. It gingerly dismounted. This sudden show of violence startled Veronica half to deletion.

Slowly, the wolf sauntered over to the sprites. It sat down about two lengths of its body away from them.

Ronnie was now standing in front of Diode's unconscious form. Wire came around to stand on Veronica's left side. "I don't think it wants to hurt us, Ronnie," she said, taking a step forward.

"You saw what it did to the other guy, Ace. And to Diode. I don't trust it."

The viral longed to tell them that there was nothing to fear and that it had knocked Diode out by accident. The wolf was baffled by how it could understand the speech it had heard all of its life from inside the crate, where it had been executed, and only, very suddenly come to understand the words' meanings just now. Almost as if it had completely skipped the process of learning and just knew it.

Inexplicably, the wolf had a sudden tightness in its throat and was forced to try to clear it.

"Wire, no! I don't want you getting hurt! especially by a virus. Look, it's just like the other one."

"But this one's calmer."

"Virals have personalities too, kid."

The wolf took a step forward. Its desire to communicate driving it on to do something, although it couldn't quite figure out what. It startled everyone in the vicinity by crying, "I won't hurt her!" The wolf's voice was decidedly female, and the wolf herself had stunned herself to silence.

"You can talk!" exclaimed Wire. Ronnie held her back.

"How can we trust you, virus?" she asked the creature.

"I take it virals have done horrible things in the past?" she asked, inadvertently answering a question with a question.

"Let's ask Dad's opinion, he's waking up."

"Wha... w... hmm." Diode sat up and looked around. "Hey, that thing's still here? It tried to kill me!"

"No, I didn't. It was an accident. I didn't mean to hit you that hard. I'm sorry."

"I don't believe this. A viral's apologizing to me."

Just then Chroma appeared. "What happened?"

"I'll fill you in later," Veronica said.

Chroma's eyes fell upon the viral.

"Thank you for finding me. I thought I would be stuck down there forever. I do appreciate it."

Chroma blinked. Was a viral thanking her? She decided to get to the point. "State your name and function," she said in a business-like fashion. The animal's ears drooped slightly. Her eyes went to the side as she thought. It got to the point where she could almost feel the sparks of energy flying through her head. She delved into the depths of her mind, but couldn't find any useful information. "I don't have a name," she said, ears drooping lower. "And I don't know what my function is, either. I don't even think I have a function."

"You have to have a function; the user creates all the program types. Programs have to have a function, else the user wouldn't have created your type," Diode exclaimed.

"She's a viral," Veronica reminded them all.

"But she doesn't have a file where it says she is one, according to her. In fact, we don't even know if she is viral. Just because she looks like the other one. She certainly behave like one," Wire piped.

"There's only one way to find out. then," Veronica said. She turned on her heel and headed towards the tower.

Veronica knelt by the viral, unformatted icon in hand. "Are you sure it's smart to give a virus an icon?" asked Chroma.

"No, in fact, it isn't. But it's the only way to find out more about this thing. And if it's telling the truth." She then touched the icon to the wolf's neck. It stayed and formatted itself. Veronica then explained the procedure, "Once the icon has all the info it can get, I'll take it back and take a read on it. The icon won't complete formation without all the requirements. If there are any blanks, we'll fill them in manually.

"It seems--," Veronica started, but was interrupted by Diode groaning.

"My multi-weapon. That guy took it."

"Looks like you'll have to use a gun, Diode," Veronica said with a smile. "Diode can't hit a targetfor his running time," she said to Chroma. "Anyway, like I was saying, it seems that what she is saying is true," she said to the group standing around the wolf. "We have to find you both a name and a purpose."

"What is your kind's purpose, sprite?" the creature asked.

"We serve the user, to one extent or another. She's a Guardian, she protects sprites and other well-meaning things. I organize all the I/O traffic, Diode over there does mainly what Chroma does, only unofficially, and Wire, what do you want to do, Wire?"

"I think I'd like to be a Guardian too. Either that or I'll do what Dad does. Or maybe I'll be a mercenary, only for the good side, of course, so my conscience won't bother me. Oooo... like a hacker. Mmmm... hacker... auuhhhg." Her eyes went all distant and it was quite obvious that she was daydreaming.

"Uh, yeah. Anyway," Ronnie continued, "Our kind have the opportunity to decide what we want to do with our running times. We're lucky that way. So you're physically a virus but you're an incomplete program. The user didn't give you the drive that normal virals have. You have the same ability as us. You have a choice. It's yours. Your decision. Will you stay with us, or will you go with your, uh, family and your heritage? It's up to you. You're still a viral in many aspects."

"You're my family, I want to stay with you."

"They won't take you back if you leave with us."

"Neither will you."

Veronica sighed. "All right. But be very careful not to injure anyone in any way. You're still viral and have the capability to create virals with the correct programming."

Diode's log, one zero nine seven two zero, second entry.

Boy, has this been a memorable second. First the Guardian 636, Chroma, arrives, then similar viral entities nearly kill me, twice, the latter of the two claiming that she is an incomplete program. I can't bring myself to trust a virus, no matter how "incomplete" it is.

This other guy, a viral too, tried to kill me... also, and he got away with my multi-weapon. Veronica says she'll get me a good gun, but, I suck at using them.

Anyway, once I finish this log, I'm gonna head over to the hospital to ask that sprite Chroma rescued some questions. I'm doing this log now so that I can go straight to bed after; it's been some second.

After putting some minor finishing touches to his log, Diode left his room to find Wire riding the wolf creature (which he found most disturbing), and Algo Rithm looking through his fridge, again.

Diode took the fridge door and closed it firmly. Rithm had already succeeded in grabbing a soda can.

"What? Did I offend you in any way?" he asked in his "ghetto" accent he shared with his uncle, Mic. "You know, you're technically taking the food right out of my mouth doing that," the very dark blue sprite said.

"You come in here almost every second and eat my food. Get a job!"

"I have a job," the sprite said with forced dignity, "And th' food's my payment."

"And what would that be?" asked Diode as he prepared to leave.

"Baby-sitting services."

"Oh? And where were you just before when I could have used you? Face it, you're only here because of the fridge."

"I resent that, man," he said.

"Too bad, if you eat my food, you have to put up with me." And with that, Diode walked out the door.

Diode entered the room where he had been told she was. He saw her with her back to him. She looked like someone he had once known, but he knew it couldn't be. She had been only one zero the last time he had seen her, that would put her in her mid-teen hours now. Not the sprite he saw here; she looked almost his age. She had long hair that was pulled back into a bun, with the rest of the hair hanging down from the bottom of it. Her hair was blue going on silver, a lighter shade than her blue skin. The latter was a medium sky blue. She was looking out the window.

"Excuse me," he said softly. She turned, but not all the way. "Uh, I'd like to ask you some questions," he asked in his deep voice.

"Yeah, sure," she said, not moving. He came around the bed to sit beside her.

He could only see her profile. She certainly looked like his childhood friend, only much older. He could remember something about older sisters; maybe this was one of her older sisters. If it was, she he'd ask her about his friend. He missed her. What had become of her? And what did she look like now?

"Uh, so how'd you get in that cage?" he asked, in an attempt to distract his mind from thinking about his friend. She still didn't look at him. She seemed to be staring at a point on the floor.

"I'm not sure," she said. "But I do know that I was put in there as food for that thing. I almost starved to deletion. That's why I was out cold, I think." She looked at him.

Diode was barely able to suppress a wince as he saw the left side of her face. Two parallel scars down her face starting just above her eyebrow and trailed off to the middle of her cheek. They looked about an hour old, considering their extremely light shade of blue. Her eye had been replaced by dark blue glass. It was a lot darker in shade until it hit the middle where it was darkest. Apparently, the cybernetic eye could shift with the other one. As she looked at him, her expression changed. "Diode?" she ventured.

"How do you know my name?" he asked, suspiciously squinting at her.

"It's me, Synth!"

"You can't be Synth," he countered. "Synth would be hardly old enough to drive."

She smiled. "Diode, I game-hopped to travel. In fact, I game-hopped for fun, mostly. See this?" she said, pointing to her eye. "The more games you play, the greater your risk of getting an eye put out by the user. This is reminiscent of a game I almost lost. I know it doesn't really matter whether you win or lose, but I tried to visit many systems along the way. These," she said, pointing to the scars, "are dragon's claws. The user was a dragon in that game. I won though, I won every game I played," she announced proudly. When Diode looked closer, he saw a third scar, much fainter than the other two, and shorter. "I missed you," she said, moving to hug him. He hugged her back and admitted in a whisper, "I missed you too."

"My, you grew," she said. She couldn't put her arms around him as easily as she used to.

"And you did too..." he said. "I mean," he faltered, realizing how that might be taken.

Synth laughed at his awkwardness. "I know what you meant," she said with a smile. He loved how her brown eyes (eye?) sparkled when she did.

"When you meet my friends tomorrow, don't reminisce."

"Why not? You're hiding your past from them? Why?"

"Think about it," he said. "It's mainly my daughter I'm hiding from, however I wouldn't like it if my friend found out about all of it either."

It took her less than half a nano to think of the reasons why Diode might want to hide his past.

Diode definitely wasn't an angel.

When Synth heard the part about his daughter, her heart fell like iron. That could mean that... "You're married?" she asked, afraid to know the answer.

"No," he said shortly.

"Then what are you doing with a kid?"

"Guilt made me do it."

Synth really didn't like the sound of that statement. She expected the worst. "What?"

"I'll explain later.

"Oh come on! I'm his best friend! I deserve to know something about him, please?"

"No, Ronnie. He told me not to say anything. I'm sorry," Synth replied. It was late morning and Ronnie and Synth were outside on a bench near the docks, talking.

"Please?! I won't stop bugging you until you tell me something!"

"No! I won't! He specifically told me not to!"

"Why? What did he do that was so terrible?"

"I can't tell you."

"Meaning he did everything."

Synth sighed. "Let's just say that he's wanted in many systems by many people for many things.

Continued in Another Time, Another Place: Part Four

Back to Fic Archive