I took the lift up to the observation deck, stepped outside, then looked around. I had looked everywhere else, she had to be... There she was. I don't know why I bothered to search anywhere else. More often than not, she was up here. Walking over, I stopped beside the bench, looking down at Mirele. In her long, flowing gown, she was a vision... but I couldn't bring myself to tell her that. She hadn't moved a muscle, hadn't looked at me, her eyes firmly fastened on the sunset. "Mind if I join you?" She shook her head. I sat beside her, looking out over the landscape. A year had passed since the tenth control key had been placed... and my nearly lifeless body had been dragged across the world to Central Control, where Dr.

As Grandfather started to fall, I caught him, easing him into a chair that Candy hurriedly yanked over. "Grandfather, you need to rest!" I insisted worriedly. "It's bad enough that I have to face the idea of spending the rest of eternity floating in a box. Losing you too... I can't. I just can't bear it!"He smiled wryly as he clasped my shoulder. "Toby, I'm not immortal. That is one difference... you will be integrated into the computer system, but you'll still be yourself. To a point. You're immortal as long as the network stays intact and your body holds out. The system is designed so that under the right conditions, you can communicate and interact with us.""Really?" Candy asked as I just stared in surprise. This was news to me."I told everyone this before," Grandfather said with a sigh. "Almost everyone, obvi

"Are we sure that we're sure about this?" Mirele asked in a small voice, looking into her tank with a grimace. She poked a finger at the odd construct that was designed to fit around the groin, taking care of that end of things while our bodies simply existed in the tanks, letting our minds run free through the worldwide network. I shrugged, feeling a bit uncomfortable in my short white robe as I watched the controllers and other staff complete final preparations. "I think so, and it's a bit late to back out now." She nodded, putting her arms around me as we waited. I closed my eyes and laid my head over hers as I held her, trying to etch this moment sharply in my memory. The feel of her, the smell of her short fuzz of hair, the warmth of her breath on my bare chest... I'd done the same thing with as many memories as possible since our elopement. I tried to r

Mirele had to get my attention again, pulling my back from my fascination with the complexity of the system. "Do you have all the inputs and outputs figured out?" she asked.I took another look around... it wasn't long before I had figured out where everything was coming from, and I was encouraged when I realized that I actually understood what it all was. This wasn't all that different from our practices. The only real difference was that we were now fully and permanently engaged in the server, with no sense of the outside except through our peripheral devices.I missed it, to a point, but having such incredible clarity and speed of thought was a decent trade-off. I had Mirele with me... the only thing that would have made it perfect was if my grandfather was in here as well.I focused on the output where Mirele wa

We'd been given a task to perform, and we took it seriously. Perhaps a bit too seriously. In our laser focus on getting the systems back online, neither of us noticed that Grandfather had been trying to get our attention for several hours. I finally spotted the data stream as I was flying back and forth between several of the sector computers, getting all the droids active and back to work.Initially, it looked like he was just being conversational, asking us how things were going. The last few messages sounded downright panicked. I think he was afraid that we were indeed getting lost... getting so deep into the system that we were losing contact with the outside.I felt so bad for panicking him. We needed a better way to do this, some method for him to signal us. A summons command, or something like that."I think there's supposed to be one programmed in, but I'm not sure why it isn't working," Mirele said as she started to explore the inputs again."Maybe it's