VcnV

Brunei

They entered Mike’s grassy office and he said, “Good timing. I’ve got what we need.” They looked at each other hoping he was right. He pointed to a floating device, “There it is.”

“What is it an anti-virus,” asked Josh.

“Not just any old anti-virus. I’ve nicknamed this anti-virus as Brunei. We have a lot of viruses to kill. It looked similar to the one that attached itself to Pete in the hallway. One difference Josh spotted was the siphon’s were replace by something else.

“What are those projections?” asked Sheri.

“Those are zappers and it has many of them with a high charged battery. It will be able to do a lot more damage. It also has another secret function that I can’t deploy until we are in the Virome and it is also completely under my control so we don’t have to worry about it rubbing us out. I loaded in all of our images including Brutus. It will recognize us now.”

“Cool, that is what we need. When do we get started?” Josh was a little anxious to see where this would lead to. They were also trapped like Mike for now in the virtual.

“We can go there now but, what about Pete. I do think it would not be good to unleashed this doomsday device while he is still down on the floor there.”

“No of course not. We will have to rescue him again,” said Sheri. Lets go.” They all went through the wormhole across from the colony.

Standing in the hallway with the floating device next to him, Mike opened the door, looked around and entered the room. Molly and Yancy saw them and came out of hiding. Josh, Sheri and Brutus stayed in the hall.

Mike asked about Pete and they told him that they had not seen him since they were there. Yancy said, “Molly and I will go down and inspect the boxes for him.”

“Good,” said Mike. “I have some medicine to take care of this virus but I would like to have him out of danger. See what you can do. I will hold off on deploying my weapon. He left and they all went back to his office. They sat down near the tree with the wormhole. The device remained floating next to the tree. We will give them time to attempt a rescue.

Josh opened up to Mike again, “So tell me how does the time dilation we have experienced work?”

“Oh, that is easy. In the virtual, time can be changed in two different programs by just slowing down or speeding up one of their clocks. In reality, time is experienced due to the physical movements within our solar system. The earth spinning while rotating around the sun in orbit. In computers everything is run by digital clocks. We set them to the same rate as we experience in life but they can be changed to any duration easily. It would not be easy to slow down the earth’s rotation or its orbit around the sun.”

Sheri asks, “Are we really experiencing this dilation Josh has mentioned?”

“Time dilation, yes I would say you are.”

Molly popped in, “He is not in any of the boxes.”

“Good, we really need to get started. He must have gotten away while we were all in my domain.” Mike turned and addressed the anti-virus secret weapon. He talked to it the same way he talked to Brutus. It was unintelligible to their ears. He walked across the hall and entered the colony as Brunei followed behind him.

Yancy said, “I hope he is right,” while shaking his head. They all followed Mike into the room.

“It is going to get dangerous here so it would be best if all but one of you left for safety across the hall. If Pete sticks his head out the one person here with me can go and assist him.”

Yancy said, “I want to stay.”

“OK, the rest of you evacuate. Brutus go along with them and make sure they don’t get in any trouble.” Brutus gave a bark and then obeyed following them. “All right Yancy, get ready for the fireworks.” He said some words to Brunei that Yancy did not understand while pointing out into the center of the large room. Brunei levitated out into the center above the hordes. There was no immediate reaction from the hive. The bottom of the device opened what appeared like a bomb bay on a jet. Down dropped an object floating slowly toward the bottom. It grew larger and larger until it made contact with the floor. It was about the size of a bus when fully transformed. Six legs popped out of it’s sides and it stood up very mechanically. A head grew in with a very long snout. At that time it started sucking up virus bots into it’s snout. It walked along sucking up the robots. The rear starting popping out rectangular bricks that would be just about the size of one of the bots if it was crushed.

The virus finally woke up. First the bots started running in all directions. From Mike’s viewpoint they appeared as roaches in the kitchen in the middle of the night when the lights come on. They scattered. The giant machine kept sucking up bot after bot and depositing a brick as it moved along.

The aerial anti-virus started firing it’s zappers at any bots that seemed like they might escape. Some where hiding in the cutouts for stairs and doorways. It was like a machine gun, rapid fire. It left a pile everywhere it made contact with a viral bot. The robots climbing the walls to escape were destroyed first. The giant virus bot eater was sucking them up two and three at a time. There were so many though.

Yancy kept his eyes peered on the boxes where Pete was last seen just in case. He asked Mike, “How are we doing?”

“Good, but its going to take a while to clean this up completely.” He looked on. One robot cleared the wall and breached the deck right in front of them. Mike used his zapper. A bright flash of electricity and a loud bang. A heap of debris remained on the floor followed by a rising puff of smoke.

Another breach occurred and Mike’s zapper was recharging. He panicked with no protection when Yancy pulled a zapper out of his pocket and fired at the creature. Bang, it dropped like a rock. Yancy held the zapper up near his mouth and blew on it like he was cooling it off smiling at Mike.

“Good shot. I’m going to get Brutus. We may need him now. He went across the hall and returned with his best friend who stood by him.

On the floor below, the hordes starting chewing away at the virtual floor. There was no real floor actually there so it left only an absence, a blackness, a void. This part of the room experienced a memory leak so it ceased to exist. As they chewed away at it and their numbers were being pushed into the emptiness and disappearing as they tried to get away from Brunei.

Yancy pointed to it. “Where do they end up when they fall into the blackness?” he asked Mike.

“I don’t know. Hopefully somewhere they can’t come back from.” The noise was extremely loud. The zapper firing over and over. Brunei was making quite a bit of noise while devouring the ant-like robot viruses. There was also a kind of squealing the viruses were making in their haste to get away.

Then Yancy spotted Pete wandering in a daze below. The floor was disappearing at an alarming rate and approaching his position. He pointed toward Pete so Mike would see him.

Mike yelled something back at him but he couldn’t hear it. Then Mike used hand motions to get Yancy to go and help him. He also sent Brutus with him. Then he commanded the Brunei to retreat back to his position to neutralize the escaping bots. The number of viruses breaching the deck was increasing and he couldn’t defend it alone.

Yancy ran to a stairwell and descended to the lowest level. He saw Pete and ran toward him. There was a virus was behind him and it stood on it’s two hind feet and grabbed Pete from behind. Pete struggled to get free. The giant virus eaters snout was coming near Pete from behind. It would suck up the virus and Pete if it got much closer. Yancy grabbed the viruses appendages and try to break them free from Pete’s torso. Then he started kicking the legs out from under the virus and one broke off and fell to the floor. It had to drop down to use the next set of legs so it had three on the floor. Yancy looked over the edge of the void that was being created by the robots. He saw blackness that had an enormous depth to it. It made him feel dizzy.

Pete came more alive and started wiggling and twisting his body. He pulled the upper hands apart breaking the lock it had on him. Yancy gave it a push from the side and it toppled into the void. They watched as it fell and got smaller and smaller until they couldn’t see it anymore. In the chaos another two viruses approached them and they ran towards the stairs. They were followed. On the stairs as they turned on a midway landing there was one coming down the steps toward them. It went for Pete on the inside of the step. Yancy passed it on the outside, turned and kicked at it’s head. He connected brutally and the head snapped off bouncing down the steps. It started running around in a circle wildly. Pete was a little woozy but wore a huge smile as he fist bumped Yancy while they finished their stairway climb to the upper deck.

Mike was in a battle with escaped viruses on the deck with Brutus. Brutus was neutralizing as many as he could. Mike slipped and one virus mounted him from above. It readied it’s antennae to strike when Yancy fired his zapper and demolished it. Mike said, “That’s twice you saved me. Good work.” He got up and analyzed the conflict watching Pete and Yancy lifting a bot and hurling it over the side. “We need help,” he yelled.

Yancy went across the hall and said, “come on we need help”. Josh, Sheri and Molly quickly joined the melee. What they were greeted by was the horror of a landscape of dysfunctional bots laying all over the floor. Some were missing heads while others were smoking debris piles. Brutus was biting off heads and limbs. Brunei was hovering above what used to be the floor full of thousands of viruses. Now it was an empty dark hole. The only remaining bots were those who were still climbing the walls or stairs to get out.

Sheri shook from the site of the evil all around. She was scared. Josh saw her condition and pulled her back behind the debris they had hid behind earlier. “Stay here for now, OK,” he said to her. She nodded and he rejoined the fight.

Josh pulled out his zapper and fired at a bot behind Molly, about to grab her. The loud close bang startled her and she jumped forward into Yancy who was fighting with another. He grabbed it’s upper legs and Molly grabbed the lower appendages and they lifted it over the ledge. It fell into the deep darkness below.

Brunei settled down firing except an occasion single shot. The room became almost silent for a moment. Mike said, “Its finished.”

Josh, Molly and Yancy leaned on the wall resting after quite a fight.

Brutus was having trouble getting up. He looked to is master. Mike went to him and analyzed his wounds. “I’ll get you back so you can rest Brutus.” He picked him up and headed to the wormhole. “He has amazing regenerative powers. Don’t worry,” he told the gang.

Molly asked, “Wasn’t Sheri here with us?”

Josh, “Yeah, she was fainting so I hid her over behind that debris there.” He pointed in the direction then walked to her. He found her laying on the ground. “Oh, no. What happened?” he asked her.