At the foot of Ayers Rock, Jonah paced up and down between the Guardians’ land yachts. He looked at the catapults on their backs.
He climbed into the seat of the catapult on the yacht that had brought him here. He was wearing his parachute harness. He had reset the spring and set the catapult for his build and weight. He wasn’t sure he had done it right.
Jonah found the release catch by his left side, closed his fingers around it.
He couldn’t bring himself to pull it.
He jumped out of the catapult seat. He could still hear gunfire from the top of the rock, though less persistent than it had been. What could he do up there anyway, without a weapon? Hadn’t he done enough?
But what if Sam was in trouble?
He could climb the rock, he thought. It would take him some time, but at least he would get there, and in one piece. At least he would be doing something.
His mind was made up. Jonah set off, away from the land yachts, around the rock. He had barely gone two steps when a voice sounded behind him:
‘Jonah? Jonah? Are you there? Can you hear me? Come in, Jonah.’
This ought to have been a day of celebration.
The Guardians had taken one of the Four Corners. Sam had led the way into the control room herself. In her worst nightmares, she could never have predicted what she had found there.
‘Sam? Is that you?’
‘Jonah!’ Sam had found a comms program on the system and entered the frequency of the land yachts’ cockpit radios. ‘Listen, I’m in the control room, but we have a big problem here.’
The control room lights were flickering as the power supply dwindled.
‘The control room?’ echoed Jonah. ‘You mean you—?’
‘Yes, Jonah, we did it. A few of the Millennials are still fighting in the corridors, but we did it. We won. But, listen, what you did on the Island—’
‘It worked, Sam. The plan worked. I got the Uploaded to remember, and they—’
‘I know it worked, Jonah. It worked too well. The servers here are in a worse state even than we thought they were. They’re failing!’
‘Failing? But... Won’t that mean...?’
‘It means that a quarter of the Metasphere is about to crash. Hard. It means that every avatar logged in to that quarter will be lost. For ever.’
‘What... What can we do?’
‘You have to get back there,’ said Sam.
‘I can’t. I wish I could, Sam, but—’
‘You have to stop the Uploaded from remembering, before they—’
‘It would kill me, Sam. The way I used to get to the Island – it would kill me to try it a second time.’
‘It’s their only chance, Jonah. We can evacuate the living, most of them, but the dead...the dead can’t leave the Island. They’re stuck there!’
‘The mistwall!’ said Jonah. ‘Granger’s barrier. Now you have access to his systems, maybe you could—?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Sam. She cut off the connection.
The control room was in turmoil. Twenty Guardians hovered helplessly over the monitors and datapads. Twenty more were panicking loudly. Of course, the people Sam had led here had mostly been fighters. She needed programmers, technicians. She needed a leader.
Sam needed her dad.
A monitor in front of her was outputting a stream of figures. Their prognosis wasn’t good. Even if she could get Jonah to the Island of the Uploaded and if he could stop the server drain, Sam feared it might only be delaying the inevitable.
The damage had already been done.
*
For some time after Sam had broken off contact, Jonah sat frozen, one thought ringing in his head: This is all my fault.
He had climbed into a land yacht to use its cockpit radio. He climbed out now, and began to pace again. Each time he passed a yacht, Jonah glared into it, at its radio, as if he could will Sam’s voice to sound again, tell him everything was OK after all.
How long had it been already?
Jonah didn’t know how to contact Sam inside the rock, and didn’t want to disturb her. But he had to know what was happening.
He searched the land yachts until he found a handheld monitor. He plugged it into a Metasphere terminal. He inputted co-ordinates for a zone close to the Island.
On the monitor, he saw desperate avatars flying in slow motion, jerkily, as Jonah had on the Island, flying for their lives through the virtual streets.
They were panicking and shrieking, unable to understand why they couldn’t move faster. Some of them were lost and screaming for help.
Warning messages were scrolling across every available surface: across walls, along roads, in the sky itself. Avatars were being told to flee to another quarter of the Metasphere, or out of it altogether, whichever option was the quickest. Sam had been as good as her word. She must have organised this.
The avatars were sluggish and fighting against the failing servers that betrayed them. Still, they were reaching their exit halos, many of them, diving through to safety.
All Jonah could think of, however, was what Sam had said: The dead can’t leave... They’re stuck...
He had been so proud of himself, thought he’d been so clever, convincing the Uploaded to tax the Southern Corner’s servers. He had even left his dad to keep spreading the word... If only he could contact him and tell him to stop!
Jonah typed the co-ordinates of the Island of the Uploaded. The picture on the monitor changed. Now, it showed only grey mist.
A lump formed in Jonah’s throat. He was about to lose his grandmother – and his father, all over again – and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Everyone knew someone, had someone they loved, on the Island. Everyone would lose someone, if the Island crashed. All those avatars, those remnants of lives once lived, they would all be destroyed for ever – and Jonah would be the one to blame.
He smacked the handheld monitor against the land yacht’s instrument panel, as if he could clear the grey haze from its screen. It broke.
Why hadn’t Sam been back in touch? Why hadn’t she lowered the mistwall yet? They were running out of time.
*
‘Why should I help you? Guardian scum!’
The Millennial prisoner lay on his bed, facing the wall stubbornly. Two Guardians marched into the bunkroom and hauled him to his feet. One of them put a gun to his head, but Sam told him to lower it.
The Millennial’s name was Warren. He was just a teenager, blond-haired and twitchy. He had been captured in the control room.
‘You wouldn’t be doing this to help the Guardians,’ said Sam, reasonably. ‘You’d be doing it to help the whole world. You know the servers are crashing. We need—’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘That...that doesn’t matter now. We need those access codes, so we can—’
‘—lower the mistwall around the Island. So you said. But why should I believe you? This sounds like a trick to me, to get your hands on—’
‘Why would I?’ cried Sam in frustration. ‘Why would anyone want to destroy the Island of the Uploaded?’
‘Like the Guardians care about human life? You’re terrorists, killers! For all I know, you could be plotting to destroy the whole of the—’
‘Don’t you have someone on the Island? A parent or a grandparent, or a brother or a sister or a best friend?’
Warren stared down at his shoes. Sam had struck a nerve. She sat down on the bed beside him and gently asked, ‘Who is it?’
‘My brother. He had terminal leukaemia. We Uploaded him just in time. That’s why I joined the Millennials – to protect him, to let him live forever.’
‘Then you know why I need those codes,’ Sam begged. ‘What harm could it do to give them to me now? And maybe we can save your brother together.’
‘But I don’t have them,’ said Warren, sullenly. ‘I don’t have the access codes. Only Mr Granger has them.’
‘Then I’ll take you to the control room. You must have some way of contacting Granger... Don’t you? You could ask him to lower the mistwall himself.’
The prisoner shook his head. ‘He won’t do it!’
‘He has to,’ insisted Sam. ‘Once he knows what’s at stake...’
‘Don’t you think he knows already?’
‘So, you’re saying he won’t help us,’ said Sam, angrily, ‘is that it? He’d rather see the Southern Corner crash, sacrifice all those lives?’
Warren looked up, glaring at Sam with renewed defiance. ‘Mr Granger did all he could to save those lives,’ he snarled. ‘He stayed at his datapad for as long as he could, longer than was safe for him. If it hadn’t been for you Guardians—’
‘Wait,’ said Sam. ‘You’re saying he was...?’
‘Matthew Granger is the smartest man in the world, but even he couldn’t stop the server crash that you started. What hope do you think you have?’
‘Granger was here?’ cried Sam.
Warren closed his mouth and blinked nervously, as he realised he had said too much. ‘Matthew Granger was right here?’ repeated Sam. ‘In this facility?’
Jonah couldn’t bear the waiting any longer.
He still hadn’t heard back from Sam. What if something else had gone wrong? he thought. What if she had other problems to deal with?
If so, then everything was down to him. Jonah had to do something, fix the problem he had created – but how?
What if I did board the death barge again? he asked himself. It was a desperate notion, but Jonah was feeling desperate. It would get me through the mistwall, like it did last time... But with only one avatar left in my brain, it would kill me!
Maybe it’d be worth it to save the Island. To save the dead.
There had to be another way.
Jonah thrust his hands deep into his pockets, his head aching with thought. His left hand brushed against something cold and metal. He didn’t know what it was. Then he remembered.
Jonah’s heart leapt as he pulled out the Chang Bridge device, inspected it in the bright moonlight.
It will create a bridge between the Metasphere and a new virtual world. That was what Mr Chang had said about his invention. And what else? He had talked about his new world’s increased processing power. And wasn’t that just what the Uploaded needed?
Had Jonah really been holding the device that could save them, all along?
He remembered Mr Chang’s instructions: The Chang Bridge must be physically interfaced with the servers of any of the Four Corners. Once this has been achieved, the rest is automatic.
He had to get inside Ayers Rock.
Jonah ran to the land yacht in which he had travelled, the one whose catapult he had set for himself. He leapt into the catapult seat and didn’t hesitate this time.
He pulled the release catch.