MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 41

The atmosphere inside the control room was tense. Jonah paced up and down, playing anxiously with his hands. No one had spoken in minutes. There was nothing they could do now. Nothing but wait and hope. The Chang Bridge had been easy enough to install, as Mr Chang had promised. Jonah had opened a server panel and simply clicked the device into an available slot. Immediately, the LEDs on its front edge had begun to flash green in sequence.

Seated at a computer monitor, Sam had reported on the device’s progress. ‘It’s building the bridge now... I’m rewriting the entrance co-ordinates...’

Sam had been reluctant to do this. She had reminded Jonah of what Axel had said, in Shanghai: We install that device over my dead body. Jonah had persuaded her that they had no choice. This was their only hope of saving the Uploaded. There would be time enough later to worry about the consequences.

‘It’s done,’ said Sam. ‘The bridge is complete!’

‘So, what happens now?’ asked Jonah.

‘I wish I knew,’ said Sam. ‘But the Chang Bridge has penetrated the mistwall. It built itself in the sky above the Island.’

‘So, the Uploaded have their escape route,’ said Jonah, relieved.

Sam nodded. ‘I just hope they realise it.’

‘We’re losing another row of servers!’ someone cried, from across the room.

The Guardians all crowded around. On another screen, they could see an aerial view of a quarter of the Metasphere. Its Southern Corner. As they watched, to Jonah’s dismay, the lights of a whole cluster of zones flickered and went out.

A grey stain was spreading across the virtual world. Jonah remembered the Recyclers’ attacks upon the Icarus and his family’s gift shop, and he knew what that grey stain was. It was destruction. It was the void.

‘Do you think...?’ breathed someone. ‘Do you think everyone made it out?’

‘They should have done,’ said Sam. ‘We gave them plenty of warning. I’m not worried about the living. They can take care of themselves. But the dead...’

‘We have to keep the Island of the Uploaded running,’ another Guardian agreed.

‘For as long as possible,’ said Sam. ‘Whatever else we have to sacrifice. We have to give the Uploaded as much time as we can to find the bridge and get out of there.’

Jonah wandered away from the others. He had a terrible feeling of foreboding in his stomach. He sat down at a monitor, pulled up a datapad. He entered the co-ordinates of the Island of the Uploaded, of his grandmother’s beach. He saw only grey mist, as before. He had expected no more than this, but still he could have wept.

Then, to Jonah’s amazement, the mist cleared. Only for a second – but, in that second, he saw blue sky and yellow sand and green trees.

He leapt to his feet. ‘The mistwall!’ he cried. ‘Of course! The mistwall is controlled by these servers too, and it’s failing! We might be able to get through it! Sam...’

‘Jonah, I don’t know...’ Sam hurried over, looked at Jonah’s monitor. It was grey again. ‘Even if we could... Jonah, you can’t mean to go back in there.’

‘I have to! You said it yourself, Sam, you know how confused the Uploaded get.’

Sam nodded. ‘Of course. But—’

‘And they’re so used to being on the Island... They don’t even think about leaving it. It’s in their programming. We might have given them a way out, Sam, but I don’t think they’ll use it. Not unless we can tell them, show them what to do...’