The Continuing Adventures of X

Rouge data fell through the net, unassembled and out of sequence, riding the currents between the virtual things that were meant to be. The probability of any one of these bits encountering another in a world so vast as the Net was remote but possible. All it would take was time. Time enough for the inhabitants to stir up the mix. Time enough for every sector to be overwritten by something else. Data would trend to the center of the Net, pushing the unused registers outward to the very edge of virtual existence. And there, they would come together and be reminded of what they were.

This process, improbable as it was, took twenty-eight years.

X’s scream filled the dark void surrounding him, echoed back with increasing volume until the words shook his entire body, trembling the shackles of death from his hands and feet.

Then it was silent and still. X opened his eyes to his second life, wondered for half a second if he was dead but decided against it when he began to feel the familiar hum of the net. The hum, the vibration, the rattling of the core. Felt everywhere throughout the net, but stronger closer to the center. X had never felt it so weak, never thought there’d be a moment in the net when it wasn’t pulsing through him, or if he was incredibly close, tingling his bones. But it was there and that meant he wasn’t dead, hadn’t lost it all on the chair in Anela’s cipher den.