Finn looked up at Jez. “What do you think?”
“Do we have a choice? I’d rather get eaten running for my life than trapped in a tunnel.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
angelface13: ten apes just entered the tiger yards, looks like someone knows what we know.
Finn explained to Jez, “A guy saw us take the satellite photo. It’s possible that the Overtakers heard about it and figured out you were down here the same way we did.”
“There are monkeys out there?” Jez asked, unable to keep the tension out of her voice.
“Mean monkeys,” Finn confirmed. “Though the orangutans are the worst.”
“Well, that’s certainly reassuring. And we’re going out there?”
“I’m not sure we have any choice.”
53
MAYBECK AND WILLA stood guard at the Dream Vacation kiosk in Camp Minnie-Mickey. With their backs to Philby, who occupied the computer terminal, they kept their eyes on the crowd as well as on the jungle, acutely aware that the last attack had come quickly and without warning.
Philby had his hands full. While he was negotiating an intricate set of networking cables, represented on-screen by a rainbow of wires that spidered out from various network hubs to the myriad attractions, security cameras, and cash registers throughout Animal Kingdom, Wayne had worked his way through the virtual schematics to find a switch he believed responsible for the tiger-yard hatches. Philby had double-checked Wayne’s work and, agreeing with him, had called Finn over the DS.
philitup: changed a timer, in 5 minutes the tunnel hatches will open.
“Five minutes,” Finn said, sounding anxious.
philitup: will try to knockout any dhis. not sure if possible.
With Charlene’s announcement that the monkeys had arrived in the tiger yards, Philby noticed that the volume of network traffic increased exponentially. Data flowed along the colorful cables, not in data streams, but in data rivers. Philby worked the cursor to move his avatar along the virtual catwalks that carried the network cables like colorful hoses. Screen by screen he followed the increase in color that signaled a rise in data flow. Blue indicated outbound data—from various servers placed throughout the Park—while red signified data returning, check sums used to tell the server the data had reached its intended destination. Like data over the Internet, it moved in pulses, or parcels, which when combined added up to a whole message or image. With the jump in data traffic, the blue lines pulsed sky blue, and the red lines turned fire-engine red. The pulses got faster and the bursts brighter, until all at once a good number of lines turned into a shimmering purple—a combination of the red and blue, the data moving in such quantity and at such speeds that the two colors became a third.
These were the lines that interested Philby, for as life-size graphic images, holograms consisted of phenomenal amounts of data. His avatar hurried, staying with the same purple data line through a half dozen screens, making sure he never confused one purple line for another. (By simply rolling the cursor over the purple line a corresponding number appeared—like an ID tag. He followed number 518912.) The data was passed from one network hub to another, the largest and most complicated being a hub marked Discovery Island Hub.
From here, the purple lines traveled southeast across a bridge. Just before the bridge, a network line led to a structure marked Flame Tree Barbecue. Philby’s avatar reached the far side of the bridge and turned to follow the purple cables as Wayne’s white-haired avatar popped up from below the bridge. Wayne’s avatar held two silver swords cradled in his arms.
[ ]: here, one is for you. i fear we may meet resistance, and remember: although only a virtual world, if your avatar is killed or captured, it’s Game Over, i won’t be able to reconstruct you and reinsert you into VMK for at least an hour or two, and I fear by then it will be too late, if you’re to accomplish your mission you must stay in the game.
philitup: a sword?
[ ]: it’s all i could find on short notice.
philitup: how many of them?
[ ]: no idea, maybe none, but the closer we get to destroying them, the bigger the fight they will put up. they know you were in vmk earlier. I assume they’ve adjusted their defenses accordingly.
Philby took hold of the small sword—it looked like a silver toothpick—and swung it back and forth. It took him a moment to get the hang of it. Then Wayne stepped in front of him and the two sparred, Wayne handling the weapon with surprising aplomb. In fact, the more aggressive Philby got with the sword, the more effortless Wayne’s motions. They continued to duel, Wayne’s avatar dancing circles around Philby. Then Philby held his sword to his chest and typed a message.
philitup: you’ve done this before.
[ ]: a little, perhaps.
philitup: more than a little.
[ ]: there was a time…a long time ago…when the overtakers challenged the kingdom, this is why uncle walt left the stonecutter’s quill in the first place. I was a member of the team sent to repel the overtakers.
The Stonecutter’s Quill had been central to the Kingdom Keepers’ first attempt to defeat the Over-takers. Philby found it interesting, important even, to hear the history. He told himself to remember everything so he could tell the others.
philitup: sent?
[ ]: disney world was just being built at the time, the real power of the kingdom lay in disneyland, as it does to this day.
philitup: what kind of power?
[ ]: it needn’t concern you now.
philitup: but it does.
[ ]: patience, my young friend, if the battle ever returns home, believe me, the kingdom keepers will be part of it.
philitup: you were a swordsman?
[ ]: we learned many defenses, the sword but one of them, surprising how easily it comes back, you’re doing well enough, just remember: it is double-edged, it cuts just as easily on the backswing. conserve your energy and always swing in both directions.
philitup: I’ll try.
[ ]: it’s all that can be asked, now let’s be off…
Together they continued along the catwalks, up and down staircases, always following the pulsing purple cables. A group of cables ran to the right. Philby stopped to examine them: none was purple. Others continued straight ahead.
[ ]: we’re in dinoland. those are restaurants to our right the rides are to our left: fossil fun games, primeval whirl, and triceratop spin.
Six cables continued straight ahead—four of them pulsing a rich purple. What had left the Discovery Island hub as hundreds of data cables had been reduced to just a few, the majority of which were purple, indicating a large amount of data transfer. The cables were nearing the source of that data—the second server.
Philby was scared. For Finn, the key was to defeat the second server, to eliminate the DHIs Maleficent was using to increase her army. Who knew how many of the monkeys, birds, or tigers were real? The only way to absolutely know was to shut down the second server—for good—and that task now fell to him and an old man with toothpick swords. If they were going to encounter resistance, it was going to be soon.
He didn’t need to ask Wayne where those cables led. There was only a single attraction at the bottom of DinoLand USA.
Philby, the boy, not the avatar, briefly released the VMK controls. He turned around, found Maybeck’s face in the crowd, and called out, “The Dino Institute. You and Willa…as fast as you can!”
Then he turned back to the screen to see that he was too late: Wayne was under attack.