I was beyond caring about Aja’s intellectual digs. I was way more interested in this strange pyramid. We headed toward a revolving door that looked tiny at the base of this massive building. As we rode closer I finally saw some of the other people of Veelox. They were walking around the pyramid, wearing coveralls like Aja’s. Some were blue, others were red. That was it. Blue and red. Not a whole lot of fashion going on here.
“The people in red are vedders,” she explained. “No way I’d want their job.”
“What do they do?” I asked. “You’ll see.”
Aja guided our bike right up to the revolving door and hopped off. “Open your mind, Pendragon. Don’t judge until you’ve experienced it.”
“Experienced what?”
“Lifelight, of course. I’m going to take you on the most amazing trip you could possibly imagine.” With that, she turned and entered the pyramid.
I had been on plenty of amazing trips lately. She would have to go a long way to top any of them. To be honest, I wasn’t so sure I wanted her to try. But there was one thing I was dead sure of: If I wanted to figure out what Saint Dane had been up to on Veelox, the answer would be inside this pyramid.
So with one last quick glance around at the world outside, I stepped into the dark pyramid and a world called “Lifelight.”
(CONTINUED)
VEELOX
Forget everything I said about Veelox being like Second Earth.
Stepping into that pyramid was like entering a different world. Inside the revolving door we walked through a narrow tunnel that was lit by long tubes of purple neon light. As soon as we stepped inside, the hair stood up on my arms. It was like the room was charged with electricity.
“Sterilization,” Aja explained.
Sterilization? That sounded like something the veterinarian did to your dog when you didn’t want it to have puppies. Gulp.
“It’s totally safe,” she assured me. “The process kills any foreign microbes that might foul the grid.”
“Sure, wouldn’t want to foul the grid.” Whatever that meant.
At the end of the corridor, we walked our newly sterilized selves through another revolving door that led to a quiet, dimly lit room. There was a long counter, behind which were four people wearing red coveralls. “Vedders” is what Aja called them. She led me up to a guy I guessed to be about my age. He had coal black hair parted in the middle that went right down to his shoulders. There was definitely a Goth vibe going on, but I doubted they called it that on Veelox.
“Hello,” the vedder said to Aja flatly.
“This is my friend’s first time; I wanted to walk him through.”
The vedder snapped a look at me like I had two heads. “You’ve never jumped before?”
“Uh… not that I can remember,” I said, then held out my hand to shake. “My name’s Pendragon.”
The Goth vedder stared at me blankly. He didn’t care what my name was. He didn’t shake my hand, either. Creep.
“Yes, well, welcome to Lifelight,” he said, sounding totally bored. He reminded me of somebody who had worked at McDonald’s selling burgers for too long. He finally reached out to take my hand, but rather than shaking it, he flipped it over and jabbed a tiny needle into my pinkie.
“Ow!” I quickly pulled back and sucked on my stinging finger. “What was that for?”
“You need a bio workup,” Aja explained.
I had already been sterilized, dissed, and stabbed. So far there wasn’t much to like about Lifelight. The vedder put the needle into a computer-looking thing that I assumed was doing the bio-whatever analysis on the blood he had just stolen from me. While we waited for him to finish, I glanced around the room. It reminded me of the ticket counter at an airport. It was all very modern. There were no signs, but on the wall behind the counter was a big oil portrait of a kid. He looked to be about ten years old, with short, blond hair and a blue jumpsuit like Aja’s. He was a serious-looking little dude, too. He seemed to be staring right at me.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
The vedder shot me a look as if I had suddenly sprouted a third head to go with my other two.
“You’re funny,” Aja said, covering for me. She then looked at the vedder and said, “He’s always making dumb jokes.”
The vedder wasn’t laughing. “Give me your hand, please.”
“Not if you’re gonna poke me again,” I protested.
Goth boy gave Aja an impatient look.
“Hold up your hand, Pendragon,” she commanded.
Reluctantly I held up my hand again, prepared for more pain. But the vedder quickly snapped a silver bracelet around my wrist. It looked more like a high-tech device than jewelry. It was smaller than Aja’s, about two inches wide, with three square buttons that were flush to the surface.
“Enjoy your jump,” the vedder said, though I was betting he didn’t care one way or the other.
I smiled at the guy anyway, then followed Aja toward a door at the far end of the room. “Who was the kid in the picture?” I whispered.
“Dr. Zetlin, the person who invented Lifelight.”
“A kid invented all of this?” I asked, unbelieving.
“A very smart kid,” was her answer.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
Aja then pushed open a door, and we continued into a long corridor that can be best described as mission control… times about a thousand. The walls were made of glass. Through them I saw a series of high-tech workstations that looked like they each had enough electronic muscle to launch about a million space shuttles. Each station was its own separate, enclosed cubicle. I guessed that there were around fifty of these workstations on either side of the corridor. Then there was a whole nother row of workstations above them. So a rough guess wa that there were around two hundred of these high-tech rigs.
There was one phader in each, wearing the signature blue jumpsuit and sitting in the coolest looking chair I had ever seen. It was black, with a high back, and wings near the head that spread out to either side. The arms of the chair were wide, with a silver control panel on each side where the phader could touch the myriad of buttons that worked… whatever.
In front of each phader was a wall of computer screens. A quick count told me that each phader was looking at around thirty screens. Here’s the strange part (as if everything up until now wasn’t strange): Each of the computer monitors was showing a different movie. Multiply the thirty movies playing in each cubicle by two hundred cubicles and that’s like six thousand movies, all playing at the same time. I figured this might be some kind of satellite TV operation that beamed shows all over Veelox.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“This is where I work,” Aja explained. “It’s called the ‘core.’ The phaders troubleshoot the hardware, upgrade when necessary, and monitor the jumps to make sure everyone is okay.”
“And what do the vedders do?”
“They take care of the jumpers physically. That’s why they took your blood. They make sure the jumpers are safe and healthy.”
“What are the movies they’re watching?” I asked.
“Those are the jumps,” Aja answered, trying not to sound too impatient.
I looked through the glass at one of the banks of monitors and saw that the action on the screens wasn’t continuous. Every few seconds each screen changed to another bit of action, like turning the channels on a TV. I focused on one screen to see a hot sailboat gliding through tropical waters. The image then changed to the point of view of a skier flying down a snowy mountain, expertly dodging through trees. On the screen next to that I saw what looked like a stadium full of people watching a game that was like soccer, but played with a big orange ball the size of a monster pumpkin. That screen then changed to the quiet scene of a cozy fireplace and an older woman drinking tea.
“People come here to watch movies?” I asked.
Aja chuckled. “Something like that. Come on.”
She led me down the long corridor of cubicles. I glanced into the different workstations that made up the core to get an idea of what kind of movie I’d choose when it came my turn. I figured I’d want to watch a movie about basketball. I hadn’t played in a long time and missed it. I hoped they knew what basketball was on Veelox.