After the successful recovery of the storage unit and the gnosis battery to power it.
Silver happily put the storage unit on the floor at the base of the supercomputer. It worked fine, lights were on, and she could tell that he was safe. Some parts had been lost, but he seemed to “heal”. She put her hand on the storage container and patted it. “CAL–”
She felt a tug at her belt, and then electricity filled her, but not like the power that she could generate. It wasn’t comfortable. It hurt, it hurt a lot – like when she was pulled into VR all those years ago.
She fell through the void, naked, exposed, screaming. She was suddenly caught in someone’s arms. She stopped screaming abruptly, and opened her eyes to look upon glowing white eyes.
Silver. His voice echoed everywhere. His voice was different, a touch of a British accent that deep down would always make her start and pause. She stared at him, and he slowly set her down on what seemed to be solid ground. His eyes were glowing white, he had white hair like hers. He looked like Pale, having a flat skull for a face. He was muscular, perfectly proportioned, with light coloring. He was naked as well, and formed perfectly. She jerked her head up sharply to look into his eyes.
His chuckled. I’ve been taking lessons from you. I know you like Walker better, but I would never assume his form for you. He reached out and touched her cheek. I thank you. I thank all four of you. Walker, it seems, has already been rewarded. He has you.
She put her head down. “Will you be all right here?”
He reached down and took her hand, then took a step. When he did, she was suddenly not there anymore, but looking into the webbed city. He turned to her, and when he did, he wore the face – and body, and clothes – of her one of her favorite characters, Jean-Luc Picard in the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. “What do you think, Silver? Do you think I’ll be all right here?”
“But this is the Umbra.”
He looked behind him, and they could see where they had just come from. “I can be here. I can be there. I can be in the Net high above and see what goes on in the world immediately. I am spirit. I am ascended.”
“So does that mean..?”
He squeezed her hand, like Walker did when he was trying to reassure her. “I will never leave you.” He put a hand on her chest, between her breasts, and flattened his palm against it. She gasped for a moment, thinking of Walker. CAL smiled. “I am here.” He removed his hand, and stepped back. He stated, in binary, “Silver, you have succeeded beyond all my expectations of you. I call you Magus.”
She heard something fall. The belt, broken, fell from her hips. The chips in the belt floated out of the belt, and swirled around her like fireflies. “Raise your hands, and accept your gifts.”
She did raise her hands. The chips landed one by one on her, and sunk into her, with absolutely no pain. She blinked, suddenly, knowing how to make the chips, how to create the coding, and how they were meant to be used. It all was clear to her now.
The last chip was floating above her, the chip she had gotten when Walker had given her the drop of blood for it, so that she wouldn’t shock him. It embedded itself in her shoulder, above her right breast. A small rune appeared there, a lighter color against her normal color of skin.
“I have one final gift for you.”
A green chip appeared in his hand, the size of his pinky nail. “Give this to Walker, to reassure him of your safety. He will know and sense if you are in danger, here or in the Net. It will burn with the intensity of the danger.” Then he smiled. “It will show him when you think happy thoughts of him, giving him a warm feeling. It’s a mood chip.”
She tilted his head. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am serious.” He even had a straight face. “And don’t call me Shirley.”
She laughed; hearing that line come from Picard was hilarious. She picked up the chip and laughed again when she turned it over – it even had the strange colored stone set in it that would be found in a mood ring. However, it disappeared the moment she laughed, sinking into the green chip itself. “How do I give this to him?”
“Press it against where you want it, and it will be under his skin, like yours. There will be binary, similar to what you see with his mark upon you.”
“Not like the three pages that you gave him for the ring!”
He smiled. Picard hardly ever laughed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few weeks, it’s how to capture the essence of a person.” He turned her around. “Go now. Practice making babies. I want grandchildren.”
Before she could recover from the shock of that, he gave her a gentle shove, and she fell out of the storage device, naked. Again.
Words: 885
Music: Into the Night – Santana