Torrik walked around the field of a high school football stadium. Hundreds of comatose victims of the Ren Wear lay on the ground. He rubbed his eyes and let out a long sigh as he collected himself. Gar flew down with two people in his arms. Torrik joined him and carefully laid the pair of towels on the ground.
“This is all we can fit in here,” Torrik said.
Strange Quark appeared in a flash of blue. “I just finished with the hotel. That place is full. I encased it in a bio-energy field. Should help keep their bodily functions working. But it won’t last long.”
Torrik held out his hands. “You two, stand back.”
Gar and Quark ran over to some metal bleachers and watched. Torrik walked through the people as he cast a spell. Green energy rose from the ground like a thick cloud. His hands and eyes both were beaming a brilliant emerald green. Finally, he called out a word in his magical tongue and vines sprouted quickly and wrapped around arms, legs, and torsos of people. A glowing green energy flickered across each vine like water rushing through a tube.
Torrik joined them at the side of the field. “There, that’ll keep their body from starving for a while. But it won’t last forever. We need... oh...” He stumbled and fell down against the bleachers.
Gar asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes, just give me a moment.”
“No,” Quark said, “You’ve been at this for days with little sleep. You’ll succumb to weakness too, and we can’t lose you.”
“Nice to be needed.” Torrik smiled.
“Back to the station. Get food, water, and eight hours of sleep. Gar and I can exist without either food or water for a lot longer than you.”
“But you need my magic to help these people.”
“We’ll get them ready. Once you’ve recovered, you can come and do your nature thing. Now, go!With that word, a blue flash of light zapped Torrik away.
The dull light of the monitors flickered in Nova’s tireless eyes, with Alex beside them. There were thousands of robots being monitored by a single screen.
"What are those robots doing? Aren't they type seven med droids?" Alex pointed at the small screen.
"I have sent all the medical droids we have to the hospitals. They are making sure all the patients with immediate care needs are being looked after."
Alex nodded, "Smart."
They both were still talking about the situation when a blue flash of light appeared, leaving Torrik in its wake.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” Torrik said.
“What are you doing up here?” Nova asked.
“Quark sent me, said I need rest. He’s right. But we have so many people to save.”
Nova said, “We can’t let ourselves get ill doing this. We’re all that stands between survival and extinction. But I have to say that I’m more than thankful that you stuck around to help. This not being your world.”
Torrik said, “How can I leave at a time like this? I’m a trained protector. People are in danger. I’ll do all I can. But I need some food and rest. Oh...” His eyes brightened up at the sight of Alex, “I didn’t realize. Alex, you’re awake!”
Alex nodded, “Yeah, I’m here. Wish this was the dream.”
Nova asked, “How goes the mission?”
The grim look on Torrik’s face told a whole story. “I feel like we’re just busying ourselves before the end comes. We’ve helped thousands, but there are so many. We have little time. I wish I could go back and bring a few thousand more of my people.”
Nova nodded, “That would be wonderful, but the portal between our worlds isn’t very stable right now.”
Alex asked, “Why not just use magic to transport everyone to a safe place instead of having Gar and robots carry them? Between yourself, my magic, EB, and Strange Quark’s power, we could zap millions to safe locations quickly.”
Torrik said, “We tried teleporting them with magic.”
Nova finished, “We tried teleporting one victim. The legion tech in that Ren Wear went haywire, and they died a horrible, painful death. I don’t know if it is just a side effect, or a purposed program, but if we teleported everyone, it would kill them all at once.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “Those monsters thought of everything.”
Torrik continued, “My magic and Quarks’ special power can keep the humans’ bodies from decaying for a short amount of time, but it won’t be long before that fails and so do they. This dream state they are in defies anything I have ever seen.”
Nova said, “The technology is incredibly advanced and confusing. We can’t find the source of it to put a stop to it. And, to make it worse, we don’t know what the point is. Why put the world in a dream state that will starve everyone to death slowly? Yet, they put them in some kind of utopia simulation. It seems pointless.”
“Utopia?” Torrik asked.
Alex said, “The dream world everyone is stuck in is the most peaceful, happy world we have never experienced. If we weren’t all tired and hungry all the time, it would be paradise. Nova’s right, none of it makes sense.”
“Could they be harvesting something?” Torrik asked.
Nova said, “We’ve considered that. My first thought was that the Ren Wear would harvest morphons, drawing them out for some kind of fuel. But, none of our victims in the infirmary are having any change in the morphon state in their bodies. And the vast majority are non-morphonic humans.”
Alex said, “There was one other feature that was odd. Everyone was incredibly smart. But, it was unusual intelligence. It was like everyone could calculate things quickly, recall information in a flash. I don’t recall feeling much more intelligent, but people spouted out complex equations and calculations faster than computers.”
“Computers,” Nova said, and then walked away quickly.
“Did you figure something out?” Torrik asked.
Nova stood next to a robot, “Analyze the psionic connection across the planet.”
The main monitor displayed the world with billions of lines of energy now crisscrossing it.
Alex asked, “What are you looking for?”
Nova commanded the robot, “Now, show me the BADGE Ai computer system.”
Another image displayed the complicated computer used to run the entire BADGE network. It too had lines of energy crisscrossing it.
“Why didn’t I see this before?” Nova looked at the two.
Alex said, “Is it just me, or do those look oddly similar?”
“It isn’t just you.” Nova said. “That psionic network connecting everyone is like a giant ai algorithm processing quadrillions of data every second.”
“I’m lost.” Torrik said.
Nova said, “Our computers use something we call Artificial Intelligence, or AI. What AI does is use many items of information and then process them to come up with logical answers. Say, I put in every single battle strategy ever used by victorious generals. Then, I tell a computer about an upcoming battle and let it use all those winning strategies to come up with something that should win me that battle.”
“Oh, that makes some sense.” Torrik said, though his tone betrayed a remaining confusion.
Nova said, “In the same way, only billions of times more complex, this system is using every human brain in the world to build and operate a powerful ai program, one that is so far ahead of anything we have that it would be godlike. Instead of using computer chips and data storage, this system is using the most advanced computer on this planet, eight billion human brains.”
Alex asked, “If this is true, then it has a limited lifespan. If everyone dies, then their computer dies.”
Nova said, “From my long experience fighting supervillains, I know there’s much more to this than meets the eye. We have to find the source of all this, the computer this human-network is operating.”
“Then we find Gamer G; he’s intricately involved in this,” Alex said.
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