The Byte, Aryan Jassal [distant reading TXT] 📗

backpack to find a weapon, anything. Somehow, I found a long, rod-like - thing. It was roughly two feet long greyish rod and had a black handle with a push-button.

When I pushed the button, the rod glowed white-hot. I ran to the arena with the rod in my hand like a madman holding a sword. Both the parties were easy to distinguish as I had an up-close session with the antivirus of this computer.

I swung my rod/sword towards a rogue byte and the rod cut straight through it as if it was made of butter. The byte fell on the floor, split in half. I scanned around for other enemies. An antivirus byte was being overpowered one-to-eleven.

I ran towards that byte and with one clean swipe, destroyed five virus bytes. The antivirus byte was able to handle the rest of them. It busted out its ninja moves and destroyed the other virus bytes before I even had time to raise my sword.

I gave that byte a thumbs-up and ran for assisting more bytes. One green connector thickened under my feet, just like magic. It was as wide as twenty bytes standing side-to-side. Then, I turned around.

There was a huge mob of virus bytes coming from the exit of “My PC”. I looked down again. The connector was extra-bright. It was illuminated with a bright-green color. My white-hot sword and the connector’s green light battled for brightness.

Then I realized that the virus bytes were taking power from the extra-thick green connector. I used my sword to cut the connection line. The moment I had cut the connector, the mob instantly crumpled.

Thankfully, the computer didn’t try to make any other connections. The battlefield became so eerily silent, that I had to look around. The fight was done, won by this computer’s antivirus.

Suddenly, the temperature dropped by 10 degrees. Was the computer getting cooler? “Impossible,” said a familiar voice behind me. I turned around and noticed Lucy for the first time since the battle started.

I was too shocked to answer. Lucy continued, “The computer has shut down. That must mean trouble.” A random byte called up, “The computer is corrupted by this new-comer!” At that comment, two bytes seized me and Lucy by the arms. Again, I was greeted by that LED RoboCop. It touched one terminal with me, and I lost consciousness again.

I Meet the King and the Queen

 

I woke up, my hands and feet tied behind my back. Those guys might’ve soldered my hands again. I tried to break it. It didn’t budge.

Great! Just Great! I was in a huge hallway and in front of me, was a raised platform with two empty chairs. No, not chairs. They were thrones. Each throne was completely covered with various green connectors coming from every direction.

A dozen bytes were on either side of the throne. There was a giant wall behind them filled with small components. Then, I noticed the switches on the throne arm-rest, which meant, I was seeing the CPU.

There must be a cooling system. I looked straight up. There was a huge fan above us, currently inactive. That might be the CPU cooler, I thought. This meant that I was in the heart of the computer! “The King and The Queen arrive,” said a byte. That’s it, I thought. I am done for.

Then, The King arrived first. He was just like any other byte, only a bit bigger and had a zapper-backpack. Then the queen came. She wasn’t much different from the king. They both sat on their thrones and the green connectors went bright.

Someone pushed me ahead. Somehow, my leg-solders were molten so I just stumbled ahead and tripped. I somehow was able to stand up again.

The king announced, “You broke the power to the hard drive. You are responsible for permanent shutting down of this computer. Now we only have twelve years’ worth of energy, instead of unlimited energy. You will be killed on this charge.”

“But you could rewire the energy input to the Hard Drive,” I said.

“No, we can’t!”

“But why?”

“Because it was meant as a backup plan, not the primary connection.”

“So?”

“So, it will already be at its maximum handle-able voltage and will break if the user tries to reboot the computer.”

Just then, an army of virus bytes broke through the massive throne doors. They stopped at the doors. A lead byte came ahead and it stomped on the ground so hard that the connector under its feet broke, cutting power supply to antivirus bytes, corrupting them. Then, the fight began.

Virus Attack, Part 2

 

Thankfully, I still had my bag. I took out my sword and pressed the button. It quickly glowed white-hot. With one slash, I destroyed ten bytes. Then I spun around with the sword extended, and killed several more bytes.

One I had some room to move around, I ran towards the door. I closed the door and melted the door controllers. Then I went to the king and the queen. When I reached to them, I saw that they were doing well on their own.

Both of them were zapping any virus byte which came close to them. Then, things started going wrong. The fan’s blades above started spinning. The king’s zapper-pack was destroyed by a virus byte. Then, a byte came in from ahead and kicked the king in his black box so hard that the box cracked. He toppled backwards and knocked the queen down.

Then, I heard a scream behind me. I turned around and saw that Lucy was sprawled on the floor. Her right arm had a long cut and was oozing blood. Thankfully, there was no green connector around her, so she was not in danger of getting zapped. I was filled with rage.

I yelled and spun my sword wildly. My sword somehow extended, killing the virus bytes in the hundreds. I willed the sword to go back in small form and it contracted into the regular small sword. I ran to Lucy’s side. She had lost consciousness.

Fight was still all around me. I had to save the king and the queen. I tore a part of my shirt and tied it tightly around her wound. Then, I rushed to the king. The leader virus byte was just next to the king. He raised one of its arms.

His zapper-pack hummed with electricity. I threw my sword as if it was a boomerang. It impaled itself in the leader’s black-box. The leader’s black-box released a plume of smoke and the leader fell backwards. Thankfully, the sword was cooled enough that it didn’t damage the floor and the green connectors.

Then I realized that I had thrown my only weapon. Fortunately, I was saved by the chaos which followed the leader’s death. I helped the king and the queen rise up. The king sat on his throne along with the queen and pressed a series of buttons.

Instantly, all the green connectors in the room lit up so brightly that I had to close my eyes. I heard electricity frying the internal controllers of the bytes. I opened my eyes as the glow died down. All the virus bytes were dead, but somehow the friendly bytes survived. Just then, I remembered about Lucy. I was about to go to her, but I had a more important question. How did the sword thing appear in my bag? I asked about it from the king. The queen gasped when she saw my backpack.

“The Ultimate Backpack? Impossible,” the queen said. The king looked shaken as well. The king replied, There is an ancient prophecy that goes along these lines: “Once your kingdom will be in trouble; The bag wielder will save your kingdom, times double.” That might be you.” Now it was my turn to look shaken.

“Which means…?”

“You can get anything out of this bag.” I silently thanked god as I rushed towards Lucy, jumping over dead bytes. No one tried to block my path. I buried my hand inside looking for a bandage to stop the blood flow and some ointment to clean the wound.

As expected, I found it. I quickly did the first-aid. “Can I get a comfortable place for humans,” I asked. “We are robots. We do not rest,” the king replied. “Look in your bag. You might find something.” I didn’t actually expect to find anything but I found a pillow, a few cushions and a thin sheet, all stacked neatly in one pile.

I put them back in, for now and asked, “Now, do you at least have a room that we can go into?” “Oh, yes, yes,” a voice squeaked to the left of me. I turned to locate the byte who had spoken. Then, a terminal went up from between the crowd. The crowd parted around him.

“Where,” I asked. “Follow me,” the byte said. I scooped up Lucy, who was still unconscious. She weighed nothing. I guessed that it might be because of my adrenalin levels.

Still, with my so-called Ultimate Backpack and Lucy in my arms, we ran towards a towering building. He led me into a small box with doors sliding right down. He pressed a button and the door slid back up. The box went dark as we started to elevate.

That byte just stood there. I realized that the power to the box had been cut as we were elevating. And this box was an elevator! Cool! When we arrived at the desired floor, the elevator lit back up.

The byte ran forward with me struggling to catch up. Now with my adrenalin levels fading, I grew more tired every second. Just as I was about to collapse with exhaustion, he threw open a door.

I struggled for air. It was just like my room from my real house up in the real world! It was a fairly large room with electric blue walls. I had my king-sized bed (now just a glowing rectangle with connectors) at the middle of the room with a television (yes, the fully functional one) on a table.

Next to the bed were some night-tables. In the front, it was only transparent mirrors, just like in real life, but how could they make a glowing mirror, I had no idea till date. That view might’ve shocked me really hard because the byte that had brought me here was shaking me. “Whoa, dude! Careful, now,” the byte said. “S-Sorry” I replied.

I ran to the bed and laid Lucy on one side while I put the cushions on the other side as the mattress. I also put the pillow at the head