Writing Digimon: Data Storm

[Circ]

This is assumed to be a first chapter. Opinions would be appreciated. Planning to post it on FanfictionNET.


(and by the by, if you'd mind have a look for corrections, Sara, it'd be very appreciated as well ;))


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[i]Several big Internet sites have reported close server breakdowns this weeks. A network-sized problem seems to clog data transmissions between large servers. Most noticeably, Amazon and the whole Google network, have been all but impossible to access for the past 12 hours. Many, if not all, of the most popular hosting sites also went berserk, deleting major parts of their accounts. Geocities.com, Free.fr, Angelfire.com and Tripods hostees are desperate, as they are unable to even access their sites to check if they have been deleted. This other catastrophe is striking the dot-com industries at one of...[/i]

A hand reached out and tuned down the sound. It retreated to the mouse and added text to a picture of stylized blooming flowers. Andrea quickly completed the last of her conceptual work to be presented to her boss that afternoon and saved it. She sighed, stretched and reached for her coffee mug.

?Alright... A last shot of caffeine before printing.?

Her shoes brushed on the carpeted floor as she walked out of her cubicle to the coffee maker and pressed the ?expresso? button. The device gurgled happily at being solicited and filled half her mug. She grimaced, and pressed the button a second time, eventually managing to get her mug mostly filled.

Even before she walked back to her cubicle, she noticed the sound. A weird digital rustling that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She looked cautiously inside the room, fearing to see some ?blue screen of death?, and her eyes widened at the sight of her screen. She would have screamed in frustration, if it weren?t for the fact she had never seen this strange kind of bug. The screen looked like a DNA analyzer gone wild, with binary code flooding across it randomly right to left, top to bottom and vice-versa.

?What the...? the conceptual designer trailed.

Andrea blinked and attempted to use the mouse to close the window or something, but the mouse felt [i]different[/i]. She slowly turned her head at what once had been a perfectly normal laser mouse. The cord had disappeared, along with the two buttons, and two new ones had appeared on each side. The round part was much flatter, and the center part now had a green-gray screen covered with dark green words. She scrolled with the untouched central button and the words changed. ?No messages? ?Encrypt? ?Hack? ?Data Storage?...

The computer suddenly stopped rustling. It took a good ten seconds for Andrea?s ears to retransmit the info to her brain, and she turned back abruptly at the screen. The data had stopped moving, but a white shape was now layered over the code. It seemed vaguely familiar, then she looked back at her ?mouse?.
?No way!? she mumbled.

Her world was slowly sinking into insanity.

?What do I have to loose?? She asked to nobody and put the mouse against the screen to check if the shapes were as much identical as they seemed.

{[i]All lights disappear, Andrea seems paralyzed. The view pans around her until it comes to her face, then it zooms to her right eye where we can see her still standing in pitch darkness as pressing her ?mouse? against an invisible computer screen, then she start plummeting down...[/i]}

Andrea blinked a first time, then a second, then a third just to be sure. Nope, she wasn?t in her cubicle anymore. She was terribly ditzy and felt sick. A loud crack came from behind her. She was able to distinguish some kind of tropical wilderness behind the mist in her eyes.

?Okay... No more... coffee for... me.? She mumbled before falling to the ground, unconscious.

---

Was it a second later? A minute? An hour? She didn?t know and didn?t care either. She was almost completely conscious now. [i]All I need is to open my eyes and I?ll be back to my cubicle, I?ll see that I was just sleeping a couple of seconds. Then I?ll print those concepts, show them to the boss, and off for the weekend![/i] She smiled. A nice fresh waffle smell was floating in the air and her smile widened, then it hit her like a celeri stick.

?WAFFLES!?? She exclaimed, sitting abruptly.

?Yes, miss, waffles, would you like some?? Casually replied a male voice from the next room.

She heard a sound she related to a waffle-iron opening with a puff of vapor. She got up and walked zombie-like out of the room. The next room seemed to be the kitchen. Someone looking like an African shaman from those old cartoons with a gigantic mask over his face was conscientiously cutting something with a meter-long boomerang-shaped sword or something. The blade was dripping red blood, which upon sight finally managed to snap Andrea out of her trance.

She yelled and nearly jumped out of her skin.

The masked figure fairly did the same, even adding it?s own personal tweak by throwing the sword-thing up. It went stuck straight into the stone ceiling. They both kept yelling for a good 2 minutes until they simultaneously ran out of air. Andrea struck a pose.

?Don?t get near me! I?m black belt (Which was true) and I?m getting out of here and back to my office!?

Her ?opponent? put his hands to his hips. Wasn?t it for the mask, she would have sworn he was looking at her amusedly.

?How??

It took her another 10 seconds to realize that she didn?t know where she was and who she was facing. Her brain was definitely NOT appreciative of expresso today. She groaned and took yet another ten seconds to look over her opponent... and really wondered where she actually was.

He (from the voice, she could assume it was a he) had a short brown fur all over his body, his chest and belly being white. Bandages covered is overgrown wrists. His feet rather looked like animalistic clawed paws and green hair (she could only assume it was hair) was visible behind the mask and large feathers covering his head. She started shaking when her brain finally registered the fact this was certainly not a human being, confirmed by the simple fact this... thing... had a tail.

The mist was coming back before her eyes. In the nick of time, she was fainting again and the ?thing? rushed to catch her before she crashed on the floor.

---

It was starting all over again. She just knew it. At least, this time, she knew, or though she knew, a bit of what to expect. The first thing she noticed was a smell of fruits and waffles. [i]Strawberry... That?s what he was cutting.[/i] Her memory somehow worked, which was seemingly good news. She moaned and half-opened her eyes.

?There, you had me worried for a little while, miss.? A male, rather comforting voice spoke.

She decided to look straight. The mask, the same blue, green and red mask she saw previously. The... person was sitting on a chair by the bed she was in.

?Where am I?? she managed to ask. ?How long have I been out of it and who are you??

?Well, I?ll reply in order.? Amazingly, the mask didn?t seem to alter the voice in any way. ?You are in Axolotl Node. First time you?ve been out half an hour. Second time, you?ve been out of it for at least two hours. Apparently all this screaming took its toll on you. And last, but not least, your servant is known as Sepikmon.?

?Sepik-what? Axol-what?? She refrained herself from yelling and downed her tone to just a bit loud. Her throat still felt sore from the last time she yelled.

?Sepikmon? He looked closer at her. ?You?re not from around here.?

?That would be the understatement of the century. Sepikman, eh? I must still be out cold and I?m dreaming about Marvel comics or something.? The creature tilted it?s head. Andrea considered it must have been it?s way of staring.

?You [i]definitely[/i] are not from here.? He seemed to think a moment. ?You are from the Real World!?

Andrea glared back at the thing. Of course she was from, and still in the real world, or at least hoped so. However, some insistent grumbling kept her from snapping at her interlocutor.

?Oh God, I?m hungry.? She muttered.

?I?d have guessed so. I had to eat the first serving of waffles after a while, but those are very fresh.? He grabbed a tray on the nightstand and put it before her. She glimpsed the furniture in the room was all made of stone. She hate hungrily, still watched over by... what was his name again, Sepikmon?

Once she was finished, she sat and tried to walk across the room. This time, aside from a slight wobbling, her legs seemed receptive to orders from her brains. She walked to a window across the room.

?Oh, dear, I think I?m not in Canada anymore.? She whispered.

Large palm trees shadowed a luxurious vegetations where she recognized yuccas, agaves as well as various orchids. A flat paved road was going straight ahead up to a Mayan pyramid. Small stone building lined the street. A mechanic from some demented mind rolled pass the house she was in. Built from stone and wooden parts, it looked like some vehicle driven by two meter-high frogs with a cornet sprouting from their necks. She blinked, then drunkly walked back to the bed and started sobbing.

[Patronus]

Very good!! It reads like a literary novel! Keep writing!