Last Chapter!
12.
Dark Reflections
Inez was first to regain consciousness. Wincing at the dull ache in her head, she sat up and looked around. The cybercoop was very damaged, but had faired better this time around. Matt lay sprawled in his seat, still unconscious, the wound on his arm bleeding freely and was beginning to sport a large purple bump on his forehead. Outside the coop was nothing but empty cyberspace. Both pistols and the SKWAK pad they had gotten in the other universe were gone, lost in transit, no doubt.
It was like it never happened.
Inez weakly leaned forward and checked the coop's power gage. It had very little left, and what there was left remaining was slowly being leaked out somehow. She wasn't interested in the power leak though. All that mattered was that there was enough power for the radio to work properly. Slowly, Inez switched it on and tuned in to the right channel.
"...there?" Jackie's voice suddenly came to Inez's ears. "Digit, I'm starting to lose hope. What if...?"
Jackie trailed off, not needing to finish the question. And she needed not worry, either.
"Jackie!" Inez exclaimed into the coop's radio transmitter. "Boy, does your voice sound good to my ears!"
"Inez!" Jackie was heard exclaiming in joy. "Thank heavens! We were starting to fear the worse."
"No chance of that." Inez said, then added mystically, "Remember, in Cyberspace, anything is possible."
"Huh?" Jackie questioned.
"I'll explain later." Inez promised. "Right now, we need a little help. Me and Matt are okay, but the coop's totaled, engines powerless, or soon will be, and we're just drifting aimlessly." She leaned over and checked another gage. "We're about two-hundred cybermeters from cybersite Sensible Flats."
"Sensible Flats?" Digit's voice now came on. "How did you guys get all the way over there?"
"Like I said, I'll explain later." Inez promised. "I can't maintain this transmission forever at the rate the coop's losing power."
"Okay, Digit's on his way to pick you guys up." Jackie said, taking the conversation over. "But seriously, where have you guys been? We haven't heard anything from you guys for hours now! Hacker's already promised to return and defeat us next time twice already by cybermail."
Inez pondered Jackie's question for a moment, deciding how to best respond. "Let's just say we've been seeing things as they could've been." she saw Matt sit up out of the corner of her eye and knew he had regained consciousness and was listening. "And the consequences thereof."
Jackie was silent for a moment, no doubt puzzled by the serious tone Inez had taken. "What are you saying?" she asked.
"Like I said, Jackie, anything's possible." Inez repeated. "Listen, the coop's running out of power to maintain the transmission, we're going to have to go out of contact for a little while."
"Okay, don't worry, Digit's...on his...Mother B...portal...cut...be...shortly..." Jackie's voice faded away in nothing. There was no static, or any other kind of radio noise. The radio simply fell silent.
Inez stared at it, thoughts and memories of the past day tangling up with each other.
Matt broke the silence. "Feel's kind of weird, doesn't it?" he asked.
"To know that somewhere out there, there's a whole other universe fighting a war?" Inez asked. "One that could've been avoided? Yes, it does. It feels like we just abandoned them."
"Maybe so." Matt said, his breathing ragged as he shifted positions, clamping one hand on his wounded arm. "But there isn't really anything we could've done for them."
"Except one thing." Inez said.
"What?"
"To follow their advice." Inez stated. "No, their pleas. Make sure that the same thing does not happen in this universe. No matter how tempting it might be, how perfect it might seem, and how intriguing it might seem, we saw first hand that present day Cyberspace and the Real World just aren't ready. Eventually, it would all end in anarchy."
"Short term gain, long term loss." Matt summed up grimly. "A fatal long term loss."
As the cybercoop drifted aimlessly through Cyberspace as they waited for Digit to retrieve them, the two thought about the disastrous outcomes of the CSRW Alliance, wondering how it would eventually all end for them in that alternate reality, thinking about all that universe would lose, if not more...
Okay, so a bit of a gloomy ending, but that was really the whole point of the story. Leave the reader gloomy and wondering.
My next Cyberchase fanfic that I have in the works (entitled "Mishap") will be a lot more cheery and care-free, and hopefully will be up later today, so be on the look out for it. ;)