An agile hand rubbed the sweat that trickled down the wrikled forhead with a frown of worry written all over the fine features. Black eyes behind a pair of small, round glasses glimmered with the flashing green light that irradiated from the computer screen at which he was working. A dim light coming from a small table lamp and the continuous and intermitent glitters of irradiating bright light where the only source that illuminated the pale white office, lack of homey and cozy feeling floated in the completely vast and loose athmopshere. If one was to see the enormous mirror like building that united the whole structure of offices which composed the InSysMat-X company, a very famous company of informatics, you would only see the faint glimmer coming from the window at the last floor. The building towered over the city, it's enormous shadow standing proud against the tall and vast sky, it's chest inflating with strength over the much smaller building that cowered under it. Yet Izumi Koushiro payed little attention to such minor details, for his whole attention was focused on the glimmer of the computer.

"I'm so close" murmurred Izumi calmly staring with attention at the sequence of fantastic characters in a continuous order forming a complicated sequence, most of which nobody had ever seen.

"I must find out how to get out, it's all I need, I've got all info about it, enough investigation, there is just one thing I must do! Wake up!" his mouth emmited this words in inaudible whispers and mumbles, while his hands raced across the keyboard with the speed of gazelles galloping across the savanhas.

The screen flickered lightly, like the small and weak flame of a small candle when a gentle breeze blows through it, and before Izumi could realize or analize the situation the monitor's glass had turned a deep, penetrating black, his CPU blocked completely to control. The expert programer gasped without understanding the incoherent behaviour of his computer, "what are you doing now?" his voice, hoarse to lack of use, exclaimed in a retoric question. He typed around the keyboard yet his results were pretty much nule, and negative, his hopeless situation becoming a frustration torwards the free will of the computer.

"hello Izzy!" typed his screen in green letters, the caligraphy none like that which he had ever seen, and the understanding evolved more into conffusion.

"who are you?" Izzy typed, realizing it was very stupid, speaking with a computer which was possibly simply having an overheat and typing the codificated sequence of it's voice control system.

"I know what you are doing!" typed the computer once more, and Izzy couldn't help but imagine a morbid voice hissing behind his ear in a murderous way, threatening to kill him. He shuddered at the thought yet tried to ignore it, he was at his office, there were security policemen at the basement and each of the floors, he was safer here than anywhere else.

"what are you talking about? What did you do to my computer?" Izzy typed, yet insisde his voice was yelling at the computer for an answer to his frustration.

"I know all about Proyect Matrix" the computer typed, it was logical that she knew about it considering she had been used to save all the data about the proyect and the final experiments, yet Izzy was annoyed at the fact that someone out there had entered his computer and found the files that considered nearly ten years of research.

"how did you hack into her? How could you evade the firewalls, antiviruses and codificated security controls and passwords?" Izzy inquired angrily, his insides burning yet contradicting himself with the cold feeling of fear spreading across his insides. It was his project and he hadn't gotten so far into it to hav it stolen now.

"I have followed your research for the past 8 years, and I am truly impressed at your capacity of understanding and learning, even how imaginative your mind is!" continued the screen with the same, acid green letters. Izzy snorted, was this guy actually paying attention to what he wrote?

"I have answers, I know how close you are to the end, yet you cant do that alone, this is as far as you can get with your computer!" explained the green letters in the same calm and passive tone that sent so much goosebumps covering his pale skin.

"tell me, I'm willing to listen!" commented Izzy with as much calm as he could gather, considering his computer was speaking to him and someone had hacked into his basicly impenetrable system.

"good!" typed the computer, which sent much more frustration across his body, realizing this misterious hacker had ignored all his inquires, instead of his secondary option which considered his kkeyboard being completely useless, "it is time you experiment with yourself, you know that the spoon does not exist, but you must believe that it really doesn't, once you manage that you will have reached the end, you will wake up!" the computer explained with it's usual calm.

Izzy straightened and tensed agaisnt his chair, he had mentioned this in such an unaudible voice and incoherent mumble that it was impossible they knew about his words, not when he was situated at the highest floor of a three hundred floor building and he was engulfed in a security camera with guards roaming across the building.

"what do you mean?" he inquired again in typing letters, yet as soon as his keyboard pressed enter, the screen flickered again and it faded inmediatly into the codes he had been analizing before the whole event had occurred. Izumi was bewildered by the computer's behaviour, it was not like any normal hacker had accessed his computer, he had never heard of a system working like that or a hacker gaining so much control over a computer. He analized his possibilities searching for a realistic conclusion, yet he knew very well this was a virtual reality and, like any operative system, it had flaws, therefore his mind roamed around the last phrase, considering all his possibilities.

"daddy!" yelled a very shrieking, yet delighted young voice, and young Izumi was inmediatly ambushed by the small figure still engulfed in pijamas that was his youngest daughter.

"Mizzy!" Izzy said with a laugh, taking the girl in his arms and making her fly. Mizumi oppened her arms and closed her intense, deep black eyes, a swarm of butterflies tickling her stomach with their fantastic, velvet wings, the air caressing her delicate skin as the child imagined herself flying.

"daddy, make our secret place, please!" Mizzy begged once her father, feeling his arms weaker than normally as a cause of his general exhaustion and the many hours spent in front of the computer, placed her with wobbly legs on the ground.

"ok Mizzy, but first let me see your brother, ok?" Izzy said placing a hand tenderly on the three year's old head and shaking her still unruly, and wild hair, which flashed with an intense flaming colour, like the spirit that rested inside her young body, inherited all this from her father. She was a copy of her father, the same features as when he was young, the same flaming copper hair, and the same computer passion and experiment desires.

"bah, Kenji is asleep! Play with me and then, when he wakes up, you say hello to him, ok daddy?" Mizzy pouted, crossing her little arms, yet inmediatly slender fingers grabbed Izzy's untamed and wrinkled shirt and tugged at them with a hopeful expression.

"all right! Aren't you one meany little girl? You'll make anyone do whatever you wish when you grow up!" Izzy joked with the young child, giving up in his attempt to salute the sleeping, five year old son.

The two figures, father and daughter, entered the room, and without hesiation Izzy turned on the computer, it seemed obvious that, as a programer, his life revolved around computers, yet even a lover like him managed to get tired of the miraculous and self thinking items from time to time. His tender and calid face became cold and expressionless as soon as his fingers made contact with the cold and hard structure of the keyboard, his tired eyes glancing with a penetrating gaze at a misterious sequence of numbers and characters that flashed in intense green across his computer, falling in a cascade of database.

He typed into his computer with speed and as soon as he pressed enter, the small room, with the bed and the curtains became a fantastic pond of crystaline waters and a cascade of singing fluid of life, whispering it's delicious songs to the winds. The trees bloomed where they hadnt existed before, and a faint rustle of leaves dropped the powder of numerous flowers over them, a brilliant purpurine of glittering magic that sparkled like the misterious speech of flashing stars. Then, next to the pond, by the waterfall, resting calmly on the grass, appeared an unicorn, of the purest white colour, the most intense violet eyes, horn and hooves of silver and mane the colour of pearls, with it's cromatic derivation reaching faint lilacs, pale blues and gentle greys. Mizzy shrieked in delight, "Pegasso!" she gleefully screamed and ran torwards the unicorn. The animal greeted her with a nod of his head, and Izzy smiled, it was just an illusion, a small world he created in the big illusion that was their life, but it was something that made his daughter happy, and with little effort he managed to make her enjoy the dream no children could achieve.

He saw thoughtfully the animal's games with the girl, the way he galloped and leapt and paced, the way he nieghed, and the way he made his horn sparkle with the essence of magic that rested within his depths. He saw Pegasso making the water raise in a motion of whirlpool, dancing like a mermaid in a rather seductive way, he could almost hear the melodious voice of the mythical creatures. That was until Izzy realized that the water had transformed into a woman, yet it was still water, crystaline, with tints of blue, difracting the reality around them and becoming, herself, a subreal, imaginative being.

"the spoon does not exist!" Izzy whispered to himself observing the active playing of the two creatures, the two data indeed.

Kenji, who had casted a glance across a gap in the door, gasped silently at the vision, his creamy, caramel eyes shining with amusement and evenr surprise. It was not like he had never seen his father creating paradises where they played, but the fact that he made them using some sort of magic always brought him a delicious deeling of joy into his depth, throught his soul, a light filling his young heart. He didn't dare to enter and decided to observe his sister enjoying the games with the unicorn and the water nymph, it made him happy even although he didn't participate. Kenji also knew this was their moment, his father and Mizzy's moment, and would never dare to break that blessed, sacred space of time.

Tokio's Daily

Izumi Koushiro DISSAPEARED!

The famous businessman Izumi Koushiro, president and founder of the famous computer company InSysMat-X, misteriously dissapeared the past thursday, 15 of november, after leaving his office at late hours of night. The guards, last people to have seen Izumi, declared that he stayed long after everyone left, which was usual in him.

   "Izumi left rather quickly that particular night, he seemed to be in a hurry, he didn't even say good night!" declared Kaero Nobu, one of the guards and the last person to have seen Izumi.

   "he was a strange man, he used to stay until very late, and sometimes you could see strange sounds or flashes of light coming from his office!" commented Mameha Yamamoto, one of the high security service police.

   "what sort of strange sounds?" asked one of our reporters.

   "I don't know, like waterfalls, horse neighs, birds chirping, even motorcycles and waves, and other assortments of sounds, normal sounds but you see, it's not normal they come from the office of a working man!" Mameha explained in a tone of suspicion.

   "anything else?" asked our reporter.

   "yes, nobody was allowed to enter to his office, it's enclosed with strange security passwords and a method I ignore, but nobody can get in, I think he was hiding something, him and those three strange people, Matthew Ishida, Cody, and Jake Anderson" the security guard explained in a low tone.

   Izumi Koushiro's work mates refused to speak to us, declaring he never hid anything and that he worked on computer projects himself before presenting them to the company and working at a high scale. However more accurate investiagtions believe he was working on something called Proyect Matrix, where he wanted to represent a virtual reality that could be mistaken for the reality. Investigations point out that his disappereance might have been caused by a problem considering this work, perhaps mafias from some sect or similar wanted to get him out of the way to put an end to that project. Simple speculations that give people what to think about.

   As for now his dissapereance will remain a mistery and exhaustive investigations will continue. Reporter Draca Narlwe from the Tokio's Daily.

To Be Continued…

AN: There, the first chapter, do you like it? I promise that it will be more interesting as it goes on. This is a sequel to A Shooting Star, so if you want to know more about Proyect Matrix, how it all began, and how Izzy discovered that his world was Matrix, then I recommend you read that one. Please, I work hard in this so leave a review, I'll apreciate it.