Upside Down Stairs
"Fancy, shiny, clever, but at the same time empty and so fragile that they look like they might break at any moment?"
"Exactly! This really is..."
"Hush, GX, I'm not here to be Plato now," Damy replied in despair.
"You work so hard, what for?" reproached the mini android to its owner.
"I want this world back," she said with tears beginning to well up in her eyes.
"Damy, you have lost everything, what do you want to rescue from this dark world?" questioned the android simulating human confusion.
The young woman suddenly stopped on scrambling around in her interface madly searching for codes. She looked up, and pointed sharply at the bare roof of the shed they were both in hiding from The Unit.
"That transition of sunrise colors reminds me of when Dad used to take us camping. Life was simpler because there was freedom of choice," Damy said wiping away tears.
"There's no way they're coming back," bipped GX.
"Shut up! I already have a plan to bring back not only my family, but all the people kidnapped by The Unit," Damy shouted before starting the coding again.
GX saw her owner and could detect a high heart rate, but was unable to identify what was going on in her head, especially since Damy was also partially transfigured by the Nano Virtuality.
"Got it!" roared the young woman before lifting GX up and giving it a kiss.
"What? How? When? Now I understand why humans like to kiss and be kissed," commented GX awkwardly.
"I have the key to the door to Virtuality," Damy replied enthusiastically as ever.
"The Unit will detect you right away," warned GX.
"And that's where you lack human trickery, buddy,"
GX was silent, trying to recalculate its earlier approaches, but nothing in its spherical system seemed to resolve the matter.
Out of nowhere, a portal to virtuality opened, and Damy launched herself toward it with GX in her arms. It was a shorter trip than expected. Arriving on the other side, however, was a very different landscape than Damy had imagined.
In Virtuality nothing was so perfect. In fact, many people seemed more enslaved than on Earth. Across long titanium bridges, people shuffled their feet toward a common destination, all the while keeping their gazes glued to the ground.
Between large buildings, interconnected by thousands of cybernetic links, the figures of Damy and GX were lost. It was impossible for them to be seen in such a huge scenario.
But GX still wondered how they could be there undetected by The Unit.
"I realized over there that with half of my body being transfigured by Nano Virtuality, it could not capture me because The Unit, being also Nano Virtuality, is not programmed to attack itself," Damy clarified in a heroic tone.
"It's as reckless a move, as it is brilliant, Damy," the android ball replied in wonder.
"It had to be tried."
"But still, I don't understand what your ultimate plan is," GX said with intrigue in its little virtual eyes.
"You'll have to follow me to find out," said the young half-human, half-code girl before setting off to where they were all going.
Damy feared failure, but she was unwilling not to try. After all, it was either disappear at any moment or get her family back for good.
She had already realized, also thanks to the transfiguration, that The Unit was not a group of omnipresent cybernetic entities, but a millionaire who tricked programmers into creating a virtual world where he could manage people as he pleased.
Within minutes, Damy was dodging everyone on the bridges. GX was flying over everyone with fear, which was evident by its constant back and forth moves.
The saving duo was carrying out a simple mission, until the hundreds of thousands of people around them stopped walking. A column of light appeared far ahead, and everyone raised their heads to gaze at it.
It was a very abrupt event. For, before Damy and GX came out of their astonishment, all the people began to be hit by small fluorescent balls that had come out of the column, and their attitudes became hostile.
The great cyberzombie horde had begun its attack and Damy had no idea how to stop it. She only came to realize her chances when out of fear she tried to cover her face with her arms.
"Damy, look, you're doing magic!" exclaimed GX, noticing how her owner had sent several flying just by raising her arms.
Damy half-opened her teary eyes to confirm what GX had said.
"Maybe I was able to do that because... yes, I too can wield Nano Virtuality at my whim!" said Damy to herself as such a skill was revealed.
In short, all the codes that constituted Virtuality were manageable by Damy. This made it possible for her to first destabilize the cybezombies, causing waves under their feet, and then begin to unravel the bridges part by part, causing the hordes to fall endlessly into the void of the city.
To avoid falling as well, Damy clung to GX, who in turn flew over that chaos in a great hurry, following the trail of the luminous column.
"No, I hate all this, GX, these were people I made them fall," Damy said crying.
"There was no choice," bipped GX.
"I'm a monster!" wailed Damy, covering her face.
The situation seemed to become more tense as two more columns of light, and a possible new horde of cyberzombies, suddenly came into view.
However, GX hurried its flight as fast as it could and finally arrived at the place where the columns were coming out.
It was a building in the shape of a lying egg, where only a small entrance door could be seen.
"Damy, we have arrived, fear no more," GX stated, easing its owner to land.
Damy slowly came back to her senses and took a big look around. She looked both sad and surprised.
In fact, just as she wanted to finish standing up, she found herself knocked down again. Out of the door of the oval building came not the millionaire, but her family, headed by the large zombie figure of her father.
GX realized that this would end fatally, and even with a low battery, it reacted in time to stop the cyberzombies' imminent attack on Damy.
The maximum of GX's capabilities were tested by having to convince Damy to go after the millionaire, while at the same time it had to stop her family with an electromagnetic jail.
"You told me you wanted to bring everyone back. There is no tomorrow, it's now, Damy," the android said with the last of its energy.
Soon after, Damy watched as the spherical body of his android companion fell, bounced a couple of times and then rolled around until it was completely extinguished.
This clicked Damy's mind and, against all odds, the girl who lay paralyzed by sadness and fright, was completely transfigured into Nano Virtuality and undid the millionaire's control over her relatives.
In fact, everything became controlled by her, and the evil mastermind behind The Unit had no choice but to come out of his lair. His lean appearance, with long, unkempt hair, broken cloak and weathered face, hinted that he had long since lost himself.
"You've come all this way to stop me? It won't do any good, Virtuality is indestructible," commented the man behind all the chaos with laughter.
The virtualized Damy said nothing, only frowned.
"This creation," continued the Machiavellian man, "is connected to Earth's reality, so if this disappears, so will our planet."
These words seemed to infuriate Damy to such an extent that, opening and closing her hands fleetingly, she generated a hole through which the man fell into an endless void. A sort of timeless prison in Nano Virtuality.
Damy knew that, despite so much effort, this bad copy of Earth could not disappear. Therefore, she became the new Unity herself. But instead of enslavement, she gave freedom to all those who were once kidnapped, and sent them back to Earth, including her family. She only kept GX as her patrolman.
That was how a new tomorrow began on both worlds in 2101.
