Chapter 15:
Data Stream
Meanwhile, not far away, the other kids and Digimon had stopped in a small clearing, watching impatiently as Jun and Akira picked their way through the old computer database.
Akira frowned as she clicked the mouse and a warning flashed across the screen in bright, red Japanese text.
Access denied. Please try again later.
“Another one?” Jun asked.
Akira nodded, sighing. “Yep. Another section of the database we can't get into.” She clicked the mouse again, this time on another section.
Access denied. Please go away as the computer is busy with something more important.
Akira blinked. “All right, then...” Another click.
Access denied. Please log off, don't come back, and have a nice day.
Akira stared at the screen in disbelief. “You've gotta be kidding me...” Another click.
Access denied. Why don't you give up already? There's nothing important in here, moron !
Akira scowled and slammed a fist into the ground, barely missing Jun's laptop. “Damn it!” she shouted, and let out a stream of words in Japanese. Seita, Tian and Yuka were laughing.
Jun looked confused. “What did it say?”
Akira huffed. “Nothing!”
“It was just an error message,” Tian said between giggles.
“Nothing major,” Seita added, “All it does is insult you!”
“Humph!” Akira shot back, looking away.
“Okay... how about I try it this time?” Jun said, “Just tell me where to click.”
Akira rolled her eyes and looked toward the screen again. “How about this one?” She pointed to a link in the top left-hand corner.
Jun clicked it. No error message.
Akira shot a look at him and took back the mouse. “I don't believe it. Why'd it work for you?” Jun smiled nervously.
Kei looked over Akira's shoulder. “So, what does it say?” When she saw what was on the screen, she didn't need an answer. “Hey!” she exclaimed, pointing to the pictures. “These are all the Crests we got!” She pulled out hers and held it out, and so did everyone else.
“Courage, Friendship, and Love...” Akira murmured, reading the names. “The ones that appeared for us!” she confirmed, looking at Seita and Tian.
“Knowledge, Sincerity, Hope, Light...” Seita read, “These are the ones everyone else got... But look-” He pointed to nine spaces near the bottom. “There's more of them.”
Tian looked at the spaces. The pictures were shadowed, and no names were shown. She looked at Akira, confused. “There's no information on these. Maybe they're the other crests that the three of us are supposed to find?” she asked, holding up her empty tag.
“That doesn't explain all those others,” Akira answered, “And why they have no information either...” She clicked on one of the shadowed spaces.
Access denied. Knowing too much is dangerous for your health!
Akira sighed. “Never mind.” She clicked on something else, and gratefully, there was no error message.
This time, there was a list of names. Akira scrolled up and down, reading the names and looking at the pictures of the people the names belonged to. “Taichi Yagami, Yamato Ishida, Sora Takenouchi... These are the names of the kids we talked to in the ruins!”
Jun looked at the pictures. “You're right.”
“Koushirou, Mimi, Jyou, Takeru, Hikari... Everyone we met is in here,” Akira continued.
“But who's this?” Kei pointed to a picture of someone else, located at the very bottom, spaced further apart from the others.
Akira looked at it, and gasped. The picture was of a black-haired, violet-eyed girl, wearing a pair of goggles.
“She looks just like you,” Kei continued, “But it couldn't be, could it?”
Akira shook her head slowly. “No...” She swallowed. “But I've seen her before.”
All eyes were on her. “You have?” Seita spoke up, “When? Where?”
“Right before we entered that ruined village,” Akira replied, “She led us to it. She was the person I saw on the road. And she moved funny – just like the programs of the other kids we talked to.”
“What's her name?” Kei asked.
Akira looked at the screen. “Naoko Magami...” she murmured, reading off the text under the picture.
“Do you think she's the person we're supposed to find?” Tian asked, interrupting Akira's thoughts.
“Naoko Magami...” Jun murmured. He thought a moment, then his eyes widened. “It couldn’t be…”
“What is it?” Akira asked.
“Magami…” Jun continued, “…as in the Magami OS?”
The kids looked at each other in surprise.
“That’s impossible,” Seita answered, “She’s only one person – uh, program – whatever! And there are billions of computers around the world running Magami OS. She can’t be in that many places at once!”
“But it makes sense,” Jun put in. “Look at this.” He pointed to a short annotation at the end of the page:
Naoko.exe – Command.com
“If this is true,” Jun continued, “This girl's 'programmed self' is the one responsible for managing everything around here, just like a Command.com program controls a computer.”
He was met with blank stares. Only Akira was nodding her head. “Go on.”
Jun sighed. “And according to this,” He pointed to a set of dates, “She created her program years ago, so the time period would be just about right.”
Akira was silent for a few seconds, then spoke up again. “How long ago?”
Jun looked at the screen and did a rapid calculation in his head. “About... 70 years ago.”
“What?!” Everyone else shouted.
Jun shrugged and clicked on another link. This time it was a different list of text and pictures.
“Digivices...” Jun murmured, looking at the pictures. “This one looks like yours, Akira.” He pointed to a light, pale blue Digivice at the top of the page, separate from the others.
Akira nodded, pulling it out and comparing it to the picture.
“And here's ours,” Jun pointed to the rest of them.
“But – wait a minute, how would they know about those?” Mana asked incredulously, “I got mine through the mail!”
Everyone fell silent for a moment. “So did I,” Jun said.
“Me too,” Tian said. Seita, Yuka and Kei nodded.
“I didn't.”
Everyone turned to face Akira. She looked just as confused as them. “I don't remember how I got it,” she answered.
“Oh yeah – I never did get around to asking you where you got your Digivice from!” Kei told Akira. “There was only one Digivice in that box that came in the mail – mine!”
“I do remember finding it somewhere in your house on the day we got here,” Akira continued, “but I think I've had it longer than that.”
“You would have, since you were here before any of us!” Seita answered with a smirk.
“There's something else strange about it,” Jun said suddenly, squinting through the text. “Look at this.” He pointed to two words under the Digivice picture. The only ones in English:
Digivice S1
“S1?” Akira asked.
“And look at this,” Jun pointed to a set of English words under the rest of the Digivices:
Digivice S1 – Copy
“So, does this mean that Akira's Digivice is the original, and ours were just copied from hers?” Tian asked.
Jun frowned. “Probably. But that doesn't explain this,” He pointed to another Digivice at the bottom. It was black and also had the words “Digivice S1 – Copy” written under it. “None of us have this one,” he continued, “And we still don't know how we got them in the real world, in the mailbox, of all places.”
“Hey, how about this,” Mana piped up, “Maybe there's someone in the real world who knows what's going on here and decided to recruit us to help – someone like the Naoko person who programmed herself here! Maybe she had us play that 'Digital Adventure' game that got us in this mess in the first place, and since we won, the person somehow copied our Digivices from Akira’s, gave them to us in the mail, and activated them so we'd all get here at the same time!”
Everyone stared at her.
“That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard,” Seita muttered.
“You know… that just might be it…” Akira said softly, her hand tightening around her Digivice.
“What do you mean?” Jun asked intently.
Akira thought a moment, then answered him. “Do you have a cable? There's something I want to try.”
When Jun gave her the cable, she plugged one end of it into the small slot on the top of her Digivice, and plugged the other end into the laptop. Then she opened a few programs and started typing furiously.
“What are you doing?” Jun asked, staring at the gibberish appearing on the screen.
“You’ll see. If I’m right.”
“But-“
“Shh!” Kodamon said sharply.
After a few minutes, a long stream of pictures and text flashed across the screen at high speed. Jun breathed in sharply, reeling in the sheer amount of information zipping across the screen. He looked at Akira, puzzled by the determined look on her face. She seemed to be looking for something. Then, she gasped, and a disbelieving smile appeared on her face.
“So that’s it…”
Jun looked at the data stream, then looked at her. “I don’t get it. What did you see?”
“Yeah, and can you explain it all to the rest of us who don’t have a degree in computer nonsense?” Seita added grudgingly.
The others turned to him. “Shh!” Seita frowned and folded his arms.
Akira ignored him and turned her attention to Jun again. “Remember what you said about the admin program being created 70 years ago? And about my Digivice being the original device that all of yours were copied from?”
Jun nodded.
Akira looked at the screen again and saw that the data stream had stopped. She disconnected her Digivice and held it out. “Look at mine, and look at yours. What differences do you see?”
Jun glanced at his Digivice, picked up Akira’s, and took a long look at both. Color differences aside, there were a few other significant differences – the rough, scratched surface, faint cracks, and chipped and worn edges on Akira’s, compared to the smoothness of his.
“From the outside, it looks like it’s been through years of hell…” Jun answered slowly.
“Right,” Akira replied, pressing a key on the laptop. A long list appeared, and she motioned to it. “This is all the data that came from my Digivice. It looks like garbage, but what do you see that every file has in common?”
Jun looked carefully for a minute, then a knowing look appeared on his face. “The access dates…”
Akira nodded. “They’re all from 70 years ago.”
Everyone was silent for a moment.
“Wait a minute…” Seita spoke up, “Are you trying to say that your Digivice belonged to the mystery program girl… Naoko… when she was in the real world?”
Akira nodded.
“But if that’s true, how did you get it?” Tian added, “If Naoko created her program 70 years ago, she probably isn’t around anymore in the real world!”
Akira shrugged. “I don’t know… yet. Maybe someday we’ll find out.” She turned toward the computer again and started typing.
Seita frowned. “What are you doing now?”
“Just trying to figure out what else to do with all this stuff…” Akira replied, not looking away from the screen.
She entered a few more commands on the keyboard when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yuka and Lopmon slowly get up and start moving away from them. Akira watched them closely, with an eyebrow raised, until they were almost out of sight.
After that, Akira pressed “Enter” and got up from the laptop.
“Where are you going?” Jun asked.
Akira turned to him. “Oh, I'm just going to take a break. I’m starting to get a headache, and I don't feel like being insulted by a computer again just yet!”
Seita laughed. “Right!”
Akira shot a dirty look at him before she walked off. “Kodamon, you coming?” she called out. Kodamon left the huddle in front of the laptop to join her.
Jun watched them leave, then turned back to the laptop. When he saw what was on the screen, his eyes widened and he gasped.
“Whoa! Everyone, look at this!” He clicked on a couple of links, and pictures and information on different types of Digimon appeared. And everything was in English.
“Digimon Analyzer,” Jun read from the top of the window. He shook his head in wonder and looked in the direction Akira and Kodamon left in. “She unlocks an encyclopedia and translates everything into English. How does she do it?”
Tian shrugged. “One of those weird mysteries, I guess.” She looked up at the sky, thinking. “For as long as I’ve known Akira, her one passion was soccer. She hardly ever touched a computer.”
Jun stared back at her. “Really?”
“Yeah. But then, she left for a year, stayed in America with her mom, and a lot of bad stuff happened…”
Jun and Mana nodded. They’d all heard a little bit of what happened after the incident with Devimon in the mountains.
“And then, a couple of months ago, when she came back, she just all of a sudden got good at computers. And everything else too. It scared everyone, even me. It was like she was a completely different person…”
“Well…” Mana began, “She studied a lot over there, right? Maybe all of that stuck with her.”
“I guess…” Tian said doubtfully.
They were silent for a while, until Seita finally spoke up.
“This Naoko person…” he began, “She and Akira had the same Digivice, and they look so much alike that it’s scary... Do you think they’re related somehow?”
Jun glanced at him. “Well, with all the insane computer skills they have – Akira doing all of that data work on the laptop, and Naoko programming herself – they might as well may be.”
At that, he turned back to the laptop and looked at more of the database.
A few feet away, Kei was sitting against a rock, staring into space. All the extra talk about the computer was beginning to bore her. She yawned, and glanced at the nearby trees, trying hard not to fall asleep. Then...
A bright twinkle of light flashed from the trees.
Kei blinked, and rubbed her eyes. She got up, and slowly walked toward the tree line. Terriermon followed her, puzzled.
“Kei?” he asked.
Kei didn't answer.
Tian and Renamon noticed them walking away, and followed.
“What is it?” Tian asked Kei.
“I thought I saw something,” Kei answered, squinting through spaces between the trees.
Tian looked around her. The others seemed not to have noticed anything.
Just then, Terriermon heard footsteps from behind the trees. They were faint, but distinctive. She looked up and caught Renamon's eye.
Renamon nodded quietly, catching on. She peered into the line of trees and thought she saw two pairs of glittery eyes and a glimpse of a black stone hanging from a cord.
A bright light flashed from the stone, and a strange feeling swept over all four of them.
“What was that?” Kei asked, staggering. She felt as if she had been smacked by a huge wave.
“No clue!” Tian replied, her hand on her forehead.
And still, the others hadn't noticed anything.
At this time, Jun and Patamon were looking through more of the database while Mana and Salamon looked on. Seita sat nearby, staring into space.
“There's a lot of interesting stuff in here, huh?” Jun asked.
Patamon nodded. “Yeah.”
“It kind of reminds me of when the two of us were stuck in that pyramid, with all those wall carvings,” Jun added, pulling up random pictures from the database. Many of them were filled with nothing but random bits of Digicode.
“Hey!” Patamon spoke up, pointing to one picture. “Isn't that the bit of Digicode that you took pictures of? The one carved on the pyramid wall?”
Jun looked at it. “You're right.” He pulled up one of the pictures he took, and laid it and the database picture side by side on the laptop screen.
After looking at the two pictures for a few moments, Jun's eyes widened.
He thought, once again, about where and when he had seen this particular bit of Digicode before. At the time he had taken the pictures, he couldn't remember. But now... after seeing the Digicode clearly on the computer screen...
Now he did.
It had been five years ago. Five years ago, he had seen the same three lines of symbols, laid out in bold on a flickering, old computer screen...
“Jun!”
An eight-year-old Mana smiled, and walked up to Jun, who was sitting at a desk with an old computer. The room was filled with the shouts and laughter of children at play. In the hallways adjoining the room, men and women in uniform walked by, conversing in English and Japanese. Outside, a couple of fighter planes zoomed across the sky.
“What'cha looking at?”
“I don't know. It just showed up, out of nowhere!” Jun frowned at the screen. “And it won't go away, no matter how many keys I push!”
Mana suddenly looked worried. “...Maybe you should turn it off, before someone sees!”
“Why?”
“Because...”
“Who would care about a couple of kids playing with a computer? And besides, my mom said it was okay!”
“But... we're on a military base! If you mess up their computer, they'll probably arrest you, even if you are a kid!”
“Don't worry about it,” Jun assured her, “We're fine.”
Suddenly, the computer bleeped an alarm, and the screen flickered red. The strange symbols ran along the screen like lines of code, completely filling it up.
“I told you!” Mana shouted. “Jun!”
“Relax!” Jun shot back, agitated and nervous. “I'm turning it off already!” He pushed the power button, but the computer would not turn off.
“Jun...”
“What, Mana?” Jun answered, irritated.
“Someone's staring at us...” Mana whispered.
“Huh?” Jun looked up, and saw a man in a black suit, standing a few feet away. His eyes were hidden by sunglasses, and he was holding a strange, electronic instrument.
“He's staring right at us, Jun!” Mana whispered again, afraid. “We're going to get arrested!” She clutched at his arm in fright. “Jun!”
“...un.”
“Jun!”
Jun blinked and shook his head, his mind abruptly returning to reality. He looked up to see Mana staring at him.
“You okay?” Mana asked.
Jun nodded. “Yeah. I was just thinking about stuff.” He glanced at the pictures of the carvings again.
Mana frowned. “Are you sure you're okay?”
Somehow, something about Mana's question irritated him. “I'm fine, Mana,” he answered crossly, “You worry too much!”
Mana scowled at him. “You don't have to say it like that!” she retorted, “You could just tell me nicely!”
They were interrupted by a mean laugh from Seita.
“It's about time you annoyed someone else besides me, Mana!” Seita said, smirking.
Mana glared. “That's not funny!”
“Sure it is!” he answered, “To me!”
Mana stuck out her tongue and turned her attention back to Jun. “It's probably something on this thing that has you worried,” she said agitatedly, pushing him away from the laptop and typing a few things.
Jun glared at her. “Don't just start using people's things without their permission!”
“Whatever,” Mana answered. She made several keystrokes, then her hand slipped, making the laptop bleep.
Jun's expression turned ugly. “What are you doing?” he shouted, pulling his laptop away from Mana, “You almost broke it!”
“I did not!” Mana shot back.
“Yes, you did! Didn't I ask you before not to mess with this?”
Mana scowled. “I wasn't messing with anything! I just wanted to help you out! And why are you so protective of that? It's only a computer!”
Patamon and Salamon looked at both of them in disbelief. As far as they knew, Jun and Mana were very good friends and always enjoyed each other's company. They did have small disagreements now and then, but they weren't at all like this.
“No, it's not 'just a computer,'” Jun continued, “It's the only thing we have to understand anything in this stupid place! What if something happened to it?”
“Well, I -” Mana stammered.
“Will you two please shut up? I'm trying to think!” Seita shouted, ignoring Gazimon tugging on his sleeve and shaking his head.
Mana glared at him, and Jun sent out a nasty retort, which made Seita even madder. Soon enough, all three of them were shouting at each other, ignoring their Digimon's pleas.
Tian and Kei stared at the whole scene, too stunned to say a word.
Renamon looked at the three angry kids carefully and noticed something vaguely different about them. A slight change, especially in their eyes.
Something was happening, and it was only affecting them.
Meanwhile, Akira and Kodamon followed Yuka and Lopmon deeper and deeper into the forest. Along the way, Akira thought about all the stuff they had found out, and so many unanswered questions filled her head, on top of all the other mysterious things she had to figure out.
After a while, Akira realized that she had stopped walking, and Yuka and Lopmon were nowhere in sight. Neither was Kodamon.
She anxiously walked ahead a few more paces, until she saw Yuka and Lopmon sitting on the edge of another small clearing, their backs to her. She sighed in relief, and Kodamon came up to her and took her hand. They walked a little closer to them.
“Hi!” Akira said out loud, making Yuka jump. She turned around and saw that it was her, and relaxed.
“Hi...” she said slowly.
“Is something bothering you?” Akira asked, sitting next to her.
Yuka hesitated a little before answering. “Yeah...”
“Is it something I can help you with?”
“I'm not sure.”
“You can tell me anyway,” Akira answered, smiling.
Yuka hesitated again. “Okay... Promise you won't get mad?”
Akira's smile slowly disappeared and she looked at Yuka seriously. “Sure.”
“I..” Yuka took a deep breath. “I wanted us to stop sitting around and start doing something already.”
Akira frowned. “But we were. We needed to look at the information we had, so we'd understand things better.”
“It seemed like we were getting nowhere,” Yuka said, shaking her head slowly. “That's why Lopmon and I left when we did.”
“What were you planning to do?” Akira asked.
“I don't know.”
“I wonder why you'd feel that way,” Akira replied, “It isn't like you to be impatient.”
“I don't know either...” Yuka agreed, “But there's something... a feeling in me that's urging us to keep going, and don't stop.” She shivered a little. “That we're running out of time.”
Akira thought about it for a moment, a faraway look in her eyes. Sometimes I feel the same way, she thought.
“Well, it could be something else too,” Yuka conceded, a little more cheerfully, “Maybe I've been around Kei and Terriermon too long, and the impatience rubbed off on me!”
Akira stared at her in surprise, then started laughing.
Yuka smiled at her. “You look pretty when you laugh.”
Akira stopped laughing, but still had a smile on her face. “Really?”
Yuka nodded. “You do. Every time you do that and Seita's around, he stops whatever he's doing and stares, and his mouth's wide open!”
Akira smiled, imagining that. “Your brother's a funny person, isn't he?”
Yuka giggled. “Yeah.” Then, she abruptly stopped giggling and looked behind her.
“What is it?” Akira asked, looking at the same place and seeing nothing but trees.
“We're being watched...” Yuka whispered, shivering. Her crest began to glow.
Kodamon watched everything in surprise, and turned to see a light flash from the trees and a red energy beam slice through the air. It was headed straight for Akira.
“Watch out!” Kodamon thrust herself between the shot and Akira. The impact pushed both of them back a couple of feet.
As Kodamon got up again, another Digimon, red and black, stepped out of the bushes. When Kodamon got a clear look at the Digimon, she gasped.
“Guilmon...?”
Guilmon didn't answer. He sent an attack her way, but this time it missed.
Kodamon stared at him in disbelief. “Guilmon... what are you trying to do?” She ducked another attack, then shot back.
“Bear Fist!”
“Fireball!”
The attacks collided in midair, sending a blinding blast in all directions. Kodamon shielded her eyes, but her peripheral vision caught something pink and brown streak through the air.
“Blazing Ice!”
“Lopmon, no!” Kodamon shouted out, but her warning came too late.
Guilmon dodged the attack, whipped around, and shot another Fireball, hitting Lopmon in the face. She fell from the air, unconscious.
“Lopmon!” Yuka cried, running up to catch her partner.
Akira glanced over at them. “Yuka!” she called, “You and Lopmon go back and tell the others what's going on! We'll take care of everything here!”
Yuka hesitated for a second, then nodded. She turned around and ran, carrying Lopmon in her arms.
When Akira saw them disappear along the path, she turned around to face Guilmon.
“Be careful,” Kodamon said softly, “This is no ordinary Digimon. I can't tell whether or not he's on our side.”
“What do you mean?” Akira demanded, “He attacked us three times!”
“That's what I don't understand,” Kodamon answered, frustrated, “He shouldn't be attacking us! The last time we saw each other, we were on the same side!”
“The last time...” Akira started to say, then stopped. She remembered the little boy and the Guilmon in the game, and how she ran into that same boy, carrying a Digivice and a Crest, on the street near Kei's house. She thought of the black Digivice and the unknown Crest spaces from the computer database, and realization hit her. “He's one of us,” she whispered fearfully, “He's one of us, and we never realized it...”
“About time you figured that out,” a voice came from the shadows.
Akira blinked. She recognized that voice, somehow.
A black-haired, dark-eyed boy appeared from behind a tree. He stared at her with a hateful expression.
Akira stared at him, confused. I know you! she thought furiously. I know you and I know your name, but why can't I...
The boy flashed a nasty smile. “Oh yeah, I forgot – you don't remember me. But I remember you.” He stepped closer to her. “I remember everything. All that time we spent here, fighting to save the world, how we would face everything together...”
He closed his eyes. “I remember how you'd always protect me. You would never let me get hurt. You were like my big sister – my ate...”
At that, Akira breathed in sharply. The memory wall she always slammed into finally had a chink.
“Rion...”