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THE SUNSET
* 12B *
At last, Aaron agreed, "Then you may help us."
"Thank you," Unicorn answered with a slight nod and a touch of relief.
With the hard-fought acceptance of the teenagers, the crew of the 'Nosferatu' could now set the first phase of their mission into motion -- the defense of the exit fire...
"Million, go now!" Captain Helios commanded.
Quickly, Commander Million left her chair, headed for the wooden trunks sitting on the other side of Aaron, and lifted the hinged lids on all of them. Kneeling upon the rubberized mat, she strapped a set of cylindrical tanks upon her leather-clad back and clipped its long discharge hose to her left forearm. Finally, after replacing the twin automatic pistols in her hip-holsters, the commander leapt up to her feet, and dashed out of the tepee to her midnight-black motocross bike.
The second phase of their mission was the disruption and detection of the teens' real-world signals...
As Million dashed out, Unicorn took the empty chair beside Aaron. Stepping towards the exit fire, Helios pulled a small silver case from one of his many pockets, and turned to the teens.
"Aaron, Miriam... To help you, I must offer you one last chance, one last choice... to join us, or forget us..." Helios carefully opened the case, and tapped the contents into his large palm, "In my hand, I have two sets of pills... two red ones and two blue ones..." He nodded to Unicorn, who promptly unbuckled the wide belts holding the brother's wrists, and nodded to Threads, who promptly did the same for the sister's wrists, "On the desk beside you, you will each find a glass of water..." To his left, Aaron found his glass, and to her right, Miriam found hers.
First, Helios walked over to the brother, and extended his upturned palm of four pills.
"Aaron, you must choose one pill... Swallow a red pill, and you will escape this living dream... this living lie... and see how the real world truly exists..." The elliptical pills glistened in the wavering flames. "But swallow a blue pill, and you will remain in this dream... you will forget we ever existed... and you will return to the demons that await you."
With only the slightest of hesitations, Aaron reached over and plucked a red pill. Then with an approving nod from Unicorn and several gulps of water, Aaron finally swallowed it.
"Good," Helios added.
Next, he walked over to the sister, and extended his upturned palm of three pills -- one red one and two blue ones.
"Miriam, you too must choose one pill... Swallow the red pill to escape with your brother... Or swallow the blue pill to stay behind."
Without hesitation, Miriam reached over, plucked the last red pill, took several sips of water, and swallowed it.
"Very good."
As he stood among them, with Aaron and Unicorn seated to his left, and Threads and Miriam seated to his right, Helios began his explanation to the siblings.
"Now, the red pills you took will allow my friends to find you, and wake you, in the real world, so we can rescue you from this dream world... But the pills may make you sick... So try to relax as best as you can..."
In growing wooziness, the monitored siblings nodded... or tried to nod... as the voice of Helios... their sun god... guided their way through the darkness and cloudiness...
"Try to relax... Try to imagine leaving this dream... leaving this dream like the sun rising from the horizon... rising higher... and higher... high into the bright blue sky..."
And the siblings felt it...
"How are they?" Helios asked Unicorn.
"Elevated heart rate, breathing... nothing major."
Helios turned to Threads. "Any sign of them?"
"Nothing yet."
The teenaged siblings felt it... the warmth... the warm power of the rising sun.
And unbeknownst to any of them, a glitter of emerald-green sparkled in the flickering firelight.
As Junior Operator Hitchhiker awaited his father's order to activate the exit signal that would awaken the siblings, he glanced from display to display while keeping his primary focus on the three main screens that revealed his crewmates in the Matrix.
Then one display caught his eye. "What?"
Very similar to the glitch-fire display, the exit-fire display continually updated its color-coded graphical data on the exit-fire, including fluctuations in its dimensions, energy, frequency, geometry, and intensity. But instead of the weakening disruption that it detected during Million's Mirrorbrook chase, it indicated a growing reinforcement of the signal...
The exit-fire was getting stronger!
Searching and scanning his displays for any intimations or explanations leading to the signal reinforcement, the operator finally found a correlation... The reinforcement began shortly after the siblings took their red pills...
'It makes sense!' Hitchhiker thought wildly.
Over his father's open cellphone line, the operator had followed his father's relaxing almost-hypnotizing words...
'Try to imagine leaving this dream...' his father had said, 'leaving this dream like the sun rising from the horizon... rising higher... and higher... high into the bright blue sky...'
And Hitchhiker cried out, "That's it!"
The exit-fire was being reinforced by the kids!
Racing southeast across the starlit Rollingridge, her dirt bike leaping and landing at full throttle along the edges of the southern woodlands, Million prepared herself for battle.
Within minutes, she spotted the lead Agent on horseback approaching at full gallop. Within seconds, she used her right hand to unclip the long discharge hose from her left forearm, then gripped the discharge trigger in her left hand...
She waited for him to come closer...
Just a little closer...
Within two hundred feet, she leaned her bike to the right, cut a wide high-speed turn, aimed her flamethrower hose high, and literally opened fire!
Swoosh!
Unleashing a blazing high-speed stream of fire, over fifty feet away and across the path of the oncoming Agent, Million sustained the fuel discharge for ten seconds... and created an arcing wall of flames and smoke over five-hundred feet wide.
"Nice," she noted.
With such a sustained discharge, Million estimated she carried enough fuel for another one-to-three long bursts, or another three-to-five shorter bursts.
Keeping the discharge trigger in her grip, she continued her high-speed turn with the thought of making another flamethrowing pass.
"We'll see."
As the endless night sky twinkled its distant light upon him, Agent Greene rode towards the source of the rebel-hacking signal trace.
'Less than 5 minutes,' he noted to himself.
Quickly, Greene caught the faint high-pitched buzz and the bright piercing headlight of an approaching dirt bike.
'It's about time,' he thought.
But as he rode closer, Greene noticed the headlight drift over to his right, then cut back across to his left.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, a stream of bright-orange flames flashed high and wide against the darkness of the rolling landscape. Softly, the blazing stream floated to the earth in plumes of rising black smoke... and created an arcing wall of flames and smoke over five-hundred feet wide.
"Dammit," he whispered.
Once again exhaling in frustration, Greene reapplied greater leg pressure to the sides of his horse to achieve greater velocity... He intended to force his beast on the straight path, and leap through the fiery wall.
He rode nearer.
Nearer.
But at the last moment, as Greene braced himself for the impending leap, his horse panicked wildly and spun away from the flames. The wild beast out of his control, the Agent leapt off and landed feetfirst upon the dirt.
Once again, he found himself stranded, and found himself tempted to depart this plugged-in body.
"Not this time," he muttered.
"Captain!" Unicorn called as the real-time vital-sign information flashed across his desktop monitor. "Aaron's heartrate is skyrocketing! And Miriam's right behind him!"
The captain glanced at his youngest crewmate, "Threads, anything?"
Gazing at his ongoing pill-disrupted signal trace, Threads shook his head, "Still nothing."
Helios whispered to himself, "Where are you?"
"Wait!" Threads jumped. "I found him! I found Aaron!... Just a few more seconds..."
The captain unclipped his cellphone and ordered, "Hitch, prepare to send the exit signal."
"Aaron's heart is failing!" Unicorn turned to the captain. "He's going into cardiac arrest!"
"Got him!" Threads confirmed. "Locked!"
"Now, Hitch!" the captain commanded. "Now!"
Instantly, the small orange-and-yellow flames flickered blue, and Aaron vanished from his stark recliner chair.
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