Jorden
Tapestry of Dreams
Welcome. View through my eyes and thoughts the story of Cricket, one of six pieces of the mind of God.
Four thousand one hundred and twenty years have come and gone since the Christen religion was born in Christ. The world for most part is a place of dreams. A place where people have the power to create their own realities, with only the rules of their minds. Virtual reality has long since become the reality it had been mimicking.
Twenty billion people, with unlimited space to play. It is good, I think that only a few don't want to play in that playground. I am owned by one such group because it is our nature after all that the way of things not to please everybody.
My owners are called Fascists. They are mocked often with great relish by the greater population of variety. The title has stuck. They hadn't given themselves a name so their was nothing to fight it with. Now even they jokingly call each other fascists.
They wanted to spend as much time as possible in the real world. The world of nature, not the imaginary world the second universe developed by man and man's creations. The saw a purity of spirit in this. Many of these Fascists were religious in some form or another. Almost all were very very conservative. They were extreme, but not so extreme as to ignore the second universe all together like some groups tried to do. Mainstream saw them as weird but didn't care overly much since they had the opposite belief in that they tried to spend as much time as possible in the imaginary world.
So over ten thousand of the more extreme of these Fascists decided to leave and set up camp away from the cities. They choose to make their colony in the wilderness. With mankind's inverted attitude the environment has been give a chance to recover some of the territory lost in the reign of man. The Fascists built a building on twenty foot stilts. It took up a square mile in area, a perfect square. Forty stories high, plenty of room for growth in the ten thousand population. Today their are just over twenty five thousand. The original colonists planned for the colony to eventually comfortable hold almost a hundred thousand people.
The building would have been amazing in the imaginary world, it is twenty times as amazing in the real world. Even from my perspective. It took them over a hundred years to complete the basic plan. Now four hundred and fifty years after the original colonists arrived they are still adding and customizing. Most of the rooms and corridors are usually still and lifeless, not that I mind it easy my strain at trying to watch everything. Well that's misleading I do hand over a lot of burden over to the five resident mild AI programs. That helps me keep my sanity. I really don' understand how the overlords of the second universe can keep track of everything with out their minds being ripped apart. Maybe it comes with age, after all I'm only a little over five hundred years old. The youngest of the overlords is over a thousand.
The roof is home to our own little self contained natural environments. Parks, gardens, zoos, and little examples of natural environments from around the world like deserts, rain forest, savanna etc.. I like watching the roof the best. I love animals. They have such a fierce beauty. It is like all the turmoil, beauty and balance of nature is in each creature. I have seen such things in the second universe. Mimics of nature, with similar laws, but rarely to they the balance and complexity anything like what I see in our tame little piece of nature.
Then their are the children. Day or night there are children on the roof. The little people. Elves, perfect tiny reflections of their parents. Impish joy, and such a direct view of things. I don't like their seeming innocence so much as their curiosity in every direction. I admire their chooses and the experience of learning. Learning even the simplest things are so amazing. A soap bubble. I saw one child just watch soap bubbles for an hour. He was tired, his mom was trying to get him asleep. He didn't want to cause he was having bad dreams. He just laid there watching the bubbles looking at all its wondrous properties. I think I want to be a kid again or something.
Even at night their are always children on the roof. Sometimes older, experimenting with their bodies, sometimes younger, wanting escape. They break curfews and their parents ask for recordings and details. I do my best to hide the children's secrets while still following my oath of obedience. Then when they grow up and become parents, and remember what I did for them as children, they become that much harder to trick or mislead.
They have a right to worry. The colony is basically five separate buildings all touching each other. Four main quadrants and the central building with a stadium. Three of the quadrants are largely unused. Children could get lost or hurt by a crazy. In reality as long as I am functional they could not get lost and very few violent crimes of occurred in the colony in the past four hundred fifty years. I or an AI witnessed all off them and notified security immediately. So the children are safe anywhere anytime in the colony.
Outside the colony are the farms. A couple of square miles of high nutrition crops, most of which are protected from the weather inside greenhouses. This site was picked by the colonists because of its seclusion and the ten or so square miles of flat grassland. This swath of grass is bordered on three sides by beautiful coniferous forests. On the fourth side is swamp. The swamp stretches for miles until it dries up at the foothills of a mountain chain that goes on for as long as an human eye can see. Of course, I have many eyes and can see the whole mountain chain, from ocean to ocean.
I have a direct link to a system of twenty satellites that let me see such things. Throughout the colony, in every corridor and room I have eyes. I, like the overlords of the second universe, the Thirteen, have been uploaded. I never was truly a Fascist but I sympathized with their beliefs when my mind and body were still one. My cousin and his family had become Fascists after one of their children committed suicide in the imaginary world. She was only nine years old, but she had been a part of the second universe since she was four months old, and had a very intimate connection. For a reason they never did find out, she decided to fade away. A form of suicide, as far as I know, unique to the second universe. With many in the main stream the connection is so strong that their minds can literally leave and dissipate, fade away. What is left in their body has no will to live and dies if left alone. Nothing in modern medicine has been able to revive somebody who has gone into that form of comma.
My cousin became a very important woman in the Fascist organization. She was one of the leaders in the movement to relocate to this colony. I was known as Akadeian Mistwolf Jones at the time, or just Kade. I was an expert dream maker in the second universe, even though I spent only half my waking hours plugged into system. She and I had become good friends over the years, despite my love of both the second and first universe, and she asked me numerous times to give up my mainstream life. Just a few days before she told me about the colony project, my doctor discovered that I had a rare genetic disorder, one of the few that both was fatal and had yet to be made curable.
When I told my cousin, her name was Gloria, she was quiet for a long time. Then she told me about her plans with the colony and she gave my a proposition. Something that has been known to have occurred less than thirty times successfully. Something that required personal permission from one of the Thirteen. She asked me to upload onto the system net that would be made for the colony. This would give me immortality and chance to know the imaginary world like I could only dream of, but the price would be my mortality. The beauty of looking at the wonders of the real world from the limited dreaming perspective of my natural body. The joy of being a child.
She understood the price I would pay, but she knew that my services as a guardian would be invaluable. It took me only a few moments to nod. Most of the other leaders of the Fascists saw the value of the services I could provide even if they didn't completely trust a dream maker, like Gloria did. It had been a major worry for them. They hadn't wanted a net that was only a piece of the over all second universe. They wanted to be completely independent, with the power and authority to shut down the imaginary world if they wanted or needed to. But without the uploaded once human minds of the Thirteen regulating their imaginary world it would be subject to many problems very few of the Fascists wanted to deal with.
They interviewed me and decided to accept me if I took an oath to obey the leaders of the colonists and look out for the interests of the colonists. Once I was in place they couldn't enforce the oath but they could, and still can, erase me from the system. I can see, but have no access to, that program.
All we needed was permission from one of the overlords. I was creating a mountain in my little pocket of virtual reality when I got a call. We hadn't even finished the statement to ask permission for me uploading yet so I wasn't expecting a call remotely like this. It was a flashing orange diamond that followed any direction I looked. I had never received such a call before, but I new it was a personal call from one of the Thirteen. It was the sort of thing that caused one to disappear if one didn't answer as soon as possible. How the overlord had known so soon about our plans I don't know. I can only accept the scope of their regulation and their knowledge of the second universe.
It was none other than the One himself who called. The first and most powerful of the overlords. He appeared in a robe of ocean blue, with the hood down. He was bare foot with hands clasped like a monk. His face changed a thousand times a second, so it appeared to me only as a blur. He floated their for a moment then said "Akadeian, it has come to my attention that you wish to be uploaded on to a localized net of the nameless fringe organization that your cousin is a leading member. They wish for you to serve as a guardian over their net for an unspecified amount of time. I am willing to sponsor you in this, but you will be restricted to this net and I will have domination codes over you that I will use in case you at some point lose your sanity or decide to become ambitious. But before you make your final decision remember how long a time unspecified is. It will be lonely. Think on it. Also I will give you a suicide code that only I have a counter for. I give you this as an escape for you. Who knows how your friends will treat you a thousand years from now. Who knows how happy you will be. Any questions?"
I didn't want to waste his time with a question about how he had found out so quickly about our plans, but I did need to know why he was being so nice to us. "Why are you doing this? I don't understand why we would be of enough interest to warrant a personal visit."
"I am interested for many reasons. I want you do have more of an idea of what you are getting into then when I uploaded. I also, believe it or not, sympathize with your cousins cause. Not that I agree, but much like you, I sympathize. I also have an interest in making as many people as possible happy. That is why I have made several anonymous donations which have helped make your friends little project possible." With those words and bow he was gone.
I knew I had, at most, only a few more years to live. The universe of imaginative reality called to me. I had dream that night. I was immortal, some kind of monster. Like a vampire I couldn't come out in the day. In the dream I could live forever, but I would never again truly know the day. My world would be beautiful and wondrous, but it would be cold. But I knew my heart, it always had wanted a little adventure.
I told Gloria about my visit from the One. I told her everything, except the suicide code. I didn't want to be melancholy. So the One sponsored my upload, supplied the equipment and programming. He never appeared to me in person again, but I know he was watching.
Time passed. At first it didn't seem any different than a very good connection with the imaginary world, but gradually my mind adapted and explored. I was helped by five simple AI programs, gifts from the One, to ease some of the burdens of guardianship. The hardest thing was to learn how to do more than a few things at the same time. I had to develop the ability to divide my conciseness into many parts, parts that still thought together. After all these years I'm still not very good at that. I also had to learn how to process a perfect memory. A perfect memory with the ability to hold almost a limitless supply of information. I also can never truly sleep or dream. At least dream in the mortal sense. My mind still wanders, but when I dream here, my dreams live. Cities spring from seas and are destroyed by volcanoes. Knights battle with swords and mandolins. Music plays throughout my dreams. Not just one song but a dozen. Like my dreams. Not just one fantasy, but a dozen or two, all interwoven. A hum that is almost always in the back of my mind.
The world of my mind is amazing, and I was happy living in it for many years. But I gradually developed an interest in what was happening in the real world. Not just the important stuff, but the little too. Like the children. No matter what mood I'm in I always brighten when I see children playing. And the animals. I've found myself straining my sensors following a mouse in the forest half a mile away. I've been following the patterns of the animals on the colony's roof and the surrounding area for over a hundred years know.
In the past fifty years or so I've noticed a change in behavior. First of all, I see very few animals in the forest to the west anymore. When I do I only see them going in, never out. I fear something is killing them. I mentioned this to Mr. James Rain Cromwell, a friend and the council head of external affairs. I think he just filed it away with the other seemingly unimportant observations that I have made from time to time. The farms were to the East, so the threat if their was one was seen as minimal.
Their are many strange stories about that forest. Stories that date back thousands of years. My information is kinda sketchy, those were strange times, but their seems to have been a fair sized settlement to the northwest of the colony on the other side of the forest. This small city is where most of the stories about the forest originated. Their name for the forest translates into something like "hell's garden". This settlement was abandoned just over two thousand years ago because of a civil war. An army used it for a short time as a base of operations then burned it as they pushed their advance.
Some of the survivors of the city remembered the stories they were told about the forest when they were children, and kept the mystery alive. Most of the stories that I have been able to piece together involve disappearances of some kind. People went into the forest against the advice of their elders and were never seen again. With my satellite eyes I see nothing unusual in the forest, so I have no easy answer. I think though that their is significance to the animal movements and that it is connected to the myths of that forgotten city.
There is definitely something about that forest. It is hard to put my finger on though. It reminds me of something from a nightmare I made before I uploaded. Nothing too specific, it would make a good background for a nightmare. A quiet dark forest that even wind seems to avoid.
A message has just come in from the outside world. It has bypassed my AI helpers. I've never seen that happen before.
"Akadeian, it has been decided that you will be exempt from the cleansing that will happen in the next few days. I has been decided that the second universe will be destroyed and that it will be discouraged from developing again. Your exemption will last as long as you remain restricted to your own system. If you attempt to spread your consciousness beyond this boundary your suicide code will automatically be activated." No signature, but only one being should have been able to do that and know my code. But destroying the imaginary world doesn't sound like the One.
"Mr. Cromwell I've just received a message." It is dark but he seems to be making love to his wife.
"Kade, do you mind! . . . Is it that important?"
"I wouldn't have interrupted you if it wasn't."
"Nooo, Kade this had better be important!" said Mrs. Cromwell. Her body was still quite beautiful at forty. "You have an amazing sense of timing, I was second away, just seconds, from a very enjoyable experience!" She also could be very loud when she wanted too. I always liked her, ever since she learned to talk. She was usually full of spice.
"Jenny please not so loud, we don't want security busting in."
"Honey you know Kade wouldn't let that happen."
"Hmm. All right Kade what is the message." I put it on the screen by their bed, and they hunched down to read it. "Suicide code?" I had never told anyone about that.
"A gift from the One, but I don't think he wanted it to be used this way. I don't think he would approve any of what has been decided."
"So you are taking this seriously. You think that it truly has been decided that the second universe will be destroyed?"
"This is crazy." Jenny was rereading the message.
"Whoever, whatever sent this message has a great deal of access. I never told anyone about my suicide code. As far as I know the only other being with that knowledge was the One. Anybody with enough clout to take out him has enough power to take out that whole universe. Not only that but the message came straight to me, past my AI's. That couldn't happen unless it had very high level codes." I think I am in some form of shock. I'm drawing my full attention together for this. The AI's can last a couple of minutes without me.
"Can you confirm something happening in mainstream's net?" asked James.
"I'm looking now." I have to be careful, I don't look forward to committing suicide. I can only send a stream of queries into the net, I can't extend to look myself. Interesting. Most of my queries have stopped sending off their locater beacons. The rest appear to be caught up in some sort of information vortex. I'm not getting any replies from any of the systems, not even one for what time it is. " I would say that something big is definitely happening. Wait I'm getting some sort of reply." Some program is heading in my direction. A big one, bigger then me in fact. It is going incredibly slow by the standards of the second universe. It seems like it is fighting a storm of the abyss to get to me. An emptiness is closing in on it. Something unlike the vortex or storm of the abyss. This is the edge of the shrinking universe. When anything touches this edge it vanishes utterly. Black. All my connections with the net of the mainstream have just been severed. "Yes I would say the message is accurate. I no longer have access to their net. But for the few seconds that I did I saw complete chaos. That universe is coming to an end."
"Wow to think my grandma was right." Jenny's grandmother had firmly believed that the life of mainstream would lead to disaster of an epic nature. This extreme belief wasn't held by most of the colonists anymore, but most still felt life lived on the net would only lead to pain and depression.
"Kade give this information to all the council heads and call a full council meeting for midnight." That is in almost two hours. "Keep an eye on how the city people are dealing with their loss. I think this could be a very good thing or the end of humanity."
I have no access to the computers of the mainstream anymore, but I can scope them with the satellite connections that I still have. Nothing. The people on the streets don't seem to be rioting, but they also seem a bit aimless. A rather large number seem to be walking in circles. Hmm I'm picking up some very simple signal code. So simple it can only be viewing only no interaction at all. A message. A message broadcast to all two dimensional cities around the world. The message reads:
"Sorry to disturb your apathy, but you had no limits and yet you stopped expanding. Everything you did had been done before a thousand times. Those of you who did not succumb to depression and fade away might have simply lived happily in your own minds till the sun grew red and enveloped the earth, but that would be a sad thing if it was the only role humanity was to play in the universe."
This definitely doesn't seem like something the overlords of the imaginary world would endorse. In response to the news about the outside world, forty colonists, who were members of a small spiritual organization, have decided to go camping in the forest. The group has about a hundred members in the colony. They have some very bizarre rituals and beliefs. They hate technology and love nature, but love the artificial nature created on the enclosed roof of the colony. Many nights they have slept in the gardens.
The news of the apocalyptic ending of the imaginary world made some of these people look at the hypocrisy of how they followed their beliefs. They hate technology but use it as much as anyone else. So forty of them have decided to take a spiritually cleansing trip into the wilderness. They figure they will come back prepared to lead the people of the colony to their roots in the soil and trees.
Of course they want to go West straight into the thickest oldest part of the forest. I have warned them of my misgivings of the forest, but they have free wills I can not stop them. Besides I think my warnings are just encouraging them. They want to be punished.
It has been two weeks since they went into the forest. I don't think they are coming back. The other members of the group have requested that a rescue team be sent in to find them. They fear they may be lost. I believe it. Even my satellite eyes can't pierce most of the forest, the canopy is too thick even for infrared.
Four runabouts, small vehicles with flight capability, are being sent out. I don't know how they could find them. The campers had brought nothing technical with them, not even their identity bands.
The runabouts have just finished up their last day of searching. Another week has gone by. The head council of internal affairs Mr. Craig Jerkin released a statement to the remainders of the spiritual organization that expressed his regret that they were lost, but asked them to remember that they decided, of their own free will, to go. Mr. Cromwell, encouraged by Jenny, tried to push for a continued search. Craig felt it would be a waste of time and resources, plus he saw their likely demise as a good lesson for other colonists with crazy ideas. So that chapter is closed.
-- -- --
The dust has settled. The colony hasn't been overrun with refuges in the five years since the destruction of the net, like some on the councils had feared. Only a few thousand have made it to our sanctuary. And sanctuary it is, even though our technology is a bit outdated and overused. Mainstream only now has begun to recover enough to start reforming into some sort of organized society again.
Oh this sad. A squirrel is in the swamp about a quarter mile away. It must have been avoiding the forest to the West and found itself lost on a sinking log. It keeps running back and forth along the shrinking length of the log try to gather the courage to make a jump to safety. He had better hurry or it will be hopeless. He isn't jumping. I don't think the poor guy can make it anymore even if he was a flying squirrel. There is just a foot of log left. He must be exhausted. Will he give up to fate? No there he goes, what a jump, he could be a flying squirrel. Damn, not far enough. The muck is swallowing him up. He seems so weak now I can almost here him whimper. Only his nose is sticking out now. I wonder how long it will take him to suffocate. Not long I think. He will try to breathe the muck no matter that he can't, just like he jumped no matter that there was no chance he would make it.
The swamp, not as foreboding as the forest but, with its own dark side. It is alive with insects. Clouds of them skim the watery muck. Years ago a colonist committed suicide in the swamp. She was crazy, everybody said so. They were going to force her to take medication to calm her down, but she killed herself in rebellion by diving head first into one of the swamp's murky pools. She never even tried to come up for air. I know I watched. I shouldn't have allowed her access outside, but I didn't have the authority to prevent her. It would have gone against my oath. I won't make that mistake again. I am not artificial. I have a will of my own and I can make a choice.
"Kade can I go see Tiger?" Cricket Wilkenson, six years and four months old. She is in love with a young tiger in the petting zoo, and I am in love with her.
"Does your mother know where you are going?" She tends to wander. Has a talent for disappearing from adult's eyes.
"I don't know."
"Okay, but if she calls I got to tell her where you are."
"Tiger needs me Mr. Mistwolf."
"Right." The elevator takes here up to the roof.
Cricket is a dream child. She was connected to the imaginary world before she was born. For the first year and a half after her birth she never left the second universe. Every moment waking and sleeping took place their. She was part of a new generation of children whose parents had decided that they would be the ones to take the next step in the road of dedication to the artificial. It was planned that not once these children would have to suffer the sight of reality. Not once their entire life. This would allow them to have an edge to dealing with the other inhabitants of the second universe which would be their home as much as it was to an AI created there.
Many people who had a strong connection with the net suffered severe brain damage for its destruction. Some lost their minds entirely; like it was just another part of the net. This happened to most of the dream children. They lost every bit of their consciousness. Their were a few who escaped having their minds erased, but most of these children aren't able to deal with the limits of reality. All these children have brains that have advanced beyond anything anybody with a body still has. They are only half step away from an uploaded mind.
But then their is Cricket, a member of a very small group of dream children who have not only survived the destruction of the net but also was able to deal with the starvation of impute long enough to adjust to the limits of reality. It is this group of perhaps two thousand children who have truly lived up to their name. For they have learned to cope with reality by only making their own universes in their minds. Ones in which they had the power and control that they had been born knowing. They dreamed. Awake and asleep they dreamed. How many fantasies did they follow at a time? As many as me; I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
From what little I know about them Cricket is one of the few who have dedicated enough of themselves to reality to lead a quasi-normal life. She is perhaps too quite for a normal girl her age, but I don't mind. She has a beauty of motion and interest that speaks enough for me. She is graceful. As graceful as any lady I've seen. Her three foot tall body betrays none of that grace. She holds her head high, and walks like she is wearing a gown of velvet. When she speaks to somebody she looks them straight in the eye hardly ever blinking. And she never shows surprise when anybody is around. Only I have seen her eyes widen at the sight of something wondrous.
A year ago, right after she had arrived, she had wandered up to the roof and over to the zoo. It was night time and the zoo was closed. I didn't have the heart to stop her and her mother didn't have the authority yet to make me stop her. One look at the tiger cub was all it took. She crawled into the cage with the cub and its mother. Absolutely no fear. The mother was a very gentle tiger that had been conditioned since birth to be nice; however, such conditioning had been known to fail on occasion. Realizing the possibility of the mother swatting Cricket, I notified George, the zoo keeper who was sleeping near by. Cricket, with wide brown eyes, slowly cuddled with the mother and cub and fell asleep. It was a really cute picture. I almost regretted it when George showed up all disheveled.
"That girl needs to learn how to be afraid," said George.
Cricket and her mother were accepted into the colony exactly one year ago today. Since then Mrs. Wilkenson has made herself useful in the laboratories of the colony. She is a very talented scientist and doctor. She has helped to modernize our equipment in the medical laboratories. She is a very driven person as I suppose all really good scientists and doctors have to be. She has recently been spending twelve to sixteen hours a day studying a bizarre blood decease that has infected a falcon somehow. Coincidentally the falcon came from the West. It crashed to the ground, breaking both its wings, but miraculously surviving the fall.
She has found two puncture marks on the birds torso, that appears to be where the infection started. I've never heard of anything like it. The infected blood has spread throughout the body gradually changing it from blue and red to a brownish red color. Magnified the normal oxidized red and deoxidized blue blood is still their but only in small percentages. Green blood has also appeared. It seems the falcon has become part animal part plant and part something unknown. It can breathe both oxygen and carbon dioxide. What's weird is that it only seems to breath about once a minute. The rest of the time, nothing. It's eating habits have also changed, it only seems to want the blood of an animal, not the meat. It also seems to get energy like a plant from the sun. So far its other behavior remains fairly normal for such a bird.
Cricket has been trying to get to it since her mom brought it into the lab, but she made it very clear that this was not going to happen. I very much agree. Uh oh Mrs. Wilkenson has noticed her missing daughter. "Kade has she snuck up to the roof again?"
"Yes Mrs. Wilkenson, but George is up their giving the tigers a bath. Their is no danger or I would have told you."
"Why can't you warn me right when she begins to wander off? We might have had to do something." I always walk the tight rope with parents.
"Their was no danger to her. I try to obey as best I can, but when two people want something the contradicts. I have to chose the one that wants it more and will damage the other less. I don't think that much control over your child would do any good for her or you. You would have your work constantly interrupted and she would be forced to find entertainment within her mind. That is the last thing I will let happen. If you have plans or another good reason I will be happy to put a collar on her, but if not I prefer to give her the freedom."
"You know paranoia comes naturally to single parents, you could cut me a little slack. I know your speech; I know you are correct." She rubbed her eyes and sat down. "Okay how's this, you flash my band green when she sneaks away. If their are no plans I'll let her go her way. How's that sound?"
"All right, but if you abuse this privilege just once, without good cause, You will lose it." I would give her another chance, but she doesn't need to know that.
"Fine, it's a deal."
Cricket has reached the roof and is walking through the rock gardens to the zoo. It's early still so the stone path is empty, but for her. The sprinklers will turn on in a minute, but I won't tell her. She asked me not to. I guess she likes the surprise. "Kade does Cricket talk much to you?"
"Not much Mrs. Wilkenson."
"I mean does she ever just talk to you? You know, for no reason other than the company." Mrs. Wilkenson, Fran is her first name, has a strong bond with her daughter. I now this because of the way they look at each other, but they never, too my knowledge, have had a chat. Cricket definitely has the ability, in many ways she has the brain of someone three times her age or more.
"No she hasn't. I think that will come in time though, when more people expect that kind of conversation from her. She is very real though, don't every doubt that. She may have not let you seen, but I have. I have seen such expressions of joy and happiness on her face. It is a wondrous sight. That is why she loves the roof so much I think. It is a place that truly makes her happy, and she it is a place where she feels safe enough not to guard her feelings."
"Why does she need to guard her feelings? Why from me?"
"Don't worry, she is getting better. Compare how open she is now to what she was like when she arrived here. I think back then she was averaging what two three words a week. Now she is spitting out whole sentences even if it is only to get something she wants." She knows her daughter is slowly recovering, and she is very thankful at how lucky she is, but Fran needs to be reminded know and then that everything is okay. The years after the great crash were hard on her. She, for once hadn't even been plugged in when her section of the net was destroyed. Unfortunately though, her husband, Cricket's father, was plugged in. It was a very strong connection, and his mind was caught in the chaos. He faded away. Fran was left to care for her baby alone in a city they had moved to only two years before. She hadn't made any friends in the real world. Their was no reason to when most of your life is spent in the second universe.
Even in the imaginary world she didn't have many friends. She tended to be very inverted, except with her husband and child. She had, like most parents, been very concerned about her baby's future. So she had encouraged her husband to agree to moving to a bigger city where the technology for dream children was better developed. When the bridges came tumbling down, she clung to the only solid thing left in her life. Cricket, the baby who never cried.
It was only luck that she happened to hear of a transport full of refuges heading here. The city was still very much in chaos, now a year later order has finally begun to be enforced. Very few new of our organization, fewer still new we had a colony. Many thought we never truly colonized here, that it was some kind of ruse. Or they thought that we hadn't failed in our colonization.