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Current Music: "Beastie" by Jethro Tull

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It was difficult sneaking the guitar into the utility tunnels without attracting comment, especially since the most convenient entrance is via the restroom off the student lounge, but Enzo managed it. He's on a sofa now, trying out some of the sheet music Tommy gave him for Christmas. Happily, he's gotten a lot of practice recently, and his voice is decent enough, so no one's ears are actually likely to bleed.

^♫From early days of infancy,
Through trembling years of youth,
Long murky middle age
And final hours long in the tooth...^♫

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"What is your... format, then?"

"I'm a Guardian!" he declares, pushing the guitar aside to show off his uniform. "We protect the 'Net. My function's to mend and defend."

She nods slowly, taking another sip.

"I... have no idea what that is, I'm sorry. But it sounds exciting. You enjoy it?"

"Do you know computers? Guardians're security programs. We fix system errors and fight viruses and Games and stuff." Hopefully, that's a little clearer. Maybe.

"Real Guardian work is exciting. I got to do a little of that at home before I left for the Academy. It's all studying right now. It's better than regular school, though, at least I'm learning cool stuff and we've got combat training."

"We have computers back home--well, I never had any, I'm more of a low-tech girl. But I understand the concept."

She nods. "You're a... concept, with a physical shape? That's very... metaphysical. I like it."

"I guess? I'm not made of matter, anyway. What's 'metaphysical'?"

"Where I come from, most things are made of matter. And there are people who believe that if you can't see and touch something, that it's not real--well, except the particular things they believe in, but the things everybody else believes in, those aren't real."

Enzo ponders this. "There's people in cyberspace who don't believe in Users, but most people think they're random."

"I suppose it's only natural to not believe in something you've never seen," she says. "But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's a lot more out there than what we can see, and denying it only leads to trouble. Sometimes the things you don't believe in force you to believe, if you've been denying them."

Well, even if the User can't be directly seen, there's concrete evidence that something's out there, like Games and upgrades. But you can't argue with conspiracy theorists.

"Like how?"

"Well..."

She slouches gracefully into a chair. "Do you know the old stories of what happened when men dared to think they could do things that the gods thought only they should do? Or there's love... that's one thing no one can shield themselves from."

"...no?"

"There was Daedalus," she says, "a brilliant man, a scientist and architect. He built a prison for a very rich king, a maze that no man could escape--and to keep him from telling anyone the way out, the king shut him up in that maze with his son, a boy named Icarus. But Daedalus knew the way out, and he planned their escape--he built them each a set of wings, so they could fly away."

A pause, as she takes another sip of coffee. "Daedalus was humble, and he only flew high enough to clear the tops of the waves. But Icarus, he wanted to see the world as the gods saw it--so he flew higher, and higher. He thought he was like a god, that nothing could happen to him--so the god of the sun melted the wax holding his wings together, and he fell into the sea."

"Oh." It's a good story, but... "Weird. Why didn't the gods want them to fly? We fly all the time."

"We don't fly--except in airplanes, but that's different. The gods, at least back then, were very afraid of humankind realizing its potential, so they did everything they could to see that we didn't try, didn't think about it, didn't dream."

She says it like she was there.

"But eventually, some of us did start to dream."

"Well, that was selfish of them!"

"If you had almost-infinite power, would you want your biggest threat to take it away from you? We're the only ones who can."

A pause.

"Do your people have gods?"

"We've got you."

"It's been a long time since someone called me a god," she says with a chuckle.

"Really, though--people?"

"Users. Only most of us don't know you're people, not people people, and most of you don't know we're in there. We don't talk to you or anything, like you do with gods. And we don't have that 'religion' stuff."

"Except when you come here, and can talk with anybody?" she asks. "Do many of your people come here?"

"Just me and my sister and our friends. I haven't seen any sprites here who aren't from Mainframe. No binomes, either. Weird, huh?"

That was a lot of words she doesn't quite understand, hence her vaguely confused look.

"Are there other places you go? Do you all live in one big computer?"

"Uh-uh. Each computer's a city, or more than one city sometimes. If your system's connected to the 'Net, you can travel to other systems. Mainframe's my home system, but I'm going to the Guardian Academy in the Supercomputer now."

She thinks about that.

"Are you... made of energy? Like thought, or electricity?"