|
Chapter 43 - How To Get Into Void!
As Dot looked at the picture on Adrienne's
screen, she had to swallow very hard to stop herself from feeling scared.
Void looked just as horrible as its name sounded - and a really frightening
place to be.
At first it reminded Dot of the Moon - only the moon without the strange
light that you see when you watch TV pictures of the moon landing. There was
a kind of light but it was very dull, as if the miles and miles of Void they
were looking at were being lit up by just one old electric bulb.
As far as you could see, all you could see was a kind of desert - a
rocky, empty landscape - no fields or trees or bushes, and none of the
friendly sights Dot had got used to voyaging on the Internet, like the
servers and the router stations and the C drives you found everywhere. But
the ground was covered in all sorts of strange, twisted shapes - lumpy and
bumpy, sticking up and lying down, some even standing up all kind of crooked
and leaning over to one side.
You couldn't tell what anything was though because EVERYTHING was covered in
a kind of grey dust - it looked like it had fallen from the sky like a shower
onto the surface below, coating the floor of Void as far as you could see. In
fact as Dot looked closer, she could see it was falling still, as if it was
one of those drizzly days you get in the autumn, when the rain falls like a
kind of powder and you get very wet if you go out without an umbrella. Or
even with one.
"Urrgghh!" went Mr Mouse suddenly, making them all jump. "What
a dump! Looks like Mort's Car Wreckers in Toronto!"
"Well you know" said Adrienne. "That ees kind of what
it is… Everyzing zat people do not want, or zat zey Delete Permanently, ends
up in Void… but just sometimes zere is a big mistake - or whatever" she
looked angrily at Blackshanks "and we lose good net-people in zere. But
mostly, eet ees stuff zat does not matter,"
Just as she spoke, across the screen a tangle of wires and metal drifted
slowly down onto the surface of Void, It bounced gently as it landed and a
cloud of dust rose up around it.
"What's that?" asked Dot.
"It's the programming for an A-drive" said Louise D quietly.
"You know - what your floppy disc goes in… a lot of that ends up in
Void…"
But as Dot watched the A-drive started to disappear - covered with the dust
that had come up like a cloud as it landed, and with the dust that kept on
raining down. Soon it was just another strange crooked shape on the floor of
Void.
Louise turned to Dot, her brown and gold Afghan hound's head on one side.
"Do you still think you can help Luis?" she asked. "You don't
have to Dot… I will rescue him one day… just don't know how or
when…"
Dot smiled as bravely as she could. "I… I don't know" she said.
She'd found herself liking Louise D from the moment she'd first seen her -
she really wanted to help - it was just so scary. "But… but how could I
find him?"
"With zis!" said Adrienne. She undid a flap on the side of her
search engine, opening up a little cupboard. It was full of beautiful
bracelets in all kinds of different colours, twinkling in the constantly
changing light of the search Zone. She took one out and put it into a special
port in the side of the keyboard in her cockpit, and then turned to Louise D.
"Luis was a Format 80/12 Zefod92 Scribefinder wasn't he?" she
asked. Louise nodded sadly. "OK!" Once again Adrienne's little
squirrel's paw moved quickly over the keyboard on her control panel. Then she
turned to the Afghan again. "His Username?" she asked.
"Gazpacho!"
More tapping on the keyboard. Then suddenly a little tune came out of the
port where she'd put the bracelet, and it opened like your CD player does,
sliding out with a hiss.
Adrienne took the bracelet off the little flap and slipped it onto Dot's
wrist. It began to sparkle softly with a silver light running round and round
it.
"Wiz zis" she said gently "you can find Luis for us. Can you
'elp us Dorothee? Because if we do not find him soon - 'e will be gone - forever!"
JOIN US EVERY MONDAY FOR THE NEXT
CHAPTER!
*********************************
|
