"Did you get any of this?" she asked her producer.

"Affirmative, Miss Wong, and we have billions listening in right now. You are live in some parts, deferred in other places awaiting the end of the Presidential Challenge, couple more minutes. Some people on Mars realized Sophie is out of confinement."

A direct override was never given to any field journalist. The laws were clear, to prevent abuse or other violations, live feeds were delayed by a couple of editorial seconds. The delay was gone, the producers were trying to avoid the pirating of the signal. She could talk live, from Mars. Numbers began to roll in the journalist's mind. Milly knew her contract had a live broadcast clause, it got her two million credits per second. Money was not the object, but she unclipped two more fly-cameras from her belt. They immediately took flight and began to send images back to Earth.

"Live from Mars, we are now in what appears to be..." Milly faltered as she realized she had no idea of the purpose of this new area.

“I baptized this the competition arena,” offered the computer voice. “The last 32 contestants will play and fight, starting Round 28 in these. Before, the next two rounds of the game will take place at the Holliday Inn.” The group was standing in very large auditorium room. Behind them were rows of nearly a hundred seats where an audience of dropped players would watch the game as it happened on the raised stage. These were the seats for all contestants about to be dropped after loosing the next rounds.

The walls of the arena were covered with screens larger and small, along with other, less obviously identifiable technology. One by one, the screens lit up. On each, the Electoral 2072 logo was rotating over a star-filled night sky. This room could rival the most expensive, lush Hollywood set ever designed. The place shone with metal and glass. On the outside periphery of the stage was a metal walkway two feet off the ground. Alongside of it was a gold-plated handrail. The walkway gave access to thirty-two standing glass tubes, each with a bodyshaped foam insert. It was easy to understand each of the 32 finalists would be using these. The tubes were arranged symmetrically in four groups of eight, on both sides of a center table. In the air above each tube hung cables and shiny equipment to animate the pods. The design of the room was very inviting. This is where the ultimate game would unfold.

In the middle of the walkway were two large desks, multiple consoles, and a single horizontal cradle designed to hold Laurent's crippled body. One by one, the different pieces of equipment came to life. Electricity was the lifeblood of Marilyn's world. It began to flow in the consoles and the tubes. The lid on Laurent's central bed and one of the vertical tubes opened.

“Doctor, please place Laurent in the center cradle. Sophie, if you want to connect, you must enter one on the pods. Any one of them.”

The doctor knew what had to be done. She climbed two steps and gently placed Laurent's body into the machine.

“Sophie, Georges will help you slide into the chamber. Let me rescale the bed to your size. You will be more comfortable.”

"Leave me out of this," said the programmer from his console in the corner.

“Georges, don't be an ass. Get up and do some exercise for a change. Help the girl or I'll stop synthesizing Mountain Dew.” Her voice was kind as she scolded her progenitor. There was a bond between these two.

With a soft grumble, Marilyn's creator got up, walked with the girl the two steps and looked at Sophie. He hesitated for a moment, then began tapping the keyboard next to the chamber. "Fine," he grumbled in defeat. Sophie's attraction was such that everyone watching would find Georges rude. The big man stepped up on the metal railing. "Here!" he pointed at the tube. Sophie was amused by the demeanor of Marilyn's creator. For months, no one had been anything but kind and respectful to her, sometimes to the point of obsequiousness. This man was different. She liked his genuineness. She smiled to him.

“Doctor, Georges, give me a moment to boot the software. I will need to calibrate Sophie's mind. This will be hard on my networking systems.” Sophie was getting ready and looked at her father being connected to the system.

Using the same powder magic, the computer rescaled the size of the padding in the tube selected by the young girl. Slowly, parts of the glass, the metal, and the polymer began to transform into sand. It took about twenty seconds for the eight feet tube to rescale to accommodate Sophie's petite size. The left-over sand flew out through the ventilation like a smoker’s unwanted pollution. There was an awkward silence between the programmer and the girl as they looked at each other.

"I like it," said the girl standing in front of the smaller tube. "Elegant." She was trying to be sweet; she needed to test this man.

“Why, thank you,” the response came from the artificial intelligence. Georges, for all of his gruff extemporization, wondered if he shouldn't soften up.

At this point, both Sophie and the journalist realized that this was no place for their questions. There would be ample time for those once her father's condition had stabilized. Sophie knew deep down she had to enter Laurent's mind. Time was short. It required her full attention. Milly doubted if words would have helped the broadcast, in any event. The silence was television gold.

Just before she stepped in the smaller pod, Sophie walked over to her father's cradle. She waved her hand and the computer telling it to open the glass cover. Sophie grabbed the white plush dog, the one from Marilyn's gift basket that she'd named “Oscar”, and kissed her father's forehead. "Hold on daddy," she just said, "I'm coming."

The three women in the room, including Marilyn, looked away in an effort not to tear up. Georges crossed his arms and stared, virtually screaming annoyance. The cameras caught the kiss and the words. On Earth, millions were not as good holding back their emotions. Fathers from around the globe tried in vain to surreptitiously wipe a tear away.

“Doctor, you may connect Laurent's neuro-patch using the black cable next to his head. Keep a close eye on his Rho wave count of your viewer as you work. You need to familiarize yourself with this part of your pa...–“ Marilyn stopped herself. She knew not to call Laurent a patient in front of Sophie. She finished, “Laurent.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The doctor was surprised to see a physical connector, let alone cables; this place was full of anachronisms. She placed the connector next to the head port. The magnets locked, Laurent's Rho waves spiked. Even if the connection had not begun, like a drowning man, Laurent's mind grasped for whatever might keep him afloat.

“Doctor, you will note Laurent registers 1.2 G in the Rho detention. Humans are around 0.3 to 0.6 K. That's over a thousand times less. Aside from Sophie, he has no real human equal. This is why I tried to prevent him from joining the competition. It uses Rho technology. Sophie, before we begin...”

"Do you want to warn me of the danger, get my consent? You have it!" The face of Marilyn on the one screen was priceless. The computer was, like most, falling for the girl. Marilyn knew her brain waves were permeating the entire center. She'd wondered if her systems would be vulnerable to the waves. She had her answer: they were.

“Thank you. Actually, we will need to set-up a baseline. We need an exit protocol, a way to let me know as you dream and float in Laurent's mind, that you want to be disconnected because I will not be going in with you to avoid overloading him.” Georges was hooking up some type of belt around her waist. He strapped her in like a skydiver. There were even pedals and a headband as she slipped on an angled cushioned table.

“Normally the neuro-patches used on Earth work by reading some very crude waves created by the brain called Alpha waves. This system works on the Rho waves we spoke of earlier; these are normally very faint. My sensors are very sensitive. The connection using Rho is much deeper, more personal. These chambers will be used by the finalists of this year's competition. Using Rho waves, I bypass most human functions. In this status, I can even influence your feelings and even create a feeling of gravity, which is important in the game.”

"Thank you," said Sophie to Georges as he finished hooking her in. The Plexiglas panel closed. The big man was already on his way back to a monitoring console.

"What's next?" asked Sophie, adjusting the headband.

“Normally, I run the simulation, and the players connect to me. Here you enter your father's mind directly. Rather than as any kind of guide or participant, in this instance I serve merely as a bridge. I will not be there, and the problem is, I cannot regulate your inner clock. I have no clue if Laurent's mind is evolving at a faster or slower rate than yours. You may be in there for months, and back here it might be milliseconds. The reverse is also true. You saw your father wrestle with this problem in the plane on the way here.”

"Yes."

“Also, you produce raw Rho waves, more waves that can be measured by my sensors. My detectors are set to a millionth of what you produce. The best way for me to get a message from you is the simplest method I know. Please close your eyes and imagine Oscar, the white plush dog next to you. See him in your mind. That will generate a low-level imprint.”

Sophie was confused. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the dog. The screens in the room filled with complex graphs. Suddenly, every screen flickered and began to blink red. Alarms went off. Then, as if there was a short-circuit, they all went dark.

"What?" asked Sophie.

“Sorry, you literally destroyed my Rho detectors. I must repair them now. I had set danger thresholds. One was at 1600 G. Let me remove the limits and try a couple of technical tweaks.”

"How much more waves do I produce?"

One by one, the screens slowly returned online.

“Sophie, I made up the scale. Your numbers, they are so large in comparison to anything ever encountered before that they have very little practical meaning. Stated differently, the only thing I can compare them to is yourself.”

"What about, say, compared with the Doctor?"

“Sophie, I cannot say as I cannot measure your output. My detectors, had they not blown up would have detected anything less than forty trillion times.”

Sophie was confused by the answer. "Can I go in?"

The data on the screen twisted, moved, and changed. In seconds, the waves became 3D graphs. The digital intelligence was quickly adapting as it mapped Sophie's brain. Then mathematical equations began to fill the screens. Electoral knew the cameras were filming, yet she was not hiding her work. The human scientists would have a field day with this. After what seemed to be an insufferably complex calculation even for Electoral, a long series of numbers appeared.

“I think I have it. Now, in the dream, simply think of the image of Oscar, and I may be able to recognize the signal. Think as long as you can about this white dog as you just did. I simply will match those patters with the one from a second ago. It may take a while for me to decode your request. The waves may be highly compressed.”

Sophie was lost as to the technology. She understood Marilyn was nervous, Georges was there monitoring her, and the doctor was watching over her dad. The instructions were clear and she was ready.

"What if I get stuck?"

“Dear, I promise, if you want out, you will return. That much I can promise. Wait,” said the computer before Sophie closed her eyes.

"What now?"

“Laurent's waves are fluctuating, incoherently. Weak.”

Georges went to a keyboard and started typing hysterically. He wanted to know what she meant.

"I don't care," said the girl. "I am going in."

"This makes no sense," said Georges out loud.

“I know,” replied Marilyn to her father.

"What do you think it is?"

“Attraction. Nothing else makes sense.” The computer was already acting as if she was gone.

"What the hell does that mean?" said the large programmer.

“We must let Sophie act. No matter what dangers she encounters. The rule is simple. We must not get in her way. The Sixth Attraction has begun.”

"Guys, I'm still here," said Sophie from her tube. "I'm ready."

“Proceed please.”

Georges pushed a key. Sophie instantly lost consciousness, but her eyes remained open.

"Milly make yourself useful. Close the girl's eyes." Georges was not the best communicator. "This part always freaks me out. Marilyn doesn't care," he added as she shot a dark look his way.

“When will she be back?”

Marilyn said, “This should be rather quick. Her father’s mind moves quickly in time, free of our human world. If he was a movie, he would constantly be on fast forward. He unfolds, that’s the term for it, about one hundred times faster than we do. If Sophie spends two hours in his head, that’s only two minutes here. I think she should be back soon.

Began a long silence as a clock unrolled on one of the screens.

“Marilyn,” said kindly the doctor eyes locked on her forearm display. “Those Rho waves are gone for her, zero but Laurent’s remain the same.”

“I see that.”

“What does it mean?”

“Sadly she has not gone into his mind, she left our world.”

“What?” asked Georges as Milly filled every detail of the discussion.

“Yes,” clarified the computer, “she left our reality for other worlds of the Multiverse.”

“Do we know where she is?”

“I can measure the unfolding of her normal mind, she has not been sped up as expected, she has been slowed, very slowed. I fear if she spends hours in that other place, she may be gone for days.”

“Can’t you guess where she is?” asked the creator of the computer.

“I fear she went to the world from which I took that Dot.” No one understood what that meant.

“Now what do we do?” finally asked the Journalist.

The computer’s answer amused, “We just wait, prepare the game and get Daddy ready for his interview on CNN. If you don’t mind, I must turn my attention to improbable and illogical events ready to cascade.”

“In these other worlds?” asked the journalist.

“Nope, nothing that complex. On Earth, it starts now in Europe.” Marilyn looked very serious, “Randomness, more than I need right now, damn him.”

“Who?”

“Takeda.”

“Who is that?”

“Focus - That’s Emilio’s job right now, he protects your species on Earth, I protect it from here.” The way she spoke was no laughing matter.