Elle reached her computer just as she heard Alli walk through the front door. Looking at the screen she saw
a new window had opened up with the words "MasterPC v1.7.4" at the top and a text entry field below. Her mind
raced as she heard her daughter getting closer, trying to find the right words to avert the impending
catastrophe. The easiest way would be to try to reverse the change, but none of the other artifacts had
managed to do even that much. She was no closer to an answer when she suddenly heard a scream from the doorway
and looked up to see her horror stricken daughter, who was clearly not handling the sight of her new identical
twin very well. Her daughter stared at her mouth agape, and Elle was about to make some feeble attempt at
explaining when her daughter began backing away and turning to run back out of the house. Knowing she had to
halt her daughter's flight and not knowing what else to do she frantically typed in:
>>Allison will freeze where she is
As she hit "enter" Alli suddenly stopped moving, her face frozen in her moment of terror, one leg still
lifted of the ground in the first stride of her flight. Elle walked over to her, slowly, searching for signs
of movement but there were none. Her daughter was completely still, not even moving her eyes as her mother
walked a complete circle around her. Elle sighed in relief, the surge of adrenaline fading into calm
weariness. Her calm was short lived, however, when she realized with a start that breathing was a movement and
checked and saw that Alli's chest was as still as the rest of her. Tearing back over to her computer, she
fought back her panic, telling herself that another ill-thought out command would do no good. After a few
seconds an idea formed and she entered:
>>Allison will unfreeze but will enter a trance and walk to the kitchen
As she finished, Alli suddenly unfroze, but instead of continuing her run for the door her face calmed and she walked dreamily down the hall and into the kitchen. Elle looked and saw to her relief that her daughter was breathing again, but otherwise completely motionless. Elle walked over and waved her hand in front of Alli's face, and was encouraged to see that her eyes remained completely still and unblinking. Elle finally allowed herself to relax, collapsing in a chair by her computer. After a moment of blissful calm, she forced herself to return to the present. Her problem had been momentarily contained but not solved. Alli normally came home about a hour before the others, so she had time, but not a lot. She turned back to her computer and looked at the open MasterPC window, the cursor blinking as it waited for her next command. She smiled to herself. She had all the time she needed...