The villain avatar wore a hooded cloak, and had an air of malevolence, but it was an empty shell. Ty
concentrated. He felt the rush of power as his jar emptied and he filled the cloak of Lord Nightshade. The
wraith lord's power surged as it became Ty's own. He easily defeated the startled children battling him.
"Since when does Nightshade use such powerful spells on the first turn?" texted the wizard in red.
"We each only had one pip and he had 10! Must be a system ------," texted the wizard in blue, the word glitch
didn't pass the muster of the text screening, so she typed, "error."
"Yeah..."
They vanished to reappear at the commons. The Lord Nightshade avatar went into storage mode. Ty fell asleep.
He awoke with a start, another player had entered the tower. He was awake, and he decided he had better not
dispatch the player too quickly if he wanted to escape.
Meanwhile back at the lab, the doctor had enlisted a hacker friend of hers to try to figure out what had
happened with the computer surge.
"Dang, Doc, this hard drive is a mess, and according to the log you uploaded like a googolplex of data in just
a few seconds. It fried the T1 line, but with a new line, I may be able to download it again, but first I'll
need to add more memory."
"Just do it, Andrew, and be quick about it," the woman doctor said with her hands on her hips.
"Yes, ma'am," Drew answered, and muttered under his breath about charging her double for being a bitch.
It took a few hours, and Ty had wasted dozens of wizards. Tech support at Wizard 101 was getting complaints
about Lord Nightshade being unbeatable. A service report was filed, and the Storm Drain Tower would be
offline at midnight.
At 11:49 PM, Drew was ready to begin his attempted download of the brain in a jar.
"I found the server it was uploaded into, didn't know you could really upload solid matter, it's like Tron,"
Drew said.
The doctor sighed, "More like It Lives." Drew didn't know what had been uploaded and would freak if he knew
it was a sentient disembodied brain.
He looked at her funny, and typed. "Hm, this seems to be it, but the file seems to have changed. Well, here
goes nothing."
Ty felt an odd tingling. He easily dispatched the annoying level 35 wizard who was shocked to be wiped out
without ever even getting to cast one spell. There was a hollowness in his gut. Then a rushing sensation. It
was familiar, like something was sucking him. Sucking him out of Lord Nightshade's realm and into the real
world. He concentrated.
"Whoa!" shouted Drew standing up, "This cannot be right! Look at this download speed, no T-1 Line is that
fast!"
"Good, you've done it. Now you'd better get going," the doctor said hastening Drew out before Ty
materialized.
Drew balked, "Hey, doc, there's a matter of my fee!"
"Just bill me," she said.
"I really should make sure it works, and I need my diagnostic kit," he complained from the doorway.
"Come back tomorrow with your bill and get your kit then. If it doesn't work I'll call you."
There was a clap of thunder and flash of light. An ominous hooded figure appeared in the laboratory.
"The Emperor for Star Wars?" Drew asked.
"Looks more like the Grim Reaper," said the doctor with her jaw hanging open. Then her scientific mind
reasserted itself, "Ty is that you?" she asked loudly.
"Ah, Doctor, I've changed since we last met. Haven't I?" a white bubble with black text letters appeared at
the spectre's feet and a weird disembodied voice spoke. Ty frowned, and concentrated. And repeated the words
but this time audibly in his own voice.
"Whoa, we downloaded Lord Nightshade," said Drew - then he bolted for the computer, "Maybe I can pause him?"
Nightshade Ty waved his hand dark clouds swirled inside the room and lightning bats dove out of the clouds and
down on the computer.
Drew jumped backwards landing on his butt, "Yeow!"
"Now, Ty, that was unnecessarily violent," said the doctor cautiously edging around the room skirting the
smoldering wreckage of her monitor and pc to get closer to Ty. Was he corporeal or only a holographic
representation? She had to know. She'd make Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, and Carl Sagan look like amateurs with
her discovery. The greedy expression on her face did not go unnoticed.