The Factory's Secret

"Tomorrow's the day! You mean, in how many hours?" Xina asked, unsure.

"Like in... Less than 24 hours, 18 I'd say." Caro said after Luna retransmitted.

"Sorry guys, but we have to go to announce the principal that you'll be coming soon." Madd said.

"Already? Can't you stay a little longer?" Luna asked.

"Sorry, but if we don't meet him, you can't come." Caro said.

"Okay then, see you tomorrow!" Lena said before they got rematerialized.

***

"So, they will come tomorrow?" Mr. Jones asked.

"Yes, that's what my mother told me." Caro responded.

"Okay, that's fine. You will transmit them that they're welcome in my school?" he added.

"No problem! Thank you!" Caro answered, enthusiastic.

"Thank you, Mrs. Miller I hope you have a nice evening, I'm happy we could talk about it. Oh, and if you have sleeping issues again you can talk too." he suggested.

"Well actually, this is an old problem, I realised I didn't sleep enough, but it's fine now." Caro said before leaving.

Mike waited for her at the door.

"So he's good with it?" Mike asked.

"Yes! He accepted!" Caro said, excitedly.

"So cool! I can't wait!" Mike answered on the same tone.

"Me neither! But I'm hungry... Let's have dinner!" Caro suggested.

"Wait! Can I talk to you about... Madd..." he started.

"Yes? What's the problem?" Caro interrupted.

"Tell her I want to see her in the park at eighteen o'clock, would you?" he asked.

"Of course, that's no problem!" Caro said.

***

At the hour he was supposed to meet Madd, Mike was waiting. He was scared that Madd would just never show up. He took a look at his phone. 18:15. She was not going to come. He headed back to his house, his head low, knowing he messed up.

***

Caro was awoke by her phone's alarm clock. She put it at three in the morning. She called Mike, Madd and Jo. They would meet in the factory soon enough. Once there, Caro explained the procedure.

"First, I have to activate a tower, because the program isn't strong enough to generate itself."

"And you know how to do that?" Madd said, astonished by Caro's capacities.

"Sure! It's not very complicated." she said before glancing at Madd.

"Oh, fine then. I'll trust you." Madd said, letting her do her things.

"Okay there. Tower activated!" Caro said.

They all stayed there looking at the computer's screen for a moment.

"It's not working!" Caro complained.

"Of course it works. Look." Mike said pointing at the tower icon on Carolina's screen saying the tower's halo had turned grey.

"I did it! Now I will have energy to activate the program. Go one by one in the tower so I can materialize you." Caro prepared.

Lena was going first. She took a step on the tower's platform. Caro prayed for silence from her friends. It was a complicated program and a simple error could make the virtual person disappear. She typed calmly, for once, she took a break after the program was ready.

"Are you in the middle of the platform?" she asked last.

"I am. You can go, I'm ready." Lena said, emotionally.

"Perfect." Caro activated the vocal command, like she did when she virtualized her friends.

"She's ready, go..." Mike said, as he saw Caro a little stressed.

"Materialization." she said.

Madd and Jo had gone in the scanner room to see if the program worked. The scanner opened up. Lena was there, unconscious, dressed as on Aria.

"Caro... It... It worked!" Jo exclamated.

"Lena, come on the first floor!" Caro said.

The elevator's doors opened up, showing Lena with her Aria clothes on.

"Come!" Caro said.

"Is that how it is to breathe?" she asked at first.

"It's good, right? Wait to breathe fresh air outside. But before that, I have gifts for you guys. Let me work for Xina now." Caro said.

Xina got in the middle of the platform. Caro started typing, activated the vocal command again, and said "Materialization"

"Caro? Are you sure you've done the right thing? Xina isn't there." Jo said from the scanner room.

"What? I'll check that, but I'd be surprised." Caro answered, worried.

Caro checked what she typed again and again. She couldn't find her mistake.

"I don't figure it out. Xuli, let's try it with you as a test. Maybe it's a strength issue. If it's that, we'll have to unplug one of the scanners and turn its energy in the supercomputer..." she said, thinking about the complexity of this manipulation.

She typed the program but it still didn't work with Xuli. So they unplugged a scanner and Caro reinitialised the super computer's scanner code. They tried, but with Luna that time. Jo and Madd were in the scanner room, waiting for the process to achieve itself. As before with Lena, Luna woke up in the scanner room a couple minutes later.

"Clearly, it's not a strength issue. The program doesn't work with you both. I'll try to find it out tonight." Caro said, before realizing they were going to start school in one hour.

"So we go now?" Mike asked.

"Sorry Xuli and Xina, but I have to find another program for you." Caro told them with regret.

"Will it be long?" Xuli asked, deceived.

"I don't know." Caro answered.

"Now the only thing you can do is go to class. We'll search for that after." Xina said.

"You're right. Lena, Luna, your gifts will be given right now." Caro said, giving them two bags.

"Can we?" Luna asked.

"Of course!" Caro answered, as Luna took clothes out of her bag.

"Thank you Caro! It's very nice. We're real humans now!" Lena hugged her.

They went outside, Lena and Luna took many deep breaths. They didn't go in the sewers, they went to school by the outside. In class, Caro tried to think about the solution of materialization. The principal came in to introduce the twins who looked shy. It was the first time they saw that many humans gathered in a small space. But it was not the last.

"I can't think of it!" Caro said, too loud for Mr. Cameron.

"Is there something you would like to share with us, Mrs. Miller?" he glared at her like she was some extraterrestrial creature that couldn't stop talking, which made Lena and Luna laugh.

"There's nothing wrong. Please continue your explanation." Caro responded.

"If you don't need to listen, which I assume because you were talking, you can do it for me, if that's no problem." Mr. Cameron said.

"You were saying how complicated the parthenogenesis of a plant is." Caro answered as the teacher looked down and sighed.

"I'm not a science teacher Caro." he answered.

"Oh. I didn't see the Brewer's equation on the board. By the way, it's incorrect!" Caro pointed the board.

"How is it wrong?" the teacher asked her like an extraterrestrial creature again.

"It's technically not wrong, from a mathematical, but if you talk physics, you should treat the second unknown factor as an exponential variable. Not as a compared mass. Then you can find your unknown factor and resolve the equation." Caro said.

"I... It's perfectly correct, I..."

But he didn't have time to finish his sentence because the bell rang.

"Wow, physics are super easy finally." Lena said.

"You see, it was nothing to be stressed about." Madd said.

"Now we have math. Can you find another error in the equation, Caro?" Luna said.

"I can totally find a mistake in that class. It's easy, the teacher! She has nothing to do here." Caro complained.

"I know you hate her but keep your mouth shut this time. She's near you." Jo said.

"Why do you hate her so much?" Luna asked.

"Long story... I suffer hyperactivity, I need to use my hands often to stay concentrated, or I need to take pills. So I decided to write notes about her class. When she saw me, she took my notebook away and said she didn't want me to take notes. What the f*ck is she still doing here!" Caro screamed, but the teacher got away. The vell rang and they went to math.

They took their seats as the teacher started her class.

***

"Hi guys!" Mike said, putting his plate on the table.

"Hey!" they all answered.

"Tonight I'm going to find out what is the materialization's problem. Someone to come with me?" Caro asked.

"Date." Mike simply answered.

"Math homework to complete." Madd said.

"I want to test sleeping." the girls both answered.

"I can come." Jo finally answered.

"Okay then." Caro said before taking her plate in the dirty pile.

They went off at the factory, Jo knowing he was coming for nothing. Mike went to his date, Madd did homework and the girls went sleeping. They all had things to do. Caro looked for the supercomputer's security files' code when she finally cracked it, it was almost three in the morning. She was not leaving her computer if she hadn't found the reason of this failure. But every file lead to another page. At six o'clock, she realised she didn't need the secured part of the supercomputer to access the scanners' working codes. Jo sleeping in the corner made her laugh everytime she felt tired. She hacked the processing code of the scanners and when she did it, she still couldn't find anything. She was starting to think it didn't have anything to do with the supercomputer's infrastructures. Maybe it could be stocked in Aria. She left a message to Jo, who was still asleep, and virtualized herself. She tried to get information in the tower, but all she found is the programmation of Xina, Xuli and X.A.R.A. Weirdly, Lena and Luna's weren't there. the page lead to another hidden file. But in that file, she'd find something interesting.

***

The twins came in the factory after receiving Caro's message.

"What does the file say?" Luna asked.

Before Caro could answer, the elevator opened up, showing Madd.

"It says that Xina and Xuli were supposed to be your friends. It explains everything that happened since Aria's beginnings. But it also says who created it, where he is and why did he do this. It gave me many ideas, mostly for my materialization program coming. I went on the link it gave me then and there were the reasons why Xina and Xuli couldn't get materialized." Caro said, making them wait.

"Just say it! That's torture." Madd said.

"It didn't work because Xina and Xuli are... Not human. Let me explain. It means that before the supercomputer was in your lives, you lived on Earth. Your father and your mother, which created Aria together, had enemies. To get their project to work, they needed many things. Uranium, Radium and plenty of stuff like that. But they could afford it. The thing is, they built it in a place that did not belong to them. That, they couldn't afford. They still did it illegally and secret police associations spied on them. Their cameras were everywhere and microphones hidden in the corners. The secret agencies had put on a system programmed to warn the minister from a potential attack. When your parents discovered the program, they built X.A.R.A. A program conceived to destroy Sparta, the program used to spy by the secret forces. But X.A.R.A. sadly accessed consciousness and was able to take his own decisions to destroy Diana and Craig. We don't know if they could resist that attack. All we know is that you girls are humans at the origin but your memory had been altered because of the first virtualization. The scanners were not ready so you lost every souvenir. That's the differences between you and Xina and Xuli. They aren't humans. You are. You know what we all said once. Earth always takes her belongings back. We don't know if your parents are still alive but that's our next mission." Caro said without taking any pause.

"You're right. We have to find a way to get them back. After all, combating X.A.R.A. is our mission." Lena said pointing Luna, both girls sad and confused at the same time.

"Not true. It's our mission. We will get your parents back. It's a promise we're making you." Caro added.