snake. Or something pulsing.p>
Jenny's little fingers were tingling; there was a crawling between her shoulder blades. This was wrong. She had a dreadful feeling of the physical distance the line of Js had traveled. It was as if she were out in space somewhere, far to the right of her original document-and going on farther. She was lost somewhere in virtual space, and she was terrified of what she might see there.
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
Jenny had been pressing Escape continuously since the key had stuck. Now she hit Enter to put in a hard return, to break the line. Nothing happened.
WJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
Oh, God, what was out here? What were the s heading for? Something miles to the side of her original document, something that just couldn't be there because there wasn't room for it. She was beyond any possible margins. It was like sailing over the edge of the world.p>
She scrambled in her mind for the screen rewrite code, hit that. Nothing. She stabbed at the Break key. Nothing. Then, teeth sunk in her lip, she pressed Control/Alt/Delete.
The combination should have rebooted the computer. It didn't. The s sailed on.p>
The screen glowed a deep and beautiful blue. Jenny had never noticed before just how blue that screen really was. A color vivid beyond imagining.
The white s surged on and on. Jenny had a physical sense of falling. She was out too far....p>
She reached out and did something the computer teacher had threatened them with death for doing she flipped the main switch of the computer off. Depriving it of electricity, killing it in the middle of a program. Crashing it deliberately.
Only it didn't crash.
The switch was off, the CPU light was off-but She 7s kept on going, pulsing and surging.
Jenny's breath stopped. She stared in disbelief. Her hand went to the monitor and fumbled frantically with the monitor switch. It clicked under her fingers; the monitor light went off.
"What are you doing?" the girl to the left of her gasped.
The monitor still glowed blue. The Js sailed on,
Jenny yanked the keyboard out of the socket.
She had to stop this. Something was going terribly, unimaginably wrong, and she had to stop those h before ...
"Ms. Godfrey!" the girl to the left of her cried. "Ms. Godfrey, Jenny's-"
Jenny had just an instant to see what happened next. Even with the keyboard detached, the 7s kept going-or at least she thought they did. It was hard to tell because everything happened so fast. There was a bright flash-the screen going blindingly white -and a blue afterimage printed on her retinas. Then the monitor went dark.
So did the lights in the room-and all the other computers.
"Now see what you did," the girl beside her hissed,
Jenny sat, scarcely breathing. Pulling out the keyboard cord couldn't have caused a blackout. Even crashing her computer shouldn't have done that. The room wasn't totally dark, but it was very dim; the windows were tinted to protect the equipment. Impressed on the dimness Jenny saw pinwheels and filaments of glowing blue.
Oh, please, she thought, holding herself as still as possible. She could feel her heart beating in her throat.
Then she heard-something-from underneath the computer tables.
Soft as a match strike, but audible. A moving sound, like a rope being dragged. Like something sliding across the floor.
Toward her.
Jenny twisted her head, trying to locate it. The teacher's voice seemed distant. The sliding sound was getting closer, she could hear it clearly now. Like a dry leaf blowing across pavement. Starting and stopping. Surging. Like the s. Coming straight for her legs.p>
It was almost here. Almost was under her table. And she couldn't move; she was frozen.
She heard a hiss like static. Like white noise. Or -
Something brushed her leg.
Jenny screamed. Released from her paralysis all at once, she jumped to her feet, beating at her leg. The thing brushed her again, and she grabbed at it, throttling it, trying to kill it-
-and found herself holding the keyboard cord.
It must have fallen over the edge of the table when she yanked it out, and dangled there. Jenny was holding on to its spiraling length so tightly that she could feel dents in her palms. This close she could see it clearly. Just a cord.
The lights went on. People were gathering around her, putting their hands on her, asking questions.
It's just your brain making models, she told herself desperately, ignoring everyone else. The computer malfunctioned and you freaked. You heard static when the power went off, and you freaked more and made it into a hiss.