Carolina is a normal teenager who has just left for college. She has good marks already. She had always been strong and intelligent at school, but also in life in general, she knows many theories from quantum physics and never had lower than ninety percent in maths. There was just one thing troubling her and making her a bit sad. She hadn't really made friends yet, but according to her family, her loneliness wouldn't last really long. They said she was sweet, very nice, a bit shy, but she had something attractive. Her mother used to tell her " You're the most beautiful 14 year old I know, honey", but when she saw Lisbeth on the first day of school, she doubted a bit that her mother was saying that to make her comfortable. Carolina didn't think she could ever be friends with Lisbeth.

" We're too different, she could not be friends with a girl like me" she said contradicting her mother's thought, as usually...

"What do you mean a girl like you?" her mother said smiling, I don't know what you're talking about sweetie.

Carolina never liked popularity and it's not today she would change this morality. She said she never liked it and that she will never do. Her old friend said the exact same thing by heart when Carolina said it back then. But those friends also said she always liked attention.

"Attention and popularity are not the same, there's a big difference!" she said when her friends were annoying her, getting in the subject too much.

But Carolina had to go to the factory near the school, to prepare her robots for the contest she would participate to in two days.

"-I can win this contest very easily. I just need to make my special robot and it's done with this contest."

Her special robot was a representation of her cat Larry. A big persian with one eye blue and green the other. But it was a very complicated robots, that's why she came to the factory. She knew she could find electric circuits or components for her robotic cat. She saw an old elevator that looked like a lift. She wasn't sure it worked, so she decided to go and verify the fuses in the control room. Everything was fine with them. But strangely, Carolina saw they had been replaced about ten years ago. She found it strange because the factory was empty since 1992, according to Google . She remembers the date, because she had to check before coming. If she met people there, it wouldn't have been the same things as picking up circuits like it's normal. She is now sure that the lift is working, so she thinks about using it and go see on the lower levels, but she's still hesitating.

"-Is that thing really solid?" she asked to herself.

Now she wasn't sure about this, but she was too curious so she tried to convince herself to go. She wasn't sure about what she would find down there. Is there really a lower level? Maybe yes maybe not, but she just couldn't help it. She was too curious.She decided to go and to, according to her, risk her life going down there.

***

"-Mike, are you ready for the plane's departure honey?

-Yes. Yes I am, mom." Mike answered after his mother asked for the sixtieth time.

Mike and Angela were moving from their hometown in England. Angela wanted to start a new life without a husband, letting all of her bad memories behind her. Mike thought of it like an excuse from his mother not to let him see how sad she was. Mike didn't want to leave their little town. He didn't want to separate with those souvenirs from his father. It just happened so fast... He was not ready for that, but his mother was, and he had to follow her. And he couldn't tell his mother about his feelings because she put too much pressure on herself with all of the moving stuff. So he had to deal with a new house, new neiborhood, new town, new country... New life.

A couple hours later, their plane landed in USA. They arrived in their new house and got prepared, Angela for work and Mike for college. Their house was a one-floored, renovated two years ago, according to his mother. College was at a walking distance, so Mike could still live with Angela as before. It was ten P.M., but Mike couldn't sleep, yet. He could just think about jet lag and this new place where they would live forever, or so.

***

In the old factory was hidden a big secret that only two collegians knew about for now two days. There was Maddison, a small girl with bleached blond hair and dark brown eyes. She was cute, but she never liked close relationships because she never thought so much about herself or boys. She was always calm and responsible. Even with those qualities, her best friend called her Madd. He was Jonathan and his nickname was just Jo. He had brown hair and eyes the same colour. Even if he was the most greedy person Madd had ever knew, she called him the stick. Once, at the factory, they took the elevator to go down. They couldn't believe what they saw down there. A supercomputer with and four scanners. They didn't know how to use them, so they didn't. Today they left their rooms later than the last time, because John, the gym teacher and supervisor of the internship. At the factory, the took the elevator and its door opened and Jo asked:

"-Who are you?

-I was going to ask the same thing, answered Carolina,

-I'm Maddison and this is Jonathan, said Madd to Carolina,

-I'm Carolina Miller.

-And what are you doing? asked Jo,

-I'm going to turn it on, confirmed Carolina,

-Oh, so you're good in informatics? asked Madd, unsure of what she meant,

-I'm not bad, let's say, she answered immediatly

They turned it on and ran to the supercomputer's desk and saw someone on the screen. As soon as she woke up, she asked:

"-Where am I? Can someone hear me?"

"-What? Who is speaking?" asked Caro, not sure if she wanted an answer.

"-I don't know, I forgot everything! I don't know who I am!" the virtual girl said before starting to panic

She was kind of pretty, she had beautiful flashy blue hair, and light green eyes. She was simply dressed with a dark blue two-piece kimono that was pretty too.

"-Hmm... Ok I'm going to stay with you for the night to collect informations on all of this stuff". said Carolina to confort her new friend.

"-Hey, what does it look like in your place?" asked Jo, letting his curiosity take the advantage.

"-Its like a big square. It's like a tower with two platforms, one underneath the other." answered the disconcered girl.

"-Can you go on the second platform? I mean, the higher one? If there's a kind of database, we may possibly find informations?" suggested Caro, very impatient.

" Yes good idea I'm going to try." accepted the virtual intelligence

She placed in the middle of the platform, and concentrated on what she wanted. Soon, she was surrounded by a green halo and she floated to reach the higher one and connected to a database

"-Oh and by the way, my name is Carolina. Call me Caro."

"-I'm Jo, nice to meet you!"

"-And I'm Maddison, but this one nicknamed me Madd, so you can call me like that."she said hitting Jo on his arm.

"-Nice to meet you all"said the girl, greeting them with enthusiasm, but can I get a name too?"

"-Of course, you can choose it" proposed Carolina

But when the girl finished scanning the database, a message appeared when she but her hand to close the interface. It said: "Always happy to teach you something, Luna!"

The message was addressed to her, but she couldn't think of how the tower could've remembered her name more than Luna herself.

"-Caro, I found my name." said Luna, confused and happy at the same time.

"-Oh yes? Where?

"-When I closed the interface of the database it told me: Always happy to teach you something, Luna! Can you look for the program of the towers? I'd like to know who is telling me that message." she asked.

A couple minutes later, Madd and Jo were going to the college, because they didn't understand a thing of what Luna and Caro said.

"-I couldn't find the author of the message, sorry. But I still have new informations. You're in a virtual world, called Aria and it's got four territories, each different than the other. Do you see something you could exit by, like a door or something?" asked Caro to her friend as she went down the higher platform to find and the exit.

"-No I really can't see something that I could..."

She stopped talking as soon as her hand touched the wall of the tower and started to cross it. She had a surprise reaction, because when all of her body was out of the tower, she was on an island and she could see rivers and towers from their outside. There were six giant water lilies. They were big, they each had one tower on their surface, but Luna was on a higher plateau that was connected to all of the water lilies by pastel green slides.She remarked that all of the towers had a coloured higher part. It was green on all of the towers, just like on the slides. The principal highered island was slowly turning, training all of the smaller islands with her and the river was flowing in different directions, falling into a giant digital ocean.

"-It's, it's, wow I have no words! You've got to see this Caro!"

"-I'd love to. Do you think you could give me a visual representation? asked Caro, hoping very hard

"-I'm ready to try." accepted Luna

A visual arrived on Carolina's screen. She saw absolutely the same thing as Luna. It was very impressive and beautiful, but something still bothered Caro.

"-Tomorrow we have to find out how to change territories, so we can now the limits of this virtual reality. But I can't think because I'm too tired tonight. I will come back tomorrow morning if I can."

And Caro left for college, letting Luna alone, contemplating the first beautiful territory they found.

It was a bad wednesday afternoon. It rained all day and it wouldn't stop until the night, they said on TV. Madd still had her judo class, in school with John as teacher. John was a gym teacher, the internship's supervisor and the judo teacher, obviously. Madd started warming up as soon as she was dressed and ready to start. She was alone with another boy. She recognized him, he was new, and he was in her class, with Jo and Caro. She actually found him gorgeous. It was the first time in her life she ever thought a guy was beautiful. He had blue eyes, and just a bit curled light brown hair.

"-Hi", the guy said, stretching is arm for a classic handshake

"-Hi", answered Madd, timidly, shaking his hand, "So you're new here?" she asked back

"-Yes, I just moved from England. I'm Mike."

"-I'm Maddison, but my friends call me Madd"

She couldn't think about their conversation no more, she was too concentrated on his accent, she found weird and his beautiful face. Then John came in to tell them there would be no practice today because he had to supervise an activity for the first graders. Before the teenagers left the gymnasium, Madd looked back at Mike and they both went to bed. Madd thought about what she said to him and how she looked at him and said:

"I must've looked like an idiot!"

Soon, she fell asleep, thinking of their new secret her friends and her got to hide.

* * *

Thursday morning, Madd, Jo and Carolina went to the factory and passed in the scanners, so that their virtual corpses would be analyzed. Jo asked tons of questions to Caro, but Madd didn't want to be late to class. After the scanner finished analyzing them, they went to class, got thousands of homework an assignements. Routine, as Jo would say. But Madd just ran out of class so fast, she had to meet Mike and the end of his class.Madd and Mike were walking in the school's small park, just talking about themselves. Madd realised that Mike hadn't seen all of the school's buildings so she brought him to the sciences building's rooftop so he could see everything. They sat on the little fence, placed around the roof. Mike tried to stop holding the fence with his hands, but as he did that he accidently fell

"No, Mike!" screamed Madd

But then, a weird thing happened. Mike was floating up in the air, and his movement followed Madd's eyes. She brought him back on the roof, and they went down the building

"-What happened up there? I was gonna fall off, but you... Catched me and brought me back on ground!" exclaimed Mike, surprised and confused

"-Hi Caro? I just saved Mike from a fatal fall. Without touching him! Is that because of the scanners?"

"-I know I have a superpower too. I can teleport people on short distances by touching them. It is because of the scanners. In fact, they defragment your molecular structures when you get virtualised and they reform you when you come back from Aria. The problem is that we didn't go on Aria. So we got half destructed, our genes mutated and we got those superpowers." explained Caro

"-So when you go on Aria, you get destructed and when you come back you get reformed?" asked Madd

"- You got it all! Get Mike here, we're going to give him a superpower too. Oh and by the way, Jo called me to tell me the same thing, but he can run in hypervelocity. Pretty cool, ha?" said Caro, jealous of Mike's power

Once arrived at the factory, Mike went on a scanner, they got he process inrushed and Mike was officially included to their gang. He received Caro's explaination on Aria an Luna and Jo proposed:

"-Can we go on Aria?" he asked, wanting a yes more than everything.

"-Ok, why not" accepted Caro go onto a scanner, I will transfer you."

She started to work on a program and tried to virtualize them.

"Ok. Let's see that... Transfer Jo, Madd and Mike, activated for all. Virtualization!"