The ocean?

Intrigued, he bolted up the last few feet and carefully peered out the circular hole. His eyes had slowly adjusted to the glow of the light coming from above, but he still wasn’t prepared when he fully emerged. Blinded by the brilliance and deafened by the sound, he needed a few seconds to get his bearings. And when he did, his jaw dropped.

He emerged at the top of an angular sheath of black rock, jutting out of the churning waters of a massive purple ocean. Waves crashed into the stone to create great crystalline plumes that looked like sparkling wine. The noise of it was a rushing boom, filling the air. A spray of the plum-colored water washed across his face. It was so cold he gasped. He wiped it out of his eyes, felt the slight sting of salt. It was exhilarating and made him feel more awake than he had in a long time.

Squinting, he studied the endless sea stretching in every direction, its choppy surface full of whitecaps, like frosting on a purple cake. There was no ship, no birds or sea life or land to speak of. Two other rocky spits were the only things that broke the monotony. They stood equidistant a few hundred feet away, forming a triangle with his own perch. He didn’t catch it at first, but as he gazed out at the other rocks, he realized that a person sat on each one. And he was pretty sure who those people were.

Bryson and Sarah.

Michael climbed out and kneeled down at the edge of the hole. He waved his arms, shouting his friends’ names as loud as he could, but the roar of the wind and the ocean swept his voice away. Eventually both of his friends noticed him waving and motioned back to him. Michael couldn’t imagine where they’d been sent—or why—but he didn’t really care at that moment. He was just relieved to be reunited with Bryson and Sarah.

He looked back down at the hole he’d climbed out of and watched as it disappeared, only to be replaced by rock congruous with the rest of the little island. The area looked as if nothing had ever been there.

What is this place? Michael wondered.

He scanned the choppy waters below, wishing he had the courage to swim across, and realized there was something strange about the ocean, besides the fact that it was purple. There was a static look about it, sparkles and flashes and fuzzy lines, all moving in the water like sea creatures. And when he really thought about the color itself, it reminded him of times he’d been immersed in areas of naked programming material within the VirtNet—undeveloped places waiting to be molded by code.

Swimming seemed like a bad idea. He was thinking about the possibility of coding a bridge when Sarah beat him to it: a green beam of light suddenly stretched from her rocky perch into the air. It was simple, a flat plane about three feet wide, and it was crossing the distance between them as if someone were drawing it with a giant marker. Michael smiled, still feeling the rush of the cold water that had splashed over his body. He knew exactly where she’d gotten the code for this beauty. It was from a game called, simply, Bridges. It was about as exciting as it sounded, and they’d only played it a couple of times before moving on to bigger and better things.

Even before it reached Michael, another bridge started connecting Sara’s rock to Bryson’s, where he sat like a sunbather, leaning back with his face open to the gray sky even though clouds hid the sun. It made Michael think Bryson spent way too much time inside.

Michael stood up, bracing himself against the wind, just as another wave crashed into his island and sprayed him good. Laughing, he wiped his face again. For a moment he forgot about everything that had happened and just smiled, feeling like the king of the world.

As soon as Sarah’s bridge of light reached Michael, he jumped onto it and sprinted toward her. The surface was rubbery, just like he remembered from the game. Goose bumps covered his skin as the wind ripped at his wet clothes, and the feeling gave him even more energy. He picked up his pace.

He was about twenty feet away—almost there—when the bridge vanished, leaving nothing below him but air. He yelped as his heart leaped into his throat and he plummeted into the angry purple water.

The ice-cold water swallowed him, igniting his nerves and making his heart pound from the shock of it. He kicked and pulled himself upward, breaking the surface in a sparkle of purple light. Treading water, he looked up at Sarah’s rock, only a few feet away now, to see his friend staring down at him, Bryson standing beside her.

“Sorry!” she yelled. “I forgot those things had unpredictable timers on them in the game!” She laughed, tried to cover it up, then laughed again. Bryson didn’t even bother trying to hide his glee. Michael would have laughed, too, if he didn’t feel like his nether regions were about to freeze solid.

“I didn’t know you were that slow!” Bryson shouted down to him.

Michael wiped his face and spit out some of the strange purple water, then swam toward his friends. Suddenly he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something slithering—and there were more than one. In a flit of panic, he burst forward, swimming frantically until he reached a slab of low black stone angling into the ocean and climbed onto it. He scrambled away from the edge of the water until he backed into a wall of jagged rock.

He ducked as a huge wave slammed him against the stone. When it receded, he quickly climbed even higher, finding plenty of places in the rocks for hand- and footholds. About halfway up, he found a flat outcropping and stopped. He got onto his stomach so he could lean out and look down at the water, madly curious about what lurked in this bizarre ocean.

Another cold wave crashed below, its crest splashing over him as he ducked his head. When it receded, he wiped his face and spit, slicked his hair back. And then he stared.

It wasn’t eels or fish slithering around in the water. They were spliced lines of code—actual, literal lines of numbers and letters—squirming and bouncing around like electrocuted worms.

He called out to his friends, the words ripping through his throat. “Get down here!”

By the time Bryson and Sarah clambered down to him, Michael had gotten to his feet. He crouched over, hands on knees, studying the water below. There was just enough room for the other two to squeeze in beside him, both of them taking a seat on the ground, legs dangling over the edge of the rock. A wave crashed, spraying them all. Sarah shrieked and then laughed.

“Whoa!” Bryson shouted, pointing at several different spots. “What was that? What are those …” Michael knew Bryson had seen the same thing he had. And Sarah, too, because her face had grown as immobile as the wet stone on which they sat.