So they waited for a sign. It wasn't necessary to wait, however, for Werner hadn't been completely honest with them. The truth was, he
did know where the passage to F: could be found but hadn't told them. He was taking a huge gamble, and he knew it, but if it worked, if they delayed their departure long enough, SecuROM wouldn't just be their undoing; it would be their
salvation.
Early in the history of the Valley there had been a pair of unfortunate events, one by design, the second by accident. Before there were any inhabitants in Foster's Valley a wave of energy had passed through it; Werner had no idea what the source was but he determined that it was meant to somehow cleanse the land, to prepare it for new life. It did so, but had inadvertently corrupted everything it touched. What effects it had he didn't know but it had certainly contributed to the neighborhood's instability. Everyone was leaving so it wasn't really an issue anymore. But the second event was far more serious; again, he was unable to determine the cause of the event, or even what it was supposed to accomplish, but it had resulted in a death. More than that, really; whoever had been killed had been
erased,
completely blasted out of existance. Everyone who knew the victim now had a hole in his or her memory; they knew it was there but since there was technically nothing there, they couldn't talk about it. It was a disjoined, unlinked memory, and it was one of the worst forms of corruption possible. And they could never escape it, because it was a part of them. The residents
themselves were corrupted.
What had happened on that dark, tragic day, Werner didn't know. Every bit of research he did was to little avail. He knew it had effected a lot of people, including almost everyone at Foster's; only Wilt had escaped, but he had no idea why. He knew the event had centered largely on Foster's, and the erasure had probably happened there, too, yet strangely enough the hardest hit seemed to be the girl Louise, who lived halfway across the Valley. In fact, teens in general seemed to have been hurt more, corrupted more, than any other age group. It was bizarre; he doubted he's ever figure it all out. And now, into all this, SecuROM had dropped out of the sky on an unfathomable mission of it's own, slowly but surely reversing everyone's age and taking away their memories. And that, Werner knew, was the key. The timing was critical; everyone needed to stay in the Valley, in the presence of SecuROM, long enough for the hole in their memories to be wiped clean. And then they had to run for their lives before SecuROM finished them all. Madame Foster had decided they were going to wait for a sign, something to tell them where to find the passage to F:; Werner knew that trying to argue with the grand old lady was futile, and a lot of the Valley's residents listened to her. He needed to come up with something that everyone would take as the sign they were waiting for.
The moment came and went; SecuROM continued to send out it's pulses of energy, everyone aged in reverse a little further, and the memory hole was gone, So, unfortunately, were most of their other memories as well. Werner began to doubt his plan; he no longer had the skills necessary to create a fake sign to get everyone moving, and simply telling them what he'd done wasn't likely to be enough. He needed a miracle; everyone in the Valley needed a miracle. They got one. With time running out, Frankie stepped out of the house, worn and weary, for a breath of fresh air, and saw something in the nightime sky that she and the rest of the inhabitants of Foster's Valley would
never forget:
At which point everyone panicked and ran in the opposite direction as fast as they could, to the imagined safety of the Northwest hills. Which, as fate would have it, was where Mac and Bloo found a network of caves that turned out to be the passage to F:.
Werner, however, stayed behind. Whatever intelligence had provided a sign that spectacular was probably going to do something else, too; he wanted to see what would happen next. Such is the nature of the scientific mind; always questioning, always curious. He hoped that whatever it did, getting rid of SecuROM was on it's agenda. He didn't have long to wait. Strange icons began appearing in the sky, probing the now deserted Valley with beams of colored light, seeming to search for something. Always the beams would hit SecuROM, and simply pass through; it was invisible to them. Lacking anything else to do, Werner gave names to the icons, names like Norton and McAfee. Finally, one he called A-Squared located SecuROM and then things got interesting. Other icons appeared and lashed out at SecuROM with much fiercer rays of light, fighting with it, attacking it, but nothing happened; it resisted everything thrown at it. Soon, the attacks ceased; SecuROM had beaten them all.
Night fell. Werner continued to watch but knew he was nearly out of time. He'd wanted to see an end to this alien thing, this thing that had it's uses but didn't belong here. It seemed that it wasn't going to happen. He wondered if it was here to stay, if it would eventually destroy other neighborhoods as well. Time to head for F:, he thought as he went to his car. He turned for one last look, and just behind SecuROM a new icon appeared in the sky:
Werner didn't know how he knew it, but he suddenly realized that he was in
extreme danger; he had to go, and go
now, or he was going to be obliterated. He sped away as fast as his car could move; in the rearview mirror he watched as a beam of brilliant golden light shot out from this new icon, an icon he called
Windows XP, and touched the ground. Nothing seemed to happen, but then a blast of power rippled down the golden beam, a thousand times brighter than the sun, and the entire Valley rocked under it's impact. Werner drove on as fast as he could, watching all the while as a wall of blue-white fire rolled out of the blast site, vaporizing, erasing,
reformatting everything in it's path. He took some grim satisfaction in knowing that SecuROM had finally been destroyed, that the fear was finally over. He barely made it to the passage to F: when the fire washed over the northwest hills, and then they were gone. As was the rest of Foster's Valley.
"Um, does anyone know how we got here?" asked Frankie. She and all the other residents of the Valley were gathered on a hillside, looking down on a lovely bay. She knew that her house, a place called
Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, was down there somewhere:
She just wasn't sure where. Or who all these people were, for that matter. Eh, she'd worry about it later. Right now it was time to go home; after all, the Welcome Wagon would be arriving soon.
In the downtown area of Foster's Valley, the
new Foster's Valley, there is a woman who wanders around town, selling potions of many sorts and finding love for those who ask her help. She has a proper name, but is usually referred to as the Gypsy Matchmaker:
She sees many things in that crystal ball, things that were, things that are, and things that might be. She sees the new arrivals and wonders how they will get along with the current residents. There are stories here, stories that will arise from the newcomers and the natives both. Which ones will come to pass, she wonders. There are rivalries yet unborn here, where a bitter conflict may ignite and come to a head, or never begin at all. Which of these people is the one known as the Dark Sun? Who is Avatar, and who is the Chosen One? Is SecuROM finally gone, or is there another fragment of alien malware lurking in the shadows? Will this be the birthplace of the Melancholic Fighter? And what secrets are hidden in The Piano? Which of these stories will someday be told? Questions for later; for now, the Gypsy Matchmaker is content to smile at the new arrivals. "So, the Imaginary Friends and their families have finally arrived, eh?" she says to herself. "Welcome, one and all. Make yourself at home, dearies; some of your fans are waiting to greet you."
