Free Book Two of the Travelers by D.J. MacHale

problem was based on which chambers you went into, I simply constructed a problem that the computer couldn’t solve.”
    The headmistress’s eyes widened. “Like a nonterminating, nonrepeating decimal!”
    â€œExactly. The same idea. It’s possible to create a mathematical series that never ends. It just goes on and on and on forever. You see, in order to keep anybody from knowing what he was up to, Nak had to run his code in Lifelight’s Alpha Core. His game had Priority One access to Lifelight’s processing power, along with the ability to modify Lifelight’s origin code. So once the program started trying to solve an unsolvable problem, Lifelight rechanneled one hundred percent of its processing power into solving the problem. Sincethe problem was unsolvable, it maxed out the system. Boom. Automatic shutdown.”
    Headmistress Nilssin looked at Aja for a long time. “Amazing.”
    â€œThere was one strange thing though,” Aja said. “Inside the game I ran into a man. A man named Press. He told me that he was tandeming into the game, but that Nak didn’t know he was there.”
    â€œPress?” the headmistress said, eyes widening. “ Press was inside the game?”
    â€œYou know him?”
    Headmistress Nilssin smiled fondly. “Yes, I do.”
    â€œHe told me all this weird stuff about how I was something called a ‘Traveler.’ It didn’t seem like he was part of the game at all. He told me that he couldn’t talk to me in person because there was some evil guy here. Some guy who was spying on me or something.”
    The headmistress’s face went pale. “ What evil guy?”
    â€œSaint Something. Saint Pain, Saint Rain…”
    â€œSaint Dane ?”
    Aja looked at her, puzzled. “Yeah. That’s it. He said he was masquerading as that Lifelight director, Allik Worthintin.”
    The headmistress didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then, finally, she reached into a desk drawer and pulled something out. “I’ve been holding something here that I probably should have talked to you about a long time ago,” she said. “But…you push yourself so hard. I guess I just didn’t want you to have this burden too. Not at such a young age.”
    â€œWhat burden?” Aja said. She had an odd feelingrising inside her—the nervous, frightened feeling she got when things weren’t working out the way she’d predicted.
    Headmistress Nilssin leaned forward, rested one fingertip on the desk, and then pushed something across the wood toward Aja.
    There, on the desk, lay a small silver ring with a stone in the center. Aja picked it up and examined it. Around its rim were strange little symbols.
    â€œUnfortunately,” the headmistress said, “it’s not a game. Press is real. Everything he said to you in the game was true.”
    Aja swallowed.
    â€œBefore you take this ring,” the headmistress said, “I have to ask you something. What have you learned from this experience?”
    Aja squinted, thinking hard. “I’ve always thought that the solution to every problem could be found through logic. But I guess sometimes it can’t. Sometimes you have to rely on other things. Feelings, emotions, whatever.” She paused. “Remember when Allik Worthintin was trying to get me to go up to his office with him? There was a moment there where Dal Whitbred could have decided not to let me jump again. And yet ultimately he decided to trust me.”
    The headmistress nodded.
    â€œI mean, honestly?” Aja said. “He didn’t make the logical choice. Everything pointed to me being the person who was destroying the core. But I think he did it because he saw something in my eyes. Something he trusted. He made his choice based on a feeling.”
    Aja picked up the ring and studied the symbols. They were the same ones that had been carved into the