Dagger clicked the back button to erase the command he failed to execute over a dozen times that day.

"I'm sorry Jeannie, I can't do it."

He knew Jeannie would want him to execute the worm, the computer program that would eat the code away one line at a time, erasing the first virtual region they created. Officially, they called it "Sheryl's Sandbox," but its significance was more monumental than the name suggested. She wouldn't want the risk of that scumbag husband tainting her special place. In truth, Dagger should have done it right away. Jeannie made him promise so many years ago.

"If anything ever happens to me, execute the worm program to evaporate the Sandbox. That's Sheryl's place, our place. I know we made it difficult to find, but promise me anyway."

It was almost midnight of their anniversary, the first day he booted up his personal systems since receiving the tragic news, but he still couldn't do it. During this final attempt to fulfill his promise, he got other ideas.

Would it really hurt anything if I kept the Sandbox for myself? Maybe I could visit and even learn to forget the reality of this pain for a while. Isn't that one of the many reasons we created the Sanctuary in the first place?

Once those thoughts gained life, he changed his course of action. Instead of destroying the region with the worm, he set himself up to do a solo entry from his basement. Xander may have revoked and banned Dagger's credentials from the S.O.S. Building and Internal Server System, but there was no command listed in any notes or system logs that could lock him out of the Sandbox. He could enter it directly from here.

Just like the old days.

No one else even knew the region existed. He and Jeannie had intentionally kept it that way. Sheryl's Sandbox was a sacred, secret place. You'd have to break through far too many firewalls, and decipher some of Jeannie's secret code, to figure that one out. It was hidden deep in the server core and yet, separate from all other entities. Only Jeannie could cross the bridge from one to the other on the inside, and only Dagger could control what happened to it on the outside.

Well in actuality, Jeannie could do whatever she wanted no matter what side of the virtual screen she was on, but that is how they worked best. He would manage the console and server work, while she immersed and worked from the inside.

At fourteen, Jeannie was a master at server design; and, in the fifteen years since they met, she never ceased to astonish him with the things she could do. There were only three people that could read the language of the core system, Dagger being the only one of them still alive. It was an encrypted language created by two young girls, originally designed so they could 'pass notes' to each other in school.

Dagger had laughed at that one. Most girls just wrote notes and slipped them into each other's locker, but not Jeannie and Sheryl. They created a language all their own and hid messages for each other behind icons, firewalls, riddles, and games. It was their way of having fun in an environment that was far too serious for pre-teens.

Dagger still didn't understand how Xander managed to get legal control of S.O.S., but Jeannie had trusted him completely with the business stuff. In the end, her signature was confirmed on all the relevant documents. She would never have done that knowingly, but that didn't mean she couldn't be tricked. She was pure of heart, an innocent. Jeannie never would have suspected the man she married to cheat her.

What puzzled him more than the question of legal control, though, was how Xander avoided the endGame activation. Dagger, of course, knew he didn't disable it himself. He could only guess that Jeannie had done so for some unknown reason and forgot to tell him. That was the only logical answer, but it still didn't make sense to him.

They had discussed the endGame over and over before launching the master system and beginning the beta trial. Jeannie, having seen many questionable things during her early years at the prodigal school, wanted to protect the code from any kind of corporate or academic abuse. They both agreed that in the wrong hands, the Sanctuary could be dangerous. For this reason, they had stamped the system with both of their biological signatures.

"Okay, so we are agreed," Jeannie had confirmed. "If neither of us logs in for over seven days, the Sanctuary will safely kick everyone out and lock itself down, the same way it kicks someone out if they fall asleep. Simple program adjustment. I'll call it the endGame, but encrypt it with our code so it won't be easy to spot."

The day she figured out the sleepKicker Protocol was yet another day that Dagger marveled at her brilliance. Jeannie didn't take the credit, of course. She never did. This time it was because she had figured it out by studying some doctor's work whose name always escaped him. She referenced the doctor's work a lot, said his work was the key that helped her design the required security. She was afraid that if someone fell asleep inside the Sanctuary they might get lost in there, become confused about which reality was real. The other possible theory was that upon disconnect, their brain would shut down on exit. Not being able to connect the dots between realities, it would launch the person into an unending coma.

"Putting the physical body and coma scenario aside for a moment, it is still too dangerous," she had insisted the many weeks before. "We have to figure out how to recognize the brainwaves and kick them out of the system whenever they begin to present. If not, their consciousness could literally separate from their body and biorhythm signature. That would leave them doomed to roam the Sanctuary forever, like a ghost or a lost soul."

Dagger shook his head at that one. She always said "we," but she wasn't fooling anyone. She did all the heavy lifting. Sure, he helped refine the details and often acted as her muse, but the Sanctuary was her baby. How could it not be? She started building it when she was nine. She wouldn't even take credit for that. In her mind, it was all about Sheryl.

"You would have loved Sheryl, Dagger, she was the brightest light, as kind as she was brilliant."

Dagger didn't think he could admire Jeannie any more than he already did; but the night she told him about Sheryl created an unbreakable bond between them, a depth of friendship and trust he didn't even know was possible. It had always been Jeannie's dream, but that night her dream became their mutual quest. Together they vowed to make the Sanctuary their foremost goal. Of course, he would have done anything to make Jeannie happy; but in this case, he took ownership of the dream right along with her.

"I wish I could have met her," he shared as Jeannie had smiled through her tears, the first tears Dagger had ever seen her shed.

"She wouldn't want me to cry. Even with all she had to deal with, Sheryl was the best laugher I ever knew. She was even better than you!" she had joked as she elbowed Dagger in the ribs.

The story Jeannie shared with him that night included a rollercoaster of inspiration, joy and heartbreak. Sheryl had been born with many ailments, leading her to a wheelchair and limiting communication to a computer console. When they first met, at age nine in a school for prodigies, Jeannie saw none of that; and, Sheryl's limited communication abilities didn't hinder their fast-forming friendship.

"I could see what she was thinking just by looking at her big, beautiful brown eyes. Other people could have seen it too if they had bothered to really look at her. Sadly, all most of them saw was the chair and her physical differences. Even though she was there, in the same school with the rest of us, the other kids treated her like she was stupid. Which was ironic since she figured out how to interface her brain with the computer, a prototype system that had never before been seen! It converted some of her synaptic activity into speech, so she didn't have to struggle with the keypad to talk.

"She did that before I got there, when she still had mobility with her arms, hands, and fingers; but, by the time I arrived, she was pretty isolated and frustrated. No one knew enough to help her take it to the next level. Basically, she needed someone with a little insight and willing hands. So, I offered mine.

"Believe it or not, all we had to do was increase the vocabulary database. She had already done all the hard stuff. We also converted the visor she wore over her eyes to a mesh you could see through. That was just so I could see her eyes better though. They both worked the same. Oh! And the temple attachments, I turned those into little daisies for her so they looked more like barrettes instead of robot wires," Jeannie laughed.

"After that, she no longer had to filter her thoughts. She could just think what she wanted to say and the computer would spit it out. She taught me so much, so far ahead of her time, completely and utterly brilliant."

From that moment on, the girls became two little hackers, constantly manipulating Sheryl's computer console to make her life easier. In the process, they created hidden adventures that only they knew about and could enjoy, discussed concepts for a world where Sheryl could experience a different life. Maybe even retrain her brain to work around her physical challenges. While that would have seemed like a fantasy game to Dagger at that young age, to Jeannie and Sheryl it was the next logical step. Just another day at school.

Before Sheryl passed away, she shared a dream with Jeannie. A dream they began to explore diligently. This dream was something so simple for the average person, but without virtual support was an impossibility for Sheryl. She wanted to walk barefoot, in a field full of her favorite flowers...a field of daisies.

That unrealized dream led to Jeannie's obsession with creating such a world in honor of her friend's memory and an opportunity for others that suffered similar afflictions. And so, it would become that Sheryl Olivia Sanford would forever live on in the creation of the Synaptic Optical Sanctuary, S.O.S. meaning something completely different to Jeannie and Dagger than it did to the rest of the watching world.

Sheryl's passing was indeed a huge tragedy, but also one that led to Jeannie and Dagger meeting. Because of the unbearable loss, Jeannie convinced her mother to remove her from the prodigal school and send her to college halfway across the nation. She couldn't bear to return. It would never be the same.

Dagger thanked Sheryl for her sacrifice often, for since that first day he couldn't imagine not having Jeannie in his life. To him, it even felt like Sheryl lived in the Sandbox with them. Maybe it was crazy but Sheryl was an important part of his life too, even though they had never truly met. Now that Jeannie was gone, he was supposed to keep his promise and erase them both from his life.

"I can't do it, Jeannie. Please forgive me, I just can't do it."

The final decision was made only minutes before the stroke of midnight. He hooked himself into the synaptic suit and pulled the net-mesh down over his eyes, an optic interface based off of Sheryl's original program. He entered the Sandbox with tears streaming down his face.

Sheryl greeted him as he stepped barefooted into her field of daisies. The avatar created from old pictures was skipping in circles around the region entrance point, occasionally stopping to pick a daisy to add them to the bunch in her hand. She stopped and smiled when she saw him.

"Welcome back, Dagger."

"Hi Sheryl, looking beautiful today," said Dagger through his tears.

"Are you crying? You know that is against the rules. No crying here. It's a happy day," she said in the melodious voice that Jeannie had imagined would be Sheryl's own.

"Yes, I know. I'm afraid I'm breaking all the rules today," Dagger replied, holding back a sob. "It's about Jeannie."

"She has been looking for you. She was getting worried. I think you must be late," said Sheryl looking over her shoulder.

Running towards them was a barefooted woman dressed in a black pin-striped pantsuit, her hair neatly knotted in a French twist.

"What the...?"

"Dagger! Where have you been?! What went wrong?" she asked holding out her wrist and panting from her sprint, "I swear, this has been like the longest day ever."