She awoke to find herself lying on a grassy bank.

It could have been a Windows XP wallpaper. The golden sun bathed the emerald grass in a warm light, soothing the various aches in his body from being thrown around a train. As far as he could see, the rolling hills stretched out with no sign of an end. There was silence. Complete silence. Not even a background tune apart from the crackling hum of the atmosphere that you always heard when the background music went offline. It was perfectly peaceful and she was utterly alone.

She rolled over and stared at the deep blue sky. The fragrance of the grass, its feeling beneath her feet, reminded her of more peaceful times when she wasn't an exile, or at least not from anywhere important. Wherever she was, it was beautiful. She didn't dare believe it was real. How could it be? She remembered being on an unstoppable train about to plummet into an endless void that had once been a plague world - not the first time it had happened to her courtesy of the RRB Office, she thought bitterly. Had she teleported herself off in time? If so, and if by some miracle she had teleported far away enough and in the right direction to lock onto an uninhabited planet, she could be anywhere. Fighting off her urge to fall asleep in the sun, she stood up and walked in a random direction. She found herself climbing up and up a steepening hill. When she reached the top, she looked down and saw the beginnings of a huge city.

It took her longer to climb down. She managed to slip and fall into several hedges and her clothes were even more ripped and dirty by the time she reached the bottom. She leapt a stone wall and carried on running down a country path. There were a few signs of habitation, all of them abandoned - a bus stop with an empty bus parked outside it, an empty farm house, its fields devoid of animals. After a few wrong turns, she found the city gates and walked in. The city was called LinkSys 04.

It was also completely abandoned.

The city streets were empty. Abandoned vehicles lined the roads. All the building and shops were empty, some left open, some closed, some halfway inbetween. The street lights had all shorted out but some computers were still working. A digital billboard the size of a wall looped over and over, showing her adverts for all the major interplanetary trading corporations. She looked around her and saw that it was full of huge stores and business centres, as well as a communications tower obviously built to contact other systems far and wide, and an interplanetary transport interchange that rivaled RRB Central. It had cathedrals for every major religion and a Capel Datei centre. This was once an important city, an interplanetary trade and communications hub. Once it had obviously housed millions of people. Why would they all abandon the place like this? There were no dead bodies or signs of destruction, nothing that left a clue as to what they were fleeing. How could so many people vanish without a trace, leaving everything perfectly pristine?

Shaking her head, Diggory wandered over to the transport interchange and searched through the empty aisles, the buses, trains and spacecraft sitting in their hangars. Soon she found what she was looking for - an RRB depot connected to a small deportation station. The computers were still working, although she was disappointed to find that it was not connected to the interplanetary computer network at all. She typed in Kobryn's password and was permitted access to the staff intranet.

'Welcome to RRB LinkSys 04, Mr. Kobryn.' The computer had an annoying female voice with an overeager American accent.

"Computer, what system are we on?" she asked, "What planet is this?"

'You are currently on planet Earth in the Sol System.'

"Repeat that, computer."

'You are currently on planet Earth in the Sol System.' it complied happily, 'Enjoy your stay, Mr. Kobryn.'

-Epilogue-

On the front page of Interplanetary Chronicle, March 2036:

JUNON'S BASEMENT TO PLAY AT LINKSYS-04

Tomorrow, at 7pm standard interplanetary time, Junon's Basement will play in the city square of LinkSys-04, capital of LinkSys, Neo Earth.

Until a week ago, they were a relatively obscure epic metal band from Northern Legendra and were surprised when they received an offer to play at the opening ceremony of Neo Earth. Diggory Doragor, the new system's head RRB Official, said to be personally responsible for its discover, has been described by colleagues 'a total Junon's Basement fangirl' and has personally commissioned them. The paycheck is large but the main benefit for the band will be the publicity. The opening of the new system is said to be the biggest news story in ten years.

An interplanetary trading hub had been discovered, whole and undamaged, underneath a plague world thought completely erased. In fact, the virus had only infected the system's front end, a consensus reality system that had developed by accident and run out of control before becoming cancerous. Unfortunately, every single inhabitant was infected and erased in the initial purge, but immigrants are being brought in now that the system has been officially announced virus-free.

For Mrs. Doragor, now 34, it has been difficult adjusting from the duties of a lone guard on the border of a plague planet to the Director of one of the largest interplanetary hubs in the Universe. She comments 'I'm only here to see that it never happens again. Once people are aware of the dangers of corrupted reality systems, I will retire and return to my old life.' Mrs. Doragor suffers from a rare administrative glitch making her both an RRB Official and a registered exile. Once she retires, she will be a Grade Five Higher Exile. When asked what she will actually do when she retires, she refused to comment.

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