What is Life?

                                    

                                          
Jeremie popped the cricks in his neck before typing again. Sissi typed along on her laptop while Aelita oversaw Jeremie's calculations. Jeremie and Sissi already hypothesized that were other replicas besides the four they knew. They had been destroying them by using Jeremie's Teleportation program which allowed the team to be virtualized into the real world from the replicas to destroy their supercomputers. Though they had a secret weapon in mind, Jeremie explained that destroying the replicas would weaken XANA. Aelita questioned the apparent secretive nature between Sissi and Jeremie.

                          
"One," Sissi listed off, "Ever since XANA used the memories of your snow cottage to trick you, I think he listens to our conversations."
                          
"How?" Aelita asked.
                          
"He uses electricity. Until we can put XANA to bed, I want to keep everything under wraps," Sissi said. "So for right now, we're using the time to destroy the replicas and work on our... other project."
                          
"Right," Aelita nodded. "Would the project... you know, interfere with any... other activity?" Sissi rose her eyebrow with a wide smirk. "I mean, you know."
                          
"Don't worry," Sissi said, cracking her knuckles, "If Einstein gets any ideas of trying to skip out on your concert for the Sub-Digitals, he'll have to deal with me." Jeremie pulled at his apparently hot brown turtleneck collar. Sissi yawned, stood up, and stretched, "Well, I think we should get going."
                          
"What if-"
                          
"You have the program on a restricted part of the computer." Sissi rubbed Jeremie's shoulders. "Relax, Einstein. Your brain needs a break."
                          
"Alright, alright. I'll take a break," Jeremie griped at Aelita's light giggling. They left the computer lab and walked back to school. The afternoon sun trickled through the forest leaves of pre-autumn as Jeremie asked, "When does William come back from his break?"
                          
"About a week, why?" Sissi asked.
                          
"Did he tell you where he was going?"
                          
"No, you?" Jeremie shook his head. "Why would he keep it a secret?" Jeremie and Aelita glanced at her with deadpanned faces. Sissi's eyes jumped open. "That little..." She scrambled for her phone and called William.
                          
"H-H-Hello?" William had such a tremble in his voice that it almost didn't sound like him.
                          
"William," She said calmly, "How are you doing?"
                          
"Oh! Sissi! I'm fine. What's up? Is... you know who on the move?"
                          
"Why are you saying you know who? Aren't you in your house with your parents?"
                          
"Yes! Of course. I'm just making sure that they don't overhear. Thin walls, you know," William replied hastily.
                          
"That's interesting because I'm looking at your location from the computer lab and it says you're at the coastline. Care to explain?" Sissi grumbled.
                          
"Okay, listen, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but Sam and I-"
                          
"William, she was lying," Jeremie shouted loud enough for him to hear.
                          
"Oh... darn it!"
                          
"So," Sissi smirked, "How's Sam?" There was movement over the phone.
                          
"Why don't you ask her yourself," Sam replied over the phone. "Do you have to torture him like that, Sissi?"
                          
"You know me: always playing around," Sissi grinned.
                          
"Is that why you haven't gotten with Odd yet?" Sam could feel Sissi frown. "Alright, that was a low blow. I'm sorry. But could you stop messing with William? Isn't he your friend?"