SNAP! and the Alter Ego Dimension

Eyewitness

Victim of Tesla’s Chair

Money for a Forward Journey

False Partnership

Sins of the Past

Secrets of the Langberg

When Wishes Come True

Payoff for Happiness

In a Whirlpool

A Safe Man

Perseverance Will Be Rewarded

Moonshine and Roses

Lize’s Game Thief

New Happiness

Afrikaans books for young adults:

Django en die Toordokters (Django and the Witch Doctors);

Die Moreleta-grot ( The Moreleta Cave);

Nuwe Maat (New Friend)

Fase Een van Plan Protea ( Phase One of  Plan Protea)

Karel se Dilemma (Carl’s Dilemma)    

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

About the Author

Oh no! What is this?

Frowning, but also irritated, Tammy Delport looked at the message on her screen. Unexpected messages like these, popping up without notice could only mean one thing: There was a virus on her computer.

Tammy stared at the stupid message, Do you want to play
Snap
? in a rectangular block with a Yes, No and Help option.

So now what?
She clicked her tongue.

She tried every trick she knew to close the box, but the message would not disappear. There was no “Close” icon, no little device anywhere around the box that would let her close it.

Tammy clicked on “No”.

You need to play
Snap
. Press Yes.

She stared at the new message.
What on earth?
she thought angrily. Why then was there a “No” option?

Frustrated, she started to press all the keys that might have anything to do with delete, but the message still stayed in the middle of the screen. It did not move.

There was no way she could continue with her friend, Wayne’s, work. The computer was just not responding to anything. Clicking “Yes” could activate something nasty.

She hated viruses more than anything else in the world. There had been times when her fast reactions were all that saved her school work from being lost. More than once she thought about the people who spent time and effort writing these viruses and wondered just what made them tick. Were they malicious sadists or greedy men with shares in businesses that sell anti-virus programs? Perhaps that was the reason why new virus’s erupted out of nowhere.

Once she had convinced her mother that they should have the Internet at home, it became much easier to protect her work. Now she could download the latest anti-virus programs and keep her work safe. It still made her angry though, wasting her time and costing her, or at least her mother, money. Because of the cost, it had been a while since she last updated her computer. Now, it seemed, she had been caught out.

She glared at the computer.

All she could think of to do next was to switch it off without saving. Perhaps it would be a good thing. It would serve Wayne right if his assignment wasn’t ready for him. The reason why Wayne had asked her to download information for his assignment was because his own Internet connection was acting up. And he had the cheek to ask this favor of her, Tammy Delport, after he had laughed at her for having a bright red pimple on her face. She could hardly believe he was so cheeky or that she had actually agreed.

She pressed the red bulge on her face. Pain erupted around the tender spot and she winced. Where had this thing come from? Every day she took medicine to keep her acne under control.

When she thought about what had happened that morning, she became furious all over again. It had been the worst of days . . .

Tammy joined with the other grade twelve students in the shade of the white stinkwood trees close to the school square. She kept her left hand next to her nose to prevent her friends from seeing the huge pimple. She felt so ashamed of it, because it resembled a red volcano.

“Hi, Tammy,” she recognized Wayne’s voice and froze.

Oh no, not Wayne. She didn’t want him to see her like this. Her face was all swollen on the left side.

“Can I ask you a huge favor?” he asked.

She turned around and faced him—still with her hand next to her nose.

“Our Internet connection is giving me trouble,” he continued and his eyes wandered to her hand. “I must still do my science-assignment for tomorrow. Will you be a darling and download the stuff for me? I can do it myself in the school’s computer room on their Internet, but I would rather come round to your house and collect the information later. Then I can stay over for a while if it is okay with your mother. I’ll even bring you a chocolate bar.”

Tammy was delighted. They had been dating since the start of the year and things were going well. A few minutes work was the least a girl could do for her boyfriend.

At school everybody called Wayne ‘the Blonde Hero’. Most year twelve girls thought he was a real hunk, and she did too. Dating a popular guy made her feel special. Wayne was good at rugby and tennis and was a very fast swimmer, though being so handsome and popular sometimes made him a bit arrogant and boastful.

“Thanks,” she said. “My assignment is all done. But I’ll download the information again and put it on a flash-drive for you, okay?”

He looked at her with his cheeky smile and said: “Take your hand away from your face, Tammy. Everybody knows you’ve got a volcano growing next to your nose. Come on, let’s see it.”

Unwillingly she took her hand away and he burst out laughing. His perfect white teeth gleamed in the morning sun.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed.

She could not believe her eyes and ears. There was a powerful urge inside her to scratch out his eyes, but she knew her whole face was distorted by the huge bulge. He couldn’t help himself.

Everybody turned to stare.

She felt as if she could sink into the ground.

Goodness, why could Wayne not have been more diplomatic? He could at least have pretended it wasn’t that bad.

She wanted to tell him there and then to go to hell and get a new girlfriend, but she didn’t. She literally bit her tongue and fought against the tears.

There was going to be a big athletics gathering at the school on Saturday and she wanted to hang around with him for the whole day. She was sure Wayne would win some events and she dreamt of him charging over to her to show off his trophies. It was something she had looked forward to for weeks. She had the same shade of blonde hair as Wayne. Everybody that saw them together said that they were such a cute couple. But after what just happened she wasn’t quite so keen to go anymore. Perhaps Wayne wouldn’t like to be seen going out with little miss pimple-face.

Tammy swallowed her shame and stifled her tears and told Wayne he could come round to her house and fetch the flash drive.

The school-bell rang and she was very glad to walk away from him.

At home after school, she had put on her swimsuit and jumped into their little pool. Like most pools in South Africa theirs was in their garden. It was more like a splash pool than a swimming pool, but it was sufficient to cool off in after yet another very hot, totally cloudless, summer’s day in Pretoria. Tammy had an ulterior motive for jumping into the pool. She wanted to soak her face in the chlorinated water. If chlorine could kill algae and other stuff, it might also cleanse her face from whatever causes acne.

Because of the heat, her bikini had dried very quickly and she had decided to keep it on while working at her computer. With only her mum and herself at home, it wasn’t a big deal to stay in her bikini, and she worked better when she was cool. Her mother was an accountant who did most of her work on her desk-top at home. Having a parent good at math was a real plus at school.

While Tammy had waited for the computer to start up, she had stared at the old, black screen of the monitor. She had gazed at her own reflection, and also saw the reflection of the window behind her and the branches of the young tree in the garden outside. The curtains on each side of the window had cast colorful reflections, and on the branches of the tree she could see two almost identical birds. What she couldn’t see was the ugly bulge on her face, because there hadn’t been enough light to show her face in detail.

She had thought of Wayne’s previous girlfriend, Rosette. The beautiful Rosette, with skin so pure and perfect, that she had already been in a television commercial. Rosette never had any trouble with acne or greasy skin and she had the most beautiful hair. It was a million dollar question as to why Wayne had split from the pretty Rosette, but Tammy couldn’t bring herself to ask. She might not like the answer. She would have given anything to look as good as Rosette did. No puberty problems, no acne. Just a perfect, lightly tanned, smooth skin. Perfect, in every sense. She had dreamt of being as perfect as Rosette.

Tammy stared at the monitor with the second message.

You need to play
Snap
. Press Yes
.

What now?
Must I reboot or what?

She knew a game named
Snap
. She had played it when she was a toddler. There were playing cards with pictures of different animals, four card sets of lions, four of tigers, four of elephants, etc. Perhaps this game and the card game she had played as a child were the same?

Moving the mouse she clicked on “Help” and kept her fingers poised and ready to switch everything off in case this indeed activated a virus.

She waited.

A long piece of information appeared on the screen.

A pack of
Snap
cards contains sets of 4 pictures of people or animals or numbers that are identical. Therefore an ordinary pack of 52 cards can also be used. Choose a dealer randomly. The dealer shuffles the cards and deals them all as evenly as possible. Each player places his cards, face down, in a pile in front of him. The player to the left of the dealer begins by turning over the top card from his face-down pile. Play then moves clockwise. When someone turns over a card that matches one already face up on another player’s pile, players race to be the first to call “
Snap
!”. The player who calls “
Snap
!” first wins both piles and adds them to the bottom of his face-down pile. Play continues until one player wins all the cards. That player wins the game.

Good, this sounded like the game she used to play, Tammy thought.
But how is it going to work on the Internet? Will it be like a chat room where different people play together and shout “Snap!” by pressing a button? Which button? The Enter key?

She cancelled “Help” and immediately the block with the message was back in the middle of the screen.

Do you want to play
Snap
?

She could quickly have a look to see how the game works. If it took too much time, she would switch the computer off again. Then she would continue searching for the information for Wayne.

Okay, she clicked on “Yes”.

For a split second it looked as if the monitor had photographed her. There was a sudden flash of white light. As the flash faded she noticed the reflection of her window and the branches outside. But the light kept fading and she was engulfed in total darkness. Night-blind and startled she looked around.

It couldn’t be a power failure because it was still mid-afternoon. Light should be streaming in through her window. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when she took her swim. Where had this total darkness come from? An eclipse?

Then it felt as if she was weightless and was floating through the air. Like the time when her mum and she had visited relatives in Plettenberg Bay and her cousin had dared her to bungee jump from the Storms River bridge. She had to jump even though she was so scared that she was shaking. She had plucked up all her courage and stepped off the bridge. Then she had started to fall and fall and fall. The fear had grown as the water rushed up toward her. Her terror only had shrunk as she had had felt pressure on her ankles and her descent had started to slow. She had realized the fall was over and that she had been hanging by her ankles, bouncing gently with her blood ringing in her ears. It had felt so good to be alive. She had shrieked with the exhilaration and the sheer joy of it all.

Now she was floating somewhere without knowing where she was heading. She couldn’t see her screen anymore. It was still pitch black. She could see nothing in front of her.

What was happening? Where was she going?

She had only clicked on “Yes”.

The floating stopped. Her feet touched something solid, but she couldn’t see any flooring or ground. It was as if she was standing on gray, opaque dense fog. Or something grayish. Grayish, not black. She looked in front of her. A few meters ahead of her—more or less five meters, she guessed—she could also see nothing but the strange opaque grayness.

She turned around and saw her bedroom window with the multi-colored curtains drawn to each side. But it was only the window and a narrow strip of white wall around it that was there. The rest of her room had vanished.

She was not in her room anymore . . .

The window with the two curtains and the strip of wall were floating in the middle of nowhere. Floating in the strange grayness that surrounded her. There was no top or bottom to this grayness, no real up or down. It was simply all around her. Everywhere. And on the other side of the window were the branches of the tree outside her bedroom. Through the branches she could see blue sky, but it was only inside the frame of the window. The light from outside the bedroom did not filter through and light up the place where she was standing. It resembled a three-dimensional painting, animated, because the two birds that she had seen in the screen of her monitor were still there, hopping from one branch to the other. They seemed to be staring at her as they turned first one eye, then the other, to look through the window. As if they too knew that something was wrong.

Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

The window, the curtains, the strip of wall, the branches and the two birds, all resembled the reflection that she had seen on her computer’s monitor . . .