When I was younger my father encouraged me to read as much as he encouraged me to focus on my music, so I did a lot of reading in my spare time. And my favorite books by far were the Alice Roy* series.

I absolutely adored Alice when I was a little girl. She was smart and adventurous, she had the nicest friends, traveled around the world and solved mysteries wherever she went. Sometimes when I'd play I'd imagine that I was Alice, tracking down ghosts and bad guys in places like Scotland or faraway China, my loyal friends Marion and Bess at my side.

I suppose one of the reasons that I loved Alice so much was that I identified with her and her family. Like me, Alice had lost her mother at a young age so it was just her and her father at home. Of course, I didn't have a housekeeper like Sarah Berny like Alice did. But Alice and her father loved each other, and they were all that the other needed.

*Alice Roy = French translation of Nancy Drew.

I've never liked shortcuts. Shortcuts always seem to lead to trouble. Sure, they're great if you want to get somewhere or something done faster, but you never know what you might be missing out on if you take the short way out.

I think it's something I get from my parents; from my mother, at least. Dad may have been my piano teacher but it was Mom who made sure that I practiced every day. I was a pretty good sight reader but she wasn't about to let me slide by on only that.

I'm not really sure if I would count Daddy's abuse of Lyoko's Return to the Past program as a shortcut. Sure, he used it repeatedly to finish his work on Lyoko, but he wasn't trying to save time. Instead Daddy needed more time to work, time that he probably wouldn't have had after the Men in Black came for us.

If there's one good thing I can say about Jeremie (among all of the other good things I can say about him), it's his ability to plan ahead. During our war against XANA it seemed like he - and Ulrich - planned for pretty much every contingency - including the end of the world, or something close to it.

In the lower levels of the factory, a few levels up from the supercomputer, tucked in an out of the way area, is a fall-out shelter; at least, the Lyoko Warriors' version of a fall-out shelter. It's got cots and bedding for the five of us, camping lanterns and flashlights, and enough rations to last five people for at least a couple months. Jeremie and Ulrich created it in case of a worst case scenario, like XANA launching a major attack and destroying the school.

They got the idea from, of all people, Jim. On the day that I was materialized from Lyoko for the first time Jim had gotten into trouble for allegedly causing injury to a student - Jeremie - and was fired for it. Losing his job meant Jim also lost his room and board, so he moved into the factory and set up camp. Of course all of that was erased after Jeremie activated Return to the Past, but the idea of camping out in the factory obviously stuck with the two boys.

Fortunately we never had to use the shelter for what it was intended for; our fight with XANA never escalated that far. Even so, the shelter still remains in the factory along with the supercomputer and the scanners. The cots and lanterns and food rations are sitting there gathering dust. Jeremie and Ulrich have said that they'll move everything out one of these days.

But part of me can't help wondering if they're leaving everything in the factory...just in case...

The leaves under Aelita's feet made a crunching sound that was almost satisfying as she walked through the woods outside of campus. The solitude of her walk was also satisfying ; as much as she cared for her friends, for Jeremie, sometimes it was nice to get away. Enjoying the colors of the fall, the oranges, reds and yellows of the leaves, by her lonesome was one of the few pleasures she had remaining from her old life.

Eventually, almost predictably, Aelita found herself on the path that led to Hermitage House. Her old home. She hadn't been back there in several months, not since she and her friends had collected everything of hers and her father's that Aelita wanted to keep and destroyed everything that needed to be destroyed, including the entrance to the secret tunnel that led to the factory and her father's laboratory.

Soon enough Aelita came upon the old place, but it didn't look as it had the last time she'd been there. Since her last visit the bank had taken possession of the house, once Franz Hopper's death was confirmed and legitimized. Because of the house's run-down state workers had been busy fixing it up, making sure it was suitable before being put back on the market. Now it looked closer to the way Aelita remembered it. There was a fresh coat of paint on the outside. The fence had been cleaned of rust, the vines pulled away and the house's nameplate on the fence painted and polished. The plants in the front yard had been pruned. Aelita was sure similar improvements were going on inside the house as well.

It was bittersweet, knowing that someday in the near future the Hermitage would be home to someone else. Aelita had never mentioned it to the others but she'd often dreamed, or at least fantasized, about moving back into the house as an adult, either as a single woman or with Jeremie. It would be where she would raise her family, as her father had raised her.

Guess it wasn't meant to be, she thought to herself.

Aelita allowed herself one last, lingering gaze on the Hermitage before turning around and heading back the way she came.

Not necessarily. I guess it would depend on just how bad that day was and what happened to make it so bad. If there was some sort of major accident involved or if I were to suddenly become ill and it ended up having a permanent affect on my health, then yes I would classify that as a bad day that changed at the very least a part of me.

However, there is one so-called "bad day" that changed who I was, or at least who I thought I was. The day that we experienced our first major loss to XANA, the day that XANA stole the keys to Lyoko from me and escaped from the supercomputer. Up until that day I and the rest of my friends believed that I was an artificial intelligence, a computer program created by Franz Hopper to be the sole inhabitant of Lyoko. I was only human because Jeremie's materialization program made me so.

But then Franz sacrificed himself to save Lyoko, and me, and to give me back my memories. And that's when we learned the truth. I wasn't an AI; I was human, had always been a human. More than that, I was Franz Hopper's daughter.

Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I had never learned the truth about who I was, if I would be any different if I still thought that I was an AI. I'm fairly certain that I would be might be a bit more cheerful. I wouldn't have to worry about the Men in Black or hiding the truth about my past from practically everybody. I wouldn't have had to struggle with my identity, pitting 'Aelita Schaeffer' versus 'Aelita Stones'.

I wouldn't have had to grieve the death of my father or the disappearance of my mother, or the loss of my childhood thanks to Daddy's decision to trap me in a deactivated supercomputer for a decade.

And I suppose I wouldn't be this bitter.

Technically it wasn't a "job", but it's the closest I'll come for a while. But it was when I was partnered with Herve for a project in science class.

Partnering up with Herve wasn't my idea; Jeremie and I had always been lab partners since we were in the same science class. But Mrs. Hertz decided to change things around a bit for this project and assigned everyone different partners. Herve was (and still is, to an extent) one of Sissi's cronies, and while my friends and I have pretty much made our peace with her, Herve is another story. He's one of the few students in our grade that is as smart as Jeremie and I are and so Herve has pretty much installed himself as Jeremie's rival. It didn't help that Herve has a not-so secret crush on me, either. Unfortunately the project counted for a good portion of our grade, too, so I had to just grin and bear it for the next four weeks.

It was the longest four weeks of my life.

The entire time that Herve and I were working together on our project he never wasted an opportunity to insult Jeremie or to insinuate that he was better than Jeremie was. And on the rare occasions that he wasn't doing that, he was trying to impress me, flirt with me and ask me out. There were some points where I felt as if I was the one doing all the work.

Fortunately I only had to put up with Herve as my lab partner for those four weeks, then everything went back to normal once we handed our final project in.

Fighting against XANA didn't give my friends and I much opportunity for vacations. At least one of us had to remain in the city at all times to monitor activity on Lyoko, just in case XANA decided to launch an attack (which he usually did).

That person was usually me, due to the fact I had no home to go back to during school breaks; no family to visit or spend time with. I'll admit, it was a little disheartening to see my friends and classmates go off to be with their families while I was left alone on campus. Sometimes it felt like I was on a leash, the other end of which was attached to the computer.

But one winter break was different. I stayed behind at Kadic at first, to keep an eye on XANA. Sure enough XANA attacked, trying to kill me in order to lure my father out of hiding, but fortunately the others came back and we managed to stop him. And after that, Jeremie invited me to come home with him for winter break.

That break at Jeremie's house, with his family, was one of the best vacations I've ever had. Jeremie's parents were nothing but kind to me. It made me a little homesick for my own parents, but it wasn't an overwhelming feeling. When it was time for Jeremie and I to go back to school his mother told me how glad she was that Jeremie had found someone like me, and said that I was welcome to come back any time.

I can't wait for the next time I go back.

If I only had to take one lesson away from our battle with XANA, it would be this: having your life force tied to that of a computer program sucks.

I unfortunately vividly remember the day that we tried to shut the supercomputer down only to discover XANA's little "surprise". As we gathered in the super computer room I remember feeling a fluttery feeling in my stomach; Yumi explained that it was probably excitement for what we were about to accomplish. I watched as Jeremie grabbed the power switch and started to push it down. As he did this I started feeling shaky and dizzy and my head began to hurt. The next thing I knew I was waking up, lying on cot in another area of the factory. Jeremie told me that I had fainted. Jeremie did a quick scan and that's when we found XANA's virus.

Living with that...thing...connecting me to XANA wasn't too bad, for the most part. I was able to feel it inside me, particularly while I was on Lyoko. No matter where I went or what I did I knew that it was there, connecting me to him. It was XANA's reminder that he owned me and that my friends couldn't do anything serious against him without it affecting me.

But ironically, the absolute worst time that link caused me wasn't even XANA's fault. The power supply for the super computer started to fail, resulting in periodic shutdowns. For me this meant a trip to the hospital since every time the super computer shut down my own heart stopped beating and I went into cardiac arrest. Fortunately, and with a little help from XANA, Jeremie was able to replace the computer's power supply restoring it and my good health. We went back to the hospital, I was examined and given a bill of clean health by a baffled doctor, and we returned to Kadic.

I'm just glad that I never have to live through something like that ever again.

A few weeks ago the students in my grade finished a project for our home economics class. For the project we had to partner up into "married couples", pick careers and establish families; basically pretend that we were adults for the duration of the project. Naturally Jeremie and I paired up together as "husband" and "wife". In our self-created future Jeremie was a computer programmer and I was a music teacher at Kadic. We lived in the Hermitage, although we left out the part about it being my childhood home.

As part of the project we also had to take care of an egg "baby". Our "child" was a girl named Antea Francis, after my parents. I'll admit that part of the project was a little eerie for me, if only because part of me realized - not for the first time - that if my physical age matched my true chronological age I very well could be a parent by now.

Do I want children someday? Part of me, probably influenced by the project, does. It's part of the reason that we fought against XANA in the first place, to have the chance to live our lives, to grow up and have families. But there's another part that's afraid, that wonders if I'll be a good parent like I remember my mother or, worst case scenario, if I'll turn into my father.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess and her kindly father who lived together in the land of Earth. The princess and her father were in hiding from evil knights in black who had stolen the princess' mother long ago. To escape from the black knights the princess' father, who was a magician, created a brand new kingdom where just the two of them could live together in peace. The new kingdom was called "Lyoko".

Within Lyoko there lurked a beast named XANA. XANA had been created by the magician to protect him and his daughter in their new home. But over time, darkness grew in XANA's heart and he turned evil; he wanted Lyoko all to himself. When the magician and the princess arrived in Lyoko XANA attacked them with an army of monsters. Using the last big of his magic the magician cast a spell to save them all, putting the princess, XANA and the entire realm of Lyoko into a deep sleep.

The princess, XANA, the monsters and all of Lyoko remained in a deep sleep for years, while life on Earth moved on. Eventually the people there forgot all about the princess and her father the magician, and it was as if they had never existed at all.

That is, until the day that a young apprentice magician from Earth discovered Lyoko and broke the spell...