The CyberCat was back to normal, he looked shaken, but OK. “Well I’ve survived another crash!” he said, “What a relief! There’s always a chance that you can be corrupted or even deleted.” He looked at the four cats. “I see you guys made it through the crash just fine. We are all unbelievably lucky.”, he said. “No matter how many crashes I go through, I never get used to it, it scares me each and every time.” 

“I’d rather not think about what just happened” said Opie, “I never knew the CyberWorld could be so frightening”.

“Well, hey, no point in dwelling on it.” said the CyberCat, “Say why don’t we pay a visit to my old buddy Ice Pop the penguin, in the Ice Zone, where he lives.”

With that the world transformed itself into a starlit body of water, going out in all directions. Cutting through the water was a path made out of ice. As the cats walked the path they saw amazing ice formations coming out of the water on either side of it. Some looked like delicate sprays of water, blown up by the wind and then frozen there. It was as if the sweeping movement of the wind had been captured in a frozen water sculpture. Other formations looked like fuzzy little creatures or a bird’s wing. The ice looked delicate enough to shatter at the slightest touch.

The cats walked through the ice zone in awed silence, for what could have been hours or days. Time stood still. Then the silence was broken by the sound of Opie’s voice.  “You what’s strange,” He said, “All this ice and I’m not even cold.” He turned to the CyberCat. “Why is that?” he asked.

“What is ‘cold’? I think that’s another one of your words that are meaningless  here in CyberWorld, like ‘sleep’ and ‘tired’ whatever they mean.”, said the CyberCat.

“Well let’s see,” said Opie, “you don’t get cold, you don’t get tired, so you don’t sleep, so… I’ll bet you don’t get hungry either, and you probably don’t need to eat, right?”

“What do you mean, ‘eat’?” said the CyberCat.

“Well there, I think you have your answer”, Zigger said to Opie.

“So you don’t have to eat or sleep, and you never get cold or tired! That’s really hard to imagine. It seems so strange, I haven’t eaten or slept in such a long time, and yet I’m not even tired or hungry!”

“Sounds great to me,” said Zigger, “It’s that much less I have to think about. I can prowl and explore for as long as I want, without having to stop for anything!”

Opie thought about long luxurious afternoon naps, stretched out on the sidewalk, his fur warm from the sun. He remembered the great taste of a fresh helping of canned cat food, and he felt homesick. “I miss eating and sleeping! And you know another weird thing? There’s no smell here either!”

“Why that’s right!” said Thomas, “I noticed something strange about the CyberWorld right from the start, something missing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was! There are no smells, that’s it!”

Opie thought about the smell of tuna or leaves burning on a late autumn day, and it made him even more homesick. He wondered if they would ever get back to the real world.