Firewall

by Sean Rodman

  Later, dinner with Dad. Over-reheated spaghetti, he asks me the mandatory questions. How my day was, if I have any homework—stuff I know he feels he has to ask me in order to be a good parent. And I give him the basic answers. Ones that won’t raise any alarms. Definitely not telling him how I’m gradually unplugging from everybody. Plugging into the game.

  “You’re not going trick-or-treating tonight, are you?” he grunts. I shake my head, keeping my eye on the noodles twisted in the red sauce on my plate. Like tentacles. Hey, there’s an idea. I can add tentacles to the tank I’m designing.

  “Good. You’re too old for that kid stuff. Like those video games. Kid stuff.”

  I shake my head again. Keep quiet and get out as soon as I can.

  Later I’m on my second can of Monster Juice, and the caffeine is hissing through my veins. The beat of my tunes wraps around me like a heartbeat. On the laptop screen images are flashing by at high speed as I type sequences of commands into a text window. Plates of metal melt together to form the sharp-edged walls of my castle. I clone my robot spider design until an army of them waits for me in the dungeon below. Spiked tentacles slide into the armored skin of a command tank, creating a nightmare combination of squid and machine. It reminds me of the sea monster from Norse mythology that Mr. Dyson was talking about in class—a Kraken. A Kraken tank. Awesome.

  And then everything freezes.

  I swear quietly, hoping I haven’t lost the last set of changes I made to my designs. I reboot the laptop and see what happens. Everything seems fine until I try to reconnect to the Valleytown mod, and that’s when a message appears.

  [Permission denied.]

  I stare at the words dumbly for a moment. Did I do something in the editor that messed things up? I carefully repeat my steps, making sure that I do everything correctly. But the response on the screen is the same.

  [Permission denied.]

  Crap. I can suddenly feel my pulse in my forehead. So many hours of work on all these special creations. Buildings. Creatures. Weapons. Everything I created in the Valleytown mod—lost?

  My phone suddenly vibrates against the desk. A text message.

  u don’t belong.

  From someone named Sudo. Sudo? Why does that name seem familiar? Oh yeah, the graffiti at school. And in the game.

  Who is this?? I text back. A minute goes by with no response. I’m just starting to put the phone down when it vibrates again.

  i own Valleytown & u don’t belong & stay out

  You created the mod?

  i made it and u messed it up, Sudo texts.

  Wait—what? Before I can type a response, another message arrives.

  how did u do it? i did not give u permission

  None of this is making sense. How did this person get my cell number? It’s not Jane—she’s too pissed at me to mess around like this, and it’s not her style. The only other person who would try something like this would be—oh, I get it.

  This you, Griggs? Not funny

  There’s a long pause. Then a flurry of messages.

  not griggs

  how did u mess up my game?

  u tell me NOW, josh, or i will make u pay

  Okay. This isn’t sounding like Griggs. Or Jane. Or anyone else I know. So who the hell is it?

  How did you get my number? I type slowly.

  i know who u are, he texts.

  I drop the phone on my desk and back away like it might contaminate me. I walk over to the window of my room and look out. The view is just like it was the last time I was in the game—nighttime with a crescent moon hanging over the city. Except here, in the real world, there are kids in costumes walking from house to house. Laughter. Life. In the mod there aren’t any people. Except for me.

  And Sudo.

  The creepy feeling comes back. I quickly pull the curtains closed.

  The phone starts to vibrate rhythmically on my desk. It’s a phone call this time, not a text message. I slowly walk back to the desk and turn it over. I don’t recognize the number. But I’m certain it’s Sudo. My finger hangs over the green Answer icon. Part of me wants to ignore him. Part of me is afraid to.

  I stab the green icon and put the phone to my ear.

  “Who is this?” I say quietly. The voice on the other end is disguised, warped into robot-like tones. But I can also detect something else. Something unexpected. He sounds worried, nervous.

  “You don’t get to know,” Sudo says. “Tell me how you got admin permission for the mod. I need to fix the security and…just explain where the hole is. I don’t want anyone else to get in and mess it up. I just want to keep it…the way it is.”

  Suddenly I understand what he’s feeling. He wants to protect his kingdom, where no one else is allowed.

  “I didn’t wreck anything,” I say. “I just built some new stuff—”

  Sudo snorts. “You trashed half the downtown with your little fragfest. I had to reload all the data from an older copy. Took me two hours to make sure everything was right again.”

  “Okay, you’re right. That’s on me.” I sit down heavily in my desk chair, phone feeling clammy against my ear. “But I really don’t want to destroy anything else. I like the mod. It’s cool. I just want to play in it. Build stuff. Like the castle.”

  “Castle?” From the surprised tone in Sudo’s voice, I realize that he hasn’t yet found Blade Castle stashed in Havenwood Park. “It’s not your playground. Forget it—just stay out.” He sounds like he’s about to disconnect. Crap!

  “I’ll make you a deal,” I say quickly. “Let me in the game again, and I’ll explain how I did it. Show you everything I’ve done. But only once I’m in the game with you.”

  The connection crackles a little bit. Finally he answers.

  “All right. Log in.” The phone beeps, and the call is terminated.

  I turn back to my laptop and try connecting to the mod again. The cursor pulses blue and green for a moment. Then, with a shower of pixels, my warfighter appears in the central square of Valleytown.

  I’m back in. And this time, I’m not alone.

  Chapter Ten

  The game is still in night mode, with the moon still hanging in the same position in the sky. In the cold blue light, towering over me at twice my height, stands a mecha-golem. Shaped roughly like a human, the thing is a wild combination of parts. It’s cobbled together from the leftover pieces of a hundred different creatures. Its left hand is a cruel-looking hook, which it raises slowly to point down the street.

  I turn my warfighter and start walking, the mecha-golem falling into step beside me. As we walk through the downtown, I notice that the destruction I caused last time has been fully erased. As if nothing ever happened.

  After a few minutes we arrive at the electrical substation that Griggs first led me to. Lightning still crackles along wires strung between the massive transformers. After a moment a strange figure emerges from the shadows beneath one of the towers. He’s wearing warfighter armor bigger and heavier than my own.

  “Sudo?” I ask. “Is this your… home?”

  “My fortress,” he says. His voice isn’t masked and distorted like it was on the phone. He sounds human. And prouder, more sure of himself. “So let’s see what you built. What are the coordinates? We’ll fly there.”

  “Ah, that’s a problem. I don’t have a jetpack.”

  “That’s lame,” he snorts. “Hang on for a second.” I hear the faint clicking of keys through the headset. A few seconds later the image of my warfighter alters as two jet pods appear on his back. Cool.

  “Thanks,” I say reflexively. We sort out the location coordinates of the castle, then launch our warfighters into the night sky. The mecha-golem and the electrical towers quickly dwindle beneath us. Valleytown is spread out below like a map, roads outlined by the dots of streetlights. Homes glow in the darkness. But nothing moves. In real life, the headlights of cars would crawl down the streets. Little knots of people would be clustered around the shops. There wou
ld be the noise of arguments and accidents, life being lived messily. Not here. Everything is static. Like a beautiful photograph, a snapshot, a perfect version of a screwed-up world.

  Sudo interrupts my thoughts. “You going to talk now?” he asks impatiently. “Tell me how you made yourself an admin?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t,” I say, tensing up a little. Not sure how he’s going handle this next part. “I had a friend do it for me.”

  Sudo’s warfighter suddenly spins in midair to face me. “What? Someone else was in my mod?”

  “Two people,” I say, hoping my staying calm will encourage Sudo not to freak out. “A friend of mine from school was playing in here with me for a while. And then someone else hacked your system and gave me admin rights. I don’t really know how she did it.”

  There’s silence from Sudo, his warfighter hovering in the dark sky. I realize how pissed he must be. I would be if I were him.

  “Neither one is coming back,” I say quietly.

  “How can you be sure?” he says.

  “We’re not friends anymore. They’re gone for good.”

  There’s a pause. Then Sudo’s warfighter turns and hits some kind of turbo-boost, rapidly disappearing into the distance. I engage my jets and race after him.

  I finally catch up with him at the park. I land beside his warfighter, standing on the ground looking up at the sharp-edged spires of my black metal castle. A swarm of spiderbot scouts, the size and shape of hockey pucks, come skittering over the walls to examine us. I’ve programmed them to recognize me and not attack—but I can tell they’re not sure about Sudo.

  “Uh, better take a step back,” I warn him. “Those little guys aren’t bad on their own. But they’ll call out the big guns eventually.” Sudo’s warfighter shuffles back. He turns slowly, taking it all in.

  “You did all this?” He doesn’t sound angry anymore, just kind of mystified.

  “Took me about two weeks. There’s lots more inside.”

  “It’s…cool,” Sudo says reluctantly. “So show me the rest.”

  I disable the spiderbot defenses, then bring down the obsidian drawbridge. We walk into the castle and toward the great hall. This is where I’ve assembled the big mechanical spiders and Kraken tanks, lined up neatly in rows. We look over them from an upper balcony. Occasionally a little dragonfly-bot clicks through the air, carrying pieces of equipment to the multi-armed mechanic. In turn, the mechanic assembles the pieces into more bots. A little factory creating my pet monsters. Sudo’s warfighter watches the mechanic for a long time. When he finally speaks, he doesn’t sound mad, just kind of perplexed.

  “Everything in this game was made by me, do you understand? It was all part of my plan. I never wanted anyone else to build in it. None of this belongs here.” Sudo’s warfighter lifts his gun, pointing at the mechanic. At the spiderbots. Then at me. “You don’t belong here.”

  I make my warfighter back up a few steps. “Look, I can’t stop you from destroying any of this. Or kicking me out. Like I said, the one other person who could give me admin rights to the game is gone. And she’s not coming back. You lock me out, and I’m gone forever.”

  Sudo says nothing. But orange lines on the barrel of his gun start to pulse, indicating that the weapon is armed. I quickly continue with my speech.

  “But you’ve made something amazing here. Something that’s like the real world—but better. And I think I can add to it. Maybe it wasn’t part of what you had planned. But you like what I’ve built, right?”

  Sudo grunts. “Yeah.”

  “So why not give me a chance to show you that I belong here?”

  The gun doesn’t waver. The orange lights pulse faster.

  “I belong here, Sudo,” I say.

  There’s a pause that feels like forever. Finally the orange glow fades from his weapon.

  “Maybe,” Sudo says. “But you have to prove yourself first.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sudo’s warfighter leads me back outside. We move past the bustling bugchoppers and spiderbots, down the rows between the hulking Kraken tanks.

  “Why do you think I built Valleytown?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “A place to hang out? Kind of like a better version of the real world?”

  “No,” Sudo snorts. “That would be stupid. I built Valleytown so I could have a place to test things out.”

  “Things?”

  “Ideas. Plans. Missions.” His warfighter spins to face me. “You’re going on a mission. It’s going to be a little different than what you’re used to. If you can handle it, I’ll let you stick around.” I hear the muffled clicking sound of Sudo typing commands on his keyboard.

  “What do—” I start to ask. But before I can finish, everything changes. The castle vanishes, and suddenly I’m back in the central Valleytown square, next to the church. Same moon. Same downtown.

  I see something move in the distance. A figure. Then another. Dark silhouettes shuffle toward me. A faint groaning fills the air. Zombies? Must be zombies.

  I know how to handle this—I’ve been trained by a hundred video games, TV shows and movies. See, your basic zombie is dumb and slow. Not a problem for a warfighter when it’s one-on-one. The only problem is that zombies rarely come alone. Instead you get swarms that need to be mowed down like blades of grass. I warm up my radium gun and get to work. Green lightning crackles from the barrel, snapping into the crowd of shadowy figures. I hit one, and he glows green, then brightens to an unbearable white. Then vanishes. My score increases a few points. I move the crosshairs on the screen to my next shadowy target. Zap.

  But more and more keep coming at me. Main Street is filling up with the groaning horde. I keep firing, but my radium gun eventually runs out of charges. When I pause to reload, things go to hell. Like water surging over a broken dam, the wave of zombies rushes inexorably toward my warfighter. Time to go.

  I spin around and run smack into Mr. Dyson.

  I gasp. What’s standing in front of me isn’t a classic video-game zombie. Instead, it’s like the zombie dolls that Griggs and I found in the virtual version of our high school. A basic black-and-gray human-shaped figure with an actual photograph pasted onto the head. In this case, Mr. Dyson’s. His image must have been taken from the school website. The effect might be funny if it weren’t so creepy. His face is stretched in a weird permanent grin, unmoving and malevolent. His arms reach out and claw at my warfighter. The screen flashes red as I start to lose health points.

  “Sorry, Mr. Dyson,” I mutter. I squeeze off a burst from the radium gun, and he vanishes in a green haze. The groaning suddenly sounds louder, and I turn around. Dozens of figures lurch toward me, almost within arm’s reach. Now that they are closer, I can see that each zombie is actually created in the same way as Mr. Dyson was—a basic human shape with a photograph pasted over the head. Some of the faces I recognize from school—students, teachers. All real people.

  Sudo is putting real people in the game. And getting me to blow them away.

  I raise my radium gun. Then my finger hesitates over the trigger button on my game controller. The zombie dolls shamble closer.

  “You know what you have to do, right?” Sudo’s voice makes me jump. His warfighter is nowhere to be seen, but he must be watching me somehow. He sounds peeved. “Just kill them all. The next part of the mission is even better.”

  I just stare at the weird crowd as it shuffles toward my warfighter, scanning the faces. The goth kid from the bus. A couple of teachers.

  Griggs.

  Both my hands drop away from the keyboard. The screen starts strobing red as the zombie dolls surround my warfighter, clawing at his armor. But I do nothing. Within a few seconds the red X is hovering in the air, and my warfighter is dead.

  “What the hell happened?” Sudo says. “You should have slaughtered them!”

  I answer slowly, processing it all. “Yeah, zombies are usually easy to slaughter. But these ones were different.”

/>   “The faces? That’s what makes it awesome.”

  “But they were like real people,” I say slowly.

  “Was that the problem?” Sudo sounds genuinely puzzled.

  “I don’t know.”

  There’s a long pause. “Maybe I was right. You don’t get it. You don’t belong here.” I hear a muffled tapping sound as Sudo starts keying in commands. My screen switches from the mod to the main screen.

  “Wait!” I say. “It wasn’t the faces. That part was really cool.” I try to say it with an enthusiasm I don’t feel.

  “So what happened?”

  “It was just my Internet connection. It gets laggy sometimes, makes things freeze up. Just a glitch.”

  There’s another pause. I’m not sure he believes me. I still feel weirdly queasy about what I saw. Like I just picked at a bandage and saw a little bit of the infection waiting underneath. Part of me is hoping he just kicks me out.

  But he doesn’t.

  “I get it,” he says. “Lag sucks. Try rebooting and logging in. We’ll do it again.”

  I rub my forehead. “Tomorrow, okay? Can we do it then? The connection might be better.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Sudo says, yawning. “It’s late anyway. See you tomorrow night.”

  “Great,” I say, relieved.

  “Or maybe I’ll see you at school.” Sudo’s laugh is like rough sandpaper on steel. “But I bet you won’t see me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sunlight punctures the cracks around my window blinds, sending laser-like lines onto my bed. Right into my eyes. I can’t help but wake up, despite only having had three hours’ sleep. But it’s the smell of bacon from the kitchen downstairs that actually gets me out of bed.

  “Morning,” grunts Dad. He’s wearing pyjama bottoms and an old Rangers T-shirt, standing at the stove. A pan of bacon sizzles beside another of bright-yellow scrambled eggs. “I’m coming off the night shift. Thought we could both use breakfast before you head off to school.”