Cragbridge Hall, Volume 2: The Avatar Battle

by Morris, Chad

  George spoke. “If someone had told me that they were two famous unsolved problems, I probably wouldn’t have even tried to solve them. This is an example of the power of positive thinking.” The image faded into nothing.

  Cool story. Mrs. Trinhouse was obviously teaching the entire class, but was she especially trying to encourage Abby? And if so, was it sincere? Or to get on Abby’s good side, so she didn’t suspect her? That had happened last semester with her history teacher. Abby wouldn’t let it happen again.

  “One of your advantages as students,” Mrs. Trinhouse said, “is that you don’t know what should be impossible. And I’m surely not going to tell you. So today I want you to start on a project that will continue through the whole semester. But you will each need one of these.” Mrs. Trinhouse walked to her desk and then returned with a flat container. She opened it to reveal a series of little spheres.

  Immediately Abby thought of the sphere her grandfather had given her. The deleted one. The empty one. The one she didn’t know what to do with.

  Mrs. Trinhouse walked up and down the rows, letting each student grab a sphere. Great, now Abby would have two she didn’t know what to do with.

  “I want you to begin to make something all your own—your own house, your own amusement park, your own car, your own world. It doesn’t matter. Pick something. Go big. Go for the impossible. I have programmed each of your spheres with our world’s laws of physics, but otherwise, you have free rein to create whatever you like. These spheres are a blank canvas. A blank canvas is one of the most beautiful things—it has endless potential. You can create anything. Your sphere is just waiting for you to decide what is possible.”

  “C’mon,” Mrs. Trinhouse said, and clapped her hands. “Let’s push some limits. Try something ambitious. Let’s follow George Dantzig’s example and do something others think is impossible. Be sure to either ask me or search our class site if you need any help with your math equations or engineering questions. All the building materials we have on file will be available to you.”

  It worked. It was inspiring. But Abby was still thinking about what Mrs. Trinhouse had said about a blank canvas. Was that Grandpa’s point? Did he clear off the sphere so Abby could make her own creation on it? That’s what a blank canvas is for, right? And he did say to put the sphere back in its place and make the most of what happens.

  Abby walked to her booth and put on the suit and sensors. But instead of putting the sphere Mrs. Trinhouse had given her into the console, she put in the one from Grandpa. She had to decide what to build. A house? She had always had ideas about how to put rooms together and decorate. No. She didn’t think that would be enough to get a good grade. She would probably have to be more ambitious. A car? No. That would require a whole bunch of engineering Abby didn’t understand. What about a castle? Oh yeah.

  Her imagination filled with the possibilities. She knew she had to start with a design. She used her rings to search for real castles. She loved the classic look of the Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, England. Its thick towers looked so solid and majestic. It was built by a knight to defend the area against France in the Hundred Years War. But it had no rooms in the middle. All its rooms and covered spaces were on the outside in the walls and towers.

  She also loved the Bran Castle in Transylvania with its towers, pitched red roofs, and spires. The info said that it was often referred to as Dracula’s castle—a place that inspired the writing of the famous book, though it really had nothing to do with Dracula.

  Abby started to get an idea of how large she wanted her castle to be. She drew a plan with squares on it, each small square on the plan equaling about two feet. Based on the models and plans of existing castles, she planned her own. She could use parts from each that she liked. They would blend into something original. She spent the entire class measuring various places from the walls to the towers and the gates and calculating how tall and thick certain places would need to be. She made a decision. She wanted it to be a modern castle: screens and modern furniture, heating and air conditioning—no drafty castle for her. Maybe even a garage. She’d have to park the car somewhere, right?

  She also consulted the list of materials, and in the end decided on granite. She would use various sizes of stones. She learned that just one stone in the Western Wall in Jerusalem was longer, taller, and thicker than a bus. It weighed the equivalent of two hundred elephants. She had no idea how the Jews had moved such a stone over two thousand years ago. In her virtual world, she could move it with a sweep of her hand, but she didn’t think she would need any that big.

  It was only at the very end of the class period that she began to set the huge stones of the castle’s foundation. This was going to look amazing!

  Grandpa suddenly appeared. He seemed just as real in the virtual world as he did in real life. Apparently the sphere still had at least enough code left to show Grandpa; it wasn’t as completely erased as she’d thought. He leaned against a large block of stone. “Well done. Some might have thought a blank sphere was useless. They might even have discarded it because it was empty. But that is precisely what makes it great. And you decided to make something of it.”

  Abby felt a blanket of relief fall over her. She was on the right trail, a step closer to getting her answer.

  “We could compare building on an empty sphere to life.” Abby was used to her grandpa always trying to teach her something. “Each one of us starts off with nothing, but we make decisions, we learn. In a way, it is like building something. Each choice fills our world with something new, something more. I have something else to teach you, but first I need you to build the best you know how.” Virtual Grandpa smiled and disappeared.

  Awesome. Abby could work on her homework and toward finding an answer at the same time. She stacked a huge granite block on top of two others. She couldn’t help but wonder what exactly Grandpa was going to teach and how it would help her with her question—and how would that help her fight against Muns?

  • • •

  “Okay, I’m going into my cage to work,” Dr. Mackleprank said.

  “Sem problema,” Rafa said.

  “English . . . English,” Derick reminded. He picked out the word for “problem,” but what did sem mean?

  “Rafa just said that it wouldn’t be a problem,” Dr. Mackleprank explained.

  “And Dr. Mackleprank’s cage is his office or his lab—kind of both,” Rafa said. “I guess we both need interpreters.”

  The avatar teacher laughed.

  “We’ll be here a bit longer,” Rafa explained. “We have avatar club today.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Dr. Mackleprank said, palming his forehead. “Still trying out?” He looked at Derick.

  Derick smiled and nodded. Abby had passed on the news about the spheres, and Derick had started to build something, but had taken a break to come try out again.

  “Well, good luck. Maybe they can help you a bit more with the giraffe,” Dr. Mackleprank said. He had really pushed Derick today in class. “You have work to do.” His weakness had definitely been noticed.

  Derick winced, knowing Rafa was listening. He was hoping to keep that a secret. “I’ll keep practicing,” he said, though that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Dr. Mackleprank waved goodbye and walked through the main lab to a back room and closed a heavy door.

  “Giraffes, huh?” Rafa said.

  Derick looked down. “Yeah. I—” Derick rubbed his temple. “I pretty much stink. But I’ll get better. Let’s just not do it in the club for a while, okay?”

  Rafa smiled. “You might want to practice. I don’t always choose what we do. We rotate. They could choose something with giraffes today.” Derick didn’t like that possibility.

  Derick and Rafa began walking toward their equipment, but Rafa looked back at Dr. Mackleprank, who was now leaving the lab. “He’s been spending some long hours in his office these days.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Grade p
apers, work on avatars. He’s always fiddling with something.”

  “Like his half-put-together robots back there?”

  “Sim. How did you know?”

  “He spoke with me back there the other day after our relay race.”

  “It must have been pretty important. He doesn’t normally bring students there. He has a whole closet of parts and prototypes, but he keeps it locked up tight. He doesn’t want anyone messing with his stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” Derick said.

  “I don’t blame him, but he has been acting estranho,” Rafa said. “He doesn’t usually forget when club meets, or speak of others’ weaknesses. I asked him if he was feeling okay since the attack. He says he’s fine, but I think it really affected him.”

  Derick remembered Rafa racing out of the room when he found out about Dr. Mackleprank being shot by a blowdart in the night. “Hey, that would be some scary stuff. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So, how did you and the doctor strike up such an amazing bond?” Derick asked.

  Rafa smiled, walking toward the large room where they would practice for the club. “When I came to Cragbridge Hall, the avatar lab made me feel at home. Since Dr. Mackleprank has spent some time in Brazil and knows my culture, it was an easy friendship. We could talk soccer and samba and capoeira. When I showed some talent, it gave us an excuse to work together some more.”

  “Wait. Why did the avatar lab make you feel at home?” Derick asked, walking alongside his Brazilian friend.

  Rafa glanced quickly at Derick and then away. “Oh, it’s just there are a lot of animals and stuff where I lived in Brazil. You know, I lived close to the zoo. My parents used to take me there a lot.” Rafa blinked several times.

  “You okay?” Derick asked.

  “Yeah,” Rafa said. “Sorry, there’s a lot of tension around here lately. Makes me nervoso.” He pulled his hair out of his ponytail, flung it around for a moment, then pulled it back in. “Oi. We’d better get you hooked up before the others come.”

  In a few minutes Derick was hanging from the branch of a large tree with five other squirrel monkeys nearby. “Hey, Tryout,” one of them waved. “It’s good to have you back.” It was the boy with a Southern drawl. “I hope you make it into the Crash.”

  “The Crash?” Derick asked.

  Another monkey came closer. “We wanted to name the club after a group of animals, but ‘the herd’ or ‘the pack’ seemed too cliché.” Derick recognized her voice. She had been on his team for handball. “So we went with the Crash.”

  The girl with a Latin accent spoke. “A crash is what you call a group of rhinos.”

  “For the record,” the fourth monkey said, hanging upside down from a branch. “I wanted ‘Murder.’”

  Derick raised his monkey eyebrows. “What?”

  “A murder is the name for a group of crows, but we decided that it would probably get us into trouble for saying stuff like she just did,” a girl said.

  “Like, ‘let’s meet for murder,’” the Southern boy said,

  “Or ‘murder today after school,’” a girl added.

  “Or ‘I love murder,’” another girl said.

  “I get the idea,” Derick said. “It was probably wise to steer clear of that one.”

  The other monkeys agreed. A few added a couple of monkey shouts.

  “Pansies.” That was the voice of the girl who wanted “Murder” for the group name.

  “All right,” the monkey with a drawl said. “I wanted a rematch of handball, but someone else chose monkeys.”

  “I had an idea,” one of the girls said. “Let’s play some football.”

  “I thought we had agreed that we would play something new so that no one has an advantage,” Rafa said.

  “We did. So we’ll make it new. Let’s play football in the tree.” She emphasized the last words, her voice rising with excitement.

  Derick perched on top of a branch, noticing hundreds of other branches surrounding him. It was a maze of wood and leaves jutting out of a trunk.

  “The opposite sides are touchdowns,” the girl explained. “You can pass or run for it, you just have to do it on the branches.”

  “I’m in,” the Southern monkey said. The others voiced their approval.

  This was going to be crazy.

  Soon Derick was jumping from limb to limb, trying to guard a monkey on the opposite team. They dodged, passed, ran, and leapt with the ball. It was tough to tackle a monkey, but sometimes Derick was able to drag it by its tail to slow it down. This time Rafa was on the other team.

  Derick ran with the ball along a branch and leapt to another. Then he rolled underneath it and hung upside down. But when he tried to right himself again, he stumbled, almost falling. He pitched the ball to his teammate, but it was a step behind her. She had to grab another branch and fully extend herself to catch it.

  Just a few minutes later, Derick tried to stay with Rafa as another monkey launched the ball through the trees toward him. Rafa bobbled the ball, narrowly snagging it before another monkey collided into him. He fell off his branch, but caught another.

  What was going on with Rafa? Today he was less than an invincible prodigy. Was he just worried about Mackleprank, or was there something he wasn’t telling anyone? Was there any chance he had something to do with Muns?

  By the end of the session, Derick still didn’t know if he’d made it. They said they would talk it over one more time and message him. How long would it take them to make up their minds?

  • • •

  Abby was starting in on her last tower. It was thick and strong with a series of rooms stacked on top of one another. It was different from the ancient castles, though. Her tower had a sun roof to be more energy efficient and large flex-paned windows. She intended on making this tower a library. She loved the idea of rooms stacked on top of one another with books everywhere and a spiral staircase going up through them. She had inherited her love for physical books made from actual paper, not just digital ones, from her grandpa. Once she was done here, she would go back to the last tower. She had an idea that she’d put a waterslide around it down into a pool below. She would have to extend the pool from what she had originally planned, which might affect her courtyard and ballroom space, but she thought it would be worth it.

  After school, Abby had returned to her virtual booth, placed the sphere from her grandfather in it, and continued her work. Then she returned again after dinner. She had spread the word to Derick and Carol, who were building in the booths next to her. They had all worked a few minutes past curfew. That didn’t matter as much anymore.

  Grandpa appeared again in Abby’s world, walking with his cane. He looked around for a moment. “You’ve done good work here.” Abby wondered if the virtual Grandpa could somehow quantify the quality of her work in order to say that, or if he was preprogrammed to say it no matter what. “You have made fantastic choices. You were given freedom and used it well. However, it is time to add another level of understanding to prepare you to find an answer to your question. You see.” Grandpa took a few steps forward. “In many ways, your life is like a blank canvas, an empty sphere. You can make it whatever you want it to be. However, your canvas, your world, your sphere is never truly isolated. Your life is never isolated.”

  In a flash, Abby no longer stood alone in her world. Derick and Carol stood with her. She knew that they had also been in booths in the same room, but she didn’t expect them in her world.

  “Um, how did you guys get in my world?” Carol asked.

  “I think you came into mine,” Abby said.

  “Grandpa’s doing it somehow,” Derick explained. “My guess is that our spheres are connected.” Abby remembered how Mrs. Trinhouse had allowed all of her class into the same world at once. Maybe this was something like that. Derick pointed in front of him. “And looks like he brought our worlds together too.”

  This was definitely different
from Mrs. Trinhouse’s class.

  Abby’s castle was no longer the only creation. To Abby’s left was a movie screen ten stories high. Beneath it was an array of couches, fluffy chairs, swimming pools, swings, gardens, and parks. Abby looked over at Carol.

  “It’s all my favorite places to watch a movie,” she said. “Plus with a screen that huge, it would be just an awesome experience. If I can rig it to play all my best webseries, then it’ll be perfect.”

  To Abby’s right was a crazy mix of stairs, walls with ropes, dummies standing in fighting positions, sports fields, hoops, mud pits, jungle gyms, and climbing walls. “It’s an avatar training space,” Derick said. “They’ve been on my mind a lot lately.”

  Grandpa stood in front of all three of them. “You have to share space with others. Other people are creating their lives at the same time you are creating yours, even in some of the same spaces.” Abby looked again at her brother and her friend. “And as that happens, your choices influence others. Sometimes you may adopt ideas from others.” Abby watched as one of her walls gained a huge movie screen, while a couch and fluffy chairs appeared on the ground beneath and the opposite wall turned into stadium seating. A small castle sprouted up on the avatar field, with dummies along the top and a climbing rope dangling down one tower.

  “Sometimes you may try to separate yourself from others.” Abby watched as Carol’s theater grew huge walls around it. Derick’s avatar field did the same.

  “As you build and make your choices, you may even accidentally hurt others,” Grandpa said. One of Abby’s castle walls grew taller, but then several large stones fell, crushing part of Carol’s wall and smashing into one of her pools, cracking its foundation and splashing water everywhere.

  “Pool-party pooper,” Carol mumbled.

  “But you learn to create, sharing the same space.” Grandpa took a few paces. “Let me give you a real-life example. You decide how to act in school.” Instantly a classroom appeared. It was as though it simply grew out of the ground. A teacher stood in front, with kids in desks throughout the room. “Your actions affect others in the class. Your effort may inspire others. Your answers may teach others.” One student raised his hand. After the teacher pointed to him and the boy started talking, heads turned to listen. “They may actually become better for being in the same room with you.”