by Dustin Brady
I couldn’t put an ounce of weight on the ankle I’d rolled earlier — it was completely broken. I looked back up at the flashlights. Two were getting closer. I quickly crawled behind a big piece of concrete and peeked out. The flashlights had turned left. I needed to put some distance between myself and the robot suit if I wanted any hope of making it out. I rolled underneath a collapsed sheet of metal, waited for two more flashlights to pass, then scrambled to an overturned conveyor belt. I continued that way across the smoldering heap of a factory until I had almost made it to the trees. I hopped behind another mangled robot armor and just started planning my final move to the forest when I felt something on my shoulder.
A tap.
I gasped and almost screamed, but the tapper quickly put a hand over my mouth. A cold, metallic hand.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BillyBotBoy
I slowly glanced out of the corner of my eye to see that I’d been discovered by Roger. He waved at me with his free claw, blinked his flashlight into the woods and let me go. He then led me the rest of the way into the forest, where I found Sam and Mark huddled behind a big log. They were sitting next to Mark’s helmet, which had cracked in two. Sam had a long gash across her forehead, and Mark had a homemade bandage wrapped around his upper arm, but otherwise they seemed OK.
Sam gave me a big hug and wouldn’t let go. “You made it, you made it!” she kept repeating.
She started telling me about how she and Mark had miraculously escaped the blast, but I interrupted. “We need to move,” I said and recounted the suits’ conversation at the factory.
Sam and Mark seemed awed by the story. “Do you know who they are?” Mark asked.
I shrugged. “They mentioned ‘the agency.’ I don’t know what that means, but I think they want to keep this whole thing a secret so they can use Mr. Gregory’s technology for something down the road.”
“So if they get to Eric before us…” Sam’s voice trailed off.
“Scrambled eggs. Or worse.”
“But it doesn’t sound like they know the robots are building more levels, right?” Mark asked hopefully.
“Right. They didn’t seem to know anything about who the robots are or what they’re doing. They’ll probably figure it out in the morning when people start reporting death bots everywhere, so that gives us a few hours to find Eric.”
“We really need to skip ahead to the end of the game,” Sam said.
“But how are we going to do that when we don’t even know which direction to go?”
We thought in silence for a few moments. “What I wouldn’t give for BillyBotBoy’s number right now,” Sam said.
“What’s a BillyBotBoy?” Mark asked.
“He’s an Aussie gamer who’s obsessed with this game. He makes these brilliant Super Bot World videos,” Sam said with a dreamy look in her eye.
A few more seconds of silence. Then Mark spoke up. “Are these videos on YouTube?”
“Of course,” Sam said. “But I don’t see a computer around here, do you?”
Mark remained quiet for a few more seconds. He seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to tell us something.
“What is it, Mark?” I asked.
“Well we are actually pretty close to a computer,” he said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Sam got up. “Let’s go!”
Mark looked at me with a pained expression. “It’s at my house.”
I shook my head. “Mark…”
“We walk through my backyard, get the spare key, sneak into the basement, watch the video and leave everything the way it was before my parents wake up.” Mark said the whole thing in one sentence like he needed to get it all out before he could change his mind.
“Peaches,” Sam said. Then she noticed me shaking my head. “What’s the problem?”
“Mark has been in a video game for 80 years,” I said.
“Eighty years?!”
Mark and I shushed her.
“Eighty years?!” Sam said quieter.
“Long story, but 80 years in video game time is almost two months in the real world,” I said. “So by now, his parents think he’s, uh — well, they think he’s dead.”
“So he can’t just go bopping into his house at two in the morning, can he?” Sam said.
“Right,” I said. “If we wake up his parents, we’re never getting back out of the house to rescue Eric.”
Sam nodded, seeing the big picture now. “But if we don’t wake them up, then Mark will have to leave the house without knowing for sure that he’ll ever get to see them again.”
We both looked at Mark. He turned around and started walking through the woods.
“Come back here!” Sam hissed.
He spun around. “Stop wasting time!” Without waiting for an argument, he turned and started walking again. Sam and Roger quickly followed.
“Hey guys,” I said, still on the ground. “Bad news — I can’t really walk anymore.”
“Oh my!” Sam said. She and Mark came back, helped me to my feet and supported my weight all the way to Mark’s house. He was right — it was close. After 15 minutes of navigating through the woods, Mark shushed us, and we turned into a backyard. We crept through the yard, and then nearly jumped out of our skin when a motion sensor light turned on. Mark shook his head and hurried to the back patio, grabbed a fake rock from the garden, unscrewed it, then pulled out a key. He quickly got us all into the house, then shut the door behind him.
Once we made it inside, we stopped for a few seconds to rest. The house was dark and silent except for the hum of the refrigerator. When my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I saw that we were standing right next to the kitchen table, where Mark’s parents still had a place set for him. I glanced over at Mark to see how he was doing. He kept his eyes focused on the ground. He’d probably spent the last 80 years dreaming of this moment, and he couldn’t even let himself enjoy it because he knew he had to turn right back around. After we caught our breath, he motioned for us to follow him into the basement.
Mark’s basement looked like it had been a fun place at one time. But now wilting flower arrangements from the memorial service covered the ping-pong table, the big portrait from our school’s “Mark Day” stood between a movie projector and “theater screen” wall, and every trophy Mark had ever won cluttered the overstuffed couch. Roger lit the way as we quietly navigated through all the memories of Mark. Again, Mark refused to look at any of it.
“You OK?” I whispered.
Mark sat down at the computer. “I’m fine,” he said, but he said it real fast, in that way you do when you’re on the verge of tears but don’t want to give it away. He turned on the monitor and stared at it with a funny expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” Sam whispered.
“I can’t remember the password.”
“You can’t remember?!”
“It’s been 80 years! Just give me a second.” Mark finally nodded and typed something.
USER NAME OR PASSWORD INCORRECT
He furrowed his eyebrows and tried again.
USER NAME OR PASSWORD INCORRECT
“I know that was it,” he muttered. He tried again. Same result.
“Maybe they changed it,” I said. I looked around the room and got an idea. I reached over and typed “Mark.”
USER NAME OR PASSWORD INCORRECT
“Wait a second,” Mark said. He typed, “M@rk1.”
WELCOME
Mark smiled. “My dad always replaced the ‘a’s with ‘@’s and added a ‘1’ to the end of all his passwords. He thought it was more secure.”
“Thinks,” Sam said.
“Huh?”
“He thinks it’s more secure,” Sam said. “He’s still alive.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “Yeah, I guess he is.” He turned back to the computer and started YouTube. “All you, Sam.”
Sam pulled up a video titled, “Super Bot World 3 Playthrough — EPIC Finale! (Part 17/17).”
“G�
�DAY EVERYONE!” a boisterous BillyBotBoy yelled from the speakers. “TODAY, WE’RE GONNA GET THIS CHEEKY FELLA TO HIS PRINCESS, BUT FIRST…”
Mark dove across the desk to hit the mute button. Sam paused the video, and we waited for a full minute without breathing to listen for any movement upstairs. Fortunately, Mark’s parents were heavy sleepers.
Sam pressed play again. A robot decked out with Sam’s metal fist as well as 30 other upgrades ran onto the screen. A few seconds later, Roger flew in behind him.
bleep-bloooooooooop
We all turned in a panic to shush the real Roger, but something was wrong. Seeing himself on the computer screen seemed to cause a short circuit in his brain.
bloooowoooorooooop
He wobbled and swayed mid-air while making loud, dying computer noises. Sam grabbed a box of Mark memories from the desk, dumped it out and used it to cover Roger. That finally shut him up.
“What was that?” Mark hissed to Sam.
She shrugged and shook her head with wide eyes. We waited for any sign of Mark’s parents again, then turned back to the screen.
The character seemed to be floating through a futuristic hallway. He was a blur of motion, dodging fireballs, kicking off walls and mowing through enemies. Finally, he got to a big, metal switch on the wall and flipped it. Gravity came back on, and everything fell to the ground.
“It’s some sort of anti-gravity chamber I guess?” Mark said. “Where would you even find an anti-gravity chamber?!”
But then the character walked into the next room, and we discovered exactly where someone might find an anti-gravity chamber. In this new room, the entire back wall was a window. And through that window, way in the distance, was planet Earth.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lavers Hill
“THE MOON?! I CAN’T GO TO THE MOON!” Sam started screaming while whispering at the same time, which is kind of a hard thing to do. “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE MOON! I MEAN, I KNOW YOU CAN’T BREATHE! HOW WOULD WE BREATHE ON THE MOON? HOW WOULD WE GET OFF THE MOON?!”
“Sam!” I interrupted. “Relax! If they make it to the moon, it’s too late for Eric anyway.”
Sam took a second to breathe. Mark was already scrolling through the other videos. “Here’s the level that comes before the moon one,” he said.
We watched the main character fight an enormous boss in front of a rocket preparing for blastoff. They battled on an open field in the middle of farm country. I wrinkled my nose. “A farm? Really? Seems like a pretty boring place to put a level.”
“It’s Lavers Hill,” Sam said.
“Excuse me?”
“Lavers Hill. It’s the hometown of the guy who created Super Bot World. He always puts it in his games.”
“And I’m assuming that’s in Australia?” Mark said.
“Sure is.”
“Great.” Mark leaned back in his chair. “So instead of going to the moon, we need to go to Australia.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Look, it’s just farms and fields. As long as the robots find something like that near us, they’ll build their level here.”
“We’re in Ohio,” Mark said. “The whole state is farms and fields.”
I wasn’t about to lose hope yet. “They seem to keep the levels close to each other. Maybe we can figure out where they’re building the other levels and map out a path.”
With no other options, Mark snuck to the garage and came back a few minutes later with a big paper map. “My dad always kept a paper map in the car,” he explained. Then he looked at Sam and corrected himself. “I mean ‘keeps.’ He keeps a map in the car.”
Mark unfolded the map on the desk and studied it for a few seconds. “OK, Bionosoft is here,” he drew a circle on the map. “The paper mill is here,” he drew another circle. “Now let’s find Level Four.” He played another BillyBotBoy video. This one showed the robot hero launching a rocket-powered hovercraft off the first hill of a roller coaster.
“Kiddie Park?” I guessed.
Mark circled it on his map.
Sam shook her head. “A theme park for cats? What is wrong with America?”
“Not Kitty Park,” I said. “Kiddie Park. It’s an amusement park in our town just for little kids.”
Sam had tuned out before I’d finished my explanation, so it’s entirely possible that she still thinks America is a land full of amusement parks for cats. She’d already moved onto the video of the next level. “Looks like it’s pirate-themed?” she said.
I nodded. “Kiddie Park is next to Lake Erie, so that makes sense.”
By 3 a.m., we’d circled locations for every level in the game and connected them all with a line. Sam stepped back, stared at the map for a moment and then said what we were all thinking. “Well, that looks like a whole heap of nothing.”
“It does kind of follow a pattern,” I pointed out. “Like a swirl or a swoop or, uh, a curly-Q.”
“Whatever it is, it ends up in the middle of nowhere,” Mark said.
“Just pull up the satellite view of that area,” I said.
Mark did — there were farms everywhere.
“Boom!” I said. Then I noticed something. “Zoom in on that road.”
Buildings came into focus. Google Maps started putting names over businesses. Holmes County Seed and Feed. Yoder Meats. Berlin Farmstead Dutch Kitchen. “I know this place,” I said excitedly. “It’s Amish country!”
Sam looked at me weird.
“Amish country!” I repeated. “You don’t have that in Australia?”
“Is this another cat thing?”
“The Amish don’t believe in electricity, so they mostly work on farms and make things out of wood and sell pies and stuff. Anyways, the important thing is if the robots are building a giant rocket ship in Amish country, we’ll see it from miles away!”
“There’s just one problem,” Mark said. “Look.” He’d mapped out the walking route from his house to Amish country. Twenty-two hours and fifteen minutes. We stared at that number in silence for a few seconds; then I clicked back to the rocket-powered roller coaster video from earlier. An idea had started forming in my head.
“We’ve been playing by the robots’ rules this whole time, right?” I asked.
Sam and Mark shrugged.
“Maybe it’s time we make up our own rules.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kiddie Park
After a half hour of watching videos, making plans and gathering supplies, we were ready. Mark shut off the computer and lifted the box off of Roger. “Come on, buddy. We’re going to need you.”
beep, Roger replied, using his quietest setting.
Before Mark could get out of the chair, Sam put her hand on his shoulder. “Mark,” she said. That was as far as she got before Mark interrupted her.
“Look, I know you’re going to give some big speech about why I need to stay. And, believe me, I want nothing more than to go upstairs right now, curl up in my own bed and then eat my mom’s banana-chocolate-chunk pancakes in the morning. But that’s not what we do. That’s not what you did, that’s not what Jesse did and that’s certainly not what Eric did. We stick together and help each other no matter what. So if there’s even a tiny chance I can still help Eric, there’s nothing you can say that will stop me from trying. Got it?”
Sam stared at him for a second before finally finishing her sentence. “I was just going to remind you to bring the map.”
Mark’s face turned red. “Oh. Got it.” He stuffed the map in his bookbag and led us out of the house to the garage. We squeezed past a red minivan and pulled out the bikes. Sam grabbed Mark’s mom’s bicycle, Mark got his own, and — since I still couldn’t walk — I climbed onto Mark’s handlebars. We silently pedaled through town until Kiddie Park came into view. Actually, I’m just going to call it “Park,” because there was no longer anything “Kiddie” about it. Overnight, the robots had transformed the cute merry-go-round into a whirling death machine. The choo-choo
train tracks that circled the park now disappeared underground where, I’m sure, terrifying robots were waiting. And the Little Dipper, which was a disappointing thrill ride even when I was six years old, had a new 150-foot hill.
We dumped our bikes next to the front gate and put our plan into motion. “Don’t screw this up, Roger,” Sam said.
beep-beep!
Roger flew through the entrance of the park while we circled back near the Little Dipper. We waited until we heard Roger start his distraction (whistling “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree” as obnoxiously as possible over and over) and then hopped the fence. Well, technically Sam and Mark hopped the fence. I tried twice before Sam finally ripped the fence apart with her metal hand. All three of us piled into the roller coaster hovercraft and pulled down the safety harnesses. Mark flipped a switch, cracked his knuckles and turned to smile at us. Then he pushed the throttle forward ever so slightly.
WHOOMF!
That little bit of throttle rocketed us to 100 mph in about two seconds. We shot up the hill and launched into the night sky.
“AHHHHH!”
I screamed, not only because flying off of roller coaster tracks is my worst nightmare, but also because we’d just watched a robot dragon pluck BillyBotBoy’s character out of the sky and carry him to the funhouse of terror at this exact point in the game.
WHOOSH!
The robot dragon arrived a half-second too late and flew right past our hovercraft. He shrieked and shook his head as he zoomed past us, probably trying to get rid of the annoying, whistling drone that was blocking his vision. As soon as the dragon passed by, Roger zipped into our vehicle.
“Nice job!” Mark yelled.
beepbeepbeepbeep-beep-boooooooop!
THUMP!
We finally landed on the ground and steered toward Kiddie Park’s front gate.
“SCREEECH!”
The robot dragon hit the ground behind us and blasted fire in our direction. Mark dodged the blast, pushed the throttle forward and zoomed out of the park faster than a Formula One racecar driver. Decades of mastering the hover tank in Full Blast had given Mark almost superhuman reflexes in the driver’s seat, and he needed every ounce of that ability to navigate the twisty residential streets outside of Kiddie Park. If the suits didn’t know about the other robots by now, the clock had certainly started ticking, as a metallic dragon chasing a speeding hovercraft isn’t something you see outside your house every day. Mark followed the route we’d plotted in his basement and ended up at Columbia Beach Park in less than a minute. He flew past the playground and launched off the pier.