by Dave Bakers
Not really having anything else to do—I don’t believe in gaming on mobile phones, it’s just not right—and not wanting to do anything approaching reading, I looked about me, trying to see if I recognised anybody among the faces.
Standing behind us, I saw, with a quick, surreptitious glance over my shoulder, was a black kid about my age who wore his hair in braids—dreadlocks?—with a bunch of multi-coloured beads that clicked every time he moved his head at all.
I saw that he was tapping away at his own mobile, and I couldn’t help but get in a snide smile thinking that I was really dealing with an amateur . . . some kid who’d come along here, to Gamers Con, just to have some ‘fun.’
In front of us things were even more surprising.
There was a girl.
She had blond hair, and light-green eyes—I only just got away with noticing that since she turned to stare at me right at that moment.
And she had on a light-grey hooded top with a picture of two knights jousting on it.
The weird thing about the picture wasn’t the jousting, though, it was the fact that the knights were riding unicorns.
And that one of the unicorns was spurting arterial blood where one of the lances had managed to get itself stuck into its side.
Sucks to be a unicorn, I guess . . .
She kept her hands inside the front pouch of her hoodie the whole time, and she was chewing on some gum or something while her dad, standing beside her, blabbed into his mobile phone.
In fact, he didn’t stop the entire time we were in the queue.
When we reached the front, there was a snub-nosed, red-faced guy dressed in a dark-purple polo shirt with ‘Gamers Con Staff’ neatly stitched with blue thread onto his breast pocket. He held us back, the girl’s father just sort of nodded to her when they called her name out from the desks with all the badges lying on them.
Soon enough, it was my turn, and, with my dad, we strode over to the white-clothed table where all the plastic-laminated badges were lying.
I saw that each badge had a mug shot on it, and then the name of the person along with their description: ‘All-Access’ was written out in prominent red lettering on some of the badges, but most just had ‘Open-Access’ scrawled over them in blue.
I guessed that girl, and the black kid who’d been playing on his phone behind us, would be here to pick up their Open-Access badges.
. . . That’s what you get when you’re an amateur.
I gave the guy at the desk my name, and then waited as he ran the nib of his pen down the register before him.
The guy had long, bushy black hair, and those eyebrows which look kind of like a pair of caterpillars taking a siesta. He wore another of those dark-purple polo shirts, though I could see that he wore a black t-shirt underneath. The design of the t-shirt poked through the neck of the polo shirt, and I saw that it featured an electric chair with some band’s name splashed on it—a band that I guessed was a metal band.
But I really don’t know the first thing about music.
In my book, there’s no time for such a thing as having ‘twin’ passions.
You’ve got to learn to make just one thing your life . . .
Finally, the guy picked out my name on his sheet. Tapped the tip of his pen against it, and then dug about for my badge.
I felt my stomach crunch in on itself knowing that—in only a couple of moments’ time—I would have that plush, red cord about my neck, the badge bouncing off my chest . . . then I would get some respect about the place.
It’s pretty difficult not to get respect about Gamers Con with an All-Access Pass hanging around your neck.
The guy handed the pass to me, handed another to my dad. “Main convention access starts tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, if you wanna get your hands on a . . .”
It was only then that I’d managed to process the pass which lay in my hand.
An Open-Access Pass.
Blue lettering and all.
My mug shot there.
My name: ‘Zak Steepleman’ written out with the tag ‘Aspiring Pro Gamer’ typed beneath it.
It was like I felt a chill pass through my blood. My heart beat hard for a couple of thumps and then seemed to stop completely. That taste of Chewy-Tang Worms turned totally sour in my mouth, and I glared at the guy who’d handed me the badge.
“Wait,” I said. “I’m signed up for All-Access.”
The guy pouted, scratched his head with the tip of his pen, and then turned his attention back to the list. He flipped through the sheets again, still scratching his scalp, and then shook his head. He glanced up at me. “Nope,” he said, “ ‘Zak Steepleman: Open-Access.’ ”
My blood got even chillier.
The babbling of the people waiting in the queue behind me seemed to thicken in my ears. Seemed to muffle out everything else. Suddenly that smell—the plastic-and-paper smell—seemed to become sharp in my nostrils.
When I breathed in, it was like I was sucking in razorblades.
“Please,” I said, “there’s a mistake—something’s wrong. Alive Action Games, they sponsored my All-Access Pass, they were the ones who signed me up for Gamers Con . . . they . . .”
“Alive Action, huh?” the guy said, with a slight scowl, and then he scratched his scalp again with his pen. “You didn’t hear about that?”
“No?” I said, now tingling all over.
“Went under,” the guy said. “Gone, poof!” he added with a flurry of his hands. “You should count yourself lucky that Gamers Con’s giving you an Open-Access Pass—they could’ve just pulled your pass altogether . . .”
I blinked several times in that way that Dad does. I felt like, somehow, my trainers had grown spikes and that they’d sunk themselves into the carpeted floor where I stood.
I couldn’t believe it.
Simply couldn’t believe it.
The guy hunched his shoulders, pouted again, and then looked at my dad with a raised eyebrow. “It’s happened with a couple of other kids.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate a Chinese-looking kid who hung off his mum’s heels as she was arguing with a grey-haired official, this guy who had dark bags sagging down from his eyes, and who was only nodding along vaguely to everything she said.
In his case, the dark-purple polo shirt looked somewhat ridiculous on him.
Finally, the guy at the desk looked back to me. “Look, kid,” he said. “Like I was about to say, if you want to get yourself one of those All-Access Passes then take part in the Ignition Tournament tonight.” He leaned over the table, whisked up a glossy flyer that lay on a huge stack at his elbow. “Eight o’clock. Free entry. The top five gamers receive an All-Access Pass to Gamers Con.”
I stared at the flyer as I held it in my fist.
Though I could read fine, I was having a hard time processing the text before me—on the flyer . . . just about the only thing I could make out was the word ‘Ignition’ splashed across the front of it with lettering that seemed to be giving off sparks.
I turned back to the guy, saw that he was shifting a sheepish glance back off in the direction of the queue, clearly wanting to get on with handing out passes. “Really,” I said, “there’s no way you can just hand me one of those passes?”
The guy held his hands up to me as if he was surrendering, then said, “Look, if you want All-Access for Gamers Con you know what to do.” He nodded to the suited guy at the front of the queue so that the next person in line would come forwards. “Eight o’clock tonight. Ignition Tournament.”
I don’t quite remember if I stepped away from the desk of my own accord, or if Dad had to grab me by the shoulder and steer me away.
But one thing was for certain.
I knew what I’d be getting up to that night.
4
“WHAT’S SO SPECIAL about All-Access anyway?” my dad said as he lay flat on his bed in our hotel room.
The TV was switched on, but on mute, and my dad was still ta
pping away at the screen of his mobile, making his latest chess move.
Every muscle in my body felt stiff. My bones felt like they might snap if I moved myself too much. Ever since we’d got into the room, I’d sat rigid on the end of my hotel bed and stared at the cream wallpaper—specifically at this smudge that various hotel cleaners had obviously attempted, and failed, to remove with a whole host of cleaners.
“That pass,” I said, “is everything.”
My dad stayed quiet, apparently not wanting to annoy me at all.
But the truth was that I was way past being annoyed now.
What had happened to me was nothing short of a tragedy.
The worst possible thing that could’ve happened at Gamers Con . . . short of me not being admitted to the place at all, that was . . .
I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that Dad had never actually looked around in the five years we’d been coming here—that he’d never actually got what the difference between Open-Access and All-Access was.
Parents can be so frustrating sometimes . . . not quite as frustrating as The Whistling Kingdom, but frustrating still.
“All-Access,” I said, “is the only pass that anybody at Gamers Con actually takes seriously—it’s the only one that shows people that you’re here to work . . . not to play.”
Dad glanced up briefly from his mobile, looked to the screen, and then at me. “But I thought that games are all about playing.”
“I’m not going to dignify that remark with an answer,” I said, and then continued with my potted explanation. “An All-Access badge means that you get to go behind the scenes, that you can go and speak with the developers—that you can make contacts.”
Dad turned his attention back to his mobile and, apparently, his next move in whatever chess game he was playing. “And you can’t do that with Open-Access?”
“Nope.”
“. . . Ah.”
“Dad,” I said, waiting for him to turn his full attention back to me.
He swiped the screen of his mobile—the final flourish to his move—and then he looked over.
“Open-Access means that you can go into the convention, that you can go mooching around the stands, play the games, and maybe, if you’re lucky, speak with some of the developers there. But, likely as not, they won’t actually listen to what you’ve got to say, they won’t pay attention to any of your feedback.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Dad,” I said, this time my tone getting a little brisk, a little sharp at the edges, “have you paid any attention to what I’ve been doing my entire life?”
Dad just eyeballed me in that poor, confused way of his. I wondered if it was the lenses of his glasses that were making his eyeballs seem like they were about twice their normal size, or if he really was out-to-sea.
“Developers send me games—they look for my feedback on them. Alive Action is . . . was one of those developers. They used to send me all sorts so that I could review them—look them over. They were the ones who were supposed to have left the badge for me, like the guy said.”
“So,” Dad said, “what happens now?”
I gave a shrug. “Dunno, truly don’t know . . . now that I don’t have a sponsor any longer things are going to be tough.” I drew in a deep breath and then blew it out, making my cheeks bulge as I did so. “It means that I won’t be allowed into the Grand Tournament . . . they won’t let me compete with the best they’ve got here.”
Dad screwed up his features. “But I thought having had a sponsor was enough qualification?”
I shook my head. “Nope, your sponsor just pays for your pass . . . that’s all they do . . . and it seems that Alive Action just ducked that responsibility.”
“So anybody can sign up for this tournament, then?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, Dad, if you’ve got like a thousand pounds to throw around, and you got in the application form six weeks ago.”
“Oh,” Dad said, eyes still wide, “so you’re definitely going to that tournament tonight?”
I narrowed my eyes to slits, and then cast a glare at the muted TV which was showing an ad for some beach resort holiday, then I bent down, knuckled through my Sirocco 3000 carrying case, and dug out the console.
I had to get my mind into competition mode.
And I had to do it fast.
My future as a pro gamer depended on it.
5
THERE WAS A TON of people babbling about the convention centre at around seven thirty that night. The air still reeked of paper and plastic though I had certainly lost the first-flush buzz I’d got off it from before.
Now that smell just seemed to be taunting me, saying, Hey, Zak, you don’t belong here, why don’t you just wander off home, huh?
Fat chance.
I could still taste the remainder of the grease from my hamburger and chips, still had that kind of crackly taste from the half a litre of Brizzmere Buzz that I’d blasted down my gullet. I kept getting hot and cold flushes—those reactions that I just knew were nerves.
Nerves? Me? At this?
A beginners’ tournament?
Because not one of the people buzzing about the place could compete with me . . . well, perhaps that Chinese kid aside, the one who’d also got himself burned by Alive Action Games—just that name sent waves of nausea through my stomach.
But there were five spots, if the guy at the desk had been telling the truth.
I only had to place in the top five.
And that would be simple.
Dad was still glued to his chess match as we lined up, once again, along with all the other kids for the first test. I did have to admit that the sheer number of kids here was intimidating. There must’ve been at least as many as the two hundred or so there’d been in the queue for passes that afternoon.
But I remained focussed.
Eyes fixed on our destination.
Up ahead, I saw the large plastic dome, and the darkened doorway which led inside of it. And, beyond, I could see that there were others.
Kids wandered in through the archway of the dome, and then wandered out the other side.
Onto the next step.
I was familiar with these initiation tournaments—or Ignition, as the flyer stated—they pretty much always took the form of a few timed challenges, with the winner of each round appearing up on the board to continue onto the final round.
My goal, first off, was simply to play through these initial timed challenges, absolutely destroy them, before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the final stage.
As we approached the first plastic dome, this woman dressed in a dark-purple polo shirt with purple-grey hair and a clipboard took my name and—embarrassingly—the serial number attached to my Pass-of-Shame . . . but, as I told myself, over and over again, that pass would not be around my neck for much longer.
Nope, I would be certain to make sure of that.
When we arrived to the archway of the first plastic dome, I found that I could look inside, see the current kid there, playing away.
It was Ridgeway Highway—an old-style, fifties motorbike racing game.
Like pretty much all racing games, or any games really for that matter, I had achieved one-hundred-per-cent completion on my first run-through.
Hadn’t so much as looked at it again after that.
Developers send me a whole bunch of stuff, and I really never have much time to bother looking a second time at most games.
Unless I’m planning to enter a competition for one of them.
And I hadn’t planned on entering a competition with Ridgeway Highway.
Maybe I should’ve dug out my copy and had a quick play-through . . . but, then again, I hadn’t known till now just what games I would up be against.
Retrospect is a fine thing.
The kid with the pad in his hands, I saw right away, was that same black kid from the queue earlier on.
I couldn’t help but give a slight smirk as I tho
ught about him tapping away at his mobile playing on whatever ‘game’ he’d had on there.
Then I turned my attention to the screen.
I noted, straightaway, that it was the level of Ridgeway Highway where you have to breach this tunnel between the east of Russia, and the far west of the US . . . it’s an imaginary undersea tunnel, and the idea is to arrive on the Alaskan coast where you proceed onto the next stage—through snow, obviously—before returning to face the final race in Las Vegas.
I watched as the black kid steered the leathered-up rider, slumped low on the motorbike, handlebars pretty much sticking into his chest, through the tricky course.
He took the corners nicely . . . no, I mean really nicely.
I mean, this kid, he really knew how to drift.
How to catch that extra boost out of each of the corners.
How to absolutely jet right ahead.
As he approached the finishing straight, I couldn’t help but glance up at the timer.
Though I hadn’t played Ridgeway Highway for quite a while, I still had a vague notion of just what the timings meant . . . I guess some things are impossible to completely singe from your mind . . . and I knew that, for this level, the black kid was absolutely whipping along.
He finished up and I watched as the invigilator—another guy with a clipboard and dark-purple polo shirt—made a note of the time.
After the black kid and his dad—or the guy I thought was his dad—skirted on out of the booth, the invigilator glanced at me, nodded, and then I handed over my badge.
Watched him scrawl down the serial number on his page, then hand me the badge back.
And, just like that, with Dad watching over my shoulder, I picked up the pad and started into Ridgeway Highway.
6
TEN ROUNDS LATER—and a whole host of games I’d hoped I’d never see again . . . even—shudder—the truly awful Bubbled Up! . . . I wandered on out to the main concourse of the convention centre, to the place with the slicked-up, white floor tiles, to where a plasma screen was spewing out the results from the tournament so far.