I was standing on the edge of a giant, loud, exciting… arcade full of games.
Imagine the most elaborate, noisy high-tech video arcade you’ve ever been in, and then multiply that by about a hundred. This place was stupid-big. Hundreds of computer games lined the walls and formed aisles everywhere. I guess it’s dumb for me to say I’d never seen games like that before, being that I was on a new territory. But I never had. The overall setup wasn’t that much different from a Second Earth arcade, though. Some games were contained in big boxlike structures with colorful designs on the sides. Others were giant video screens that loomed over the gaming floor. I saw one game that looked to be a battle challenge, with the player shooting it out with the computer-generated image of an opponent on a giant screen in front of him. Another looked like a maze where the player stood on a platform, running in place while negotiating turns that he saw on his own big screen. It was all way more sophisticated than anything from Second Earth. All the games had some version of flashing colored lights to get the customers’ attention and entice them to play. The weird electronic music added a feeling of excitement and fantasy. The arcade was on three levels. I was on the bottom and could look up to see two more balconies full of games.
Sorry for sounding like a kid here, but this was the most awesome arcade I had ever seen. No, that I could ever imagine. If this existed on Second Earth, it would clean up. It was gaming nirvana.
Oddly though, it wasn’t very crowded. Most of the excitement and noise came from the games themselves, and the music. A quick guesstimate told me that there might have been about thirty people hanging around. That wasn’t a lot for such a huge arcade. On Second Earth this place would be packed. Only a few people were actually playing. Others watched. Once I got used to the environment, I could take a closer look at the people. I wandered through the games, observing the people. First, I’m happy to say that they weren’t spiders. Check that one off the list of scary possibilities. They looked every bit as human as I did, which meant they probably weren’t robots, either. Things were looking up. There looked to be a mix of different races, too. Some had dark skin with blond hair, others were fairly pale with darker hair. I saw heavyset people, and older guys, and… I guess there’s no need to keep describing the specifics. Bottom line was that the people of Quillan looked every bit as normal and diverse as the people of Second Earth.
As normal as this appeared, I did notice some things that struck me as odd. For one thing, there were no kids. You’d think the place would be a kid magnet. There were women and men, some old, some older. But no kids. I noticed the clothing they wore was kind of, I don’t know, boring. There wasn’t a whole lot of style going on. Not that I’m the best judge of that, but when you see a bunch of people together in the same place, you’d expect to see a big range of clothing styles. Not there. Everyone wore some kind of variation of pants and plain shirts. Some wore jackets. Some tucked their shirts in, others didn’t. There wasn’t much difference in style between the men and women, either. I didn’t see any dresses or skirts. I don’t mean to say they all wore the exact same thing. They didn’t. There was some variation in color, but the clothing all tended to edge toward the darker side, with muted shades of green and blue. There was lots of gray, too. But nothing bright or livery or patterned. And many of the pants were just plain black. Their shoes didn’t jump out at me either. They mostly appeared to be plain and black. I wasn’t sure what conclusion to draw from this, other than that the people of Quillan had absolutely no sense of style or fashion. I suppose there are worse things to say. They could have been mutant spider robots.
I wasn’t worried about being the youngest person there, but I was self-conscious about my clothes. The long-sleeved, bright red shirt with the diagonal black stripes was kind of radical for this dull crowd. But there was nothing I could do about it. I had to trust that whoever put the clothes at the flume knew what they were doing.
As I made my way through the arcade, there was something else that I started to realize. This was a bright and colorful place full of games. I’d been to plenty of arcades before, and I always felt that there was as much energy coming from the people as from the loud games. But here on Quillan, nobody seemed to be having any fun. Just the opposite. The people playing the games were focused. Seriously focused. There was no laughter, no screams of surprise or disappointment, no victory cries. These people were playing with serious intensity. They may have been running through an electronic maze, or testing their reflexes, or dodging video bullets, but they were all doing it with such concentration that it didn’t seem to be any fun at all.
The same went for the people who were watching. They looked about as excited as they would be watching chess, which for me is about as thrilling as watching trees grow. There were only a few games actually being played, and each one had a small group of spectators who were watching with the same intensity as the players. There were no shouts of encouragement or taunting or advice being shouted out. I guess the best word to describe the whole atmosphere was “tense.”
There is one other thing I need to point out. Remember the silver bracelet I picked up at the flume and stuck in my back pocket? Several of the people had similar ones. They wore them on their left arms, just above the biceps. All the people playing the games had them, and some of the spectators. It added one more curious touch to the already bizarre scene.
“Yayyyyy!” came an excited scream from the other side of the arcade.
Finally! A sign of life! I jogged over to see the guy who was playing the 3-D shoot-out game. Apparently he had won. (The words you win! flashing in red on the giant screen were a dead giveaway. Duh.) Unlike the other zombielike players, this guy was over-the-moon thrilled. A woman hugged him as if he had just won the zillion-dollar lottery. I think they were crying. Others gathered around, clapping and smiling. They were totally psyched that this guy had won. What was up with this? It was a freakin’ video game! I remember breaking the record on a snowboard simulator at the theater on the bottom of the Ave at home. Remember that game? Is it still there? I’m embarrassed to say how many quarters it took me just to see my initials at the top spot. And I did it, finally. But I didn’t go all nuts like this. I was happy, but give me a break.
“What are you doing here?” came a voice from behind me.
I spun quickly to see a concerned-looking little bald guy staring at me. He wore a frown that crinkled his forehead. Was I not supposed to be there? Was this arcade off-limits to the general public? Maybe you had to be a member to get in, and I was definitely not a member. I had to play this very carefully.
“Uhh…,” I said. “Are you talking to me?”
“Of course I’m talking to you!” the little guy whined. “What are you doing here?”
“Just hanging around,” I said casually. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the slickest comeback, but I had no idea where this guy was going.
“Just hanging around?” he parroted with surprise. “Challengers don’t just hang around. Are you here to train?”
Challengers? Train?
“Yes,” I said, though I had no idea what I was agreeing to. Obviously this guy thought I was somebody else. I figured it wasn’t a good idea to tell him otherwise. “Yeah, I’m training,” I bluffed. “Lots of training. Right here. Yessir.”
The guy lunged at me and grabbed both my arms. It happened so fast I had no time to react. He looked me square in the eye. He was shorter than I am, so he had to look up to do it. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t scared. I know this may sound weird, but the look I saw in the guy’s eyes was… desperation.
“What’s your event?” he whispered, as if not wanting anybody else to hear. “How good are you? Honestly. I’ve never seen you before. What are your chances? Tell me, please. I won’t share it with a soul.”
The guy was weirding me out. He definitely had me mistaken for somebody else. Stranger still, he was asking me questions that he desperately wanted answers to. No, it was like he needed the answers.
I debated about making something up to calm him, but that felt wrong. He wanted answers so badly that I didn’t want to say something that might upset him even more. I was absolutely, totally frozen.
“Daddy!” came a shout from across the arcade. It was a little kid’s voice. Both the bald guy and I looked to see a little girl running through the arcade with a huge smile. I was glad for the distraction. The little blond girl sprinted past some games with her arms wide open. She ran up to the guy who had just won the game and flung herself into his arms. The guy hugged her as if he hadn’t seen her in years. The woman who had been so happy for him joined in. I’m guessing she was the mommy. The three of them stood there for a long moment, hugging one another tightly while the spectators applauded. I figured the guy must have won something big. At least it had to be bigger than simply getting top score. But nobody official-looking came up with his winnings, or even to shake his hand. There didn’t seem to be any prize at all. I watched as the family walked off, followed by the others, who all shared happy knowing looks.
“Thank goodness,” the bald little guy said. I thought I saw a tear in his eye.
I took a chance and asked, “So what’s the big deal about beating that game?”
The bald guy snapped me a look as if I had just asked the most idiotic question in the history of idiotic questions. He still held on to my arms, which, to be honest, was making me nervous. The guy had a hell of a grip. I didn’t know if that was because he was strong, or driven by insanity. He looked at me in wonder, as if trying to find the right words to answer such a stupid question. He looked to my left arm and asked, “Where’s your loop?”
“My what?” he asked.
“Your loop!” he said, looking at my upper arm. “Do you know how much trouble you can get in for taking that off?” His face lit up as if he’d just gotten a brilliant idea. He asked, “Is that why you’re here? Did you learn something?”
He kept asking questions and I kept not having answers. He let go of my arm and held his own arm out toward me. He had one of those silver bands above his biceps. “Tell me what you know,” he demanded. “Please.”
I realized that this silver band must have been the “loop” he was talking about. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the one that had been at the flume. The guy’s eyes went wide. He quickly grabbed the loop and looked around as if he feared being seen.
“Are you insane?” he seethed. “Don’t flash that around.”
Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed the loop, then took my hand and shoved it through.
“Hey,” I protested, and tried to pull away. It was too late. He shoved the round bracelet all the way up to my biceps. Instantly I felt it tighten around my arm, as if it were alive. I tried to pull it back down, but it wouldn’t move. It rested just above my biceps and clung there.
“Why did you do that?” I shouted.
“I helped you, now you help me” was his answer. “What are your chances? Be honest. It doesn’t matter to you if I know, does it?”
“Chances for what?” I asked while trying to pull the loop down my arm. It wouldn’t move. The harder I pulled, the tighter it squeezed. It felt like there were a thousand tiny needles inside, keeping it in place. I was frightened, and more than a little creeped out. What was this diabolical loop? How could it know that I was trying to pull it off so it knew to cling tighter? And why didn’t it want to get pulled off in the first place? Could it think like the robot-quig-spiders back at the gate? Things were happening a little too fast.
“Get it off!” I shouted to the bald guy.
His answer? He laughed. “I just did you a favor!” he said. “If you were seen without that loop, you’d never see another challenge.”
Before I could ask what the hell he meant by that, I felt the loop tighten on my arm again-on its own. Remember the groove I described that was etched in the circle? It was glowing bright purple. A thin, bright light circled the band that was squeezing the heck out of my arm.
“What’s with that?” I asked nervously.
“What do you mean?” he asked dismissively. “That’s what happens when a loop activates.”
“Activates?” I shouted. “I don’t want anything on me ‘activating’!”
“I don’t understand,” the guy said genuinely. “You’re a challenger. All challengers wear the loop.”
“What do you mean, I’m ‘a challenger’?” I snapped. “What makes you say that?” I had decided to give up being coy. I needed answers. The pulsing, glowing, grabbing ring on my arm was making that all too obvious.
“Aren’t you wearing the uniform of a challenger?” the guy asked, looking every bit as bewildered as I felt.
Uh-oh. It was the shirt. It seemed this red shirt with the black diagonal stripes was only worn by challengers. Whoever they were. I could only hope that challengers were cool people whom everyone loved and nobody ever gave a hard time to.
Yeah, right.
Before I could ask the guy anything else, I heard a tortured scream come from across the noisy room. A quick look told me that unlike the guy who was playing the shoot-out game, the player who was running through the 3-D maze wasn’t having as much luck, game over flashed in big blue letters on his screen. The player had fallen to his knees. He truly looked beaten. His head hung and he was breathing hard. No doubt he had given the game his all, only to lose. I wondered if the reaction of a loser was going to be as dramatic as that of a winner.
I wasn’t prepared for the answer.
This guy had a crowd around him as well, but rather than console him, they slowly backed away. It was weird, as if they just got word that the guy had the plague. They all had dark, pained expressions. Nobody so much as threw him a casual, “Too bad, dude. Try again.” They were taking this loss very seriously. One person did break from the crowd. She ran up to the guy and hugged him. The guy didn’t move. I saw that her eyes were screwed shut and her lips pursed, as if she were holding back a scream. The two stayed that way for a few moments while the others continued to move away. That’s when the loop around this guy’s arm began to glow. Unlike my loop that had given off a bright purple glow, his loop glowed yellow. The woman saw this, gave the guy one last squeeze and a kiss on the top of his head, then turned and ran. Seriously. She ran away. By this time the other spectators had blended back into the arcade, disappearing among the other people. Some pretended to be playing games, others were gone entirely. It was like the guy who lost had suddenly developed leprosy.
I heard a crash come from somewhere. It sounded like a door being thrown open. It made the bald guy next to me jump.
“Dados,” he whispered softly, almost reverently.
I gave the guy a quick look and asked, “What’s a dado?”
He scoffed, as if he didn’t believe for a second I didn’t know. “Now aren’t you glad I put your loop back on?” he asked smugly. The next thing I heard was sounded like quick marching, as if a parade were about to pass through. This seemed to snap the guy who’d lost the game back to life. He looked around quickly. His eyes were wide and scared. I didn’t know if he was looking for help, or trying to see where the marchers were coming from, or choosing the best escape route. Or all three. He ran…
The wrong way. He took only a few steps before he ran right into the arms of two uniformed men who were headed his way. They grabbed him, held his arms, and without breaking stride kept on moving. The guy struggled to break away, but it was no use. They had him and weren’t letting go.
“This was my first try!” he complained nervously. “I’m allowed two tries, aren’t I? I thought those were the rules? If I’m wrong, I’m sorry, but I know I’m supposed to get two tries.”
Obviously he was wrong. Or the uniformed guys didn’t care. They kept marching him away. The guy was near panic. It was incredible. He lost at a video game, and by losing, some police-looking guys called “dados” came to take him away. It really didn’t make sense. What kind of games do you lose, and then get drag
ged away by the police? These dado guys weren’t fooling around, either. They were both big. I’m guessing they stood about six-foot-four. They had broad shoulders and wore shiny gold helmets. Their uniforms were dark green and looked like they’d just come from the cleaners. That’s how tight and pressed they were. Each guy had a round patch on his upper arm that was bright yellow, with a logo that looked like a “B.” On their hips they each had a shiny black holster that held a golden pistol that seemed to be made of the same material as their helmets.
As scary as all this looked, there was one more thing about these guys that told me you didn’t want to mess with them. It was their faces. I don’t know how else to describe this except to write that their faces were big. And square. They almost looked like cartoon bad guys, with sharp jaw-lines and deep-set eyes. They had no expression. Even as they carted off a guy who was yelling and squirming to get loose. Their faces remained stone blank. They didn’t give instructions. They didn’t tell the guy to calm down. They definitely didn’t say where they were going. They simply kept moving. The guy didn’t have a chance.
They dragged him past two more police guys who were standing on either side of the aisle. They had entered from two different directions to surround their quarry. When the loser guy was dragged past these two other uniforms, I saw that the two new guys were standing stock still, their hands behind their backs, surveying the crowd. Nobody else in the arcade made eye contact with them. It seemed pretty clear to me that they were afraid of these police dudes. Heck, I would be too if I lost at a pinball game and my punishment was to get dragged off by a couple of Terminator-looking guys. I now understood why all the players were so intent on their games. Losing wasn’t a good thing.
The two sentries followed the others. One of them took one last look around the arcade, scanning the room, until his gaze came to rest… on me. The two of us made eye contact. I felt a chill. This may sound weird, but it was like I was staring into the eyes of a doll. A big, living doll.
The Quillan Games tpa-7 Page 4