Solarversia: The Year Long Game

by Mr Toby Downton

  In the valley beneath the platforms lay a sea of sulphuric acid populated with lavadiles hungry for the treats that fell to them in shiny silver wrappers. Nova and the group she was with watched as a player from Argentina, about halfway up, misjudged a jump and fell to his fiery death. As if reading her mind, the visor flashed up a new piece of information: 3.59% of players lost a life on their way up the platforms.

  She took her time to learn how the system worked and constantly monitored the datafeed for information about traps that had been sprung on previous players. Like all platform games, it got harder as it went on: static platforms soon gave way to ones that drifted from side to side and then to pyro-forms that burst into flames if you hesitated to jump off them. To a regular gamer like Nova, the platform challenge was pretty tame; perhaps it was old grannies that kept losing their lives?

  She made the last jump across to Meganja’s platform, glad to have made it in one piece. Burner would have given her untold grief if she had died at this stage. When the hour struck, Meganja started his talk, outlining the rules of the puzzle. This time there were 7,224 safe spots for the 9,030 players tackling the puzzle with her. She noted one difference from the previous puzzles she’d played: players were allowed to use the in-game digital pen and paper.

  “Every three minutes Gorigaroo will strike his gong, a signal that something within the puzzle has changed. This will be a new clue to help you solve it. Good luck, and remember these two things. First, those who follow the same map, end up at the same destination. Second, There Can Be Only One!”

  As he finished talking he dissolved into the ether to be replaced by a creature that made her flinch. It was one of the lavadiles and standing so close to it brought back the memory of the obstacle course and one of the critters snapping at her leg.

  “I’m a Luminous Lavadile, and the answer to this puzzle can be found on my scales. Or, to be precise, one of my scales. There are six hundred and sixty-six of them, but only one will secure you a safe spot. All you need to do is touch it. However, you only get one chance. Touch the wrong scale and you’ll lose a life.”

  Remembering the key to success at Volters restaurant — speed of action combined with lateral thinking — she paced around the lavadile looking for clues. Except in this case, nothing obvious stood out like the beer bottles or the magnifying glass had. She scanned the beast from different angles, looking for ideas, but everything appeared to be in its right place and in the right proportion. Except, she realised, the tail, whose tip, which was shaped like an arrowhead, was free of scales.

  A hundred thoughts raced through her mind, each competing for attention. The lavadile’s words echoed through her mind. Touch the wrong scale and you’ll lose a life. He’d definitely said that, she was sure of it. But there were no scales on his tip of his tail, so she tugged at it. The arrowhead made a ker-ching! sound. She hadn’t lost a life. And all the scales had changed — a little number had appeared on each of them. Which was great. All she needed to do now was work out which number to touch.

  She paced some more, studying some of the numbers up close, looking for a sign that one of them was different, an arse among elbows. While studying the number 211, and trying to decide whether its shape constituted something of importance, the number of safe spots started ticking down. And to compound her frustration further, the gong sounded, signalling a clue. When she ran round the lavadile to find what had changed, it was the tail, now glowing, a clear sign that it needed to be pulled. She let out a groan, knowing that her initial advantage was already spent. Why did that keep happening?

  She spotted the next clue almost by accident. There was something different about the lavadile’s front feet: two of the four claws on each one had retracted. But what did it mean? On the beast’s right foot, the central two claws had retracted; on its left foot, the outer two. She wished Burner was there to help; it felt like something he’d know about.

  They were allowed to use the pen and paper, but to draw what? Was she supposed to draw the missing claws and feed the picture into his mouth? Perhaps it wasn’t a drawing that was needed, but a calculation of some sort. While she pondered the possibilities, distressed to notice that the number of safe spots had already dropped below three thousand, the next gong sounded, making the lavadile speak again.

  “Did you know that there are only ten types of people in this world? Those who understand binary, and those who don’t?”

  She was right. Burner would have solved the puzzle in two seconds flat. Bloody binary. How did it work again? She racked her brain, remembered something about powers of two, and recited the first few out loud: one, two, four, eight, sixteen. Hurriedly opening the digital pad, she scribbled down the sequence the claws made. Out, in, in, out: 1001. In, out, out, in: 0110. Putting the numbers together made 10010110. She just needed to convert it into a decimal number.

  She tallied the digits against the powers of two, a series of rushed black lines that rendered the pad close to unreadable. The calculation was one hundred and twenty-eight plus sixteen, plus four, plus two. The answer came to one hundred and fifty, she was sure of it. There were a thousand safe spots left which gave her enough time to check her maths while she located the scale she needed.

  Finding it a third of the way down the beast’s back, and convinced that her sums were correct, she pressed it, knowing that it was her only chance. When the victory jingle played she let out a big sigh of relief. She reappeared in Meganja’s circle, along with a teleport machine that would transport her back to the Spaceport for free.

  “Here she is, resurfacing from her games. Where are you now, love? Still on the Moon somewhere?”

  “I’m on Venus, Mum. I just solved Grandmaster Meganja’s puzzle. I’ll probably stay at the Spaceport for a bit, check out some of the exhibitions and return to Earth tomorrow.”

  “Well, don’t be late. You wouldn’t want to miss any lectures. We just passed a sign for the university, it’s only a couple of minutes away now.”

  It was Monday 21st September, the first day of term at Nottingham University. Nova had wanted to drive there on her own; her parents hadn’t concurred. The argument didn’t last very long. All Mr Negrahnu had needed to do was to tilt his head to the side and raise his eyebrows. It was a look that said, “You might want to remember our great leniency earlier in the year when you were in a whole shedload of trouble.”

  As she’d conceded to Burner, her parents had been lenient about the fact that she’d spent her Travinsky winnings on a plan to locate a terrorist cell. The most plausible explanation she’d been able to come up with was that they felt bad about having had a go at her so soon after Sushi had died. She’d heard them talking late one night about ‘what she was going through’ and although she’d resented being talked about, it was good to know they realised how awful things had been.

  She also knew how proud they were that she’d managed to scrape into Nottingham after all she’d been through. Opening the text message with her results had been distressing. She’d been round at Burnside with Burner and Jono and had just watched Burner open his message, confirming that he got the grades he needed.

  But when it came to her turn she had been so nervous that she ended up handing her phone to Jono to read out her grades. When he read the last one, her ‘B’ in English, she clenched her fists, threw her arms into the air and shouted “Yes!” at the top of her voice. Once she’d calmed down, the three of them had linked arms and danced round in a circle while chanting, “We are Nottingham, yes we are,” to a tune they made up on the spot.

  And here she was already, pulling into the university campus to start her new life as a student. As happy and excited as she felt, she paused a moment to reflect on the fact that if things had been different, she’d be messaging Sushi, relaying the details of this new adventure to her as they happened: the drive here, a photo of her room, the complaints she would undoubtedly make about the dodgy food.

  At least she’d developed something of a routi
ne with her friend, visiting her every Sunday evening so that she could recap the week with her. When her mum had asked what visits were like, Nova had told her that Computer Sushi was 70% like the real Sushi had been — and was getting more like her all the time. Although in darker moments she wondered whether the digital approximation of her friend only appeared to be getting more like Sushi because she’d already started to forget what the real one was like. It was a chilling thought.

  When they arrived at Hugh Stewart Hall, her residence for the year, Nova was relieved to see that most of the other students had been accompanied by their parents too. A map in the lobby told her that she had been assigned a room in ‘Z’ block, where all of the rooms had been refurbished with new beds, fittings and Smart Paint on the walls.

  Zhang seemed to like his new home. As soon as they entered he scampered over to the window ledge while Nova and her parents lugged her stuff from the car to her room on the second floor. When they were surrounded by her bags and boxes, and Nova’s mum had checked for the umpteenth time that she had everything she needed, and Nova was wondering if they would ever leave, her dad finally said, “We’d better get a wriggle on then,” and she burst into tears like she was being left for the first time at nursery school.

  As tears streamed down her face, Nova’s mum scavenged around in her handbag to find a tissue for her. She felt a stream of dripping snot reach the end of her nose when her dad passed her a flyer advertising the Rutland Hall fresher’s party later that week. Without wondering where he’d got it from, she swiped the flyer under her nose, caught the offending mucus, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the bin.

  “I take it you don’t want to attend the party then?” said the person standing in the doorway. Realising that she’d just managed to make herself look a complete doofus within minutes of arriving, she turned to the doorway with the biggest smile she could muster to meet a fellow student.

  But it wasn’t a stranger standing in the doorway. It was Charlie.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Nova did her best to ignore the comments she was getting and tried to concentrate on not tripping over her stupid dress. She was used to wearing clothes and accessories that others thought were a bit weird, but this was different. And she was out in public all on her own. Blame Charlie. She hadn’t seen him since Monday, when he’d handed her dad the flyer for the Rutland Hall Star Wars party, but she hadn’t stopped thinking about him.

  After she’d apologised for the unorthodox way in which she’d dispatched with the flyer, he’d handed her another one and told her that he hoped to see her there. And here she was, three days later, walking down the grassy hill to Rutland Hall, dressed as Princess Leia, with Zhang riding on her shoulders.

  Burner had refused to come with her. He was heading to a party down at the lake with his brother Jono, but she was hardly going to pass up a guaranteed meeting with Charlie. She told Burner she’d see him later on if the Star Wars party turned out to be lame. In Burner’s defence, he had helped her source her costume, and to her delight, she made a damn fine princess.

  At the entrance to Rutland Hall, C-3PO welcomed guests while his companion R2-D2 projected holograms of well-known scenes from the films onto the table beside him. Towering over them was a machine on two legs, “a 2:1 scale All Terrain Scout Transport Walker,” as C-3PO explained to an assembled group of excited nerds.

  “Hey, Leia, nice buns!” one of them said in her direction, to howls of laughter from his fighter pilot friends.

  “Thanks, I plaited them myself,” she responded, without missing a beat. Burner had made the same joke only half an hour earlier. C-3PO turned to her, trying to emulate the character’s jerky robotic movement. “I’m awfully sorry about that, Princess Leia, please excuse their childish behaviour. Here’s a token for a free drink at the Rebel Bar, included in the price of the ticket. Have a great evening, and may the Force be with you.”

  Waiting at the bar for her vodka cranberry, she watched Zhang amuse himself with some bendy straws. He picked a couple up and drummed them against Nova’s hand. She leant in close until their noses touched and spoke to him in a conspiratorial tone.

  “Listen up, furball. We’re looking for a boy called Charlie. He’s got long blond hair and the sweetest blue eyes you ever did see. He’s the reason I’m wearing this ridiculous get-up.”

  She rested an elbow on the bar while she eyed people up, cocking her head this way and that, occasionally going up on tiptoes to scan the room for blond hair.

  “Princess Leia, you’re to come with us. By order of the Imperial Guard, we hereby place you under arrest.”

  Great — more little boys to deal with. These two were dressed in homemade Stormtrooper outfits.

  “Oh, dear. I think I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee, don’t you, Zhang?”

  “We were only joking. I’m Gideon, and this is Joey,” said one of the guys, removing his helmet. “We’re from Cripps Hall. Elite Stormtroopers, reporting for duty, your majesty. Cute monkey, by the way.”

  “I’m sorry, boys, but you’re not the dweebs I’m looking for.”

  “Ah, very good, like your style. But it’s ‘droids’. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. I don’t think I caught your name?”

  Nova spent the next five minutes doing her best to disengage from their small talk. It was the exact same conversation she’d had countless times that week, the one where each fresher revealed where they were from, their A-level grades, the degree they were studying and the societies they’d joined. Burner had mentioned wanting to create a voice-activated app that reeled off the information for him, and he’d only been half-joking.

  She knew that the troopers were harmless enough, just a little try-hard. But this princess was here on imperial business that didn’t concern them, and now her craning and scanning had paid off: on the other side of the room was Charlie. Dressed as Han Solo, he was talking to another Princess Leia, this one dressed in the slave outfit from her time as Jabba’s prisoner.

  The costume consisted of a scant gold-threaded bikini and a faux metal collar attached to a chain that she kept caressing. She must have been at least six foot, and her long, tanned legs were more toned than Nova’s had been at any point in her life. She was all over Charlie, laughing at everything he said and fluttering her false eyelashes. And she kept touching him. If she stroked his blaster pistol one more time, Nova would feed her to Jabba herself.

  As Charlie took a swig of his beer, she noticed a bulge on his arm. At first she thought it was a part of his outfit — but then it moved and changed colour. A second or two of complete bewilderment was followed by a knowing smile as she finally realised what it was. He had an Electropet chameleon perching on his arm and its skin had changed colour to blend with Charlie’s outfit. The realisation brought a grin to Nova’s face. They had something in common. The only question was how she could best use that fact to her advantage.

  While Gideon yammered away, interrupted by the occasional comment from his friend, she brainstormed her options. In a different universe — one that obeyed another set of social laws — she would send Zhang over with a funny little note, Charlie would stop talking to the tramp, look over with a huge smile on his face, and they’d leave together, hand in hand, towards a sunset. Instead, she would have to approach him herself, the old-fashioned way. She excused herself from the dismayed troopers, battled the intense feeling of nerves, and made her way over to them.

  “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s Charlie, right? I think we first met at the open day earlier in the year.”

  “Hi. It’s Luna, isn’t it?” Nova’s heart stepped up a gear. He remembered her. And not for the flyer incident. Take that, Slave Leia.

  “Er, nearly. It’s Nova. They’re similar names — they’ve both got four letters in a sequence that goes ‘consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel’. And they’re both related to space. Samesies.”

  She listened to the drivel coming out of her mouth and hat
ed her life a little bit more every time a word left her lips. Why did this always happen? Why did she have to spout such utter shit in front of him? Her embarrassment was compounded by the look she could feel the slutty Leia giving her.

  “Nova, that’s right. And this is Holly. We lived in the same corridor here at Rutland in our first year.”

  The two Leias exchanged cursory nods and fake hellos.

  “And who’s the ring-tailed lemur on your shoulder? Hey, little guy, nice to meet you.”

  “He’s called Zhang. Say hello to the nice man.”

  “This is Flash, my chameleon.”

  Their pets held out their hands and rubbed each other’s heads, the customary Electropet introduction. He’d make a perfect playmate for Zhang — when she went on dates with Charlie, they could keep each other entertained.

  “I met some real-life lemurs while I was in Madagascar. ‘Maky’ is what they call them out there. Isn’t that right, Zhang? And you’ve spent some time in Mozambique, Nova, if I remember correctly?”

  In your face, you big-breasted whore. He might have got my name slightly mixed up, but we’re totally down with the travelling thing. In theory at least. After the open day, she’d done some basic research into sustainable development in an attempt to convince herself that they really did have the same interests.

  “Yes! Good old Mozambique. One of the best times of my life. They could really benefit from microfinance out there, which I believe was something—”

  “I’m sure they could,” Holly cut in, with a supercilious smile. “But we were just about to leave, weren’t we, Charlie?”

  “Yeah. It’s a bit nerd-heavy in here, don’t you think? We were thinking about heading to a club. Holly suggested Hedonism.”

  Nova’s heart raced. She had one last trick up her sleeve.