Cure for the Common Universe

by Christian McKay Heidicker

  Time for your guilding,” Command said, escorting me back down G-man’s staircase.

  I stopped walking. “Guilding?”

  He chuckled and took my arm. “Don’t worry. You’ll keep your balls.”

  We continued down the hallway, passing a cafeteria, a laundry room, and, oh God, a community shower room. At the end of the hall was a black door with “The Hub” painted in the white, mad-slash handwriting of a serial killer.

  Behind it, whispers hummed like electricity:

  “Talk to the cat. She’ll tame the Darkroot hunters.”

  “Just cracking the warthog will make it blow.”

  “You can’t stop the bleedout! It’s the bleedout!”

  Normally I’d be stoked to join a guild. But I had the sinking feeling this was going to be very different from Arcadia.

  What waited behind that door? A stripping and whipping? A chair, an injection, eye clamps, and a game controller? A single pull-up?

  As Command led me toward the Hub, I gazed back toward the green light of the exit. Beyond that door, beyond an impossible stretch of desert, beyond sand and road and dead gas stations, Serena was bending space and time to tug at my heartstrings. . . .

  Command pushed open the door, and the whispers stopped.

  The Hub was shadowy and cavernous. It smelled like gasoline. Light from three tall, frosted windows shined on dust and brick and a small wooden stage. The space looked industrial, like it had once been used to manufacture robot soldiers or something. But now it felt uncomfortably empty, like an MMO no one wanted to play. Everything was colorless except a bunch of beanbag chairs in front of the stage, where about a dozen teens sat . . . and stared at me.

  Command marched me toward the stage. The teens watched. Without phones or 3DSs to distract them, these gamers were creepily attentive. The longer they stared, the more I felt my self-conscious parts bloat, becoming paler and hairier. I tried to avoid eye contact. I never did do well with people in person. Not even gamers. That was why the car wash had felt like a miracle to me.

  “Afternoon, everyone!” G-man jogged onto the stage and set down a folding chair. “We’ve got a new player starting today! Come on up, Miles!”

  I felt everyone’s eyes on me. I felt my face turn red. I felt my feet turn to concrete. Somewhere the building’s plumbing gurgled.

  Why would my dad do this to me?

  Why couldn’t I go have a normal week before I went on a normal date?

  Why had I played so many stupid video games?

  “Miles?” G-man tapped the chair.

  Command gave my back a little push, making me trip up onto the stage. I sat in the chair.

  I should be getting my back waxed right now.

  G-man clapped me on the shoulder. “I want you all to give a big Video Horizons welcome to . . . Miles Prower!”

  “Hi, Miles,” the gamers said.

  They sounded as pleased as a cow in a cement mixer.

  Somehow I worked up the guts to look at the crowd looking at me.

  Gamers, especially hard-core gamers, especially hard-core gamers who play enough to be sent to a video game rehab, fill every possible moment with beating the next level, getting the high score, or leveling their character. Exercise, showering, and overall hygiene tend to go out the window. But these kids looked . . . clean. Their greasy complexions had been scrubbed away, their pale skin tanned, their colorful gamer tees tossed out. It was as if they were slowly transforming into versions of their gaming characters. And no one looked happy about it.

  “Guilding time,” G-man whispered with excitement. He didn’t seem to be looking into the same sea of dead eyes I was. “Miles, we want you to think of Video Horizons as a place of magic.” He put his mouth too close to my ear and cast his hand out over the audience. “A place where classes are filled with wonder, activities are filled with surprises, and side quests await around every corner.”

  I stared at my hands and wondered what Serena was up to. Probably feeding Ethiopian children or something.

  G-man squeezed my shoulder. “Which of the three guilds will help you achieve your greatest potential?”

  I glanced up and noticed that the Hub’s beanbag chairs were arranged into three columns of red, green, and purple. At the front of each, an adult held a sign with a different misspelled video game reference.

  “Will it be . . .” G-man pointed to the red group. “The Master Cheefs?”

  The guild stood and gave a grunt salute that would have made the Skyrim theme song blush. They were led by a muscly coach who had a tan like a burned carrot. These looked like the action gamers, the type who shoot every red thing in sight before teabagging your character’s corpse.

  “Will it be . . . the Sefiroths?”

  The green guild stood and hissed at me. Then one broke into a coughing fit. Their guild leader, a slight woman with silver hair, helped the coughing kid sit down.

  “Or will it be the Fury Burds?”

  The final guild—just two girls and a prepubescent kid—stood from their purple beanbags and half-assedly flapped their hands like little wings while trying to whistle. Their guild leader was HUGE. His hands looked big enough to scoop up Command and Conquer and make them fight each other like action figures.

  “So, player Miles,” G-man said, squeezing my shoulders. “Who’s it going to be?”

  I frowned at the gamers. I remembered when guilds had been fun—that morning. What did G-man know about fun or magic? Had he ever joined a raiding party to defeat a wad of bubble gum that was attacking downtown Arcadia, sticking its citizens to the streets and collapsing buildings with popped bubbles? No. No, he hadn’t.

  Still. I had to play this Video Horizons game. For Serena.

  Which guild would help me get out of there and to my date the fastest? The sickly Sefiroths? The futile Fury Burds? Part of me wanted to be in what was clearly the strongest of the guilds—the warriors of Halo—the Master Cheefs. But their almost-athletic builds intimidated the hell out of me.

  Also, one of the Cheefs kept grinning at me. He was as skinny as a wire, wearing a big white gangster tee, and sitting in his beanbag like a breeze had slumped him over. His hair hung like black straw around an expression that was boredom and chaos both.

  He gave me a venomous smile and shook his head as if to say, Not my guild. The nerves came alive in my teeth.

  “Um . . .” I swallowed. “I choose—”

  “Not so fast,” G-man said. He reached behind the stage and brought out a black shoebox with an oval cut out of the lid. “Let’s let the Box of Fate decide.”

  He shook the box at me. I stared into the dark oval. This was it. I’d randomly choose a powerful guild that would humiliate me, or a shitty guild that would make me lose. I reached inside. There was only one piece of paper in the shoebox. I looked at G-man, who smiled with his fuzzy teeth. Had he taken the others out because I’d been a smart-ass in our first meeting? Was he trying to prove that it was impossible for me to win in four days?

  I pulled out the paper and read it. My stomach dropped.

  “What does it say?” G-man asked.

  When I didn’t answer, he snatched it out of my hand.

  “Master Cheefs!”

  The Cheefs gave an audible groan of disappointment.

  “Really, Cheefs?” G-man said, hand on hip. “Is that how we treat a new player? Scarecrow?”

  The kid with the slanted grin shrugged. “What’d I do?”

  The other Cheefs snickered.

  What would Serena think if she knew that even a bunch of gaming addicts didn’t want me in their guild?

  Still, I didn’t blame the Cheefs. They didn’t need bloated Miles Prower slowing down their escape from rehab.

  “Well, shucks,” G-man said. “I was hoping we could introduce a little diversity into some of the guilds.” I looked at the athletic Cheefs and knew exactly what kind of diversity he meant. “But I suppose it won’t work out that way.” He crumpled up the piece of paper.


  The Cheefs cheered.

  G-man pointed at them. “Minus a thousand points for every player on the Cheefs for poor sportsmanship.”

  The Cheefs moaned. Oh God. Didn’t G-man know they would take this out on me?

  “Miles,” G-man said, touching my shoulder again, “we’ll stick you in the Fury Burds, I guess.”

  The Burds didn’t react, except for their giant leader, who gave an enthusiastic series of deafening claps.

  “Go find a seat,” G-man said, patting my back so hard, it stung.

  I slouched toward the Fury Burds. My guild.

  The giant guild leader shook my hand, which practically disappeared inside his.

  “Good tidings, Miles!” he said, grinning. He drew me close and whispered, “When you’re in the guilding chair, these meetings can feel longer than a Final Fantasy cut scene. Heh-heh.”

  I managed half a smile.

  A bird tweeted through the overhead speakers.

  “All right, everyone!” G-man called from the stage. “Before you head off to guild therapy, say it with me now! One, two, three!”

  The players chanted in their unenthusiastic voices: “I am not a gamer; I am a player of life.”

  And just like that, I was.

  NPCs

  To the Nest, adventurers!” the giant guild leader said.

  I followed the Fury Burds out of the Hub and along the eastern corridor. The prepubescent kid kept glancing over his shoulder at me. He couldn’t seem to keep his tongue in his mouth.

  We climbed another staircase to a purple door painted with a picture of a bird’s nest. Inside, the two girls combed through an activity chest while the smaller kid started unfolding chairs with the effort of a squirrel trying to pry open bear traps.

  “Thank you, Fury Burds mayor!” the giant guild leader said. He took the kid’s scroll and stamped it.

  I stood there like an idiot.

  The Nest was a small, gray brick room that smelled like dead grass. A half wall divided the far wall in two, with four bunks on each side. On the right side of the wall was a punching bag and a crafts table. On the left was a workstation and the activity chest. Above the half wall was a small, barred window that looked over desert dunes and a pale sky. A bird-themed clock above the door said it was a quarter after canary—5:13.

  Four days to earn a million points.

  The guild leader’s hand thunked down onto my shoulder. “Let’s start guild therapy, shall we?”

  I nodded, like what he’d said was perfectly normal, and joined the circle of chairs. The small kid immediately sat next to me. The two girls also sat, holding circles of wood that framed perforated pieces of cloth. The fluorescents flickered on the dead-fish gray of the walls. I needed a Red Bull.

  “Greetings, players!” the guild leader said. His voice was so big and warm that for a moment it felt like we were gathered around a crackling hearth in Azeroth. Y’know, as opposed to being in a gray-brick jail cell. “We have a new player joining us today. Greetings, Miles!”

  I gave the guild a flat smile and a small wave.

  Earlier I had failed to convince G-man that I was a healthy or good person. I needed a new tactic. When you find yourself in a dungeon that’s too high-level, you remain stealthy. You memorize the layout of the passages and study the enemies’ movements from the shadows while searching for a way to get the hell out.

  “Normally,” the guild leader said, “we would have guild therapy during this block, but because it’s Sunday, we’re a little more relaxed, and I can give you a proper welcome.” He gestured around the circle. “I want you to get to know your guildmates. You’ll be pretty close with these guys for the next few weeks.”

  Not if I could help it.

  Going clockwise from my chair were the two girls—a larger Asian with short shiny black hair, and a girl with dark skin, her hair bleached white. Then there was the giant guild leader, and finally, the small kid and me. The kid was sitting so close, I could feel him breathing.

  “I’ll begin,” the guild leader said. “They call me Fezzik. I’m a very nice man, but I’m also a giant. Heh. Guess I don’t have to tell you that part.”

  The bigger girl raised her hand. “Do we have to listen to this again?”

  “You can stitch for points if you’d like,” Fezzik said.

  The girls started to sew. The small kid kept his attention fixed on me.

  “Miles, they say the best kind of sponsor is one who has experienced the same addiction,” Fezzik continued, “or as I like to say, has gone on the same dangerous quests. I’m no different from you. I’ve experienced gamer regret. I’ve come out of a gaming haze and discovered the world had left me behind without any real connections or appreciable skills.”

  My dad had used similar words when trying to discipline me. But I knew I had enough “appreciable skills” to get by in life. I could build a computer from scratch. I could order underwear online. I could microwave Hot Pockets.

  Fezzik rested his elbows on his knees so that his eyes were more level with mine. “No one loves a giant. Just like in fairy tales. I don’t know if people are worried I’m going to break them or what, but when you’re my size, no one invites you to things. No parties. No football games. No dates.”

  Something squeezed inside me. I may have complained about my looks and my luck with girls, but it would be nearly impossible to find love with a giant’s stats.

  “So one day I gave up on it all,” he said. “I went to Costco with my savings and bought three shopping carts full of food. Then I shut myself up in my apartment with an Arcadia subscription.”

  My eye twitched. I hoped he didn’t notice.

  “I stayed there for six straight weeks, ordering an extra large supreme pizza every night, and spending every possible moment in Arcadia. I would’ve stayed longer, but then my sobering moment came. The thing that smoked me out of my cave. I’d been fighting the Click Clack God for four straight days—waiting for him to respawn again and again so I could get him to drop a pair of epic titanium cuff links—when I ran out of food. The fridge was empty. The cupboard was bare. I couldn’t afford pizza three times a day, so I needed another Costco run. But . . .” Fezzik gave a giant-size sigh. “When I tried to leave my apartment, I couldn’t fit out the front door.”

  My eyebrows leapt to the top of my forehead. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh.

  Fezzik pinched up his shoulders like he was still trying to find a way out of that door. “I squeezed and squeezed until I was afraid I might get stuck in the frame.” His shoulders released. “Finally I had to just . . . give up. I went and sat on my couch.” He shook his giant head, ashamed. “That moment hit me like a bucket of ice water. I didn’t want to be one of those people who had to be lifted through a hole in the ceiling by a crane after I died. So I sat there in my apartment for days, eating nothing, playing nothing, just staring at the wall until I lost enough weight to fit out my door again.”

  It was so quiet, I could hear the girls’ needles threading through cloth.

  “BUT—” Fezzik lifted his giant hands and let them fall with a big SLAP onto his lap. “That was another life. The Emperor is long behind me.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re the Emperor?”

  Fezzik blushed and tried to contain a smile.

  I nearly dropped to my knees before the most famous player ever to grace Arcadia. I looked around the circle.

  “You guys are sitting in front of a god,” I said.

  “I doubt that,” the Asian girl said.

  The white-haired girl stared admiringly at Fezzik, but then quickly dropped her gaze when the Asian girl looked her way.

  “Tell them!” I said to Fezzik. “Tell them what you did!”

  Fezzik waved his hands. “No, no. I left that life behind long ago.”

  The small kid next to me bounced in his chair. “Tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us!”

  “Yes. God. Please,” the Asian girl said. “We’r
e dying.”

  “Well,” Fezzik said, cheeks red from the attention, “my guild was the first to complete the Jack and Lop quest. I obtained Eeqwuan’s blade and fed it to Gurglaxe, the lava amphibian, in order to acquire the Toasty Scythe, which I took into the Temple of the Horn and used to decapitate the Mallow King, earning me the Jackalopesus mount. I used it to build the Pyramid of Atmo . . . which earned me the title of Emperor.”

  I caught the girl with white hair secretly smiling as she stitched.

  “I didn’t sleep for ninety hours,” Fezzik said. “I’m not proud of it.”

  He clearly was.

  I wanted to invite the giant guild leader to join the Wight Knights guild, but that seemed inappropriate in a video game rehab. So I just said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Emperor.”

  “No, no,” Fezzik said. “Don’t call me that. Like I said, that was another life.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “The point is, I know what it’s like to get lost in a digital world and watch the real world leave you behind. More than most, probably. Heh. Think of me as your healer, Miles. The white mage of the guild.”

  “A-hem,” the Asian girl said. “White?”

  “Excuse me,” Fezzik said. “I’m your healer. I’m here to give you a phoenix down in life.”

  He gave an infectious chuckle, and I smiled. For real this time.

  Fezzik gestured around the circle. “Let’s go around and have everyone give a brief introduction: name, tier, and why you’re here.”

  “What’s a tier?” I asked.

  “It’s just which quarter of a million points the player has. You’re a first tier.” He gestured to the big girl, who kept her eyes on her cross-stitch. She looked annoyed enough to crumple the chair she sat in. “Meeki?”

  She kept stitching. “I’m Meeki. I’m a first tier. I’m not addicted to video games. I’m here because a controller accidentally slipped out of my hand during a Wii tennis match against my brother, and it accidentally gave him a concussion.”

  “Meeki,” Fezzik said. “Did the controller accidentally break the television too?”

  She dropped her needle and made an annoyed sound. “I already told you. The Wiimote bounced off my brother’s head and then hit the TV. I’m not a violent person.”