Cure for the Common Universe

by Christian McKay Heidicker

  He pulled out what looked like a computer chip, slid it into a zip case, and then replaced it with another. He glanced up, saw me, quickly replaced the grate, and pushed his mop around the corner.

  I walked up to the corner and squinted through the vent. Tiny green lights winked in the darkness.

  What the hell? This was some serious Myst shit. . . .

  Whatever. I wasn’t there to solve mysteries. I was there to win.

  Ugh. I was starting to sound like I was on a reality game show.

  • • •

  Back in the Nest, Fezzik placed a finger to his lips and pointed to a lump in one of the bunks. Zxzord was snoring.

  “So is he on heroin, or not?” Meeki asked.

  “G-man thinks he’s exaggerating,” Fezzik said. “But that is none of our business. Tonight let’s try to make the Dust Fairy’s job a bit easier.”

  The rest of us quietly cleaned the Nest for a few thousand points each, until an owl hooted for lights-out. Meeki disappeared behind the half wall, and Aurora slipped out of the Nest. I tossed my pouch onto the top bunk diagonal from Zxzord’s so I wouldn’t have to listen to his snoring. I climbed the little ladder and slipped under the covers while Fezzik hummed the sleep song from Final Fantasy.

  “Rest well, adventurers,” he said. “Tomorrow your quest continues.”

  He switched off the light, and green star stickers glowed to life on the ceiling.

  I looked at the bird clock, lit by the Nest’s green exit light—10:02. Owl o’clock. Less than four days until my date. Less than four days to earn a million points. Usually I loved challenges like this. The odds stacked against me. A boss no one had defeated. A record no one had beaten. But that was when I could do everything with my ass in my desk chair, controlling a warrior avatar who wields an axe the size of a bison. Without those, how was I supposed to win at “sports in the Coliseum”?

  Something pressed into my back through the mattress below. Two small feet.

  “Psst! Miles!”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Miles? . . . Miles? . . . Miles? . . . Miles?”

  “I’m asleep.”

  “You want me to cross-stitch for you? I’ll give you all the points.”

  “Wait . . .” I stuck my head over the edge of the bed. “Seriously?”

  Press Start

  I was woken by an electronic rooster, a warbled grok-a-drrdle-gdoo blaring through the blown-out speaker above my head. I rubbed my eyes and tried to figure out why I wasn’t looking at the glowing gray breasts of the Kerrigan poster above my computer. Instead I was looking at a shitty watercolor portrait of what might have been Felicia Day.

  A freckled nose peeked over the edge of my bed.

  “Moooooorning,” Soup crooned.

  Outside the window the sun made blinding sparkles on the dunes. It was only then that I remembered that, not unlike Harry Potter, I had been escorted (kidnapped) by a giant (two Tongan men) and whisked (driven) to a magical land (desert) where I was sorted (humiliated) into a new house (guild) to learn new skills that would result in points (against my will).

  I covered my face with my pillow.

  Soup snorted. “You’re funny.”

  The rooster choked out another call. The speaker didn’t have a snooze button. Neither did Soup. I couldn’t sink back into bed until my dad came in and stole my blanket. I had to be a warrior. For Gravity.

  I uncovered my head and took a deep breath.

  “Want me to get your pants for you?” Soup asked.

  “Yes.”

  I sat up and tried to blink life back into my brain. It was seven a.m. First time I’d woken up before noon all summer.

  “Rise, adventurers!” Fezzik said, jostling my bunk. “Prepare for the day’s quests!”

  Aurora was already dressed and cross-stitching. Zxzord snored below me. Behind the half wall, Meeki groaned. I slid out of bed.

  “Pants!” Soup said, presenting them.

  I slid them on.

  “Cross-stitch!”

  He held up a white piece of cloth poorly stitched with the words Miles n Gra. “I haven’t done the ‘vity’ or the ‘4 ever’ yet.”

  “Shh,” I said, blocking the cross-stitch from Fezzik’s sight.

  “Oh, right,” Soup whispered. “But do you like it?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  It was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen, but I needed Soup to keep farming points for me.

  “Will you give it to Gravity?” Soup asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said, as I fantasized tossing the cross-stitch out the window as G-man drove me home on Thursday.

  “Yesss!” Soup took the cross-stitch and skipped to Aurora. “He loved it!”

  A huge hand clapped me on the shoulder. “Strap on your armor, adventurer!” Fezzik said.

  I unzipped my suitcase. My dad hadn’t packed any of my favorite shirts, of course. No “Still Alive,” no Cardboard Tube Samurai, no Finn and Jake. Instead he’d bought a pack of Hanes large V-neck shirts that were too small, a pack of tighty blackies, a pack of plain white socks, a pair of white pants that could unzip into shorts, and a pair of laceless tennis shoes. He’d also thrown in his orange Home Depot hat.

  Worst. Armor. Ever.

  I squeezed into a T-shirt, clicked on my adventure pouch, and slipped on my shoes, leaving the Home Depot hat behind.

  I took one last look out the window, across the endless dunes. Could I fill my pockets with enough bottled water from the Feed to survive the walk across the desert? Doctors said I retained a lot of water weight, and I would have a hell of a tan for my date . . . or I’d just get lost and die.

  Let the game begin, I guess.

  • • •

  After brushing my teeth with a toothbrush carefully prepared by Soup, and turning down his offer to apply my deodorant, I followed the shuffle of feet down the dead, fluorescent hallway to the Hub for Monday assembly. I kept my eyes on the floor the whole way, hoping to avoid any chance encounter with Scarecrow. I was anxious enough without seeing his crooked smile.

  In the Hub I quickly snagged a beanbag chair between Fezzik and Aurora so that Soup couldn’t sit next to me. While G-man took the stage and discussed personal accountability, I unzipped my adventure pouch and tried to make sense of my picture-based schedule through the fog of less than twelve hours of sleep.

  The week was packed with activities, each less appealing than the last. Still, I needed to speed-run this game, executing every class and chore perfectly, without ever having played it. Of course, if I could just win four golds in the tournaments . . . That wasn’t going to happen.

  Every day there were three class blocks—sports, life skills, and arts and music—but players could choose the kind of class within those categories that most appealed to them. The options for first block were jogging, aerobics, and the class obviously designed for lazy kids, tai chi. Jogging was worth the most points, so I circled it grudgingly. I continued to circle the most challenging classes throughout the week, until a shadow fell across my schedule.

  “You’re my eggy daddy,” Meeki said.

  I looked up. The assembly had ended. The players were lined up at the stage, collecting eggs from G-man.

  “Were you not listening?” Meeki asked, then rolled her eyes before I could answer. “You’re already a terrible father.” She stuck an egg into my face. “You and I take care of this together. For every day that it doesn’t break, we get ten thousand points.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the egg, then at Meeki. I didn’t trust this. This was the girl who’d spent my first guild therapy session ridiculing absolutely everything I’d said.

  “Why don’t you ask Aurora?” I said. “Y’know, because . . . y’know.”

  “First of all, she’s not my type. Second of all . . .” Meeki huffed. “Look, dude, do you want the points or not?”

  I looked at my schedule. Ten thousand points a day would really help me out.

  “Okay.”

  Mee
ki bit the lid off a marker and drew on the shell. “We trade off every day. I’ll take him first.” She showed me the egg. It had a face now. One eye was narrow like hers, one wide like mine. My half of the egg was smiling. Hers was in a scowl.

  “Looks just like us,” I said.

  “What are we going to name him?” she asked, annoyed.

  “Do we have to for points?”

  Meeki shook her head. “Terrible father,” she said, and left.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I let my head flop back onto the beanbag chair and found Aurora cradling her own egg, decorated with constellations. She had wrapped a scarf around her head and spoke in a fragile voice. “You wouldn’t want to help a poor widowed mother out, would you?”

  “Um . . .”

  Aurora’s lip quivered.

  I hesitated, wondering if I could cheat by raising two eggs to earn double points. But then I remembered G-man deducting points from the Master Cheefs for bad sportsmanship. I couldn’t risk losing any points in the next four days.

  “I already told Meeki I would,” I said.

  Aurora nuzzled her egg. “Maybe we can get child support points. C’mon, Megg White.”

  She exited the Hub, leaving me feeling pretty studly that two girls wanted to raise eggs with me . . . until I remembered that their other options were Soup and Zxzord.

  Two small hands rubbed my arms from behind. “You hungry?” Soup said. “I could hear your stomach growling all meeting!”

  I shrugged him away. “I’m starving.”

  For breakfast, Cooking Mama laid out ingredients in the Feed’s kitchen and told us to make whatever we wanted, reminding us that healthy food would earn us points. One of the Sefiroths made open-mouthed Pac-Man pancakes that looked like they were chasing raspberries. I wanted those pancakes. I was hungry enough to lay waste to the entire stack. Instead I made a runny, over-spiced tofu scramble for my guild.

  “Thanks, Miles!” Soup said.

  “I did it for the points,” I said.

  +6,000

  When the clock struck cardinal, Aurora asked, “Would you like to tai chi with us, Miles Prower?”

  “Not enough points,” I said, and headed out to the racetrack.

  The sky was bright and hot. A powerful wind blew sand off the dunes in painful invisible lashes. It was the kind of day I’d usually spend locked in my room, battling marble cherubs that had escaped from the medina’s fountain. But no. I had to run. And not just run. The schedule said each lap was worth 1,000 points. In order to reach my desired PPD (points per day), I’d have to run ten laps around the sandy track that wrapped around the building. I quickly did the math. . . . Yep. That was nine more laps than I’d ever run in my life.

  I felt something next to me. I turned around and found Soup standing in my shadow.

  “What are we doing?” he asked. “Running?”

  I ignored him and walked up to the muscly coach with a carrot tan, the Master Cheefs’ guild leader. Everything about him made me want to run, from his metallic Oakley sunglasses to his crossed arms to the veins in his neck. Even the nipples pressing through his sweat-resistant tank top looked angry.

  “Uh, what do I do?” I asked.

  The coach pointed down the track. “You run. It’s not rocket science.”

  A little fan whirred at his feet, making his shoelaces flap. All I wanted was to lie down in front of it.

  I walked to the starting line, where a couple of large Master Cheefs stretched themselves in positions impossible for my body.

  I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

  “We got this!” Soup said, leaping and punching into the air.

  His enthusiasm made my man boobs sag.

  The coach blew his whistle. The Master Cheefs shot ahead while I set off one plodding foot at a time. A burning wind dried my eyes and filled my lungs with fire. My bones felt fragile. I wanted to be home. Home, where my warrior had infinite endurance and I got 100 percent more ass support.

  Soup did not help. He had so much energy, he actually ran backward in front of me, so I had to look at his stupid smiling face the whole time.

  “Don’t crane your neck back and don’t breathe out so hard and don’t make your arms flop around,” he said. “You’re doing great.”

  After what felt like an eon of running, I heard the Master Cheefs’ sneakers pounding down the track from behind, about to lap me. As they passed, I couldn’t tell if they were huffing or laughing. This was what a rhinoceros with osteoporosis must feel like when being chased by a pack of hyenas.

  After a lap and a half I nearly wobbled off the track.

  “Gotcha!” Soup hooked my arm and pulled me back between the track lines. “You can quit anytime! But you don’t want to!”

  “I will throw up on you,” I told him.

  “That’s okay!” Soup said.

  I ran three laps.

  I went blind, threw up my scramble, and Soup practically had to carry me back to the building . . . but I ran three laps.

  +3,000 points

  • • •

  Between classes I tried to blink the purple spots from my vision while washing dishes in the Feed for a bonus 2,000 points. Then I dragged my bones to the hazy electric symbol room for a class with G-man, whom I high-fived with the least sarcastic smile I could muster. +1,000

  “If you guys are going to live a life fueled by electronics, you might as well learn how the darned things work.” He taught us about transistors as we soldered tiny bits of metal onto circuit boards.

  “What game is this?” Meeki asked, waving one in the air.

  “Actually, that’s a calculator chip,” G-man said.

  After that, I watched her solder 80085 onto her board.

  +2,000 points

  When the chickadee chirped at noon, I dragged myself to the Feed. I was exhausted. I felt like dying. I did not die. Instead I filled my tray with zero-point foods and joined the Fury Burds table.

  “Cheap highs, like shopping and sugar and epic loot, don’t last,” Fezzik said. “They’re like a star in Super Mario Bros. You may feel invincible for a brief period, but after the comedown, you’ll be just as vulnerable as before, if not more so.”

  I avoided the guild leader’s eyes as I scarfed down mashed potatoes and chocolate milk. I realized I was doing exactly what he was warning us against, but I was starving and needed the energy for “sports in the Coliseum.”

  “How goes the adventure, Miles?” Fezzik asked.

  “Fine,” I said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “Aurora, you’re a third tier,” he said. “Any advice for the new player?”

  “Um,” she said. “Don’t burn yourself out trying to get home too soon.”

  She slid her fingers next to my lunch tray. Her knuckles were scabbed and swollen.

  “Too much cross-stitching,” she said.

  “Don’t have to worry about that,” I said, taking another bite.

  “Nope!” Soup said, and winked at me.

  I subtly shook my head at him.

  “. . . and that’s why Last of Us sucks,” a voice said. “Except when the chicks make out, of course.”

  Scarecrow passed our table, his arm around a girl who giggled and playfully pushed him away.

  “He’s such a douche bag,” Meeki said.

  Aurora nodded.

  “Language, Meeki,” Fezzik said.

  “Sorry,” Meeki said. “He’s a device that cleans out vaginas.”

  Fezzik didn’t argue with that.

  The tension in my chest uncoiled a bit. It’s not so bad when the person who mysteriously hates you is widely considered a douche bag.

  “I don’t know what Dorothy sees in him,” Aurora said, looking after Scarecrow and the girl.

  “Their player names are Scarecrow and Dorothy?” I asked.

  “The other two Cheefs call themselves Lion and Tin Man,” Fezzik said, pointing toward the bigger guys, who’d lapped me on the racetrack—twice. “Th
ey changed their player names together last week.”

  Great. My mysterious archnemesis was the leader of a Yellow Brick Road gang.

  Someone sat and collapsed onto the table next to me.

  “How’s the dream world, Zxzord?” Fezzik asked.

  Zxzord kept his head hidden in his arms. “I’ve been shitting the La Brea Tar Pits all morning.”

  Fezzik made his uncomfortable Wookiee sound.

  Aurora reached under her tongue and inexplicably offered Zxzord a pearl.

  • • •

  “Paint what inspires you in the real world,” the Sefiroths’ silver-haired guild leader said in the paintbrush room. The walls were covered with hideous watercolors.

  Meeki painted armor. Aurora painted stars. Soup sat too close, as usual, and painted what looked like a chubby kid trapped in a Pokéball.

  “That better not be me,” I told him.

  He slowly slid it off the table and crumpled it.

  By the end of class, there was a hideous watercolor portrait on the wall—a dripping, smiling, black-haired stick figure, standing at what might have been a car wash.

  Ragdoll Physics

  I have been a hero.

  I have hefted my axe and climbed the jagged mountaintop. A blizzard lashed my armor as I approached a behemoth that vomited venomous lava onto any who tried to steal its treasure. I have stared that demon in its eyes of chaos as it howled for my death. And I was not half so terrified as when I went to play some casual sports with a few video game addicts.

  My heart was practically hammering out my brains as the Fury Burds trudged the sandy path to the Coliseum. It was the kind of terror I’d felt a thousand times at my high school. Like my body was about to be assaulted—by health.

  In the high desert sky, clouds drifted across the sun, making the sand dull gray one moment, flashing gold the next. Oh God, please let me win that gold.