by Dustin Brady
“Real friends know each other,” Eric said. “And this friend knows that you never want to have fun or make decisions for yourself. So sometimes he has to push you a little bit.”
“Well maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do!”
I blasted the monster’s belly. Unbeknownst to me, Eric blasted its back at the same time. In slow motion, the monster looked at me, then turned around to look at Eric. Then a funny thing happened. Its head started twitching unnaturally. As the monster’s head snapped from me to Eric and back again, it started to roar. Or at least, it started trying to roar.
“RO-RO-RO-RO-RO”
It sounded a lawn mower trying to start.
“RO-RO-RO-RO-RO”
Suddenly the sand monster and island disappeared. Everything faded away, and we were left in a bright blue room. On the wall, words started to appear as if they were being typed.
ERROR 2302. ACTIVATE HINDENBURG PROTOCOL?
- YES
- NO
“OK,” I said to Eric. “What’s the Hindenburg Protocol?”
His face was kind of white.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean it’s never done anything like this before.”
“So should we pick no?”
“Yeah probably.”
I walked to the wall and touched “NO.”
The message disappeared. Eric and I looked at each other and waited for something to happen. Then the message started typing out again.
ERROR 2302. ACTIVATE HINDENBURG PROTOCOL?
- YES
- NO
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” Eric said.
He touched “YES,” and the room faded away. The island and ocean came back, but no more monster.
“That was weird,” I said.
“Yeah. Super weird.”
Three portals started pushing through the ground in front of us.
Why don’t we both get out of here,” Eric said.
We walked toward the middle portal — the HOME one — but stopped short once it began revealing itself. Something was wrong. The two other portals glowed bright blue and purple like before, but not the middle one.
The middle one was dull gray. And it was locked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mark Day
“What now?”
Eric backed up. “I…I don’t know.”
We’re trapped?”
“I mean I’m sure there’s a way out.”
“Oh really?!” I blasted the locked door. Nothing. I chunked a grenade at it. Didn’t even make a dent. Then I blasted Eric. He reappeared on the other side of the island. I started marching toward him. “This is all your fault!” I blasted him again. He disappeared and reappeared again. “Now what are we going to do?” Another blast. “Nobody knows we’re in here!” BLAST. “And even if they did, what would they do, reprogram the game and erase us?” BLAST. “We’re supposed to go on a field trip to the science center next week, and I really wanted to go to the science center!” BLAST. “This…” BLAST “…is…” BLAST “…all…” BLAST “…your…” BLAST “…fault!” BLAST BLAST.
By the end of my little speech, Eric was just hanging his head while I blasted him to video game death over and over again.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said.
I glared and blasted him again.
“It is all my fault. I shouldn’t have made you come without asking.” He plopped onto the sand.
I sat down next to him. “No, you shouldn’t have. But I did have a choice, and I decided to keep going. So I guess we’re in this together.”
Eric didn’t say anything. He just kept his head down and started drawing a sad face in the sand. Except Eric is really bad at drawing, so the face looked like a melty pizza.
“Come on,” I picked him up. “Let’s find a way out of here.”
We walked through the REPLAY portal and reappeared back on top of the waterfall at the beginning of the level.
“OK, I said. “When we got into the video game, it felt like we were falling, right? So maybe we just need to jetpack high enough to escape.”
Eric shook his head. “Won’t work. We’ll bonk our heads on the ceiling first.”
I looked up at the clear blue sky above me. “OK, Mr. Positive. What ceiling?”
“The whole world is way too big to put into a video game. So programmers make it look like their levels stretch on forever, but they put in these invisible walls and ceilings to keep you from leaving.”
I remembered the invisible fence in the Rockies. “OK, but maybe there’s a portal hidden somewhere.”
Eric shrugged.
“Well grab a jetpack and let’s see!”
We scoured every inch of our fake Hawaiian island. Eric was right – it was a lot smaller than I first thought. In a single afternoon, we had jetpacked over every acre of rainforest, trekked across every beach and even hiked up the volcano. No hidden portals. At Pearl Harbor, while we were looking for an unlocked spaceship we could use to escape, Eric spoke up.
“Do you think they’ll have a Mark Day for us at school?”
Mark Whitman was a kid in our class who had disappeared last month. Word around town was that he had drowned trying to swim across the Mahoning River after a storm. Everyone pitched in to find him - they even brought in these special boats to look up and down the river. When they couldn’t find his body after two weeks, they finally decided to hold a memorial service at school. They set up a gigantic picture of Mark on stage, and his big blue eyes stared at us while a bunch of people got up to say nice things about him. Then we got to go home early. I remember being sad, but also a little excited that we got an extra day off. I got mad at myself for feeling like that.
“Stop it,” I told Eric. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I mean, you didn’t tell your parents where you were going, did you?”
I was silent.
“And my parents were only going to be gone for an hour or two. They have no idea. How long have we been in here? Half a day? A whole day? They’re probably already looking for us.”
I knew he was right. My mom would probably think I’d gotten kidnapped, and my dad would say Eric and I were hiding in the woods. I glanced back at Eric. He looked like he was going to start crying. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go back to Sand Monster Island.”
We jumped off the cliff from before, jetpacked over the ocean and let the big bats take us to the island. Sure enough, the sand monster was back. We teamed up and defeated him in no time. This time, he didn’t start glitching when we beat him. He just shrieked and disappeared into the island. In his place, the portals reappeared. But now instead of three, there were four.
“That’s it!” I said, pointing to the fourth portal. “That’s our way out!”
Eric shook his head. “No, that one just sends you back to previous levels.” He took a closer look at the locked HOME portal. “Wait. Wait a second! Look at this!”
We ran to the HOME portal. It was still gray and locked, but over the lock was now written “LEVEL 20.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Eric turned and smiled. “There are 20 levels in the game!”
“OK.”
“Jesse, this door unlocks when we beat the game!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lady Liberty
I am not at all a huggy person, but I gave Eric the biggest bear hug of my life right there.
“Wooohooooo!”
It was an awkward hug because we clunked arm blasters, but neither of us cared. We ran through the LEVEL 3 portal and did the pitch black skydiving thing again. I must have been getting used to it, because I barely felt like puking this time. When we finally stopped falling, I looked up to see the Statue of Liberty towering over me.
“OK, tell me about this level.”
“This is a good one!” Eric exclaimed. “See, all the aliens in New York City t
hink they have you trapped on Liberty Island. Little do they know that the Resistance has turned the Statue of Liberty into a rocket ship! So you have to lure all the aliens into the Statue of Liberty, climb to the top, and escape by jetpack the second before Lady Liberty blasts the aliens to the moon!”
I stared at Eric with my mouth hanging open. Finally I said, “OK, I never want to hear you make fun of me for collecting baseball cards again, because that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He kept grinning. “But it’s cool, right?”
“It’s cool that the Statue of Liberty is a rocket ship? No. That’s dumb.”
Eric shrugged. “To each his own.”
“So how are we going to do this?”
“The problem is that there’s only one jetpack at the top, and we won’t have enough time to wait for a second one to come back before the Statue of Liberty blasts off.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Doesn’t that sentence sound stupid? ‘Before the Statue of Liberty blasts off?’ I just feel like we need to stop for a second so you can admit how dumb all of this is.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “So I’ll run ahead of you and unlock all the doors. You wait five minutes, hit that alarm over there to attract the aliens and run like crazy up to the top with them chasing you. I’ll be waiting there with the jetpack, and we’ll fly off into the sunset together. Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to watch the Statue of Liberty fly to the moon with a bunch of aliens inside.”
Eric grinned. “I know, right? Me too!”
With that, he ran into the statue and disappeared inside. After five minutes of counting, I pressed the big red button next to me helpfully labeled “ALARM.”
BRRRAAAAAAANG
BRAAAAAAAAANG
BRAAAAAAAAANG
A loud alarm sounded, and the Statue of Liberty’s eyes began glowing red in time with the noise. I didn’t have to wait long for the aliens to show up. They started pouring onto the island from every direction. All kinds of aliens emerged from the water — some old friends like the praying mantises and wasps, along with some new ones, including these Transformer ripoffs and stretchy Slinky guys. I blasted as many as I could, then made a break for the Statue of Liberty when the number of aliens started to get overwhelming.
I had visited the Statue of Liberty a few years ago on a family vacation to New York, so I thought I knew what the inside would look like. As soon as I entered the lobby, though, I realized that the game developers had taken some, uh, “creative liberties.” No more simple lobby and long, winding staircase. Instead, I found an elaborate series of platforms and ropes.
“Seriously?!” I shouted before climbing onto the first platform. From there, I jumped onto the flame sculpture in the middle of the lobby, and then onto a third platform. I climbed a rope to the fourth ledge, then discovered a problem — my next platform was all the way on the other side of the statue. I considered climbing back down and looking for another way, but the aliens had already filled up the lobby below. In fact, they continued to pour through the door, steadily climbing on top of each other toward me. From above, the whole thing looked like rising water coming to swallow me. If I didn’t move soon, I’d be alien meat. I reminded myself that I’d just reappear back at the beginning of the level if I fell into the pit of squirming, shrieking aliens, but it still felt super scary.
I took a deep breath and remembered something I learned during my training. “OK maggot,” Sergeant Sandpants had said. “When you come across a large pit, shoot your blaster at the ground in the middle of the jump to give yourself an extra boost.”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” I yelled at the time.
Now I knew. I took a deep breath, jumped as far as I could, then shot a blast down into the pit the second I started falling. It worked! The blast gave me just enough lift to make it to the other side. I continued climbing and jumping and blasting my way up the Statue of Liberty as the tide of aliens rose closer and closer to me. In gym class, I’ve never been the best at pull-ups (and by “never the best” I mean “unable to do anything but hang from the bar like a noodle”), but I was able to climb up every ledge with no problem thanks to my new, strong mechanical blaster arm.
By the time I reached the top, I was actually starting to have fun. I opened a door and ran up the last staircase to the Statue of Liberty’s crown. “All right Eric, let’s blow this popsicle stand!” (I don’t know where that came from. “Blow this popsicle stand” is something I have never said once in real life, but it seemed like something a cool video game hero might say.)
I stopped in my tracks when I rounded the corner. In the middle of the room was Eric, wearing a jetpack, pointing a blaster at me. Also, for some reason, he was wearing a gas mask.
Oh, and one more thing. His right arm was long, slimy and gray.
CHAPTER NINE
Bye Bye
Eric — or whatever that thing was in front of me — raised its right hand with five spindly fingers and started waving bye-bye. I was so confused that I barely noticed him aiming his blaster directly between my eyes. Then, just before he pulled the trigger, he got distracted. I followed his gaze. Next to me, in the shiny, metallic surface of the wall, I could make out the reflection of a hand sticking out of a box, waving wildly. Mr. Gas Mask adjusted his aim from me to the reflection and shot a red laser.
ZZZZZIIIIING
As soon as he shot, Eric jumped out of the box and ran at me. Gas Mask shot at Eric. Or at least, he tried to shoot at Eric. Instead, he shot Eric’s reflection.
ZZZZZIIIIING
“WHOOOOMPF!” I wheezed as the real Eric hit me in the ribs and tackled me behind a box.
The thing pointed its blaster at us.
ZZZZZIIIIING
Eric blasted the window next to us. From the ground I could feel the first rumblings of a rocket taking off. I looked out the shattered window to see that we were moving.
“Come on!” Eric grunted as he jumped out of the window.
Before I could argue that this would be a lot better with jetpacks, the alien rolled left to get a clean shot at me. I took a deep breath, ran and jumped.
ZZZZZIIIIING
The good news was that the alien missed. The bad news was that I found myself plummeting to my death. Again. The Statue of Liberty rocketed past me, and I heard the screams of a thousand aliens discovering that they were getting a free ride to the moon. Then, just before everything disappeared in a flash of light, I saw a small speck wearing a jetpack fly from the Statue of Liberty’s crown.
“Was that another one of your schemes where you don’t tell me half the plan?” I yelled after we reappeared in the water off of Liberty Island.
Eric shook his head as he treaded water. “I don’t know what that was. When I got to the top of the statue, I heard something behind me. I thought it was you not following instructions, so I hid in a box to scare you. Instead, it was some weird alien wearing a gas mask.”
“Wait, you’ve never seen that alien in this game before?”
“Never.”
“That’s creepy.”
“Yeah. Super creepy. Anyways, it started poking around the room like it was looking for me, so I stayed hidden. Then when it couldn’t find me, it strapped on the jetpack and waited for you. I figured our plan would work just as well without jetpacks, so I decided to stay hidden and warn you to jump out the window when you showed up.”
“Wait, waving wildly from a box was supposed to be your way of telling me to jump out the window?”
“Of course. Wasn’t it obvious?”
I squinted at him. “I’m sorry I don’t know the hand signal for ‘jump out of the Statue of Liberty.’”
“Well everything worked out just fine, didn’t it?”
“Whatever, can we just get through this before any more creepy surprise aliens pop up?”
“Definitely.”
We swam toward the shore of Liberty Island as fast as possible. Because w
e are not the world’s best athletes to begin with and because we had blasters strapped to our arms, it was possibly the slowest, splashiest, most pathetic swim the world had ever seen. When we finally reached the shore, we shook ourselves off and walked toward the glowing portals that had appeared in place of the Statue of Liberty.
Eric walked through the LEVEL 4 portal first.
WHOOSH!
Then I walked through.
WHOOSH!
Then, as I was falling through the blackness, I could have sworn I heard the faint sound of a third person entering the portal.
WHOOSH!
CHAPTER TEN
Captain Eric
“I’m driving!”
“Driving what?” I asked as I looked around to figure out where we’d landed this time.
Oh. Great. A swamp. A thick, smelly swamp. I picked up my right foot. THHHHHHWUUUUCK. The worst. I was standing in six inches of muck, which meant I’d be walking in wet socks all day. I can handle snow, I can handle volcanoes, I can even handle house-sized sand monsters. I cannot handle wet socks.
“I’M DRIVING I CALLED IT!” Eric did not have wet socks, because he did not get teleported into the swamp. Instead he ended up on a future-y looking tank 10 feet away, and he was calling it at the top of his lungs.
“No way, that thing’s going to get stuck in two seconds!”
“Not this tank!” Eric yelled. He disappeared into the machine, and five seconds later it roared to life.
VVVVVRAWWWWWWW!
The tank lifted a foot off the ground thanks to four small rockets on the bottom.
Eric popped his head back up. “Is this cool or what?!”
“Hey, I want to drive that!”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before I called it. You can shoot the cannon though! That’s pretty cool.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Oh really.”
Just then, Eric’s eyes got huge. He grabbed the cannon, swiveled it around and blasted something right behind me. I turned around just in time to see a 20-foot crocodile alien that had been jumping out of the swamp disappear in a flash of light. I had to admit — it was pretty cool.