His thoughts tumbled like mismatched socks in the dryer. Just when Milton latched on to one, it was consumed by the chaotic swirl of his buzzing brain.
The elevator stopped abruptly, pitching Milton’s stomach somewhere out past the top of his head. The doors opened, overwhelming the elevator with the peppery-wet smell of ozone.
“Provost Marshal Tesla,” Milton mumbled, his head burning like a hibachi. “Tesla … of course.” It helped Milton to verbalize his jumbled thoughts. “Electrical engineer and … inventor … nineteenth century … I think I did … a report on him.…”
Milton stepped out of the elevator and into a large, rounded penthouse. Arcs of surging blue-white electricity pulsated back and forth from tall copper posts like a game of high-voltage hot potato. Needlelike shocks pricked Milton’s face, neck, and arms.
“Hello?” Milton called out as he walked tentatively across a singed Victorian throw rug toward a massive metal object, blurred by the blinding flashes of light. “Provost Marshal? You wanted to see me? Alone? To meet, face to …?”
Head. The object was a huge bronze head resting on its side.
Milton stared at the enormous bronze sculpture and, through its hollowed-out eyes, saw a slim figure inside.
Milton walked around to the head’s open neck. With the sculpture’s metal beard, prominent nose, and stern expression of torment, it seemed Greek (though most every sculpture looked Greek to Milton). A man’s mumbling voice reverberated from inside the bronze head.
Milton rapped his knuckles against the sculpture’s neck, his tap amplified by the hollow head until it pealed like a church bell. Milton could see the man now, reclining back in a gauzy web of electrical tendrils, with a throbbing purple neon tube hanging down the front of his shirt like a tie. The man, Provost Marshal Tesla, flicked open his dark, sparkling eyes. Milton gasped. His face was like a crazy person’s math homework, his features subtly mismatched and crooked, yet arranged with a cryptic precision. The lines etched around his eyes and mouth made them seem somehow parenthetically contained like the factors of an algebraic equation puzzled out in flesh.
“Um, sorry, I …” Milton quavered as the static electricity coursing through the head made his hair stand on end. “There wasn’t a door.”
Provost Marshal Tesla reached for a dial beneath two glowing vacuum tubes. The web of electricity sputtered before dying out to nothing but a weak mist of tingling ozone.
“A door?” Provost Marshal Tesla replied, his mustache fanning out beneath his nose like a sleek, black moth. “I need a door in this thing like I need a hole in zhe head.” Tesla stepped out of the bronze head, extending his hand in greeting. Milton shook it, then jumped back in shock. “Milton Fauster,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you. I am Provost Marshal Tesla.”
He quickly straightened his purple neon tie-tube.
“You and I are soldered to zhe same circuit board,” Tesla continued in a clipped, mile-a-minute Serbian accent. “Exceptionally sensitive. I could hear zhe ticking of a watch from three rooms away, and a fly alighting on a table caused a dull thud in my ears. And you—such initiative! Zhe first child to ever escape from Heck—”
“What is this place?” Milton interrupted, his eyes traveling quickly around the circular penthouse. Its curved windows afforded breathtaking views of Arcadia’s dazzling landscape.
Tesla smirked. “This is my Rumination Nook where, due to optimal voltage, I do my best, most lucid thinking. Zhe scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane—”
“No,” Milton broke in. “Not this specific place but—”
“It’s fashioned after zhe head of Prometheus, who stole fire from zhe hearth of Zeus and gave it to mortals,” Tesla continued, patting down his bat-wing hair that seemed poised to flap away at the slightest provocation. “This fire gave man dominion over beasts. They no longer shivered in zhe cold of night. Animals dared not attack. It was zhe ultimate game changer. Though its flames have been passed along for centuries, nothing can match zhe burning intensity and blazing clarity of zhat first fire.”
“First Fire,” Milton murmured. “That ball of blinding flame above that seems to power this place.”
“Yes! You are understanding!” Tesla exclaimed. “Zhe name Prometheus means zhe ‘foresight.’ Zhe predicting of what will be needed in zhe future. After teaching humanity how to use zhe fire—there were a lot of singed monkey paws—Prometheus invented mathematics, architecture, metalworking, writing … progress. Zhe spread of civilization may be likened to zhe fire. First, there is a feeble spark, next, a flickering flame—insights to solutions in want of problems—then mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.”
Milton breathed deeply to calm his jittery nerves. His attention span could scarcely bridge one thought to the next.
“But Arcadia—”
“For this, Zeus punished Prometheus, chaining him to a rock where an eagle picked painfully at his liver every day, only to have it grow back again each night. Like mankind needs another reason not to like zhe liver.”
“WHY AM I HERE?!” Milton shouted, unable to endure being talked over, his head full of thrashing thoughts.
“Zhe ultimate question!” Provost Marshal Tesla cried out as he rocked back and forth in his seat with an almost unbearable excitement. “You are here, Milton Fauster, because you are vital to zhe success of Arcadia!”
“Me?” Milton replied. Lucky wriggled in his backpack before settling back to sleep. “Why?”
“In my lifetime above on zhe Surface, I held zhe patents for over three hundred innovations zhat defined zhe twentieth century and set zhe stage for zhe next,” Tesla replied as he rubbed his eyes, which seemed both frighteningly awake and impossibly tired. “But nothing could hold a candle—or Edison’s feeble lightbulb—to Arcadia.”
Milton scratched at the electric prickles nagging his arms.
“The Great Gamers Club,” he interjected, exasperated and agitated. “I found an invitation in Camp Snivel, then an entry exam where the only question was my name. If you wanted me here, why go through all the trouble?”
Provost Marshal Tesla stood, extending his imposing six-foot-four-inch frame with a stretch.
“So zhat you would go through zhe trouble.” Tesla smirked slyly. “You see, escaping from Snivel to Arcadia was zhe entry exam. It proved your worth. Your fortitude, ingenuity, and ability to inspire others.”
“But I’m a loner,” Milton replied with a dispirited shrug. “I’ve never inspired anything but wedgies and merciless teasing.”
“Do you like being part of a team?” Provost Marshal interjected.
Milton thought back upon his miserable time at Camp Snivel and how the companionship of his fellow Unhappy Campers had made the experience somewhat bearable.
“Sure.”
“Well, do you know what they call a loner who likes being part of a team?”
“No.”
“A leader,” the strikingly thin man answered. “Gifted with zhe ability to galvanize individuals yet still, somehow, always standing apart. Alone. Perfect for tactical shooters or role-playing games. You know what happens if you’re always thinking about Number One?”
“No, what?”
“You find yourself deep in Number Two …”
“But what about Marlo?” Milton replied, scratching his neck. “My sister …?”
Tesla climbed out of his Rumination Nook.
“She—and others like her—are not Arcadia material,” he said dismissively as Milton followed behind him, the man strutting about with hungry steps. “Undisciplined rogues and spineless whiners do not make for great gamers. You and your friends, however, are determined and resourceful. You acknowledge zhe rules even as you break them. And every game needs rules.”
Provost Marshal Tesla stood before the expansive polarized window of his penthouse and took in the sweeping vista of Arcadia.
“A ga
me without rules has no purpose. Is no fun,” he said, the electric crackle leaving his voice, the pace of his words relaxing to merely hectic. “A game without rules is … life. At least as it is now. Before everything changes …”
Tesla turned swiftly on his heels. His dark, glittering eyes were bracketed by deep creases, his gaze boring into Milton. Milton trembled with uncomfortable energy.
“We have an understanding, no?” he said. “I have given you and your friends extra points, but you have many levels to best. Report to HQ-Bert so zhat your clothes and personal effects can be disposed of. You’ll then be fitted for your uniform.”
Milton swallowed. He could feel Lucky’s warmth burning into his back.
“D-disposed of?” he croaked. “My backpack has lots of … medicine. For my allergies.”
Provost Marshal Tesla smiled. The ebony wings of his mustache fluttered briefly above his lips.
“There are no allergies here. Have you felt anything less than robust since your arrival?”
Milton, although a hive of uneasy energy, did feel healthier, more awake, than he had ever before.
“No … I guess not. But my backpack is important to me. It has … lucky things in it. Things that help me win games. I know it’s superstitious, but it works. I rack up some serious points just knowing that—”
“All right, all right,” Tesla said with a twinge of fatigue, rippling his long, articulated fingers toward Milton like bony white tarantulas. “I will keep it here, though. Zhe games are meticulously calibrated. I don’t want artifacts from zhe outside confusing zhe advanced technologies therein.”
Milton nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pulsating cord of glowing light leading to a phone installed at the back of the penthouse.
Just like in Vice Principal Poe’s Conversation Pit and Pendulum.
As Tesla returned to his Rumination Nook, Milton unhooked his backpack and laid it on the floor outside the bronze head. Inside, Lucky lay sleeping, his slack jaws wrapped around Mr. van Gogh’s severed ear. Milton saw the small brass disk inside the ear’s canal. He dug it out with his finger.
Milton had an idea.
He cinched his backpack closed and set it by Prometheus’s nose. Milton put the brass disk inside his left ear and grabbed his former art teacher’s amputated auditory organ.
“Marlo always said if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” Milton mumbled as he jumped up alongside the bronze head and slapped the ear just below the sculpted lobe of Prometheus, where it stuck like a suction cup. “This way I can keep my eyes on the game and my ears—all three of them—on Tesla.”
FROM THE INSIDE, Arcadia didn’t just look like a dazzling, droning den of intensely focused video gamesmanship, Milton thought as he was led through the first gaming level at the mezzanine of the Donkey Koncourse. It looked as if he was actually inside a video game. Right down to the strewn rubble, abandoned cars, and grated metal catwalks that encircled the smoked-glass atrium.
“Level One,” Hazelle said, marching in perfect step to a disciplined drumbeat inside her head before allowing her stern face a peeved smirk. “Mostly vector-based, eight-bit twitch games … not that you’ll spend much time here, considering all of the points Provost Marshal Tesla gave you—”
“We earned them,” Milton clarified testily. “As part of our escape, according to Tesla. And where are my friends?”
“Provost Marshal Tesla,” Hazelle replied tartly. “In any case, we all got here the same way you did, just not all together. As a team. So … brazenly.”
Wyatt, with his nervous, elfin demeanor, appeared at Milton’s side.
“W00t, huh?!” he laughed, his bloodshot eyes rimmed dark from lack of sleep. He leaned in close to Milton. “Don’t mind her … and some of the other kids. Okay, all of them. I think it’s EPIC that you guys shot up your wattage in just a twinge. It gives us all something to shoot for—something that won’t shoot back, that is!”
Milton took a sip from the canteen hooked onto his thick belt. The drink tasted like an intensely sweet, over-carbonated blend of Staminade, Iced AnxieTea, and Beverageous! power drinks. He wiped the neon-purple dribble from his quivering lips.
The last thing I need is more nervous energy. But I feel like a hummingbird, my metabolism cranked into fifth gear, craving sugar water for fuel. I’m nearly jumping out of my skin.
“It’s made from Hypool-Active Overstimu Lake water,” Wyatt interjected as he took a greedy swig from his canteen. “You know … the lake we all came through. First Fire gives it a seriously supremium kick! Provost Marshal Tesla says it has something to do with the blue-green algae, mixed with hecka sug ’n’ caff.”
Hazelle shot the prattling Wyatt her patented TMI look. To her, information was a form of currency that had to be earned through hard work, not doled out like free samples at a supermarket.
All of the Arcadians, Milton noticed, were wound tighter than a midget’s banjo. And they looked like they hadn’t slept in weeks but were somehow keen and hyperalert, though tense and a little smeary around the edges.
“You didn’t tell me where my friends are,” Milton said, staring into Hazelle’s blue eyes.
She sighed, her cold shoulders melting one or two degrees Fahrenheit. “Your friends are—”
“Here!” Sara called out.
Milton turned.
There, in their tailored Arcadia uniforms, were Sam/Sara, Howler Monkey, the Sunshine Sneezer, and Caterwaul. Milton tugged self-consciously at his shorts. Everything about his Arcadia uniform, from his fitted ankle socks to his snug beret, was so contoured to not interfere with gaming that it almost felt like he wasn’t wearing anything.
“H-E-Y,” Milton said in Remorse code, smiling through the sobs and snorts.
Sara dragged her smiling eyes from the distracting rows of video games and gave Milton a friendly wink. Sam was semiawake on her shoulder, surfing the crest of another narcoleptic episode.
They all looked different. Shiny and edgy, like a set of serrated knives. Not saggy, soggy, and defeated like back in Snivel.
Caterwaul’s cheeks were dry and Howler Monkey’s mouth, while still slack, was now at least in sync with the jaw-dropping sights around him.
“Sunshine Sneezer,” Milton said. “Your eyes aren’t red and your nose isn’t running.”
“Yeah,” the boy replied with a grin. “My allergies cleared up the second we got here.”
“If I were your nose,” Sam said, slurring his words, “I’d keeping running until I was as far from your face as possible.”
Sara rolled her eyes.
“So how was it with Tesla?” she asked. “Isn’t it awesome that we got all those points just for showing up—”
“It’s Provost Marshal Tesla,” Hazelle interrupted, “and it’s time to show you Level Two.” She led the group up the dimpled metal stairs connecting the mountainous domed gaming hive. “Mostly sims: life sims, vehicle sims, construction and management sims, even sim sims.”
The level was lined with dozens of large, blocky metal capsules thrashing about on noisy hydraulic platforms. The sound of gunshots and yelling pierced the mechanical veil of whooshing pneumatics and whirring accelerators. Milton scratched the side of his neck, his skin still prickling from the heightened electromagnetic atmosphere, as he and his former Unhappy Campers followed Hazelle to the next level of games.
“Tesla was just kind of welcoming me, I guess,” Milton said, leaning in to Sara. “And he told me all about First Fire.”
Milton’s voice couldn’t compete with the lion’s din of computerized mayhem they were entering. It was like World War 2.0.
“And this, Level Three,” Hazelle said with a dismissive sniff, “is reserved for FPS games.” She paused to clarify, even though—with all the rifles and merry mayhem—this level’s purpose was perfectly clear. “First-person shooters.”
In terms of gaming preference, Milton was not necessarily the pixel-packin’ gunslinger type. He could hol
d his own with a virtual weapon, but the chaos of close-quarters combat and frantic firefights made Milton go numb, his killer instinct running AWOL. He was a decent sniper, though. There was something almost murderously Zen about lurking on the edge of the action and just cherry-picking. It was like taking fatal free throws.
A line of Gr8 G4m3rz lined the level, their straight backs to Milton and the other Unhappy Campers, each occupying a gaming station with monklike intensity (save for intermittent, bloodcurdling whoops of delight). Their silhouettes were haloed with dancing oranges and reds from frag grenades and Molotov cocktails.
Hazelle turned to the Unhappy Campers, arms outstretched at her sides like a stewardess demonstrating how hugging your seat will somehow protect you from a plane crash.
“Level Four: strategy games and RPGs—role-playing games,” Hazelle said as she climbed the stairs, her shiny patent-leather shoes tapping the metal in measured steps. “That’s where you’ll be spending the bulk of your game time, as per Provost Marshal Tesla’s instructions.”
The tour settled on the upper catwalk, surrounded by gaming quads with clusters of wide, wraparound high-definition screens. With cinematic sweep and remarkable texture, the displays depicted lush vistas with startling clarity. One of the games, Holy Temple Raider, featured a stately religious sanctuary glittering in red sunlight, resplendent with hundreds of turrets and minarets. It looked magical, like the handiwork of countless fairies and gnomes working conjointly. They walked past game after game: Catho-strophic Combat, Presby-terror Assault, Episcopalooza!, Pentecostal Fantasy IV …
“Why are all the games religious?” Milton asked.
“Provost Marshal Tesla feels that gamers play harder if a game is aligned with their personal belief systems,” Hazelle explained. “They tend to play for keeps.”
“What if you don’t have a belief system?”
“Then that’s the game for you,” Wyatt interjected, attached to Milton like Velcro to a poodle.
He pointed to a nearby quad of black screens, the darkest black Milton had ever seen.
Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck Page 11