by Dustin Brady
“I don’t know; that’s the dumb story in this game. The evil robot overlords capture the robot princess and take her away because of her heart of gold or some junk like that. It’s like Mario.” She looked sideways at us. “You do have Mario here, right?”
I glanced at the scepter in my hand. Upon closer inspection, it did look like something that a robot princess might have. “So if they saw Eric with the scepter…”
“Yeah, they probably thought he was the princess,” Sam said.
I dropped the scepter and started to panic. “So what are they going to do to him? Where are they taking him? Do they want to rip out his heart of gold?!”
“Relax,” Sam said. “They’re building this level as they go, remember? I’m sure we’ll catch up before they get too far.”
“We’re not going to catch anybody walking like this!” I said as I started to run. “Let’s go!”
I got about 20 yards before I realized nobody was following me. I turned to see Roger shining his light on part of the tunnel wall for Sam.
“What are you doing?!” I yelled back.
Sam clunked Roger on the head, and he moved the light closer to her. She tapped the dirt a couple of times, then wound up with her metal fist and punched right through the wall.
“Coming?” she called out to me.
I jogged back to her and Mark. “What’s this?”
She stepped through the hole into the darkness. All of a sudden, a series of lights clicked on in front of us, revealing minecart track set over a bottomless pit.
“It’s a shortcut,” Sam said.
CHAPTER SIX
Minecart Madness
Mark and Sam started climbing into the minecart. “Wait!” I said. “That doesn’t look big enough for three people.”
Sam stuck her giant metal hand out of the cart as she sat down, giving Mark space to squeeze in behind her. “Look, plenty of room,” she said. Mark scrunched himself as small as he could, providing enough room for maybe a baby to fit behind him.
“I’m just saying, if anybody falls out or if that thing tips over, we’re not magically reappearing at the beginning of the level,” I said. “We’re dead. Dead-dead. Like real-life dead. Wouldn’t it be a lot safer to take the long way through the level?”
“My leg’s falling asleep,” Sam said. “Are you getting in or what?”
“But…”
“The longer you putz around, the more time these bots have to build their killing machines. Just get in the blasted cart!”
I sighed and squeezed behind Mark. There wasn’t enough room to sit down inside the cart, so I had to settle for wedging my feet underneath Mark and sitting on the back lip of the cart. Roger landed on top of my head.
“This is going to be a real ripper!” Sam released the brake. “It’s just like a roller coaster!”
She was wrong. It was not just like a roller coaster because roller coasters don’t make you hold on to keep yourself from falling into a bottomless pit every time you go over a hill.
“Slow down!” I yelled the first time I almost popped out of the cart.
“No can do,” Sam said.
“WHY NOT?!”
“That’s why not.” Sam pointed ahead to a missing section of track.
That’s another nice feature of roller coasters — they generally have all their tracks.
“AHHHHHH!” I screamed as we approached the giant pit. At the last second, Sam pounded a button at the front of the cart, causing a small rocket to pop out of the minecart and boost us over the hole in the tracks. We landed just on the edge of the next set of tracks.
“Woohoo!” Mark yelled. “That was awesome!”
Sam, for once, didn’t join in the excitement. Instead, she turned around to give us the first worried look I’d seen from her all day. “The booster usually gets you a lot farther than that,” she said. “There might be too much weight in the cart.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Sam turned around just in time to hit the boosters for the next set of missing tracks. This time when we blasted off, there were no other tracks in sight — only a helicopter robot hovering in our path. “Everyone lean back!” Sam instructed. We all leaned, pulling the front of our minecart up just enough clip the enemy. That gave us the momentum we needed to barely make it to the next set of tracks.
These tracks were angled like the first hill of a roller coaster. We picked up more and more speed until the tracks bottomed out and turned into a ski jump ramp. Our cart launched high into the air, and Sam started hitting the boost button over and over. Even with the big jump and repeated rocket boosts, it became clear that we weren’t going to make it to the next set of tracks.
“What do we do?!” Mark yelled.
beepity boooooooop!
Roger made a “Superman saves the day” sound and flew off of my head as if lightening the load by three pounds was going to make a difference. But Roger seemed to be thinking of more than just his own weight. He hovered inches over my head and blooped and squawked and made car alarm sounds until I grabbed him. As soon as I had a grip, his four tiny propellers began working overtime. He started pulling me up just a little. I clenched my knees around Mark, and Mark held tight to the minecart.
CLANK!
It was the closest call yet, but we somehow landed back on the tracks. We continued jumping and boosting and bouncing off of enemies, but I could feel a growing sense of dread from the front of the cart. “What’s wrong Sam?”
When she turned around, her face was white. “We’re not going to make it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Roger can help. Even if it’s a really big jump, we should be fine…”
“NO!” she interrupted. “The last part is a jump through a closing door. We need speed, not height! With all this weight in the cart, we’re just too slow.”
Mark and I remained silent as we sped down the track.
“I was so stupid,” Sam said. “I don’t know why I made you both do this.”
We jumped another pit, then found ourselves speeding down a hill. At the end of the hill was a ramp, and past that ramp was a slowly lowering metal slab.
“Could two people make it?” Mark asked.
“What do you mean?” Sam said.
“If only two people were in the cart, would it be light enough to make the jump?”
We were rolling so fast now that I could barely keep my eyes open against the wind. “It doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “There’s no way…”
Mark stopped listening. He had made up his mind. He spun around, put his hands on my shoulders and jumped out of the cart.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Diggin' Season
“MARK! NO!”
He landed on the tracks and tumbled a few times. I reached for him, but it was too late — we’d run out of track. Sam and I launched into the air.
Roger flew behind the cart and pushed it as hard as he could. By now, the giant door had nearly closed. Even with Mark’s sacrifice, it didn’t look like we’d make it. I watched Mark tumble down the track until he finally rolled to a stop just before the pit.
“GET DOWN!”
I turned back around to see Sam in my face. She yanked me into the minecart right before we squeaked underneath the door. As soon as the cart crashed and we spilled out, both of us ran back to the door and tried to lift it. It wouldn’t budge. We pounded and pounded, but the metal was so thick that it barely made a thud. Roger finally tried his buzzsaw, but even that got nothing but sparks.
As the minutes ticked by, I grew more frustrated. I’d almost gotten killed 20 different times trying to rescue Mark, and just as soon as we’d broken him out of his video game prison, Sam had buried him in an underground tomb because she wanted to go on a stupid roller coaster ride. I started walking away.
“Wait, we’ve got to help Matt!” Sam said.
I spun around. “Mark! His name’s Mark! You got him killed, and you don’t e
ven know his name.” I turned and stalked away.
She finally caught up to me. “I’m sorry about Mark,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, me too,” I muttered. “I just hope we survive long enough to get him some help.”
She hung her head, and we walked silently for a while. Sam punched robots here and there with her metal fist, but there was no longer any joy in it. We eventually came across another metal box with a glowing red button. “We’re almost to the boss,” Sam said. “You’re going to need that.”
I pressed the button, and a helmet formed over my head. “What’s this for?”
“Protection.”
We walked a little farther, and our narrow tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern with stalactites on the ceiling. It was pretty impressive. “So you’re telling me the robots built all this too?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “You should see some of these bots.”
Suddenly, a giant metal cube fell from the darkness above. The cube buzzed and whirred and opened up like a Transformer until it was a 15-foot-tall robot with a long tube contraption attached to its right arm. It was terrifying.
“What does that do?!” I screamed.
Before Sam could answer, the robot jammed the tube into the ground and fired. A shockwave rippled through the cavern, knocking us off balance and causing a cave-in back where we’d entered. The robot roared and started slowly walking toward us. Words flickered on my helmet visor.
BUILD: DGN-SZN
POWER: 88
SPEED: 39
INTELLIGENCE: 11
VULNERABILITY: HEAD
“OK, uh, the build looks like dig, uh, diggun sizzin? Diggin…”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Sam said, her eyes on the ceiling.
I looked up to see Roger buzzing in and out of the stalactites. He finally stopped at one he liked and pointed his light at it.
“Come on!” Sam said. We ran underneath the stalactite and waited. The robot plodded toward us. Even when it started getting close, Sam refused to move.
“Sam?” I said. The robot was close enough that I could feel a gust of wind every time it took a step.
“Not yet.”
The robot got closer. I could now see up its robot nose.
“SAM?!”
“Wait for it.”
When the robot was just one step away, it jumped.
“NOW!” Sam sprinted away from the robot. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was already halfway across the cavern when the robot landed on the spot where we’d been standing. When it hit the ground, it put its tube thing into the dirt and fired again. This time, there was an even bigger shockwave, and I felt the tink-tink-tink of tiny rocks from the ceiling hitting my helmet. Sam held her metal fist above her head to protect herself.
CRASH!
The stalactite that we’d been standing under earlier broke loose and fell onto the robot’s head. He stumbled backward and roared again. Roger pointed his flashlight at another stalactite across the room. “We’ve got to move faster now,” Sam said.
I followed her underneath the stalactite and waited for the robot to come at us again. When he jumped this time, I got a bad start and twisted my ankle.
“Ah!” I yelled as I hobbled to Sam.
“You OK?” she asked.
Before I could answer, the robot sent another shockwave, knocking us to the ground. Pebbles from the ceiling pelted me again, and —
CRASH!
We scored another direct hit.
When I stood back up, my ankle started throbbing. “This is bad,” I said as I hopped backward and stumbled around. Sam put her non-metal hand around me and guided me to the third stalactite.
The robot got up, roared and practically ran at us.
“Sam?” I said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this again.”
“Trust me,” she said as she put her metal fist on my back.
Based on recent experience, that was not an easy instruction to follow. I waited as long as I could, then started hobbling away.
“Jesse! Wait!”
Sam stood under the stalactite a half second longer, then dove and punched me across the room with her supercharged fist. By diving, Sam didn’t have any time left to get to safety herself. She rolled away from the robot’s foot at the last second, but couldn’t use her metal hand to protect herself from falling debris. I helplessly watched as she scrunched into a ball while rocks from the ceiling hit her. Finally, the stalactite fell onto the robot, causing him to stumble a few times before finally falling over for good.
I ran to Sam, who had bruises and scrapes all over her body. “Are you OK?!”
She groaned and nodded. Then she pointed to the fallen robot’s shockwave blaster. “I think I know how we can rescue Mark.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lefty Loosey
We got to work unscrewing the robot’s blaster from its arm. Actually, Sam did the unscrewing with her super-strong metal hand. Roger provided light, and I mostly watched and made dumb suggestions.
“Lefty loosey, righty tighty,” I said when she was struggling with one especially tough screw.
“I knoooow,” she replied, adding a bunch of “r”s at the end of “know” in a very Australian way.
“So how is this going to help us rescue Mark again?” I asked.
“We use it to break the door.”
“Yeah but then what?”
“We’ll figure it out, OK?”
WHACK!
“OW!” Sam shook out her non-metal hand, which she’d just jammed with a screw. “ROGER, STOP WANDERING OFF WITH THE TORCH!”
Roger, who had been slowly losing interest in the project, quickly turned his flashlight back to Sam.
“I can’t wait to take you to the scrap yard,” Sam muttered.
I paused for a second. “Hey, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That rumbling sound.”
Sam shrugged. “The next level is a sewer. It’s probably water.”
“It doesn’t sound like water though,” I said. “It’s like, I don’t know, it’s extra rumbly.”
“Go have a lookie if you like,” Sam said without looking up. “The tunnel to the next level is over there.”
I followed her finger, and sure enough, a hole just big enough to crawl through had opened up on the other side of the cavern. I jogged over and peeked in. When I did, the sound got louder, and I got a distinct whiff of diesel fuel. I crawled inside, waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and then navigated around a corner. When I turned the corner, I glimpsed the cause of the rumbling and immediately dove backward.
It was them.
The tall, skinny robots I’d seen at Bionosoft were marching down the tunnel, carrying something squirmy and Eric-shaped. In front of them was an army of tanks, drilling machines and scary robot soldiers. I crawled back to the cavern as fast as I could.
“Sam!” I yelled.
Roger looked up.
“What did I say about the torch?!” Sam snapped. Roger quickly went back to lighting the robot for Sam.
“I found Eric!”
Roger shrieked with delight and started flying toward me.
“OK,” Sam said without looking. “Almost got this.”
“It doesn’t matter! Did you hear what I said? We need to get Eric!”
“Not now,” she said, still tinkering away.
Roger stopped in midair. He looked confused.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN NOT NOW?!”
Sam finally sat up and looked me in the eye. Oil and dirt had joined the scratches and bruises on her face. “These things disappear if you leave them for too long,” she calmly explained as she patted the robot. “If I don’t get the blaster off now, we might not ever be able to reach Mark.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “This is real life! Not a video game! NOTHING’S GOING TO DISAPPEAR!”
“I can’t take that chance,” Sam said.
“What are you
talking about?! Eric is right here!”
“I got Mark into this mess, so it’s on me to get him back out. Trust me; your mate will be fine for a few more minutes.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Would you stop feeling guilty for one second and help me?!”
Sam went back to working on the robot. Roger looked at Sam, then me, then back at Sam.
“Ouch!” Sam shouted as she hit her finger again. “Roger, you are SECONDS away from scrap!” Roger immediately returned to light her work.
Fine, I didn’t need them anyway. I turned back in a huff and crawled toward the rumbling. When I rounded the corner this time, I noticed that the robot army was gone. In its place was a perfectly circular hole at the end of the tunnel. I walked to the opening and took a deep breath for courage. Then I gagged. The robots had indeed drilled through to the very real, very smelly city sewer system. I put my shirt over my nose and peeked out.
The hole overlooked a fast-flowing river of muck and filth. Down below, hundreds of robots were busy rebuilding the level they remembered. Orange construction vehicles carved out nooks and crannies. Tall, walking box things rumbled their way down the river, dropping off enemies every few feet. Elsewhere, black drones flew around, stringing electrical wiring and adding lights.
It was all kind of beautiful. I could have watched the robots build their new level all day if it weren’t for the squirming thing one of the tall, skinny robots was carrying upside down. In the light, I could clearly see it was Eric, still kicking and yelling with every step the robot took.
I wanted to run down to rescue him right there or at least yell to let him know it was OK, but I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself with all these robots around, especially while I was unarmed. I looked around the sewer for something I could use to help Eric.
Bloop!
My helmet made a noise, and a floating red circle appeared over a prize cube on the walkway next to the sewage river. “AQUA COMBAT BOOTS” appeared in red letters on my visor and an arrow pointed to the cube. OK, that was a start. I edged a little farther onto the lookout to check out the river underneath me. If I could just find another prize cube or maybe a…
