by Dustin Brady
My mind raced. “Charlie, start asking them questions!”
“What book did you used to read me before bed?” Charlie shouted to the two Mr. Gregorys.
“Sparky the Squirrel Saves the Day,” they both answered at once.
“Where did I want to eat my birthday meal every year when I was little?”
“The Subway at Walmart.” Again, both Mr. Gregorys gave the same answer at almost the same time.
Whichever one was the robot must have had such a good computer brain that it could copy the real Mr. Gregory’s answer in a millisecond.
“Jesse!” Mr. Gregory #2 said. “If you don’t act fast, Christian is going to burn up in there. Please!”
I breathed faster and tried to concentrate on the blinks. One-two-three-blink. I looked at the other Mr. Gregory. One-two-blink.
Bee-bee-bee-beep! Bee-bee-bee-beep!
The tower beeped faster. Both Mr. Gregorys went back to their computers on opposite sides of the tower. “Christian has maybe a minute left!” Mr. Gregory #1 said.
I looked over Mr. Gregory #2’s shoulder to try to figure out the computer code gibberish. I’d never taken a programming class in my life—how was I supposed to know if this Mr. Gregory’s code was the one saving Christian or killing him? I tried to keep up with the commands streaming down the screen as Mr. Gregory’s fingers flew across the keyboard. Wait a second. I shifted my attention from the screen to Mr. Gregory’s fingers. They were typing fast. Faster than I’d seen anyone type in my life. Maybe faster than a human could type. I raised the plasma gun.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
“Jesse,” Charlie whispered, pushing my gun down.
“I got it,” I whispered back.
“I need to do this,” Charlie said, stepping in front of the gun.
I tried to move around Charlie. “I have a good shot! Get out of the way.”
Charlie moved with me. He was holding out his hands. “Jesse, give it to me. I need to be the one that pulls the trigger.”
“But … ”
“Please.” His voice cracked. “That’s my dad and brother, not yours.”
The way he said that last sentence made me stop and rethink everything I’d done that day. I’d seen myself as the hero by rescuing us from the RMG in the basement and then choosing to bypass the safe. But from Charlie’s point of view, every decision I’d made had put his family in greater danger. I handed Charlie the gun.
“Dad,” Charlie said. Both Mr. Gregorys stopped what they were doing and turned to him. Charlie pointed the gun at Mr. Gregory #2 and looked at Mr. Gregory #1. “Love you,” he said.
Mr. Gregory #1 nodded. “You’ve made the right decision, son.”
Just before Charlie could pull the trigger, Mr. Gregory #2 spoke up. He didn’t try to plead for his life or convince Charlie that he was wrong. He just said four words.
“Love you lots, kiddo.”
That was all Charlie needed to hear. He smiled, then spun and blasted Mr. Gregory #1.
Chapter 22
Escape
Mr. Gregory #1 opened his mouth when the blast hit him, but he never got a chance to make a sound. His body flashed once, revealing a metal skeleton, then disappeared for good.
Eric stared at Charlie with his mouth open. “You almost blasted your real dad into a bottomless pit!”
Mr. Gregory hugged his son. “He knew what he was doing.”
BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
The tower screeched to remind us that Christian was still inside, and Mr. Gregory ran back to his keyboard. After just a few keystrokes, the noise stopped, and Mr. Gregory breathed a sigh of relief.
Charlie hugged Eric and me. Neither of us is very huggy, so we patted Charlie on the back awkwardly while he thanked us. “My brother would be gone right now if it weren’t for you two.” He finally let go and smiled. “How did you know to come back?”
Oh yeah! I’d forgotten all about the real reason we’d returned. “Eric! The watch!”
Eric took the spy watch off his wrist. “Mr. Gregory, does this building have an intercom system?”
“Yes, through the phones. Why?”
Eric motioned to me, and I explained. “Eric recorded Max Reuben’s whole plan. If we try to bring it to the police ourselves, Max will probably just send more suits like he did last time. But there’s no way he can stop the message from getting to the police if we play it for the whole building.”
“That’s brilliant!” Mr. Gregory said, leaping into action. He punched a series of numbers into a phone next to the control tower and held the receiver to his mouth. “Attention, employees of Max Investment Agency.” His voice echoed over the intercom speakers in the ceiling. “This is Alistair Gregory speaking to you from the fifty-sixth floor. I’m sure many of you have wondered about Max Reuben’s secret project. I’m here to tell you that it’s bad. The next voice you will hear is Max himself confessing.”
Eric handed over his watch, and Mr. Gregory pressed PLAY.
“I have thousands of employees,” Max’s voice played over the intercom speakers. “They are all wonderful people, but some might be—let’s say—closed-minded to what we’re doing here on the fifty-sixth floor.”
As the recording played, Mr. Gregory went back to his keyboard. “I might have figured out a way to get Christian out. Charlie, can you help me on the other keyboard? When I give the word, I need you to hold down the ESCAPE key, OK? Three, two … ”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The countdown got interrupted by loud knocking. We all turned. The knocking came from the hallway door Max and his goons had run through. Before we could run back to protect the watch, the door swung open, and Mrs. Gregory and the kids tumbled through.
“Daddy! Daddy!” The Gregory girls ran over and clutched their father’s leg.
Mr. Gregory hugged his wife. “How did you escape?”
“When that recording started playing, the men who were guarding us ran away,” Mrs. Gregory said. “Is Christian OK?”
“Better than OK! I’m about to bring him back. Ready, Charlie?”
“Ready.”
Mr. Gregory typed a few commands on his keyboard. “Hit it!”
Charlie pressed the ESCAPE key, and the Reubenverse door lit up. It glowed brighter and brighter until little Christian Gregory tumbled out, holding what appeared to be a real lightsaber. Christian blinked a few times, then looked down to see what he was holding in his hand. “SHAR WARSH!” he yelled, holding the lightsaber above his head.
“Christian, put that down right now!” Mrs. Gregory commanded.
Christian obeyed, and the whole family swallowed him up in a hug. “Are you guys ready to go home?” Mr. Gregory finally asked, opening one of the checkpoint doors.
Mrs. Gregory eyed the blue light skeptically. “Is this safe, hon?”
Before Mr. Gregory could answer, Christian had picked the lightsaber back up and walked through the door. “WAIT! NOT IN THE HOUSE!” Mrs. Gregory yelled as she sprinted after him. Charlie held his sisters’ hands and walked through, too.
I turned to Mr. Gregory. “Aren’t you going?”
He shook his head sadly. “I have to stay behind and clean up this mess. I just wish I could go back in time and make myself drop this whole thing. I put so many people in danger.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I said. “You made something awesome, and people used it for bad stuff.”
“Like the guy who invented bazookas,” Eric offered helpfully.
“I can’t thank you both enough,” Mr. Gregory said. “Without your help, my family might never have made it.”
“Any time you want to put us in a video game, we’re ready,” Eric said.
“Nobody’s ever going in a video game again,” Mr. Gregory said. “Now let’s get you home.”
&n
bsp; Eric and I started to walk through the door the Gregory family had gone through. “No, not there,” Mr. Gregory said. “I can get you even closer.”
He led us to a nearby door. “They built one that goes to your basement, Eric.”
“Creepy,” I said.
“Cool!” Eric said at the same time.
Eric stepped into the blue, then I followed. After a few seconds of falling, I tumbled out of Eric’s TV onto his ratty basement carpet.
Chapter 23
Code Black
We had played it cool with Mr. Gregory, but alone in Eric’s basement, we let loose. “WOOOOO!” Eric beat his chest like Tarzan while I jumped up and down.
“Can you believe it?!” I yelled. “We were like super-spies!”
“Zero-zero-seven at your service,” Eric said, tilting pretend sunglasses on his face.
“I think it’s ‘double-oh seven,’” I said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Hey, turn on the news. I want to see if the FBI is at Max Reuben’s building yet.”
“Great idea!” Eric said, turning to search the couch for the remote.
I sprawled out on the carpet and closed my eyes. I’d already been to San Francisco; Washington, D.C.;
and the jungles of a 1980s video game, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
Eric pointed a remote at the TV and tried a few buttons. “That’s not it … ” he muttered.
I thought back to our watch scheme and shook my head. It really wasn’t that great of a plan. If any suits had been in the room when we’d returned from Washington, D.C., or even if they’d have barged in while the recording was playing, everything would have fallen apart. I paused and thought about it some more. “Hey Eric, don’t you think it’s weird that Max just let us play that recording without trying to stop us?”
“Hmm?”
I turned around. Eric was too busy smelling a gummy worm he’d found between the cushions of his couch to pay attention.
“Like, why did Max just leave and not come back? They had cameras in there, right? I’m sure they saw us come back in.”
Eric was now trying to chew the gummy worm. “Who knows,” he said. “Hey, can you pick up that side of the couch? I think the TV remote is down there.”
I picked up the couch, then immediately dropped it. “Code Black!”
“Hey!” Eric yelled. “You can’t just drop that without warning! I could have been under there!”
“Remember Charlie saying that Max had said something about a Code Black when he left the room?”
“So what?”
“So what if Max didn’t care about stopping us because he had a backup plan?”
“Or what if he was just running away?” Eric asked. “Can you stop worrying long enough to pick up the couch?”
Just then, the TV turned on by itself. A blurry image appeared for a second, then the picture snapped into focus. It was Mr. Gregory.
“Jesse! Eric! We’ve got a problem!” Mr. Gregory was still in the control tower room, but now lights and sirens were going off behind him.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he did it!”
“Did what?!”
“I need you back here right now! Can you find a controller?”
Eric and I grabbed two controllers from the TV stand.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Gregory said as he typed something. “So, so sorry.”
The controller rumbled in my hands, and the room went black. As I fell into the darkness, flashing red lights started to appear. Also, there was a voice. It was the same friendly woman’s voice that chirps, “tenth floor!” on elevators. Except this particular voice had a much more terrifying message.
“Ten minutes to Rapture.”
About the Author
Dustin Brady
Dustin Brady lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Deserae; dog, Nugget; and kids. He has spent a good chunk of his life getting crushed over and over in Super Smash Bros. by his brother Jesse and friend Eric. You can learn what he’s working on next at dustinbradybooks.com and e-mail him at [email protected].
Jesse Brady
Jesse Brady is a professional illustrator and animator, who lives in Pensacola, Florida. His wife, April, is an awesome illustrator, too! When he was a kid, Jesse loved drawing pictures of his favorite video games, and he spent lots of time crushing his brother Dustin in Super Smash Bros. over and over again. You can see some of Jesse’s best work at jessebradyart.com, and you can e-mail him at [email protected].
Don’t computers feel like magic? You push one little button, and—poof—you’re seconds away from basically any book, song, and movie ever created. Today’s computers can drive cars, pilot airplanes, and land a rocket on the moon. They power video games that feel like real life and run artificial intelligence smart enough to beat the world’s best chess players.
How can one little box do all that? It has to be at least a little bit of magic, right? You can actually start to understand how computers work by flipping the nearest light switch. Try it. Awesome, right?! Right? OK, it’s pretty boring.
But imagine you had a hundred light bulbs to work with. Now you can start doing things that are actually exciting. For example, sometimes all of the businesses in one skyscraper will work together to spell words with their lights during big sports games.
The secret to today’s computers is that they don’t have one switch or even a hundred. They are filled with billions of microscopic switches called “transistors.” Just like those skyscraper businesses, transistors work together to create patterns that mean something.
Transistors create patterns through code called “binary.” Binary just means that there are only two possibilities. In the case of a light switch or transistor, those possibilities are “on” and “off.” By stringing together a group of “on” and “off” transistors, we can start to build code that computers understand. For example, computers understand this pattern to be a question mark:
Binary lets us translate human language into computer language, giving us the only building blocks we need to program video games, stream movies, and FaceTime Grandma.
Now when we write binary, we don’t draw cartoon transistors like the ones you see above. (That would be cute, but it’s a little impractical.) Instead, we represent “on” and “off” with two numbers. Can you guess what they are? Here’s a hint: Go back to the cover of this book and look at the power button inside the Trapped in a Video Game logo.
Do you see it? The power symbol is a “1” inside of a “0.” That’s because in binary, “1” means “on,” and “0” means “off.” Over the next few pages, we’re going to use ones and zeroes to learn more about how computers use binary.
Screens give us a good example of how computers break down complicated ideas into simple binary choices.
Here’s a picture of a dog. His name is Barney.
Screens display pictures by splitting them into tiny squares called “pixels.”
For a simple black-and-white picture like this, empty pixels can get a zero and black pixels can get a one.
Screens can display “zero” pixels as white and “one” pixels as black. Now Barney is inside a computer!
The more pixels a screen has, the clearer the picture becomes. Put these drawings into a video game by filling in the pixels on a separate sheet of graph paper.
Binary works like a secret code that superspies Jesse and Eric can appreciate. Those ones and zeros add up to regular numbers, which, in turn, can represent letters and symbols. For example, 1100011 in binary adds up to ninety-nine, which can be translated to a lowercase “c.”
If that example just gave you a mini heart attack, don’t worry. You don’t actually need to
learn binary math or translation to start programming—the computer does all that work for you. Still, it is fun to find out how computers think by translating binary into letters like a secret code.
In this section, you’ll use the table on the next page to translate binary into hints about the next Trapped in a Video Game book. It might be helpful to copy the binary below onto a piece of paper first. Work through the numbers left to right, top to bottom. Once you’re done with that, you can use binary to write secret messages to your friends!
The subtitle for the fifth Trapped in a Video Game book is:
In the fifth Trapped in a Video Game book, Jesse and Eric venture into the Reubenverse. The first world they encounter is called:
Shortly after entering the Reubenverse, Jesse and Eric meet an old “friend.” This friend is named:
(The Answer Key is on the last page.)
Answer Key:
1. THE FINAL BOSS
2. DINO DISASTER
3. HINDENBURG
Look for these books!
