Zoe figured it wouldn’t hurt to just take a peek at the game to figure out how to play it and teach Ella. She didn’t plan to get a bootleg copy for herself or anything. She loved tech and puzzle challenges, and Ella, a cool upperclassman, wanted her help.
Ella’s cousin had left some basic instructions on her tablet about how to get into the game and get started. Ella accessed the information and handed the tablet to Zoe. “These are the only instructions I have. I tried to play the game, but I couldn’t figure it out. I think my cousin skipped some steps. He’s a hacker. I need step-by-step guidelines. Here…”
Zoe took the tablet. She’d never been in a sim rig before, but she’d built her own computer, knew her way around tech stuff and games, and felt confident she could figure it out.
Suddenly, the memories came flooding back. There had been two sim systems, right in Ella’s bedroom. She had an awesome room: pink walls, a ceiling white as clouds on a sunny day, a canopy bed with gauzy pink netting around it, a long white desk…and the sim systems. Ella said she’d gotten them for her last birthday, so she could play sim games with her friends.
Zoe sat down in one of the white leather sim chairs and pulled on the gaming gloves. A pair of the kind Shadow had uncovered in the shoebox: silver and decorated with what appeared to be jewels: amethysts, rubies, emeralds. They were actually LEDs. Ella handed her a shiny pink plasmetal helmet. Zoe put it on and followed the instructions she’d memorized.
On the visor screen, choose the F icon. The F icon glowed like flame.
After Zoe lifted her finger to choose the fiery icon, the menu faded away. It was replaced by the word Feyland and something else that had been pixelated out. The bootleg copy was obviously flawed, or someone had edited out some information on purpose.
The visor screen went dark. Music started playing, quiet and haunting, and then light gradually appeared in a design that reminded Zoe of spider webs or delicate veins. Then the following words appeared:
WELCOME TO FEYLAND
The message unfurled across the visor screen, changing from bright gold to crimson. Flames flickered along the edges, then the words turned to gray, giving the appearance of burning down to ash. Zoe was amazed by how vivid everything was, better than any electronic game she’d ever played.
She chatted away excitedly while concentrating on everything she was experiencing. “This is totally sparked, Ella. There are flames and ash that seem totally real. And I’m only in the intro part!”
The music changed, and the letters went flying away like leaves edged in darkness.
Next came the character-creator interface that RPG games always had. Zoe chose SPELLWEAVER. She liked the look and the cool spells. She lifted her index finger and highlighted her choice. Her character immediately appeared on the visor screen. She didn’t want to lose too much time fine-tuning the appearance, so she went with a flowing purple robe and long blond hair, and left everything else to the default settings.
When she was prompted for a character name, she decided on Moth, one of the faeries in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She double-clicked her thumb and index finger to bring up the keyboard. That part of the interface was flawless.
She worked her way through to a single question popping onto her visor screen. It filled Zoe’s stomach with the sensation of fluttering butterflies:
MOTH – character complete. Enter game?
Zoe tipped her thumb up to say: Yes.
Trumpets blared as the visor screen turned golden. Suddenly, Zoe felt incredibly dizzy and nauseated. She figured it was the bootlegged copy, flawed in ways that threw off the inner ear and other senses that normally keep people grounded—kind of like getting nauseated when reading in a moving vehicle rather than looking outside at the horizon, but much worse.
Finally, the sick feeling stopped.
Zoe landed at the game’s starting point, a place that seemed incredibly real.
She stood in a clearing. She could feel wind rustling through her hair and against her face. “Ella, this is amazing! I’ve become my avatar. It’s like I’m actually here, inside a physical world!”
Zoe stood on bright green grass. When she took a couple of small steps to test it out, she could feel the soft natural surface under her feet. She was surrounded by trees with white bark, their leaves flashing silver as the wind rustled them. Looking up, she found a bright blue sky with birds flying across it. Looking down, she discovered that she was in a ring of pale mushrooms. She shared that with Ella. “I made it into the game. Your cousin’s information says that the starting point is a circle of mushrooms, which is a faerie ring. I’m there now.” Talking more to herself than to Ella in order to review the next steps and commit them to memory, she continued, “You have to step over the mushrooms without damaging them, then find a Brownie named Fynnod at a nearby cottage to get your first quest. If you think about items in your inventory, they’ll automatically appear in your hand. As you approach Fynnod, you’re supposed to think about a bowl of milk. When it appears, you’re supposed to offer it to him. Then he’ll give you your first quest. The instructions from your cousin stop there.”
Confident that she understood how to start the game, Zoe exited Feyland. Taking off the helmet and gloves, she turned to Ella. “There are bound to be battles in this game. Why don’t you join me in there before I go any further? I probably won’t survive too long by myself. And I don’t think I can teach you this game unless we’re actually in-game together. There’s too much stuff you have to experience firsthand.”
Ella’s eyes were bright with anticipation. It was obvious how much she’d wanted to see Feyland for herself.
She hopped into the other sim chair. Zoe walked her through the same instructions she’d followed earlier. Zoe had to explain everything, even the things she felt were completely intuitive. When she told Ella to choose the F icon, Ella did nothing. A few seconds later, she said, “I chose it, but nothing happened.”
Zoe figured it was a programming bug. “Really? You pointed at it and nothing happened?”
“No. I thought about it,” Ella replied, “like you told me to.”
Zoe had an impulse to smack her own forehead, but she realized she’d just be smacking her helmet and probably messing up something in-game. “No. That’s for calling up items in your inventory. To choose the F icon, you have to point at it.”
Sounding annoyed, Ella replied, “Why didn’t you say so?”
Because it’s perfectly intuitive? Zoe kept that thought to herself.
After that, Zoe explained everything in painstaking detail until they both landed inside the faerie ring. Ella arrived as an Archer, slight of build with a curved bow and a quiver of arrows on her back.
“I feel sick,” Ella said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
Zoe told her to imagine something calming and see if it went away. She shared her thoughts that there were bugs in the interface that needed to be fixed while she fought back her own intense sensations of nausea.
Finally, Ella said, “Okay. I’m better. Let’s go.”
Together, they stepped over the mushrooms. Zoe led the way down a mossy path through the trees.
When they reached the end of the forest, they saw a rise of small green hills and a country cottage with white walls and a thatched roof. Trekking over to it, they found an incredibly ugly man with an enormous nose and flappy ears. His body was covered in dark hair; his only clothing was a piece of ragged cloth tied around his waist. He stank something horrible.
Zoe thought of milk. A clay bowl filled with milk appeared in her hands. Placing it in front of the creature, she said, “Greetings, Fynnod.”
The ugly man said, “Moth…”
Ella shrieked.
Fear shot through Zoe. Was there an enemy she couldn’t see?
Ella said, “Mom! Don’t sneak up on me like that! We’re simming. You could give me a heart attack, like for real, you know!”
Zoe’s m
other had finished her work at the Bradford residence and it was time for them to go home.
Zoe experienced an emotional reaction she didn’t quite understand. She felt extremely upset, basically devastated, to have to leave the game so soon. She felt enraged that she hadn’t heard everything that Fynnod had said and they hadn’t yet received his quest. She exited the game and removed the helmet and gloves. She picked up her backpack in a huff.
When Ella’s mom went downstairs, Ella grabbed Zoe by the arm. “Remember you can’t tell anyone about this bootlegged copy. Not anyone. If your mother asks what we were playing, make up another game, one you’ve played before. Okay? My cousin was adamant that we could get in serious trouble. We could go to jail. VirtuMax would make sure of that, to set an example.”
Zoe’s answer was so unlike herself that it startled her. Normally, hearing that she could get arrested for something made her steer clear of it. It was as though Ella had told her the game was an illicit drug. She’d never take part in that. She knew how hard her mother worked just to keep them in a livable house at the edge of the Exe. It was so bad there that she couldn’t imagine ending up in the Exe or on the street or, even worse, taken away from her mother and placed in one of the Homes. Her mother was also putting away money to send Zoe to college. That was their ticket out of the rough sections of Crestview. There was no way Zoe was ever going to jeopardize that.
Except that Zoe found herself saying, “Sure. I won’t say a word about Feyland. No problem.” After getting a taste of the game, she wanted to play it more than anything else in the world. It had crawled into her brain like an earworm. She couldn’t shake it. Visions of the game lured her into wanting to get back inside as soon as possible.
The real world paled in comparison with the vividness of the in-game world of Feyland. Especially her section of the real world on the outskirts of the Exe. Ugh. It felt like she had important work to do inside the Realm of Feyland, more important than anything else she had to do elsewhere.
Thankfully, Ella had the same response to the game. Both girls felt they were about to be assigned an important mission. They had to discover what that was and complete it. They agreed to play the next day.
As Zoe walked out the front door of Ella’s house, she realized the game had a highly addictive component, much like the type of drugs she’d heard about, that got people hooked on the first try. She shrugged it off. That was ridiculous. It was just a game. But if it was like most games, it was bound to have a mission and puzzles to solve. It was simply her OCD, which usually worked in her favor. She never left puzzles unsolved, whether those were math problems or jigsaw puzzles with thousands of pieces.
Reluctantly, Zoe went home with her mother. She finished up her algebra problems. Then, to distract herself from thoughts of the game, she decided to work on one of the many puzzles her mom had given her over the years. They were secondhand, purchased at Goodwill or given to her for free by people whose houses she cleaned. There were always missing pieces and tattered edges. According to the picture on the box lid, this particular puzzle would be a photograph of polar bear cubs playing in the snow.
There was an awful lot of white, but Zoe was good at figuring out the shapes that needed to interlock. It was like looking at keys. The edges determined the locks they could open.
***
That evening, Ella hopped into the Feyland game alone. She concentrated on remembering everything that Zoe had taught her and everything her cousin had told her when he first gave her the game.
She was delighted when she managed to start the game, see the shimmering golden glow and get past the nausea. Once again, she became her Archer avatar. As she stepped from the ring of mushrooms, being careful not to brush against them and risk damaging them, a flock of birds passed overhead. She followed the mossy path that led into the trees. Hearing a rustling sound, she drew her bow. Her avatar looked so much like her real self that she experienced the muscle memory of taking archery lessons at summer camp. She was good with the bow and arrow, so she figured that would translate into in-game skill.
A woman about the size of a cat flew with fluttering rainbow-colored wings out of the undergrowth in the forest. Rather than pull an arrow from her quiver, Ella screamed. Damn. This wasn’t like summer camp. Things were going to come at you, not like the nice, big, round targets at camp that didn’t move.
Landing on the path in front of Ella, the faerie placed her tiny hands on her hips and, with an impish grin, said, “Well? Come on, then…follow me.”
Ella felt like she was being reprimanded. She said, “I didn’t know I was supposed to do that. You just showed up.”
“Well, you know now,” the tiny faerie replied. “You’re supposed to follow me.”
The path suddenly changed, looking very different from the original mossy path. Part of Ella was terrified. Her hands became sweaty inside her gaming gloves, and she could hear her pulse beating in her ears. She wasn’t good at games. She should have waited for Zoe.
The faerie waved her hand. A chain of white mist filled with rainbow-colored sparkles formed around her. Holding a section of it in her hands, she lifted the loop that trailed in front of her feet. “I’ll show you the way. Follow the sparkling path. Come on…” As the faerie moved forward, she gradually unspooled the thread of twinkling lights.
Curiosity winning out over fear, Ella followed her…
***
Later that night, Ella’s younger sister found her unresponsive in her simming chair. Ella still had her helmet and gloves on, but she was slumped over the armrest. Her sister tried shaking her and screaming at her. Not sure how to pull the helmet off, she went running to get her parents.
Ten minutes later, the siren wail and sweeping red-and-blue lights of an ambulance disturbed the usual quiet of the VirtuMax compound. A few neighbors stepped outside and walked over to the Bradford residence to ask what happened. To gape at the teenager with an oxygen mask over her face, her silky blond hair lying on the crisp white sheets. To ask if they could do anything.
Ella’s mother was frozen with panic, wanting to reach out and help her daughter, but knowing that she needed to stay out of the paramedics’ way. Her baby. What could possibly have happened to her? She’d been in the safety of her own room. Her husband put his arm around her and waited helplessly to find out if they could ride along in the ambulance. As soon as they got the okay, they hopped into the vehicle.
***
The next day, Zoe showed up to play Feyland. She had no idea what had happened the night before. Mrs. Bradford screamed at her.
Her face turning bright red and a thick vein popping out in the middle of her forehead, Mrs. Bradford said, “Stay away from here. I should have known better than to ever let Exe scum in my house! You gave my daughter drugs, didn’t you? What did you give her?”
Zoe was frightened. She started, “I didn’t give her anything. I never use drugs.” But when Mrs. Bradford started coming down the front steps of her house with fists raised and a murderous look in her eyes, Zoe turned and ran.
Later that night, it was Mr. Bradford who called their house and fired Zoe’s mom. Losing that job was devastating, yet her mom was incredibly patient and understanding.
As she sat with her daughter, sipping blackberry tea with honey, she said, “I know it wasn’t you. We get blamed for everything, those of us in the Exe. A VirtuMax employee loses a piece of jewelry, they blame it on their staff. Their kid gets addicted to drugs, they blame it on the bad influence of hooligans in their schools. Hooligan always means poor. Don’t dwell on it, Zoe. Just study. Do well in school. Get yourself out of here.”
***
Zoe had unfinished business. The day after talking with Colton, she did as he asked: waited for him outside their school building after the final bell rang.
She watched the rich kids getting picked up in grav-cars, the kids from the Exe heading off to walk back home. Finally, Colton showed up. A tall, muscular
guy, he revealed large biceps as he shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. His red hair curled loosely around his face, and his blue eyes shone in the afternoon sunlight. Without smiling, he said, “Hey.”
Zoe replied, “Hey.” When Colton didn’t add anything else to the conversation, she asked, “So, where are we going?” as nonchalantly as she could.
Colton said, “You’ll see.”
Oh, great. That was comforting.
With Colton leading the way, Zoe rolled her eyes.
When she realized they were about to leave the outskirts of the Exe and head right into it, she stopped walking. Trying to keep her voice from shaking, she said, “Look. I need to know where we’re going.”
Colton laughed. “We’re almost there. Trust me, it will be worth your while.”
Feyland. Feyland. Zoe thought of the mushroom ring. She thought of the vibrancy of the green grass and blue sky. The feel of wind blowing through her hair and against her face. Birds flying overhead, moving shapes against a brilliant sky. The quest that Fynnod would provide. There was an emotional pull and tightening in her chest to move on, to venture forth, to explore and overcome obstacles, to battle enemies and set herself free. The Exe was simply a real-world obstacle to get to Feyland. She had to get back into Feyland.
Just as she had accepted the challenge, three rough-looking guys came around the corner of an abandoned building that was falling apart. A pile of bricks spilled across the cracked sidewalk, exposing a battered wall. Two of the guys revealed black and silver teeth as they smiled menacingly at Colton and Zoe.
Stroking his mangy beard, the taller one shouted, “Well, what do we have here?”
The entire group had crazed yellow eyes and stank to high heaven. Obviously hopped up on some kind of drug, the third guy sauntered over to Zoe. He was emaciated, with pockmarked skin. Placing a long, yellowed fingernail against her cheek, he said, “I like you. You think your boyfriend’s willing to pay a ransom for us not to kidnap you?”
Through the Trapdoor: A Feyland Story Page 2
