by Dave Bakers
We each had a score graded from—I guessed—zero to ten thousand.
Our names were all up there on the board, written out in neat, crisp, white block capitals.
After everything that had happened earlier that day, I was feeling pretty low.
So I started off reading from the bottom upwards.
It was a bit of a boost to see—of the hundred or so other people there—that I was sitting right at the top of the list with 9,640 points.
The next name down had 9,420 points.
Chung Wen.
I guessed that was the Chinese kid I’d seen earlier in the queue—with his mother getting angry with the official.
Pretty much on autopilot, I skimmed the next eighteen names on the list: the names which appeared before the neon-red line which read ‘CUT OFF’ . . . the people I’d have to face off against in the final round.
I watched on as lots of kids skulked away, their parents consoling them.
I also watched a couple of adults—clearly unable to understand how they’d got beaten by a bunch of kids—getting all angry with some of the officials with clipboards.
I looked about me as the crowd thinned out, sizing up my competition.
Sure enough, I spotted right away the Chinese kid—Chung Wen—and his mother alongside him. Both of them wore neutral expressions, like they hadn’t expected anything else. And I knew that though I didn’t need to beat Chung Wen right now, I most certainly would have to face him at some point if I actually managed to get through into the Grand Tournament later on.
When the angry adults, and the weeping children, had finally skulked off to their hotel rooms, the officials—the invigilators—called us all together, surrounding us with their clipboards and dark-purple polo shirts.
They explained the rules to us: the remaining twenty.
How we would be participating in five groups of four and—quite simply—the player with the most wins in each group would be the ones to receive the passes.
Five winners of the All-Access Pass.
And I was determined to be one of them.
As the invigilators read out our groups—all of them organised fairly by our ranking—I noted the blond girl from earlier on, watched as she pranced over to join her group.
Then, a little less surprisingly, given his performance on Ridgeway Highway, I saw the black kid heading off to join his group.
The Chinese kid—Chung Wen—headed off to another.
I blinked a few times, tried to bring the world back into focus. Tried to get my brain back into gear for the games ahead of us.
I looked about my group—Group A—looked to their faces.
All of the people in my group were at least ten years older than me, and I couldn’t help noticing just a few snide sidelong glances at me as if I didn’t deserve to be here at all, as if they were just sizing me up like a cut of meat for a barbecue.
Well I guess that I would make a fairly decent barbecue, what with my rolls of fat . . . but they’d have to beat me first for that privilege.
Our invigilator, it turned out, in all his dark-purple-polo-shirted glory, was named Harold. That was what his name badge read, anyway. He was going to make sure that none of us cheated. He would be the one with the final say in who got their hands on the All-Access Pass.
As he brought us through to the plastic pod that would be our playing field, I glanced back over my shoulder to see that Dad had taken a seat on one of the steps back out in the concourse, and that he was back to his chess game.
I guessed that—for him—this was something of a treat too.
Back home Mum was always scolding him for constantly playing chess.
Never letting his mobile leave his palm, except for chess night, of course, when he was actually playing chess in person with all his buddies.
So I just left him to it.
I know that—for some people—watching others playing video games is akin to torture . . . and, well, if that particular person doesn’t have a clue about what they’re doing, then I can’t say anything else except that I agree with them wholeheartedly.
Harold had one of those spindly bodies, and I guessed that he was maybe in his late-twenties. His throat stuck out like an iguana’s, and he had lots of fluff all about his chin and neckline, and I guessed that—maybe—he was trying to grow a beard there, or something.
As he led us through the wide variety of games we’d be playing, I noticed how he had a kind of booming voice, almost the complete opposite of what I’d have expected from someone of his body type . . . at least it caught me off guard.
It turned out that the tournament would consist of a bunch of minigames: of slices of full games all stitched together. This was a specially prepared package, and not unusual at Gamers Con . . . though I did wonder whether they were putting too much effort into what was, essentially, a beginners’ tournament.
We would play against one another, each of us with a gamepad the entire time.
I guess that was the point where I felt my stomach sinking.
If there’s one thing that I absolutely abhor, it’s single-screen—no matter how big that screen is—four-player mode.
The reason is simple.
Under those sorts of conditions—cramped on screen, and down on the floor what with everybody hunched together, their own controller in their hands—a strong element of luck gets thrown into the competition.
And I don’t believe in luck.
Not when it comes to video games.
It’s all about skill.
About how much you know about each game.
Sure, there are those pro gamers who’ll get their panties all in a twist about bugs in games, and players who see their way to exploiting them. But, truth is, those are the sorts of pro gamers who don’t hang around too long because they obviously don’t know all the ins-and-outs of whatever game they just lost at . . .
There’s no such thing as luck.
Anyway, it seemed like I had no choice.
It would be me versus these three fully grown men.
7
I DID IT.
I’d like to say that it was tricky, that I almost came unstuck in places . . . but no.
Truth is that all those gamers—if that’s what you could call them—were flat-average beginners.
The funniest part was about halfway through when the screen announced that the next game to be played would be Footie Bonanza 500 . . . I remember overhearing a couple of the men there saying how they played it all the time, and then, with a slight nudge, and a muttered remark that Harold the Invigilator either chose not to hear, or didn’t hear—I’m guessing that the first one’s more likely given both men had some pretty sizeable muscles—they made a pact to take me out.
To make sure I wouldn’t register any points in that minigame.
So, guess they were a little surprised to watch me spin right through them and score more goals than the rest of them all put together.
I finished with maximum points in my group—and earned myself the long-awaited All-Access Pass.
I would’ve liked to say that that was where it ended, that right after spinning my way through the Ignition Tournament—winning back my rightful All-Access Pass—that I could simply wake Dad up from where he’d slipped off to sleep on the step, drift on up to the hotel room, and then get a solid night’s sleep before the Real Deal started the next day . . . but that wasn’t how it panned out.
I was just about to leave, to head out of the dome with the Sirocco 3000 and the still-flickering plasma screen which continued to show the leader board, and the final group ranking. The others had all slipped out, some of them swearing under their breath, when Harold the Invigilator called me back.
Throughout the whole of the group games, he’d looked just a touch nervous, and I’d thought that it was most likely because of the three large men who were all taking on a plump, thirteen-year-old . . . and what with the thirteen-year-old wiping the floor with them.
&n
bsp; But it turned out to be something else entirely.
I studied Harold’s wispy beardy chin, and gave him one of my squinty-eye specials—it was getting on for eleven o’clock at night, so I suppose I was looking forward to my beauty sleep. “What?” I said. “What’s the matter? I am getting the All-Access Pass, aren’t I?”
Harold flashed me a smile for a quarter of a millisecond, and then he got all fidgety, started to curl up the corner of the page resting on his clipboard. “Oh yes,” he said, “of course you will. Tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock, we’ll be hosting a Winners’ Breakfast where everybody will be presented with their All-Access Pass along with a goodie bag.”
“Fine,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, then firing off a glance at my dad who was slumped up against the banister of the stairs, snoring away.
“There’s just, uh, one thing.”
“What?”
“Are you, uh . . . I mean, were you, previously associated with Alive Action Games?”
I felt a slight tickle at the base of my throat, and wondered if it might be my heart that had got lodged up there.
Though some pro gamers might say different, it’s not often they get recognised . . . and I’m not even a pro gamer . . . yet.
“Yeah?” I said, not really sure where this was going.
Harold gave me another of his unconvincing smiles. “I thought so,” he said. “Terrible what’s happened—what with the passes, and all that . . . still, at least the five of you managed to squeak through on your own merit.”
“The five of us?” I said.
“Yes, all five of you.”
I thought about what he’d said—I hadn’t got a chance to look at the other winners and, it seemed, just about everyone else had headed up to their hotel rooms for the night.
The only people still down here, on the conference centre floor, close to eleven at night, were me and Harold.
“You see,” Harold said, his eyes leaving mine, finding the flickering screen behind me quite quickly, “this is really the first year that we’ve put on this Ignition Tournament—it’s not particularly in keeping with Gamers Con regulations to hand out All-Access Passes at the very last minute.” He flashed a too-brief smile again. “Difficult administration-wise.”
“Yeah,” I said, already mentally picturing my fluffy bed and, actually, also feeling my mouth water just a touch at the notion of a Winners’ Breakfast.
“It was when Alive Action decided to pull their funding—to cease to sponsor the five of you that Gamers Con thought that we really must do something.”
I couldn’t help but give a yawn right then, though I did my best to cover it up with the back of my hand . . .
Harold seemed to get the message and began to speak faster. “You have heard what happened with Alive Action—why they decided to shut down?”
I shrugged. “Nope, they didn’t even tell me they had shut down.”
Harold nodded along. “Yes, sure, I can understand that, it makes sense that you were all surprised about what happened when you arrived—that they hadn’t actually informed you of the, uh, situation.”
It was then that Harold broke off eye contact with me, that he shifted his gaze to the doorway of the dome.
I followed his eyes, looked to the person who stood there now.
It was a man in about his seventies—maybe eighties . . . one thing was for sure, he was old.
He wore a clean black suit and tie. He was slim and his leathery skin hung off him. He only had a light sprinkling of grey hair over his mainly bald scalp.
He was flashing us a beaming smile, and he held one hand in the pocket of his suit trousers in a seemingly carefree way.
But something was off about him.
The way that he had black eyes, eyes that constantly seemed to skitter between me and Harold here.
When I slipped Harold a sidelong glance, I realised that he was trembling.
“Mr Yorbleson,” Harold said, his voice creaking and groaning in a way my voice gets when I have to speak up in class, or I get nervous, or whatever.
“It’s all right,” Mr Yorbleson said, and then turned to me, “you must be Zak Steepleman.”
I felt my stomach clench. It was weird that all these people here seemingly knew just who I was . . . and I had no idea who they were.
But maybe it was because I was beginning to earn myself a reputation, and that can’t be a bad thing, right?
Then Mr Yorbleson outstretched his hand towards me.
It took me a couple of seconds to realise that he wanted to shake my hand.
I’m not that used to being treated like an ‘adult.’
His hand felt a little damp, a little sweaty, and I caught a whiff of his bad breath, which smelled of onions, and something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Congratulations, Mr Steepleman,” he said, slipping Harold a glance as if he was making a point to him that I was to be referred to by my surname only.
Already I didn’t much like Mr Yorbleson.
He slunk back, eyed me with that same dead smile, and then turned on Harold. “Could I have a quick word with you in my office?”
Harold flinched, and then looked to me.
I wondered if I was meant to interpret a warning—something like that—from the look . . . but, as it was, I couldn’t pick up on anything.
Guess that means I’m not telepathic, right?
Harold gave me another of his unconvincing smiles and then slunk out after Mr Yorbleson, who gave me a parting grin himself.
I listened to their footsteps echo about the high-ceiling of the convention centre.
I waited till they’d totally died away, and then went to fetch Dad.
Woke him up.
His first words to me when he did wake up were, “Bishop to B3.”
I saw that his mobile screen had gone blank.
That it had run out of battery.
8
THE WINNERS’ BREAKFAST exceeded even my expectations.
That’s why I love Gamers Con . . . as if I even needed another reason.
When I wandered on in through the door, I could already smell the butter melting on the stacks of pancakes, could sense it weaving itself into the chocolate fondue.
It’s fair to say that my mouth resembled something of a swimming pool just seconds after I’d wandered into the large room apart from the rest of the conference centre.
A window took up an entire wall of the place and gave a—fairly uninteresting—view out onto the car park outside. There were some trees and some rolling hills off in the middle distance for people who like that sort of thing.
I’m not one of them.
A scattering of officials in their dark-purple polo shirts popped up here and there, putting the final touches to the Winners’ Breakfast table which was, as far as I could tell, a pretty long table with a white cloth that had been nicely smoothed down.
Each place had a shining, white porcelain plate with gleaming silver cutlery alongside.
Now, I know that Gamers Con is pretty great—but even I doubt that it was real silver.
Most likely just some other metal.
Which one, I’m not sure.
Look, I’m a gaming genius, not a chemistry whizz, okay?
But by far the most beautiful sight there were the plasticky badges that lay on everybody’s plate: the ones which read All-Access and had that cheery red ribbon all about the border.
Now, I knew, I really had arrived at Gamers Con.
For some reason I got all timid then, and just sort of hovered at the door to the place with my dad sort of hanging off me, apparently equally as taken aback by this breakfast awaiting us, though I’m not sure why . . . that’s another way that me and Dad are different.
While I eat like a shire horse, Dad eats more like a sparrow, and a very weight-conscious sparrow at that.
“Please, Mr Steepleman, take a seat.”
I glanced around. Saw that it was Harold standing there. Anothe
r of his nervous grins splitting his cheeks, though it wasn’t like I could mention anything about that grin.
And he kept grinning, holding out his hands to, apparently, indicate the chair at the head of the table.
I hung back precisely half a second more, and then sat down.
It was one of those plumped-up leather chairs, the ones that have a whole bunch of air inside of them, and I immediately found myself sinking into it, probably coming quite close to dying of comfort.
The chair was white leather so I made a mental note to myself to try not to let anything stain it . . . that’s the thing with white materials, you’ve always got to take extreme caution with them.
My dad sat down beside me.
And it began.
* * *
It was only after I’d demolished a good three—or was it four?—stacks of pancakes that I realised someone was standing in the doorway, waiting to come inside, hanging back in the same—slightly nervous—way that I had.
I saw that it was the Chinese kid: Chung Wen.
Luckily for Chung, though, his mum wasn’t as timid as my dad had been, and she shepherded him in through the doorway, and over to the seat furthest away from me and Dad that she could possibly pick.
I gave a sort of sheepish grin in Chung’s direction.
He didn’t respond in any way.
Another pile of pancakes later, and I noticed another couple walking in.
The black kid, and the blond girl.
The ones who I’d noticed standing in the queue.
While the black kid wasn’t much of a surprise, the blond girl certainly was.
Oh, sure, I’d seen her down there going through with the ‘Ignition Tournament,’ but I hadn’t thought, not really even for a minute, that she would actually go on to win one of the five places . . . and there was always that knowledge that I’d gained from Harold the day before, that all of us—all five of us—had been associated with Alive Action Games.
So, apparently, she was a serious gamer too.
. . . At least as serious as me.
We all sat down to eat without any words to one another—each of us with our respective parents . . . Chung with his mother, and the rest of us with our dads.
