by Dave Bakers
“Zak?” James said. “Did you see that kid at the Winners’ Breakfast—I mean the ginger kid, you know, the one who came in later on?”
I felt a quiver pass through my stomach, and I was worried—just for a second—that those pancakes might be coming up for an encore . . . a vomity encore.
“Yeah?” I said, now feeling deeply worried.
“Well,” he said, turning to face me, “don’t you think it was weird, like, how he sort of appeared in that cut scene, you know, with that guy in the cloak?”
My stomach tightened itself up into a knot and I could feel my mobile buzzing away in my pocket. As I reached down for it, saw that Dad was calling me, James reached out, squeezed my shoulder and then said, “Look, we’ll speak later, okay? After the First Round?”
I nodded to him and picked up the call.
12
“DAD?” I said, holding the phone up to my ear.
“Where are you?”
He sounded a little more brisk than I would’ve thought he’d be—as if he’d just come home after a long, hard day at work rather than if he’d just been tapping away at his mobile playing computer chess with his best buddies.
“Uh,” I said, looking about me, trying to establish my coordinates using the giant letters that hung from the ceiling. “F,” I eventually said.
“Why did you go wandering off?”
I gave a shrug though I knew we didn’t have any sort of video chat going on here. “Dunno, you seemed busy, I kinda got talking with one of the other kids—one of the gamers—and we just got walking away, I guess.”
“Oh, all right,” he said, “wait there, I’ll find you, okay?”
That seemed to lighten his tone just a little—I noticed it in his voice.
Though maybe the one thing that me and my dad have in common is that we’re just about the most introverted of introverts—that video games are to me what chess is to him—he always seems pretty pleased when I’m actually, you know, interacting with other people.
With other kids.
Even if they’re video- game kids.
I guess that’s something he’s picked up from my mum, and how she’s almost always harping on at me to ‘go outside’ and ‘play in the real world.’
Yeah, but what she doesn’t realise about the Real World is that it has sharp corners, and bullies, and crap like that . . .
I gave Dad a bit better description of my surroundings, what with the railing, and the people down below, and how I was right below the letter F, and I hoped that would help him get about the place.
That was when I realised, back not ten or fifteen minutes ago, the invigilator—as part of our briefing—had told us that there was an app we could download which featured a map of the whole of Gamers Con . . . and, of course, our current location too.
Though all that info was right there in the brochure we’d got given the day before, along with the Open-Access Pass, I guess the invigilator had thought that since we were hardcore gamers we might not have thought to dirty our minds with something so base as reading.
I got onto the internet on my mobile and got it all downloaded. I guessed that Dad had already downloaded his own copy. That’s the strange thing about him. He goes along appearing to have that chess app open on his mobile twenty-four hours a day, and then he’ll turn around at some random time, point to his mobile screen and show me some app that I’ve never even heard of that he’s downloaded on the sly.
Guess that says something about my coolness that my dad can beat me when it comes down to cutting-edge technology . . . outside of video games that is . . .
“Hi.”
I flinched at the word. Glanced about me. Caught sight of the person who’d spoken.
I recognised her right away, of course.
The blond girl.
The girl who’d also been working with Alive Action Games.
I couldn’t help but stare right back into her light-green eyes.
And those eyes of hers seemed to strip all the words off the surface of my tongue.
“Uh, uh,” I just about got out.
She grinned back at me. “Yeah, I know, right? A girl. And not only is she at a gaming convention—at Gamers Con—but she’s got the audacity to take part in the Grand Tournament, something’s not right with the world, is it?”
Actually, I was more focussed on how she was using words like ‘audacity’ which made me feel a thousand shades of stupid.
Made me wonder if—maybe, just maybe—I should revise my attitude towards reading and English class in general.
She hunched her shoulders up so they almost came level with her ears, and then she let loose a deep breath.
Her breath smelled a little of almonds: the rich kind that they put in chocolate.
I swallowed hard catching an aftertaste of sugar from those pancakes.
I would’ve liked to follow what she said next, but my heart near enough pounded her words right out of my eardrums.
I felt cold all of a sudden—really cold.
She stared out over the crowd with that same mid-air stare that James had used, and then she snapped back onto me, as if she was expecting me to make conversation. Then, seeing that I obviously wasn’t, she said, “So, aren’t you going to at least show off some surface-level politeness?” She was wrapping her long blond hair about her index finger now, knotting it so tight that it cut off the blood flow to the end of her finger—made it turn a dark purple.
“Uh,” I started again, somewhat poorly, “you, uh, you were with Alive Action too?”
She rolled her eyes, and actually fixed a look of disgust across her features—bunching up her nose in a way that reminded me of a cat giving its food a sniff and deciding that it won’t lower itself to eating it. “Unfortunately.”
I found myself growing just a little more confident.
That chilly feeling was just about leaving my bones.
“Uh,” I said, “that was pretty annoying, wasn’t it? Like how they made us take part in that beginners’ tournament.”
She shrugged. “Oh I dunno, guess it was the best that Gamers Con could do for us.” Her eyes crossed over mine, and then she said, “What’s your name?”
I told her.
“Huh,” she said, “what’re your family, some sort of church-roof specialists?”
It was funny, though I’d had to live with my name my entire life, though I’d had to suffer through many—many—classes, and many different iterations of my name in varying comical contexts, the kids at school had never come up with that one.
I was so taken aback that I didn’t feel at all anxious when I replied, “I’ll have to add that one to the book.”
She giggled girlishly, covering her mouth with her hand.
I blushed a little, though I was pretty sure she was teasing me.
Her eyes wandered over the crowd behind me, and then she looked over my head. “Uh, isn’t that guy over there with you?”
I turned to look where she was looking. Saw that Dad was just then climbing the steps.
Sure enough, he had his mobile in hand, and I realised that—against all odds—he actually did have that app the invigilator had pointed out to us that morning on his screen.
No chess.
Just for a couple of seconds.
That made me feel better—that he valued his son at least a little above chess.
“Hey?” she said, as if I’d just done something rude. “Kate,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, not sure if we should shake hands or hug or kiss on the cheek or what . . . though since we were both thirteen-year-old kids, and thinking about the way I was blushing, I guessed that it made sense for it to be awkward.
“I’m in Group D,” she said, “so, maybe we’ll see one another in the next rounds.”
Though I was sure that my heart was pumping gallons of blood per second into my cheeks, I couldn’t help thinking, in a snide way, that, most likely, she would get knocked out soon enough.
&n
bsp; I wondered if she was going to intercept this thought of mine, but, instead, she just gave me a sliver of a smile, showing off a tiny glimmer of her very white teeth, and then she shimmied on away, lost herself in the crowd.
“Dad?” I called out.
He glanced up from his mobile screen.
Only about ten paces away from me now.
He caught my eye.
13
“SO?” Dad said. “All set for the matchup?”
Though Dad had picked the right terminology, I couldn’t help wincing just a little.
I stared down at my half-eaten hamburger, lying there on the greased-up, thin paper. I decided that now was the time for me to make inroads into my fries—so far I hadn’t touched them. There’s definitely something to be said for salt before a gaming tournament.
If nothing else, it gets your heart pounding just that little bit harder.
Can help you hit those split-second reactions.
“Uh huh,” I replied, snatching for a handful of chips, stuffing them between my lips, chewing up the salt and fat, and all that goodness, washing it down with a good slurp of Brizzmere Buzz.
The sugary bubbles seemed to lash their way right into my bloodstream.
Again, some pretty good energy.
I breathed in the fat on the air, found it reassuring, and I did my best to block out the blabbering crowd that sat at the food court.
I didn’t really want to run into another meet-and-greet situation.
It was enough for my inside-kid nature to have the stress of ‘getting to know’ two people in one day.
Kate and James.
That meant two more names I’d have to remember.
I reached down for my lukewarm hamburger.
Bit off another quarter.
Chewed it up thinking that—to the casual observer—I no doubt looked a little like a cow chewing away on some cud.
Let them think what they want.
Because I was going to show them all who was boss just as soon as I found myself at a gamepad.
It was then that I realised that I hadn’t called Mum, and that I had told her I would ring her the day before.
I looked to Dad, who was currently pondering his next move in his computer chess game. I saw that the other player was ambiguously named Nemux5 . . . Dad really did have some of the geekiest friends, and that’s coming from his video-game-playing son.
“Can I give Mum a ring, Dad? I told her I would, and I don’t have any minutes.”
Okay, that was kind of, sort of accurate.
The truth was that I never really liked to use up my minutes.
I always get a little paranoid that I might end up somewhere—someplace, sometime—and not be able to make a potentially life-saving phone call . . . yeah, or something like that . . . but, long story short, why should I have to use my phone to call one of my parents?
. . . Couldn’t they call me?
Dad pondered his next move for half a minute or so, long enough that, if I hadn’t known him so well, I might’ve thought that he hadn’t heard what I’d just said.
But, sure enough, after he’d made his move, he slid his mobile across the table to me.
I checked down the list for Mum’s name and number then hit the Call button.
The dial tone chirped away in my ear.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I checked the time, saw that it was around midday now—hence the hamburger.
I guessed that, maybe, Mum had gone to have her own lunch with my aunt, and that she had perhaps left her phone behind in the guest room.
Still, I tried another couple of times, and then settled on leaving a voicemail message.
I handed my dad his mobile back.
He near enough snatched it out of my fingers, and I saw that he already had five moves to see to . . . five different games that were awaiting his input.
I rolled my eyes and tried to get my brain into gaming mode.
To get myself all revved up.
14
ALL THE GAMERS in our group—Group M—were clustered around our invigilator: the same guy from this morning who had taken us through briefing.
I looked across to James, caught his eye.
He smiled at me.
I smiled back.
Then I remembered that he was the competition.
That I couldn’t afford to think of him as a friend.
. . . At least not till I’d crushed him, and the rest of the players in my group, beneath my oversized bottom.
The invigilator, like the rest of the staff at Gamers Con, wore a dark-purple polo shirt. His name badge read: Steve, though since he never formally introduced himself to us, I guess that he might’ve conceivably been called something else.
Steve was one of those trusty guys.
He was well-built, which was to say that he was fat—fat enough that a fat kid like me could comfortably get away with calling him fat.
He’d obviously taken the extra-large size of polo shirt, but that was still struggling to cover his belly which kind of flopped out over his waistline showing off the fuzzy black hair which clung to his skin.
A couple of times, when I got too close to Steve, I caught a whiff of his sweat—realised that there was maybe a lingering odour of chip grease there too . . . and I wondered if, maybe, he’d eaten in the same food court as me and Dad.
But Steve was serious about what he did. Not once, throughout the entire explanation, did he crack a smile or even hint at a dry-humoured joke . . . I like that.
The First Round was to be shooting games using peripherals.
There was a bit of a collective sigh around me.
I knew just what everybody else was thinking, because I felt just the same.
That peripherals were below me.
Of course they were.
They weren’t serious.
But, then again, I knew that this was Gamers Con, and whatever they said was Law.
If they wanted to tumble us into a bunch of giant inflatable balls and have us try to knock one another off a narrow ledge then we would’ve had to do it . . . or admit defeat.
Nope, this First Round would be a true challenge of our gaming credentials.
The first step to proving the all-round gamer who would eventually take the trophy.
We filed along, away from the meeting area—that section beneath the large letter M which was, logically, where our group: Group M, would get together before each of these First Round events.
I felt pumped looking upwards, seeing all the people looking down on us from above, looking down into the area restricted to only All-Access Passes, and, for the first time at Gamers Con, I felt, well and truly, like I belonged.
After a five-minute walk which got, at least, both me and Steve breathing heavily, I found myself facing off with a whole row of arcade machines, all of them with a shooting peripheral.
Again, I sensed that heaviness in the air, that sense that these gamers were all about to take part in something that was beneath them.
Well, the only ones who’d end up thinking this was beneath them would find themselves knocked out of the Grand Tournament.
Strangely enough, nobody quit there and then.
We all listened attentively to yet more instructions and then it was playtime.
I lined myself up at the machine I’d been assigned.
I checked out my competition, the rest of them all at their own machines.
The rules were simple.
Whoever scored the most points would win.
We wouldn’t know which game we were playing till the screen blazed into life.
That suited me just fine.
I could sharp shoot in just about any shooting game.
I picked up the plastic gun from its holster, checked to my left, then my right, saw that neither of the gamers who stood beside me was James, and then I held the gun straight.
Stared along the sight.
>
15
I GOT LUCKY.
The first game that fired up was Zombie Harvester III.
Though I’d never played Zombie Harvester III on an arcade machine—not even with the gun peripheral on my Sirocco 3000 . . . did I mention that serious gamers never use peripherals?—I found my feet quickly.
We were on the final level, taking part in a customised scenario.
On the top floor of Pentwhistle Mansion, the part where you have to face off with a bunch of demented—possessed?—puppets.
The strategy is simple.
You’ve gotta shoot at the cords.
Take those down and you get a flat two or three seconds, while the puppet sprawls about on the floor, to shoot them like little baby ducklings.
Like little demon baby ducklings, make no mistake.
The only minor difference—what made this a customised edition—was that there seemed to be about twice the number of puppets as usual.
It was a bit of a mindless mod, to be honest.
But I guess that it would throw a couple of the less-experienced gamers.
As I flushed out the puppets, I thought about how there’re often message-board arguments over whether or not Zombie Harvester III is superior to its sequel, Zombie Harvester IV.
As for me?
I guess they both have their merits.
The story of Zombie Harvester IV is certainly better—a little more global in scale—and there’s that great part where you actually get to hop onto a combine harvester and mow over an entire field’s worth of zombies.
Then again, there are those who like to argue for Zombie Harvester III because of the more claustrophobic feel to the game . . . wow, look at me, maybe I’d already been spending too much time with Kate, and her extended vocabulary had begun to rub off on me.
Whatever, I was seriously donning Zombie Harvester III—just flat killing the whole thing.
I didn’t even think to glance at my points at the side of the screen till I reached the victory screen for that particular scenario.
My points had a comma in them, and a whole bunch of zeroes.
When I glanced around, getting that skin-itching sensation that somebody was looking over my shoulder, I saw Steve—clipboard in hand—clicking his tongue . . . apparently impressed.
