Gamers Con: The First Zak Steepleman Novel
Page 18
“So,” James said, not really addressing anybody in particular, “Whereabouts do you guys live?”
Another couple of moments later and we’d established that none of us lived close to one another. In fact, we were all pretty much settled in separate corners of the country.
Again, a good thing that we had the internet, all things considered.
We chatted on for hours and hours till, one by one, our parents called us back, you know, to go have dinner with them, remind them that we were still alive, stuff like that.
Before we split up, though, we all made an agreement.
That, first, we would all keep in touch.
Find a good way to keep in touch.
And, second, we wouldn’t enlighten our parents about this whole transporting-into-the-game stuff. It really was too much for them to handle, and there was also that thing about us kids wanting to keep something to ourselves.
Just a little, tiny secret.
That couldn’t hurt, could it?
Of course, Alan would have by far the most explaining to do—what with his parents no longer having a house, and them having to explain their absence to their relatives, but we agreed to help him out with a decent cover story.
Something which would mean that our parents wouldn’t have to know the secret.
And I headed back to go see Dad, too, since he was calling me up and wondering just where I’d got to.
The funny thing was, right as I was making my way through a stream of people near the entrance of the convention centre, the second-place cup casually hanging down by my side, I heard a pair of twins blabbing about the Final—which they’d apparently been watching.
I picked up on their conversation about halfway through.
“. . . Oh, I dunno, I thought it was pretty good, actually, pretty realistic.”
“Nah,” the other one said, “Rubbish, if you ask me. First of all, those avatars, looked absolutely nothing like the gamers, did they? The graphics were all blurred about the edges. Like watching a bunch of pixels wandering about a maze, if you ask me. We were better out of it. Getting knocked out early on.”
As the two of them wandered away, I couldn’t help smiling to myself.
Thinking that, really, they’d hit the nail on the head.
‘A bunch of pixels wandering about a maze.’
Wasn’t that a pretty good description for what a video game is?
ONE MONTH LATER
I LOBBED MY SCHOOLBAG on the floor, listened to all the books inside all sort of thwack together. Then I yanked my school jumper off over my head, dropped it in the same—growing—pile as my schoolbag, and then I listened hard.
Listened to check if Mum was home.
If she was still about the house.
When I’d called out her name when I’d come in through the front door, she hadn’t responded to me.
But I couldn’t be too careful.
She’d said she’d be out till seven o’clock, and that she’d left me some spaghetti bolognaise to stick in the microwave for dinner.
But I wasn’t hungry.
Not quite yet.
I checked my watch, saw that it had just gone four thirty.
I had a good amount of time to kill.
A good long while really.
Now that Dad wasn’t living with us anymore, Mum was the only one I’d have to watch for coming in and noticing that I was actually in the video games I was playing.
I fired up my Sirocco.
Watched it connect to the internet.
Sending information back and forth.
As I logged on, I saw that, already, Chung, James and Kate were online.
Four out of five of us.
I just sat there, grinning to myself for a few moments, thinking about how these people I’d met at Gamers Con had somehow become my very best friends—and in such a short time.
And there was just one of them missing.
Over the past few days, I’d noticed that Alan was online less and less, and I knew that was because of his parents’ financial problems, that they were finding it tough to slip back into their life . . . after a little while, a couple of days, we’d told Alan that it was better for him to tell his parents the truth.
Yeah, and a fat lot of good that had done him.
They’d forced him to go and see a psychologist.
And when those issues had got worse, he told us that his parents also had gone to get themselves checked out for what seemed like several years of amnesia, just stuff they couldn’t remember at all . . . like how they’d lost their house for one.
It was going to be tough for them, but the good thing—for Alan—was that the four of us, the others who’d all been involved with Alive Action Games, would all be here for him.
Ready to chat whenever he wanted.
I guess, sometimes, there’s stuff that’s more important than video games, though it breaks my heart to say it.
I got chatting with the others, and we started off our daily argument about which game we were going to play tonight.
Like always, James was fighting the corner for Golden Bullets Bite Hardest: a comedy-horror-mashup game, while Chung was going on about Ladder to the Stars which was this really lame, experimental title where you have to climb on up into the night sky . . . and then, as usual, Kate wanted to play Summoner’s Apprentice which wasn’t actually as bad as it sounded.
As for me, I was just happy playing whatever.
But it seemed, right here and now, that I had somehow ended up having the casting vote.
Right when I was on the point of choosing, I noticed the little popup: that Alan had just logged on.
For a long few seconds, the chat window between the four of us—already online—went totally quiet, as if we were sort of in awe of Alan.
He was, after all, the Grand Tournament Champion . . .
And then, right when I was sure that it might’ve been a mistake, that he’d simply flipped on his Sirocco while he’d been moving something, I saw his message come through:
You guys ready to play?
I felt the smile almost burst right off my lips, and I could hardly keep myself from breaking out laughing as I padded over to the Sirocco, dug around about the back and found the infrared panel.
The sensation was kind of itchy.
Then the world went kind of black.
And, just like that, I was with my friends.
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INSIDE KIDS: THE SECOND ZAK STEEPLEMAN NOVEL
Zak Steepleman: Not your average teenage gamer. He determines to become the greatest gamer on planet Earth. Only one thing stands in his way:
His games console.
After Gamers Con, Zak forges friendships with his competitors. They move online. Adventure beckons. Just one problem:
What offered them a world of wonder…
Will bring them a world of pain.
Inside Kids: The Second Zak Steepleman Novel
Please visit: www.dibbooks.com/inside-kids/ for more information!
ALSO BY DAVE BAKERS
Series
Daniel Redfern
Zak Steepleman
Short Stories
Graveyard Club
I am NOT a Bicycle
Orphans
Why my Parents Hate me
Zombies are Overrated and Boring
Collections
Bullies, Snow & Magic
Other Times, Other Spaces
Daymares
Nobody Told Us
Starlight Tonight
Getting into the Game: A Zak Steepleman Collection
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OU LOVE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wish you could transport into your favourite video game?
So does Dave Bakers!
In fact his character, Zak Steepleman, managed to find that button . . . you know, the one right at the back of your games console?
Go on, take a look, he’ll wait . . .
Dave keeps a foot in the real world with some of his short stories (‘Orphans,’ ‘The Fight,’ ‘Rhys’s Friend’), but just as often fails to do so (‘Zombies are Overrated and Boring’ and ‘Graveyard Club’) and don’t even get him started on Zak Steepleman.
You can find all his stuff here.
His website: www.davebakers.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE ZAK STEEPLEMAN SERIES
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GAMERS CON
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
ONE MONTH LATER . . .
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INSIDE KIDS: THE SECOND ZAK STEEPLEMAN NOVEL
ALSO BY DAVE BAKERS
MORE OF WHAT YOU LOVE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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