by Caleb Huett
Ramp napped through the whole show, but his form was so good (thanks to the suit) that no one could really complain.
Celia added a lot of cool tech to her set. She flew around the stage, fire leapt from the wings, and a cannon shot actual candies out to the audience. The spectacle made up for her lack of dance experience.
Buzz totally destroyed us all, again, because it was obvious he was the best dancer onstage. I laughed, I cried, and the entire crowd gave a standing ovation when he did a 720-degree pirouette in the air and landed straight into a double somersault pop-and-lock salsa kick-flip hip shimmy.
Then it was Andrea’s turn. She, as Clara, led herself as the late Mouse King’s army into battle against herself as the citizens of the Land of Sweets. It was very bloody, and swords were flying around everywhere. During a quick costume change, she looked at me in the side of the audience and secretly mouthed, Now! behind her hand. She mimed pressing a button.
I don’t know if I can do this. She ran back center stage and threw sabers around. What if she gets hurt? I watched her jump and twirl with a rapier. As a knight, she stabbed herself as an innocent townsperson and threw fake blood all over the front row of the audience while making dramatic crying noises. During the distraction, she tapped her wrist in my direction like she was waiting on me.
Fine. I pulled the remote out of my jacket and looked at it, and then back at her. I wiggled in my seat at the edge of the audience.
I don’t want to do this. It feels like cheating.
But she asked me to. And she has to lose sometime.
I held my breath and pushed the button while she juggled butcher knives. Nothing happened. Maybe I have to get closer?
I slid out of my seat and tried to move to the front of the stage without attracting attention—lucky her performance was so interesting—and held my breath again. I pushed the button.
A visible jolt of blue energy spread around her costume and froze up. Three—no, four—swords were airborne as her suit short-circuited, and she fell to the ground on her back. The swords turned and fell to the ground as the audience gasped. A little boy behind me asked his mom if this was part of the show. I covered my eyes with my hands but peeked out through my fingers anyway.
The swords stabbed into the ground around her, but none of them hurt her, thankfully. The audience waited for a few minutes to see if it was part of the show, but the music kept going and Andrea just wiggled in her frozen suit.
Frosty stopped the show and a team of elves marched onstage with a stretcher. They picked her up and led her off the stage toward where I was standing.
As she passed she whispered, “Thanks, Ollie. You’re a good friend.”
Phew, I thought. I instantly felt so much better. I’m glad I was able to help her.
The awards ceremony was pretty much unnecessary. Buzz won—he was the only person to win two challenges already—and Andrea was eliminated.
As soon as it was over, Celia and I ran as fast as we could back home.
“Must … sleep!” Celia yelled.
I groaned like a zombie. “We just have to make it through one more day!”
Compared to all the other challenges, doing anything for only eighty minutes sounded like a breeze. Even with the crazy Miser twins in charge.
Heatmiser and Snowmiser were AI programs with full control over the North Pole’s air-conditioning and climate-control systems. They were also responsible for maintaining the fog that obscured our location to regular humans; anybody exploring the area would get lost in it and then blown by seriously strong winds away from the city perimeter. They kept us safe and kept our buildings warm and comfortable.
The key to their success was that they had been built to balance each other. Heatmiser always wanted things hotter, and Snowmiser always wanted things colder. Since they were able to move around inside of any technology connected to the North Pole’s network, their fights would sometimes have real-world consequences.
Every computer in my neighborhood overheated to the point of catching on fire once because Heatmiser lost a best two hundred out of three hundred checkers match. One time Heatmiser didn’t laugh at one of Snowmiser’s jokes, and he pouted so hard all the food in the kitchens became frozen food. I had a lot of popsicles that week, and some of the popsicles were hot dogs.
When we arrived on the field, we were greeted with an enormous metal dome taking up the entire non-spa half of the stadium. There was only one door, so all five of us walked inside and it slid closed on its own.
“I can’t even see my hands,” I heard Celia say. She was right; the whole dome was in pitch black.
Klaus called out from beside us. “Heaty? Snowbro?”
I heard Buzz snort, then put on a fake baby voice: “Help me, Snowbwo! The darkness is soooo scawy!!”
“Shut up.”
“Heatyyyyy! Whewe aaaaawe you?!”
“I said shut up.”
“KLAUS!” Up in the dark sky, a huge sun appeared and started beaming warmth down at us. It had a big white smile and was wearing sunglasses, which I thought was very funny. “How’s my best little buddy?” Heatmiser’s voice was loud and quick, like a crackling fire. “You might not recognize me because I’m a hologram, but it’s your favorite uncle, Heatmiser!”
Klaus rolled his eyes, but I could tell he was smiling just a little. “I know it’s you, Heaty.”
“ ‘Favorite uncle’ my switchboard.” A huge icy moon eclipsed the sun, and a thin smile spread among its craters. The moon was also wearing sunglasses, and it was still funny. “Everyone knows I’m Klaus’s favorite.” Snowmiser always sounded a little bored, even when he was freaking out. “And you’ve gotten so tall, Klaus darling!”
“You saw me last week, Snowbro.” Klaus was staring at the ground and smirking.
I put my hands on my cheeks and opened my mouth in shock at Celia.
This is the cutest thing I have ever seen, I mouthed. She stuck out her tongue like she was grossed out by it.
“Could you give us a floor or something, guys?” Klaus asked the brothers. “It’s pretty weird to be standing on nothing.”
“Duh. If ice brain here didn’t move so slow, I would have done it ages ago.” The sun bumped the moon out of the way, and his rays grew bigger and brighter. I could really feel the heat coming off of them, which I was surprised by.
As Heatmiser lit up the ground, a beautiful green field started growing around us. Suddenly there was thick, bright grass as far as we could see, with the occasional tree or animal running around it. I knelt down to touch the grass—it felt real. I saw Ramp pat a rabbit on the head. Buzz swung on a tree branch.
“Welcome, Klaus—”
“And the rest of you.”
“—and the rest of you, to our state-of-the-art Holo-Chamber.” Snowmiser swooped down to the horizon and blew. A wave of cold washed over us, and the grass shrunk and turned brown. Snow fell from the sky, and the leaves on the trees turned brown and then fell off.
Heatmiser frowned at having his field ruined but kept talking. “We’ve got full control of artificial reality in here. It’s really very impressive.”
Snowmiser sighed. “You don’t tell people something is impressive, brother. You just let them be impressed.”
“Oh, so now you’re saying I’m a show-off.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant!”
“You are so immature.” The sun and moon pressed up against each other, and the world around us started shifting in strange ways. The trees grew green leaves while snow fell on top of them. A tropical storm dumped on us and froze into an ice block as soon as it reached the ground.
“Guys!” Klaus yelled, drawing the brothers’ attention. “Can we get started with the challenge, please?”
Heatmiser sucked the water off of our clothes and hair, leaving us dry again. “Of course, little buddy. Let’s get going.”
“We should explain the rules.” Snowmiser looked to his r
ight and a bulleted list appeared in the sky next to him. “This challenge will test how you could survive the harshest climates in the world, as Santa must every Christmas. To that end, there are a series of rules. Rule number one: In case of emergency, all contestants should—”
Heatmiser interrupted him with a growl. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s simple: Don’t die and keep moving. Readysetgo!”
“Santa clearly said—”
Heatmiser interrupted him with a loud, extended fart sound effect. The floor below us started moving backward, and the holo-world around us moved along with it. We all started walking to keep up.
“I’m first!” Heatmiser said. “Welcome to one of my favorite places on Earth: the desert.”
“Which desert?” Celia asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
I could feel all the moisture being sucked out of the world, and what was left of the grass and trees melted into growing dunes of sand. Soon we were struggling to keep moving with our feet sloshing through the loose grains.
“Ugh …” I groaned as I struggled not to fall on my face. “It’s so hot.”
Celia made a motion with her hands like she was fanning herself, activating the air-conditioning I’d programmed in her suit. I shifted my suit to a pair of shorts and a tank top to cool down.
“Don’t forget your hover jets!” I reminded Celia.
“Oh, yeah!” I was so excited about those when we put them in. She flattened her palms toward the floor and powerful jets of air started shooting out of her sleeves and pants. She sprayed sand everywhere but lifted up above the ground and didn’t have to trod on the hot surface anymore.
“Nice to have a challenge where we can actually use our suits,” Buzz said. His shoes turned into little sleds with tiny rockets on the back, and he skated along the sand.
“You think you’re so tough.” Heatmiser chuckled above us. “Let’s see how you fare against my sand worm!”
The ground rumbled below us, and we saw a cloud of sand being spewed up into the air as something burrowed toward us at an extreme speed.
Within seconds, an enormous monster burst out of the ground in front of us, covered in scales and with six rows of sharp teeth spinning around inside a circular mouth. It roared in our faces, dove at me—and then froze completely solid.
“My turn!” Snowmiser singsonged. The moving ground quickly ushered the frozen worm behind us and away. The sand started leveling out into a huge frozen lake. Celia stayed in the air, and Buzz stayed on his sleds. Klaus’s shoes grew blades on the bottom for ice skating, and Ramp scooted along on his butt. I focused and elongated my shoes into skis.
Celia rubbed her shoulders like she was cold to activate her heating system. My suit grew into a big, fluffy coat.
“What? But I barely got a turn!” The water started melting as Heatmiser got angry, but Snowmiser eclipsed him again and froze it back over before it got too thin. “That’s not fair!”
“Those are the rules.” Snowmiser flew across the sky, and the lake in front of us lit up in a series of squares, like a checkerboard. Each square had a number inside it, starting with one where we were and gradually escalating into the distance. “Speaking of rules: Some of this ice is safe to pass over, and some is very dangerous. If you would like to stay alive, you must stay away from: prime numbers; numbers divisible by 91; numbers that appear in any movie released between October 22, 1991, and November 22, 1992; any number that’s the same backward and forward; numbers I don’t like; my favorite number; any number that—”
“Alright, alright, you’ve tortured them enough. Let’s pull you out of Snoozeville, kids. MY TURN!” Heatmiser spread his light, and the ice started melting. Clouds formed above us, and rain started pouring down, replacing the frozen lake with a vast ocean. A storm whipped up around us with lightning and thunder while the waves grew and smashed against each other.
I saw Celia try to fly, but apparently water was not good for the suit’s air jets. I tried to think of what else my suit could do. What could I make?
It clicked. I shifted my shoes into big flippers, and my hat expanded around my head and sealed at my neck. The hat’s color faded until it was totally see-through.
Now that I could breathe and see, I swam deeper into the water to get away from the crazy storm up above. I saw Klaus sail by in a comfy-looking submarine. I looked up above and saw the bottom of a surfboard that said BUZZ BROWNIE, and the kicking legs of what must have been Ramp clinging to the back of it. Celia made use of the oxygen I had built into her hat.
A huge stream of bubbles and a muffled slurping sound rose from below. I felt myself being tugged deeper underwater and tried to swim against the current with very little success. Klaus’s submarine came flying backward toward me, and I grabbed onto a tube jutting off the side. Buzz and Ramp slammed against the top and their surfboard went flying down into the depths. They held on to other pieces of the submarine, too.
Klaus was banging on the glass from the inside, and I think was yelling “get off!” But his voice was muffled by the water and metal. I felt something grab my foot and looked down; it was Celia. She climbed up my leg and took the same handhold as me as we were sucked down to the bottom of the ocean. The submarine thunked onto the ground, and then the current dragged us toward a giant pit swallowing all the water.
Then we were in a tube, pulling us down and in all sorts of directions—ending straight up. The water pushed us higher, higher, and then out of a geyser. I looked at the landscape around us.
“How pretty!” I yelled now that we were out of the water. “A beautiful island! Black cracked ground, water all over, and then, oh, a volcano full of lava that we are currently heading straight for!!!!”
The four of us outside kicked off the submarine and tried to fight the direction we were falling. I shook the water out of my suit and pulled my hat off my face, while Celia kicked on her hover jets. I—and Ramp, somehow—grabbed hold of her suit and dragged her down, but we would at least make it to the rim of the volcano. Buzz was using his rocket-sled shoes as a poorly balanced upside-down steering for his fall, and kept having to push his shirt out of his face.
The glass front of the submarine popped up, and Klaus’s seat ejected. He flew out of the way of the volcano’s mouth, and a parachute shot out of his chair to carry him gently to the edge.
The five of us collapsed on the ground and groaned. We had barely started complaining when the ground started rumbling.
“The volcano is erupting!” Celia yelled.
“Can we get a break, please, Heaty?” Klaus yelled. The sun didn’t answer. “Snowbro?” The moon didn’t answer, either. The two circles in the sky were too busy bashing into each other.
Ramp was lying on the ground with his eyes closed. “What, you kids can’t—nnngh—take it? Back in my day, we—”
“Shut up!” Klaus yelled. “You’re so terrible at pretending to be a kid that it isn’t even funny anymore.”
“I am a kid,” Ramp protested. “See, listen: ‘Saturday morning cartoons!’ ” Ramp spread his arms out wide like the argument was over. “Couldn’t say that if I was an adult, could I? That’s a kid-only secret, that is.”
Celia smirked at Klaus. “Looks like he’s got you with that one.”
I nodded. It’s nice to see Ramp frustrating someone else for a change. “A hundred percent for sure a kid, I guess.”
Klaus took a deep breath and pushed on his forehead with his hands. “Okay, look, I hate him, and I think I might actually hate all of you a little bit, but the last time they got in a huge fight it lasted three weeks.”
The volcano rumbled again.
“So?” Ramp asked.
“Yeah, so?” Celia said.
“SO, since they never got around to telling us what to do in case of emergency, we don’t know how to get to the exit. It might just keep rolling random settings and trap us in this stupid dome forever. And I don’t know if you’ve figured this out, but”—he was interrupted by another, m
uch more urgent, rumble from the volcano—“if you die in a Big Red Suit, you die in real life.”
“Oh, I thought …” I decided correcting him was no longer important to me, but everyone got quiet, so I had to keep going. “I thought maybe you were going to say if we die in, like, this simulation. I think we’re all pretty sure that clothes don’t make a big difference.”
Buzz nodded. “That’s a good point, Ollie. I think maybe Klaus got swept up in the drama of the moment.”
“This is why I said I hated all of you. Can you take anything seriously for five seconds, please?”
“Maybe you need to, like, take stuff a little less seriously, Klaus.” Celia raised an eyebrow at him. “People might like you more.”
Ramp snorted. “Kids like us might call that one a sick burn.”
“I don’t care if people like me! Right now I don’t want to get third-degree burns from an effectively real volcano!”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I totally forgot about the—”
At this moment, the volcano chose to erupt. I braced myself to melt. Klaus was right, I thought. We weren’t taking it seriously enough and now we’re all going to be cooked like a bunch of delicious hams.
I thought about how hams used to be pigs and felt pretty sad about that for a second. I hope nobody is throwing any pigs into a volcano.
No, I don’t think that’s how it works.
You’re probably right about that, me. Wait, how do we have so much time to think about this? Are we dead?
I nervously opened my eyes and saw pure white all around me. I patted my body, and it was still there. The white was moving. And very cold.
“A blizzard?” I yelled. “The volcano erupted a blizzard?!”
“I have an idea!” Celia yelled. I moved through the white toward her voice and saw the rest of the contestants doing that, too. “We need to get to the edge of the dome.”
“It won’t let us.” Klaus’s suit was glowing, and snow was melting as it landed on him. “It’s going to keep moving the landscape and creating things to keep us in the center.”
