by Justin Sloan
“What might?” I asked.
“Okay, so don’t be mad at me. It’s not as cool as dragons or space fighter craft, but… ever ridden in a minecart?” She stepped aside. Two connected minecarts had appeared, sitting atop tracks leading right into the city. The minecarts were pixelated, like from one of those very old games from the late 1900s. “Thing is, it’s much easier for me to port in things from older, open world games, along with something they wouldn’t expect. They clearly weren’t expecting this, because I got zero resistance.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Glider said, glaring at the minecarts.
“Hey, no need for lip from the NPCs,” Rivera said with a laugh. She stepped in and held out a hand to help me in after her. “Everyone on board?”
“I don’t think you say ‘on board’ with these,” I pointed out, “but yeah, okay.” This time, I took her hand and allowed her to help me in. Now that I better understood the picture, even though I didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle, I felt closer to her. And I hoped it was a her, because there was something else there too, a bond forming. Maybe one that could be a simple friendship and trust with a friend, though a voice in the back of my mind was saying I wanted it to be more.
The other two jumped into the rear car, and Rivera grinned as she hit the lever. “Hold on, it’s going to be bumpy!”
We took off slow at first, but with the first dip the minecarts were going faster and faster, jostling us around to the point of discomfort.
“Can’t you pull in an army of creepers to throw at them?” I asked. “Maybe a flock of winged monkeys or something?”
She laughed. “I wish! The first block they put up was for living creatures, and I’ve managed to do the same. Whatever they have now is all they can get—and if they want more, we’ll get more.”
“Wait, so that was you all along, right? The Oliver thing and the wizard, ‘destroy the ring’ and all that?”
“Hey, I’m a nerd. It worked, right?”
“Unless we lose,” I replied, holding tight as a bump nearly sent me out of the minecart. “Then I’m going to be on my deathbed thinking how you wasted my time when you could’ve simply told me what to do and how to do it.”
“But would you have listened? Trusted me at that point?”
I frowned, knowing she was right. As silly as her way had been, it somehow made sense.
“Ouch!” I shouted as I bit my lip, then turned at the sound of whooping and hollering. The two ladies behind us were having the time of their lives.
“That’s how this should be going,” Rivera said with a wink. “We need to live this up, make it fun. How many times in your life can you play a game like this?”
“Wait.” I held tight over another bump, then turned to her with confusion. “Back there, when they tried to seduce me…?”
She actually blushed. “It was a test.”
“A test to see how good I am in the sack?”
“In the… oh, no. I’m sorry, I know it’s none of my business, but part of me felt that if you were willing to jump right into bed with two to three ladies, maybe your commitment to your wife wasn’t what everyone said it was. I know, it’s not my place, but I kind of thought that would mean maybe you aren’t dedicated to your word, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to trust you as much.”
“So if I’d had sex with them, you wouldn’t have helped me defeat the bad guy?”
“Depends on how good you were in the sack, I guess.” She held up her hands. “Joking!”
The cart hit a bump that made her fall back, but I caught her.
“Answer the question,” I said, letting her go.
It was her turn to frown, as she considered it. “I’m not sure I thought that far ahead. But… I would’ve. We need to win this. But I wouldn’t be telling you everything, and I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to meet you outside of this once we’re done.”
That made sense enough, but after another few moments of riding and listening to the NPCs have their fun, I asked, “Why shouldn’t a man be allowed to move on?”
Our cart was suddenly somber.
She sniffled, glanced my way, then at the tracks as we rattled over them. “You should, of course.”
“Well then?”
“It’s different. If you were to, say, form a relationship with someone… I could see how then you’d go for it and have moved on, and that’s great. But the situation you were presented with wasn’t exactly that.”
“It wasn’t, but honestly, I’d say your test was more about my thoughts on sex than on my relationship issues. Or really, it’s about your opinion about men in those situations. If I’d been a normal, young, single Marine and jumped into it with them, would that have made you not trust me to the same degree?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She turned on me. “I’m not perfect, okay? I was just trying to figure out who you are and where your lines are, and now I know. You’re a nerdy Marine with interests quite similar to my own, who doesn’t just throw his dick around like darts at a balloon game.”
“Weird choice, but okay.” The cart rattled and my hand came free, landing on hers when I found a hold again. It lingered there, and our eyes met. “Then there’s still the issue of me not knowing who you really are, other than that you know your history of nerd culture and are apparently one of the best at hacking advanced simulations.”
“For now, that should do,” she replied, and took her hand away. “We’re not so far now.”
I looked up and was about to push for more information, when a hole in the ground opened and our tracks veered down into it. My protest turned into a scream as we wrapped around tracks, more of the world around us taking on a pixelated look. And then we were twisting and turning, towards the flowing lava beneath us.
“What the hell?” I shouted.
“Sorry, figuring it out as I go,” she replied, shouting over the laughter of Banshee and Glider. “I’m not exactly having a lot of time to research every piece of game I use.”
Suddenly we flew off the tracks, into open air, and crashed through a wall! We came out the other side, the cart vanishing, and found ourselves in a normal world again. You don’t know how much you miss non-pixelated worlds until you’ve just left a pixelated one.
“Can we do it again?” Banshee asked with a grin, her red pixie hair sticking out in every direction like a crazy person.
Glider was smiling at her side, and I had to laugh. Knowing that they were NPCs now, and seeing them as the characters from Secret of Mana, it was just too funny.
“You two kill all the bad guys for us, and we’ll see,” Rivera replied.
“Not me,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not sure I’d ever get into another simulation as long as I live, after this.”
“No?” Rivera looked let down, as if that somehow impacted her, but shrugged. “We’ll see.”
I wanted to ask what she meant by that, but that’s when the sound of gunfire started not far off. The three remaining Marines were close, and we had to get to them.
17
Another round of shots sounded, this time in the distance. We were at the outskirts of the city, where walls rose high up into the sky. As we approached, turrets burst out from the wall and aimed in our direction. Glider and Banshee knelt, arms up while they hit buttons on their wrist computers, and the turrets hesitated, then vanished.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Cloak,” said Banshee.
“And I was putting up shields in case that didn’t work,” Glider added.
“Great, so… getting over the wall?” I turned to Rivera, waiting for her to make a hole appear or something.
She grinned. “Weren’t we just talking about a game that dealt with walls.”
“Knocking them down and rebuilding them, I guess. If you’re talking about—”
“Rampart,” she said, finishing my sentence. In a flash of light, we were about fifty feet back from the walls. She chuckled before saying, “This will be fun.�
�
“What will?” I asked. But I was starting to have an idea of what she was planning.
“Pull up your minimap,” she said. “Be quick.”
All I had to do was think about it, and the map appeared as a screen floating in the air in front of me. A countdown timer showed thirty seconds, then twenty-nine…
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Use the map as an interface and place those blocks!”
Immediately, an L-shaped Tetris-looking block appeared on the screen, just like they did in the old Rampart game. When I rotated my right hand, it would rotate too, and I could move it with my left, an outline appearing on the ground. I confirmed by forming a fist, and it landed in place. Next a corner one appeared, and I realized this was really happening.
“They’re going to attack the hell out of us, and we’re playing Rampart?” I asked, but kept on placing blocks until we were surrounded and our area inside the walls became shaded in. Suddenly, walls much like theirs flew down from the sky, surrounding us.
“It’s all a game,” Rivera said. “In a sense. So roll with it.”
The timer stopped, then the floating screen gave me three cannons to place. I put two at the front and one in the rear. That round ended, and the floating screen prompted me to select my enemy’s walls. As I was doing this, a loud explosion knocked a piece of our wall out. I had to steel my nerves as large chunks of stone fell around us, and I selected my first target—a piece of the enemy wall closest to us. One of our cannons shot with a boom, then we heard the wall explode. The enemy was shouting.
“Won’t they send the raiders or mechs after us?” I asked. “We won’t hold to that.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “This is a combat patch, which means no other combat can occur while it’s in place. Problem is, once they find a similar patch, they can reverse code it. They do that and they can find out what I’m doing and either shut it off or create their own version of it—which is probably worse—so hurry the hell up!”
My barrage against them continued, and we blasted an opening just as the whole scene started to glitch out, replaced with what looked like lines of code raining down from the sky as the hole began to patch itself up.
“They did not like that!” Rivera said, eyes suddenly going white. “Got it!”
For a moment, everything went white like her eyes, then it was back to how it had been, but the hole in the enemy wall was still there! We charged for it without a moment’s hesitation, but enemy soldiers met us at the entrance, shooting and rushing towards us.
“Give me a minute,” Rivera said, and the two NPCs ran past her, holding the enemy back. The coolest part for me was when three soldiers came in for close-quarters combat, and the ladies busted out a whip and round throwing weapon—both straight out of the Mana game.
“What’s going on?” I asked, noticing the way her eyes went white again. I reached the left section of the wall and fired in, taking down another soldier.
“They’re closing in,” she said. “Everything they have is coming my way, trying to track me down. Shit!”
A flash of white light blinded me for a moment, and I assumed that was a sign of either the enemy’s hacking or Rivera’s. Then Glider and Banshee were gone again. Rivera became translucent like a ghost, and when she tried to fire, the bullet flew right through her opponent without harming him.
“Be my eyes where I can’t see,” I said, and pointed through the opening in the wall.
She seemed distracted again, but ran forward, diving right into the wall.
“Two coming at you from your left,” she said. “If you were to walk straight through, they’d be at your eight.”
I knelt and turned the corner. Knowing exactly where to aim helped, and with two quick squeezes of the trigger, those two were down.
“We can make this work,” I said. “Next?”
“It’s not optimal, but yeah, until I can get past their defenses.” She turned to me and had a thought.
“I’m not sure I like the look in your eyes,” I said, running up to the next building over.
“Trust me,” she said, and then walked into me. We were like one. My surroundings took on a mixture of black and glowing white, almost blue. I could see white dots moving behind buildings and walls, all converging on my position.
“I… I can see them,” I said, and charged forward to intercept one about to fire down from above. I got an angle from the opposite side and took him out, but then had a realization. “Please, tell me this is from that other Shadow game, that one with the ring maker.”
“You know my preferences too well,” she said, her voice coming from inside my head. It was an odd feeling.
“Then can I…” The next enemy appeared from a ledge above, and I reached out, focusing. A moment later I flew forward in a flash of silver light and blasted his head off at point-blank. “Wooo!”
“Don’t go crazy,” she advised, but I ignored her. More enemies approached and I repeated the motion, flying over and taking the first one out, then slipping under an attack to draw my Ka-Bar and slam it up into the soldier’s head.
Three forms appeared in the distance, glowing blue. I figured that had to be my fellow Marines, so I started working my way over. Each kill was a thrill, and soon I heard the chime of leveling up again, though I was too in the zone to act on it yet.
“Don’t draw too much attention,” she commanded. “The closer they get, the worse it is. This was barely—ack!”
She was pushed out of me, flying back to the ground, and I was left holding out my hand like an idiot.
“I warned you,” she groaned, starting to stand and fading even more.
“Just… warn me if you see anyone coming,” I said, and started running along the rooftop of this building. I knew where I was going now, at least. “Any chance you have any Assassin’s Creed or Spider-Man code or patches or whatever it is you’re doing ready?”
“It wouldn’t work if I did,” she said. “I’m barely able to stay with you as it is.”
“Roger that,” I said. I slipped over the edge of the roof, grabbing hold of a pipe halfway down, then moving to one of their sky bridges. “Find me more ways down. Please.”
While the coding we’d seen had apparently impacted her ability to really be there, she was still guiding me. I ran while she zipped around, searching out more easy drop points and bridges. I couldn’t help thinking back over all the games I’d played from the early days, ones she said would be easier to use here. The original Zelda, Friday the 13th, Shadowrun. I could see awesome ways to adapt parts of each to this, but the one that I wished we could use the most right now was A Boy and His Blob. Imagine, throwing jelly beans to Rivers and watching her ghost-like form transform into bridges, slides, ladders, holes in walls. If only.
The thought of it made me chuckle.
“So glad you can make light of this situation,” she chided me, appearing at a ledge and then guiding me back as a group of soldiers shot up and lobbed a grenade. I explained myself as I crouched behind a wall.
“Oh, yeah… That would’ve been perfect!” she agreed.
“No go, then?” I asked.
“I’m doing everything I can in the real world while trying to look out for you, so cut me some slack.”
“Whatever you can manage,” I replied, and turned to follow her down a stairwell, where I took out three more soldiers.
I pulled up the map while I ran and placed a marker where I’d seen the Marines. That was my goal. Keeping the map up, I made sure to do my best to head in that direction at every opportunity, but there were many obstacles in the way.
“Something’s not right,” Rivera said, stopping mid-flight in a passage between buildings she’d led me to.
“There’s a whole lot of something’s not right,” I replied, unable to forget the deaths of all of my brothers and sisters in recent events.
“No, wait… I feel more coming.”
A loud rumbling sounded, and I
noticed movement to my left. I swung my rifle over, but there was only an empty hall. It wasn’t movement in the building I’d seen, but on my minimap, which was still open.
“The whole place is changing,” I said as I watched sections shift around, the palace in the distance itself vanishing.
“Something like that,” she smiled. “They’re layering mods on top of mods to be able to do what they’re doing.”
“So why do you sound so happy about it?” I asked.
“Because that means they’re distracted.” She turned and grinned, solidifying as she put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m able to try a few new things, get back in the game. Hang on, buddy, because if you thought this was crazy, you’re about to lose your damn mind.”
18
“I’m going to give them the bait and switch,” Rivera said. “Try not to shit your pants.”
“What!” I didn’t like the sound of that, and spun, not sure what to expect. She vanished, and I found myself pulled forward, flying through a burst of light and then appearing in a pit like a gladiator ring. The entire enemy army stood around me with weapons drawn.
“Rivera?” I hissed, but got no response.
There was no way this could’ve been her plan. The odds of me surviving this were a million to one, and I was the one. But I didn’t care. I would take as many of them down as I could, so I stepped forward, ready to meet them on the battlefield.
They were all focused on me. Every one of them lifted their rifle to fire, and I stared them down, hoping for a miracle.
Suddenly, it all morphed around me, the image of their army slipping away as if being pulled back. And then there was only me in a green field of grass, staring at water with another mass of land on the other side.
“What the hell?” I asked, glancing around.
In answer, a large screen popped up in front of me. The words ‘Base No.’ flashed next to three blue squares with octagons of green and red inside, along with squiggly black lines that were meant to be the levels of the bases in old-school art. Below that read ‘Deploy the Bases.’
