by Dustin Brady
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER ONE The Ghost
CHAPTER TWO Aug-whatever Reality
CHAPTER THREE Garbage Truck
CHAPTER FOUR Elsa
CHAPTER FIVE Slip-n-Slide
CHAPTER SIX Got Him
CHAPTER SEVEN Upside Down Flamezoid
CHAPTER EIGHT The Leash
CHAPTER NINE Ice Bazooka
CHAPTER TEN Vinnie
CHAPTER ELEVEN Ground Control
CHAPTER TWELVE Mad Scientist
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Experiment
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Pirate!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Horde
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Black Box
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Game Over
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN For Real This Time
CHAPTER NINETEEN Cook the CPU
CHAPTER TWENTY Chain Reaction
Note From the Author
Other Books by Dustin Brady
About the Author
Trapped in a Video Game: Book Two
Dustin Brady
Copyright © 2016 Dustin Brady
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1539609553
ISBN-13: 978-1539609551
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Jesse Brady for the cover and interior illustrations. You can check out more of Jesse’s sweet artwork on Instagram: @jessnetic.
CHAPTER ONE
The Ghost
What did you do last night? Sleep? Hm, you don’t say.
Want to know what I did? I talked to an Army guy. Not like someone from the real Army trying to recruit me (I’m 12. It would have been a short conversation). The Army guy I talked to happened to be six inches tall and made of plastic.
I don’t make a habit of talking to toys — I’m not crazy — but I had a good excuse. This one talked to me first. See, I met this particular toy when he wasn’t a toy, but a real sergeant in the game Full Blast. Two weeks ago, I got sucked into Full Blast with my friend Eric Conrad. We flew around with jetpacks and rode the Statue of Liberty like a rocket ship and almost got trapped inside the game for good by an alien who said our names in the creepiest way possible. It’s a long story. You should read it sometime.
Anyways, in Full Blast, we met Mark Whitman — another kid from our class who had gotten sucked into the same game. Mark stayed behind so Eric and I could escape. Now, this Army guy was telling me that I could go back into the video game to save Mark, but I had to “go back now.”
Of course I wanted to go back. I’d do anything for Mark. The sergeant asked me if I was sure. Yes I was sure, let’s go! I stared at the Army guy, waiting for him to — I don’t know, click his heels or open a portal in my closet or something. Instead, he stared at me motionless kind of like a toy would. That’s when I started feeling stupid.
“Hey, I said ‘yes.’” I poked the sergeant. He continued staring with his blank toy expression. “Do I need to press some sort of button?” I picked him up and turned him over in my hand. No button.
At this point, you might be thinking that maybe the whole talking toy thing was a dream. And I would normally agree with you, except for one very important detail: the sergeant had actually woken me up from a dream. Now have you ever woken up from a dream only to find yourself in another dream? You have not. That has never once happened in real life, only in movies. The talking sergeant was not a dream because this is not a movie, and also I am not crazy.
I spent the next several minutes talking to and poking at the Army guy. Then I got up and checked all the places where he might have hidden some sort of portal to the video game (TV, toilet, wardrobe, etc.). Nothing. I crawled back into bed and spent much of the rest of the night convincing myself I wasn’t crazy, and then I think I fell asleep.
“Jesse! Breakfast!”
My eyes popped open. Sunlight streamed through the window. Monday morning.
“Jesse!” my mom yelled up the stairs again.
“Mmmf,” I replied. I stumbled out of bed and plop-plop-plopped down the stairs. I took my seat at the table and waited for my dad to grab the cereal from the top shelf. “What kind do you want, hon?” he asked.
“Blueberry crunch,” my mom replied as she finished packing her lunch.
“I’ll try that new chocolate one,” I said.
My dad grabbed the blueberry only. “Can I try the chocolate one?” I repeated a little louder. My dad set my mom’s cereal box on the table and grabbed his bowl from the freezer. (“Freeze the bowl first. It will change your life,” he tells everyone who will listen. Not true. From personal experience, I can tell you that the only thing freezing the cereal bowl will do is turn the milk so cold that it hurts your teeth.)
I sighed and reached for my mom’s gross organic blueberry cereal. I knew the promise of chocolate for breakfast was too good to be true.
“Did you call Jesse?” my dad asked as he grabbed the cereal box before I could.
I squinted at him and waved right in front of his face. “Yeah Dad, I’m right here.”
My mom sighed. “I’ll call him again.” She walked to the stairs. “Jesse! Jesse Daniel Rigsby! Get down here now! You’re going to be late for school!”
I threw my hands into the air. “Dad. Dad! DAD!”
My dad finished pouring his cereal and reached across the table for the milk like I wasn’t there. I jumped up and grabbed the milk before he could to get his attention. That didn’t stop him, so I pulled the milk toward me. Or at least I tried to pull it toward me. When I did, my hands went right through the jug.
“WHAT IS GOING ON?!” I grabbed the cereal box. Same thing — I could touch and feel the box, but when I tried to move it, my hand went right through. “AHHHHH!” I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, desperate to see my terrified face. Instead, all I got was the empty bathtub behind me. I looked down at my hands. Real as could be. But when I waved them in front of the mirror — nothing.
I was a ghost.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. As I tried to figure out what to do next (What do ghosts eat? Do they go to the bathroom? What about school? Is there a special ghost school?), I heard a snort behind me. I looked into the mirror. Nothing. Another snort.
I slowly turned around. Behind me, sitting patiently in the tub as real as could be, was an eight-foot-tall, bright blue Bigfoot.
CHAPTER TWO
Aug-whatever Reality
I ran out of the bathroom as fast as my little ghost legs would take me. As I passed through the kitchen, I screamed a warning to my parents. “MONSTER! MONSTER IN THE BATHROOM! DON’T GO IN!” My mom continued packing her lunch, and my dad continued eating his freezing cold cereal as if there weren’t a GIANT BLUE MONSTER IN THEIR BATHTUB!
If I didn’t get some fresh air soon, I was going to pass out. I ran for the front door, grabbed the knob, twisted, and of course nothing happened because I was twisting with my invisible ghost hand. I took a deep breath, lowered my shoulder and pushed into the door. There was a moment of resistance before — pop! — I stumbled right through solid oak.
Outside looked like a scene from Monsters, Inc. A herd of giant, purple Ninja Turtle things strolled past my house. A fluffy, polka-dotted bird poked its head out of the tree on our front lawn and squawked. I looked down to see a pile of fur the size of a soccer ball checking out my shoelaces. When I moved my foot, it tripped over itself trying to run away.
I started breathing faster. This is not OK. THIS IS NOT OK!
“Psst.”
I looked around. That “psst” sounded a lot more human than monster.
“Psst,” the voice whispered again.
“Jesse. Bushes.”
I looked at the bushes next to the porch and noticed a cell phone pointed at me. I squinted and lowered my head. There was a guy in there. I kicked away the ball of fur that had regained the courage to battle my shoelaces again and approached the bush.
As I walked closer, I noticed the crazy hair. “Mr. Gregory?”
Mr. Gregory is the dad of Charlie Gregory, one of the kids in my class, and works at Bionosoft, the video game company that made Full Blast. He promised to help me and Eric find Mark, and then disappeared two weeks ago. At that moment, he was curled up in the azalea bush, which is something that would get him in pretty big trouble if my mom saw.
“Hi,” he whispered, still pointing the phone at me. “You OK?”
“I’m invisible,” I hissed. “So no, I am not OK!”
“You don’t have to whisper,” he said. “No one can hear you.”
“No kidding.” I kicked the ball of fur away again. “Wait, you can hear me though, right?”
“Those things have really sharp teeth and a lot of angry friends,” Mr. Gregory said. “I wouldn’t make him mad.”
I stopped kicking.
“But right,” he continued. “Of course I can hear you. Anyone playing the game can hear you.”
“What game?”
Mr. Gregory looked at me like I was crazy. “Go Wild.”
“Okayyyyy.”
He continued with the weird look. “You knew you were in Go Wild, right? I thought the sergeant was pretty clear.”
“Pretend I have no idea what Go Wild even is.”
“You serious?”
“I don’t play video games.”
“I mean, most people who enjoy Go Wild don’t usually play video games. The core market includes…”
“Can you just tell me what it is?”
“Oh, right, well it’s augmented reality,” he said like “aug-whatever reality” is a thing people say all the time.
“Listen,” I said. “I am having a real hard time right now understanding why I’m a ghost in a world of monsters, so it would be helpful if you could explain things to me in a way that a sixth grader who is pretty new to the whole ghost thing can understand.”
“First of all, you’re not a ghost because you’re not dead,” Mr. Gregory said.
“Well that’s a relief.”
“You’re just in a video game. This one is like Pokemon Go. Do you know Pokemon Go?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s a game that’s going on all the time in the real world. You just can’t see it unless you’re looking at the world through your phone. See, look.”
I bent down and looked at his phone, which was pointed at my neighbor’s rose bushes. On the screen, I could see the bushes as if the phone were in camera mode.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at,” I said.
He tapped his phone a few times until a big, cartoon pear appeared on the screen. Then he flicked his finger, which threw the pear toward the rose bushes. I looked up just in time to see the pear fly through the air and land right next to the bushes in real life.
“Whoa, how did you do that?!”
“That pear is part of the game. It’s not real. Nobody can see it unless they’re looking at it through their phone.”
“Or unless they’re in the game,” I said.
“Right.”
Just then a skinny snake with a gigantic head and goofy eyes emerged from the rose bushes. It examined the pear.
I jumped back. “Whoa!”
“Again, that’s invisible to anyone who’s not looking at it through the game on their phone,” Mr. Gregory said. “Watch this.”
He tapped and swiped a few more times on his screen. All of a sudden, a purple gecko thing with a long neck popped out of his phone. In a matter of two seconds, it grew a REALLY long neck to half the size of my house. It locked eyes with the snake and got angry.
“You might want to take a step back,” Mr. Gregory said.
I took five steps back.
The gecko screeched. The snake hissed. The sun dimmed and intense battle music started playing out of nowhere. The snake’s eyes began glowing red. After three seconds of brighter and brighter glowing, the eyes shot two fireballs toward the gecko. As the fireballs were in midair, the gecko turned from purple to red. It absorbed the blast into its red body and grew twice as big. It then grabbed the snake by the tail, threw it into its mouth and swallowed it in one gulp. With that, the gecko disappeared back into Mr. Gregory’s phone, the lights came back on and the music stopped.
Mr. Gregory turned to me. “You can’t let that happen to you.”
“I WOULD LIKE VERY MUCH FOR THAT NOT TO HAPPEN TO ME!” I yelped.
“The goal of the game, since apparently you’ve never played it before,” Mr. Gregory gave me a skeptical look, “is to capture Wild Things. You do this by battling the Wild Things you find in the wild with Wild Things that you’ve already captured from the wild.”
“You said ‘wild’ five times in two seconds.”
“So when I saw that Cobrameano in the wild…”
“Six. Also, I don’t know what that is.”
“…When I saw that snake, I could capture it into my phone by defeating it with one of my own Wild Things — er, monsters. I picked Salamaladder — the gecko thing — because it’s really good against snakes. If the snake were to defeat my gecko, my gecko would get knocked out for 24 hours. But since my gecko defeated the snake, I get to keep the snake and use it in battles now.”
“And since I’m in the game…”
“Anybody with a phone can battle and imprison you forever.”
“Well I would like very much for that not to happen to me.”
“Right, so you need to avoid people who are playing the game.”
“How do I know if someone’s playing the game?”
“Well, for example, if they’re walking while staring at their phone.”
I squinted at him. “That’s like everyone.”
“Look, I know. It’s not great, but we should mostly be able to avoid people where we’re going.”
“Where’s that?”
Mr. Gregory smiled and leaned in. “To rescue Mark, of course.”
In all the excitement about turning into a ghost, I’d totally forgotten about Mark. “Oh that’s so awesome! But how? Isn’t he in another game?”
I’ll explain everything,” Mr. Gregory said. “But first we’ve got to let your parents know you’re OK.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. Do you want to knock on the door and tell them? They’re both in the kitchen.”
“So you think it will make them feel better if a strange man knocks on their door and tells them that their missing son is OK because he’s in a video game?”
“Oh, probably not. Is that why you’re hiding in the bushes?”
“Part of the reason, yes. Eric plays Go Wild, right?”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Go across the street, get his attention when he checks the game, have him call your parents and meet me back here in ten minutes.”
“Got it.”
“And Jesse?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t let anyone else see you.”
CHAPTER THREE
Garbage Truck
Four minutes until the bus was supposed to come, and Eric was still snoring.
“Hey.” I poked Eric. Of course, my finger poked right through him. “Hey! HEY! Wake up!”
Eric made a garbage truck sound with his throat.
I threw up my hands. I’d run across the street right after my conversation with Mr. Gregory to get Eric’s help. But instead of talking to him, I’d spent the last 20 minutes trying to wake him up. I tried yelling at him, blowing into his ear, even throwing that shoelace-loving ball of fur on top of him. The garbage truck kept rumbling away.
Finally, exactly 60 seconds before the bus was supposed to arrive, the truck fell off
its bed.
THUD!
On the ground, Eric grunted and started putting on his socks without opening his eyes.
“Eric! Finally! I need your help!” I shouted.
He picked his nose and scratched his belly.
“Come on, come on, come on!”
He grabbed a shirt from the floor, smelled it, made a face and threw it back. He tried another one. This one seemed acceptable. I turned my back as he changed.
“Turn on your phone! Eric, you had better not get on that bus!”
He did not turn on his phone. He did get on the bus.
After getting ready for school in less than 30 seconds, Eric stumbled downstairs, mumbled goodbye to his mom and strapped on his bookbag. He got to the corner of the street just as the bus pulled up. I looked nervously at the bus. Four out of every five kids had some sort of phone or iPod in front of their face. How many of them were playing Go Wild? I looked across the street. Mr. Gregory was going nuts in the bushes.
I could ditch Eric and hope for the best. But if I did that, my parents would get real worried and call the police and Mr. Gregory could get in trouble and we might never get to Mark. I looked into the bus again. Even if some kids did see me in the game, they probably wouldn’t notice because I’m on the bus every day anyways, right? They’d probably think I was just a regular kid going to class instead of an invisible ghost that they could capture in their phone forever.
The bus slowed to a stop. I took one last look across the street at Mr. Gregory waving his arms like crazy, then followed Eric into the bus. Eric took his usual seat toward the front, and I took my usual seat next to him. We pulled off. So far so good. Nobody was pointing yet. I sat still waiting for Eric to start fiddling with his phone. Although he had sworn off video games after the Full Blast incident, I knew he still played things like Go Wild on his phone.
“Phone games don’t count,” he’d told me last week.
“What do you mean they don’t count? Of course they count! They’re still video games!”
