by Dustin Brady
“Come look!” Mr. Gregory said. Eric and I gathered around the computer. On the screen, Mr. Gregory had pulled up live video from the view of my glasses. “When you’re wearing those, we can see and hear everything you’re experiencing in the game, and we can also communicate with you through an earpiece built into the frame.”
“But how?!” I asked. “The glasses aren’t even real!”
“I worked on this game! I know a few hacks.” Mr. Gregory smiled, clearly quite proud of himself.
“Sweet!” Eric said. “Can we have that $120 now?”
“One hundred twenty dollars?!” Mr. Gregory said with his eyes bugging out of his head.
After Eric finished explaining that we needed the money for “leash reasons” and also how cool and necessary the ice bazooka was, Mr. Gregory finally got some cash out of his wallet, but not before making us promise that we wouldn’t spend any more money. We decided to test our new system on the guard. I walked into the guardhouse. “Can you see him?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Mr. Gregory said. “And talk louder. It’s OK, he can’t hear you.”
I watched the guard do boring guard things — look at the monitors, check his watch, yawn. Then he picked up his phone and started texting.
“Now!” I yelled.
Just then, Eric ran out of the woods with two balled-up bills, threw them into the guardhouse —
PLOP PLOP
— And ran back behind cover. When the guard heard the bills hit the ground behind him, he walked over to investigate. His eyes got huge when he picked up a $100 and a $20.
“Success!” I yelled and got out of there.
Back in the woods, Mr. Gregory gave me a thumbs up. “Excellent work, Jesse. Now it’s time to find Mark.” He pulled up an overhead view of the Bionosoft building on his computer. “OK, here’s where we are. You’ll go through this fence and follow the road to Bionosoft’s truck loading dock. Once you get inside, I’ll direct you over the earpiece.”
“Got it,” I said. “But what if I run into any monsters?”
“It’s fine,” Mr. Gregory said. “Any Wild Thing you come across should truly be wild, so they won’t attack.”
“And if they do attack, unleash the ice bazooka!” Eric said.
“No ice bazooka!” Mr. Gregory warned. “The last thing we need is for you to get into a fight!”
“Agree to disagree,” Eric mumbled.
I took a deep breath. “Got it. Thanks for all your help, Mr. Gregory.”
“Jesse.” Mr. Gregory got all serious. “Be careful in there. We can’t lose both of you.”
I nodded and walked through the forest toward the fence. Not “through the forest” like a normal person, but “through the forest” as in through every tree I could find. It was very cool. I passed through the fence, pushed through some bushes and…
Uh oh.
“Are you guys seeing this?” I asked over the earpiece. Between me and Bionosoft was a field filled with Wild Things. But these Wild Things weren’t wandering around peacefully like the ones I’d seen outside my house that morning. They were flexing and pacing and hissing and every single one of them had glowing red attack eyes.
“ICE BAZOOKA!” Eric said over the earpiece.
Mr. Gregory came on. “Don’t move!”
“Why are they all in attack mode?!”
He sighed. “Bionosoft must have known we were coming. Abort mission.”
“But…”
Right then, I felt a claw slowly run down my back. I turned to see a velociraptor with glowing red eyes and sharp teeth smiling an evil smile.
CHAPTER TEN
Vinnie
“ICE BAZOOKA!”
“RUN AWAY!”
Eric and Mr. Gregory were both giving terrible advice. The ice bazooka would serve as a personal invitation to every Wild Thing on the lawn to attack at once. Running would get me about two steps before being devoured by a hungry dinosaur. The rest of the world went dim, and battle music started playing. I sized up the velociraptor in front of me.
“BRAWWWWWWW!”
This one was even bigger and scarier than Stu’s. “Hey buddy,” I tried.
“BRAWWWWWWWW!”
That seemed to make him angrier. “I’d like to be friends,” I continued.
“HE DOES NOT WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!” Eric yelled over the earpiece.
“My name is Jesse. Can I call you Vinnie? Vinnie the velociraptor?” I reached out my hand. The dinosaur snapped a few times, but I didn’t pull away. Instead, I gave it a head scratch.
“Braw?” the dinosaur tilted its head and wagged its tail a little bit. Its eyes flickered from glowing red to light brown. It then shook its head and let out another long “BRAWWWWWW!”
“JESSE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I heard over the earpiece.
I continued scratching the velociraptor between the eyes, and the tail wagging returned. The dinosaur nuzzled its nose into my chest and actually began thumping its back leg. It eventually rolled onto its back, causing the battle music to stop and the darkness to lift. “That’s a good boy,” I said.
“Braw!” Vinnie cooed back.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Mr. Gregory marveled over the earpiece.
“I have,” I said. After a few minutes of head scratching and belly rubbing, I looked the dinosaur in the eye. “Can you help me get in there?” I asked.
“Braw!”
“You know it can’t understand you,” Eric said over the radio.
“Velociraptors are smart!” I said. “I’ve seen Jurassic Park.”
“That’s not a velociraptor, it’s a Sliceasaurus,” Eric said.
“Same difference.” I turned back to Vinnie. “So whaddya say buddy?”
The velociraptor (I’m not calling it a Sliceasaurus. That’s ridiculous.) jumped to its feet and bounded around me.
“Haha! Let’s go!” I climbed onto its back and pointed to the loading dock. Vinnie nodded and took off. The army of Wild Things on the Bionosoft lawn all looked up at once. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea? The first to greet us was a line of half-metal robot lizards.
“Point your fist at them and squeeze!” Mr. Gregory said over the radio.
WASWOOSH!
A laser beam of ice exploded out of my hand and blasted through every lizard, freezing them in place.
“WOOHOO! ICE BAZOOKA!” Eric yelled.
I didn’t have time to celebrate, because a green rhinoceros with an extra-long, extra-sharp horn galloped up on my right.
“Squeeze your right hand like you’re holding a sword!” Mr. Gregory offered.
SHHHHING!
An ice sword appeared in my hand. The rhinoceros tried to spear me with its horn, but I blocked it with the sword. We went back and forth sword fighting, him with his razor horn and me with my icicle, for a few seconds before — SHING! — I cut off the horn and — SWOOSH! — froze the rhino.
“AHH!” I slapped at my head. Something big and feathery had swooped down and was trying to lift me off of Vinnie.
“Grab it and squeeze!”
I did as the voice in my ear instructed. The huge bird froze in my hand.
“FROSTY FINGERS!” Eric celebrated over the radio.
Vinnie had to bob and weave across the lawn and up the hill to avoid all the attacks, but we were now only ten yards away from the loading dock. Unfortunately, a mob of angry creatures had formed behind us, and they were gaining fast. I turned around and iced the ground behind me.
SWOOOOOOSH!
I iced and iced until I’d formed an enormous frozen lake. The first Wild Thing — a massive, white bear — stepped onto the ice and promptly wiped out on its face. That caused the man-sized walking stick behind it to trip, which made a spiky, rolling thing tip over, which caused a 20-Wild Thing pile-up on the ice. Vinnie and I broke through the loading dock door, leaving the wreckage behind.
“Where to now?” I yelled over the earpiece.
“Straight through the warehou
se,” Mr. Gregory said. “All the way in the back is a door that leads to the main building. Get there before that pile-up sorts itself out.”
I pushed Vinnie toward the back of the dark warehouse, but he wouldn’t budge. “Come on, we gotta move!” He backed up a little. “Let’s go!” He made a tiny whimpering noise. After a few seconds of kicking and prodding, I finally gave up and jumped off. “Look, there’s nothing to worry about,” I said as I stepped right into the waiting claw of a giant, black bat.
“AHHHHHHH!”
An Upside Down Flamezoid rocketed me up into the warehouse rafters. By the time I got my bearings, I was hanging upside down 50 feet in the air.
“SCREEEE…” the bat began its flaming death screech.
“Guys? GUYS WHAT DO I DO NOW?!” I yelled over my earpiece.
“EEEEEEEEEEE…” the bat continued.
“This is so bad!” Eric yelled.
“You can try…”
“EEEEEEEEEECH!” The Upside Down Flamezoid cut off Mr. Gregory mid-suggestion by finishing its screech and shooting fire out of its mouth at me. I put up my hand in defense and ice blasted the wall of flame. The fire and ice met in the middle, causing a waterfall to start pouring from the warehouse rafters. We fought each other to a draw for a few moments before running out of power at the same time. We both breathed heavily as we determined our next moves. Then the bat remembered that, oh yeah, it could just eat me alive. It opened its giant mouth, but just as it started shoving me inside — WHOP! — it got smacked in the face with an egg.
The Upside Down Flamezoid grunted. WHOP! Another egg. It let out a series of high-pitched noises to find the egg thrower with its bat sonar. I looked down and discovered the source of the irritation at the same time the bat did. Vinnie! He was holding an egg in one hand and what appeared to be a baby bat in his mouth.
“SCREEEEEEECH!” The bat dropped me and took off for Vinnie, presenting a good news/bad news situation. Good news: The giant death bat no longer wanted to swallow me whole. Yay! Bad news: Getting flattened on a cement floor is arguably less fun than being eaten alive by a bat.
As I tumbled through the air, I screamed and waved my outstretched arms.
SWOOOOOSH!
Twenty feet, ten feet — I braced for impact. But the impact never came. Instead, I temporarily picked up speed before finally sliding to a stop at the far end of the warehouse. It turns out, my desperate icing combined with the wild tumbling worked together to create the happy accident of an ice ramp on the ground that not only broke my fall, but also spit me out where I wanted to go! Just one problem…
“SCREEEEEEEEE…”
I turned back toward Vinnie and the Upside Down Flamezoid across the warehouse. Vinnie retreated while the bat built its flame.
“VINNIE!” I yelled.
He shooed me toward the door I needed to go through with his skinny dinosaur arms. At that moment, the army of Wild Things from outside started pouring through the wall behind him.
“I’M COMING FOR YOU!” I got only two steps toward my dinosaur friend before the screeching reached its highest point, and the bat unleashed a wall of fire, engulfing Vinnie and the rest of the Wild Things behind him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ground Control
The flaming lasted ten full seconds before the bat paused to reload.
“VINNIE!” I yelled.
The bat looked at me.
“Get out of there!” Mr. Gregory said.
I turned and ran as the bat started another death screech. “Can you bring Vinnie back?!” I asked.
“I’m sorry, that’s not the way it works,” Mr. Gregory said.
“Bring him back!” I yelled while fighting back tears. “You made this game, you can bring him back!”
“I’m sorry, I really am,” Mr. Gregory said. “But we need you to refocus.”
“But…”
“Mark needs you to refocus.”
I slowed down and took a few deep breaths.
“That’s it,” Mr. Gregory said. “Now I need you to walk straight down the hallway you’re in. At the end of the hall, you’ll find an elevator that goes all the way to the basement.”
Sniff, sniff. “OK,” I said as I wiped away tears and started walking. The hallway had just as little personality as the outside of the building. The walls were white, the floor was white, even the overhead fluorescent lighting provided a perfectly white light. “So Mark’s down in the basement?” I asked.
“Well, that’s complicated…”
Just then, a guy glued to his phone walked out of a door. There was no way to tell whether or not he was playing Go Wild, so I dove through a wall just in case. “Do you think he…” I looked around the room. “Whoaaaaa.”
Inside the room I’d crashed were rows and rows of people watching computer monitors. Other workers wheeled around small projectors that displayed Star Wars-level holograms. Up front was a gigantic screen showing all sorts of numbers and moving charts. The whole thing looked like a NASA ground control room from the future.
“Is this where they make the video games?”
“That’s not safe!” Mr. Gregory yelled. “You need to get out of there now and run to the basement.”
“Definitely,” I said, moving to the door at the other end of the room. “Let me just make sure that the guy’s gone.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s gone or not,” Mr. Gregory said, a little panicky. “You need to get out now!”
“OK, OK, I’m…” I stopped dead in my tracks. At that moment, I happened to glance at a computer screen and catch a familiar sight — the Statue of Liberty taking off like a rocket ship. “What is this?”
“Jesse! Out! Now!”
Two small figures jumped out of the crown. Two figures that looked just like me and Eric.
“Are they… Are they watching us?” I asked.
“This isn’t safe!”
I looked at another screen. It showed me and Eric blowing through a dark swamp on a hover tank. Another screen — Eric blasting me in the Rocky Mountains. Another — me flying through Hawaii with a jetpack. In fact, Eric and I seemed to be on dozens of screens around the room.
“Mr. Gregory, if they knew we were in the video game, why didn’t they get us out?”
“Go to the basement!”
Was Mr. Gregory trying to hide something? I continued walking down the row of computers, every one displaying a video game. Some showed me and Eric playing Full Blast, while others seemed to just be regular Bionosoft video games — one was a racing game, another was a space shooter, another was a… Wait. I backed up to the space shooter. The main character had a weird expression on his face. Instead of the usual video game tough guy look, this one had terrified eyes and seemed to be screaming. Also, he looked a little young. I scanned the room again. None of the video game characters looked happy to be there, and most seemed to be kids.
“What’s going on?” I yelled. “Are they trapping kids in video games on purpose?!”
“If you don’t get out of there now, I’m going to have to bring you in!”
Just then, a hologram at the front of the room flickered on. It showed an old man in raggedy clothes huddled into a ball. The man was shivering and rocking back and forth with his head bowed and legs pulled tight against his body. I edged closer to the hologram. There was something familiar about him.
At that moment, the old man looked up and turned toward me. I stiffened. Those eyes. Those bright blue eyes. It was Mark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mad Scientist
“MARK!” I screamed. “MARRRR — Oof!” Something tugged on my chest.
“I’m getting you out of there,” Mr. Gregory said over my earpiece. I felt myself being pulled back across the room by the leash. I tried to fight it, clawing at everything around me, but it was no use — my hands just passed through everything I touched.
“Come on! Eric, what’s going on?”
“He took my phone!” Eric yelled over the ear
piece. “He took my phone, and he’s reeling you back in!”
“You gotta help me — I think I found Mark!”
Suddenly, I heard a commotion over my earpiece. “Ouch! Hey!”
One second later, an out-of-breath Eric came onto the earpiece. “I got the phone!” he yelled. “Go get Mark!”
I ran to the front of the room screaming at the hologram of my friend. “Mark! Mark!” He never turned. When I reached him, I tried grabbing him by the shoulders. “We’re going to get you out of here,” I said. My hands passed right through his body. I climbed onto his hologram stand looking for something I could use to get him out.
“GASP!” I heard next to me. I ignored it. Maybe there was a portal in the base of the hologram stand.
“Do you see that?”
“Get it on the big screen and call security!”
The whole base of the stand seemed to be a projector. Maybe if I stuck my head through and looked around…
I suddenly became aware that the room had gone dead silent. I glanced up to find everyone in the room either locking eyes with me or staring at the screen up front. I turned around. The big screen now showed a live view of Mark’s hologram, but it looked different than before. This time, a face stuck out of Mark’s back — a face that looked just like mine.
“Uh oh,” I said.
“Uh oh,” the face on the screen said.
The room went nuts. All at once, people started screaming, jumping from their desks and grabbing phones. Two security officers — one with a big beard and one with big muscles — ran at me while I climbed off the stand. I had to get out of there before somebody had time to turn on Go Wild and —
“Got him!”
Big Beard grabbed my foot. I yelped in surprise because I’d just gotten used to the idea of being invisible. The hologram seemed to interfere with Go Wild in an unfortunate way that temporarily turned me solid. I tried kicking. No good. I screamed. His grip tightened. In desperation, I yanked my foot as hard as I could, pulling him off balance into the hologram stand.
