by Dustin Brady
“Jesse!”
I looked up. Eric. Eric Conrad, looking exactly like a superhero, was blasting away from the top of the cliff.
“Hey buddy! What do you think?”
“THIS IS THE WORST GET ME OUT OF HERE!” I screamed.
“Glad you’re having fun! Try charging up to full blast!”
I did what he said. It worked! I got a whole group with one blast. Eric and I worked together on clearing the entire canyon of aliens.
After five minutes, the only group left was three stragglers coming in through the opening. I turned around to watch Eric line up the shot, and that’s when I saw it. Sneaking up behind Eric was a jet black creature that looked a little more alien than praying mantis with five legs and one long blaster arm.
“Eric!”
He looked at me. The alien lowered its blaster.
“WATCH OU…”
The alien pulled the trigger, and my best friend in the whole world vaporized before my eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
Reality Mode
Eric had been my best friend since first grade. The first time I saw him, his parents were unloading the moving truck, while Eric ran back and forth in the front yard wearing a coonskin cap and spinning the tail with his hand. I finally went over to ask him what he was doing. He said that he was trying to fly and was “getting close.” I believed him because I was in first grade, and all first graders believe that they’re this close to flying. I decided right then to stick with this strange flying child and learn his ways.
And for the next six years, I did stick with him. Through everything. We never learned how to fly, but we did learn how to jump pretty high off of homemade bike ramps and start fires with magnifying glasses and scare each other during backyard sleepovers until we were afraid to go into the house to pee. And now he was gone.
I blasted the alien that had blasted Eric, finished off the group coming through the canyon, climbed up the rock wall to the spot where he’d been standing and sobbed the whole time. When I finally got to the top, I stood over the black spot where my best friend had been. There was nothing left. Nothing to remember my friend. What would I tell his parents? How would I even get back to his parents? I stared at the spot for a couple minutes longer, trying to wipe the tears from my eyes and forgetting that one of my hands was now a blaster and whacking myself in the face over and over and not caring.
“Whatcha looking at, buddy?”
I whipped around. “Eric?! What are you…I thought you…I saw…”
“Yeah, I got vaporized.”
“THEN HOW ARE YOU HERE I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOLD ON ARE YOU A GHOST?!”
“No, dumb dumb. This is a video game. I just went back to the beginning of the level.”
I gave him a weird look.
“Wait you thought I actually died?”
I continued my weird look.
“That would be crazy! That’s not how video games work! You get killed once and you’re done with the video game forever? Just throw it in the trash? No, you just go back to the beginning of the level and start again. It doesn’t even hurt. See?”
Eric pointed his blaster at me. My eyes got wide.
“NONONONONONO!”
ZING
And just like that, I found myself back at the beginning of the level, staring down a charging praying mantis. One second later — ZING — Eric showed up too, and one second after that — SHRIEK — Eric blasted the alien.
“Come on,” Eric said as he started walking down the path.
“Hey,” I caught up to him. “You going to explain what this is all about?”
“Oh yeah!” Eric’s eyes lit up. “Isn’t this the greatest thing in the world? Can you believe it?”
“No! Definitely not! Is this real?”
Eric shrugged. “I think so. Earlier this afternoon, I finally beat the game. At the end of the credits, a screen came up that said I’d unlocked something called ‘Reality Mode’ and asked if I wanted to try it. When I said yes, I got sucked in like you did.”
“But how did you text me?”
“Huh?”
“I asked how you texted me.”
“Wait,” Eric said as he dragged me into a small cave. “Watch this.” He shot a small blast into the snow to get the aliens’ attention. Soon, one came over, then two, then 50 or more. They were all trying to reach us, but they were all too big to fit into the tiny opening. Finally, Eric charged his blaster and vaporized the whole group in one shot. After the blinding light, we heard a chime and saw a mechanical part float over the snow. Eric woohooed, ran over and clipped it onto his blaster.
“Now I can launch grenades!” he shouted.
“Wonderful. Can you answer my question?”
“I don’t think you’re grasping the coolness of the situation here.”
“And I don’t think you’re grasping that we are stuck IN A WORLD WITH ALIENS!”
“Oh, we’re not stuck,” Eric said as he started walking.
“Really?”
“Come on, I wouldn’t have invited you in if there weren’t a way out.”
“So what happened?”
THUNK THUNK. I waited patiently while Eric shot grenades at two big trees. The grenades detonated in a flash of light, and the tops of the trees disappeared. Eric nodded approvingly.
“At the end of each level, there’s a portal that takes you back to real life. I finished two levels, then decided to go back and tell you about it. I knew that nothing I could say would convince you to come in here because you’re such a baby…” THUNK THUNK. Eric took out the alien that had shot him earlier. “…So I just had to let you discover it for yourself.” He turned and smiled. “So what do you think?”
“I think this is horrible!”
Eric’s face fell a little bit. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’! I have no idea what’s going on, and…” Eric reached over my shoulder to blast a praying mantis running behind me. “…All of the sudden I get sucked into this thing and I think I threw up and you know how much I hate throwing up…” While maintaining eye contact, Eric held his hand out and launched a grenade at two aliens trying to sneak up on us to the left. “…And then this Army guy starts yelling at me and making me do all this weird stuff…”
“That was the tutorial,” Eric interrupted.
“Huh?”
Eric held his blaster in the air and shot. A flying thing fell to the ground behind him.
“The tutorial. It’s there to teach you how to play the game. That sergeant’s not real — he’s like a robot that’s only programmed to do one thing.”
“Whatever. And now everything’s trying to kill us AND I HAVE MATH HOMEWORK THAT’S DUE ON MONDAY!”
“Listen,” Eric said as he launched two more grenades just for fun. “I understand that you’re a little annoyed right now.”
“REAL ALIENS ARE TRYING TO EAT ME!”
“But you’re with me, and I know this game backward and forward. If you stick close, I promise you’ll be fine. Who knows, you might even have a little fun.”
I glared at him.
“I’ll let you shoot a grenade.”
I glared some more. Eric unclipped his grenade launcher and put it on my arm. “Try it.”
I squeezed. Two grenades THUNK THUNKed out of my arm and vaporized a praying mantis that I didn’t see sneaking up next to us.
“Wasn’t that great?!” Eric exclaimed.
It was. It was very great.
“Hmf.”
“Come on, we’ve got an alien base to defeat,” Eric said as he ran ahead. Eric blasted and whooped his way through the rest of the level, and I launched grenades willy nilly. By the time we’d blasted our last alien, we were both out of breath.
This is it,” Eric said, as he led me through a final door inside the alien base. Inside, we found a room with three glowing portals. One said “REPLAY,” another said “HOME” and the last said “LEVEL 2.”
“All right, I’ll let
you keep going,” I said as I took a step toward the HOME portal.
“Wait.” Eric grabbed me. “Don’t you want to keep going?”
“No. I told you I want to go home.”
“One more level.”
“Nope.”
“The next one is in Hawaii.”
“Sorry.”
“They have jetpacks.”
I squinted at him.
“Jetpaaaaaacks.”
We stared at each other some more, Eric nodding and me squinting. Finally I rolled my eyes. “One more level.”
“WOOHOO!”
We walked past the HOME portal into LEVEL 2.
It was the worst decision of my life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jetpack Joyride
I probably don’t need to tell you this, but jetpacks are amazing. This is something I learned firsthand when Eric led me to a spinning jetpack at the top of a waterfall right outside the portal. “Go ahead! Strap in!”
I strapped on the jetpack, trying hard not to act like this was the coolest moment of my life. “OK, now what?”
“Jump off.”
“Excuse me?”
“Jump off the waterfall.”
I looked over the edge. The bottom of the waterfall was at least 200 feet down.
“Nope. Nopity nopity nope. Can’t I just launch from here?”
“You can, but it’s more fun if you’re falling first. Just press the button in your right hand to blast off and remember to land when it starts blinking.”
Wait, when what starts blinking?”
“Exactly! Now go!” With that, Eric pushed me off the edge of the waterfall.
I’ve only tried the big diving board at the rec center pool once. Last year, Eric finally got me to climb to the top. At the top, I told him I changed my mind about jumping, so he “helped” by pushing me off. I landed on my stomach and got a red mark that lasted the whole day. The lifeguard kicked Eric out of the pool and I punched him in the stomach as hard as I could to show him what my landing felt like, but neither of those things stopped him from cackling about it for the rest of the week.
Now here we were again, me falling to a watery grave and Eric laughing above. If I ever survived, I would do a lot more than punch him in the stomach. As the river rushed toward me, I tried to remember what Eric had said. Do I push this button? No, maybe this…
WHOOOOOOOSH!
The jetpack roared to life. I stopped falling, and for half a second I found myself suspended in midair. I noticed the impossibly green rainforest around me and the roaring river below and the ocean in the distance and thought that nothing could be more beautiful. Then I screamed into the air like an out-of-control bottle rocket.
“AHHHHHHH!”
I blew past Eric giving me a thumbs up at the top of the waterfall. “You got it!”
I certainly didn’t have it. I was spinning wildly and super close to upchucking again. But after 30 seconds of doing a perfect impression of an untied balloon losing all its air, I finally started getting the hang of it. What followed was the best minute of my life as I flew around Hawaii by jetpack. I flew around Hawaii by jetpack. If there’s a cooler sentence in the world, I can’t think of it right now.
I was having so much fun flying around Hawaii by jetpack (sorry, just wanted to say it again) that I forgot about Eric’s blinking warning. Then, 500 feet above a volcano, my jetpack started sputtering. I looked back. The fuel wasn’t just running out, the jetpack itself was disappearing and reappearing on my back! I panicked and looked for a place to land, but it was too late — the jetpack disappeared for good.
“Oh no! Nooooooo!” I screamed as I fell toward the mouth of the volcano. I was so mad at Eric. Falling off of the 15-foot diving board is one thing. Falling into a pit of boiling lava is quite another. But just before I hit the lava, everything went white, and I found myself standing next to Eric on top of the waterfall again.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Would it kill you to tell me what happens when the jetpack starts blinking?!”
Eric laughed and strapped on the jetpack. “Come on!”
“Don’t I get one?”
“Yeah, it’ll reappear in five, four, three, two…”
Another jetpack magically reappeared in its place. I strapped it on, and we started flying. In the air, Eric explained the plot of this particular level. Something really stupid about the aliens using Pearl Harbor to launch their attacks and blah blah blah. I couldn’t pay too much attention because I was flying around Hawaii by jetpack.
We landed on a secluded beach, found more jetpacks and took off again. When we got into the air, we were joined by two eagle-sized wasps. I nervously glanced over. One of them made eye contact and glared at me.
“What are those?” I yelled to Eric.
“Oh, those are dumb. Do this,” he said as he looped high into the air, circled behind one of the wasps and blasted it.
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“It’s not hard,” Eric said. “All you have to do is…”
While Eric talked, the remaining wasp’s eyes started glowing red.
“Eric, what is that?”
“Quick, pull up!”
I tried, but it was too late. The wasp zapped me with a laser.
“OUCH!”
Eric blasted the wasp and grabbed me. “Come on.”
We landed on a black sand beach. At least I think the sand was black. It was hard to tell because everything was glowing red and pulsing. “Here you go, try this,” Eric said as he led me to a suitcase with a Red Cross symbol on it.
I reached out to grab it. The instant I touched it, it disappeared in a flash of white and my vision cleared up. A warm tingle went through my body.
“Ooh, what was that?”
“Medical kit. Any time you get hurt, just find one, OK?”
“K.”
“You ready to keep going?”
I smiled. “Let’s do this.”
Eric and I spent the day blasting our way through Hawaii. We cleared out the enemy patrols on the beaches, collected new laser upgrades for our blasters and sunk all the spaceships at Pearl Harbor. At sunset, we landed on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
“See that island out there?” Eric asked.
I squinted. “Yeah, I think so.”
“There’s something really cool on it. You want to check it out?”
“What is it?”
But Eric had already strapped on a jetpack and jumped off the cliff. “You’ll see!”
I sighed, waited five seconds and strapped on my own jetpack. “Wait up!”
I pushed to catch up with him, but Eric was about 50 feet ahead of me. Thirty seconds into our flight, the island still seemed a couple miles away. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it!” I yelled ahead.
Just then, a huge shadow fell over the ocean. Then — “SCREEEEEEEEECH!” I looked up to see a bat the size of a small airplane swoop over Eric and grab him with two massive claws.
“Eriiiiiiiiic!”
At that moment, I felt claws dig into my own back.
CHAPTER SIX
Boss Battle
With me and Eric in their talons, the bats flew toward the tiny island. As we got closer, the speck of land came into focus — just a beach the size of a small backyard with a single palm tree in the middle. When we reached the island, the bats dive bombed, then — WHUMP! — dumped us onto the beach and soared off.
I brushed the sand out of my clothes. “Was that supposed to happen?”
“Of course!”
I walked toward Eric. “We have to talk.” I put my finger in his chest. “You can’t keep surprising me with…”
My voice trailed off, because as I talked a shadow fell over Eric. I slowly turned to see what it could be this time.
A sand monster. Of course. Why not.
Behind me, a monster made of sand rose from the ground. It kept growing and growing — first the size of a one-story home, then two stori
es, then as tall as one of those old houses with a big attic on top. Its face formed into angry eyes and massive fangs.
I jabbed my thumb toward the furious monster behind me. “Wanna tell me what this is?”
“The boss!”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“This is a video game. Every few levels end with a big boss battle.”
“You’re speaking gibberish.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “If you blast him enough times in a glowing spot on his back or on his belly, he’ll disappear and the portals will pop up.”
“Fine. I’ll be happy to go home where people aren’t constantly tricking me and pushing me off waterfalls!”
“Fine!”
“FINE!”
I marched in front of the sand monster, and it roared like a dinosaur.
“Ooh. Ooooooooh. I’m real scared.” I said as I blasted it in the mouth. “What are you going to do, eat me?” I charged up to full blast and shot it in the belly. It fell over shrieking, then grew bigger and angrier.
“Go ahead! Eat me! It won’t even hurt. I’ll just come right back here, and we’ll do the whole thing again, because this is a video game and video games are STUPID!”
“Oh shut up!” Eric yelled from across the level.
“What was that?!”
“Just save it. You know you’re having fun.”
“Oh really?! You know what would be fun?” I dodged a spiky sand ball that the monster threw at me. (It’s sand, you might be saying. Sand is soft. How could a sand ball be spiky? I know, right? Video games are so dumb.) “What would be fun is having a real friend who explains things and lets me choose for myself!”
Eric blasted the monster in the back, and it fell over again. “What? So I’m not a real friend now!”
The monster grew so big that I couldn’t see Eric any more, so I just started yelling at the monster’s belly, hoping Eric could hear me on the other side.
“I don’t know, real friends trust each other!”
I could hear Eric charging up his blaster. I charged mine too.
