Scrambled Lives

by Rue Vespers

  Jenner needed that ACT3 now. Not a week from now. So he was ringing that bell today.

  “-to the Sky-High,” the announcer said through a yawn. Perhaps forgetting that he was on speaker, he muttered, “Oh, crap. I forgot to hit the audience booster. I’ve been forgetting to hit that all day.”

  The stadium instantly transformed from a quarter-full to packed to the rafters, the crowd going wild. It was simple to tell who was real and who was not: the real observers had their feet propped up and their mouths closed.

  “Let’s get this party started,” the announcer said mildly. “Ready . . . set . . .”

  A tone sounded, followed by a loud musical score with pounding drums and blaring trumpets. It was action hero music, frenetic and agitating in its beat.

  Jenner had paid no heed to the player on his right. It turned out to be an elf, who leaped from his podium to the top of the net, and from there to the plateau before Jenner had even gotten from the podium to the ground. “Fucking elves!” he blurted as he ran for the net.

  “Fucking cats!” Rosy said, because the player beyond the elf’s empty podium was a werecat shifter. The woman changed into a sinuous spotted cat the size of a Great Dane, and leaped from her podium halfway up the net. Her claws dug in as the net swayed under her weight, and then she skittered up to a plateau. The elf was already on the shifting ledges, jumping from one to another so quickly that it didn’t matter if a ledge was sliding inwards and almost gone; he was off that one in a nanosecond and onto the next in line.

  Meanwhile, Jenner was wrapping his hands around the net and lifting one foot off the ground. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he cried when the net jerked in his grip.

  Ocelo was climbing the net very calmly. “One foot in front of the other.”

  Jenner climbed in an ungainly way after her. For all his frantic clutches at purchase, he was just as likely to send a fist or leg through the gaps in the net than to score his mark. Her advice wasn’t wrong; it was just devilishly hard to follow. He made himself slow down, and his speed picked up a little since he wasn’t wasting time by missing the rope.

  The bell rang.

  “Fuck!” he and Rosy yelled.

  Ocelo chuckled from her position two feet above him. “Elves,” she said placidly. “Always elves.”

  Forbidding himself to think about the ticking clock, which was being shown on the screens, refusing to listen to the raucous music, Jenner concentrated on the rope net. The bell rang again and he stuffed down his irritation and panic. He was not an elf. He was not a werecat. He had to work with what he had.

  Ocelo reached out for the plateau and hauled herself onto it. Then she stood and took hold of the grooves to climb the second story. Right behind her, Jenner extended his hand to the plateau and pulled himself up.

  A cry came from elsewhere upon the tower.

  He looked reflexively to the screen behind him, which was showing a human player on another side of the ring toppling off the second story to the net.

  “There’s a pattern to how they vanish,” Ocelo offered. “Pegs vanish much more often than the grooves fill in, and they vanish in pairs whereas the grooves don’t. I’m just using the grooves to climb.”

  Then so was Jenner. Losing one handhold or foothold wouldn’t necessarily drop him off this wall, whereas losing both pegs in his hands most assuredly would. He gripped the grooves in his fingers, wedged his feet into more grooves below, and started upwards.

  The pegs were just there for a lure, he thought as a pair of them vanished inches from his nose. Only once did a groove fill in as he was using it, and he just moved his hand to the next groove over.

  The bell rang.

  “Werecat,” Ocelo said without needing to look at the screen.

  They arrived at the third floor as another player toppled to the ground, the announcer saying over the roar of the music, “Do we have a scramble? Is he getting up? DoubleStuffedTacos falls from the third story ledges and misses the rope net on the way down. Ouch. I think we have a scramble here, folks, he’s not moving. Let me check on his HP . . . yeah, he’s a goner. Goodbye, DoubleStuffedTacos, and good luck in your next life.”

  The announcer paused for another yawn. Once again, he seemed to forget that he could be heard. “That player’s name makes me hungry for tacos. Mortie? Hey, Mortie! Let’s pick up some tacos tonight. There’s a great little joint over on the corner of Scepters and Mace that . . . Oh, hey, we might be losing another one down there. Yup, that’s ShiverMeTimbers and she’s going down from the fourth story ledges . . . she catches a face full of net . . . loses a few HP, but she’s climbing again. Go, ShiverMeTimbers. That’s the spirit.”

  Ocelo considered the moving ledges as Jenner straightened beside her upon another plateau. “Thanks,” he said for the advice about the pegs.

  She gave him an absent-minded nod and cocked her head thoughtfully. “Don’t race here. That’s why they’re falling. What’s inside the tower isn’t nearly as hard or time-consuming as what’s outside. Not being able to see in through the doorway lets you imagine the worst.”

  “Maybe I should ride around on her shoulder,” Rosy said.

  “Traitor,” Jenner replied.

  “Watch,” Ocelo said. “Jump three times in rapid succession, starting when this first ledge begins to slide in. Then you’re at the next resting spot.” She waited for another beat and jumped, taking only seconds to arrive at a higher plateau. “Now you.”

  Jenner studied the ledges keenly, and jumped as the first headed inwards. The mermaid vacated the plateau just before he arrived, leaping away upon the next succession of moving ledges.

  Straightening once she was past them, she said, “Just watch and jump. These are easy.”

  He studied them obediently.

  “Ouch, we’re losing another one from the ledges,” the announcer said. “LibraSun isn’t looking so balanced, is he? Yup, there he goes . . . and hits the dwarf off the pegs on the way down! Yikes. LibraSun and HammerTime are rolling to the bottom of the nets. Back to square one for them and minus 2 HP for each. Hey, Mortie! Did you catch my joke? About LibraSun being balanced? I’m a Libra, too. Right on the cusp with Scorpio.”

  “Nobody fucking cares what your astrological sign is, you stupid, chunky shit-nugget!” Rosy yelled.

  Jenner leaped up the ledges to the plateau, where Ocelo was focused on the next set. They were almost to the fourth story now. How long had it been? Four minutes? Five? He didn’t dare to look.

  “Jump. Jump. Wait for it to fall. Jump once it’s back up, and jump fast for the plateau.” He didn’t know if Ocelo was speaking to him or herself, but the next four ledges were nasty. The first two moved in and out of the wall swiftly, and the third was trapdoor-style. It just dropped down of its own accord every few seconds, and beyond it was another swift ledge before safety was reached.

  She jumped away, making it look simple. Jenner took off after her, the bell ringing yet again and that fifth story doorway tantalizing him from above.

  He hadn’t timed it right. He knew it the second he took off, but it wasn’t like he could double back and start over. The trapdoor gave way the moment his foot touched down upon it, Jenner making a wild leap for the next ledge.

  Missing it, he started to fall.

  “Whoops, we’re losing another one . . .” the announcer said.

  Something caught Jenner’s foot, arresting him in his plummet just as the radiant blocks appeared.

  You have a text message from Ruvina Roggio. ‘Hi, honey, it’s your mom. Your school and Zoomies raised some money for an ACT2-’

  His eyes jerked away from the message, which vanished. Never ever would he forget to turn off the notifications again before going into the ring! Suspended upside-down, he looked up to Ocelo.

  “And look at that! Isn’t The Teacup Guy a lucky little player today? The Teacup Guy gets an assist from Ocelo the mermaid. We don’t get mermaid players too often, do we, Mortie? When was the last time we had one in the ring? I
t’s been months. That one assisted a player, too. Mermaids are nice. They tend to do agility challenges more than battles.”

  The mermaid had caught Jenner with her hair, which somehow grew several feet longer in scant seconds. A thick blue lock of it was wound around his ankle and drawing him upwards to the plateau. A smaller green lock was wrapped through Rosy’s handle. She leaned over the side and offered her hand to Jenner, who took it and was heaved upwards with shocking strength. Rosy was set down gently upon his shoulder.

  “You saved me!” Jenner exclaimed. Falling to the ground wouldn’t damage him, but he didn’t have enough time to start the tower all over again.

  Her hair retracted, growing back into her head until it was waist-length. Purplish eyes drifted past him to the last few ledges, which would deliver them to the doorway. For a moment he thought she’d checked out, but she was marking the ledges for their behavior. “Just like last time,” she said. “The Sky-High doesn’t change much. Take these fast to the doorway, and then just keep running once you’re inside to the bounce climber.”

  The bell rang.

  Jenner’s eyes jerked to the clock on the nearest screen. He had less than three minutes to get to the top. Closer to two minutes. The mermaid jumped away, Jenner waiting for the next time the first ledge was on its way out to follow.

  “-about fifty percent,” the announcer was musing into the microphone. “Yeah, that sounds right. Fifty-ish percent finish the Sky-High the first time through, but you got to break it down by race for the real data, Mortie. Race matters more than the average. It’s rare to have an elf not ring that bell, and rarer still to have one scramble in the Sky-High. They have a nearly one hundred percent completion rate in their first run at the tower. Cats and dragons are mid-to-high eighties for finishing; bears and wolves are in the low eighties down to high seventies. But then you have the demons, who make it only a tad over half of the time, and humans make it a little less than half and wizards less than that, while only two out of ten dwarfs run this one successfully the first time. Saying fifty percent doesn’t really tell you much in that light, does it?”

  Somehow, this announcer was managing to be even more annoying than the last one. Maybe it was the total incongruence between the thriller-scene music and the screaming NPCs with the bored voice of the announcer and the barely awake live audience.

  Jenner made it to the fifth story doorway in relief and nearly fell back out when a giant hammer slammed down from the ceiling to the floor. The teacup squawked. As the hammer lifted back to the ceiling, two hammers farther down the hallway slammed in from the sides and crashed together in the middle. Even more hammers were beyond that, coming in from every angle and the mermaid sprinting just ahead of them.

  The hammer slammed down in front of Jenner again, and then he took off at a run when it lifted. The hallway sloped upwards beneath his feet and crooked just ahead of Ocelo.

  “And down goes LibraSun again.” The announcer’s catatonic voice was being piped into the tower. “Yeah, he’s not making it to the bell today. Oof, ow, we have a human pancake in our hammer hallway . . .”

  It wasn’t Jenner, who was running like the wind. The hammers were slamming so hard at his back that he felt the breeze. Rosy had its eyes closed in terror as Jenner sprinted for the crook where Ocelo had turned out of sight, afraid that she was the pancake before his brain put together that the announcer said human, not mermaid. Since nobody else was in view, he assumed there were multiple hammer hallways for those who entered the tower on the other sides.

  “That’s a mess in there until it fades. Gross. So long and farewell to OhioBaby, who finally achieved a narrow waist but won’t be around to enjoy it.” The announcer chuckled at himself. “What’s the time on this match, Mortie? A minute left? Oh yeah, LibraSun, HammerTime, EightInchFrank, and Raspberry Menace are conceding. Get yourselves to an obstacle course and practice, guys. We’ll see you next week.”

  Whirling around the crook, Jenner made it to an open-door elevator with spongy walls. There were no buttons to press, he ascertained in one wild revolution. A glance upwards showed that Ocelo was bouncing from side to side in the elevator to reach the top.

  Rosy opened one eye and then a second eye with a sigh. “Classic. This game just rips off the good parts of other games.”

  Jenner jumped up on the wall, his fingers sinking into the sponge. Then he leaped away to the other side, the sponge working as a spring to hurl him there. Back and forth he went up the shaft as the announcer called out the time in ten-second increments.

  He made it to the top of the tower with twenty seconds left to go. Grabbing hold of an overhead bar, he took a running leap over a flaring fire pit. The bar rattled along a chain over the flames, Jenner picking up his feet to spare his new boots more than his skin. The bell hovered there at the center of the seventh floor, getting closer every moment . . .

  “Fifteen seconds,” the announcer said through another yawn. “How many more of these are we running today? Six? Oh, there’s the mermaid, jumping the platforms to the bell and . . . she dings it, well done, and she’s disappearing back into the lounge. Will The Teacup Guy make it? He’s cutting it close. Nine seconds. Eight seconds. You aren’t going to make it, Happy Pegger, but you got farther than last time . . . Five seconds . . .”

  Jenner dropped from the bar once he was over the fire. All that was blocking him from the bell was a diagonal, stepping-stone path over a fathomless void similar to the one in the dungeon.

  The music hit a crazed tempo as he dashed onto the stones. At least they weren’t mobile. Fuck, he was going to miss the bell by one or two seconds!

  “Four seconds . . .”

  “Throw me!” Rosy yelled. “I’ll ring it!”

  Jenner could run for that bell, or he could lob the cup, but he couldn’t do both.

  He grabbed Rosy off his shoulder, took aim, and threw it. The cup hit the bell and vanished as Jenner resumed running over the stones.

  “Hey, The Teacup Guy hits the bell with his glitch-” The tone sounded and the music cut off just as Jenner stretched out his hand for the bell. “Does that count, Mortie? It counts when witches use their familiars. Well . . . it looks like it counts! The Teacup Guy made it with his cup. That’s a new one.”

  Transported downstairs, Jenner dropped to his knees outside the clinic tent.

  Ocelo knelt down to cup his cheeks. “Are you okay? You aren’t hurt.”

  He wasn’t hurt, but he couldn’t make his legs work.

  He couldn’t make his mind work.

  Her name flitted away, and so did his understanding of who this teacup was as it hopped on his knees . . .

  “ . . . he’s flickering . . .”

  Then he was back. Back in his body, back in his mind, and looking into two worried purple eyes. “I’m okay.”

  “Fuck, kid,” Rosy said. “You need that ACT3!”

  The message from Mom . . . Jenner pulled out of Ocelo’s hands and said, “Message! Play that text message for me!”

  You have a text message from Ruvina Roggio. ‘Hi, honey, it’s your mom. Your school and Zoomies raised some money for a brand new ACT2. They held fundraisers that your friends set up. Altogether they pulled in ten thousand dollars, so I added your five thousand to it. The company that makes the nets sold one to me wholesale and rush-mailed it. The doctors swapped it out for your worst ACT1 net just a few hours ago. That one was barely doing anything, and you should start uploading a lot faster now. You hold on, okay? Hold on. I love you so much.’

  That explained the sudden jump in his character upload percentage! His scrap heap of an ACT1 net had been replaced with a brand new ACT2, which uploaded at over twice the speed of an ACT1. A functional ACT1, which that one wasn’t.

  As for his friends who set up the fundraisers . . . Jenner had friends? He couldn’t remember their names or their faces, not one single fact about them, but he was grateful for their kindness all the same.

  And now he had an ACT3 coming
from Duo sometime tonight, if the guy was for real, so this upload would go even faster. He needed to tell Duo to get in the car and start driving. He needed to check his character upload percentage . . .

  “Oh, shit, it’s happening again-”

  Instead, he passed out.

  Chapter Thirty

  He was floating.

  He opened his eyes to a blurry sky of greens and golds and blues curiously dappled with light. His back was cool yet his front was warm as he bobbed, staring upwards without comprehension.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, his vision cleared. The gold colors above were the arched struts of a domed ceiling; the blues and greens were stained glass with the sun striking them.

  He was in a pool.

  “-so I would yell out all the answers to their exams and hop fast for the mouse hole,” a baritone voice said. “I didn’t know what else to do by then. Every time I sneaked out of the lab, someone tried to catch me. It was very boring to sit through their lectures again and again and again, and watch every new crop of students fuck up their potions again and again and again in exactly the same ways. But that’s enough about me! How long have you been here in the game?”

  It was Rosy. Jenner knew that voice.

  There was a splash, and a female voice answered. “Five years, or more now. I haven’t been keeping track and I disabled my outer-world news notifications, which used to give me a better sense of time. I don’t receive visitors either. Perhaps it’s been much longer than that.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I was in an accident and paralyzed from the neck down. Those were terrible months, all the surgeries, all the specialists, all the aides doing everything for me. I couldn’t even turn my head, and I knew I’d never dance again. My family didn’t want me to upload permanently to a game, just to play it in the six pod hours I was allotted a week by Respite Care, but . . . Here I can walk. Here I can run, and dance, and swim. Here I’m free. I had enough money to buy my own place and I still had my mental faculties, so no one could stop me. It was my choice, and it proved to be the right decision in the end.”