by Tracy Deebs
“What does she mean, ‘fix what’s broken’?” I ask. “What do we need to fix?”
Theo shrugs. “We’ll just have to play for a while and see.” He’s leaning back against the family room wall now, his hands shoved into his pockets. He appears totally calm, totally relaxed, but there’s a hypervigilance about him, an alertness in his eyes as he watches me, that negates the casual way he’s holding himself.
The graphics on the screen suddenly blur, and as I watch, it feels like I’m being pulled superfast into the box. The game is sucking me through a virtual black hole, with stars and planets rushing by me at alarming speeds. Pandora’s Box? I wonder hazily as I try not to get dizzy. Or Star Trek?
“Wicked graphics,” Eli says, and he’s leaning forward, his hands on either side of my shoulders, as if he can’t get close enough to the game. Which is strange, because I want nothing more than to get away from it.
Theo sits down on the couch next to me, scooting so close in his effort to get a better look at my computer that his leg is plastered to mine.
For one second, I go into sensory overload. Between looking at the game, feeling Theo against me and Eli behind and around me, it’s all too much. I feel trapped.
I shove at Eli’s arms with all my strength, desperate to get away before my brain short-circuits altogether.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he asks, and the question hits me hard.
What am I doing? Where am I going? I want to run away, to bury my head, to make it all just disappear.
But it won’t. I can’t go back, can’t go forward, can’t do anything but stay right here and see this through. I helped start it; now I need to finish it.
Theo’s hand comes up and holds my elbow, not hard, but enough to let me know that he’s there. Normally, I’d be pissed off that he thought he had the right to put his hands on me after what happened this morning, but Theo’s grip isn’t demanding. I could break it easily if I wanted to.
But I don’t want to. It’s keeping me grounded, keeping me sane, this small connection to another person who is right here in the present—in this world—with me. He doesn’t say anything, but somehow I know that this is exactly what he intends me to feel.
I beat back the panic, the fear, the knowledge that the imaginary has just become my reality, and focus on his hand on my elbow. Focus on the game. The second I let myself be drawn back to it, it yanks me in completely.
I fall straight through the blackness and into a wide blue sky, plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. I plunge through one cloud, then another and another. And then I’m skidding and shuddering to a stop, bumping along hard ground as everything drops away but the world I’ve suddenly been thrust into.
On the sidewalk, dressed in jeans and a black Jimi Hendrix tank top, is an avatar with short, choppy red hair and brown eyes. She’s tall and lean, with multipierced ears, a small star-shaped nose ring, and purple streaks in her hair.
I freeze as I look at her, choke up, and hear Theo inhale sharply next to me.
“Is that what your avatar usually looks like?” he asks.
“No.” My voice is shaking and I realize my computer is as well. No, not my computer—just the hands that are holding it.
I put it down on the coffee table, fight the urge to bury my hands in my lap. I don’t know why it matters, but I don’t want the guys to know how upset I am. Maybe because they’re so calm, taking all of this in stride when I’m one small step away from screaming my head off.
“It’s the camera,” Theo tells me, tapping the top of my computer. “The game sees you.”
“Wicked,” Eli says again.
“So, where is she?” Theo asks, and I force my fingers back to the keyboard. At the moment, my character is sitting in the middle of an empty street with buildings in every direction. Cars are all over the place—some are stopped in the middle of the street while others are parked at the curb. But no one is in them. They’re empty, abandoned, which is nothing like the Pandora’s Box I’m used to, usually teeming with other players and NPCs, Non-Playing Characters.
I hit the Up arrow and I stand on-screen.
Even with everything that’s happened, I expect to be where I left off—in the middle of postapocalyptic Manhattan. But as I look both ways, and even cross the street to peer into the window of an empty shop, I realize that nothing looks familiar. It’s impossible to tell where I am, and there’s no one around to ask.
I am completely alone in this new world. It isn’t a pleasant thought.
“Look up,” Eli instructs, and I follow his directions, looking straight up to the very pointy, very recognizable top of the Frost Bank Tower.
“I’m in Austin?” I ask incredulously.
“It seems that way,” Eli answers.
“I didn’t even know Austin was an option in Pandora’s Box. When I started, the game plopped me down in Boston and I made my way to New York.”
“Pandora’s Box covers just the big cities,” Theo says matter-of-factly. “Or at least the original one does. I guess we’ll have to see what this version covers.”
“It looks exactly like downtown.”
“Not exactly like it,” Eli points out, his finger sweeping across the screen. “When have you ever seen North Congress this empty?”
“I don’t like it,” I say. “What am I supposed to do? How do I beat a level when I’m the only one in it?”
“You don’t know that yet,” Theo tells me.
“Look around. Do you see another avatar anywhere? Or even an NPC?” asks Eli.
Again, I remember all the NPCs from the original version of Pandora’s Box, characters I never paid much attention to as I was working my way through the initial levels. But judging by the look on Eli’s face, it’s not a good thing that this version doesn’t have them.
Not that I’m surprised. Not good is par for the course at this point, right?
“Do you think you’re overreacting a little?” Theo says, and at first I think he’s somehow found a way to read my thoughts. But then I realize he’s talking to Eli. “She hasn’t even gone five feet yet.”
He’s right, I haven’t. Maybe all this gloom and doom and poor-me stuff is a little premature. I press the left arrow key and take off running up the street.
“Hey, where are you going?” Eli asks.
I don’t answer, because I don’t have a clue. I just keep my finger on the button, until I’m running faster and faster. I pass a bunch of side streets, including Austin’s famous Sixth Street, where I can hear music coming out of the bars but can’t see anyone on the sidewalks. It’s eerie to see the most popular street in Austin so empty, and I wouldn’t recognize it if not for all the familiar bar signs.
On and on I run until I’m standing, strangely enough, in front of the Texas State Capitol building. It’s in the middle of Congress Street downtown, and when the Texas legislature built it, they had one goal in mind: to make sure it was bigger and grander than the national Capitol in Washington.
They succeeded by about fourteen feet, and it’s the fanciest, tallest capitol in the fifty states. Beautiful and ostentatious, it towers over everything around it and is a monument to all things Texas. I know this because nearly every year in elementary school and junior high we were forced to take a field trip down here, as if the first five trips hadn’t provided enough opportunity to ogle the red granite and pink marble.
I’m not sure why I chose to run here, but as I walk up the long path leading to the stairs in the front, a strange feeling washes over me. I start to turn back, but something keeps my finger on the arrow key all the way to the front door. I go inside, and as I look up at the huge rotunda a memory assails me, one I didn’t even know I had.
I’m almost three years old and dressed in a pretty pink party dress—I remember the dress because my mother had it specially made for me. It had layers of frilly petticoats, and I liked nothing more than to stand in the middle of the living room and twirl in circles, again and again, so that my s
kirts flew up around me.
I used to be such a girly-girl, it’s hard to imagine now. Anyway, I’m all dressed up, including little lace tights and black patent-leather shoes, and I’m looking around me in awe (it must have been my first visit to the state Capitol). My mom is standing to my left and to my right—I close my eyes, not sure if I’m trying to banish the memory or capture it. To my right, his large, calloused hand clasped around mine, is my father.
I flash back to the pictures in my backpack, the ones my father sent me this morning. I’m wearing this dress in the one where we’re posing in front of a statue of Sam Houston. Was that picture taken here, in the rotunda, I wonder, or somewhere else?
Either way, it’s a weird coincidence. One that has me backing out the door and down the stairs. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster. I can’t get away soon enough. And even though I have a feeling that there is something for me to do at the Capitol, there is no way I’m going back in there.
“What’s wrong?” Eli asks, but I shake my head. I’m back on Congress and have no idea where to go from here. I start up the street at a dead run.
“This is stupid,” I say. “There are no directions, nothing to tell me where I’m supposed to go or what I’m supposed to do. I could wander here all day.”
But even as I’m speaking, the roads are narrowing, more and more streets are becoming blocked off to me as the game herds me in the direction it wants me to go. I know I should be hypervigilant—I’m supposed to be saving the world, after all—but I have to admit this is pretty boring. Nothing but running and occasionally jumping over something that’s in my way.
If this is the best this maniac has, he’s not nearly as smart or creative as he thinks he is. Surely someone will be able to beat the game quickly, and then everything can go back to normal.
“I think he’s sending you to Zilker Park,” Theo says, and as I look at the streets around me, at the big Whole Foods Market and Town Lake, I realize he’s right. But since I’m not in the mood for a paddleboat ride or a kite-flying competition, I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing here. Unless the guy’s programmed the game to happen during the Austin City Limits music festival.
He hasn’t, and I slow down as I reach the wooded area near the nature center. I turn in a circle, looking for some clue as to what I’m supposed to do now. Nothing comes to me, and I start walking up the huge rock stairs to the center, getting a little more annoyed with each second that passes.
I turn to Theo with a frown. “I’m beginning to think that the whole ‘beat the game, save the world’ thing is nothing but a bunch of bull—”
I break off midword as two things happen simultaneously. First, Eli’s computer makes a loud beeping noise and he is dropped straight into the game. And second, a huge black monster jumps out from behind a tree and tackles my avatar, sending me flying.
8
Adrenaline surges through my system, making my heart pound heavily as blood thrums in my ears. “What do I do?” I yell. “What do I do?” In my head is the original warning, about having only one life. If this thing kills me now, I’m out for good and I’m not sure what that means for the fate of my computer. Or the rest of my little corner of the world.
“Run,” Eli says, ripping his eyes off his own avatar long enough to check out my predicament.
“Yeah. That’s so not going to happen. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a gigantic dragon lady on my chest!” I recoil in horror as I get my first good look at her. She’s huge, and while her top half is that of a woman—with snake hair—her bottom half is covered in black scales. She has huge claws, a long barbed tail, and her legs, while stationary, are moving. Undulating, really, and I realize they’re made up of snakes, too. Snakes that are all looking at my avatar like they want to take a bite out of her. Me. Whatever.
“That’s Campe,” Theo says calmly, and I almost hate him for being such a know-it-all. He hits a couple of buttons on my keyboard. I buck and roll on-screen, but the huge, nightmarish beast doesn’t move. Big surprise. One of the claws rakes my shoulder, and I swear, I almost feel the pain. I know I’m sweating.
“She’s going to kill me!” I screech, just as Theo’s computer beeps and he’s finally thrust into the game, too. He takes off running in my direction, but I’m too busy thrashing around to pay much attention to what he and Eli are doing.
“Hold on,” Eli tells me. “I’m almost there.”
“I’m doing my best.” I hit the monster in her face, and it surprises her enough that I’m able to shove out from under her, but once she recovers, she’s enraged. She kicks me, the vipers that make up her legs hissing as they try to take a chunk out of me.
I kick back, catching the beast in her scaly stomach. She screams as she goes down on top of me.
My breath whooshes out, and I try to stay conscious as I shove at the thing. But I’m in bad shape. I’m bleeding from my left leg and right shoulder, and from the way my avatar is struggling to draw in air, I’m afraid I might have a broken rib or three. So much for boring—the game has gone from mundane to terrifying in the blink of an eye.
I look up just as she flexes her long, horrifying claws. They’re mostly black, but they’re tipped in deep red, and I’m praying that’s her normal look, not my blood. She leans over me and her teeth elongate, growing until they’re huge and so close to me that I imagine the feel of her hot, stinky breath on my face. I turn my head, close my eyes, and prepare to die before I ever had a chance to live.
But the death blow—or bite, in this case—never comes. Instead, Eli’s avatar rushes onto the scene and grabs Campe by the shoulders. His avatar is as tall and well built as Eli is in real life, and with a mighty heave, he yanks the nightmarish monster off me and sends her spinning across the grass, where she lies dazed.
He reaches down and grabs my hand—the one attached to my uninjured arm—and helps me to my feet. “Are you all right?” Eli asks me.
“Just peachy,” I answer. “But you might want to look out.”
Campe is back on her feet, and she looks a million times angrier than she did before. And this time, all of that anger is directed straight at Eli. She pulls out two glistening knives, and I take a few steps to the right, feeling like a total coward as I do so. But that thing looks like it’s going to take Eli apart in a couple of well-placed slices, and I really don’t want to have any part of that.
Suddenly, Theo is there, shoving me behind him as he and Eli hold their ground. Campe crashes into them, and they stumble a little but manage to hang on. I guess there’s something to be said for being built like Greek Titans, especially in this game.
Campe comes at them again, and this time I know she’s going to take a few chunks off them. They’re both still a little unsteady on their feet, and the dragon is determined to tear them apart.
I look around, desperate for something to use as a weapon as the game maker hasn’t gifted me with anything yet. There’s nothing close to me except for some huge rocks, so I grab one, staggering under the weight of it.
As I work my way toward Theo, Eli, and the Mistress of Hell, I try to figure out where the best place to hit her is. Normally, I’d go for the head, but hers is about ten feet off the ground, and I’m pretty positive I can’t throw this thing that high. Besides, if I miss, all it’s going to do is piss her off more, and I’ve already learned from bitter experience what a bad idea that is.
But what else can I hit that would do any damage? Her body is huge, her skin like armor, and as I stand there, looking at her, I understand a little of what David must have felt when he took on Goliath. But unlike David, I’m fresh out of slingshots.
Theo catches sight of me and the giant rock in my hand. He shakes his head and shoots Eli a look. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was telling his brother that they need to protect me.
Before I can even imagine what they’re going to do, he launches himself at Campe, wrapping his arms around her thick right arm and squeezing until
she drops the knife. Eli does the same to her left arm, and she roars in outrage, her long barbed tail swinging around and catching Theo in the back. He lets go, but he doesn’t fall, the barbs holding him in place.
I gasp in horror, my fingers tightening on the rock even as Eli scurries up her long arm to her neck. He wraps his hands around her throat and begins to squeeze. The monster bucks, tries to rip him off with her crimson-tipped claws, but Theo’s grabbed one arm again and is holding so tightly she can’t move it.
She bats at Eli with the other, but he won’t let go. For the first time since this nightmare of a game began, I see panic in the crazed monster’s eyes and I know that this is my chance—probably my only chance. I step closer, doing my best to avoid the hissing snakes and wildly gyrating tail. Then I heave the rock at her as hard as I can.
By some miracle she bends at just the right moment, and I get her right between the eyes. She freezes for a second, before letting out a long, high-pitched scream that curdles my blood. Her entire body convulses and then she’s falling, trapping Eli beneath her.
I rush forward, but Theo’s already there, dodging around her barbed tail, which is twitching dangerously. She reaches out with a claw, tries to grab me, and I scramble backward, but even as I do I know that there’s no way I can escape her.
She wraps her hand around my ankle and yanks. I’m falling, and I brace myself for impact, my entire body going tense, though I know it’s the worst thing I can do. I tell myself it will be okay, that it’s just a game, that the person about to be torn apart isn’t really me, but I can’t help the fear and adrenaline that race through me from all directions.
And then it’s too late to think anymore because the snakes are crawling off her legs and toward me, their poisonous mouths yawning wide as they get ready to bite. I kick at a few of them, but it’s no use. I close my eyes—this is it—and wait for my avatar to die.
