“Liability?”
“It’s a word.” Phelps smirked, shaking his feathered hair that might have been fashionable forty years ago. “It means that you accept responsibility for the ramifications of your concept. It also means you get a higher percentage. And do you know what it means if you don’t sign it?”
“Let me guess …”
“No check,” Phelps said, pushing a bank draft for a million dollars across his desk.
Dale stared at the check, with its six beautiful zeroes.
What do I know about gaming, anyway? he rationalized with a sigh as he grabbed his new contract. I’m just helping to provide the ultimate gaming experience for kids. I’m sure it’s harmless. The zombification or whatever is probably just because the game is so … fun. Just a teensy-weensy side effect, like those panic attacks I got with my antianxiety meds.
Dale looked up to see Phelps still composing a message on his smartphone. He noticed that the man had what looked like two tiny little horn nubs poking out from his sandy-blond hair. Dale wiped the spray-tan residue from his eyes, but the horns were still there.
“What are those … things … on your head?” Dale asked.
Phelps quickly smoothed his hair to cover the nubs.
“Prosthetic horn nubs,” he said, his black button eyes flashing quickly at Dale. “A trendy body mod in the gaming community. Everyone on the Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go development team is getting them,” he lied. “Great for brand cohesion.”
Dale snorted as he leaned over to sign his contract.
“It’s funny,” he said as Phelps went back to his smartphone, “but with the horns and the game and all, I feel like I’m signing a contract with the devil.”
Little did Dale know, but he was half right.
MILTON HAD NO idea how long he and his team had been playing. Fifteen minutes, fifteen hours, or even fifteen days, would have all seemed within the realm of possibility. Milton’s lack of sleep, his canteen full of Hypool-Active Overstimu Lake water, and the dazzling free-flowing immersion of Arcadia’s games had all conspired to erode Milton’s sense of time and sense of who he was. He was inseparable from the control console that seemed to fit him, snug and effortless, like a prosthetic limb. Milton, Sam/Sara, Caterwaul, Howler Monkey, and the Sunshine Sneezer played their team-based role-playing strategy games as one creature endowed with multiple joysticks. It was as if they were dreaming a mutual dream full of glittering geometry, physics-defying heroes, breathtakingly improbable landscapes, formidable villains, and a liquid blur of action that they drank in with their bloodshot eyes.
“I think we just made Terawatt,” the Sunshine Sneezer murmured, his eyes engaged in a tug-of-war with the screen.
“Awesome,” Howler Monkey mumbled, releasing his death grip on the gaming console just long enough to wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth.
The arcade noise washed over Milton like a soothing shower of sound, massaging away all thoughts of why he came here in the first place. He surrendered to the games—Anglican Avengers, Sufi-Sonic Cyborgs, Shalom Rangers, The Gospel Troop, and now Guardian Angel Strike (about a group of winged spiritual guides abandoning their assigned earth dwellers in disgust and forming a labor union). Sara thought, as Hazelle had suggested, that the game themes were designed to instantly engage a variety of different children based upon their core beliefs (a topic of burning importance to most every dead child, trying to reconcile the afterlife with their expectations). However, Sam thought the themes simply made for great gaming, as the stakes—especially for the fundamentalist games—were extremely high: If you won, you won big. If you lost, well, it was a case of “goodbye, cruel world. Hello, infinitely crueler afterworld.” Sam and Sara had argued their points, leading to one of the most interesting shoving matches Milton had ever seen.
As a team, the newly ranked Terawatts were unstoppable. Each brought their unique skills to the arena:
MILTON FAUSTER, AKA THE DORK KNIGHT
Rating: S for “shrewd”
Status: Happy with a side of edgy
Strengths: Strategic, diplomatic, able to keep eyes on big picture
JASLIN CHUNDER, AKA CATERWAUL
Rating: E for “empathetic”
Status: Dry-eyed
Strengths: Intuitive, can feel way around corners
MORTIMER FRANZENBURG,
AKA HOWLER MONKEY
Rating: Z for “Zen”
Status: So close to winning he can almost taste it
Strengths: Dogged calm, clarity in chaotic situations
TYLER SKAGGS, AKA THE SUNSHINE SNEEZER
Rating: T for “twitchy”
Status: Nothing to sneeze at
Strengths: Lightning reflexes, allergic to failure
SAM AND SARA BARDO, AKA SAM/SARA
Rating: DT for “double trouble”
Status: Two heads are better than one
Strengths: Consistency; deadly, unwavering focus; can take shifts (Sam recharging with power nap while Sara takes charge and vice versa)
It’s not that the games weren’t challenging. Far from it. It’s just that Milton and the Terawatts were locked completely in the flow of every game they played, their scores climbing to ludicrous heights, like the stock market during the Internet boom.
A guardian angel nearly assailed Howler Monkey with a halo blast before Sam/Sara “scabbed” the angel by shoving him out of the picket line. The angel dissolved into twinkling dust.
“Whoa! Thanks, Sam/Sara!” Howler Monkey exclaimed.
“You owe me, Noob,” Sam chuckled. “Let’s cut the jabber. Less QQ and more Pew Pew …”
Milton gave his fingerless wrestling gloves a quick, tightening tug before he clasped the console, preparing for another deadly airing of divine grievances. Just then, he heard a burst of static slice through the game chatter, followed by the sound of footsteps coming closer.
“Do you guys hear—” Milton said before remembering the receiver lodged in his ear.
Van Gogh’s ear … it’s online.
“Hello?” Milton heard someone say—Provost Marshal Tesla—through the earpiece. “Ah, yes. Hello, Edgar. Sorry. I know, I was supposed to call you.… Could you please turn your heart down? Thank you. I was talking to my connection … up on the Surface.”
Milton started. The Surface?
“Guys!” Milton called out to his friends. “I’m listening to Tesla!”
The Terawatts stared, unblinking, at their game screens.
“You’d better be paying attention, Dork Knight,” Sam replied with a sleepy slur. “You’re my wingman … and the fighting is getting heavy, which means … my eyelids are getting heavy, too.…”
“Van Gogh’s ear,” Milton replied. “I stuck it in Tesla’s penthouse. I can hear what he’s talking about. It sounds like he’s on the phone with Vice Principal Poe.”
“Poe?” exclaimed Howler Monkey. “Why would, like, Provost Marshal Tesla want to talk to a downer like Poe?”
“They’re talking about the Surface.”
“Whoa!” the Sunshine Sneezer said, wiping his dry nose out of habit, not out of necessity. “That’s wild. But what about Guardian Angel Strike?”
“Set it on Contract Negotiation,” Milton said. “That’ll buy us some time. Come here!”
The Terawatts huddled around Milton’s earpiece, which was lying on his outstretched palm.
“You know zhe double-yolk egg?” Tesla said, his voice frenetic and inconsistent, like an ungrounded electrical outlet. “Souls are like eggs. Most are normal, and sometimes you get a double-yolk soul—your Gandhis, your Martin Luther Kings—but there are also zhe half-souls. Very rare. Born on this side. Really, I know, extremely rare to zhe point of almost unheard of. Born on this side, so they die and then spend eternity on zhe other side. Anyway, my connection on zhe other side is one. A half-soul. I’m arranging zhe last few details with him. Mainly connection issues from zhe Sense-o-Rama to zhe Surface. It’s—”
“The
Sense-o-Rama?” Sara said, waking from her short catnap.
“—being worked on,” Tesla continued. “Between zhe Sense-o-Rama and zhe Shadow Box, it has been a considerable drain on zhe First Fire. But we’ll soon collect all zhe fuel we need to feed its unquenchable blaze … and zhe power to achieve our ends. Our new beginnings …”
“What is he talking about?” Caterwaul asked, her once-dry eyes again growing shiny with tears.
“I won’t lie to you, Edgar. There have been some glitches. Zhe first team wasn’t challenging enough.”
“Challenging?” Sara whispered. “What does he mean? A game is challenging … players are challenged.”
“They played skillfully but not soulfully,” Tesla continued. “They were overwhelmed. Perhaps your Shadow Box efforts drove too many to zhe converted Psychomanthiums too soon …”
“Psychomanthiums?!” Milton gasped. “Like at the Paranor Mall!”
“What’s … Psychomanthium?” Howler Monkey asked.
“They’re these supernatural mirror boxes that can connect the world of the living with the world of the dead … with us.”
“Zhe team has only now just gone offline,” Tesla added. “Zhe game is on autoplay now: addicting but not immersive enough. But I have another team waiting in the wings zhat I believe will put up much more of a fight. Perhaps less technically proficient, but much more instinctual. Zhe perfect adversaries for full-sensory gaming … Wait. I hear something. A … rustling.”
Uh-oh, Milton thought. Lucky must be awake.
Milton was guilt-stricken. His all-consuming marathon gaming had short-circuited his conscience, overriding all thoughts of what was truly important to him. Namely, Marlo and Lucky. And figuring out some way for them—for everyone—to escape from Heck, the dismal capital of underaged woe. But in Milton’s haste to leave one prison, he seemed to have rushed into another, one that incarcerated with bars of dazzle and distraction.
“It’s probably nothing,” Tesla continued, his voice squawking from Milton’s palm. “Perhaps just another solar flare. Like Thomas Edison’s crude, flickering lightbulb.” The mad inventor laughed bitterly.
A familiar, wet snuffling broke through Tesla’s cackling.
“There it is again,” the man faltered briefly. “My point, Edgar, is zhat Edison’s brilliance was zhat he invented something tangible first. Zhe lightbulb. Without electricity, though, it is worthless. My current made it valuable. But, alas, no one values what they cannot see. I only powered Edison’s legacy.”
Milton could hear Lucky’s faint squeaks of obsessive delight, followed by tiny tongue laps. Tesla’s voice grew gradually fainter.
“I won’t make zhe same mistake again, Edgar. My genius will be boldly evident to all. Ideas so powerful zhat they—unlike a lightbulb—will never grow dim. What? Speaking of dim? Oh, yes. Principal Bubb. I am keeping her in zhe dark about our activities, yes. Distracting her with her own ambition. And, in zhe event she does win, then Heck will be ripe for secession: each circle solely ruled by its own respective vice principal. And, to think, all it involves is zhe artful bending of her … ear!” Tesla yelped, causing feedback to squeal from Milton’s palm. “Holy govno! What is zhat thing doing with zhat ear?!”
Panting, puffing harder and faster, oozed out of the earpiece, followed by frantic scrabbling and the sound of a door whooshing open.
“Stop!!” Tesla yelled in the distance, his leather shoes scrambling across his floor. “A spy in zhe house of Tesla!”
The door slid closed. The steady thrum of Tesla’s elevator rumbled in Milton’s palm, causing the receiver to skitter across his hand before falling to the ground.
“Lucky’s … escaped,” Milton whispered.
Sara set her hand on Milton’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay,” she soothed. “You don’t get much more self-reliant than a ferret.”
“What are we going to do?” Caterwaul asked with a sniffle.
“About … what?” Sam grumbled, his face nearly stretching apart with a wide yawn before he fell asleep.
“All of this,” Milton said. “It’s some kind of … revenge for Tesla. And, by the sound of it, Vice Principal Poe, too. Snivel and Arcadia are connected—to each other and to the Surface.”
“But, like, why?” Howler Monkey asked, trying to pull his gaze away from his high-definition wraparound gaming screen.
“I don’t know,” Milton answered.
It was so frustrating. As soon as Milton had achieved something close to an idea, his thoughts scattered to the sky like frightened birds.
“If we can … somehow … cause a disturbance,” Milton managed. “Get the kids here mobilized … something to stall whatever Tesla has planned …”
“Maybe we could, like, you know,” Howler Monkey interjected, “start a Dance Dance Revolution down in the music-and-rhythm-games zone and see if it catches on.…”
“I know what we should do, Dork Knight,” Sara interrupted, her voice eerily calm like the eye of a storm.
“What?” Milton answered.
“Keep playing.”
“Huh?” said Howler Monkey.
“It’s like this,” Sara continued, rubbing her weary eyes with her fist. “We keep racking up points like the crazy point rackers we are until we can enter the Sense-o-Rama. That’s the key to this whole place. So either we get in and have a blast playing the most intense game ever invented …”
“Or?” Caterwaul asked, her voice tinged with worry.
“We find out what Provost Marshal Tesla is up to,” added Milton.
“And what happened to the Zetawatts,” the Sunshine Sneezer said grimly. “Firsthand.”
MILTON KNELT DOWN and picked up the earpiece. He heard ferret claws scratching across metal and the roar of arcade games.
Lucky! He’s here!
“Come back, you fuzzy white stowaway!” Tesla yelled in the distance.
“Tesla’s coming!” Milton exclaimed as he shoved the earpiece into his tight brown Arcadia shorts.
Lucky billowed across the Donkey Koncourse floor as the Arcadians, oblivious, fed their attention like quarters into the blinking, blipping machines.
No green smells. No brown smells. No blue smells. Just gray man smells. Their stare boxes. Endless of them. But there’s one smell—the boy—among the other people scent. So familiar! Salty sweet and kind! Tangled knot of odors, faint but true. Up and up high. Atop broken clatter floors. The boy! The ear! Happy, teeth-feet peace feeling!
“What?!” gasped Caterwaul.
“Lucky’s nose is second to none,” Milton explained. “He can always sniff me out, even right out of the shower. He’s coming, but, unfortunately, so is Tesla.”
“What should we, like, do?” Howler Monkey asked.
Milton ran over to the guardrail and looked down. A tiny white blip of fuzz streaked up the staircase. Through the sliding smoked-glass doors of the main entrance between the gargantuan gorilla’s feet ran Provost Marshal Tesla, spindly and freaky fast like a Serbian water-skipper.
Milton turned to his fellow Terawatts.
“Keep playing,” he said, his eyes darting quickly back to Lucky, hoping to urge his pet up the stairs faster through sheer concentration.
Lucky raced past Level Three, stopping briefly, confused by the sounds of trigger-happy chaos and blood-chilling screams of the first-person shooters, before he spilled up to the last level. Milton edged along the stairs, hoping to avoid Tesla’s gaze, and rushed toward Lucky.
“Lucky!” Milton said, scooping him into his arms. Provost Marshal Tesla’s frantic footsteps pounded the metal spiral stairs. Thinking fast, Milton pulled off his Arcadia Gr8 G4m3rz’s kerchief and folded it into a pouch, then tucked Lucky inside. He trotted back to his gaming quad just as Tesla careened onto Level Four, panting, his purple neon tie flickering with exertion.
“Have you … seen a … white rodent?” Provost Marshal Tesla wheezed in his crumbled Eastern European accent, a telephonic headset around his neck.
/> The Sunshine Sneezer shrugged.
“If it wasn’t in my line of fire,” he said, disgruntled angels reflected in his eyes, “then I didn’t see it.”
Tesla scanned Level Four dubiously. Lucky wriggled softly in Milton’s kerchief pouch before his master’s heat made him drowsy. The ferret tucked himself into a ball of sleeping fuzz. Provost Marshal Tesla marched toward the Terawatts’ gaming quad and studied the screens. Milton’s game was frozen on a picket line of indignant guardian angels on the cusp of civic unrest.
“This is a video game, not a safari,” Tesla said with a scowl. “You have to actually interact with it, especially if you want to get to zhe final level and download zhe special Screen Savior.”
He leaned into the quad and studied a string of numbers streaming past the bottom of the screen. His eyes widened with admiration.
“Well, whatever you are doing, it is working. Your accumulated scores have far surpassed my expectations.”
After one last, frenetic sweep of the level with his eyes, Provost Marshal Tesla straightened his purple neon tie.
“It is time,” he said, his voice as dark, cold, and treacherous as black ice. “Congratulations: You have graduated from Level Four and earned entry into a game of infinite possibility. Come. Follow me.…”
The Terawatts rose to their feet. Milton’s stomach gurgled in sickening waves like a digestive Lava lamp.
“Are you sure we’re ready?” he asked as he and the other gamers reluctantly followed Tesla to the stairway. “It’s just that … we want to be worthy of this honor,” Milton added, carefully probing for information, as if he were searching for broken glass in an ice bucket. “Are you sure our skills are a good match for what’s inside the Sense-o-Rama?”
Provost Marshal Tesla snorted, swishing the sides of his waistcoat with his long strides as he ascended the metal stairs.
“Zhat is for you to show me. You will see things no one else has seen. You will live a story in a way no one else has. I can only point you toward your destiny. It is for you to find it … to conquer it … to master it.…”
Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck Page 14
