by Scott Meyer
Todd turned to his captives as if they were a posse of friends who had just seen him get shot down in a bar. “Some chicks just don’t know how to take a compliment.”
Gwen said, “And some dudes don’t know how to give one.”
Brit froze dead in her tracks. She was almost to the corner of the hole in the wall where Todd’s computer sat, but when Todd turned to look at his prisoners, the entire opening was in his field of view. Even when Todd turned his attention back to Martin and Gwen, Brit didn’t dare get any closer. He could turn back at any time, and if he saw her, they were done. She looked to Roy and shrugged. He nodded slightly, understanding her predicament.
Todd looked at Martin and Gwen, but he talked to himself. “They must have followed their friends here. Applied the callout. The system would have automatically applied a dampening field and started them . . .”
Todd’s eyes got wide. “You followed them all the way here. That means you did the quest too. You had to. It never occurred to me to look back behind these jerks. I mean, I knew they were dumb enough to let me trap them, but it never occurred to me that you might actually trap yourselves.”
Todd laughed far longer than the situation called for, then said, “Well, I’m glad you did the quest just like them, because you’re going to die just like them. I have powers here. You don’t. That means you’re going to watch me kill your friends; then I’m going to do the same thing to you.”
Roy stepped forward. “Not the same thing.”
“What do you mean?” Todd asked.
“Jeff told me all about you,” Roy explained. “He told me why you got banished, what you did to that poor peasant. From the looks of it, you’re doing the same to the guys there.”
“What is he doing?” Martin asked.
Roy said, “Phillip never told you? Gwen either?”
Gwen said, “It never came up, because I haven’t thought about Todd once since the minute he left. Not once.” She glared at Todd as she said this, wanting to make sure he understood. He winked at her.
Roy said, “For his macro he created, well . . . Jeff described it as bands of force fields, designed to exactly fit a specific peasant. Once the peasant’s body was inside the force field, he would force the peasant to do anything he wanted. The bands would hold him immobile, or manipulate the poor bastard’s limbs like a puppet.”
“Wow,” Martin said. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, awfully labor intensive. The force bands have to fit perfectly. If there’s even a quarter inch of space, the victim can struggle or slide out, and the whole thing is ruined. He has to take detailed measurements and tailor each force field to the intended victim, and that takes time.”
Martin asked, “Couldn’t he come up with code to automatically generate the force fields?”
Todd shook his head and opened his mouth to answer, but Roy interrupted. “If he was clever. Jeff has a couple of ideas about how it could be done, just as an intellectual exercise, of course. Like I said, Jeff is clever, Todd here isn’t.”
“Jeff isn’t either,” Todd spat. “Not anymore. He’s dead. I killed him, in case my earlier hints were too subtle for you.”
Roy said, “Nah, we’re time travelers. Whatever you did, we’ll think of a way to undo it.”
“Not this,” Todd said. “I made a point of it. I dropped him off a cliff; then I personally watched him fall all the way down until he crunched on the rocks. I can show you a video of it if you want.” He motioned over his shoulder to the computer sitting in the opening to his quarters, not realizing that said computer was the most important object in the world as far as everyone else in the room was concerned.
Todd took a moment to savor the looks of fear and uncertainty on Martin’s, Gwen’s, and Roy’s faces as they pondered Jeff’s fate, then said, “Okay, you’ve got a point about the force fields. Of course, I could just jump back into the past, measure you all up for some force fields, then time-jump back, but I have a better idea.”
Todd rummaged around in his shoulder bag for a moment, then pulled out a silver, two-handled game controller. Phillip, Gary, Jimmy, and Tyler recognized it instantly. So did Martin.
“Hey,” Martin said, “a Wave Bird! I played a lot of Double Dash with one of those.”
Todd said, “That was a good game.”
“Yeah,” Martin agreed. “Mario Kart never really got better.”
Todd asked, “Did you ever actually try to use that stupid plastic steering wheel on the Wii?”
“Yeah, it was useless. I ended up using my old GameCube controllers anyway.”
Todd smiled. “I’m glad you like my controller, because I’m going to use it to kill you.”
Todd pressed the screen of his tablet with one of the free fingers of the hand that held the game controller. A glowing blue football-shaped jewel about a foot tall appeared above Phillip’s head and hung there, spinning in midair.
Todd said, “You’ve played your share of games. I’m sure you recognize what that marker means. I’ve applied the control and melee combat algorithm from one of my company’s games to your friends. See, my original idea was to play them through the entire quest myself, but I decided it would be easier just to watch them struggle. I left the code in the system anyway, because it was easier to just deactivate it than to fully remove it. It’s a good thing I was lazy, because now I get to kill you three with your own friends. And, for a little extra fun, I think I’ll give them their speech back. It should be funny to listen to them cry and beg while they murder you.”
Todd pressed the tablet again, then turned it off and put it away. He waited a moment in silence, then turned to his captives, making Brit glad she had decided to hold still. When he looked at Martin, Todd turned, and Brit was standing directly behind him, but whether he was looking at Martin to one side or his bound captives on the other, all he’d need to do would be pivot a bit farther and he could easily catch her in his peripheral vision.
Todd said, “Well? They came all this way to rescue you. Don’t you have anything to say?”
Phillip said, “Hi.”
Martin said, “Hey.”
Roy, Gwen, Tyler, Gary, and Jimmy all followed suit with quiet, monosyllabic greetings. Of course, they all had a great deal more they wanted to say, but not in front of Todd.
Todd looked back to his captives, causing yet another heart-stopping close call for Brit, and everyone else.
Todd said, “I don’t think any of you appreciate the gravity of your situation. I’m about to force you all to fight to the death, and any of you who survives the battle will get the reward of being killed by me personally. One hour from now, you’ll all be corpses, and I’ll be seeing what’s on TV.”
Martin’s mind was racing. Playing this low-key had clearly agitated Todd, but it also caused him to lose focus, nearly getting Brit spotted as he shifted his attention back and forth. Martin needed to get Todd to focus on him, and the easiest way to get attention is always to be unpleasant.
“No,” Martin said as smugly as possible. “That’s not how this is going to play out.”
“Really?” Todd asked. “Why not?”
“Because you’re gonna screw it up. We all know it. I’m sure you like to think you’re this devious, calculating killer, but you’re not. I don’t know if it’s that you’re too dumb, or lack the backbone, or maybe your heart’s not really in it. Really, probably all three. The point is, you’ll screw this up just like you have every other part of this whole thing.”
Tyler nearly voiced his agreement, but thought better of it. Brit was on the move again, and they all wanted Todd to keep his eyes on Martin.
Todd said, “I killed Jeff!”
“Yeah, your first mistake,” Martin said. “Take out the most mild-mannered member of the group and keep the argumentative, immature, dangerous ones to play with. Brilliant.”
“It was brilliant,” Todd cried. “I made them all run around, risking their lives for my amusement, and it worked!”
“Only because you’re easily amused,” Martin said. It took all of his willpower not to look at Brit, who was now behind their friends. She had reached the corner of Todd’s apartment and was trying to silently lift herself up onto the ledge. Martin needed to keep Todd focused on him.
“You’re stupid, so everything you’ve made has been stupid, and the fact that you’re happy with it is proof of its stupidity, or yours . . . or, really, both. Anyway, you can’t kill us. You’ve already tried,” Martin said. “There are only three of us, and we survived everything you threw at us. The mountain pass, the wolves that always attack in pairs, the army of soldiers in front of the castle, that enchanted cloak you left in our way that spawned eight wolves when I put it on . . . Why are you all laughing?”
Phillip, Jimmy, Gary, and Tyler were chuckling, in spite of themselves, but stopped abruptly when Todd turned to look at them. They were certain they had blown it, but behind them Brit had made it up onto the ledge and was ducking behind the computer desk. If Todd had looked directly toward her for even a second he’d have seen something was wrong, but he didn’t. He glanced at his prisoners, then turned away smugly, happy that they’d stopped laughing when he looked at them.
Todd said, “You never caught on to what Tyler here did. None of that stuff was really meant to kill anyone. It could have, and it wouldn’t have broken my heart, but none of it was supposed to be a hundred percent fatal. This next part is.”
Todd pushed the left thumb stick of his controller forward. Phillip lurched forward with an awkward, zombielike gait. Tyler, Gary, and Jimmy walked beside him, shoulder to shoulder, parting to walk around Todd. Gary looked terrible, but his missing foot did not seem to impede his walking in the slightest. The ring-shaped cutting blade that had been hovering directly beneath Gary’s severed leg remained firmly in place. Martin remembered that the force fields were supporting their weight and moving their limbs, meaning that they would be much stronger than normal, even without their powers.
They stopped, standing like a human barrier between their tormenter and their would-be rescuers.
“All righty, then,” Todd muttered, fiddling with his controller. “Go into fight mode.”
All four of the prisoners drew their swords. In unison they assumed a fighting stance, right feet forward, right hands holding their swords high in front of them. As Phillip’s right arm extended, he let out a bloodcurdling shriek. The sling that had been cradling his arm was made of the same beige fur as his surprisingly fluffy coat and had blended in so well that Martin hadn’t realized his arm was hurt. Phillip’s arm reached forward with the same speed and force as the others. The sling stretched, then ripped. It would have been an impressive demonstration of strength if he hadn’t been screaming bloody murder.
Phillip stood panting, holding his broken arm out ahead of himself. His makeshift sling was pinned to his forearm by the force field, but its broken straps dangled uselessly.
Todd lit up. “Hey, that gives me an idea!” He fumbled with his controller, and various parts of Phillip’s body glowed until his left arm was selected. Todd rotated the right thumb stick, and Phillip’s arm rotated, twisting his upper arm well past the point that a nonbroken arm could go. Phillip grimaced and shook, but he didn’t cry out.
Todd said, “I think on G.I. Joe dolls they used to call that a ‘kung fu grip.’ ” He looked at Martin, then Gwen, then Roy. He seemed genuinely surprised that none of them saw the humor in the situation. His face darkened.
Todd said, “Ugh, I’m tired of this. Let’s get it over with.”
Phillip’s arm rotated back to normal and stopped glowing. A neon-blue line traced through the air from Phillip to Martin. The glowing blue jewel moved from Phillip to Gary, and a line extended from him to Gwen. Then the jewel leapt to Tyler, and a line connected him to Roy. Finally the jewel jumped to Jimmy, and after a moment of thought on Todd’s part, a line went from Jimmy to Martin.
Martin said, “So I’m getting double-teamed. I’d be flattered, if your opinion meant anything to me.”
Todd said, “Yak, yak, yak.” The jewel went back to Phillip and all at once the four captives moved toward their designated targets. Jimmy, Tyler, and Gary took a straight path to their opponents, but Phillip was under Todd’s direct control and weaved a bit on his way to Martin.
Brit was horrified that her friends were fighting her other friends but was delighted that the battle was taking place in front of Todd, giving him no reason to turn around and see her messing with his computer. The screen was dark, but the monitor’s power light was flashing. She twisted the speaker’s volume knob all the way down to nothing, then moved the mouse back and forth, hoping to wake the computer up.
This Todd guy seems like the type to either dumb things down to where even a child could handle it or keep everything convoluted and disorganized, she thought. With any luck, there’ll be one application running with a nice big button labeled “Restore powers.”
The black screen blinked, then resolved into a recognizable Windows desktop. The task bar was filled with the icons of minimized running programs, all with the same icon, a cartoon picture of a black computer screen. The left half of the desktop was a grid of program and document icons, each with a long nonsensical file name. They were lined up so tightly that they obscured most of the non-Disney-sanctioned drawing of Jessica Rabbit that Todd was using for a wallpaper image.
Todd only had direct control over one of his prisoners at a time. He started with Phillip. The others were all governed by the same poorly designed fighting algorithm that had controlled almost everything hostile since the quest started. This meant that Tyler and Gary had advanced on Gwen and Roy, stood motionless in a threatening pose for a moment, then each attacked their quarry with a single swing. Gary took a swing at Gwen while Tyler attacked Roy. Of course, Gwen and Roy could have killed them easily at that point, but they didn’t want to. Instead, they blocked the blow with their own swords, then waited for the next attack, which always came from the same side, at the same speed, after the same amount of time.
I never knew there was such a thing as being “surprisingly predictable,” Gwen thought.
Martin had both Phillip and Jimmy to contend with, but because Jimmy was also governed by the computer, he was waiting his turn while Phillip attacked. Phillip’s swings were much less predictable, since they were being controlled by a real human being, but that human being was Todd, who was proving to be a bit of a button masher. Martin had his hands full fending off Phillip’s flailing attacks.
Phillip was clearly in tremendous pain. Martin could only imagine that all of this movement with an unsupported broken arm would be excruciating. Martin tried to get Phillip’s mind off the pain.
Martin said, “Nice mink you’ve got there, Zsa Zsa.”
Phillip took a wild swing toward Martin’s midsection, which Martin handily blocked.
“Is that you, Martin?” Phillip asked. “I didn’t recognize you dressed like a person instead of the mirror ball at Studio 54.”
Martin said, “God, you are old.”
Phillip’s body brought his sword down viciously with both hands. His mouth asked, “Would it have been less dated to say you usually dressed like the Silver Surfer?”
“Not by much,” Martin said, holding Phillip’s blade at bay. “It’s good to see you in one piece, Phillip.”
Phillip said, “You too, Martin. Try to stay that way.”
Gwen’s main challenge was not fighting off Gary’s attacks but resisting the urge to offer him a seat and try to get him medical attention.
“You look like hell,” she said, deflecting one of his sword thrusts.
Gary said, “Sounds about right. That’s how I feel.” His skin was pale. He was pouring sweat. He looked like he
could pass out any second.
Gwen said, “Stay awake, Gary. I can tell you want to go to sleep, but don’t. You lost some blood—you’re probably in shock. You need to stay awake.”
“I’ll try,” Gary said, swinging his sword toward Gwen’s head. “But it ain’t easy.”
Gwen said, “I know.” She raised her voice so Todd couldn’t help but hear. “It just shows how poorly made this whole thing is, that you’re having to struggle to stay awake while in the middle of a sword fight.”
Todd continued mashing the buttons and staring intently at Phillip and Martin’s fight but split his attention long enough to say, “Go ahead, Gary. Fall asleep. It won’t make any difference. The force fields are doing the fighting. Get some sleep. Heck, don’t bother waking up at all. Fine by me. Your corpse will keep fighting until Gwen gets tired and slips up.”
Roy asked, “But if they’re dead, won’t they drop their swords?”
Todd said, “No, the force field’s holding the sword. Even if they did drop it, I could still make them slap you to death with their limp corpse hands. That actually sounds pretty entertaining, now that I think about it. Huh. Maybe later, if this starts to get boring. I guess we’ll just have to see where the evening takes us.”
Brit tuned the rest of the world out as she sifted through applications and screens at breakneck speed. Her job was to end the fighting below, not pay attention to it. The faster she found a way to get their powers back, the sooner the fight would end.
Some of the active applications seemed to control aspects of the quest they’d been through; others governed things they hadn’t seen, like a giant spider. Most of the windows were images of locations, like surveillance-cam footage of the path they’d taken. She could see the mine, the desert, the castle, but the majority of the images were live feeds of the inside of a cabin. Brit assumed that it was the roadhouse where the Gwen-shaped temptresses had tried to draw them in, seeing as the place was crawling with half-dressed Gwenches. Every angle of every room was covered, including the bathroom. Nothing happened in that place without Todd seeing it. Brit tucked this knowledge away to either protect Gwen from or torment Gwen with, depending on her mood at the time.
