by Geoff Rodkey
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
(MOM) DID YOU SEE THIS???
(DAD) OMG. That’s not real, is it?
IT’S REAL. THAT IS YOUR
SON’S HEAD
Did you tell him he could do that?
I DID NOT. VERY VERY ANGRY
AT ASHLEY
Could be worse
SHE PAID $75 FOR THAT MOHAWK
Calling you now
ASHLEY
Not only that, but Reese and I had to wander around Central Park looking for some nonexistent video shoot for, like, two hours. He was practically crying when he couldn’t find it.
REESE
It was the weirdest thing. Like, not only was there no video shoot, but when I googled “Barrando news” online, I found out he wasn’t even in America that day. [Editor’s note: Reese still has no clue that I sent the email.] And the next day, the only other person who said he even got the email was Xander. Which is cray! ’Cause he hates Barrando.
XANDER
Barrando sucks, yo. Everybody on Barcelona sucks. REAL MADRID FO-EVA!
CLAUDIA
I did not realize Xander hated Barrando.
Which, obviously, meant the Xander front of Operation Stupid Haircut was doomed from the beginning. And even though it worked brilliantly as far as tricking Reese into getting a Mohawk, it still turned out to be a total fail because of one thing I never anticipated.
REESE
I’m still bummed I didn’t meet Barrando or get to star in a video with him, but I’m really glad I got that email.
If I hadn’t, I never would’ve gotten a Mohawk. Which was BEAST!
CLAUDIA
He loved his Mohawk.
Like, seriously loved it. He could not have been more thrilled with his ridiculous-looking haircut.
Even worse, all his soccer idiot friends loved it, too.
REESE
It totally freaked out kids on other teams. Like, the next game, I stole three balls in a row from some kid on City Kickers, and I’m pretty sure it’s all because he was scared of my hair.
I just wish Mom would let me get another Mohawk.
MOM AND DAD (text messages)
Reese says he wants another
Mohawk
Ed. Note: sent by Dad 2 months later,
after Reese’s hair grew back
Over my dead body
CHAPTER 10
THE WAR COMES TO PLANET AMIGO
CLAUDIA
Operation Stupid Haircut was a real setback. But when it was over, I realized if I wanted to win The War, I had to start thinking like my enemies.
I mean, public humiliation was the worst possible punishment I could think of for ME. And also for anybody with a brain. But Reese and Xander could care less about it, because they were too immature to feel shame. You know how little babies walk around naked, just letting their business hang out all over the place, because they don’t know any better?
Mentally speaking, that’s pretty much where Reese and Xander were at. Which meant if I wanted to make them feel pain, I had to hit them in a place where they actually felt it.
So I asked myself: what does Reese REALLY care about? What’s the most important thing in his life?
And how can I destroy it?
There was only one answer.
Actually, there were two. But one of them was his soccer team, and destroying Manhattan United would hurt too many innocent bystanders. Like Jens Kuypers, who plays “striker” (whatever that is) and is such an incredibly kind person that he actually friended me on ClickChat a couple of days after the whole “Vest Song” horror show. Which, just like when he said hi to me in the hallway, was very sweet of him but only made me feel even more lame, because I knew it was just a pity-friending.
So if I couldn’t go after the soccer team, that just left the one other Most Important Thing In Reese’s Life:
MetaWorld. Which I was totally clueless about.
Because as far as I was concerned, only idiots played MetaWorld.
So I had to do some research. I got a MetaWorld account, and here is the first thing I realized, which was a real shock:
MetaWorld is actually really, really cool.
MetaWorld
MetaWorld is a sandbox indie video game in which players create three-dimensional environments on planets they design themselves. Beginning with MetaWorld 2.0, players can play in “Society” mode, in which they create economic and political structures for their planets…
It isn’t so much a video game as a whole bunch of video games mashed into one. Depending on what mode you’re in, there are a TON of different ways to play MetaWorld.
For example, the first night I got my account, I used Society mode to create my own planet. I called it “Claudarama,” and I made everybody who lived there artists and musicians, because that’s the kind of planet I’d want to live on.
But since everybody was busy making art, nobody was growing any food. So there was nothing to eat. And right away, all my artists started starving to death.
So I had to create a bunch of farmers. Plus factory workers, and teachers, and all kinds of other people, because it turns out if your society is full of just artists and musicians, it will pretty much collapse.
So that was very educational.
Then I decided to create a castle for Claudarama’s ruler, President Claudaroo. But to raise enough money to build an awesome one, Ed. Note: would’ve looked like Taj Mahal (if I’d finished it) I had to crank up my planetary tax rate to 70%.
Which must have been way too high, because before I even started building the castle, everybody went on strike. Including the artists and musicians.
Which was a real slap in the face, seeing as how I’d created them.
To get everybody back to work, I had to build a pretty serious police force and knock some heads. I felt bad about that, but if you don’t want your planet to be a hot mess, you have to make some tough choices.
Again, VERY educational.
After I got the strike problem straightened out, I was going to go back to building my castle. But then I looked at the clock and realized it was almost midnight and I hadn’t started studying for my French test the next day.
Like I said, MetaWorld is really cool. It’s actually a little TOO cool, because it’s totally addictive.
And at first, I was confused, because it was the kind of cool that Reese would never, ever be into. It was way too interesting and smart for him.
Then I discovered Conquest mode.
MetaWorld
… MetaWorld 3.0 introduced a new gameplay mode, “Conquest,” in which players can do battle in both multiplayer arena combat and unlimited, at-large warfare…
THAT made a lot more sense. There was no way Reese was spending hundreds of hours online just building stuff and making sure his planet’s economy didn’t fall apart.
But killing people? Totally his thing.
At first, I assumed he was killing people on a planet of his own, and if I wanted to take him down, I’d have to turn Claudarama into a military superpower and squash Reese’s planet like a moldy orange.
But it turned out his planet, which was called “ReeseRulez,” was basically an apocalyptic wasteland, and not in a fun way. Reese was so bad at taking care of it—according to his activity log, he hadn’t even visited there in three months—that the whole place had been overrun by some kind of zombie chickens. They’d eaten all the other living things on the planet, and by the time I logged on, they were pecking each other’s brains out.
This was mystifying. If Reese wasn’t hanging out on his own planet, where was he spending the twelve hours a day he was logged on to MetaWorld?
The answer was Planet Amigo.
REESE
Planet Amigo is this totally beast planet that Akash Gupta, who’s an eighth grader at Culvert, built in Conquest mode with his friends.
Akash is crazy good at programming, so Planet Amigo has all kinds of awesome deathmatch aren
as and this really cool ranking system where you can get money by winning deathmatches.
Not real money. Planet Amigo money. But that’s just as good, because you can use it to build a giant castle for your character to live in, plus an army to protect the castle so nobody burns it down.
And you can use your army to burn down other people’s castles. Which is cool. Ed. Note: also violent/antisocial
Akash and his friends used to crush everybody in the deathmatches, but I guess they got sick of it, because they’re hardly ever on Planet Amigo anymore. Ever since they left, me and Xander have been pwning it. Wyatt’s pretty good, too. So’s Wenzhi, but his parents only let him play on the weekends. James Mantolini was okay, but he kept griefing everybody, so Akash banned him.
And lately, some Finnish kids have been kicking butt. I’m a little worried about them. They kind of came out of nowhere, and they seem like trouble.
Right now, though, me and Xander pretty much rule the planet. We’ve got the biggest castles and the most soldiers, and if we wanted to, we could go on a rampage and burn down everybody else’s castle.
But then they’d all quit, and there’d be nobody left to beat in the deathmatches. So we let them chill.
CLAUDIA
Basically, Conquest mode is MetaWorld for stupid violent people. I don’t know why they don’t just call it Stupid Violent mode. But whatever.
Once I realized where Reese was spending all his time, I created an avatar, “StealthViper999” (because it sounded like a username one of Reese’s idiot friends would have), made it look like a musclebound thug (ditto), and logged on to Planet Amigo.
When I spawned, I was all alone in an empty hut. I went outside and found myself in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland. Unlike ReeseRulez, though, it seemed like an intentional apocalyptic wasteland. There were a few other little huts scattered around, and in the distance I could see a couple of big, castle-type buildings.
Then a musclebound thug (it turned out 99% of everybody on Planet Amigo is a musclebound thug) came out of a hut and walked toward me.
This is when I found out you can chat with other characters in MetaWorld by typing into the box at the bottom of the screen. The conversation started friendly enough:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
<
<
CLAUDIA
But then he pulled a sword, and it got ugly:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
<
<
CLAUDIA
He hacked me to death while I was trying to type “what is a n00b?” into the chat box.
I respawned back in my empty hut, and when I went outside again, GorillaZBT was right where I’d left him.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
<
<
<
CLAUDIA
He put the sword away, and I thought we were making progress.
But then he took out a torch and set fire to my hut.
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
<
<
<
GorillaZBT burned down StealthViper999’s hut.
<
CLAUDIA
Then he hacked me to death with his sword again.
Only this time, I no longer had a hut to respawn in, because he’d burned it down.
So I respawned in some random place in the middle of the wasteland.
Fortunately, GorillaZBT was nowhere in sight.
Unfortunately, other people’s avatars were.
And they hacked me to death.
This kept happening until I figured out how to run away. Which was pretty easy, except that I’d be running along and suddenly hit some kind of invisible force field, and a message would pop up that said:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
Access to DESERT3 denied. Deathmatch in progress. If you wish to participate in a Planet Amigo deathmatch, please sign up in AMIGOCENTRAL.
CLAUDIA
It took me forever—and a ton of reading MetaWorld wikis—to figure out what all that meant.
Basically, if you want to avoid getting hacked to death by everybody you meet on Planet Amigo, you need a castle and an army. But to buy those, you need a lot of goldz, which is Planet Amigo’s currency. (I don’t know why there’s a “z” on the end.)
You can earn goldz by doing something psychotic and/or violent: killing somebody is worth 5 goldz, burning down their hut is worth 10 goldz, etc.
But if you win a deathmatch—which is a big battle where everybody tries to kill each other all at once—you get 1,000 goldz.
So deathmatches are the really important thing on Planet Amigo. A new deathmatch starts every time a dozen players join one, so they’re going on all the time.
And Reese must have won TONS of them, because when I finally found his castle, it was absolutely enormous. Also, if I walked too close to it, a bunch of soldiers would come running out, and I’d get a message that said:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
<
CLAUDIA
If I didn’t turn around and leave after that, Reese’s soldiers would hack me to death.
This was all pretty daunting. Because it was obvious the only way to take down Reese on Planet Amigo was to win so many deathmatches that I could afford to buy an even bigger army than Reese had.
And when I started entering StealthViper999 in deathmatches, it did not go well.
Here’s what the chat log looked like for pretty much every single deathmatch I entered as StealthViper999:
METAWORLD CHAT LOG
16 players in FOREST1 Deathmatch on Planet Amigo.
FOREST1 Deathmatch beginning in 5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
Awrsum killed StealthViper999.
CLAUDIA
I died first every time. I was getting killed before I could even take my sword out.
I’m not even sure I had a sword. The whole situation was very confusing.
Maybe if I’d been able to play deathmatches 24/7 for a few weeks, I could’ve gotten a handle on things. But at this point, I’d spent three straight nights figuring out MetaWorld, and it was starting to mess up my life: my guitar lesson that week was a disaster because I hadn’t practiced, I was way behind on my reading response in English, and I’d gotten an 82 on my French test. (If Reese got an 82 on a French test, he’d be so thrilled he’d tape it to the refrigerator, but for me it was totally shameful.)
So even though I was still desperate for revenge on Reese and Xander, the only way it was going to happen on Planet Amigo was through some kind of divine intervention.
Fortunately, I happen to be close personal friends with the god of Planet Amigo.
CHAPTER 11
(PLANET AMIGO’S) GOD IS ON MY SIDE
CLAUDIA
Akash Gupta is Planet Amigo’s admin, which means he not only created the whole planet, but he can do whatever he wants on it.
So if you want to kill hundreds of soldiers and burn down somebody’s giant castle even though you’re so clueless you can’t figure out which button activates your sword, Akash is a very good person to know.
AKASH GUPTA, admin/god of Planet Amigo
It’s called Planet Amigo because me, Dave, and Kwame started planning it in Spanish class last year. Once the younger kids found out about it, the whole thing kind of exploded. Half the people on there now don’t even go to Culvert.
Some of them
are from Finland, which makes no sense at all. I mean, how did they even find out about it?
But it’s a real hassle to be admin of a planet that big—like, I’m constantly getting messages from sixth graders accusing each other of griefing, so I have to ban them. And once a sixth grader’s mom called me because I’d banned her kid for griefing everybody, and I had to be, like, “Look, lady, your son is deranged.”
CLAUDIA
Let me guess: James Mantolini?
AKASH
Yeah. There’s something wrong with that kid.
Anyway, the crazy thing is, I hardly ever go on Planet Amigo myself anymore. I’m really into BluntForce now, so mostly I hang out on the multiplayer there. MetaWorld seems kind of babyish, to be honest.
But it’s still my planet, so I have to admin it. Which means I’m stuck putting all this time into being the god of a place where I don’t even hang out. It’s pretty annoying.
