Press Start to Play

by Daniel H. Wilson

  No: not completely featureless. “Left side, wainscot,” I said. “Is that another puzzle?”

  Artie tilted his head. “I think so.” The giggling from the shadows got louder when he tapped on the left side of the screen, and a message popped up:

  YOU ARE NOT READY FOR WHAT YOUR ACTIONS WOULD UNLEASH.

  The camera didn’t move. Artie sighed. “Okay, well, on the plus side, it’s not going to let us try an advanced puzzle before we clear out the basic ones.”

  “Yeah, and on the negative side, we’re stuck here until we either get sucked into another dimension with an ancient evil—which is so Syfy Saturday night, I can’t even—or until we finish the whole game. How big is this thing?”

  “I don’t know. A few gigabytes. And hey, we could always die of mysterious causes before we do either.” Artie began mousing around the screen, looking for something clickable.

  I groaned. “Way to look on the bright side.”

  “I try.”

  I resisted the urge to strangle my cousin. It wouldn’t have done either one of us any good, and I couldn’t reach the keyboard from where I was stuck. “All right, while you find the next accessible puzzle, how about you tell me why a bunch of hidebehinds would be targeting you via evil video game. That doesn’t feel like the sort of thing that happens at random, you know?”

  “I don’t know! I haven’t done anything!”

  I smacked him in the back of the head.

  “Ow!” Artie twisted as much as he could, trying to look at me. “What did you do that for?”

  “You’re not thinking. You’re supposed to be the smart one. One of the smart ones. Smarter than your sister, or mine. So think. Why would someone be out to get you? What have you been posting on that forum of yours?”

  “Nothing.” Something about his tone made it pretty clear that he was lying. I stayed silent. Artie sighed. “Nothing important. There’s a forum about cryptid injuries is all. You know, like ‘how do you patch a tear in the webbing between your fingers,’ or ‘what kind of mange treatments work for therianthropes.’ That sort of thing.” His voice took on a defensive note as he added, “It’s hard not being the dominant species. You don’t always know where to turn for information, you know? So sometimes we turn to each other.”

  “What were you posting, Artie?”

  He clicked a stripe in the wallpaper. The camera zoomed in, showing another knotwork puzzle, as he said miserably, “Sarah. I was posting about Sarah. How there was this Johrlac girl I knew, and she’d managed to hurt herself pretty bad, and did anyone know what I could do to help her get better.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from smacking him again. It wouldn’t have done any good, and more, it wouldn’t have been fair. He was asking the same questions we’d all been asking for months. He’d just taken them to a new forum. The fact that he might have gotten us killed in the process was almost irrelevant.

  “I guess maybe someone could have gotten upset by me talking about taking care of a cuckoo like she was a person, even though she is a person,” Artie concluded morosely. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know you didn’t mean to,” I said. “Given that there’s a cuckoo in the game, I’m going to bet that it wasn’t talking about Sarah like a person that got you into trouble. It was admitting that you knew she existed at all. This is an assassination attempt.”

  “Really? Cool.” Artie dragged something down the side of the line of knotwork, which warped into another series of figures. He began swapping them around, exchanging them for each other at a speed that made it clear he knew what he was doing, even if I didn’t. “I mean, bad and terrible and probably something I’m going to get yelled at for, but you know. Also cool. I don’t get many assassination attempts aimed in my direction.”

  “Yes, you’re the family wallflower, I know,” I deadpanned. “What are you doing?”

  “This is something Sarah showed me once. It’s a series of mathematical transformations. Fun, huh?”

  “Yeah, fun,” I said uneasily. “Okay: cuckoos can’t use magic, at least not runic magic, which means our mystery cuckoo didn’t design the game.”

  “No, the hidebehinds did that,” agreed Artie. He clicked his mouse. The figure went through another transformation, going smooth and blending into the wallpaper. The camera pulled out again, and the cuckoo’s lips curled upward in a warm smile.

  I jumped—or tried to, anyway, and had to grab for Artie’s chair to keep myself from going sprawling on the tarry floor. I’d grown so accustomed to the cuckoo woman being a still picture that I hadn’t expected to see her move.

  “You’re smart; that’s good,” she said, and the disturbing part was that she sounded like she meant it. It was more fun for her if we were smart. “This room has been used to keep Robin imprisoned for generations. Every piece is a puzzle. Every puzzle has a solution. If you can complete them all, the runes will be redrawn, and your release will be at hand.”

  “Sounds good,” said Artie, and he started to move his mouse again. I grabbed his arm, freezing him in mid-motion.

  “The video hasn’t finished,” I said softly. “She’s still watching you. Look at her nostrils.” The cuckoo woman’s nostrils were very slightly flared, like she smelled something unpleasant. That was the only sign that the feed was still live.

  “So?”

  “So she said that everything in the room was a puzzle, and she’s in the room. I think…I think if you try to trigger another puzzle while she’s active, it may count as losing. I’d really rather not lose, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Yeah, no, getting sucked into some unknown dimension to hang with Robin, not my idea of a good time.” Cautiously, Artie brought the mouse back around to the cuckoo woman, and clicked on her nose.

  Her face split into a grin even wider than the one she’d been wearing before. “Fearless questers, brave and true, what gift can I give to you?” She stopped then, and appeared to be waiting.

  “What?” I demanded. “That’s not a riddle. That’s barely even a question. That can’t be the whole puzzle.”

  “Sure it can,” said Artie philosophically. “She’s a cuckoo, and cuckoos are all assholes. I bet that’s a super long, easy riddle by their standards. I mean, really, the question is whether or not she’s playing fair. If she is, then there’s an answer we can guess from what we already know. If she’s not, I might as well just do a keyboard smash, because we’re about to be eaten by a video game.”

  “Hidebehinds are inherently fair,” I said. “Assume that since they programmed the game—”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Assume that since they probably programmed the game, they’re making her play fair. That means the riddle has an answer. I can’t promise we won’t be penalized for capitalization or anything, but at least we have something resembling a fighting chance.”

  “Oh. In that case…” Artie leaned forward and typed something in before I could object. We both focused our attention on the screen, barely breathing as we waited to see what would happen next.

  The cuckoo’s smile faded. “Really? That’s what you want from me, out of everything in this world? I won’t forget.” Then she turned and stormed out of the picture, opening the door on the far wall to reveal a hallway beyond. The door swung slowly shut behind her, but the screen remained lit, and no dread portals appeared. We hadn’t lost the game yet.

  Artie let out a slow breath. “Whew,” he said.

  I smacked him in the back of the head. “What did you type?” I demanded.

  “The only thing I could type. When a cuckoo that isn’t Sarah or Grandma Angela asks what she can do for you, the answer is ‘leave.’ ”

  I blinked. And then I laughed. “God, I love you.”

  “I know,” said Artie, and he clicked on another puzzle.

  —

  What felt like hours later, we were still playing, and the darkness still held absolute dominion over the room. The gi
ggles from the shadows had been replaced by moans, except when they were replaced by hellish screams that made it difficult for us to concentrate on the puzzles we were struggling to solve. The cuckoo woman did not return. I had to view that as a good thing, since otherwise, it would have been proof that we had already lost, and that the game was just toying with us. I didn’t like being toyed with.

  “I need to pee,” said Artie glumly.

  “Yeah, and my feet hurt,” I said. “How many puzzles do you think we have left?”

  “I don’t know. Every time I think we’re done, two more pop up.” Artie hesitated before asking the question I’d been fighting not to ask myself for the last four puzzles: “Do you think they’re ever going to end? Because I’m not sure starving to death in my bedroom is any better than being sucked into a prison dimension.”

  “We won’t starve to death,” I said. “We’ll die of dehydration long before that point.”

  “I knew there was a reason you were my favorite cousin.” The fear in Artie’s voice was getting clearer with every word. “Annie…what if this never ends?”

  “It’ll end. You’ll see. We just need to figure out why we’re playing. You posted about Sarah, and there’s a cuckoo in the game: I think it’s pretty clear that the cuckoos sent this for you, after getting the hidebehinds to program it, which explains the fairness. You said you downloaded this from your forum? That means it’s pretty new, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s still being play-tested. I guess if I never log on again, they know it works.”

  “Okay. So that means they’re not completely sure it does what it’s supposed to. They’re testing. We’re going to have to track them down and kick their teeth in after we get done with this, you realize, but…have you tried hitting ‘escape’?”

  “What.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of utter disbelief, like I had just said the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever uttered.

  “They can’t have played all the way through every time they decided to test a new puzzle. There has to be a way out.”

  “Annie—”

  “Can you think of a better one?”

  There was a long pause before Artie said, sounding somewhat sullen, “If we get sucked into a localized equivalent of hell for a hundred years, I am blaming you.”

  “Maybe we can find Grandpa Thomas while we’re there.” I squeezed his shoulder. “Just try it.”

  Artie sighed, raised his hand, and pressed the “escape” key. Words appeared on the screen:

  EXIT AND SAVE?

  Y/N

  “Oh my God say yes Artie say yes right now,” I said.

  “Yes!” Artie stabbed his finger at the keyboard. The screen went black. The moaning in the shadows stopped.

  The lights came back on.

  Without the tarry floor holding me in place, I automatically adjusted my position, and then toppled over as my long-asleep feet refused to hold my weight any longer. I had never been so grateful to get a face full of carpet. I heard Artie’s chair creak, followed by the sound of the bedroom door slamming open and his feet pounding up the stairs, presumably heading for the bathroom.

  “Shouldn’t drink so much Pepsi,” I muttered, and began the laborious process of peeling myself off the floor. Artie’s computer screen had returned to an innocuous view of browser and wallpaper—a picture of Sarah taken the summer before she followed my sister Verity to New York. No signs of an ancient evil waiting to either break free or swallow us whole. That was a nice change.

  I staggered up the stairs on shaking legs, and passed the closed bathroom door on my way to the kitchen. Either Artie had needed to pee more than I thought, or he was having a quiet cry in the bathtub before he came back out to face the world. If I faulted him for that at all, it was only because I couldn’t be crying in the tub while he was locked in there.

  The kitchen clock said that it was almost seven. Artie had launched the game shortly after noon. I’d never been more exhausted in my life.

  Aunt Jane turned away from whatever she was stirring on the stove to look over her shoulder at me and smile. “There you are,” she said. “I was just getting ready to send a search party.”

  “I don’t think that would have worked.” I walked to the fridge, opened it, and extracted a can of Dr Pepper. After a pause to consider, I made that two. As I walked over to the table, I continued, “They would just have gotten sucked into the magically generated shadows that were holding us captive as we tried to complete a series of complicated puzzles and refresh the wards that were holding Robin Goodfellow in his eternal prison.” I collapsed into the chair across from Uncle Ted and cracked open the seal on my first soda.

  Uncle Ted and Aunt Jane both stared at me, not saying a word. I took a long drink of Dr Pepper.

  “So, what’s for dinner?” I asked.

  “Magically generated shadows?” asked Aunt Jane.

  “Robin Goodfellow?” asked Uncle Ted.

  Artie appeared in the doorway, eyes red, wiping his hands on a towel. “Oh,” he said. “You told them.”

  I took another drink of Dr Pepper.

  —

  Uncle Ted eyed Artie’s laptop like he expected it to grow teeth and start biting him at any moment. Honestly, that would have been easier to understand than “remotely executable runic magic embedded in the game program by hidebehinds working with a cuckoo for some unknown and probably unpleasant reason.” Even for us, that was pushing the bounds of comprehensibility a bit. “And you say you just downloaded the game, and then the shadows came?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” said Artie. He sighed. “I swear there was no ‘contains actual evil’ warning on the file.”

  “There rarely is.”

  Aunt Jane walked back into the kitchen, waving her phone like it had just unlocked the secrets of the universe. “All right, my contact with the local bogeymen confirmed that some hidebehinds have been taking contract work from whoever’s willing to put down the cash. Something about establishing a competitive multimedia company in a human-dominated market. They specialize in puzzle games and phone apps for cryptids—which does sometimes mean executable magic.”

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s go punch them a lot.”

  “No can do, my darling, overly violent niece,” she said. “They’re down in Silicon Valley. Even if we could convince your parents to let us take you to California on no notice for the sole purpose of punching people, I can’t get the time off work.”

  “Your brother would probably let us take Antimony to California in order to punch people,” said Uncle Ted, giving the laptop another poke. “He’d view it as a bonding exercise.”

  Aunt Jane snorted. “No one is crossing state lines in order to commit assault today, all right?”

  “But they nearly sucked us into a pocket dimension,” I said. “Don’t they deserve some punching?”

  “I’ll set up a conference call and have some words with their CEO about taking money from cuckoos,” said Aunt Jane. “That’s really the best I can do right now. Sometimes you have to explore nonviolent solutions.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat, glowering sullenly. “I hate nonviolent solutions.”

  “Even the X-Men sometimes resolve things without punching,” said Artie.

  I swiveled around so that I was glowering directly at him. He quailed.

  “I mean, punching would be better, we should really go with punching.”

  “See, look there, Annie got her way without punching you, clearly diplomatic methods can work.” Uncle Ted pushed Artie’s laptop across the table toward him. “Uninstall the evil software and you should be fine.”

  “That’s it?” I abandoned glaring at Artie in favor of staring at my uncle Ted. “Just ‘uninstall the evil software’? We don’t even have to kill a chicken?”

  “Why would you? It’s not like you installed Windows 7.” Uncle Ted started laughing at his own joke. I groaned, which just made him laugh harder.

  “You’d think s
omeone would be at least a little upset about us nearly getting sucked into an unidentified pocket dimension,” I grumbled.

  “I’m upset,” offered Artie. “Come on. I’ll let you help me write the game review. That’ll make you feel better.”

  “The really pathetic part is that you’re right.” I sighed and stood, grabbing my soda. “Let’s go.”

  “Awesome.” Artie picked up his computer. “Mom, when’s dinner?”

  “About twenty minutes,” said Aunt Jane.

  “Great, plenty of time.” He went trotting off toward his basement. I followed him more slowly. My feet still hurt.

  The last thing I heard before I slammed the basement door was Uncle Ted saying, far too calmly, “I told those kids video games were going to get them in trouble one day.”

  —

  Artie was back at his desk by the time I finished stomping down the stairs. He had a browser open and was typing something into a forum window. I stopped, eyeing first his screen, and then him. He reddened.

  “I’m just…reporting…that the game is sort of evil,” he said.

  “Uh-huh. And then?”

  “I’m uninstalling the game.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m deleting my forum account before I accidentally invite any more assassination attempts from pissed-off Johrlac who don’t like people knowing that they exist.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m being grateful that it wasn’t the Covenant of St. George.”

  “And then?”

  He sighed deeply. “I’m apologizing to my wonderful, brilliant, totally not going to punch me in the throat cousin for endangering her life.”

  “Good.” I walked back to the bed, where my comic book was still waiting for me. “Let me know when you want to start.” I stretched out on my stomach, getting comfortable, and turned the page. All in all, the afternoon hadn’t been that unusual.

  * * *