Grow Up
Page 36
“Only the part where I commented on the diminutive size of your reproductive organs in front of your classmates,” Gargle added helpfully.
“Oh right, how could I forget that part! It’s a bloody good job I wasn’t gone for a month! Seriously, you had one job to do. I don’t think you could have possibly screwed it up more if you’d been trying.”
“On the plus side, I have assisted in reforming your family unit.”
“The crazy thing is, that is the one I am having the hardest time believing.” Josh leaned back, feeling the softness of his bed engulf him. What was he going to do? He had his exams next week, and he was even less prepared for them now than he was before. He’d have to find a new job, and study, and start thinking about what he was going to do with his life. It was time to do what everyone kept telling him and grow up.
He stopped. How could he go back to worrying about this stuff after everything he had just been through? He had saved a planet, fought injustice, and made trillions of credits, but now he was supposed to worry about his History exam and find a new minimum wage gig. Which reminded him.
“Hey Computer. What was my total haul for completing all my tasks?”
“I have calculated the time you spent completing your tasks, and multiplied by your hourly rate, plus bonus, it comes to £930.87.”
“That’s it? I saved Blurgon for the price of a mid-level computer? The whole point was to earn enough to help my dad! Can you not just whack an extra million on there?”
“Negative. You have proven to be highly motivated by money, if I give you lots of it then that motivation might cease. We may however be able to negotiate your hourly rate.”
“Damn straight we are! I need the money!”
Gargle perked up. “On the topic of money, I earned £14,414.30 towards your Father’s debt.”
“What? How?” Josh put his hands over his face and mumbled, “Please tell me it was legal.”
“I solved a math problem. It was very simple. I was planning on solving more of them, to make your Dad’s financial problems go away, but unfortunately I ran out of time.”
“I save your home world and don’t even make a grand, and you did a hard math problem and made £16k. That doesn’t sound right!”
“I know. Your economy here is extremely broken, but I believe we may be able to use that our advantage…” Gargle stopped. He had almost forgotten that this was the end for him. He added, “I shall leave some notes for you, and the money. To help your family.”
A germ of an idea started to form. Josh said, “Gargle, tell me honestly, how did you feel about being me?”
Gargle blurted out, “It was the single greatest experience of my life. Everything was so new and exciting, I could hardly wait to see what happened next. I am truly sad that it is over.”
“What if it wasn’t over?”
“I do not understand,” Gargle said. “You are back now, you will resume your life. My services are no longer required.”
“Actually they might be. This ankle feels like I’ve sprained it. It would be great to rest it for a few days. I can hide out on the ship while you can be me. Ali can print you off a new shell in no time.”
I told you it was a bad idea to jump! thought Frag.
Josh ignored him. “It’s not just that, I’m going to have a lot going on. I’m a fully qualified lawyer, and that comes with responsibilities.”
Josh stopped. Who had just said that piece? It didn’t sound like something he would say.
Before he could think too much about it, he kept talking. “I may have cause to be away from Earth for extended periods, and I would feel much better if I could leave someone here to take care of things in my absence. Provided you can stop getting arrested and talking about my privates. What do you think?”
Gargle listened to Caitlin’s giggle floating up the stairs and smiled. “I think we could make something work.”
Josh held out his hand and said, “I think this could be the start of something great. We will make a great team.”
“Me to!” beamed Gargle.
“I agree,” said Ali.
I’m not convinced, grumbled Frag.
***
High up above the Earth, the small Galactic Corp scout ship deactivated its own stealth mode. The pilot had barely been paying attention to the planet below and had instead been binging cat videos from this planets computer network, but now a red light was flashing on his dashboard. A quick check confirmed that it was a Blurgon ship, just like the one he had been asked to keep an eye out for.
With a weary sigh he paused he cat video and picked up his data pad. The message would take a while to get back to head office, but that just gave him more time to watch videos. He reread his message before hitting send:
I think I’ve found what you’re looking for. Sending coordinates now…
Epilogue: Low Profile
Begin Encrypted Quantum Tunnel.
Connection Secured.
Chat link established.
PJ: We need to talk.
MK: Now isn’t really a good time. We are supposed to be keeping a low profile, remember!
PJ: Yeah about that, we have a problem. A big problem.
MK: You’re darn right we do, you still owe me those bitcoins.
PJ: Not the time. You remember how we reset everything back to normal on the backup server?
MK: Remember it? That was yesterday. Of course I remember. So what?
PJ: Well it turns out it didn’t work properly.
MK: Sure it did, I checked it myself.
PJ: That’s the problem. You missed something.
MK: No way! I didn’t miss a damn thing. You’re just making up excuses so you don’t have to pay me back.
PJ: Don’t take my word for it. Check for yourself. Earth isn’t supposed to be part of the wider simulation yet, but the backup backup server is now so corrupted that Earth’s firewall failed. All of the other planets can see it now.
MK: So what, it’s just a backup backup. Delete it and we’ll make up an excuse about drive failure. The A.I. won’t care, she expects us to be incompetent anyway.
PJ: That was the first thing I tried. It didn’t work. I’ve lost all administrator privileges on that drive. The entire drive.
MK: Ok, now you have my attention. That’s not good at all. If the A.I. notices that then she will definitely do more digging, and she will find my code changes.
PJ: Yep. I hope you like eating slop, cause that’s what is on the menu when she figures out what we did.
MK: How long until she checks the drive again?
PJ: We still have a few days, but that is years in simulation time. I’m not sure if Earth is going to survive that long.
MK: What? Why not?
PJ: Well a few reasons. Firstly, they just discovered Blurgon mathematics, which is going to leap their tunnelling technology ahead about a hundred years. Who knows what havoc that is going to cause with their tech tree. Second, it turns out humans make surprisingly good lawyers. Every planet is going to be looking for them now. It’s only a matter of time before someone else finds them, and that means war. Earth is still a backwater dirt planet compared to the others, they don’t even have organized corporations. They won’t last a month against a prolonged attack. They simply don’t have the resources, the coordination, or the technology to defend themselves.
MK: Ok, I’m sure we can think of a way to solve those things.
PJ: Oh I haven’t even gotten to the really bad part yet. The human completely undermined the entire Blurgon social structure and then set a Blurgon A.I. free.
MK: So you’re telling me that one single human simultaneously saved a planet, destroyed the society of the exact same planet, and then casually released the most dangerous entity in the known simverse into the wild?
PJ: Yep.
MK: ONE HUMAN
PJ: Yep. There’s a reason they were firewalled.
MK: What about the Blurgon A.I.? What is it doing?
MK: So decrypt them! We need to know what it is saying.
PJ: I can’t without the assistance of our A.I., which would kind of give the game away.
MK: So now the entire backup backup server is corrupted, we can’t delete it, the one planet we are observing is suddenly both vulnerable and stupidly dangerous, and we’ve unleashed a potentially universe-ending event.
PJ: Yep. That pretty much captures the essence of the problem. What are we going to do?
MK: Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going to the pub, while I still can.
PJ: You can’t give up! There’s still a chance we can turn things around.
MK: Perhaps, but I’m sure as heck not going to try and fix all that stuff sober. You coming or not?
PJ: Ok fine, just one drink, and then we are going to come back here and save this virtual universe, if it is the last thing we do.
MK: Hmm, when you put it like that, let’s make it a double.
Also by Craig Anderson
If you enjoyed this book there’s a pretty good chance you’ll enjoy one of my others. Here is a quick overview of what they are.
If you haven’t already read Level Up, then that is a great place to start as it also features lots of crazy gaming humour and quirky characters. You can check it out here:
Amazon
If you liked the humour in Grow Up, the Lucky Beggar Trilogy is the book for you. It follows a homeless man as he is infected with a concentrated form of karma, so his actions are judged immediately. There is lots of banter and shenanigans, and a fluffy sidekick. You can pick it up here:
Amazon
If you liked the action in Level Up, TROJAN is an action packed techno-thriller. It follows a rookie FBI agent on her first case, tracking down a dangerous hacker with the help of an outside consulting agency called Tempest. You can pick it up here:
Amazon
If you need something a little darker to balance things out, The Colony is the story of Ben, who is a clone born into captivity. He must fight for his chance to be released from his prison, but what lays beyond the wall may be even worse. You can pick it up here:
Amazon
If you loved the gaming aspects of Grow Up and are hungry for more I heartily recommend Ruins of Majesta: Volume 1 - Blood and Cupcakes by Taj McCoy El. It’s a fun filled adventure and suitable for anyone that loves a great story.
Here’s the blurb:
M.I.T. calls her a genius, her mother calls her Cupcake, her buddies call her Princess Cuddle Fluff and she’s here to kick butt and blow stuff up.
At least until she realizes she’s stuck.
Eleven-year-old Mayah’s just collateral damage in an investigation by a government agency that’s intent on keeping control of its finances. Now she’s trapped in the Virtual Reality game of Ruins of Majesta waging the war for her life the only way she can, by questing, leveling up and sewing.
You can check it out here:
Amazon
Acknowledgements
Did you know only 1% of readers leave a review on Amazon? Who doesn’t want to be in the top 1%!
If you enjoyed the book please consider leaving a review. It really is a huge help to discoverability and lets other readers know about the book. It will only take a couple of minutes. Seriously, I’ll wait…
Ok, you’re back? Let’s keep going!
So how did I go from writing a book about a guy with an office job and a pet squirrel, to intergalactic mech-fighting lawyers? Honestly, i wish i knew! I have lots of ideas for stories and characters in the ‘one-up’ universe and believe it or not I have intricate plans to tie them all together.
A big inspiration for this book is an old game called Virtual On, which I had on the Sega Saturn. My cousin Aaron and I would play it for hours, duking it out with these huge robots in a small arena. I always liked the small nippy mechs, and he’d favour the hulking big ones. Unfortunately (for me) it rarely worked out as well as it does for Josh. He kicked my butt a lot!
More recently, i was reminded of my love of mechs playing Titanfall 2 on the Xbox. I have pretty limited gaming time these days, but i somehow put 200 hours into that game! The titans were my favourite part, stomping around the levels absolutely wrecking shop, and of course my favourite was the nippy one with the big sword. I think I am spotting a pattern!
For the cover I reached out to the uber talented Sicarius8 (https://sicarius8.deviantart.com) who immediately captured what i was going for and produced some super cool mech designs. She also tolerated me going back and asking for a slightly different shade of green on the backpack half a dozen times.
I’d also like to give a shout out to Cel Rince, proofreader extraordinaire, for catching a massive stack of typos even after I had read through the book a few dozen times. His work was detailed, prompt and very reasonably priced. I laughed so hard at his notes for Gargle in particular, which were along the lines of ‘I don’t think an alien would know this!’
Last, but definitely not least, a massive, gigantic, mech-sized thank you to my wife, who rodeo’d the kids while I banged away at the keyboard for hours on end. I honestly couldn’t do it without you. YH&YR.