Cure for the Common Universe (5 page)

I put on the biggest grin I could muster. “Nowhere but here.”

“Tell you what,” he said, “if you win in four days, I'll drive you out of here myself. Deal?”

I nodded. “Deal.”

“So, player Miles Prower,” G-man said in a nauseatingly enthusiastic voice, “are you a bad enough dude to earn a million points here at Video Horizons?”

He'd said the facility had opened just two months before. That meant the game was brand-new. It was still in beta. It had
to be broken in places. All I had to do was find those broken areas and exploit them.

I smiled. “How many points if I polish your desk
right now
?”

We both laughed.

“Oh!” G-man reached back into his drawer. “We don't want to forget these.” He handed me a map and a class schedule. “This is how to find your way around, as well as a breakdown of points. Aaaaaand here's your adventure pouch.”

He really meant faux-leather fanny pack.

“Cool,” I said. I stretched the adventure pouch's strap to its limit, clicked it on, and then got up to leave.

“Oh, Miles. One last thing.” G-man pulled the cap off one of the stamps. “Every day, I'll give you a thousand points if you high-five me with a positive attitude.”

He held up his hand.

I hated high fives. But I needed any points I could get.

I smiled big and swung my hand . . . but it whooshed through open air. At first I thought I'd missed, but then I saw that G-man had dropped his hand at the last second.

“But with so many slaps a day, my hand can only take so much.” He put the cap back on the stamp. “I think I'll save my high fives for players who are a little less sarcastic.”

T
ime for your guilding,” Command said, escorting me back down G-man's staircase.

I stopped walking. “Guilding?”

He chuckled and took my arm. “Don't worry. You'll keep your balls.”

We continued down the hallway, passing a cafeteria, a laundry room, and, oh God, a community shower room. At the end of the hall was a black door with “The Hub” painted in the white, mad-slash handwriting of a serial killer.

Behind it, whispers hummed like electricity:

“Talk to the cat. She'll tame the Darkroot hunters.”

“Just cracking the warthog will make it blow.”

“You can't stop the bleedout! It's the bleedout!”

Normally I'd be stoked to join a guild. But I had the sinking feeling this was going to be very different from
Arcadia.

What waited behind that door? A stripping and whipping?
A chair, an injection, eye clamps, and a game controller? A single pull-up?

As Command led me toward the Hub, I gazed back toward the green light of the exit. Beyond that door, beyond an impossible stretch of desert, beyond sand and road and dead gas stations, Serena was bending space and time to tug at my heartstrings. . . .

Command pushed open the door, and the whispers stopped.

The Hub was shadowy and cavernous. It smelled like gasoline. Light from three tall, frosted windows shined on dust and brick and a small wooden stage. The space looked industrial, like it had once been used to manufacture robot soldiers or something. But now it felt uncomfortably empty, like an MMO no one wanted to play. Everything was colorless except a bunch of beanbag chairs in front of the stage, where about a dozen teens sat . . . and stared at me.

Command marched me toward the stage. The teens watched. Without phones or 3DSs to distract them, these gamers were creepily attentive. The longer they stared, the more I felt my self-conscious parts bloat, becoming paler and hairier. I tried to avoid eye contact. I never did do well with people in person. Not even gamers. That was why the car wash had felt like a miracle to me.

“Afternoon, everyone!” G-man jogged onto the stage and set down a folding chair. “We've got a new player starting today! Come on up, Miles!”

I felt everyone's eyes on me. I felt my face turn red. I felt my feet turn to concrete. Somewhere the building's plumbing gurgled.

Why would my dad do this to me?

Why couldn't I go have a normal week before I went on a normal date?

Why had I played so many stupid video games?

“Miles?” G-man tapped the chair.

Command gave my back a little push, making me trip up onto the stage. I sat in the chair.

I should be getting my back waxed right now.

G-man clapped me on the shoulder. “I want you all to give a big Video Horizons welcome to . . . Miles Prower!”

“Hi, Miles,” the gamers said.

They sounded as pleased as a cow in a cement mixer.

Somehow I worked up the guts to look at the crowd looking at me.

Gamers, especially hard-core gamers, especially hard-core gamers who play enough to be sent to a video game
rehab
, fill every possible moment with beating the next level, getting the high score, or leveling their character. Exercise, showering, and overall hygiene tend to go out the window. But these kids looked . . . clean. Their greasy complexions had been scrubbed away, their pale skin tanned, their colorful gamer tees tossed out. It was as if they were slowly transforming into versions of their gaming characters. And no one looked happy about it.

“Guilding time,”
G-man whispered with excitement. He
didn't seem to be looking into the same sea of dead eyes I was. “Miles, we want you to think of Video Horizons as a place of magic.” He put his mouth too close to my ear and cast his hand out over the audience. “A place where classes are filled with wonder, activities are filled with surprises, and side quests await around every corner.”

I stared at my hands and wondered what Serena was up to. Probably feeding Ethiopian children or something.

G-man squeezed my shoulder. “Which of the three guilds will help you achieve your greatest potential?”

I glanced up and noticed that the Hub's beanbag chairs were arranged into three columns of red, green, and purple. At the front of each, an adult held a sign with a different misspelled video game reference.

“Will it be . . .” G-man pointed to the red group. “The Master Cheefs?”

The guild stood and gave a grunt salute that would have made the
Skyrim
theme song blush. They were led by a muscly coach who had a tan like a burned carrot. These looked like the action gamers, the type who shoot every red thing in sight before teabagging your character's corpse.

“Will it be . . . the Sefiroths?”

The green guild stood and hissed at me. Then one broke into a coughing fit. Their guild leader, a slight woman with silver hair, helped the coughing kid sit down.

“Or will it be the Fury Burds?”

The final guild—just two girls and a prepubescent kid—
stood from their purple beanbags and half-assedly flapped their hands like little wings while trying to whistle. Their guild leader was HUGE. His hands looked big enough to scoop up Command and Conquer and make them fight each other like action figures.

“So, player Miles,” G-man said, squeezing my shoulders. “Who's it going to be?”

I frowned at the gamers. I remembered when guilds had been fun—that morning. What did G-man know about fun or magic? Had he ever joined a raiding party to defeat a wad of bubble gum that was attacking downtown Arcadia, sticking its citizens to the streets and collapsing buildings with popped bubbles? No. No, he hadn't.

Still. I had to play this Video Horizons game. For Serena.

Which guild would help me get out of there and to my date the fastest? The sickly Sefiroths? The futile Fury Burds? Part of me wanted to be in what was clearly the strongest of the guilds—the warriors of
Halo
—the Master Cheefs. But their almost-athletic builds intimidated the
hell
out of me.

Also, one of the Cheefs kept grinning at me. He was as skinny as a wire, wearing a big white gangster tee, and sitting in his beanbag like a breeze had slumped him over. His hair hung like black straw around an expression that was boredom and chaos both.

He gave me a venomous smile and shook his head as if to say,
Not my guild.
The nerves came alive in my teeth.

“Um . . .” I swallowed. “I choose—”

“Not so fast,” G-man said. He reached behind the stage and brought out a black shoebox with an oval cut out of the lid. “Let's let the Box of Fate decide.”

He shook the box at me. I stared into the dark oval. This was it. I'd randomly choose a powerful guild that would humiliate me, or a shitty guild that would make me lose. I reached inside. There was only one piece of paper in the shoebox. I looked at G-man, who smiled with his fuzzy teeth. Had he taken the others out because I'd been a smart-ass in our first meeting? Was he trying to prove that it was impossible for me to win in four days?

I pulled out the paper and read it. My stomach dropped.

“What does it say?” G-man asked.

When I didn't answer, he snatched it out of my hand.

“Master Cheefs!”

The Cheefs gave an audible groan of disappointment.

“Really, Cheefs?” G-man said, hand on hip. “Is that how we treat a new player? Scarecrow?”

The kid with the slanted grin shrugged. “What'd I do?”

The other Cheefs snickered.

What would Serena think if she knew that even a bunch of gaming addicts didn't want me in their guild?

Still, I didn't blame the Cheefs. They didn't need bloated Miles Prower slowing down their escape from rehab.

“Well, shucks,” G-man said. “I was hoping we could introduce a little
diversity
into some of the guilds.” I looked at the athletic Cheefs and knew exactly what kind of diversity
he meant. “But I suppose it won't work out that way.” He crumpled up the piece of paper.

The Cheefs cheered.

G-man pointed at them. “Minus a thousand points for every player on the Cheefs for poor sportsmanship.”

The Cheefs moaned. Oh God. Didn't G-man know they would take this out on me?

“Miles,” G-man said, touching my shoulder again, “we'll stick you in the Fury Burds, I guess.”

The Burds didn't react, except for their giant leader, who gave an enthusiastic series of deafening claps.

“Go find a seat,” G-man said, patting my back so hard, it stung.

I slouched toward the Fury Burds. My guild.

The giant guild leader shook my hand, which practically disappeared inside his.

“Good tidings, Miles!” he said, grinning. He drew me close and whispered,
“When you're in the guilding chair, these meetings can feel longer than a
Final Fantasy
cut scene. Heh-heh.”

I managed half a smile.

A bird tweeted through the overhead speakers.

“All right, everyone!” G-man called from the stage. “Before you head off to guild therapy, say it with me now! One, two,
three
!”

The players chanted in their unenthusiastic voices: “I am not a gamer; I am a player of life.”

And just like that, I was.

T
o the Nest, adventurers!” the giant guild leader said.

I followed the Fury Burds out of the Hub and along the eastern corridor. The prepubescent kid kept glancing over his shoulder at me. He couldn't seem to keep his tongue in his mouth.

We climbed another staircase to a purple door painted with a picture of a bird's nest. Inside, the two girls combed through an activity chest while the smaller kid started unfolding chairs with the effort of a squirrel trying to pry open bear traps.

“Thank you, Fury Burds mayor!” the giant guild leader said. He took the kid's scroll and stamped it.

I stood there like an idiot.

The Nest was a small, gray brick room that smelled like dead grass. A half wall divided the far wall in two, with four bunks on each side. On the right side of the wall was a punching bag and a crafts table. On the left was a workstation and the
activity chest. Above the half wall was a small, barred window that looked over desert dunes and a pale sky. A bird-themed clock above the door said it was a quarter after canary—5:13.

Four days to earn a million points.

The guild leader's hand thunked down onto my shoulder. “Let's start guild therapy, shall we?”

I nodded, like what he'd said was perfectly normal, and joined the circle of chairs. The small kid immediately sat next to me. The two girls also sat, holding circles of wood that framed perforated pieces of cloth. The fluorescents flickered on the dead-fish gray of the walls. I needed a Red Bull.

“Greetings, players!” the guild leader said. His voice was so big and warm that for a moment it felt like we were gathered around a crackling hearth in Azeroth. Y'know, as opposed to being in a gray-brick jail cell. “We have a new player joining us today. Greetings, Miles!”

I gave the guild a flat smile and a small wave.

Earlier I had failed to convince G-man that I was a healthy or good person. I needed a new tactic. When you find yourself in a dungeon that's too high-level, you remain stealthy. You memorize the layout of the passages and study the enemies' movements from the shadows while searching for a way to get the hell out.

“Normally,” the guild leader said, “we would have guild therapy during this block, but because it's Sunday, we're a little more relaxed, and I can give you a proper welcome.” He gestured around the circle. “I want you to get to know your
guildmates. You'll be pretty close with these guys for the next few weeks.”

Not if I could help it.

Going clockwise from my chair were the two girls—a larger Asian with short shiny black hair, and a girl with dark skin, her hair bleached white. Then there was the giant guild leader, and finally, the small kid and me. The kid was sitting so close, I could feel him breathing.