Cragbridge Hall, Volume 2: The Avatar Battle (21 page)

“And Dr. Mackleprank’s cage is his office or his lab—kind of both,” Rafa said. “I guess we both need interpreters.”

The avatar teacher laughed.

“We’ll be here a bit longer,” Rafa explained. “We have avatar club today.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Dr. Mackleprank said, palming his forehead. “Still trying out?” He looked at Derick.

Derick smiled and nodded. Abby had passed on the news about the spheres, and Derick had started to build something, but had taken a break to come try out again.

“Well, good luck. Maybe they can help you a bit more with the giraffe,” Dr. Mackleprank said. He had really pushed Derick today in class. “You have work to do.” His weakness had definitely been noticed.

Derick winced, knowing Rafa was listening. He was hoping to keep that a secret. “I’ll keep practicing,” he said, though that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Dr. Mackleprank waved goodbye and walked through the main lab to a back room and closed a heavy door.

“Giraffes, huh?” Rafa said.

Derick looked down. “Yeah. I—” Derick rubbed his temple. “I pretty much stink. But I’ll get better. Let’s just not do it in the club for a while, okay?”

Rafa smiled. “You might want to practice. I don’t always choose what we do. We rotate. They could choose something with giraffes today.” Derick didn’t like that possibility.

Derick and Rafa began walking toward their equipment, but Rafa looked back at Dr. Mackleprank, who was now leaving the lab. “He’s been spending some long hours in his office these days.”

“What does he do?”

“Grade papers, work on avatars. He’s always fiddling with something.”

“Like his half-put-together robots back there?”

“
Sim.
How did you know?”

“He spoke with me back there the other day after our relay race.”

“It must have been pretty important. He doesn’t normally bring students there. He has a whole closet of parts and prototypes, but he keeps it locked up tight. He doesn’t want anyone messing with his stuff.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Derick said.

“I don’t blame him, but he has been acting
estranho
,” Rafa said. “He doesn’t usually forget when club meets, or speak of others’ weaknesses. I asked him if he was feeling okay since the attack. He says he’s fine, but I think it really affected him.”

Derick remembered Rafa racing out of the room when he found out about Dr. Mackleprank being shot by a blowdart in the night. “Hey, that would be some scary stuff. Anything I can do to help?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So, how did you and the doctor strike up such an amazing bond?” Derick asked.

Rafa smiled, walking toward the large room where they would practice for the club. “When I came to Cragbridge Hall, the avatar lab made me feel at home. Since Dr. Mackleprank has spent some time in Brazil and knows my culture, it was an easy friendship. We could talk soccer and samba and capoeira. When I showed some talent, it gave us an excuse to work together some more.”

“Wait. Why did the avatar lab make you feel at home?” Derick asked, walking alongside his Brazilian friend.

Rafa glanced quickly at Derick and then away. “Oh, it’s just there are a lot of animals and stuff where I lived in Brazil. You know, I lived close to the zoo. My parents used to take me there a lot.” Rafa blinked several times.

“You okay?” Derick asked.

“Yeah,” Rafa said. “Sorry, there’s a lot of tension around here lately. Makes me
nervoso.
” He pulled his hair out of his ponytail, flung it around for a moment, then pulled it back in. “
Oi.
We’d better get you hooked up before the others come.”

In a few minutes Derick was hanging from the branch of a large tree with five other squirrel monkeys nearby. “Hey, Tryout,” one of them waved. “It’s good to have you back.” It was the boy with a Southern drawl. “I hope you make it into the Crash.”

“The Crash?” Derick asked.

Another monkey came closer. “We wanted to name the club after a group of animals, but ‘the herd’ or ‘the pack’ seemed too cliché.” Derick recognized her voice. She had been on his team for handball. “So we went with the Crash.”

The girl with a Latin accent spoke. “A crash is what you call a group of rhinos.”

“For the record,” the fourth monkey said, hanging upside down from a branch. “I wanted ‘Murder.’”

Derick raised his monkey eyebrows. “What?”

“A murder is the name for a group of crows, but we decided that it would probably get us into trouble for saying stuff like she just did,” a girl said.

“Like, ‘let’s meet for murder,’” the Southern boy said,

“Or ‘murder today after school,’” a girl added.

“Or ‘I love murder,’” another girl said.

“I get the idea,” Derick said. “It was probably wise to steer clear of that one.”

The other monkeys agreed. A few added a couple of monkey shouts.

“Pansies.” That was the voice of the girl who wanted “Murder” for the group name.

“All right,” the monkey with a drawl said. “I wanted a rematch of handball, but someone else chose monkeys.”

“I had an idea,” one of the girls said. “Let’s play some football.”

“I thought we had agreed that we would play something new so that no one has an advantage,” Rafa said.

“We did. So we’ll make it new. Let’s play football
in the tree
.” She emphasized the last words, her voice rising with excitement.

Derick perched on top of a branch, noticing hundreds of other branches surrounding him. It was a maze of wood and leaves jutting out of a trunk.

“The opposite sides are touchdowns,” the girl explained. “You can pass or run for it, you just have to do it on the branches.”

“I’m in,” the Southern monkey said. The others voiced their approval.

This was going to be crazy.

Soon Derick was jumping from limb to limb, trying to guard a monkey on the opposite team. They dodged, passed, ran, and leapt with the ball. It was tough to tackle a monkey, but sometimes Derick was able to drag it by its tail to slow it down. This time Rafa was on the other team.

Derick ran with the ball along a branch and leapt to another. Then he rolled underneath it and hung upside down. But when he tried to right himself again, he stumbled, almost falling. He pitched the ball to his teammate, but it was a step behind her. She had to grab another branch and fully extend herself to catch it.

Just a few minutes later, Derick tried to stay with Rafa as another monkey launched the ball through the trees toward him. Rafa bobbled the ball, narrowly snagging it before another monkey collided into him. He fell off his branch, but caught another.

What was going on with Rafa? Today he was less than an invincible prodigy. Was he just worried about Mackleprank, or was there something he wasn’t telling anyone? Was there any chance he had something to do with Muns?

By the end of the session, Derick still didn’t know if he’d made it. They said they would talk it over one more time and message him. How long would it take them to make up their minds?

• • •

Abby was starting in on her last tower. It was thick and strong with a series of rooms stacked on top of one another. It was different from the ancient castles, though. Her tower had a sun roof to be more energy efficient and large flex-paned windows. She intended on making this tower a library. She loved the idea of rooms stacked on top of one another with books everywhere and a spiral staircase going up through them. She had inherited her love for physical books made from actual paper, not just digital ones, from her grandpa. Once she was done here, she would go back to the last tower. She had an idea that she’d put a waterslide around it down into a pool below. She would have to extend the pool from what she had originally planned, which might affect her courtyard and ballroom space, but she thought it would be worth it.

After school, Abby had returned to her virtual booth, placed the sphere from her grandfather in it, and continued her work. Then she returned again after dinner. She had spread the word to Derick and Carol, who were building in the booths next to her. They had all worked a few minutes past curfew. That didn’t matter as much anymore.

Grandpa appeared again in Abby’s world, walking with his cane. He looked around for a moment. “You’ve done good work here.” Abby wondered if the virtual Grandpa could somehow quantify the quality of her work in order to say that, or if he was preprogrammed to say it no matter what. “You have made fantastic choices. You were given freedom and used it well. However, it is time to add another level of understanding to prepare you to find an answer to your question. You see.” Grandpa took a few steps forward. “In many ways, your life is like a blank canvas, an empty sphere. You can make it whatever you want it to be. However, your canvas, your world, your sphere is never truly isolated. Your life is never isolated.”

In a flash, Abby no longer stood alone in her world. Derick and Carol stood with her. She knew that they had also been in booths in the same room, but she didn’t expect them in her world.

“Um, how did you guys get in my world?” Carol asked.

“I think you came into mine,” Abby said.

“Grandpa’s doing it somehow,” Derick explained. “My guess is that our spheres are connected.” Abby remembered how Mrs. Trinhouse had allowed all of her class into the same world at once. Maybe this was something like that. Derick pointed in front of him. “And looks like he brought our worlds together too.”

This was definitely different from Mrs. Trinhouse’s class.

Abby’s castle was no longer the only creation. To Abby’s left was a movie screen ten stories high. Beneath it was an array of couches, fluffy chairs, swimming pools, swings, gardens, and parks. Abby looked over at Carol.

“It’s all my favorite places to watch a movie,” she said. “Plus with a screen that huge, it would be just an awesome experience. If I can rig it to play all my best webseries, then it’ll be perfect.”

To Abby’s right was a crazy mix of stairs, walls with ropes, dummies standing in fighting positions, sports fields, hoops, mud pits, jungle gyms, and climbing walls. “It’s an avatar training space,” Derick said. “They’ve been on my mind a lot lately.”

Grandpa stood in front of all three of them. “You have to share space with others. Other people are creating their lives at the same time you are creating yours, even in some of the same spaces.” Abby looked again at her brother and her friend. “And as that happens, your choices influence others. Sometimes you may adopt ideas from others.” Abby watched as one of her walls gained a huge movie screen, while a couch and fluffy chairs appeared on the ground beneath and the opposite wall turned into stadium seating. A small castle sprouted up on the avatar field, with dummies along the top and a climbing rope dangling down one tower.

“Sometimes you may try to separate yourself from others.” Abby watched as Carol’s theater grew huge walls around it. Derick’s avatar field did the same.

“As you build and make your choices, you may even accidentally hurt others,” Grandpa said. One of Abby’s castle walls grew taller, but then several large stones fell, crushing part of Carol’s wall and smashing into one of her pools, cracking its foundation and splashing water everywhere.

“Pool-party pooper,” Carol mumbled.

“But you learn to create, sharing the same space.” Grandpa took a few paces. “Let me give you a real-life example. You decide how to act in school.” Instantly a classroom appeared. It was as though it simply grew out of the ground. A teacher stood in front, with kids in desks throughout the room. “Your actions affect others in the class. Your effort may inspire others. Your answers may teach others.” One student raised his hand. After the teacher pointed to him and the boy started talking, heads turned to listen. “They may actually become better for being in the same room with you.”

That made sense. Abby could think of several students she loved having in her classes. They gave answers she wanted to hear. They asked questions she wanted to know the answers to.

“However,” Grandpa continued. “There are others who decide not to learn.” One of the students put his head on his desk. “Their example will affect the morale of the class.” A few others began putting their heads on desks. “They may even choose to be rude or degrading”—one student threw something across the row, hitting another student; that student repeated the action, hitting another—“which can affect others’ desires to learn and even their opinions of themselves.” A student retaliated with another throw, and his victim bowed her head away from the rest of the class.

“Though we can decide how much we will let others influence us, they will still influence us. We must act deliberately, understanding these principles. But what if,” Grandpa continued, “there could be another influence?” The castle shuddered. “Something from outside your world. Something that you didn’t have the power to influence, but that could destroy you.” The ground quaked. Abby heard cracking. The top stones of her castle began to fall, dropping heavily to the dirt below. Soon the wall with the screen began to wave back and forth. Why? What was causing this? More stones fell. The walls moaned, and then one pitched forward and collided into Derick’s avatar training ground with a mighty thud. A tower crashed into the movie screen. The destruction continued until all was a pile of rubble and dust.

Abby wanted to cry. She was tired. She had been working on her castle forever. In a few moments it had all been destroyed. She had planned on turning it in as her project in Mrs. Trinhouse’s math and engineering class.

Grandpa appeared in the wreckage. “I’m sorry, but this was the best way to teach this lesson. How does it feel to have the power to choose and to make something beautiful—and then have someone else destroy it?”

He looked solemn as he walked forward. “What if this lesson repeated itself over and over again? What if
every
time you tried to create something, someone else interfered with your choices, your world? I have often spoken about the need to preserve history the way it is—to not allow anyone to meddle with it, to change it. It is for this reason. Freedom is power. Some will use their freedom to create wonderful, beautiful things. Others will use it in other ways, some discouraging and even destructive ways. Both will have natural consequences, but unless someone is being destructive, we have no right to steal their power to choose. We have no right to destroy their work or meddle with their choices if we cannot naturally influence them in person, in the time we live in.”