PART SIXTEEN

MPD: 39

I went into the cinema room and took a seat. Lennie was already there with his little clipboard and pen, but now he was also wearing a pair of those low-slung spectacles that teachers wear, plus the little strap thing that goes around the ears. Lennie didn't have ears, but they stuck in place anyway. 386 was using his mana in increasingly refined ways.

"Let's get crunchy!" I said, trying to ruin 386's moment.

"Um, no," he said. "We're not numberwanging. I need to show you something."

"What could possibly -"

Lennie shushed me. He put a finger to his mouth and a shush noise came out. I'm pretty sure the actual sound came from 386, but it was Lennie who was peering over his glasses at me.

"All right," I said. "Press play."

Do You Like Scary Movies?

I think I'll write this from the point of view of the person in the video. I don't know exactly what she was thinking, of course, but I have reason to believe that what follows is 99.98% accurate, including all the thoughts and feelings that took place inside her mind.

I logged in and ran all the way to the cave. My plan was to burst in and make another scene and wave my sword around. But I was stopped in my tracks by the majesty and power of the remodeled cave entrance. It was such an overpoweringly beautiful moment that I dropped to my knees and said, "Poke out mine eyes! Let me behold naught more!"

At least, that's what I wanted to do, but just at that moment, a couple of little girls approached and asked me if I was all right. I decided to call the older girl Player 1, even though I couldn't possibly have known how appropriate that would be.

"I'm peachy," I said, because I liked teaching the NPCs new words. "Was this here yesterday?" I pointed to the wooden sign that had appeared over the still very basic cave entrance.

"No, he always changes things."

"He?"

"The wizard."

I nodded. "Wizard? Throws cards around? Is about this tall?" I raised my hand to Bain's height, then lifted it a couple of inches to be more accurate.

"Yes, I would say he's exactly that tall," said Player 1, referring to the position of my hand after I had raised it.

"What does it say?" said girl number 2. "I can't read yet."

I looked at the sign again. "The big letters say, 'Austeralia'. And then underneath it says, 'Come to a land down under!' The last symbol there is called an exclamation point. It gives the phrase a kind of jolly feeling. Do you think the wizard is a jolly person?"

"We only met him once. He was ABOUT A 7 ON THE JOLLY SCALE. PERHAPS EVEN AN 8."

"He's never here?"

"We think he watches us play the games and then he changes them."

"That's creepy."

The little girls shrugged. Player 1 said, "It's to make the games better. Jack said maybe he's a necromancer but why would he only have one skeleton and give him a name and be nice to him? If he's nice to a skeleton he can't be a necromancer. Right?" She peered up at the sign, trying to make sense of it. "What's Austeralia?"

"It's a kind of a joke," I said. "Quite a good one. Shall we go inside? Would you like to explain the games to me?"

Their faces lit up. "Yes!"

Enter the Dragon (Lady)

The older girl - she was probably 11 years old but I seem to be fabulously bad at guessing ages - told me her name was Jenny. Her little friend or sister was called Steffi. When we entered the cave itself, they turned to the left.

"Oh," said Jenny. "It's gone."

"Oh, no," said Steffi, worried.

"What's gone?"

"There used to be rooms here. One had all the kid's games. The other was for smashing things." Her voice was laced with disappointment. We did a 180 and went the other way. "Oh!"

"Oh!" agreed Steffi.

We were in a large, well-lit room with friendly murals on the walls and colorful floor tiles. In the middle of the floor were some plain stone chairs, seemingly carved out of the foundation of the world itself, and a few side tables. There were three exits. The room was trying to convey information, and it was doing a fairly [AWESOME AND WELL-DESIGNED] job of it. For example, the first exit, which was to the left when we came in, had a painting of a large man with a crossbow and a large woman with a sword. The second exit was marked with a man and a woman without weapons. Instead, they were throwing coins in the air. The third exit had two little girls painted on the floor, and they were playing hopscotch.

"Argh!' shrieked Steffi, and I fell into a crouch, ready to slay whatever beast would dare threaten a child. "Look! It's me! It's us!"

She sprinted over and indeed, it did seem that the drawings had been based on these two girls. I frowned. Did the dungeon sense who was coming and change the pictures to look like them? I had a grim thought, and went over to look at the warrior lady. She could have been said to look like my avatar, I suppose, if I had horns, a twirly moustache, and the number 666 tattooed on my otherwise normal-looking forehead. I checked the bottom and yes, there was a tail. I sighed and turned to check on the girls. They'd vanished along that corridor so I went to go check on them.

Toys Arrr Us

The kids ran around looking at all the things. They told me that they always played with every game because sometimes you didn't notice a change until you played it and sometimes the games would vanish for days and you never knew when the wizard might take it away. There was one game they hadn't seen for ages. You'd hit a disc across a slippery table trying to get it into the other person's fortress and they didn't play it much but they liked it sometimes for a change but if there was one game they'd be happy to lose forever it would be that one because they LACKED THE HEART OF A CHAMPION.

"Why do you think the wizard is doing this?" I asked.

"I heard he's got a quest," said Jenny, which seemed more than enough explanation for her.

"And what do your parents think about you coming here?"

"Not super happy but they came to have a look around and now they don't mind. Oh! There's a new game."

I looked at what they were excited about and tried to stifle a laugh. It was pretty basic stuff.

"What is it?" asked Steffi, eyes as wide as saucers.

"It's called Pinball."

"Actually," said Jenny, who I realised could be quite pedantic, "it's called Cannonball." She pointed to a sign.

"I stand corrected."

"How do you play?" asked Steffi.

"I'll work it out," said Jenny. She told me she was the best at working out how to play the new games. She fumbled around the machine for a while as Steffi watched her every move, rapt. I wandered around, touching the other games. Apart from pinball, the girls told me that the newest one was a maze roller ball thing. It was called Amazeballs and didn't appeal to me. Steffi said she liked it but she wasn't good at it. "Oh!" Jenny laughed. She'd worked out how to fire the ball into the playing area. Now she just needed to learn how to use the flippers. "Haha!" she cried, as the machine made some highly satisfying pinbally noises.

I strolled back to watch her play and I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was pinball, but better. It was better than better.

The whole thing was designed with a pirate theme. You know, barrels, ropes, men in silly hats, hooks for hands, curved swords. All that kind of thing was painted onto the actual frame of the game and on the background of the playing area. But instead of just monotonously flapping the ball back and back and back, in this game you were actually hurling a cannonball into a pirate ship. It was almost like an actual arcade game. An actual video game. It felt like 'the wizard' was seriously bending some rules of the BetterVerse here. Jenny was hitting the side flaps and sending the cannonball back up, where it would hit beer barrels and bounce off, or accelerate off a mermaid, or get deflected by a wooden peg leg that kicked out from one side of the machine. But as cool as everything was, it was all secondary to this pirate ship that was at the top of the playing area. Imagine a ship in a bottle - that's how detailed and beautiful it was. And Jenny was firing the cannonball into it, smashing it into smithereens.

Watching her play, watching her laugh giddily, I have never been so jealous of anyone, ever. I nearly barged her out of the way so that I could have my turn. What if only one person could play per day? The dungeon would reset the games overnight, wouldn't it? Then it would repair the ship. But until then... This NPC was in my way. Why couldn't I just...?

But I didn't. I let her play. Finally, she missed the ball and it fell and the pirate ship 'sank' into the water (the blue background) and we waited to see what would happen. After an agonising ten seconds, it came floating back up, whole and complete, intact and ready to be obliterated again.

"Shotgun," I said.

Hit Me

My hour was running out and so far all I'd done was play children's games. Basically, everyone wanted to play Cannonball, so while one of us did that, the other two did co-op Spider Smash games on the larger unit. We spent about 40 minutes on this loop, as happy as a hound with two tails.

But even though it was enchanting and addictive, I dragged myself away. The girls, too. I wanted to know more about Bain and his [NOT SINISTER] plan.

We went to the gambling den next. I'd seen the one-armed bandits the previous day, and the girls didn't have any money so they just span the one that you didn't have to pay to play and when they won a coin they lost it in the next machine.

"Don't you ever drop the bronzes into the Coin Pushers?" Jenny had shown me that all the games and machines were labeled.

"No. They're a bit of a mirage. You think you can win but you can't."

I scratched my head. Was Bain trying to get rich from this place? If so, why were most of the games free? "So you don't trust the wizard, then?"

Jenny scrunched her eyes. "It's not about that. The Coin Pusher is fun the first time you come in. You try it a few times and then you realise the big lump of coins you're working on is never going to drop. But it's still fun. In the beginning." She nodded once. Then she looked worried. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I've ruined it for you now, haven't I?"

I gave her a little smile. "No, it's all right. I've seen them before. They're really annoying but strangely compelling. So... there's nothing new in this section?"

The girls looked around. "Not that I can see."

I checked my timer. I had 6 minutes left. We went into the introduction area. "Can you just wait here while I go in the other room? I think it might be dangerous."

"It's probably just the punching games," said Jenny. But she sat on the stone chair and kicked her legs. Steffi copied her.

I went into the 'danger zone', had a look around, and came back out. "Huh," I said.

"What?" said Jenny.

"I'm coming back tomorrow. The same time. Will you come back again? We can explore it together."

"But what's in there?"

The girls looked at each other, eyes bigger than the moon. "Peachy!" they shouted.