Gamers' Rebellion (13 page)

‘Override access restrictions,’ said Robert. ‘Back door key.’

The image of a door appeared in the display, a numeric keypad in its centre. Robert reached out and entered a string of numbers …

01001100 01100101 01110100 00100000 01001101 01100101 00100000 01001001 01101110 00100001

There was an uneasy silence. It was only a few seconds, but it was a very tense few seconds.

The holographic door opened, then melted away.

‘Unrestricted access granted,’ the voice finally said. ‘Praise be to Designer Prime.’

Robbie rolled his eyes.

‘I saw that,’ said Robert. ‘Don’t think that I haven’t been noticing your behaviour.’

Robbie was about to reply, when Robert tensed. ‘Something is wrong,’ he announced.

‘What?’ asked Robbie.

‘There’s a digital signature that should not be here,’ explained Robert. ‘At the very back end of the whole thing.’

‘Designer Alpha?’ asked Robbie.

‘No,’ said Robert. ‘Something a little closer to home.’ His hands stilled. ‘It’s me. It’s Bobby!’

‘But you’re not in the Game,’ said Robbie. ‘You’re not playing.’

‘Yet there he is,’ said Robert, wonder and excitement slowly creeping into his voice. ‘Bobby is no longer waiting for me.’

23: Return of the Ultimate Gamer

‘Heard you guys wanted my help?’

Bobby stood in the field of flowers behind Tark.

Tark spun around to face him and Zyra came up beside him.

It was him. Bobby. Still wearing his faded blue jeans, red T-shirt and white trainers. Still twelve years old. And still alive. Zyra felt a rush of affection for the strange boy who had caused them so much trouble but who, in the end, had saved them from a mad anti-virus program. She stepped forward and gave him a hug.

‘Stop it!’ Bobby pulled away, whining.

Zyra stifled a grin. ‘How did you …’ her voice petered out, leaving the question hanging.

‘Oh, you know.’ Bobby waved his hand dismissively. ‘I have my finger on the pulse of the Game.’

‘So, Robert has –’

‘NO!’ Bobby held up his hand. ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

Zyra looked at Tark and then slowly back at Bobby.

‘Now, let’s get down to business,’ said Bobby. ‘You need me?’

‘Yes,’ said Zyra. ‘We need your help to get into the Designers’ hidden environment.’

‘Hidden environment?’ Bobby lifted his hand to his chin and rubbed at it theatrically. ‘Sounds interesting. Tell me more.’

‘I thought Robert knew all about this,’ said Tark, glancing at Zyra.

Bobby walked straight up to Tark, pushed his face up to Tark’s and yelled: ‘I AM NOT ROBERT!’

Tark stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. ‘Okay,’ he said slowly, as if he was talking to a deranged lunatic. ‘You’re not Robert.’

‘My name is Bobby,’ the boy continued in a more subdued voice. ‘Robert and I share the same past and my existence has been dependent on him.’ There was a distinct vehemence in his voice, now. ‘But we are not the same. I don’t know everything he does. And I do things differently. I play!’

‘Oh, Robert plays as well,’ said Zyra. ‘Just different games.’

‘Whatever!’ Bobby said. ‘Now get to the point.’

‘Listen –’

Zyra cut Tark off with a hand on his shoulder.

‘Bobby,’ Zyra said in a quiet voice. ‘Designer Alpha has a hidden, security-laden environment within another environment. I don’t know what’s in there, but it has something to do with the children she has been kidnapping in the real world and hooking up to the Game.’

‘I don’t care about the
real world
,’ said Bobby. ‘This is my real world.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Zyra. ‘Well, Tark and I are in this world now and we need to get into that hidden environment.’

‘Well, good luck with that.’ Bobby turned to walk off.

‘Wait!’ called Zyra. ‘We can’t get in past the security. We need your help.’

Bobby stopped but didn’t turn to face them.

‘Please,’ said Zyra. ‘We can’t do it without you.’

‘What makes you think I would want to help you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t care about what you want.’

‘Yeah, I get that,’ said Zyra. ‘But you do like to play. And this is the biggest game of all. The ultimate game for the Ultimate Gamer.’

Bobby slowly turned to face them.

‘This is like playing against the Designers,’ continued Zyra. ‘You don’t like losing, do you? I remember that. Well, you didn’t know about the hidden environment, did you? The Designers successfully kept that hidden from you. They beat you.’

‘They haven’t beaten me.’ Bobby’s eyes flared with defiance.

‘I don’t know,’ said Zyra, pressing her advantage. ‘I’m willing to bet that the security Tark and I encountered was just the first level. I think there’s lots more of it. Stuff that even you might not be able to get past.’

‘I can get past anything.’

‘Oh yeah,’ piped up Tark. ‘Well prove it!’

He did a double take. They were no longer in the field of golden flowers. They were in the desolate environment from which they had earlier escaped. He was standing next to Zyra. Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

In his place, stood the Ultimate Gamer, his tall frame a constant movement of liquid silver in vaguely human form. He was turned away from Tark and Zyra, featureless face looking up. Immediately, Tark and Zyra remembered the first time they had seen him – how he had battled the anti-virus program in a light grid; how he had continued to fight, despite the odds; how he had been willing to sacrifice himself in order to win.

Zyra nudged Tark with an elbow and raised her eyebrows, obviously pleased with herself.

A set of holographic control boards and touch-screens materialised around the Ultimate Gamer, hanging in the air. His fingers ran across them in swift, smooth motions.

‘Scanning.’ The silky smooth voice emanated from him. ‘Interesting.’

‘What?’ asked Tark.

‘Scans are ineffective,’ he said, the holograms dissipating. ‘There is nothing there.’

‘But …’ Tark began.

‘I know,’ said the Gamer. ‘It is there. But it is hidden. Even from my scans.’ He paused. ‘Interesting.’

A chair appeared behind the Gamer, hovering above the ground. He sat down and an array of displays, screens and keyboards appeared. They floated in the air around him, encasing him in a holographic techno cocoon. Finally a joystick coalesced.

‘Let’s play!’ It was Bobby’s voice that spoke those words.

The Gamer took hold of the joystick with one hand while the other flew across the keyboards.

A light grid formed, one green luminous thread after another, criss-crossing a pattern through the landscape.

‘We are inside it,’ said Tark, head snapping from one direction to the other.

‘We’re part of this game,’ said Zyra.

They watched as the grid continued to form, the beams of light shooting from one end of the landscape to the other. Above them, the hidden environment bent the light, diverting it. By displacing the light, its form became visible.

It was an enormous egg shape, suspended three metres in the air. Tark, Zyra and the Gamer were at the edge, looking up.

‘We require a vehicle,’ said the Gamer.

Machinery formed around him – a combustion engine, chassis, frame, oversized wheels. Finally the matt-black outer cover was in place. The Gamer sat in an open jeep, his holo-controls arranged in the front section, two empty seats behind him.

‘Get in!’

The wheels spun, screeching and sending up plumes of smoke as the friction infused the air with the smell of burning rubber. As soon as Tark and Zyra jumped in, the jeep sped off, crunching robotic spiders under its wheels.

‘I wonder if we’ll get the points for those?’ mused Tark.

They passed under the egg shape and points of light shimmered into existence along the underside. Seconds later they were streaking down to the ground, exploding around them as the Ultimate Gamer zigzagged the vehicle to dodge them. The Gamer swerved the jeep from side to side, knocking Tark and Zyra from one end to the other.

Even though they were seated, Tark and Zyra felt a weight pressing down on their muscles, making them tired.

The jeep screeched to a halt, and the Gamer’s hands moved across the keyboards and displays. Just in time a protective shield appeared above them, stopping the deadly streaks of light, reflecting them back up to their source. A multitude of explosions erupted on the surface above them. Then all was quiet. Tark looked up to see the points of light fading.

The Gamer’s hands continued to move across the controls. Pinpricks of light appeared in the air several metres in front of the jeep and coalesced into a shape. It was a huge industrial laser drill, much bigger than the one Zyra had used to cut into the ground. And to the side of the drill stood a knight in shining armour.

The Gamer manipulated the joystick and the knight switched on the drill. An intense beam of white-hot light shot up, hitting the surface of the egg shape. The area around the laser impact turned a sizzling static grey.

Tark and Zyra watched in stunned silence. The greyness distended on either side of the laser, forming balls of sparking static menace.

‘VIs,’ gasped Tark.

‘Anti-bodies,’ corrected the Ultimate Gamer. ‘Created to repel me.’

The first of the balls intercepted the laser beam, absorbing its energy. The second headed for the jeep.

The knight released the drill’s control and sprang into action. He drew a sword o’ light and lunged at the second ball, the dazzling blade piercing the sphere’s centre.

With the laser drill no longer firing, the first antibody headed for the knight.

‘You will need to operate the drill,’ instructed the Ultimate Gamer. ‘I will deal with the security.’

The knight swung the sword o’ light with the static ball connected. The two balls collided in a burst of static, dissolving in wispy greyness.

Zyra shoved Tark out of the jeep and towards the drill, as more anti-bodies bulged out of the hidden environment.

‘What do we do?’ asked Tark, staring at the drill controls.

‘Weren’t you paying attention?’ said Zyra.

The knight had already set the controls, so all Zyra had to do was operate the lever, slowly shifting it up. The white beam shot from the end of the drill into the hidden environment.

More static balls detached themselves. Tark glanced to the knight, who was lunging at the other two spheres.

‘Trouble’s coming!’ announced Tark.

‘Heads up!’ Bobby called.

The knight dispatched a static ball and tossed the sword o’ light to Tark, drawing a second. The sword spun through the air, the hilt angling towards Tark’s hand at the last moment. Tark swung it in an arc, slicing through an oncoming anti-body.

‘This is easier than the VIs,’ he said, sword at the ready.

‘No mad anti-virus program controlling them,’ noted Zyra.

Tark swung the sword and disposed of another. Glancing over, he saw that the knight was being swarmed by dozens of anti-bodies. Tark moved to help, but found himself blocked by two more. Another two streaked past him to the jeep.

The Ultimate Gamer extended the shield from above the jeep to encompass the whole vehicle. The anti-bodies slammed into it, blistering and sparkling and pushing against it.

Suddenly the knight was overwhelmed. The armoured figure was slowly removed from its virtual existence, one pixel at a time, layer by layer – first the armour, then the skin beneath, finally the muscles and bones and innards – until there was nothing left. Finally gone, his sword fell to the ground. The spheres now turned their attention to the Ultimate Gamer. Tark ducked and they flew over him. He jumped for the discarded sword o’ light. Grabbing it up, he stood with a sword in each hand.

The remaining anti-bodies were now swarming around the jeep, pressing up against the shield, attempting to break through. Above, more static balls were forming.

Tark let loose a battle cry and, spinning a sword o’ light in each hand, advanced on the teeming spheres of static. The spinning arcs of light slashed through the first of the anti-bodies, scattering the others. They regrouped, joined by the newly formed ones, and turned their attention towards Tark.

But the respite he had provided was all that the Ultimate Gamer needed. Again, his hands sped over the controls and pinpricks of light grouped together into a new form.

He was a futuristic techno version of the knight. Oversized muscles bulged beneath a powered titanium exoskeleton – high performance weaponry strapped to every inch of his armoured body, power gloves on each hand.

The anti-bodies now focused their attention on the techno-knight, leaving Tark free to see how Zyra was doing.

‘Is it working?’ he asked.

‘No,’ answered Zyra.

They both stared up at where the laser was hitting the surface of the hidden environment. It had created a glowing hotspot of about a metre in diameter, but there was no evidence of it breaking through.

‘Why aren’t they attacking us anymore?’ asked Zyra, glancing over her shoulder to the anti-bodies.

‘I guess they don’t really see us as a threat,’ said Tark.

‘I suppose that means the laser drill isn’t going to work.’