Now for Chapter Two, which is longer than Chapter One.

Chapter Two

The sound of the front door opening and closing could be heard. Adam looked down the loft hatch, and said, “Back in a sec,”

“Where you going,” Luke asked, glancing up from the computer screen,

“I’m going to tell Lauren that the parental types aren’t going to be around for a couple days,” Adam said, walking to the ladder,

“Lauren? As in your extremely attractive sister? Who is only three years older than us?” Luke asked, suddenly extremely interested,

“Oi, leave it, we’ve gone through this twice, you do not have a shot with her,” Adam replied, “Also, the fact that you’re in love with my sister is rather disturbing,”

“I’m not in love with her,” Luke said, “I am obsessed with her,”

“Whatever, just stay here,”

•

Adam pounded down the stairs, “Lauren?”

“Yeah?” came a voice from the kitchen,

“Mum and dad sent an email, they’ll be gone for two days,” Adam called,

“Thanks for telling me, now if you don’t mind, I have some phone conversations to make, some emails to send, and now I have to cook dinner,”

“No problem, how much you gonna cook?”

“Why?”

“I have some friends round,”

“Pete and Luke?”

“Yeah,”

Adam heard Lauren sigh, then say, “Fine, dinner’ll be ready in an hour, stay out of trouble till then, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” Adam trudged up the stairs.

•

When he got back, he found Alexis and Pete struggling to hold Luke back,

“I’m guessing he tried to get downstairs?” Adam asked,

Alexis nodded breathlessly,

Pete fell back, gasping,

“OK, well, dinner’ll be ready within the hour, so let’s carry on with what we were doing before that interruption,” Adam said, “Pete, any idea what job class your character is now?”

Pete pressed a few keys before replying, “Right now, I’m a… 1st Level Human Thief,”

“So, now what?” Luke asked,

“Well, I suppose we could use the ‘Party’ feature, to make the four of us into a group, that way, we can team up to fight larger monsters, and groups,” Alexis suggested,

“So, why hadn’t the three of you formed a party before?” Pete enquired,

“Well, a couple of reasons, I suppose, one: we couldn’t be bothered, two: parties have to be four players or more, or the group is disbanded when a member logs off the game. If there are more than four of you, you are officially a party, and it stays even when the members aren’t on, also we can name it,” Adam paused, “Now, enough chatter, let’s go,” Adam picked up his laptop and started pressing keys,

•

Soon the four of them had formed a party, called “The Four”. It would have been more original, but they couldn’t think of anything.

After a while, the Four got a little bored of just random killing and side quests, even if they were more rewarding.

Pete broke the silence, “I’m bored again,”

Adam seemed to come to a mental decision, and said, “OK, I’m about to tell you something no one outside this house knows,”

“What? You still sleep with a nightlight?” Luke asked sarcastically,

“Shut up you, no, it’s about this game,” Adam replied, “This game,” he pointed at his laptop screen, “well, Alexis and I kinda created it,”

Luke did a spit take, spraying his Diet Coke all over Pete’s head, “You did what?”

“Well, not created it in the sense that we intentionally made it, but yeah, the game was my idea,”

“What do you mean? I know you’re quite wealthy and everything, but how do two fifteen year old kids make a high quality computer game?” Pete demanded,

“Well, it’s kind of a long story, but we have about three quarters of an hour till dinner, so I guess I can tell you, well, it all started when Alexis came over from the US three weeks ago…”

•

Three Weeks Ago

Adam and Alexis got out of his parent’s car, which had just taken them from the airport to his house.

Alexis looked up at Adam’s overly large house, “What did you do? Win the lottery?”

Adam looked at her, “Yeah, pretty much,”

“I was kidding,”

“I know, doesn’t make it any less true,”

Adam led Alexis up to the guest bedroom, for her to dump her suitcases, before asking, “So what were you so excited about in the car? You seemed pretty keen to get me on my own,”

“Well, you know my dad works for the US government?” Alexis replied,

“Ye-es?”

“Well, he gave me one of these old scanner things, it analyses whatever is passed through it, and translates the data for use, he built it out of old computer parts, so it’s the only one of it’s kind,” Alexis explained, rifling through her suitcases,

“You bring it with you?”

“Yep, do you wanna go install it on your computer?”

“I don’t see why not, to the loft!” Adam exclaimed, raising his fist (superhero style) and leading her to his bedroom,

•

Present Day

“Wait a second, you’re saying that this scanner thing analysed something, and created a game about it?” Pete asked, a disbelieving expression on his face, oh, that and Diet Coke.

“Sort of, I had a notebook full of all these ideas for a game, so we decided to let the scanner scan that,” Adam explained, “At first all we got were heaps of code, which was kind of disappointing, but later, I head my computer whirring, and when I went to investigate I found that the code was writing itself, expanding on what I had originally written, and then the opening screen to the game just opened up on my computer,”

“So how’d it end up on the school system?” Luke enquired,

“Well, after the disappointing failure I had decided to do some homework, and I’d left the school website up,” Adam paused to think, “I’d say that the game broke itself up and went through the website, and then spread into the school system as soon as someone logged into it at school, or the computer the website is run from in the school,”

“Is that even possible?”

“Probably not, but it ended up in school anyway.”

“So, you accidentally created a game, through pure luck and a scanner?” Pete asked,

“Unlikely but true,” Alexis commented,

“Shards of the game were in the school computers, and people could use these to connect to the larger game, like a shortcut,” Adam explained, “I want to show you something the game made,”

“What do you mean, ‘the game made’?” Luke shook his head, “Things like this don’t happen in real life, you’re having us on,”

“Wish I was mate, but the whole thing is true,” Adam said, “So, when I opened the game up, these blueprints shot out of my printer,” he rummaged through a cupboard drawer, “As I had some spare computer and video games console parts lying around, I could build it, but I had to buy the doorframe,”

Luke looked at him questioningly, before looking at the blueprints. They showed a doorframe with door attached, and several electronic parts attached to it, such as a computer keyboard, which don’t usually come with doors, “What does it do?”

“I have my theories, the most likely being that it allows the player to go inside the game,”

“Do you have any theories on how the computer made the game?”

“Yes, I think that this house is built on a dimensional rift, and ideas about the game leaked out as thought waves, I wrote them down, and then this dimension forced my computer to make the game itself,” Adam suggested,

“A lot of crazy things there, but compared to what else you’ve been telling us, makes more sense,” Pete said,

“Well, the door is in the corner, so we get it on it’s stand, plug it in, hook it up to a computer with the game loaded, and go in,” Adam said, pointing to the completely unnoticeable door in the corner.