[Sf] Physically Virtual, a special sneak preview! (T-frequent mild language)

Rated T for Teen: frequent mild language



A Zelda Universe Creativity Corner Production, in association with The Worlds of the SightSpirit Productions:

The Virtual Files, Volume 1:

Physically Virtual: A special 3-chapter sneak preview!

Written by SightSpirit/EzloSpirit


Pixels of Darkness


Suburbs of Washington, D.C., USA; Present


Clicka-clicka-clicka-clicka. Les rapidly typed at his computer. The Game had to be created. Soon. He was the only one who could do it. Someone had told him. Over the radio. He had an I.Q. of three-hundred four. At age fourteen, that was considered genius. And that was exactly what Les Manding was. Genius. Pure genius.

“This is taking too long,” he muttered to himself still typing away. “The War could break out any day now! This needs to be finished very beforehand, so we can be ready! At this rate it won’t be finished until after we all die!”

Les could almost always be seen typing at his computer. He only got four haircuts a year. His hair did not grow that quickly anyway. But it still grew almost to his shoulders. The hair on his head was as black as night. He did change his clothes everyday, though. Except he wore the same outfit everyday, no matter what the weather was: a green shirt and black shorts.

If Les had gone to school, he would have been considered a weirdo and a nerd. But he didn’t. Senior-level college was too easy for him! So he stayed at home with his computer.


One Week Ago


Les was watching the news on television with his father, Joseph Manding. Les did not care about the world around him. He hadn’t watched the news since he was about five years old. Naturally, he had refused when his father had invited him to watch the news a few minutes earlier. But Mr. Manding insisted that his son learn about “the latest scoop around the planet.” So Les eventually gave in.

So, here he was: watching what would soon become the most famous and scariest news stories in history.

“We have received an odd report from NASA that a bizarre computer virus has come from outer space and is now spreading throughout the world. Other countries are putting the blame on the US. Rumor has it that the other main powers of the world besides the US are preparing for war.”

The scene changed, and the President of the United States was being interviewed by another reporter. The President was saying, “I do not know what has driven these other countries to turning against us. It is almost like this virus is putting little ‘pixels of darkness and evil’ into their hearts.”

“This is getting too weird for me,” Mr. Manding interrupted, turning the TV off. “It’s almost like when everyone thought there was an alien invasion when they listened to the radio, and they were actually listening to a radio play of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.” Les said nothing. For at that moment, the radio turned itself on.

“Les Manding,” an odd, slightly metallic voice whispered from the radio. Les looked up at his father. Mr. Manding was still talking about the chilling news report. He seemed unaware of the voice from the radio.

“Les Manding,” the voice repeated. Les felt chills running up his spine. He forced himself to listen to the radio. It began to give him instructions for programming a virtual reality game, meant to train anybody for war. When the voice was finished, Les pondered on whether to obey. After all, it could be a trick. Or he could be hearing things. Nevertheless, Les Manding decided to begin the creation of the Game.




Completion


Suburbs of Washington, D.C., USA; Present


Les watched as seven strings of binary code scrolled vertically down his computer screen.

“This is taking too long,” he pointed out, an obvious tone of impatience to his voice. “There are only seven damn strings of code now! There will need to be hundreds, maybe thousands, of strings before this thing is finished!” He banged his fist on the desk and continued working.

* * *

Les’ parents were becoming increasingly concerned about their son. While he had always spent at least half the day on the computer anyway, now he was spending at least sixteen hours at a time in front of the monitor. The boy rarely got up and ate a meal. He could starve. He could also go blind. That was the most likely outcome of this odd addiction. What had gotten into Les? Mr. Manding decided to find out.

One day, when Les was, quite obviously, seated in front of the computer, eyeballs on the screen and fingers typing away, Mr. Manding decided to “watch some TV.” Les’ computer is located in the same room as the TV; in fact, the sofa facing the television is right behind the chair to the computer. So, every few minutes, Mr. Manding would silently turn around and look to see what Les was doing. Les was unaware of his spying father behind him.

What was this? All Mr. Manding could see were a bunch of vertical lines of the numbers one and zero, arranged in different orders. Les would, every few seconds, type another arrangement of ones and zeroes. There were about seventy strings of what looked like some kind of code at this point. What was the point of ones and zeroes anyhow? Les’ father was clueless. He decided to do a web search on computer code next time Les took a break. The Mandings only had one computer, and it belonged to Les.

That night, Mr. Manding sat down at the computer. The codes were not there. He saw there was a minimized program. That’s probably it, he thought. He opened up the Internet browser and Googled computer codes. The code with ones and zeroes was called binary code. Depending on how the numbers one and zero were arranged, each string stood for a different thing. Les was up to something. Maybe he was making a virus. Maybe the alien virus wasn’t alien, but was being made by his own son. Or maybe he was just making a computer game. Mr. Manding decided to keep watching Les to see what took shape as more and more strings of binary were inputted.


Ten Months Later


Les breathed a sigh of relief. Exactly ten-thousand one-hundred ten strings of binary had been inputted into the system. He couldn’t (and nor could his father who was right behind him) see the code anymore. He saw a landscape. A landscape of nothing. But it would soon be a landscape. Les just needed to activate the Game from inside of it. Now it was just a grid. The grid was green. Everything else was pitch-black.

Much to Mr. Manding’s sheer astonishment, Les poke a finger at the monitor…and it passed right through! Les continued until his entire body was inside the Game.


Activation Grid, The Game, Cyberspace


Les walked forward until he came upon an icon that looked like a jetpack. “It looks like an item icon in a video game!” he exclaimed, amazed as well as proud of his hard work. He touched the icon, and it became a real jetpack. The new Player put it on and turned it on. He blasted forward.

It was like flying without wings, a mysterious, but magical experience. Les did loop-the-loops in mid-air, turned his entire body around and flew while on his back, and even did mid-air flips. He loved it. Then he got to the other wall, which was covered by a grid.

Les shut down the jetpack and began walking to the wall. In the center of one of the squares formed by the grid, was a lone switch. The switch was a lever. Les walked up to it and pulled it down. Suddenly, the grid disappeared, and images began taking shape. The Game had been activated.




The Player Draft


Tutorial Level, The Game, Cyberspace


The place taking shape before Les’ eyes was very familiar to him. It looked like a Washington, D.C. suburb, just with no houses. It was just a fairly hilly area, blanketed in a sheet of grass. The sky was as blue as could be. Besides that it was empty.

“Hello?” he shouted to no one. He heard an echo in reply: “Lo…? Lo…? Lo…?” That was his only answer. There was no one else here. Or was there…?


Suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, USA; One minute earlier


Harry Drake sat at his computer playing games on the Internet. He had pitch-black hair, always messy; he could never keep it straight, even when he wanted to. He wore black, round glasses. His nickname at school was “Harry Potter” because he looked almost exactly like the fictitious wizard.

Harry was a wizard. But not a magical wizard. No. He was the wizard of track and field! The event he excelled at the most was the long jump. Harry usually managed to leap two yards! Everyone admired him. Especially the girls!

But he had never known what he could use his leaping ability for. He definitely would not have suspected it would be good to use in a virtual reality video game…

So there he sat, eyes glued to his monitor playing a game where a four-colored circle would need to be guided into a fan-like portal. Just then, the screen went dark. Vertical lines of numbers flowed across the screen downwards.

“DAD!” Harry shouted. “I THINK THE COMPUTER’S BROKEN!”

“I CAN HEAR YOU, DAMN IT! I AM IN THE NEXT ROOM!”

Harry groaned. He felt annoyed that his father made him feel stupid.

“Plus, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his father said a lot more calmly. “I am on the computer, too, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Maybe it’s this computer,” Harry suggested. Suddenly, some of the numbers shaped themselves into a hand. A look of curiosity flashed across his face. Then, the hand came right out of the monitor and grabbed him! Harry screamed.

Mr. Drake came into the room just in time to see his son dragged right into the computer….


Toronto, ON, Canada; Ten minutes earlier


“To hell with this! There’s no reliable information about climbing on the first page of my Google search!”

“Google is typical American stuff, eh?”

“Shut up! I don’t want to talk right now!”

“Are you so lazy that you don’t feel like going to the next page?”

“…Yes!”

Keith Marrier and Joel Nison were in front of Keith’s computer researching more info on Keith’s favorite hobby: climbing. Keith was lazy. Joel was just the opposite. Somehow, they still managed to be friends.

The two boys spent another five minutes arguing about clicking one tiny link. Then, Google disappeared.

“That stuff looks like that code we learned about in school last week,” Joel noticed. Two coded hands suddenly reached out of the screen and grabbed the boys.

“I hope you also discussed this happening when you talked about the code!” Keith whined.

“Nope!” Joel replied. Then they were pulled in.


Beverly Hills, CA, USA; Ten minutes earlier


“Hiya!” the boy on the screen shouted.

I love YouTube! So many ways to get your karate moves out there. That was what Matthew Jones was thinking as he watched himself teach an invisible audience karate on the video he was watching on the Internet.
Matt was a second-degree blackbelt. He had started learning karate when he was five. Now he was fourteen. Nine years of fighting. That’s the way he liked it!

He snapped out of his thoughts when he realized the video had stopped. In fact, the video was gone.

“I stink at math!” Matt told no one. “Is this some pop quiz that my teacher’s sending me over the Internet? These problems are up and down, too! This is going to take me hours!”

A surprised look sprouted on his face as his “math pop quiz” grabbed him and took him into his computer.


Tutorial Level, The Game, Cyberspace


And so this continued. Five other teenage boys were chosen and pulled in, each with his own talent. Les didn’t know this. He wasn’t aware he had started it either. For when he had pulled the lever and activated the Game, nine other boys were dragged in by the Game itself to play with him. The Players had been chosen. It was almost time to play.




Note: The part with Keith and Joel in chapter 3 with Google being "typical American stuff" is/was not meant to be insulting or to imply that Canadians typically don't like Americans. The point of this comment was to emphasize the fact that Keith and Joel are not American, for the sole purpose of characterization. Sorry if this little comment insulted anybody.

(c)2008-2009 SightSpirit/EzloSpirit. All rights reserved.