LevelUP: an 8-bit novel by Micah Joel. Author's definitive online edition.

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Chapter Twelve

0-11: Colossal Cave

“Molly!”

Max peers into the syrupy darkness. Molly’s glowing braids lay spread out like purple rays, unmoving. “Are you hurt? Say something!”

Movement, but not of the comforting sort. The same glitching he saw on the console screen. As quickly as it appears, the distortion goes away. Then the braids tumble over each other in a more organic way.

“Something,” Molly says in flat tones.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Molly says. She finds her way back to standing. Still too far down for Max to reach. “Whoa.”

“What do you see?” Max asks.

“A Colossal Cave,” Molly responds.

Molly’s only recalling their earlier conversation, yet the absurd thought of a late 1970s text adventure playing out almost makes Max laugh. Instead, he says, “Can you see a way to get back up?”

“Not cool,” Molly says.

“What? What’s not cool?”

“The air. It’s warm,” Molly says. “You need to see this.”

Max feels around the frame of the broken trapdoor. His fingers bump against something warm and rusty. A rung. “I think there’s a ladder.”

He cautiously works his way onto the rungs, testing each before applying weight, and this way descends into the greater darkness. The air grows cooler for several rungs. But then he crosses an inversion layer, and a front of warm, stifling air engulfs him. The sharp sweet smell grows stronger and by the time Max sets a tentative foot on solid ground, he’s a bit lightheaded. If it weren’t so dark, the walls around him might be spinning.

“Someone’s been down here,” Molly says.

Well, yeah. When there’s a ladder— Pain explodes through Max’s skull as a flashlight the size of a coffee stirrer blazes to life in Molly’s hands. “Sorry,” says the fading blue streaks filling the space where Molly stands.

“Thanks, I guess,” Max grumbles. Before them is a long corridor, a clean rectangular passage carved through the earth. The cone of light reveals hard-packed earth, the walls slick with moisture. “Flashlight goes first. Don’t touch anything.” In the distance, a rectangular door breaks the straight line of the wall.

“Flashlight’s dying,” Molly says. “No wonder someone threw it away.”

“I think it’s fine,” Max says, seconds before it assaults Max’s retinas with a staccato burst of strobes. After hanging on to a final blip of solid illumination for few seconds, it stays dark.

“So, I spoke too soon.” Max sighs. “We have two choices. Either we see where that door up ahead leads, or we turn back now.” The purple braids bob up and down. “I was hoping you’d say that. Let’s keep moving.”

Max makes his way down the corridor, and his hand brushes against the side wall. “Careful,” he says. His finger tingles. Before long, it’s numb.

Maybe his eyes are adjusting to the tiny amount of light here. Max sees faint outlines of the four seams of the rectangular passage, all stretching toward a vanishing point.

They continue until a gap interrupts the line on the floor. The door. Even warmer than the air around them, and the metal faintly vibrates as if machinery lies within.

The door handle is hooked like one might find on a cruise ship or hospital ward. It turns freely.

“Are we likely to be eaten by a grue?” Molly asks.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine,” Max says, and leans into the door. It doesn’t budge. Max puts weight behind it, but it’s as solid as a vault. Above the handle, his hand finds a round raised seam with an oddly-shaped hole half the size of his finger.

“Hmm. There’s a lock. Got any keys?”

Molly doesn’t seem to take the comment in the offhanded way Max intended. “It’s got to be hidden somewhere else on this level.” She takes a step past the door.

Max reaches out, his hand catching on the bent wire of her prosthetic. Over time, Molly’s bent it at a sharp angle suitable for working the buttons on her handheld game. It’s not the most comfortable thing to grip, but Max holds on.

Together, they work their way forward. “This level isn’t very well-designed,” Molly notes.

“What do you mean?”

“It just goes straight on through. It’s linear with only one available next action.”

It doesn’t seem possible, but it gets even darker. The glow from Molly’s hair seems to be fading, though somehow the faint outlines of the corridor seem even crisper. Max cranes his head from side to side just to make sure he’s not imaging things.

“Do you see that?” he asks.

“It’s pretty dark,” Molly says.

Max waves his hand in front of his face, but even that has no effect on the faint lines. Ahead, squarely in the middle of the corridor, sits a broken brick. Max sees it. Despite the oppressive darkness pressing in from all sides, he sees it. Or at least a schematic wireframe of it, all edges and polygons.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he says. “But I can see something on the ground here.”

A scraping sound as Molly’s toe sweeps ahead of her. The brick tumbles to the side, one chunk of it breaking off.

“Ow,” Molly says.

“I told you…”

What in the world is going on? “Keep going. Here, since I can see, kinda, let me go first.” The corridor doesn’t go on much further. Max slows as they approach the end, and Molly bumps into him from behind.

“Hey, careful.”

They make their way to the end of the corridor. It’s a flat brick wall with a smaller rectangular opening right in the middle. Were it at ground level, it might pass for a fireplace.

“There’s something here,” Max says.

“If you say so,” Molly says.

Max guides Molly’s fingers onto the rectangular frame. “See?”

“No, it’s too dark,” Molly says.

“Figure of speech,” Max says. A cursor blips in the bottom-right side of Max’s field of view. The HUD is trying to reassert itself.

Suddenly uneasy, Molly says, “We should leave. We’re not safe here.”

Max swallows hard. Every time Molly has sensed danger, she’s been more than right about it. If some of Hemera’s goons came down that ladder, there’d be no escaping.

The HUD blinks an arrow, pointing toward the hole in the wall. Second by second, the lines sketching every brick in the wall seem crisper. Is that being generated from the HUD as well? And one of the bricks looks just a tiny bit different from the rest…

Max reaches for the odd brick, and his hand passes clean through. Suddenly he can see inside, floating in the air, a pixelated and slowly spinning rendition of a golden skeleton key. “Tell me you’re seeing this,” Max says.

“If we don’t get out, we’ll be trapped in here,” Molly says, bouncing with energy.

Max closes his hand around the item and it vanishes with a musical chime. The exact sound that had been tormenting him for days in the camp. “Tell me you heard that,” Max says.

“You’re scaring me,” Molly says. She pulls away.

A key icon lights up in Max’s HUD. “It’s your fault—you went off to find a key on this level. Now I’ve got one. C’mon.” Definitely more detail in corridor rendering now. Subtle textures are visible on the walls. “This is incredible,” Max says. “It’s like being inside a video game.”

Back to the locked door, Max puts his hand against the keyhole, and with a ker-thunk noise, the key icon disappears from his HUD. This time, when he pushes against the door, it nudges free.

“Well, this is it,” Max says. “Here we go.”

He opens it wide.

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