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

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Chapter Three

0-3: WALK This way

Max mashes his eyes shut and tries to pinpoint the faint sounds coming from the Bay. His breathing smooths out until his heartbeat is the loudest thing he hears. It’s got the be the stresses of the day wearing down his sanity. Like before, a pixel seems to hang in space in front of him. If anything, shut eyes only make more contrast. In the ruddy darkness behind his eyelids, it looks less like a single pixel, and more like…an icon? Pointy at one end. He can’t just lay here and stew.

Max leaves the scraps of his tent and wanders to the edge of camp, overlooking the frontage road that winds its way up the hill. Getting caught outside without clearance is enough of a deterrent that Max has personally never even attempted going AWOL. He’s always found it better to work within the system—without much to show for it, he’s gotta admit. Now things are different.

Different…the pixel’s different. Smaller. As Max turns to the side, the arrow-shape rotates back into view. It’s pointing to the far side of camp. Toward the IT tent.

“Max!” Nolan says as Max enters. He doesn’t look up from his screen. “Those LevelUP clowns must take classes in mismanagement, amirite? Ready for that new game? Maybe Colossal Cave this time?”

Colossal Cave, also known simply as “Adventure,”^[4] is game even older than Zork. Runs great on text-only 8-bit displays. But Max isn’t in the mood for games. Nolan looks up.

“Max—” Nolan says, brow crinkled with concern. “You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Did people used to see things?” Max asks. Nolan looks confused at the admittedly bizarre question. “That didn’t come out right. I mean, did people ever put…pixels in their…” he waves his hands struggling for the right words, “field of view?”

Nolan thinks for about half a second before answering. “Sounds like a Heads-Up Display,” Nolan says. “HUDs were all the rage by the end of the 2020s. But along with pretty much everything, they quit working thanks to Damage. It’s a wonder society survived at all, after seeing how dependent people had become on things like those. You were lucky to be so young, what, around ten? You probably don’t remember the worst of it.”

Damage. The day had taken on mythical status. According to many, the single worst day in history. How else could you describe the moment in which nearly every computer bricked, worldwide? Nolan was right—Max didn’t remember that day. He had memories of before and after, but it was as if his brain had stopped recording during the actual chaos.

Max opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it. The next thing he thinks to say also gets caught in a web of tangled questions. “So, these HUDs…were common?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Nolan says.

“But they all stopped working,” Max says.

“Correctamundo,” Nolan says. “And all the semiconductor factories stopped working, as did all the computer systems that kept them running, and all the laptops of the folks who knew how to fix the factories, and all the compilers needed to rebuild those systems, and so on. The survivors had to start over. Society reboot, rising from the ashes of martial law.”

Nolan switches off his CRT, something Max has only seen him do in rare moments when his full attention is required. He leans closer, focusing his watery eyes on Max. “What’s bothering you, Max?”

“Just trying to figure out a few things.” The pixel winks out, then on again. Great, now it’s blinking.

Nolan watches Max for another second, then shrugs and flips his monitor back on with an electronic buzz that makes Max’s hair stand on end. Eyes glued to the screen, he says, “Fair enough. Let me know if you need anything.”

Max exits to the sound of Nolan’s staccato typing, and plops down in the dust. Was he wrong to rebuff Nolan’s offer for help? From the narrow terrace on which the IT tent sits, it’s not that far down to the gravel access road. Totally jumpable.

Max startles when the pixel reignites in the space right in front of his eyes, bigger and brighter. In fact, it’s not even correct to call it a pixel—it’s a complete icon in the shape of a pointing finger. And it points to outside the camp. Max creeps as close the the edge as he can manage.

The IT tent sits on a roughly hewn ledge, and underneath there’s a video camera is mounted on a steel spike driven into the earth. This is part of the system keeping everyone penned in. But the metal support of this particular security point is corroded and bowed. The camera doesn’t get a view of anything more than the dirt two inches in front of the lens. A chink in the armor. The arrow blinks faster. Max jumps across the threshold.

As soon as his feet hit the gravel below, the HUD arrow flips direction, leading him into the set of dirt trails laced across the salt marshes of the bay.

Movement catches his eye: someone else is out here and heading his way. The trails have long sightlines—not much of a place to hide, even at night. Max crouches as unobtrusively as possible and… “Molly!”

She at first seems not to notice, but then, avoiding eye contact, walks up to him.

“What are you doing outside of camp?”

“Walking,” Molly says.

“No, I didn’t mean literally—never mind…”

“Why are you out here?” Molly asks.

“I…” He doesn’t know where to start. “It’s a long story. There’s something going on. Outside of camp, I mean.” Max says.

A tiny, lopsided smile appears. “Then I’m coming with you.”

The arrow prods him on. The trail loops around an endless expanse of water and emerges onto cracked city streets. Before Damage, these streets were filled with cars scanning the roads with millimeter radar and adjusting their suspension in real-time. Even at his tender age, Max still remembers the silky-smooth feeling of riding in a car. Soothing. Now travel had become more of a roughshod business.

They come to a former industrial park of the Silicon Valley sort, quiet side streets lined with every imaginable tech company. At least now the quiet part is still true.

It’s hot, even at night. Despite twelve years of dramatically reduced industrial emissions, the weather seems to keep getting hotter year by year. There’s a landfill nearby, and the heat has matured it well beyond ripe. Max’s eyes water, though Molly doesn’t seem affected.

They pass several abandoned buildings and come to a crumbling overpass. They cross over to what once passed as a residential neighborhood full of dilapidated apartment buildings.

“Is this where are we going?” Molly asks.

“I don’t know,” Max says. “Ask me again when we get there.”

Molly looks around. “Bad neighborhood,” she notes. “But it has a secret.”

“And you know this how?” Max asks, but as soon as he says it, he knows the answer. “Does Ice know you sneak out of the camp?” Molly ignores the question.

At an abandoned building, the arrow changes into a hand making an OK symbol, then points them toward an entrance. “Looks like this is the place,” Max says. “Have you been here before?”

“There’s something inside,” she says…

footnotes

[4] Technically, “Colossal Cave Adventure.”

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