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

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Chapter Four

0-4: Trophy Case

The building had shops on the ground floor, looted bare, and expensive apartments on the higher floors. The way in leads through a parking garage nestled behind the storefronts. There’s no power in this part of town; no streetlights. A metal grate that closes off the garage has been peeled back, leaving a hole large enough for someone much bulkier than Max to fit through.

Just outside the rift, Max notices a curled sign duct taped to the wall. It reads “Entry Forbidden. Consequences for Trespassers.” He smooths it out to reveal the symbol of a scarab beetle. “Humans First,” Max says. It’s a loosely knit group of people who think Damage was a good thing for humanity, and they fight back using whatever means necessary against efforts to reestablish tech. They’re obsessive about defending their territory, including this building.

Max peers into the dark. The kind of place where getting mugged would feel like getting off easy. “I don’t know about this. Molly, do you hear anything?”

“Yes,” Molly says.

“What?!”

“Crickets.” Molly cocks her head. “And an internal combustion vehicle on the 237.”

Max breathes again. “I mean, not counting the freeway over there, do you hear any people nearby?”

Molly is quiet for a second. “No.”

Max takes a step inside, and Molly follows. It’s not as dark as Max thought. In fact, the wall nearby glows with an eerie light. Max looks back, and it’s coming from Molly’s purple braids. “I had no idea glow-in-the-dark hair was a thing,” Max says. “Who does that for you?”

“There,” Molly says, pointing. Max can’t see a thing, but after several steps in that direction, a door comes into view. The handle won’t turn.

Max jumps when a gust of cool air washes across his face. But how could there be wind in an enclosed garage? “Did you feel that?” he asks.

Molly shakes her head ‘no’ but doesn’t make eye contact. She does something to the door handle and it springs open.

They’re in a stairway (and, judging by the smell, longstanding latrine) littered with the husks of electronic equipment salvaged from the apartments above. Vintage processors sell for a fortune on the open market. Max steps over a Smart Toilet that someone went to the trouble of dragging onto the stairs. It was perched precariously, and a slight nudge topples it, sending it bouncing off every step the rest of the way down, building up to an avalanche of shattered porcelain and printed circuit boards.

Molly covers her ears, even after the sound stops. “It’s okay,” Max says. “It’s just a bunch of junk. There’s another door at the top, leading to a corridor. The HUD arrow blinks once more. “This way.”

The floor creaks as they walk, splintered doors scattered on both sides. They stop at one of the doorways. Inside is dusty, long ago looted and abandoned. These were nice places once upon a time. People used to live a good life, instead of scraping by in tents on top of a toxic waste dump. But now, every single apartment they pass is utterly ransacked.

Until they reach the corridor’s end. This apartment has a metal door. Solid and riddled with dents and scratches, evidence of failed attempts to get inside. Alongside the door, some frustrated would-be looter attacked the drywall, attempting to bypass the door completely. The ragged open gash reveals thick steel plating. Somebody built this place like a vault.

Molly runs her finger along a keypad made from some indestructible plastic and it lights up. The sickly green light shines out like a spotlight compared to the purple darkness Max’s eyes have adjusted to.

“How can—? There’s no power in this building,” Max says. His HUD flashes an OK hand sign.

“I know how to get inside,” Molly says.

“Really? How?”

“By guessing the code,” Molly says.

Max sighs. She’s right of course. Zero through nine. How many digits in the code? Maybe six? Eight? That’s a hundred million possible combinations. If he had weeks, maybe. “I don’t think we can stick around long enough to crack the code,” Max says. “We need to find some other way.”

Max leans in close to see the key markings better. He runs his finger along the plastic.

KER-THUNK. The lock opens. What the?

“Well done,” Molly says.

“I didn’t do anything!” Max says. “I just touched it and it opened.”

“Shhh!”

“What?”

“Voices,” Molly says. “People outside.”

Right outside? An agonizing moment passes. Max strains to hear. He thinks he hears something far away, on the sidewalk below. “It’s okay. They’re moving away now.”

On second thought, it might be better to lay low here for a little while. Max ducks inside, Molly following and banging the door shut behind herself.

Max cringes. “Shhh. Let’s keep it on the downlow here.” In the faint glow from Molly’s locks, he looks around the space they’ve entered: an apartment in the prevailing style of the late 2020s. Pre-Damage. Untouched for more than a decade.

The entryway leads to a kitchen on the left, and a living room straight ahead. Spartan but not looted.

“I’m nervous,” Molly says.

“Now you’re nervous?” Max says. “Come with me. Let’s look around.”

Max reaches for Molly’s hand, but he’s surprised to grab a handful of bent coat hanger wire. He’d totally forgotten about her prosthetic arm. She must have been only five or six when Damage happened. Even with the latest artificial arm available at the time, she’d have quickly outgrown it and had to make do with whatever was available. He wraps his hand around the wire and gives it a gentle tug to make sure she knows he’s got her.

They take another step deeper inside. A thick layer of dust carpets the floor, and absorbs sound, giving the place a suffocating feeling. They leave footsteps as they go, soft plumes of dust mushrooming up around their feet with each step. Max feels a sneeze building.

First stop, kitchen. Carpet gives way to linoleum, slippery under the dust. The stove has a digital clock, dead as this entire neighborhood. Other than the lock on the outside door, there’s not a trace of electricity.

The cupboards are bare of food, and not in the messy already-been-looted way. Max holds his nose and risks a peek in the fridge, but it’s empty and musty; no mummified cold cuts or furry stuff. This place was never lived in.

A small dining table and four chars adorn the next open room. Outside windows facing the street and spiderwebbed with cracks. Keeping with the construction theme of this apartment, it must be reinforced glass.

Max gently guides Molly back behind the central wall. He points. “Windows,” he says. “In a dark building, you look like a neon sign. We don’t want to call attention to us. Can you hold tight here? I’ll look around.”

Molly nods. When Max looks again, a trick of the light makes her braids seem less luminous. Is he making a big deal out of nothing?

Next to the table is a tiny computer desk with a flatscreen monitor perched atop. Max rubs the dust off the case. “Dell.”

Molly leans forward. The brightness increases just a bit more than Max expects. “What year?” she asks.

“Not sure, but it’s no use to us. It definitely post-1989.” Only computers designed before 1989 remained operable after Damage.

Max can’t hold in the sneeze any longer, and the resulting blast knocks a layer of dust off the wall, spreading even more dust into the air. Max jams a knuckle against the bottom of his nose.

“Yeesh, all this dust,” Max says. He makes his way to the undisturbed end of the apartment. Molly trails behind, stopping next to the door where they first came in.

Just enough light radiates from Molly’s braids to let Max find his way to a single bedroom with its own bathroom, both completely barren. No furniture. Not even a mattress or a shower curtain. Definitely not lived in. No clues.

Max returns to the entrance, where Molly kneels, back to the door, head bent in concentration. “Got it,” she says as something tiny plops into the dust. She pockets a tiny screwdriver.

“Uh, Molly, what’cha doing?” Max asks.

She opens the door a crack, reaches to the control pad on the outside, and brings the entire panel inside, still live and glowing. She sets the chain on the door. The skinny, feeble chain, no different from every other one that failed to protect all the other apartments in the complex.

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Max says.

“Hemera said I can’t have double-A’s.” Molly hefts the device in her hand. “This makes electricity, so I won’t ever need batteries again.”

Hard to argue with that logic. “But looters can walk right in here now,” Max says.

“We won’t be back, so what does it matter?” Molly says.

“Sure, but I was thinking about a more immediate timeline. What if we get a visitor? Let’s get out of here,” Max says. He opens the door a crack and listens. It’s quiet.

Molly closes the door. “There’s still one more room. I want to see it.”

The living room. Like the other rooms, it’s lacking in furniture, except for the far wall, underneath the windows, where broad trophy case resides. A filthy piece of glass seals off each compartment. It looks like what Max imagined a trophy case would look like; every time he retrieved a treasure in one of Nolan’s narrated Zork games, he’d put it in the display.

“That’s not a good idea,” Max says. “We need to keep low and out of sight, then bug out of here.”

“I see something,” Molly says.

That dismantled lock leaves Max feeling exposed. The sooner they get out of here, the better. And not arguing will be faster. “Fine.”

The carpet is plush enough to be felt under the thick dust. The trophy case is three compartments high and eight across. Max starts at the top row. Pushing on the glass releases a magnetic latch, and the door springs open. Inside is completely bare and dust-free.

“Empty,” Max says. Molly doesn’t seem to be paying attention, so he works his way across the top row. All empty. Are we supposed to find treasures and bring them back here on display? That doesn’t make sense. We’re not in a video game.

Max works his way through the middle layer, with similar results.

But Molly’s attention is focused on the lower shelf. She opens the door revealing a gray box, darker on the lower half, with a black stripe on the right. Max finishes checking the rest of the compartments, finding nothing, and has a closer look. He wipes the dust away before realizing what it is. A piece of 8-bit hardware—worth a fortune. He pulls his hand back from it like from a burning flame.

“Nintendo of America?” Molly gasps. “A game console? I didn’t know they made them so big.”

“Or that any are left that haven’t been scavenged for parts,” Max says.

“An actual NES!” Molly shakes her good hand the way someone would after washing. “I’ve heard of these. I can’t believe I’m seeing this!”

“What year?” Max asks.

“Designed in 1983, but didn’t reach the US until 1985,” Molly says.

“Whoa.” Max raises an eyebrow. A complete 8-bit computer. This could be the shot of liquid capital that lets Max rebuild his mercantile—for that matter the whole camp—and keep it running for another year. If it works, that is.

Where did Molly pick up so much history? It seemed like everyone in camp thought of her as a game-playing robot, a fixture lurking around the tents, consuming resources. Knowing trivia about an ancient artifact was a tiny thing, but it hinted at the existence of a wider world. If she knew about this, something that Max himself didn’t know after years of experience buying and selling in the camps, what other surprises might lurk behind her smile?

Silence and dust settle between them. Before he can figure out what that means, he feels another sneeze building up explosive energy. “We can’t leave this for the looters.”

Molly doesn’t move.

“What is it?” Max asks.

“They’re here.”

Adrenaline surges through Max at the words, his heart thumping in his chest. “Who? Right outside? Right now?”

“No, not yet.” She turns her back to Max, which momentarily confuses him until he realizes this is her way of indicating to put the goods into her backpack, slung low over her shoulders. He reaches for the deck, and for a moment, he could swear it’s powered on. A faint vibration seems to thrum inside the plastic as if there’s a spinning fan inside. He listens. Nothing.

He crams the NES into Molly’s backpack, including all the wires and controllers.

“Okay, now they’re right outside,” Molly says. “Four guys. One with steel-toed boots.”

“What!? Just fifteen seconds ago you said they weren’t here,” Max whispers.

“Fifteen seconds ago, they weren’t,” Molly says.

The doorknob rattles and turns. The door opens an inch until the chain catches. Outside, a voice says, “Hey, check this out.”

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