LevelUP: an 8-bit novel by Micah Joel. Author's definitive online edition.
Support independent authors! Scroll to the end for details.
< back | ⬆️ | next >0-6: Equine Amity
Safely outside Humans First turf, Max has a new problem: he has nowhere to go. Technically he’s still a camp resident, but there’s nothing for him there. The longer he’s away, the more the thought of going back feels like returning to a past life. Molly, at least, still has a place to call home.
His second-most-immediate problem is finding somewhere to keep something as valuable as a vintage piece of 8-bit hardware. Maybe at sunrise he can trek over and unload the merchandise on Abhinav …
Molly remains silent until they approach Lockheed. “Nice move back there. I thought you hate tech.”
After getting used to Molly’s context-free pattern of speech, full sentences feel extravagant. He only said the glowing panel made his fingers tingle because that’s what would maximally freak out the Humans First goons. But it wasn’t only words. His fingers really were tingling, just from being that close to modern tech. There was more in common between Max and Humans First than he’d like to admit.
“I don’t hate tech. I think of it like…cancer,” Max says. “Okay, that didn’t sound very favorable. It’s not good or bad—it just is. I’m totally fine with trading artifacts. But there’s something about tech, especially modern tech, that corrupts people. I just can’t bring myself to trust anyone in control of so much of everyone’s lives.”
“So that’s it?” Molly asks. “Trade away the NES. Then back to your usual stupendous life?”
Ouch. “I don’t even know what ‘usual’ would mean at this point.”
“Hmm.” Molly’s silent for another block, but Max can see in her eyes that she’s thinking. “There’s more to it than that. You were sent for the NES. Someone preserved it.”
“And that makes me, what, The Chosen One?” Max says. “Not me. I’m just…me.” He shrugs. They’ve arrived back at side of the camp where they originally snuck out. “Wait, how are you going to get back in?”
“Watch,” Molly says. She bounds onto the ledge, and just like that, is back inside the camp. By official reckoning, never even left.
She’s a pro at this.
“Did you think I can’t climb with one arm?”
How often has she been outside the camp? Max wonders. She could spend all day wondering around while we’re working…
Max makes a placating gesture. “No comment.” He scrambles up but loses his footing and needs both hands to keep from tumbling down.
“Huh,” Molly says and works her way around the ledge to the IT tent entrance. A motion sensor light flips on. Max stumbles in behind her. Nolan’s not there.
Molly wordlessly turns her back to Max again, and he obliges by removing the NES deck. As if she knows what he’s thinking, she asks, “What are you going to do with it?”
“You’re going to have to hang on to it until I make arrangements. But be careful. Don’t even mention it to anyone.” Max sticks his head out of the tent to see if anyone’s within eavesdropping distance. Then he rolls down the tent flap.
“What about the lock?” Molly asks.
“Assuming I ever have a tent over my head again,” Max says, “I’ll need to figure out how to keep my things safe. Er, safer.”
“No, I mean the lock.”
Right. The other piece of tech. Molly spins again, and Max pulls the lock mechanism out of the backpack. He touches the device and it springs to life. Max’s fingers tingle again. It feels a little like the creepy sensation he gets when seeing a spider. He sets it down on the desk and shakes his hands. “What is that thing? I’ve been trading for a decade and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Molly rummages through Nolan’s toolbox and produces a voltmeter. She flips the lock onto its face and pokes at it with the leads.
“You claimed it fair and square,” Max says. “So, you keep it. See if you can get it to power your Game Boy—I mean, Atari Lynx.”
Molly flashes a quick smile at Max’s correction.
Max takes a closer look at the NES. His fingernail catches against a seam in the otherwise smooth plastic. “Wait, what’s this?”
“What?” Molly asks, suddenly interested.
The plastic has a nearly-invisible seam along the edge near the side connectors. “I need a little more light. Does Nolan have a flashlight?” Molly hands one over, and Max inspects. “Right. This case has been cut and re-glued on the edge here. See? Fine scratches along the edge. I don’t think this is factory standard. This unit has been modified.”
“Meaning?” Molly asks.
Max sighs. More bad news. “Probably that the resale value just dropped. Depends on what’s been done to the hardware.”
Molly frowns. “Are you leaving again?”
Good question. Max himself doesn’t know what he’s going to do. A fresh wave of fatigue washes over him. If it weren’t for that rash spreading across Nolan’s face, he might just curl up and sleep here in the IT tent. But he doesn’t want to spend a minute more than necessary here.
“There is someone who could tell you everything you want to know about that console,” Molly offers. “He’s seen it all.”
Max’s tiredness ebbs a little.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Max says.
“He’ll be up.”
“Why would this person help us?”
“I trust him.”
Molly turns her backpack to Max, and he carefully packs the console inside. “Follow me.”
She leads Max along the southern edge of the camp, behind a long row of residential tents, harshly lit by the ring of floodlights just outside the perimeter. By the time the smell of hay and manure reaches Max’s nose, he realizes where Molly’s leading them: the stables.
To be honest, calling a frayed bit of canvas stretched out over aluminum poles a “stable” reflects an optimistic worldview. The camp’s two horses swivel their ears when they hear Molly approach.
Chen, the stablekeep, appears from a pile of hay, rubbing her eyes, her gray hair pinned into a messy bun. “Molly! What are you doing up at this hour?”
“You two know each other?” Max asks.
“Oh yeah, we go way back,” Chen says. Max can’t tell how serious she is.
“What brings you here at this hour—ohhh… I get it. Molly, you never told me you had a special friend!”
Molly’s face flushes to a shade Max had not realized was physiologically possible.
“Oh, my dear, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Chen says. “There are no appointments until morning, but these guys need rest. You’re not going far, are you?”
“Library,” Molly says.
The library? Why would they go to a library? Chen has a similar thought, judging by the look on her face.
“Max, you know how off-the-books expeditions work, right?”
“Of course,” Max says, even though he’s always done things by-the-book.
“Okay, then. You get caught, I disavow having even seen you this evening, and all kinds of trouble coming down on your head. But you already knew that,” Chen says. Max already has more trouble than he knows what to do with. It’s hard to imagine even more.
Molly responds with a gesture that looks a bit like a military salute. Chen saddles up the horses and leads them through the camp. Twenty paces from the path leading to the stables is another path winding its way down the hill without getting too steep.
The horses confidently pick their way down the hill. The path looks like it could pass for a water runoff channel. Just how many secret exits does this camp have?
“What actually happens if we get caught?” Max asks.
“Not much,” Molly says. “Besides getting exiled from camp and probably starving on the street.”
“Oh good,” Max says. “I was worried it might be something serious.”
They ride into the dark.
ℹ️ Support the author by purchasing your own professionally formatted paperback or Kindle version of this novel. Also, subscribe to get 3 free books.
Got feedback? 👍👎 All humans welcome to send email to my first name @micahjoel.info — put "8bitnovel" somewhere in the subject.
Copyright 2018, 2019 Micah Joel. All rights reserved.