LevelUP: an 8-bit novel by Micah Joel. Author's definitive online edition.
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INVENTORY:
MYSTERIOUS SCROLL
STEALTH CLOAK
IVORY TORCH OF THE ENDLESS FIRE
TROPHY 2
MOUSE
=== SKILLS: ===
SWIM
Max arrives at a shoreline: a geometrically perfect ramp sloping out of the water. A softly glowing white landscape lies beyond. Despite how easily swimming strokes came to Max, putting his legs into action is a different game. Max wobbles as the ground seems to shift underneath his rubbery legs.
The landscape—along with everything else—consists of crisp polygons, as if the level designer started with mathematical equations, and added softly-glowing grid lines to emphasize geometric precision. The path continues its gentle slope a higher point farther inland, cutting between triangular mountains on the left and right. Even the trees are made from raw slivers of razor-sharp geometry. There’s only one way forward.
A thunk catches Max’s attention. It’s Mouse, bumping against the shore. Max picks it up, and it blinks once, coiling its long tail around his arm.
“Do you know what I’m supposed to be looking for?” Max asks.
Mouse blinks once.
“You won’t get much of a conversation out of that one,” says a black-clad figure with eyes hidden behind a leather mask. There was nobody there just a moment ago…
“Eigenthief?” Max asks. “What are you doing here?”
“Eye gehn what?” says the figure in the exact same tenor voice as ET. “I haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about.”
Then again, the original ET never let a moment of omitting ‘The’ from his name go uncorrected. But it can’t be a raw coincidence. “You’re him,” Max says. “Only less pixely.”
“Excuse me?” The figure says. She pulls off the mask to unveil long black hair that tumbles down across her shoulders. “You may call me Bode.”
“Well, that doesn’t bode well,” Max deadpans.
She looks confused. “Neither does it Max well. See how foolish your statement is? It’s ridiculous to tool with someone’s name.”
“How…how did you know my name?” Max asks.
“Wrong question,” Bode says. “The question you really meant to ask is: what can you do for me?”
No, he’s pretty sure that’s not what he meant to ask. “Are you real?”
“Well, that’s an extraordinarily rude question,” Bode says. “I could ask the same of you.”
“Why are you here?” Max asks, undaunted.
“Why are you here?” Bode echoes.
“Oh, this is stupid,” Max says.
“Oh, this is stupid,” Bode repeats.
Mouse blinks twice.
Max angrily waves her off and turns to leave. He sets out toward the notch between the mountains.
And smacks against an invisible wall. The very landscape here is set against him.
Max rubs his nose. “Fine. I’ll talk. I’m here for a trophy. I need to look around until I find it.”
Bode cocks an eyebrow. “Another trophy hunter. The second one today.”
Wait, what? “Second? Who else has been here?”
“I’ll say this, she certainly had fewer questions than you,” Bode says.
She? Hemera. “That’s all? You haven’t seen a man go through here? Looks a lot like me, except more…parental?”
“You should know better than to rely on appearances in a place like this,” Bode says. “Your father could look like anything, assuming he was here.”
“How did you—”
“There’s no end to the variety and sheer quantity of flawed assumptions I’ve seen people make. I sail on the winds of change. I—”
“Bode.” Max sighs. “OK, I get it. So tell me, in order to get the trophy before she does, what assumptions do I need to change?”
“For starters, the assumption that I have any interest whatsoever in helping you,” Bode says.
Max grinds his teeth in frustration. He can’t move forward. He can’t even seem to get past this gatekeeper. What’s left to do?
There is an answer. The needed hints are present—he needs only to figure out the puzzle. What was it that Bode had said before?
“Tell me, Bode, what can I do for you? What do you want?”
Bode arches a brow again. “Those two questions are very different and have very different answers. What do we want? Asking someone that question with a gun pointed to their head will elicit a very different answer than from someone acting at their pleasure.”
What is she talking about? “Who’s got a gun?” Max asks.
“What can you do for me? Very little, I suspect,” Bode says. “Well, there is this one, teensy, tiny little thing.”
Mouse blinks twice.
“What?”
“I want you to leave without the trophy,” Bode says.
“I don’t even know how to leave,” Max says.
“I’ll show you.” Bode casts her eyes toward the sheer wall, and a doorway traces itself into the geometric plane, complete with an exit sign above.
“If I leave without the trophy, Hemera will get it instead.”
“Of what concern is that to you?” Bode asks.
“She’s not a good person,” Max says. “All she does is hurt people.”
“And what makes you arbiter between good and evil? Do you think getting your hands on the trophy will make you a better person than her?”
“Well, just about anyone would be a better person than her, trophy or not. And I take it not too many people can get this far. And I don’t mean that as a brag. I mean not too many people have the hardware to enter this game world.”
“And?”
Max’s mind races. The Muses talked about a mouldering mystery. “Whoever hid the trophies obviously meant for someone to find them. Otherwise why go to all the trouble? They’re part of a key meant to unlock…something that Hemera wants badly. Hiding the trophies is all that keeps someone like her from just taking them.”
Max’s mind wanders back to the day of Damage. What was it his dad had said? Had he somehow been involved in making Damage happen? Or at least in preparing the world for what would happen afterward?
“That’s an interesting theory,” Bode says, a faint smile upon her lips. She lifts her hand, and the invisible wall becomes visible and disappears into the ground, leaving not even a seam. The way forward once again lies wide open. “I will guide you. But only if you follow my every instruction to the smallest detail. If not, I’m not responsible for what happens to you.”
Mouse blinks twice.
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