Puzzler
During life skills block I harvested the stupid spinach I’d be eating for dinner that night, while Soup swept around the garden like a Harvest Moon sprite, patting the tomatoes like they were tiny heads and saying things like “Plump up, my little honeys” and “You’re so engorged today!”
Finally the canary sang and we returned to the Nest for Tuesday’s team-based competition. As always, Zxzord was asleep in the bunks. I was kinda jealous . . . of the relaxing. Not the heroin withdrawals . . . if they were even real.
I joined the guild circle, sitting right next to Meeki, who immediately got up and sat on the opposite side. Fine. If she didn’t want me to apologize, I wouldn’t.
“Greetings, adventurers!” Fezzik said. “Today you’ll be leveling up your spell-casting abilities.”
Soup gave a few little claps. “Yesssss.”
Fezzik held up a Ping-Pong ball that had been painted purple. “Fury Burds,” he said, “your quest is to guide this magical orb from the Nest all the way down to the Hub and into the Box of Fate.”
We stared at him.
He held out the ball on his open palm. “Aren’t you guys going to say, ‘Oh, that’s easy’ and try to carry it to the Hub?”
“We’re guessing there’s a catch,” Meeki said.
“Heh. There is a catch.” He tossed the ball and caught it. “You can’t touch the orb. And the orb can’t touch the floor. And no, you can’t just grab a tissue and carry it. The orb cannot come into immediate contact with something you’re touching. Any questions?”
Meeki raised her hand. “Why does it feel like V-hab was designed for four-year-olds?”
“I like it!” Soup said, hurt.
Meeki smiled. “I rest my case.”
Fezzik dropped his adventure voice. “Video Horizons accepts players ages eleven to seventeen, so we have to strike a balance with challenges like this.” He looked at our blank faces. “Fine. Use your engineering skills to get this Ping-Pong ball to the box in the Hub before the other guilds. Is that better?”
There was a general grunt of assent.
“Do we get points?” I asked.
“Same as the tournaments. First place is two-hundred and fifty thousand for each player.”
I flipped my chair backward, straddled it, and focused on the orb.
Meeki was right. This did feel juvenile. But if I was going to get out of there in time, I had to treat this contest like it was my fucking job.
“You have until the loon cries,” Fezzik said. He stood up, put a pillow on the bunk above Zxzord, and then placed the purple Ping-Pong ball on the pillow. “I think this is going to be tougher than you guys think.”
Soup, Meeki, and Aurora stood around the orb.
“It can’t touch the floor?” Aurora asked.
“Nope,” Fezzik said.
“And it can’t touch us?”
“No.”
“Does telekinesis count?”
“Aurora,” Fezzik said, “if you can make that ball float with your mind, I’ll give you a million points right now.”
I kept my focus on the ball. Could we somehow hit the ball so it glided all the way down the stairs, down the hall, and perfectly into the Box of Fate?
No. This wasn’t Super Monkey Ball.
“Hurry, adventurers!” Fezzik said. “The other guilds are probably hard at work!”
“Yeah, probably not,” Meeki said. “What happens if we drop it?”
“You lose five thousand points off the reward, and you have to return here and start over.”
“We could build a train!” Soup shouted. “A little train that carries the ball in its caboose.” He shook his own caboose.
“Let me get this straight,” Meeki said in a cutting voice. “You want to construct a fully operational miniature engine and then lay small rails that perfectly run out of the room down the staircase and up into the box?”
Soup bit his bottom lip. “I guess that’s dumb, huh?”
I focused on the orb. Could we somehow tilt the floor so . . . No. This wasn’t Marble Madness. Besides, the floor was lava. The floor was death. The floor was an infinite fall into failure.
Meeki snapped her fingers. “We could build a bridge. We could use straws and spaghetti to make rails that lead all the way down—”
“That was my idea!” Soup said.
“Yeah, but mine actually works.”
“I’ll go see if there’s enough straws and spaghetti in the Feed,” Aurora said, leaving the Nest.
“A thousand points to all three of you!” Fezzik said.
“Wait, we get points just for coming up with random ideas?” I asked.
“Of course,” Fezzik said. “This is so you guys can work on team-building. I can’t give you points for just sitting there. Zxzord, I’m looking in your direction.”
In the bunk Zxzord rubbed his face. “Don’t drop the ball, dudes.”
“Thanks for that,” Meeki said.
I kept my eyes on the orb.
Before the Wight Knights had come along, I’d gone on plenty of Arcadia raids where the other players had been nothing more than dead weight for me to drag around. This was no different. The Fury Burds were competing against gamers who all thought just like they did.
We needed something new. We needed innovation.
Aurora returned to the Nest, arms full of things from the Feed. “I also got plastic cups so we can make a tunnel for the stairs.”
“Brilliant,” Meeki said. “The ball will build up momentum to get down the hallway.”
“Nice!” Fezzik said. “Another thousand for Aurora.”
I ignored them. I wasn’t in this for a measly thousand. I was going to win the whole quarter mill.
Aurora dumped the straws and spaghetti onto the floor while Meeki got glue and string from the crafts chest. Using a pair of safety scissors, Meeki punched out the bottoms of the cups.
I focused back on the orb. What if the rails ran out the window and around the building to . . .
No. That was stupider than Soup’s train idea.
Soup danced around Meeki and Aurora. “What can I do? What can I do? What can I do?”
“You can crawl into the activity chest and stop giving me a headache,” Meeki said.
Aurora handed him a handful of spaghetti. “You can start laying these out to the door.”
“Okay!” Soup said.
After laying just three noodles, he leapt to his feet and shouted, “We need a Portal gun! I’d aim at the ball and be like pthoo—blue portal!—and then aim at the ceiling over the Box of Fate and be like pthoo—orange portal! And then drop, plunk!”
“Have your parents ever had you tested for anything?” Meeki asked.
I really focused on the orb. I was determined to find a better solution than Meeki’s.
What if it wobbled off the thin spaghetti rails? What if it didn’t gain enough momentum in the cup tunnel to get all the way down the hallway? Aurora and Soup were right. We needed telekinesis. We needed a Portal gun. The orb needed little wings just like my Navi sprite—
Didilingdingdingdingding! Soar, stupid.
“Stop what you’re doing!” I said, jumping to my feet.
Meeki and Aurora looked up at me, pinching straws, dripping glue.
“We need every extension cord we can find,” I said.
“Um,” Fezzik said. “I think your guild is onto a pretty good idea here. Do you think you could incorporate—”
“It’s not gonna work,” I said, rushing to the door. “Straws are flimsy and spaghetti will snap. My way will be faster and more dependable. Trust me.”
“Well . . . ,” Fezzik began.
“If it works then we all earn points and we get out of here faster, right?” I said to my guildmates.
Aurora and Meeki went back to gluing. No wonder they’d been stuck here longer than a week.
“Fine,” I said. “Keep building your rickety spaghetti bridge. I’m doing this idea.”
“Take Soup with you,” Meeki said. “Please.”
Fezzik did not look happy.
“Soup?” I sighed. “You wanna help?”
He jumped and punched the air. “Yes!”
As we descended the staircase, I said, “Okay, I need you to go grab all of the extension cords you can find.”
“Okay! Where are they?”
“I don’t know. The Feed? The Hub? Ask the Dust Fairy. I can’t tell you everything to do.”
“Okay, right, yeah, thanks.”
He scampered away, like a StarCraft SCV, off to collect energy. I was only slightly worried. The difference between Soup and SCVs was that the bots were programmed not to screw up.
I ran outside and searched the horizon. The coach was spray-painting parallel lines along a compact stretch of sand.
Just a simple fetch-quest, I told myself.
“Hey, uh, Coach. Mind if I borrow your little electric fan?”
The coach kept spraying. “Yes, I do. What do you want it for?”
Didilingdingdingdingding! Don’t tell him about the contest! He’ll think you’re cheating like before!
“G-man asked me to grab it,” I said.
“It’s in the supply closet, and I’ve got the only key. I’m not taking time away from—”
“I think Zxzord has a fever?” I interrupted. “You know”—I cleared my throat—“the kid with the heroin addiction?”
The coach glowered at me.
Back in the Nest, I held the fan above my head.
“Dun-un-un-un!” I tried singing the Zelda treasure song.
Aurora glanced in my direction. She and Meeki were still busy gluing. They had put together, like, three feet of stable rails. Three out of around fifteen we needed just to get to the stairs.
“Where’s Soup?” I said.
“He’s not back yet,” Aurora said.
“Peons,” I mumbled under my breath. I patted Meeki and Aurora on their backs. “Don’t worry! We’re gonna win!”
Meeki continued gluing, only now with more ferocity. Finally Soup ran into the Nest, his little shoulders wound with extension cords. He looked and sounded like he’d just competed in the Ironman marathon. “Hoof!” he said, throwing down the cords and rubbing his sore little muscles. “I gotta lie down.”
“Nope!” I said. “You need to start plugging those together!” I jostled his shoulders. “C’mon, buddy! Let’s do this! I need you!”
His arms drooped as if they were made of cooked spaghetti. He dropped to his knees and started connecting the cords.
“Whoops,” I said. “Unravel them first. Otherwise you might be plugging them into knots.”
He nodded and started to unravel them.
“Soup,” Fezzik said, “you can come up with your own ideas.”
“It’s okay,” Soup said, unraveling. “I like it this way.”
I carried the fan to Aurora and Meeki. “I’m going to need both of my hands, so someone needs to be my uncoiler.”
They kept gluing.
“Guys, this is gonna work. Seriously.”
Nothing.
“Okay, uh, Zxzord? Can you help?”
A light snooze came from the bunk.
“Zxzord has died,” Fezzik whispered, “of dysentery.”
“Fine,” I said. “Soup? You think you can uncoil too?”
He looked up at me with a slack-mouthed face . . . and nodded.
“Yes! Okay. We got this. We got this!”
I hadn’t felt a rush like this since the Wight Knights had saved Graham Cracker Plaza from the Milk Tide. I grabbed the first cord from Soup and plugged in the fan. It whirred cool air. I brought it over to Zxzord’s bunk, and pointed it upward.
“Soup? Will you blow the orb off the pillow, please?”
Soup nervously crept up the ladder, as if Zxzord was going to spring to life and clamp on to his little ankle. He put his lips next to the ball and blew. The purple orb rolled off the pillow and onto the cushion of air, where it hovered about three inches above the fan in my hands.
“Oooooh,” Aurora said.
Meeki snapped her fingers in Aurora’s face and pointed downward. Aurora returned to gluing spaghetti.
I carried the fan and the ball toward the door.
“Eh?” I said to Fezzik.
“I guess that’s not technically cheating,” he said.
“Nope!” I said. “Ha!”
“What do I do?” Soup asked.
“I already explained it. You just uncoil the extension cords as I go and make sure I’ve got plenty of line.”
“You’re smart, Miles,” Soup said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t you need your guildmates?” Fezzik asked.
“Do you guys want to see us win?” I asked the glue crew.
They didn’t respond.
“Guess not,” I said to Fezzik.
I stepped carefully out of the Nest, balancing the ball in midair, while Soup unraveled the extension cord behind me.
“Don’t pull too hard,” I said, “or it will unplug.”
“’Kay,” he said. I could hear his little teeth clacking together. “This is stressful.”
“You’re doing great.”
We carefully walked down the staircase, Fezzik following behind to make sure we didn’t touch the ball. At the base of the stairs, I looked left and right toward the two staircases at the far corners of the building. The Cheefs had made it out of their door and were quickly connecting toilet paper rolls from the recycling bin. It was a good idea, but it was taking them forever to tape them all together.
The Hub’s door lay ahead.
“We’re doing it!” Soup said.
“Of course we are,” I said.
Halfway to the Hub, the door at the far end of the hallway swung open, revealing the silhouette of the coach. The fan wavered in my hand, and I quickly balanced the ball while searching for an escape. He couldn’t catch me using his fan on anything other than the kid with the heroin addiction.
“Soup, fast, open that door.”
He opened what turned out to be the music room, and he, Fezzik, and I went inside. The Dust Fairy whirled around, quickly shutting a vent.
“No class now,” he said, waving away smoke from his e-cigarette.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, peeking back down the hallway to see if the coach was gone. He was headed our way.
“Miles,” Fezzik said. “What are we doing in here? The Hub is two doors down.”
“No, yeah, I just . . .” I looked around frantically. “I left my schedule in here. Do you see it, Soup?”
Soup searched while the Dust Fairy held the vent’s grate in place with one meaty hand. I stayed pressed against the wall, out of view of the door. The coach’s sneakers squeaked closer. As he passed the door, he snorted, almost as if to say he could smell me.
“Not here,” Soup said.
“Shucks,” I said. “Well, let’s keep going.”
As Soup shut the door behind us, I got one last glance at the Dust Fairy’s ass crack as he bent back over the grate and took another drag of his e-cigarette.
We continued down the hallway. I had taken a few steps through the Hub’s door when Soup yelled, “Miles, stop! Stop, stop, stop!”
“What? What?”
The orange cord was taut, pointing a straight line down the hallway.
“God”—I glanced at Fezzik—“dangit, Soup. Did you get all the extension cords?”
“Every single one!”
“Ugh.” I stood in the hallway with the purple Ping-Pong ball floating only a few feet from the Box of Fate. “Maybe we could go set this down in the Nest and search for more cords.”
“Why are you fighting using your guild’s help?” Fezzik asked.
“I’m not,” I said. I guessed I could use some teamwork points. “Um, Soup, run back to the Nest and tell those guys we need their bridge. Tell them they don’t have to build it all the way from there. Just have them bring it here.”
“Aye, aye!” he said, saluted me, and ran down the hall.
“Unnecessary!” I called after him.
Fezzik had his arms folded. “So, it looks like you need your guild after all.”
“I wouldn’t if Soup had found more extension cords.”
“That might be true—”
Little feet came padding back down the hallway.
Soup had to catch his little Soup breath. “They said . . . they’re not . . . coming.”
“What? Why? Did you tell them how freaking close we are?”
He nodded.
“Do they want to win?”
Soup shrugged.
“Well, go ask them!”
He ran back down the hallway.
“And don’t come back without them!” I looked at Fezzik. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Every adventure party needs different kinds of skills—magic, stealth, brawn, healing.”
The ball wobbled in the air, and I tried to keep the fan under it. My arms were getting tired.
“You’re like the warrior,” Fezzik said. “You go in swinging and try to do as much damage to the enemy as you can.”
I had the ball in air equilibrium now.
“Meeki’s our warrior,” I reminded him. “I like to think of myself as more of a wizard who hangs back and figures out the problem and then swoops in to solve it.”
Fezzik nodded. “If you are the wizard, how are you going to survive the heat of battle and get to your date with the princess if you don’t have a healer? Or a tank to take all of the hits? Or Soup to run around grabbing things for you?”
Before I could answer, Soup came running back. “They wanna win. Just not this way.”
“Seriously?” I held out the fan and the floating ball to him. “Hold this. Do not drop it.”
Soup nodded, but it was a weary nod.
“Never mind,” I said. “Stay here.”
I headed back down the hallway with the fan and the ball, followed by Fezzik. I peeked down at the Cheefs, who were making unnerving progress down the hallway with their toilet rolls, and then took careful steps back up the staircase and into the Nest.
“Guys! I’m, like, three feet from the box with this thing.”
“It’s more like twelve,” Fezzik said.
“Yeah, but we’re so close.”
Meeki and Aurora kept their heads down.
“Fine,” I said. “The bridge is a great idea, okay? We need it to get the rest of the way. See? That’s us working together. I brought it most of the way. Now you guys finish it off.”
They didn’t move.
“The Master Cheefs are getting close to winning! Come on!”
Aurora’s eyes traveled from Meeki to me and back to Meeki again. “Levitation would help us win. And it is pretty.”
“That’s not the point,” Meeki said.
“Well, then what is the point?” I asked. “Do you like being trapped in V-hab? Do you enjoy not playing video games and doing whatever BS activities G-man comes up with? I seem to remember that someone said that this place was for four-year-olds, like, twenty minutes ago. Now you’re doing arts and crafts.”
Meeki stood up.
“Yes!” I said. “Thank you.”
She walked over to the wall and unplugged the extension cord. The purple ball bounced off the fan and onto the floor.
“What the fuck?” I said.
Fezzik sighed. “Minus five thousand from the final prize and minus one thousand to you, Miles, for cursed tongue. Give me your scroll.”
“It’s on my bunk,” I said, swallowing my rage. I turned to Meeki. “I’m trying to help!”
“Help us lose five thousand points?” she asked.
“But you’re the one who unplug—grrgglfrxshsssrrrrrrggggggg!” I said, or something like that.
If I hadn’t desperately needed all of the points that probably would have been taken away by the coach, I would have smashed the fan onto the floor right then.
Aurora dropped the spaghetti she was gluing, and stood up. “He’s right.”
“No,” Meeki said.
“Yes,” I said.
“We’re just being stubborn,” Aurora said. “The fan is faster. And I’m ready to not be here anymore. I’m setting aside my ego and working with Miles.”
“A thousand points to Aurora for teamwork!” Fezzik said.
“Why don’t I get any points?” I asked. “I set my ego aside, like, five minutes ago and tried to work with these guys.”
Fezzik chuckled uncomfortably. “I think you might need to think about why you finally decided to reach out to your guild.”
I swallowed the thoughts that followed. My way would have worked if we had had enough extension cords. It wouldn’t have just worked; it would have blown the other guilds out of the water.
Aurora collected the rails they’d built so far and carried them out the door.
Meeki followed, grudgingly.
“Don’t come help,” she said, pushing past me. “We’ll let you know when we’re ready.”
I stood there holding the fan, feeling raw and mad and stupid.
Soup appeared in the doorway. “We can go make them snacks in the Feed while they build it!”
“Uh . . .” I looked at Fezzik, who had picked up the ball and was setting it back on the pillow. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Twenty minutes later Aurora and Meeki had built a plastic cup tunnel from the hallway to the Hub and directly over the Box of Fate. The Cheefs saw the partial tunnel and looked at us like we were crazy. Word got around to the Sefiroths, and everyone gathered to see what magic we were working.
Then I stepped through the doorway, heroically striding through slanted pillars of frosted light, cradling the purple orb on a cushion of air. I felt the Master Cheefs’ glare as I tipped the fan so that the ball slid into the tunnel . . . and zzzzzzzzzt plunked into the shoebox.
“Fuuuuuuurrrrrrryyyyyyyyy Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurds!” Fezzik called.
I high-fived Soup and Aurora. Meeki kept her arms folded.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Admit it was a good idea. We got there way before everyone else. And we got all the points!” I dropped my hand. “Or most of them. You know, because you unplugged our fan.”
Meeki gave me a flat smile. “Maybe you should take all of my points, since you came up with the idea without us.”
“What? No,” I said. “No.”
But I was kind of hoping that Fezzik would overhear and say that was okay.
The Burds returned to the Nest in silence, which was stupid because we had totally kicked everyone’s ass. Fezzik was quiet because he didn’t like the way I’d helped our guild win, Soup because he was exhausted, Meeki because she was an asshole, and Aurora because she was just a quiet person—I think. Whatever. I was used to people not liking me. I didn’t need any of them. When I won, I’d have Gravity.
In the Nest, Fezzik called, “Plus two hundred and forty-five thousand to intelligence!”
It didn’t quite have the same ring as two fifty. Thanks a lot, Meeki.
“Congratulations, Miles,” Fezzik said, without that old crackling warmth. “You’re a second tier.”
He stamped my scroll, and I could practically feel golden fireworks streaming off me.
“Damn! Ass! Hell! Shit!”
It took a second for me to recognize Soup’s voice.
“Uh, Soup?” I said.
“Bastard! Anus! Blow job!”
“Anytime he earns a lot of points,” Aurora said, “he says every bad word he knows. It’s sweet.”
I stared at Soup in shock as he rattled off some pretty nasty phrases that he must have learned from his stepbrother. Fezzik sighed and wrote a tick mark for each one. “It would be hypocritical of me not to take the points away,” he said.
Soon Soup’s swearing slowed to a trickle. “Um . . . diarrhea . . . stupid . . . taint . . . dog diarrhea . . . dog taint . . .”