Guilds
Time for your guilding,” Command said, escorting me back down G-man’s staircase.
I stopped walking. “Guilding?”
He chuckled and took my arm. “Don’t worry. You’ll keep your balls.”
We continued down the hallway, passing a cafeteria, a laundry room, and, oh God, a community shower room. At the end of the hall was a black door with “The Hub” painted in the white, mad-slash handwriting of a serial killer.
Behind it, whispers hummed like electricity:
“Talk to the cat. She’ll tame the Darkroot hunters.”
“Just cracking the warthog will make it blow.”
“You can’t stop the bleedout! It’s the bleedout!”
Normally I’d be stoked to join a guild. But I had the sinking feeling this was going to be very different from Arcadia.
What waited behind that door? A stripping and whipping? A chair, an injection, eye clamps, and a game controller? A single pull-up?
As Command led me toward the Hub, I gazed back toward the green light of the exit. Beyond that door, beyond an impossible stretch of desert, beyond sand and road and dead gas stations, Serena was bending space and time to tug at my heartstrings. . . .
Command pushed open the door, and the whispers stopped.
The Hub was shadowy and cavernous. It smelled like gasoline. Light from three tall, frosted windows shined on dust and brick and a small wooden stage. The space looked industrial, like it had once been used to manufacture robot soldiers or something. But now it felt uncomfortably empty, like an MMO no one wanted to play. Everything was colorless except a bunch of beanbag chairs in front of the stage, where about a dozen teens sat . . . and stared at me.
Command marched me toward the stage. The teens watched. Without phones or 3DSs to distract them, these gamers were creepily attentive. The longer they stared, the more I felt my self-conscious parts bloat, becoming paler and hairier. I tried to avoid eye contact. I never did do well with people in person. Not even gamers. That was why the car wash had felt like a miracle to me.
“Afternoon, everyone!” G-man jogged onto the stage and set down a folding chair. “We’ve got a new player starting today! Come on up, Miles!”
I felt everyone’s eyes on me. I felt my face turn red. I felt my feet turn to concrete. Somewhere the building’s plumbing gurgled.
Why would my dad do this to me?
Why couldn’t I go have a normal week before I went on a normal date?
Why had I played so many stupid video games?
“Miles?” G-man tapped the chair.
Command gave my back a little push, making me trip up onto the stage. I sat in the chair.
I should be getting my back waxed right now.
G-man clapped me on the shoulder. “I want you all to give a big Video Horizons welcome to . . . Miles Prower!”
“Hi, Miles,” the gamers said.
They sounded as pleased as a cow in a cement mixer.
Somehow I worked up the guts to look at the crowd looking at me.
Gamers, especially hard-core gamers, especially hard-core gamers who play enough to be sent to a video game rehab, fill every possible moment with beating the next level, getting the high score, or leveling their character. Exercise, showering, and overall hygiene tend to go out the window. But these kids looked . . . clean. Their greasy complexions had been scrubbed away, their pale skin tanned, their colorful gamer tees tossed out. It was as if they were slowly transforming into versions of their gaming characters. And no one looked happy about it.
“Guilding time,” G-man whispered with excitement. He didn’t seem to be looking into the same sea of dead eyes I was. “Miles, we want you to think of Video Horizons as a place of magic.” He put his mouth too close to my ear and cast his hand out over the audience. “A place where classes are filled with wonder, activities are filled with surprises, and side quests await around every corner.”
I stared at my hands and wondered what Serena was up to. Probably feeding Ethiopian children or something.
G-man squeezed my shoulder. “Which of the three guilds will help you achieve your greatest potential?”
I glanced up and noticed that the Hub’s beanbag chairs were arranged into three columns of red, green, and purple. At the front of each, an adult held a sign with a different misspelled video game reference.
“Will it be . . .” G-man pointed to the red group. “The Master Cheefs?”
The guild stood and gave a grunt salute that would have made the Skyrim theme song blush. They were led by a muscly coach who had a tan like a burned carrot. These looked like the action gamers, the type who shoot every red thing in sight before teabagging your character’s corpse.
“Will it be . . . the Sefiroths?”
The green guild stood and hissed at me. Then one broke into a coughing fit. Their guild leader, a slight woman with silver hair, helped the coughing kid sit down.
“Or will it be the Fury Burds?”
The final guild—just two girls and a prepubescent kid—stood from their purple beanbags and half-assedly flapped their hands like little wings while trying to whistle. Their guild leader was HUGE. His hands looked big enough to scoop up Command and Conquer and make them fight each other like action figures.
“So, player Miles,” G-man said, squeezing my shoulders. “Who’s it going to be?”
I frowned at the gamers. I remembered when guilds had been fun—that morning. What did G-man know about fun or magic? Had he ever joined a raiding party to defeat a wad of bubble gum that was attacking downtown Arcadia, sticking its citizens to the streets and collapsing buildings with popped bubbles? No. No, he hadn’t.
Still. I had to play this Video Horizons game. For Serena.
Which guild would help me get out of there and to my date the fastest? The sickly Sefiroths? The futile Fury Burds? Part of me wanted to be in what was clearly the strongest of the guilds—the warriors of Halo—the Master Cheefs. But their almost-athletic builds intimidated the hell out of me.
Also, one of the Cheefs kept grinning at me. He was as skinny as a wire, wearing a big white gangster tee, and sitting in his beanbag like a breeze had slumped him over. His hair hung like black straw around an expression that was boredom and chaos both.
He gave me a venomous smile and shook his head as if to say, Not my guild. The nerves came alive in my teeth.
“Um . . .” I swallowed. “I choose—”
“Not so fast,” G-man said. He reached behind the stage and brought out a black shoebox with an oval cut out of the lid. “Let’s let the Box of Fate decide.”
He shook the box at me. I stared into the dark oval. This was it. I’d randomly choose a powerful guild that would humiliate me, or a shitty guild that would make me lose. I reached inside. There was only one piece of paper in the shoebox. I looked at G-man, who smiled with his fuzzy teeth. Had he taken the others out because I’d been a smart-ass in our first meeting? Was he trying to prove that it was impossible for me to win in four days?
I pulled out the paper and read it. My stomach dropped.
“What does it say?” G-man asked.
When I didn’t answer, he snatched it out of my hand.
“Master Cheefs!”
The Cheefs gave an audible groan of disappointment.
“Really, Cheefs?” G-man said, hand on hip. “Is that how we treat a new player? Scarecrow?”
The kid with the slanted grin shrugged. “What’d I do?”
The other Cheefs snickered.
What would Serena think if she knew that even a bunch of gaming addicts didn’t want me in their guild?
Still, I didn’t blame the Cheefs. They didn’t need bloated Miles Prower slowing down their escape from rehab.
“Well, shucks,” G-man said. “I was hoping we could introduce a little diversity into some of the guilds.” I looked at the athletic Cheefs and knew exactly what kind of diversity he meant. “But I suppose it won’t work out that way.” He crumpled up the piece of paper.
The Cheefs cheered.
G-man pointed at them. “Minus a thousand points for every player on the Cheefs for poor sportsmanship.”
The Cheefs moaned. Oh God. Didn’t G-man know they would take this out on me?
“Miles,” G-man said, touching my shoulder again, “we’ll stick you in the Fury Burds, I guess.”
The Burds didn’t react, except for their giant leader, who gave an enthusiastic series of deafening claps.
“Go find a seat,” G-man said, patting my back so hard, it stung.
I slouched toward the Fury Burds. My guild.
The giant guild leader shook my hand, which practically disappeared inside his.
“Good tidings, Miles!” he said, grinning. He drew me close and whispered, “When you’re in the guilding chair, these meetings can feel longer than a Final Fantasy cut scene. Heh-heh.”
I managed half a smile.
A bird tweeted through the overhead speakers.
“All right, everyone!” G-man called from the stage. “Before you head off to guild therapy, say it with me now! One, two, three!”
The players chanted in their unenthusiastic voices: “I am not a gamer; I am a player of life.”
And just like that, I was.