The taxi cab carrying Mickey, Donny and Lyle to their hotel just
missed being side-swiped by a bus; was then chased by impoverished locals with
clubs; and then rear-ended by an aged “Boomer” who refused to lower his
driver’s side window to trade insurance info with the cabdriver.
The 3 pheely-geeks didn’t even notice.
It was all reality to them. They
were used to ever-present, impending, looming danger that could kill them at
any moment, which just meant they’d have to go back to the beginning of the game.
They were so antsy to get to their hotel room that Lyle was hopping
about in the lobby, waiting for Donny to finish signing them in. Mickey made them wait while he signed for
some package.
When they got to their adjoining rooms, Lyle leapt on “his” bed, which
was his because he leapt on it, and immediately unpacked the FullSenz. Within 30 seconds the green light came on but
Mickey grabbed Lyle’s hand before he could log-in.
“Oh no,” said Mickey. “I know
what we’re playing today.”
“What?” said Lyle.
“This.” Mickey gently held up a
3-inch, light-reflecting cube by the corners.
As it spun between Mickey’s thumb and forefinger, Donny could see that
the cube was burned on all six-sides, which meant it contained exponentially
more data than anything he’d ever seen before.
“What is it?” asked Donny.
“You’ll see,” said Mickey.
Normally Mickey was not that interested in picking the game. He went along with the vibe of the
moment. The threesome almost always had
a tacit understanding of where they would be going on any given day; so Donny
and Lyle took Mickey’s newfound decisiveness very seriously.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I emailed HortenZ and it was waiting for us at the desk downstairs.”
“Great thunderin’ potatoes,” said Lyle, wide eyed.
HortenZ always had the most astonishing pheely-warez around. HortenZ wasn’t his name; it was the hacker “handle” of a teenager named Billy O’toole who lived in Seattle, Washington.
The only distinguishing difference between Billy and every other Pheely freak Mickey knew was the simple fact that Billy’s father was a Vice-President for Microvoid, the world’s largest computing corporation, and Billy’s father kept his ever-changing, encrypted password written on a sticky note in his briefcase. Billy had often conferenced into a Pheel with Mickey and the others through a new ultra high bandwidth, hyper-optic, extra-dimensional protocol available only to Microvoid executives.
As a consequence of Billy’s hacking while using his dad’s password, Billy’s dad was currently under surveillance by the FBI. This was unfortunate, because Billy’s dad was into some serious securities fraud.
“This thing is soooo unavailable in stores,” smiled Mickey.
“Let’s GO!” said Lyle, cabling up his SPECTACL as Mickey inserted the
cube.
“This is mission control, ten seconds to lift-off,” said a voice in
Lyle’s ear.
Mickey popped into the crew compartment beside Lyle, lying down in a
form-fitted chair, looking up, helmet on.
Then Donny popped in.
“This is soooo great!” said Lyle.
“How come he’s a girl again?” asked Donny.
“Don’t ask,” said Mickey, not turning to look.
“What was that?” asked the voice in Donny’s ear.
“Nothing… uh, Houston,” said Donny.
“…two…one…We have ignition…”
The capsule started to shake and quiver. The noise would have been unbearable but for
the helmets.
“We have liftoff,” said the voice in their helmets.
The capsule continued to shake.
If it wasn’t for the slowly changing scene in the porthole, they’d not
have known they were moving up. Then
they started to feel the G-forces. And
then their faces were trying to slide around to the back of their heads.
“Ow!” grunted Lyle.
“You sure you wamma do dis?” grunted Mickey.
“Are you kidding?” yelled Donny.
“Yeeee-hah!”
Next: Room Service
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