Starting Over: Mountain Hideout
The Black Void - Episode 306
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"Hmmm...that's very clever of you, Mr. Book." You smile in
appreciation. "Unfortunately, not clever enough to get you out of this
situation. Fill the tank!"
Miss Sweetheart screams. They keep getting louder, up until the point where the water covers her mouth and muffles them. At about this time, too, Red Danger gets a call. "Oh dear, Mr. Book. It seems we have a slight problem. There is no such variable on the thirty-seventh line." Not again. You won't give up your secret. Not that easily. The fate of the free world rests on your ability not to divulge it. Yes, it came to Miss Sweetheart's life or the lives of many other beautiful women around the world, and you (wisely? unwisely?) chose the many unknown other women. Red Danger continues. "But, being the good programmers that they are, my people searched the rest of that line. Yes, Mr. Book,very carefully. The thirty-sixth and thirty-eighth lines too. And do you know what they found?" His tone of voice is becoming more irritating by the moment. Miss Sweetheart, for all intents and purposes, is dead. You have to find a way to get yourself out. Alive. "Yes, Mr. Book, you know what they found. You know quite well. Now if you'll excuse me while I put into motion my plan for world domination." Red Danger leaves the room. After what seems like an eternity one of the guards goes to the phone. "Boss says to drop him," he tells the other ones as he hangs up the phone. One of the guards ties a weight around your ankles. Then you feel yourself slowly being moved--a crane, you guess, is what you have been dangling from--until you are positioned over the water tank with the dead Miss Sweetheart. "Drop him" is the last thing you hear. You take off the virtual reality goggles, staggering away from the computer as you go into the kitchen for a glass of milk. "Darn," you think. "This game just gets harder and harder." You are Julius Book, and you are anything but a paragon of perfection. Your eyesight is so bad you can't see the time on your alarm clock when you wake up. Your hair is disheveled, the comb having lost its daily battle, and speaking of battles, your face is losing the one it's fighting against your acne. All the creams and whatnot they prescribed aren't helping. By day you are a high school student struggling with schoolwork, girls, and, inevitably, PE. By night, however, you are whatever you want to be, courtesy of the games your father brings home for you to test. (It's simple, really: you get free games, they get free testing, and as long as you do what they ask you to do with the game everyone is happy. Or, at least, you think; you're fairly confident your father wouldn't be embezzling untested video games.) Most of the games are simple single-player shooter games; for whatever reason your father disabled multiplayer mode. Recently, though, he's been handing you games based on virtual reality. Games in which you are the main character, and by clicking around you can see yourself picking things up, shooting things up, and generally doing whatever you think you should do in any given situation. The latest one is the rather uninspiringly titled "Spy Thriller" (your father tells you the guys in marketing will have a catchier title once it's ready for commercial release), and you're having difficulty completing it. You note that on the comments page of your report as you finish the milk. One of the most annoying things about having the unfinished version of this game (aside from the fact that you can't complete it) is that the programmers haven't instituted a save function yet. You guess that comes later in the process, once they're satisfied with the game. Or maybe they're just lazy and forgot to put it in. Either way, though, you have to start from the beginning. Luckily, you have the notes you've taken since the start to guide you through until the final stage. On the other hand, you can try some things you haven't done yet, to see how the game will respond. You put the virtual reality goggles back on, and your character reappears as, well, a pretty good approximation of yourself, dressed in a very long white coat--or maybe it's white because you've been out in the bloody snow for so long. Anyway, you see the familiar yellow lettering coming into focus against the black background of the night sky. MOUNTAIN HIDEOUT Objective: Find a way into Spycatcher's mountain hideout. Objective: Locate and copy all three sets of personnel files. Well, Mr. Book, how do you want to do it this time?
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unknown adventurer
12/15/2004 2:19:42 AM
Extending Enabled
1655496 episodes viewed since 11/21/2004 7:16:57 PM.