Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

“Okay,” I said.

The wizard sent me into the dungeon and Rip and Batter talked to me. They told me what to do. They sounded a lot like the wizard.

We met a Wormlion. That’s what Rip and Batter called it. It had a head full of worms with little faces and Rip and Batter said to kill it, which wasn’t hard. The head exploded and all the worms started running away into the stones of the floor like water.

Then we met a woman in sexy clothes who was holding a sword and shield too. Hers were loaded with jewels and looked a lot nicer than Rip and Batter. This was Kroyd’s mistake, anyone could see that. Only I figured Kroyd wasn’t here and I was, and so maybe his mistake was one I wanted to make too.

Rip and Batter started screaming when I traded with the woman, and then she put them on and we fought. When she killed me I was back in the doorway to the wizard’s room, where I first ran in, bug-sized. This time I went the other way, back to the drawers.

Which is when I met the snowman.

I was looking around in a drawer that didn’t seem to have anything in it. Everything was just black. Then I saw a little blinking list of numbers in the corner, touched the numbers. None of them did anything except one.

It was still black but there were five pictures of a snowman. He was three balls of white, more like plastic than snow. His eyes were just o’s and his mouth didn’t move right when he talked. His arms were sticks but they bent like rubber. There were two pictures of him small and far away, one from underneath like he was on a hill and one that showed the top of his head, like he was in a hole. Then there was a big one of just his head, and a big one of his whole body. The last one was of him looking in through a window, only you couldn’t see the window, just the way it cut off part of the snowman.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Lewis.”

“I’m Mr. Sneeze.” His head and arms moved in all five pictures when he talked. His eyes got big and small.

“What’s this place you’re in?”

“It’s no place,” said Mr. Sneeze. “Just a garbage file.”

“Why do you live in a garbage file?”

“Copyright lawyers,” said Mr. Sneeze. “I made them nervous.” He sounded happy no matter what he was saying.

“Nervous about what?”

“I was in a Christmas special for interactive television. But at the last minute somebody from the legal department thought I looked too much like a snowman on a video game called Mud Flinger . It was too late to redesign me so they just cut me out and dumped me in this file.”

“Can’t you go somewhere else?”

“I don’t have too much mobility.” He jumped and twirled upside down and landed in the same place, five times at once. The one without a body spun too.

“Do you miss the show?”

“I just hope they’re doing well. Everybody has been working so hard.”

I didn’t want to tell him it was probably a long time ago.

“What are you doing here, Lewis?” said Mr. Sneeze.

“I’m in a scape-athon.”

“What’s that?”

I told him about Gloria and Fearing and Kromer, and about the contest. I think he liked that he was on television again.

THERE weren’t too many people left in the seats. Fearing was talking to them about what was going to happen tomorrow when they came back. Kromer and Ed got us all in the back. I looked over at Lane’s cot. She was already asleep. Her boyfriend was gone from the chair out front.

I lay down on the cot beside Gloria. “I’m tired now,” I said.

“So sleep a little,” she said, and put her arm over me. But I could hear Fearing outside talking about a “Sexathon” and I asked Gloria what it was.

“That’s tomorrow night,” she said. “Don’t worry about it now.”

Gloria wasn’t going to sleep, just looking around.

I FOUND the SmartHouse Showroom. It was a house with a voice inside. At first I was looking around to see who the voice was but then I figured out it was the house.

“Answer the phone!” it said. The phone was ringing.

I picked up the phone, and the lights in the room changed to a desk light on the table with the phone. The music in the room turned off.

“How’s that for responsiveness?”

“Fine,” I said. I hung up the phone. There was a television in the room, and it turned on. It was a picture of food. “See that?”

“The food, you mean?” I said.

“That’s the contents of your refrigerator!” it said. “The packages with the blue halo will go bad in the next twenty-four hours. The package with the black halo has already expired! Would you like me to dispose of it for you?”

“Sure.”

“Now look out the windows!”

I looked. There were mountains outside.

“Imagine waking up in the Alps every morning!”

“I-”

“And when you’re ready for work, your car is already warm in the garage!”

The windows switched from the mountains to a picture of a car in a garage.

“And your voicemail tells callers that you’re not home when it senses the car is gone from the garage!”

I wondered if there was somewhere I could get if I went down to drive the car. But they were trying to sell me this house, so probably not.

“And the television notifies you when the book you’re reading is available this week as a movie!”

The television switched to a movie, the window curtains closed, and the light by the phone went off.

“I can’t read,” I said.

“All the more important, then, isn’t it?” said the house.

“What about the bedroom?” I said. I was thinking about sleep.

“Here you go!” A door opened and I went in. The bedroom had another television. But the bed wasn’t right. It had a scribble of electronic stuff over it.

“What’s wrong with the bed?”

“Somebody defaced it,” said the house. “Pity.”

I knew it must have been Fearing or Kromer who wrecked the bed because they didn’t want anyone getting that comfortable and falling asleep and out of the contest. At least not yet.

“Sorry!” said the house. “Let me show you the work center!”

NEXT rest I got right into Gloria’s cot and curled up and she curled around me. It was real early in the morning and nobody was watching the show now and Fearing wasn’t talking. I think he was off taking a nap of his own.

Kromer woke us up. “He always have to sleep with you, like a baby?”

Gloria said, “Leave him alone. He can sleep where he wants.”

“I can’t figure,” said Kromer. “Is he your boyfriend or your kid brother?”

“Neither,” said Gloria. “What do you care?”

“Okay,” said Kromer. “We’ve got a job for him to do tomorrow, though.”

“What job?” said Gloria. They talked like I wasn’t there.

“We need a hacker boy for a little sideshow we put on,” said Kromer. “He’s it.”

“He’s never been in a scape before,” said Gloria. “He’s no hacker.”

“He’s the nearest we’ve got. We’ll walk him through it.”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“Okay, but then leave him out of the Sexathon,” said Gloria.

Kromer smiled. “You’re protecting him? Sorry. Everybody plays in the Sexathon, sweetheart. That’s bread and butter. The customers don’t let us break the rules.” He pointed out to the rigs. “You’d better get out there.”

I knew Kromer thought I didn’t know about Gloria and Fearing, or other things. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t so innocent, but I didn’t think Gloria would like it, so I kept quiet.

I WENT to talk to Mr. Sneeze. I remembered where he was from the first time.

“What’s a Sexathon?” I said.

“I don’t know, Lewis.”

“I’ve never had sex,” I said.