D. MacHale - The Quillan Games

I heard nothing. I felt nothing. It was like I was floating in limbo. But I didn’t panic. Moving would be a mistake.

I heard a sound. It wasn’t a living thing, it was… something. Something quick. It sounded like it flashed by overhead. It couldn’t have lasted for more than a second. Whatever it was, it gave off a high-pitched ring as it sped by. I heard another one. It came from a different direction. The sound flew over me and disappeared quickly. There was no question, something was flying above me in the dark. Another one flew by, this one was barely over my head. I felt the slight ripple of air as it sped past. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. I didn’t want to get hit, so I stayed on my back, listening.

I heard a few more passes, some close, some distant. All fast. What was it? Though I wasn’t told the rules for this game, something didn’t make sense. I was in total darkness. How could the rest of Quillan see what was going on if there was no light?

As if in answer, the world suddenly came alive. White light filled the room. It was so bright that I was just as blind as when it was dark. At the same time, music started playing. It was loud, upbeat, electronic music like they played at the challenger parties. It was so loud that I could no longer hear the thing flying around the room. This was worse than darkness. I now had two senses taken away. I forced myself to stay on my back. Looking around, my eyes adjusted enough that I could make out shapes. The room itself was totally white. Floor, walls, ceiling, everything. The bright lights were on the high ceiling, and they were moving in time to the music. There were hundreds of them, all flashing in different directions. They were painting the room with light, making it impossible to see.

I saw a flash of silver a few feet above my head. It had to be what was making the sound, though I couldn’t hear it over the music. I lost it in the lights. What was it? I started feeling a little too vulnerable by lying on the bed like that, so I quickly rolled off onto the floor, but crouched down low, using the bed for protection. I peeked my head up over the mattress in time to see another silver flash. This one I locked on to. It was headed in my direction, about five feet over my head- I followed it as it shot over me, continued on, then stuck into a wall only a few yards away. What was it? I was close enough to that wall that I felt confident enough to crawl to it. I got down on my belly and crawled, commando style, across the floor to the wall. Looking up, I saw what was making the sound… and my heart sank. It was a silver disk. It didn’t look much different from a CD. But it was embedded an inch into the wall. CDs weren’t sharp like that. I realized that the sound I was hearing wasn’t from a single source. Whatever the game was in this white, noisy room, to play it meant you had to dodge sharp, lethal Frisbees that were randomly fired in all directions.

Suddenly, rampaging clown dolls didn’t seem so bad.

Chunk! Another disk embedded itself in the wall over my head. There was no fooling around. These things were deadly. Veego and LaBerge had upped the stakes. The question now was, what was the game? I kept my back to the wall and squinted to get a look at the room. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could make out some detail. The room was giant. The ceiling was high. You could fit eight basketball courts inside, with room left over for a running track. It wasn’t empty. There looked to be several mountains scattered around. I’m serious. There were craggy mounds all over the place that had to be thirty or forty feet high. They were just as white as the rest of the room, looking like giant icebergs. I could see little glints of silver where the killer disks had embedded themselves at various places. Still, I had no clue as to what the game could be, besides avoiding decapitation, that is.

My eye caught movement. It was dark against all the bright white. It was Challenger Green. He was climbing one of the mounds. If my penalty for losing the clown game was to not learn the rules, that meant Challenger Green did know the rules. I watched him for a clue. He climbed the mound easily. There were several places for foot and handholds. It looked like climbing was the easy part. The hard part was avoiding the speeding disks. I saw one disk fly toward him and stick into the side of the mound, next to his leg. He never saw it coming, nearly fell off the mound. That meant he didn’t know’ when to expect these things. Which meant I wouldn’t know either. Swell.

The top of this minimountain came to a peak. Challenger Green quickly scampered to the summit, did something I couldn’t see, then hurried back down. Whatever he did up there, I figured I had to do it too. That was the deal. We had to climb these mountains. At least I had a goal now, besides avoiding being sliced in half, that is.

I decided that safety was more important than speed, so I stayed on the floor and crawled along on my belly. My plan was to get to the mountain closest to me. I hadn’t seen any of the disks flying that low, so I figured I’d be okay until I had to climb.

I was wrong.

I had gotten about halfway there when the floor in front of me suddenly moved! A whole section of floor quickly slid to the right, opening up a cavern. It seemed as if the room were built on air! Or at least, over a chasm. The opening was dark, so there was no way to tell how deep it might have been, but I didn’t want to jump down to find out. No way. I caught a glimpse of movement to my left. My bed was hurtling toward me! I quickly realized it wasn’t just the bed, it was the floor below it that was moving. The bed shot across the floor, then suddenly tipped on end and fell into another hole that had opened up in front of it. I quickly crawled over and looked down. The bed was long gone. The chasm below was deep.

I had learned the next wrinkle to this game. The floor was a constantly shifting puzzle. Holes opened up quickly and randomly. If you were in the wrong spot, buh-bye. But you couldn’t stand up and leap from spot to spot or you might get sliced by the flying disks. The trick was to stay alive and get to the top of those mountains to do… whatever. At least my penalty had been erased. I understood the game. I kind of wished I didn’t.

I was still looking down into the hole where my bed had disappeared, with my fingers curled over the edge, when a section of floor flew toward me. I saw it coming at the last second and pulled my hands away as the pieces of flooring slammed together with a chunk! The hole had closed so fast and so violently that my fingers would have been crushed for sure.

I scrambled back toward the first mountain. I felt a few disks flying overhead, but I was more worried about the floor suddenly opening up and swallowing me. I reached the base of the mound, took a breath, and quickly climbed. There was no problem getting up, thankfully. At least that gave me a fighting chance to dodge the disks. I leaped up, climbing from ledge to ledge while scanning back and forth for any flashes of silver headed my way. A few stuck into the mound on either side of me, but neither came close enough to be scary. There was one good thing-it didn’t seem like they were being aimed. I wasn’t being shot at. If I got hit by one of those things, it meant I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I reached the pinnacle and saw what I had to do. It was simple. There were six round, flat lights about three inches in diameter that were built into a plateau on top of the mound. Three red, three green. One of the green lights was glowing. I took a guess and touched one of the red lights. It lit up. That was the game. You had to climb three mountains and light all your lights… without getting killed, of course.

The race was on. I turned and looked down at the room from a bird’s-eye vantage point. It was so white and the lights were so bright, the whole place glowed. From high up on top. the floor looked like a checkerboard with squares about five feet across. The squares were constantly moving, opening up pieces and filling in others. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to it. That was bad. There was no way to guess where a hole might open up. I also saw the flashes of silver as the sharp disks flew across the room. Winning this game was about being lucky and keeping your head. Literally.