Alex The Virtual King Read online

  Alex, The Virtual King

  Eden’s Fall

  Emily S. Frogget

  Copyright © 2019 by Emily Frogget

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Emily Frogget

  [3841 20th Ave SW]

  [Seattle, WA 98106]

  [206-999-3560]

  [[email protected]]

  Contents

  1. Alex

  2. Alex

  3. Lucy

  4. Sam

  5. Lucy

  6. Klondike

  7. Dora

  8. Alex

  9. Klondike

  10. Lucy

  11. Dora

  12. Blake

  13. Alex

  14. Blake

  15. Sam

  16. Alex

  17. Erin

  18. Alex

  19. Dora

  20. Erin

  21. Alex

  22. Sam

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  1

  Alex

  Nothing said ‘Dork’ like childhood narcolepsy. Alex was passed out facedown on the Cheetos bag. He sneezed orange cheese dust. Yuck! Thank God I wasn’t at school, he thought. Just as he flung the VR headset off his sticky face, ZAP! went the electricity.

  “Monster Balls!” Dad yelled from his basement office.

  Alex looked around his den. After the vibrant green forest he was creating, reality was a letdown.

  Alex watched a wisp of smoke curl up the basement stairs like a spirit escaping. Adrenaline followed by his blackouts, coursed through his veins. Dad’s secret project sucked up so much electricity, Alex feared he’d blow up the house. And where was Mom?

  Wiping drool from his chin, Alex checked his black helmet was on tight. He stood waiting for the headrush to pass. He was old-man stiff—too stiff for a twelve-year-old.

  Mom still wasn’t home; unwashed dishes piled in the sink. He heard bicycle wheels and the sound of a young girl singing out front.

  Alex saved the game he was building in Unity and closed his laptop. No sense draining the battery. He crept to the basement door to spy.

  His father’s hair stood up in gray clumps and his bushy eyebrows forced his reading glasses down his nose. Life-sized metal robots with wheelchair bodies glared up at Alex. So many abandoned projects littered their basement Mom joked they should get a mean dog and open it up as a junkyard.

  Dad scurried by with a car battery, dumped it on the cement floor, slurped his Big Gulp and stroked his beard. Beard stroking could take a while. Alex leaned back on the door. Slam! Dad’s Diet Coke spilled everywhere.

  “Alex, is that you?” He cranked his neck up until they locked eyeballs. “Aw! Now look what you made me do! What a mess! Go back upstairs!” He unrolled an entire spool of paper towels to mop up.

  Bicycle wheels cut the sunbeam through the window, placing his father in momentary strobe light. He looked like a terrible dancer, bending and jerking up. Whoever was outside rolled back again.

  “I’m a little pony, clickety-clack, clickety-clack,” drifted in. Who was singing?

  Alex took a deep breath and opened the door. Too much sun! He shoved it closed. Pain bolted through his head. He closed his eyes and resisted the urge to retch. Darn Seattle sun! It came on too strong after days of darkness and made his head feel like it would split open. He willed his pupils to adjust. Just dilate already! he demanded. It’s just the world. Wasn’t he designed to exist in it? He blinked again. From behind him came the sound of his father’s shuffle up the stairs. Step. Shuffle. Step. Shuffle. Snorting breaths meant: Bad mood. Alex dove outside.

  It was Alex against the sunshine. Who would win? His eyes rolled back. Not now. He pushed the dizzy spell away by stiffening his spine. It hurt so much to look up, it was almost pleasurable—like stinky socks you had to sniff twice.

  Everything looked different in sunlight, as if he’d been transported to a strange new land just by stepping outside his front door. The sidewalk sparkled with bits of crystal and agate. Why hadn’t he ever noticed it was made of jewel-like stones? Because it always rained in Seattle.

  He tried to put the real world in the context of a video game. If he gathered gemstones out here, where would he go to convert them to food and weapons? He strained to look up at a towering pine tree. A crow shuffled its feathers and tilted its head.

  “Such a pretty pony,” hummed the distant voice. Each pine needle waved. Real life had too many details for his brain. And he wasn’t sure what to do. Best to keep his head down and kick the stone forward. Fear of the open blue sky pecked at the back of his neck.

  Zooming around the corner a girl on a bike headed straight for him, making a clicking noise with her tongue. Alex froze.

  “Whoa there, Star!” she said, popping a wheelie as though she held reins. She circled around, still clicking, and screeched to a halt with a wild braying noise.

  “Don’t worry, he won’t bite.” She patted her bike.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” stammered Alex, staring at her black riding hat and her two long braids fastened with neat red ribbons. He recognized her as Lucy. She went to his school. Her best friend just moved away.

  “You can tell?” She cocked her head to the side.

  “No good being imaginary unless you’re perfect.”

  She beamed. “Star is perfect in every way. I mean, just look at him!” She bent over and stroked an imaginary mane. “But he does bite,” she added, “quite a lot, actually. And he eats too many apples. They upset his tummy.”

  Alex backed up. “You could fix him, you know, if you imagined him differently.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” she laughed. “People—and ponies—have to want to fix themselves.” She pushed off again, pedaling slowly.

  “My dad says I used to bite,” Alex shrugged. “When I was little, I mean.” Something about the way she rode circles around him made him relax. “But I don’t anymore.”

  “I gotta watch phone. Do you have one?” She swung her leg over the bike and bounce-walked next to him. Electronics was something Alex could chat about. She was springy, barely tethered to the Earth. Either her soles were made of too much rubber or gravity affected her differently. Alex tried to keep up.

  “I thought if anyone else on our street has a watch phone, it has to be you.”

  “I have a cell phone,” he noted.

  “It can record messages. Or conversations. If you want to come over, we could figure out a way to stop crime. Or record ourselves saying stupid things…”

  “Wait, I’m not even sure I closed my front door.” Alex looked back. His door was out of sight. Lucy had never said a word to him before.

  “Your dad’s home, right? My parents say he never leaves.”

  Alex looked at her sideways. “They know my father?” His dad was weird.

  “Sure. They work at the pharmacy. They know everyone’s secrets. Here we are!” Lucy opened

  the white picket fence and pushed her bike forward, so it rolled into the grass and toppled over.

  “Go free, Star, and have a rest. I’ll brush you out later.” She bound up the steps, unlatched her

  riding hat and flung it in her front door. Her brown braids disappeared with the hat as her

  familiar short blond curls tumbled out.

  Lucy’s blue house looked newer than all the others even though Alex was sure they were built the same year. Some had additions or had turned the garage into playrooms, but the bones of each house were identi
cal. If he programmed a robot to move autonomously from room to room, he could sell it to the entire development.

  A car whizzed past them, the driver masked in sunglasses. Mom?

  “Give me your number and I’ll call you. I think my mom just got home and I’ve been waiting to show her my new VR game. She never came home last night.”

  “Here!” Lucy shoved a pink card at him.

  Private Detective For Hire

  Lucy Jones

  206-999-7827

  Alex hurried home. It wasn’t his mom’s car but it did park in front of his house. A woman in low heels waited at his door, holding a plate. Cookies?

  Alex stepped up next to her.

  “Hi, my Dad’s home.” She jumped, flinging the plate up and catching it. “Eh, sorry. He’s in the basement and wouldn’t hear the door. You want me to go get him?”

  “Alex? Is that you? You’ve grown!” She pushed her sunglasses up and almost hugged him. He flinched. Her jet-black hair and bright lips looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. She smelled like citrus. Oh, not now! His brain went fuzzy sorting through its database of faces.

  “It’s okay. You don’t remember me. I worked with Sam at BioSphereNetics. Before he fired me. How’s his invention going?”

  Alex remembered her. Both hands checked his helmet was on. His eyes rolled back. Erin, was his dad’s assistant. Dad fired her in a fit for testing his game on her daughter with MS afterhours—way before it was safe. Dad described her as a whole new level of crazy. One mention of her name set him on a rant for hours. Mom thought his raving got him fired for mental health concerns just six months later. Dad even got a restraining order against her. People like her, he said, were coming out of the woodwork to try and get themselves cured—or more likely killed—in his new VR game.

  Alex stepped back and shook his head. “Errr, he’s not having the best day.” He sounded like his mother describing his dad’s bad behavior. But then he looked at the cookies. “I could interrupt him if you want…?”

  “Nope! Just tell him I stopped by or … don’t even. But take these.” She thrust the plate into his hands. “Reese helped make them. She’s my daughter. She’s getting worse and there’s still no cure… Anyway, you must be getting hungry.” She raced back to her car, climbed in, and sped off.

  Alex watched her go then peeled back the plastic and shoved a cookie in his mouth. He was hungry. Amazing! He ate three more standing right there, then went into the kitchen, grabbed the milk jug and gulped. If I eat them all, Dad won’t know she was here.

  Shuffle, step. Shuffle, step. The wooden stairs creaked from his weight. Alex tossed the paper plate into the recycle bin but couldn’t shove the last two into his mouth.

  “There you are!” he said. “Who was here?”

  “Just Lucy from school. She got a watch phone. Her mom made these.” Alex thrust the cookies at his father like a peace offering.

  “Cookies!” Dad gobbled them down. “You left the door wide open and that white cat came downstairs to have a pee. You know the one. I had to shoo it out.”

  “That’s Max, the neighbors’ cat. He likes ice cream.”

  “Well, who doesn’t?” His shaggy gray eyebrows wagged at Alex. He was in a better mood. There must be cheese nearby. A gold spaceship on his red T-shirt sported barely legible words: Negative Mass.

  “That’s my boy!” he said. “Making friends with a good cookie source. They’re home-baked!” They went into the kitchen and nuked frozen dinners. Carrying them to the living room, they arranged TV trays side-by-side. Dad brought up an episode of Fawlty Towers. Nothing was funnier than his father chuckling at British humor. When Alex’s mom was around, they ate at the kitchen table, sometimes in silence, sometimes with Dad flapping his hands, describing his latest scientific breakthrough. TV, petrified chicken, and gluey potatoes were a treat. He loved his dad in these moments. His father laughed out loud with a mouthful of food. Any minute now, his mother could walk through the door and apologize for not calling him back.

  “I have to put in some billable hours on the account,” he said. “It’ll be a late night for me, Kiddo. I nearly blew up the house today. Good thing your mother wasn’t here. Spent the last hour trying to fix it. I have to head over to Frye’s and get a new motherboard and some GPU’s. Keep an eye on the place, for me, okay?” He tossed a lock of Alex’s hair out of his eyes. Alex squirmed. “Oh, and Mom’s working late again too.”

  “Again?” Alex pushed his tray aside. “I guess I’ll perfect my game before I show her. And I won’t share my ice cream with the neighbors’ cat.”

  “Sorry we’re so busy.” He paused. “Just trying to save the world—from myself. You done?” Alex missed this good-humored side of his father. His dad took the trays, napkins, and plastic forks and tossed it. “I love not being green! No dishes to do and my belly is full. I’ll be back in about an hour. Don’t let that cat in, please.”

  “His name is Max and you owe me a pet,” Alex closed the door after him. He opened his computer to call Lucy, but dialed Mom instead. No answer. Where was she? With his dad gone, the house was silent, like it was missing an electrical current. The icemaker hummed. Wait …no… that was something else.

  Alex followed the noise to his parent’s bedroom.

  The familiar smell wafted around the bed: Late nights, potato chips, and head sweat. He shook out his nostrils. The noise came from his mother’s side of the bed. He followed it to her cell phone tucked into her drawer, muted. What? Mom never leaves the house without her cell phone. He should have found it yesterday. Where would she go without her cell phone? No wonder she hadn’t called. He ran to her desk. Her MacBook Air, with the daisy decal, was still plugged in. She couldn’t work without her computer. But why would dad lie? And where was she? Heat rushed into his face.

  Something scratched the back door. He jumped.

  Breathe, he reminded himself, and let the cat in. Max yowled up at him with yellow eyes. Did he know something?

  Alex pulled out the pink card and dialed.

  “Lucy Jones, Detective, how can I help you?”

  “I… I’ve lost my mother.” The words tumbled out.

  “When did you last see her?” She sounded like she was in motion.

  “24 hours ago, she left for work. And…as far as I can tell, she hasn’t come home since.” He held his helmet foreword in his lap and rocked back and forth.

  “What’s your mother’s full name?” she panted.

  “Dora Bentley.”

  “Did your dad mention her disappearance?”

  “That’s what’s so weird. He says she’s working late. But I just found her phone and her laptop here.”

  “Okay, don’t panic.” Her voice quivered. “I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”

  Tap! Tap! Tap! Alex lurched. His bedroom window almost shattered as the pine tree thrashed against it. White hands pressed glass. The call went dead.

  Alex unlocked the window as Lucy hoisted herself in, shaking pine needles and possibly spiders everywhere.

  “We’ll find her!” she whispered.

  “My dad’s not home. You…you could have used the front door.”

  “That would,” she whispered, then coughed and repeated in a regular voice, “that would have been easier.” She pulled a pinecone out of her hair and chucked it out the open window. “We need to look for clues before he gets home.” She pulled a small notebook out and began going down a checklist. “First, their bedroom.”

  Lucy ducked into his parents’ closet. Alex crammed in with her.

  “Her bathing suits?”

  “Here.”

  “Hiking boots?”

  “Here.”

  “Backpack? Workout clothes?” Then she walked backwards to the bathroom, shaking her fingers. “Toothbrush? No one should travel anywhere without a toothbrush!”

  Alex looked at the toothbrush holder. There were five. How could he be sure which toothbrush she was using?

  “It lo
oks like it’s still here. But maybe she travels with a different one? This is bad, isn’t it?” Alex could see his head in the bathroom mirror, a foot above Lucy’s. Something was erasing the edges. He bent forward and rested his black helmet on the sink. Not now! The truth was, he felt awesome after a spell. It recharged his brain and doused him with adrenaline. Right now, that’d be great. But in front of other people—it was so embarrassing.

  Lucy grabbed his shoulders so they were face-to-face. “Listen, sleepy head! I don’t know how much time we have before your dad gets home, but I do know, the first seventy-two hours are critical in finding victims alive and getting them home safe. Pull yourself together and let’s go check out his office.” Alex nodded, now fully alert, and went to the basement.

  Lucy put her watch to her mouth and pressed a button. “Lucy Jones, Detective, with Alex, in the case of the missing mother. Dora has been gone for a full day, and dad is currently the prime suspect. Over.”

  Max ran ahead and jumped into Sam’s office chair, hoping to get pet. Lucy paused at the mess. They never let anyone down here. There was barely room to walk through the maze of old experiments.

  Alex picked Max up and accidentally jostled the computer screen awake. The icon LAB flashed, showing electrically-charged rabbits breaking out of a cage and escaping across the screen. Their clanking skeletons emitted strange hollow notes.

  “Has your dad been acting strange?”

  “Yes, weirder than normal.”

  Lucy nodded at the computer and then looked up at Alex. “My parents say he’s inventing something genius. This it?”

  Alex stepped backwards. “He’d kill me if I messed with his work.” He’d been dying to try it. The rabbits clanked free. “But … I bet I know his password.” A haptic suit draped over the back of the chair. New tech. The haptic suit allowed VR players to feel touch.