Book Five, Chapter 33: Rodeo

“I’ll test it out,” Antoine said. We had left Bobby’s room and had gone up ahead of the NPCs to scout and see if there was anything tricky about the Phase Ballast.

I didn’t know if IBECS would have a problem with us walking through its halls, but it didn’t seem to. All of our tropes designed to help us with stealth seemed wasted—we weren’t part of the movie; we were just around.

When we reached the part of the ship where everything bottlenecked and a giant locked door prevented us from using the Cross-Ark Hall, we found a human-sized ventilation shaft that would allow a person to enter the Phase Ballast matrix.

“I could get that thing off of there,” Antoine said, staring at the cover of the ventilation shaft. At first, it appeared to be an obstacle in and of itself.

“Yes, but then it wouldn’t make sense why the ventilation shaft was already broken open,” I said.

The solution was far more straightforward. We had brought a screwdriver from Bobby’s workshop.

It wasn’t difficult to get into the ventilation shaft—in movies, it never is.

“Here goes nothing,” Antoine said.

He was eager to help. So far, all we had done was guide people around and come up with ideas. He didn’t feel like he was really contributing as much as he could. But testing out a potentially suicidal jungle gym? He felt that he could do that.

He dropped down into the room, and I followed right after him.

It definitely was an obstacle out of a sci-fi movie. The Phase Ballast was basically a giant boardwalk about the length of a basketball court that connected two platforms on the ends of a large tube, which was the room we were in. I couldn’t see the walls because everything was dark, but there were sci-fi lights attached to the platform and ambient light that allowed us to see in front of us.

As far as I could see, the ballast itself did not touch either of the platforms or connect to anything else—it was floating free.

Therein lay the challenge.

As soon as Antoine stepped foot onto the Phase Ballast, it started to move, and he was instantly down on all fours, finding handholds where the lights emanated from or where wires stuck out. It wasn’t explicitly designed to be climbed on, but there was plenty to grab onto.

The thing moved, tilted, and spun around with him right on it, but ultimately, he held on.

It was just a test of strength and dexterity.

For some reason, it reminded me of a rodeo, as the ballast moved and turned and bucked but ultimately submitted once Antoine had shown he was not giving up easily.

Antoine made it to the other side with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and then he waved me forward.

“No, I’m good,” I said. “Time to come back—we need to instruct the NPCs.”

He rolled his eyes. “What? Coward!” he yelled.

I wasn’t afraid to cross the ballast; I was concerned about time. Second Blood would be here soon, and I wanted the NPCs to be far past this room when it got here.

I was also a little afraid to cross the ballast.

Once we got Bobby alone, we explained everything that we saw to him. Of course, his character had every reason to understand how the ship worked, so he explained it to the NPCs quickly.

Everything was going according to plan.

Until it wasn’t.

As the NPCs approached the Phase Ballast, we watched from the shadows, itching ourselves but excited. Getting past this obstacle was a colossal checkpoint—the helm was only a few more puzzles away.

“Remind me of why we didn’t try to exterminate the bedbugs again?” Antoine asked. “I’m going crazy, and I haven’t even been bitten yet.”

“Cristobal,” I said.

“Cristobal?” Antoine asked. “The harem sorcerer?”

“That one,” I said. “Grace and Chris said that his high level was enough to know that he wasn’t to be messed with. Enemies that are way too high level are a distraction, not meant to be beaten. They’re a red herring—a time waster. The bedbugs are deeply ingrained. Yeah, there are all sorts of things we could do about them. Heck, Andrew spent a day and a half trying to keep them away from some of the officers. It didn’t work. It won’t work. I know so. I’ve seen their tropes, but all I needed to see was the plot armor. That’s part of the secret language of the game itse–“

“I get it,” Antoine said. “We still could have tried.”

“Let’s try that after we win,” I said. “We can come back here and set them all on fire.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to come back,” Antoine said. “This is one story I don’t care to master.”

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We turned and watched the surrogates as they finished their dialogue setting up the Phase Ballast. Bobby’s technobabble was far less elaborate than IBECS’.”

“We cross the giant metal beam that controls gravity,” he said. “It won’t be easy, but we can do it.”

The surrogates peppered him with tech questions, many of which he seemed to answer gracefully because his character was well-informed. Others, he just floundered.”

“It’s best not to think about the specifics,” he said. “Just get to the other end.”

And so they prepared themselves. Michael told a story about basic training and how his drills in anti-gravity were probably similar to the interior of the artificial gravity machine. Basic surrogate filler material.

Just as they were about to climb into the Phase Ballast, a scream sounded from toward the back of the ship.

Then another.

Then another.

“They’re waking back up,” Andrew said. “We have to go sedate them again. They won’t survive off life support. Goddammit, I’m going to make sure that everyone knows what they did to us here.”

He and Michael immediately ran back toward the sleeping bay against Bobby’s protests. Lila instead ducked her head down into the Phase Ballast matrix to take a look, and then she sat waiting.

She wanted no part in the screaming passengers. Her ivory skin covered in blood as she sat in the industrial ship’s hallway was an image that could have been on the movie poster—the blank look in her eyes as if the lights had gone out.

The issue was that re-sedating all of the passengers took time—not just actual time but screen time, moving the story forward.

“Bobby, get them back here and get them across this Phase Ballast now,” I said, but we both knew my words were wasted.

We had set in motion everything that would happen, and it was too late to change it. Second Blood was upon us.

Antoine, Kimberly, Dina, and I couldn’t risk being on the ship during Second Blood, so we found ourselves running back to the Helio.

We actually crossed paths with the surrogates, but they didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge us. They weren’t On-Screen at that moment, but they would be soon. They were headed back up toward the Phase Ballast. I had a feeling that grabbing them and absconding with them to safety would displease Carousel.

I was looking down a long hallway, watching them run toward it.

At the end of it, I saw Bobby poking his head back, wondering if he, too, should be seeking shelter somewhere else. It didn’t make sense for his character not to be in this scene, but I could not risk Bobby dying.

Bobby had less Plot Armor than the NPCs—twenty-four to their twenty-five. I couldn’t risk him being there—I couldn’t risk him being On-Screen during Second Blood, even if it hurt the final film.

I could tell he was nervous about it, too. I waved for him to come back to us, and he did. As he passed the NPCs in the hall, he begged them not to go forward with their plan, but his words were wasted. He then gave them some excuse about why he wasn’t going to be there, and then all of us ran into his warehouse-sized unit and boarded the Helio.

We closed the door behind us but did not disconnect the ship. Bobby couldn’t die for Second Blood if he was on the Helio because the Helio didn’t exist in the movie.

He looked around with amazement as we walked up to the helm of our ship, where the viewing monitors were, so we could see what the NPCs were doing.

“Sure would be easy if we could just tell the Player Surrogates to come over here, huh?” Isaac said as he saw us coming.

No kidding

We watched as the three Player Surrogates lowered themselves down into the room with the Phase Ballast.

“I’ll go first,” Andrew said. “You keep her safe.”

Michael nodded.

Andrew crawled out onto the Phase Ballast, not taking any chances, not trying to be too brave. He hugged tight to the surface, not moving forward unless he had something to hold on to. Gravity might have been on his side at that moment, but he seemed to understand what this machine did, so when it first started to jerk and turn, he was not taken by surprise.

His crossing was more dramatic than Antoine’s because it was On-Screen. There were staged pauses as the Phase Ballast shook and twisted and then came to balance again, and Andrew put one hand over another, finding a grip and crawling forward—forward, forward, the length of a football field.

Eventually, he reached the other side and made it onto the platform. He stood up and gave the other side a thumbs-up.

Next up was Lila. She moved slowly, afraid of every tremor. She made one movement after another until she reached the center of the Phase Ballast, and suddenly, there was turbulence. She screamed, and Michael called out, “Lila!”

She was frozen with fear.

“Come on, Lila! You have to crawl the rest of the way. You’ll be fine. Just make sure you have a handhold,” Andrew said.

“I’m afraid,” she said, crying.

True to her word, she didn’t move.

And because she didn’t move, Carousel got cranky. The whole platform turned over 180 degrees, and she was left hanging from handholds and screaming at the top of her lungs.

“I’m coming!” Michael called out to her. “Just hold on a little bit longer.”

This was an entirely different task. Walking on top of the Phase Ballast was hard enough, but trying to monkey-bar along the bottom with the feeble handholds available was something else.

The underside of the Phase Ballast, which was now on top, did not have the friendly handholds that the top did.

He looked it over but wasn’t willing to risk trying to walk to her without anything to hold on to. He quickly found himself with one leg wrapped around the side of the ballast and both of his hands gripping onto handholds on the underside where Lila was. He pulled himself along, sticking to the side of the platform, showing off the strength that he had gained in the military.

It was incredible to watch—a feat of strength and coordination.

And just as he was almost to Lila, within arm’s reach where he could reach out and almost get to her, the platform flipped back over.

Lila was able to hang on, and she was now back on top of the platform, but Michael was not so lucky. He had one hand on a meager handhold, but the entire rest of his body was pulled out sideways as if gravity wasn’t behaving. The extreme forces of the Phase Ballast were pulling him as the entire platform began to shake and rotate.

Lila managed to grab hold with her hands and move her feet up under two wedges, which allowed her to establish a good foundation and hang on.

“Grab my hand!” Michael screamed. “Grab on to it! I’m slipping!”

He reached out toward Lila.

She refused to look at him.

“Lila!” he screamed. “Give me your hand!”

But she just froze, shook, and looked in the other direction, either too afraid to understand what was going on or too scared to let loose of one of her secure handholds and risk being pulled off the platform with Michael.

“Grab him!” Andrew screamed. “He’s right there—just grab him! Pull him out of that gravitational pocket! Hurry!”

But Lila did nothing.

Moments later, the platform started to gyrate back and forth. Michael was beaten up against the side of the wall, first with a scream and then with a crunch. And it went on for a while as Carousel got its footage of the carnage. It was like he was inside of a clothes dryer.

Even with our poor vantage point from the security camera in the room, we could see that there were parts of him—mostly blood—floating in the anti-gravity field around the platform.

And with that, Second Blood passed.

The rescue poster for Michael Brooks disappeared from the red wallpaper, leaving me thinking of the million ways I might have prevented it.

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