The Impossible Fortress(17)

TO: 59453,1

FROM: 38584,8

1: HI ARE YOU MARY ZELINSKY?

2: MY NAME IS WILL MARVIN.

3: I WAS IN YOUR STORE THE OTHER DAY.

4: YOU TOLD ME ABOUT THE RUTGERS CONTEST.

5: ARE YOU GOING TO ENTER?

6: I WANT TO . . . BUT MY GAME SUCKS.

When I finished, I hit Enter, and CompuServe presented me with a submenu: OPTIONS

1. REVIEW WITH MINI-EDITOR

2. MODIFY





3. SEND


ENTER DIGIT FOR OPTIONS OR M FOR MENU, OR H FOR HELP.

>__

I chose option 3, SEND, and CompuServe promised the message would be delivered within four to twenty-four hours. Then I logged off fast before any more charges could be applied to my mother’s credit card. I hoped that by the time she received her Visa statement, she’d have forgotten that I was forbidden to use my 64 anyway.

I checked CompuServe again the next night, but there was still no reply. This didn’t surprise me. CompuServe was so expensive, most people (especially kids) could only afford to use it sporadically. Factor in the slow delivery time and you could understand why electronic mail conversations often stretched over weeks or even months. It was like casting a message in a bottle; there was no way of knowing when she’d receive it.

But when I got to school on Monday morning, I found that someone had pushed a 5? floppy disk through the vent of my locker. Affixed to the front of the disk was a small white label with my name on it. I skipped first period (Intro to History) and went to the school computer lab. Class was already in progress, and I ducked behind an empty terminal in the back row. The monitor was large enough to conceal my face from Ms. Grecco, the typing teacher, who paced across the front of the classroom, reciting letters for students to type: “A, A, A, A . . . S, S, S, S . . . D, D, D, D . . .”

I pushed the disk into the drive and opened the directory. There was just a single file titled PLAYME. So I loaded it into memory and typed RUN. The screen went black, then filled with text.

You are standing outside Zelinsky's Typewriters and Office Supplies in downtown Wetbridge. You are carrying a brass lantern and a floppy disk. On the ground is a hearing aid battery.

I realized it was a game, or at least a mini-game, modeled after text adventures like Zork. The player typed commands, and the game advanced the story using words instead of pictures. I tried typing: >GET BATTERY

And the game replied with:

You reach down and pick up the hearing aid battery (because you seem to have a thing for hearing aid batteries. It's weird.) Your score just went up by 50 points!

Encouraged, I leaned over the keyboard and kept playing.

>ENTER STORE

You enter the store. Sal Zelinsky is standing here, repairing a typewriter. To the north, a passage leads deeper into the store.

>WALK NORTH

Sal jumps up, blocking your way. "Can I help you?"

>ASK SAL ABOUT MARY

Sal squints at you and jiggles the plastic amplifier tucked inside his right ear. "I’m sorry, young man, I can't hear you. Can you repeat that?"

>ASK SAL ABOUT MARY

He shakes his head. "I′m sorry, I can't understand you. My hearing aid's not working right."

>GIVE BATTERY TO SAL

Sal cheerfully accepts your gift. (Your score just went up by 50 points!) He inserts the battery into his hearing aid. "Ah, much better!" he exclaims. "Now what were you saying?"

>ASK SAL ABOUT MARY

"She's in the back!" he says, and he steps out of your way. You realize that Sal Zelinsky is very nice once you get to know him. He only acts gruff to frighten potential shoplifters.

>GO NORTH

You walk to the back of the store and find Mary sitting at a computer. She is listening to Phil Collins's extraordinary solo album NO JACKET REQUIRED, yet seems unhappy. "Golly," she says wistfully. "I wish I had a good video game to play."

>INVENTORY

You are carrying a brass lantern and a floppy disk.

>GIVE DISK TO MARY

"Thank you," Mary says. She puts the disk into her computer and she is blown away by the sheer awesomeness of your game. The ceiling explodes into butterflies, the angels descend from heaven and sing hosannas, and you all live happily ever after.

THE END.

Your score is 100 out of 100, giving you a rank of Awesome.

(Seriously, come over after school and bring your game—Mary Z) A trill of musical notes played through the computer speakers, and I recognized them as the opening chords of “Jump” by Van Halen. I laughed out loud. Apparently it was possible to program Van Halen on a 64.

Ms. Grecco interrupted her typing lesson to scream at me. “Billy Marvin! What are you doing back there? You’re not even in this class!”

I grabbed the disk and ducked out the door. Later, at lunchtime, I used one of the computers in the school library to examine the program more carefully. Even though the game itself was fairly simple, the coding was remarkably complex. Mary had programmed the game to anticipate dozens of commands and requests that I hadn’t tried. It was much more sophisticated than any of the programs in my hobby magazines—and she had somehow written the entire thing over a weekend.

When I returned to Zelinsky’s that afternoon, there were no hearing aid batteries on the sidewalk and I wasn’t carrying a brass lantern. But I did have a floppy disk and Sal Zelinsky was waiting just inside the front door, smoking a pipe and reading the Wall Street Journal.