The video game was simple in concept. You were an astronaut stranded on an unexplored planet. You had to collect various objects that you would then use to rebuild your ship. When your ship was complete, you could fly home. There were alien baddies in your way, obviously, and you could choose to shoot them from a distance with a ray gun or slice them at close range with your deadlier laser whip.
What was simple in concept was nearly impossible in execution. Except when Charlie was at the helm. Barely eleven years old, he was a prodigy at video games. Games that would take most people weeks to get the hang of, he’d master in a day or two.
Alistair watched as Charlie’s thumbs raced over a controller, which made the astronaut jump, juke, and slide. Charlie had bought the game on the morning of its release, and forty-eight hours later he was on the final level. As far as Charlie was concerned, spring break wasn’t complete until he’d beaten at least four or five games.
It had been over two months since that snowy day in the woods, since Charlie’s strange betrayal. Alistair hadn’t suffered any frostbite, but his toes now tingled whenever they got a bit chilly. He had told himself over and over that it was the last straw, that he and Charlie couldn’t be friends again after that. And Alistair tried—diligently, relentlessly—to avoid Charlie, but with each passing day, he found himself wondering if maybe his memory of that afternoon was wrong, tainted by fatigue and confusion.
At school, Charlie had told everyone that Alistair had saved, if not his life, then at least his hands and feet from frostbite. There were girls who looked at Alistair differently now, boys who picked him earlier for gym class teams. He suddenly had more “school friends,” kids he’d hang out with at lunch and study hall, not the types who would come over after class, but friends just the same. Not everything from the incident turned out to be a negative.
And so it was that by February, the two boys were hanging out again. It started in the cafeteria. Alistair was sitting alone at one of the long tables, waiting for a school friend like Trevor Weeks or Mike Cooney to join him, when Charlie sidled up and presented him with a package of miniature donuts.
“They’re the ones with the powdered sugar,” Charlie said. “Your favorites, right?”
Alistair knew this was Charlie’s way of apologizing, but he decided not to acknowledge it with anything more than a nod. That was enough for Charlie, who smiled and sat and started pointing at girls and yapping about which ones had reached their “womanhood.”
By March, things were back to normal. Charlie would invite Alistair over for TV or video games, and whenever he didn’t have other plans, which was most of the time, Alistair would go. They never mentioned the day in the woods. After a little while, Alistair stopped even thinking about it. When spring break arrived, it meant that days would be filled with video games and nights would be occupied by sleepovers. Spring break was hardly spring in Thessaly. The snow usually lasted until the beginning of April, but it was wet snow, not the sort of stuff that made for fun romping.
Alistair was sleeping over at Charlie’s when they played the game with the astronaut. Alistair had ceded his turns to Charlie because Alistair was, quite frankly, pretty lousy. He couldn’t even clear the first level, while Charlie easily swept through all seven levels and seemed to be having no trouble with the final one.
“I’m designing a game,” Charlie said as he played puppet master to the astronaut, making him zap and whip hordes of aliens.
“Like on a computer?” Alistair asked.
“Not yet. Maybe someday,” Charlie said. Charlie was good with computers, knew a bit of programming, but programming a game wasn’t exactly easy.
“So where are you designing it?” Alistair asked.
“Um…” Charlie tapped a couple of buttons and made the astronaut leap over a pool of lava. “I guess you could say I’m designing it in my own little world.”
Alistair could relate. He often made up stories in his head. “What’s the game about?” he asked. “What’s the goal?”
Charlie kept his eyes locked on the screen. “Well, it’s about chaos,” he said. “Imagine there are all these different levels. Like an underwater one. One full of castles. One in the jungle. And once upon a time they were peaceful places. But there’s nothing interesting about peaceful, is there?”
“I guess not,” Alistair said.
“Peace is boring,” Charlie said. “And so in my game, there’s a different monster that sneaks into each world. Starts ripping the places apart.”
“And the hero’s job is to stop the monsters?” Alistair asked.
Charlie guided the astronaut through a tunnel where the final piece of the spaceship was guarded by a giant alien that belched clouds of acid. “No way, nohow,” he said. “Because there’s an awesome twist in my game. The hero isn’t the one who stops the monsters. The hero is the one who designs them.”
The alien on-screen oozed slime. The astronaut pummeled it with the whip, and slime splatted on the walls of the tunnel. “So what’s the object of your game?” Alistair asked.
“Hmmm … I haven’t really figured that out yet. For now, it’s all about the chaos.”
“It’s interesting,” Alistair said. “I guess there aren’t any other games out there where the bad guy is the hero.”
On the screen, the giant alien screeched and melted into a puddle of slime, which the astronaut skipped over to retrieve the final piece of the spaceship. Charlie turned to Alistair and said, “The one who designs the monsters isn’t the bad guy.”
“But don’t the monsters hurt people?”
The astronaut climbed into his now-completed spaceship.
“The monsters do what monsters are designed to do,” Charlie said. “But you need monsters, don’t you? Someone has to create the beautiful things. And someone has to be in charge of the monsters. It doesn’t mean that the monster master is the bad guy. Actually, it’s probably harder to deal with monsters than it is with beautiful things, because the monsters will be hated. And hunted. Forever. So a game where you design monsters might be the hardest game of all. You’re already setting yourself up to lose.”
The spaceship flew into the stars, and the final credits for the video game scrolled down the screen. “I guess I see your point,” Alistair said. “Do you have a title?”
“Well,” Charlie replied, setting down the controller, “the most powerful monsters are the ones that don’t even seem like monsters. They’re the little things, the soft things that sneak in and haunt you.”
“Ghosts?” Alistair asked. “That might be a good title.”
Charlie shook his head. “Whispers.”