The Netgame that Never Was
#briefing 25
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All thoughts are suddenly diverted by a cry from a high window. A shaky voice cries "They're going to kill me" for the 200th time and is followed by further screams, as well as an 8 track recorder thrown violently through the window and landing mere inches from Hamish's feet (who's writing this one as well).
"Right!" bawls Hamish, who suddenly seems to be having a stressful day, despite the fact that most of the remaining figures are too scared of what he might do to them if they upset him, and are now concentrating on tooling on each other as a result. "What the hell is going on up there?"
A head pops out of the window: it's the much feared and reviled Nick Singer. He laughs arrogantly and shouts down "What's it to you anyway? I'm trying to do what I can up here, but Andy still sounds like a cheap Doug Zartman clone. It's all I can do to get these new sounds to you by ... Wednesday no, err, Thurs... - I mean Friday. Stop complaining - I'm doing my best with the hot needles already." (Another scream.)
Hamish ponders this for a moment, shrugs, and lobs a couple grenades through the window. Finding the screaming is much improved, he whips out a tape recorder and records those instead (up until the large "Whump!" sound five seconds later).
Pleased with these new bob sounds, he dashes off to find something else to wreak havoc upon.
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A mighty figure looms into sight - its vast, terrifying size virtually blocks out all light. Hamish, terror-stricken dives for cover, before realising that it is, in fact, Charles Hamper, a notable designer of many beastly puzzles and vicious traps. With a laugh, he realises that he is also writing this credit: a few seconds later and he has written Charles down to a much more manageable scale. Charles coughs apologetically: "Sorry I'm late," he says, before tossing a hand-grenade in Hamish's direction. "Found myself stuck in one of my own traps - it all seemed familiar enough, but it turns out some rotten sod went and swapped round a couple of the switches. I don't suppose you'd know anything about this, would you?"
Hamish, notices almost immediately that Charles hasn't pulled the pin on the grenade. But not being the vindictive sort by any means, he is happy to correct this mistake before returning the grenade to its rightful owner.
Dashing out of there, he is happy to reflect that this is the last entry he'll have to write for anyone.
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Pausing now, Hamish notices a calm has finally decended over the arena. No more sounds of battle can be heard, and birdsong is now audible in the distance.
"I expect the battle's over, and they've all taken care of each other by now," he muses, trying to work out the quickest route to the pub. Spying a handy doorway, he heads for that. "This is the one," he thinks, merrily.
He is wrong.
As soon as he steps through the door, it slams shut behind him; the locks snap into place. "Uh-oh" says Hamish. "I wonder if that semi-colon's in the right place?"
A figure folds in in front of him, points and fires. "Maybe not!" thinks Hamish. He ducks down a corridor and around the corner. Looking back, he is unable to see the figure following him. He leans back in relief, only to feel a finger tap him upon the shoulder. He looks round.....
They were all standing there. Every one of them. Finally, they had realised that the one true enemy had been before them all this time. They had called a truce, formulated a plan, and now this was their chance to wreak terrible revenge. They did.....
After a couple days of this, Hamish is pretty much nearing his end (a good Scotsman can only last so long without his hearty breakfast meal of porrige oats and haggis, and his sporran had long since been emptied of .44 clips). Finally they have him pinned him down.
"OK OK! I give in!" he shouts, spitting blood (mostly his own). "I'll give you what you want!"
Another shot slams into him, and he finally goes down.
"I'll tell," he groans, "anything.... I'll tell you how to get past level 11 after I re-engineered it to be extra-lethal. I'll tell you how to solve that intractable problem with the two switches on level 26 (oops, shouldn't mention that - they haven't got there yet!). I'll even tell you what happened to level 6 (the dog ate it, honest!)."
"That isn't it," the group retort.
"Okay, then, tell you what...." Hamish goes on. "I'll tell you how to obtain a copy of the Myth beta so you can upload it to all the ftp sites to really annoy Tuncer. That's got to be worth having, no?"
(At this point, a crack of lightning flares from the sky and hits Hamish. The group ponder the smoking remains for a moment, before deciding they'd wait off that option for a moment.)
Hamish is a goner now for sure. Gasping for breath and close to death, he tries one last time.
"Okay..... I'll...I'll te..ll you......"
The group bends closer, their collective ear almost touching the dying man.
"The secret...... ....the secret code that..... .....that....... "
("Yeuch, this is gross" says someone, before heading off to be sick. "Quite tasty" says someone else. Well, we are talking about some of the most depraved, twisted souls in the universe here. I mean, they have to be, don't they, to do all this...?)
"The code.... the secret keyboard combination that will make Lara Croft take of all her clothes and dance naked is............ "
And dies.
(Actually,this is of less interest to the others than you might have imagined, since they were all still stuck on level 4, and had simply been looking for the solution to it. But hey, life's like that you know.)
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The End
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