“My game is called Alien Adventure,” Troy said excitedly, “and it will start as soon as I boot the discs and you are ready at the keyboard. But there are some things that I must tell you first, before you start.” He knelt beside Nick and pointed at the keyboard. “There are three critical keys for you to remember while you are playing the game. First, the X key stops the clock. From the moment you start the game, the clock continues to run. While the clock is running you are consuming vital resources. There is only this one way to stop the clock and gather your wits without paying a penalty. Hitting the X key allows you to stop and think.
“Even more important than the X is the S key. The S allows you to checkpoint or, as you would say, save the game. Right now you can’t understand what I’m telling you, because you haven’t played complicated computer games before, but believe me, you must learn regularly to save the game. When you hit the S key, all the parameters of the game you are playing are written into a special data base that has a unique identifier. Then, at any time in the future, you can call that identifier and the game will restart in exactly the place where you saved it. This feature can be a life saver. If you take a risky route in the game and your character ends up dying, it’s the save game feature that keeps you from having to start all over again.”
Nick was amazed. This was a different Troy than he had ever seen before. True, he had been a little surprised and considerably impressed by his first mate’s ability to fix virtually any piece of electronic gear on the boat, but never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that Troy left the boat and went home to work with similar parts in a much more creative way. Now this same smiling black man had him sitting in a chair in front of a giant screen and was lecturing him patiently like a child. Nick could hardly wait to see what would happen next.
“Finally,” Troy said, asking with his eyes if Nick was still following him, “there’s the H or help key. When you simply have run out of imagination and don’t know what to do, you can push H. The game will then give you some hints on how you might proceed. But I must warn you of one thing. The clock continues to run while you are being helped. And there are some places in the game, during a battle for instance where pushing the H key can be disastrous, because you are essentially defenseless during the time that the game processes your request for help. H is most useful when you are in a benign spot and trying to figure out your overall strategy.”
Still squatting beside him, Troy handed Nick a small spiral notebook and motioned for him to open it. The first page said “Command Dictionary.” On each page was a separate entry, legibly written by hand, that explained the game command that would result from hitting the key listed at the top of the page. “Here are the rest of your commands, fifty in all,” Troy said. “But you don’t need to memorize them. I’ll help you. You’ll learn some of them yourself after you play the game for a while. Most of the important commands are activated by a single stroke on the keyboard, but some of the commands require two entries.”
Nick flipped through the notebook. He noted that the key L prompted the command “Look.” But another entry was necessary to identify what instrument was being used to look. L followed by a 1, for example, meant to look with your eyes. L8 meant to look with an ultraviolet spectrometer, whatever that was. Nick was already overwhelmed. He looked over at his friend, who was busy making final checks on some equipment.
Troy came back to the chair and looked down at Nick. “Now,” he said, “I think you’re ready Any questions?”
“Just one, my lord and guide,” Nick replied with mock meekness. “May I please have another beer before I risk my manhood in some weird world of your creation?”
Actually Nick was not yet ready to play the game. Even after Troy booted three compact discs, there were more preliminary activities before Nick could begin the game itself. He had to enter his name, race, age, and sex in response to questions that appeared on the giant screen. Nick looked at Troy with a curious tilt of his head and a weird expression on his face. “Don’t ask questions at this point,” Troy told him, “it will all be clear soon enough.”
The screen next was filled with a beautiful ringed planet that looked like what an artist who favored purple might make out of Saturn. The perspective was from the pole of the planet; the rings were all displayed like the different sections of a dart target. Little flecks of light gleamed intermittently from the rings, indicating that the sun or star or whatever was the source for the reflected light was in the vicinity of the viewer. It was a lovely picture. A simple credit in block titles, Alien Adventure by Troy Jefferson, was superimposed on the ringed planet for three or four seconds and the sound of soft classical music could be heard in the room. Nick resisted an urge to chuckle when he heard Troy’s voice, clearly serious and selfconscious, coming from one of the speakers.
Troy’s recorded voice explained the initial conditions for the game. The adventurer was on a space station in polar orbit around Gunna, the largest planet belonging to another solar system whose central body was the G-type star that we call Tau Ceti, only ten light years or so away from the Earth. “Tau Ceti has eight primary bodies in its system,” Troy’s voice said, “including six planets and two moons.
“Maps of the system are available at the commissary on the space station,” Troy’s voice continued, “although some of the regions have been incompletely mapped. When your adventure begins, you are sleeping in your cabin onboard the station. An alarm sounds on your personal receiver…”
The voice faded and the sound of an alarm could be heard. The picture on the giant screen was the inside of a space cabin, almost certainly taken from one of the many successful science fiction movies. In the upper right hand corner of the screen was a game digital clock that was changing by one unit every four seconds or so. Nick looked helplessly at Troy. Troy suggested that he hit the L key. In a few seconds Nick learned that he could use the direction keys on the board to look at specific items in his cabin. Each time he hit a direction key, the picture on the screen changed to correspond to a different point of view. Nick noticed that there was a fuzzy picture on his small television and followed Troy’s suggestion to watch until it became clear.
When the focus on his cabin television sharpened, Nick could see a young woman wearing a long, full, richly red dress that dropped almost all the way to the floor. She was standing, somewhat incongruously, in a small, stark room furnished with a single bed, a little desk, and a straight chair. Some light was entering the room through the solitary window near the ceiling and behind the desk. Thick vertical bars were imbedded in the window glass.
The camera zoomed in on her face. Nick leaned forward in his chair in Troy’s apartment. “Why… why it’s Julianne,” Nick said in astonishment, just as the woman began to speak.
“Captain Nick Williams,” she said, much to his surprise, “you and I have never met, but your reputation for valor and justice is unequaled in the Federation. I am Princess Heather of Othen. While attending the great ball at the inauguration of the Viceroy of Toom, I was kidnapped by willens and taken to their stronghold on the planet Accutar. They have told my father, King Merson, that they will not release me unless he cedes to them all the ore-rich asteroids in the Endelva region.
“He must not do that, Nick,” the princess continued earnestly as the camera zoomed in on her face, “or he will deprive our people of their only source of hanna, the key to our immortality. My sources tell me that already my father wastes away, brooding over his impossible predicament. My sister Samantha has fled from Othen with a key division of our best soldiers and a huge store of hanna. It is not clear whether she intends to try to free me or to revolt against my father’s rule in the event that he should decide to give up the Endelva asteroids in exchange for my life. She has always been completely unpredictable.