POST HOLLOW SYNDROME
Chapter 4- Glitch
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While all other lights in the neighborhood were out, one unkempt room in the basement of one house remained lit, illuminated by a single drawstring lightbulb. There was a bed in the corner of the room and what was possibly a collapsing dresser near the door. A desk sat beside the bed, covered with a host of tools and haphazard makeshift scientific equipment that looked sewn together by Dr. Frankenstein himself.
The rest of the room didn't look much better--- it looked less like a bedroom and more like a scrapyard, seemingly random pieces of mechanical junk strewn across the floor among dirty clothes and scraps of paper and foodstuffs that should have found their way to a garbage can weeks ago. Kai had meant to throw it away then, but he'd been so caught up in getting ready to play the Hollow that he'd forgotten all about it.
And this past week he'd been so occupied with all the media attention that even thinking about returning to any of his projects had been out of the question until now, much less worrying about a little trash. He had just gotten the will to get back to "inventing" as he usually did. Back to normal, everyday Kai things.
He held up a finger to weld a couple of sheets of metal together. Disappointment stung him when he remembered he couldn't do that anymore. Stupid, stupid Kai, he thought to himself, snatching up a welding tool and a pair of goggles in frustration. We aren't in the game anymore. Idiot.
As he began welding the two sheets together, something flickered out the corner of his eye. Probably a cockroach. "Just hold still, I'll come step on you in a minute," Kai said to the roach. It couldn't understand him. Even if it could, it definitely wouldn't listen to him. Yet the pesky thing kept twitching in his peripheral, as if teasing the boy to take a blowtorch to it.
He shot a glare toward the bug. His heart nearly bolted out of his chest (and nearly sent Kai bolting out of his chair) when it seemed to glitch and flicker--- like Vanessa's eye two weeks ago. Kai blinked and the effect was gone. The insect wiggled its antennae and skittered back under a pile of comic books. "Whooooahhh, that was weird," he commented to himself. He glanced up at his alarm clock.
3:33 AM
Adam jerked awake to see the glowing blue number staring him in the face. A dream? It had all been a dream? OK. Now that he was awake it was unmistakably too bizarre to have been real, he admitted, even within the Hollow's strange world. But the dream, like the game, had felt so real. A dream about the game? Adam knew any player on the Hollow would have been tripped up by that.
But especially he, a champion of the Hollow. He knew better than most people how well the game immersed the players into its world. Trial rounds with memories in tact were one thing. Experiencing everything all over again without knowing it was all a game was quite another. It was something one had to experience to fully know.
He rolled onto his back with a sigh. Nothing had ever haunted him like this before. Normally by now Adam would have already left the past in the past and would already be on his way toward the next goal--- that is, conquering the 11th grade. But this experience refused to let him go. And clearly, ruminating on it was starting to take its toll on his sleep!
His phone alerted him to a text. At 3:30 in the morning? Adam thought. He dragged his phone off his nightstand and activated it. Just as he suspected, it was Kai, the only person Adam knew who thought nothing of staying up until friggin sunrise on a weekend night.
Kai
hey adam i need to talk to you and mira, 2:00 for lunch at paparoni's? importent!
Adam caught himself with a smile. Good. He didn't think he could wait until Monday to tell Mira and Kai about the weird dream he'd had. He certainly didn't have the nerve to talk to his parents about it. He was even dubious about telling Seth, even though his brother was far from a hardcore Hollow skeptic like Mama and Papa. He just didn't want Seth to know to what extent the game was still on his mind.
For that matter, he didn't exactly want Kai or Mira to know how obsessed he still was either. It was embarrassing, even to himself. They were moving on with their lives, and it was about time he got back on with his.
Adam set his phone back onto his nightstand and rolled over to his other side, shutting his eyes. It was about time he got back to sleep, too. Maybe after tomorrow he could spare to move on.
Two o' clock PM had arrived, and the three teens had gathered at a table at Paparoni's Pizza Parlor. The restaurant had been a gathering place for the team back when they were preparing for the Hollow. It was the perfect place to practice getting used to high-grade hologame technology, and the casual atmosphere was perfect to get to know one another better.
Now they had no real reason to spend too much time here, aside from hanging out for the sake of it, or just going out for the parlor's delicious pizza. Which would have been good enough reasons for Adam, but he had a hunch that Kai would not have chosen this place to meet without a proper reason. And knowing their history with the place, he could wager a guess that that proper reason had something to do with the Hollow.
He was correct.
"So I was in my room last night. Tinkering, putting cool stuff together. Y'know, regular stuff I do." Kai took a bite of one slice of pizza. "I'm building this sweet VR helmet to play my space captain games in. So I'm putting these two pieces together. And I see a roach out the corner of my eye. I look at it and it goes on the fritz!" He imitated buzzing noises and gestured wildly with his hands. "Glitching, just like Vanessa's eye! Then it stopped an ran off like nothing ever happened." He went back to his pizza without so much as a concluding remark.
Neither Adam nor Mira said a word, waiting for Kai to continue. After that brief pause, the redhead scoffed. "Come on, you guys. Something's gotta be going on here! Don't tell me neither of you have seen anything weird lately..."
Adam reluctantly raised his hand a bit. "Actually, um... I had a weird dream last night... about the Hollow."
Mira sank down onto her folded arms and fixed her eyes on Adam.
Here goes nothing, he told himself.
"I dreamed you guys were missing and... when I went to look for you, I wound up in the game again. Except it was even more glitchy and corrupt than before. Eventually I stumbled into an undeveloped part of the game thanks to a glitch. I was walking around in this pure black... abyss, no end in sight. I heard both of you calling but I couldn't find you. I... finally called the weird guy. But when he showed up, he refused to help us and... caused the game to crash. Then I woke up. I remember the time was 3:33."
He glanced at Kai. "Kai texted me just a minute later."
Kai's eyes were wide and his mouth was agape. "Whoah... how weird is that?!" He turned back to Mira. "See? That can't be a coincidence!" His voice had risen to a squeak.
"Yes, it can," Mira said. "Kai, you must've seen that bug glitch around 3:30, right?"
"3:33," Kai corrected her. "Same time Adam woke up from his dream!"
"And... Adam, I know you've been thinking about the Hollow all week. It'd only make sense that you'd dream about it."
Adam lowered his head, now feeling a bit embarrassed. Of course that's what it was. It was only logical, he realized.
But Kai's brow had furrowed in indignation. "Well I wasn't asleep," he insisted. "I was fully awake and I was getting back to my normal routines just fine!"
"Kai. You saw it in your peripheral in the wee hours of the morning," Mira emphasized, leaning closer to the redhead. "Your brain had to have been tired by then."
Kai had shrunken back a little. He eyed Mira as if she had just turned into a three-headed dragon that was ready to burn him to a crisp. "Well... yeah, but..." He turned Adam's shoulder with a yank and looked pleadingly into the older teen's eyes. "Adam believes me. You believe me, don't you, buddy?"
Adam swallowed and looked aside, unable to meet Kai's hopeful baby blues and deliver his answer at the same time. "Actually, Kai... she's right." Kai's grip tightened. Adam's words began to stick in his throat as he continued. "I probably did dream about it because I was thinking too much about it."
Kai's hand fell from Adam's shoulder. His breathing had become quicker. Heavier. He was getting emotional. Adam felt like a traitor. "Look, I know what I saw!" Kai declared. "Both times! I wasn't half asleep when Vanessa glitched out!"
"But you had just come out of the game," Mira reminded him gently. She looked back and forth between the boys. "We're home now. And I'm sorry, I haven't heard anything yet that convinces me that anything unusual is happening." She folded her arms.
Kai seemed to be on the brink of frustrated tears. His eyes shone and his face was scrunched into a scowl, as if he was trying to hold back an explosion. "Mira..." Adam cautioned.
But at the last moment, Kai appeared to get a grip on himself. The teary-eyed look went away, replaced with something harder. He swallowed whatever words he was about to say and stared firmly at Mira. "Forget I even mentioned it," he said. "I didn't come here to get brushed off." He stood, shoved his chair in and stalked away.
Mira panicked. She stood and reached out to Kai. "No. Kai, wait! I didn't...!"
Adam grabbed her by the wrist. "Let him go," he cautioned her.
Mira was clearly distressed and her brow was pinched with emotion. "But I wasn't trying to insult him. I was just..."
"Trying to reason with him. I know," said Adam. "But you know how Kai is. He's stubborn, but let him think about it. He'll figure it out. He won't stay mad at you for long."
Mira thought about it, then sank back down into her seat. She looked over to Kai's abandoned lunch. "Yeah... yeah, you're probably right." The rest of the meal passed on in dreary silence between the two friends.
Kai never returned.
The rest of the room didn't look much better--- it looked less like a bedroom and more like a scrapyard, seemingly random pieces of mechanical junk strewn across the floor among dirty clothes and scraps of paper and foodstuffs that should have found their way to a garbage can weeks ago. Kai had meant to throw it away then, but he'd been so caught up in getting ready to play the Hollow that he'd forgotten all about it.
And this past week he'd been so occupied with all the media attention that even thinking about returning to any of his projects had been out of the question until now, much less worrying about a little trash. He had just gotten the will to get back to "inventing" as he usually did. Back to normal, everyday Kai things.
He held up a finger to weld a couple of sheets of metal together. Disappointment stung him when he remembered he couldn't do that anymore. Stupid, stupid Kai, he thought to himself, snatching up a welding tool and a pair of goggles in frustration. We aren't in the game anymore. Idiot.
As he began welding the two sheets together, something flickered out the corner of his eye. Probably a cockroach. "Just hold still, I'll come step on you in a minute," Kai said to the roach. It couldn't understand him. Even if it could, it definitely wouldn't listen to him. Yet the pesky thing kept twitching in his peripheral, as if teasing the boy to take a blowtorch to it.
He shot a glare toward the bug. His heart nearly bolted out of his chest (and nearly sent Kai bolting out of his chair) when it seemed to glitch and flicker--- like Vanessa's eye two weeks ago. Kai blinked and the effect was gone. The insect wiggled its antennae and skittered back under a pile of comic books. "Whooooahhh, that was weird," he commented to himself. He glanced up at his alarm clock.
3:33 AM
Adam jerked awake to see the glowing blue number staring him in the face. A dream? It had all been a dream? OK. Now that he was awake it was unmistakably too bizarre to have been real, he admitted, even within the Hollow's strange world. But the dream, like the game, had felt so real. A dream about the game? Adam knew any player on the Hollow would have been tripped up by that.
But especially he, a champion of the Hollow. He knew better than most people how well the game immersed the players into its world. Trial rounds with memories in tact were one thing. Experiencing everything all over again without knowing it was all a game was quite another. It was something one had to experience to fully know.
He rolled onto his back with a sigh. Nothing had ever haunted him like this before. Normally by now Adam would have already left the past in the past and would already be on his way toward the next goal--- that is, conquering the 11th grade. But this experience refused to let him go. And clearly, ruminating on it was starting to take its toll on his sleep!
His phone alerted him to a text. At 3:30 in the morning? Adam thought. He dragged his phone off his nightstand and activated it. Just as he suspected, it was Kai, the only person Adam knew who thought nothing of staying up until friggin sunrise on a weekend night.
Kai
hey adam i need to talk to you and mira, 2:00 for lunch at paparoni's? importent!
Adam caught himself with a smile. Good. He didn't think he could wait until Monday to tell Mira and Kai about the weird dream he'd had. He certainly didn't have the nerve to talk to his parents about it. He was even dubious about telling Seth, even though his brother was far from a hardcore Hollow skeptic like Mama and Papa. He just didn't want Seth to know to what extent the game was still on his mind.
For that matter, he didn't exactly want Kai or Mira to know how obsessed he still was either. It was embarrassing, even to himself. They were moving on with their lives, and it was about time he got back on with his.
Adam set his phone back onto his nightstand and rolled over to his other side, shutting his eyes. It was about time he got back to sleep, too. Maybe after tomorrow he could spare to move on.
Two o' clock PM had arrived, and the three teens had gathered at a table at Paparoni's Pizza Parlor. The restaurant had been a gathering place for the team back when they were preparing for the Hollow. It was the perfect place to practice getting used to high-grade hologame technology, and the casual atmosphere was perfect to get to know one another better.
Now they had no real reason to spend too much time here, aside from hanging out for the sake of it, or just going out for the parlor's delicious pizza. Which would have been good enough reasons for Adam, but he had a hunch that Kai would not have chosen this place to meet without a proper reason. And knowing their history with the place, he could wager a guess that that proper reason had something to do with the Hollow.
He was correct.
"So I was in my room last night. Tinkering, putting cool stuff together. Y'know, regular stuff I do." Kai took a bite of one slice of pizza. "I'm building this sweet VR helmet to play my space captain games in. So I'm putting these two pieces together. And I see a roach out the corner of my eye. I look at it and it goes on the fritz!" He imitated buzzing noises and gestured wildly with his hands. "Glitching, just like Vanessa's eye! Then it stopped an ran off like nothing ever happened." He went back to his pizza without so much as a concluding remark.
Neither Adam nor Mira said a word, waiting for Kai to continue. After that brief pause, the redhead scoffed. "Come on, you guys. Something's gotta be going on here! Don't tell me neither of you have seen anything weird lately..."
Adam reluctantly raised his hand a bit. "Actually, um... I had a weird dream last night... about the Hollow."
Mira sank down onto her folded arms and fixed her eyes on Adam.
Here goes nothing, he told himself.
"I dreamed you guys were missing and... when I went to look for you, I wound up in the game again. Except it was even more glitchy and corrupt than before. Eventually I stumbled into an undeveloped part of the game thanks to a glitch. I was walking around in this pure black... abyss, no end in sight. I heard both of you calling but I couldn't find you. I... finally called the weird guy. But when he showed up, he refused to help us and... caused the game to crash. Then I woke up. I remember the time was 3:33."
He glanced at Kai. "Kai texted me just a minute later."
Kai's eyes were wide and his mouth was agape. "Whoah... how weird is that?!" He turned back to Mira. "See? That can't be a coincidence!" His voice had risen to a squeak.
"Yes, it can," Mira said. "Kai, you must've seen that bug glitch around 3:30, right?"
"3:33," Kai corrected her. "Same time Adam woke up from his dream!"
"And... Adam, I know you've been thinking about the Hollow all week. It'd only make sense that you'd dream about it."
Adam lowered his head, now feeling a bit embarrassed. Of course that's what it was. It was only logical, he realized.
But Kai's brow had furrowed in indignation. "Well I wasn't asleep," he insisted. "I was fully awake and I was getting back to my normal routines just fine!"
"Kai. You saw it in your peripheral in the wee hours of the morning," Mira emphasized, leaning closer to the redhead. "Your brain had to have been tired by then."
Kai had shrunken back a little. He eyed Mira as if she had just turned into a three-headed dragon that was ready to burn him to a crisp. "Well... yeah, but..." He turned Adam's shoulder with a yank and looked pleadingly into the older teen's eyes. "Adam believes me. You believe me, don't you, buddy?"
Adam swallowed and looked aside, unable to meet Kai's hopeful baby blues and deliver his answer at the same time. "Actually, Kai... she's right." Kai's grip tightened. Adam's words began to stick in his throat as he continued. "I probably did dream about it because I was thinking too much about it."
Kai's hand fell from Adam's shoulder. His breathing had become quicker. Heavier. He was getting emotional. Adam felt like a traitor. "Look, I know what I saw!" Kai declared. "Both times! I wasn't half asleep when Vanessa glitched out!"
"But you had just come out of the game," Mira reminded him gently. She looked back and forth between the boys. "We're home now. And I'm sorry, I haven't heard anything yet that convinces me that anything unusual is happening." She folded her arms.
Kai seemed to be on the brink of frustrated tears. His eyes shone and his face was scrunched into a scowl, as if he was trying to hold back an explosion. "Mira..." Adam cautioned.
But at the last moment, Kai appeared to get a grip on himself. The teary-eyed look went away, replaced with something harder. He swallowed whatever words he was about to say and stared firmly at Mira. "Forget I even mentioned it," he said. "I didn't come here to get brushed off." He stood, shoved his chair in and stalked away.
Mira panicked. She stood and reached out to Kai. "No. Kai, wait! I didn't...!"
Adam grabbed her by the wrist. "Let him go," he cautioned her.
Mira was clearly distressed and her brow was pinched with emotion. "But I wasn't trying to insult him. I was just..."
"Trying to reason with him. I know," said Adam. "But you know how Kai is. He's stubborn, but let him think about it. He'll figure it out. He won't stay mad at you for long."
Mira thought about it, then sank back down into her seat. She looked over to Kai's abandoned lunch. "Yeah... yeah, you're probably right." The rest of the meal passed on in dreary silence between the two friends.
Kai never returned.