20,000 Nerds Under the Sea Read online

  She handed Neil a sealed yellow envelope.

  “OK, we gotta move it, folks. Games won’t deglitch themselves.”

  Waffles gave a loud yip and rushed to the idling bus.

  “Sweet surprise, Neil,” said Dale, slapping Neil’s shoulder as he chased after his brother.

  Neil ran back inside to throw on his favorite pair of old corduroy pants. He double-knotted the laces of a pair of old sneakers and ran back outside.

  Once everyone was dressed and on board, the donut feeding frenzy began. The bus rumbled into gear, and the mirrored walls of the interior filled with blue twinkling lights.

  “To RebootCon!” shouted Harris, pushing play on a speaker system that was louder than seven jet engines. Thirteen cheers went up as Neil and his best friends headed toward the highway and the famous Reboot Robiskie.

  THE PARTY BUS SKIDDED TO A STOP IN FRONT OF THE CHAOTIC San Diego convention center. Costumed gamers moved around the vehicle like a swarm of ants.

  “Thanks, Vinny!” yelled Sam to the driver. She gave him a powerful high five and skipped outside.

  “Just call me when you guys are done. With traffic being so bad, I’m gonna hang around here. Might go sneak around that new ketchup plant that’s opening up,” said the driver. “I hear they need delivery drivers. Maybe I’ll check out an aquarium or something, too.”

  “Those things are awful, Vinny,” said Biggs.

  “Could you imagine being stuck in a fish tank like that? It’s like if somebody made you drive around the parking lot forever,” added Sam.

  “I guess I never thought of it that way,” said the driver, scratching the top of his round head. He pulled a card from his shirt pocket. “Just give me a ring when you’re ready to head home. I’ll be around. Party on.”

  The bus pulled away and the group clustered together in the middle of all the zombies, vampires, overdressed Vikings, and underdressed elves.

  “Oh, no. Are costumes mandatory?” asked Corinne.

  “I’ve got enough superhero costumes for eight of us,” said Jason 2. “They’re a little wrinkly, though. They’re stuffed in my backpack.”

  “When was the last time you washed those?” asked Sam.

  Neil cleared his throat to get the group’s attention and led them toward the huge building, only to bump into the thick, steel-toed boot of a security guard.

  “Registration, please,” said the short guard, who had a stubbly gray-and-black beard. He was bald, but the rest of him was very hairy and covered in tattoos that resembled barbed wire.

  “Registration?” said Neil.

  “Yeah, kid. Or your tickets. Lemme see ’em.”

  Neil slid a finger under the flap of the yellow envelope containing their tickets. With a smile he reached inside and handed the stack of tickets to the security guard.

  “This is a joke, right?”

  Neil looked down at what he’d handed over. It was a stack of twelve seed packages. There were sunflowers, poppies, even a few forget-me-nots—but not a single ticket.

  “Oh, no, Mom must have switched up the envelopes,” Biggs said. He looked through the tiny packages containing an entire garden’s seeds.

  Neil felt a bead of sweat build on the top of his forehead. The guard impatiently cracked his knuckles.

  “We’ve got some good seeds in here, sir,” said Biggs. “These probably equal the price of the tickets.”

  The guard grimaced, flexing the muscles of his unusually huge jaw.

  “Wait—I thought Harris said we didn’t need anything?” asked Sam.

  “Perhaps this is all you need,” said Harris, stepping out from the back of the group. He pulled a glossy pass from his pocket and handed it to the man. The pass was stamped with the official RebootCon logo and the letters VIP.

  VIP! Perfect. Since Harris designs games, he can totally get us all in. Neil felt a wave of relief.

  “That gets you in, chief. But your friends aren’t VIPs,” said the guard.

  Well, awesome.

  Harris turned to Neil as his phone erupted with a panicked, all-caps text message. THE GLITCH IS MUTATING. NEED HELP ASAP.

  “I just have my pass, guys,” Harris said. “I’m sorry, but I really need to get in there. Once I fix my game, I’ll try and get twelve more passes.”

  He scribbled a number on a Beed Industries card. “Here’s the number of my booth, if you guys get inside.” With that, the blue-velvet rope was secured back in place, and Harris disappeared into the stream of gamers.

  “Well, OK,” Neil said, sighing. He turned to the scruffy guard. “Can we use RebootCoins from the hosting site?”

  “Kid, I don’t even know what anything you just said means,” he replied. “To get in here, you need to either be on this list of preregistered guests or have a ticket—and tickets have been sold out for days.”

  Neil’s sweats got worse, and he instantly regretted the nineteen donut holes he’d eaten on the ride in. He couldn’t be mad at Biggs’s mom for the ticket oversight, but Neil was panicked.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Trevor. “We flew all the way across the country for a convention we don’t have tickets to?”

  He too had had a growth spurt since Neil saw him last. He was nearly as tall as Biggs, and his voice was getting deeper.

  “Kids, you either have tickets or not. And I need this area clear. Lots of customers with real tickets need to get through.”

  Neil felt dizzy. He had worked so hard to make this trip happen, and the twelve best video gamers in the country were stuck outside the biggest video-game convention in history.

  “We could try and drive back home,” offered Biggs.

  “With that traffic? By the time we get back, the convention will be over,” said Trevor. He put his hands on his hips and huffed out in frustration. “Why wasn’t I put in charge of this? We wouldn’t be in this mess if I was the one responsible.”

  The group shuffled away from the entrance.

  “Sorry about the seeds, everybody. We tried,” Biggs said. “We can still have a good time. My mom can make us beet pancakes at home.”

  The group groaned. They wanted a chance to see the mysterious Reboot Robiskie, not to introduce more fiber into their diets.

  “It’s OK. It’s nobody’s fault,” said Neil.

  “Man, I was really looking forward to this convention,” said Yuri.

  “I know,” said Waffles. “And now we’re stuck here with nothing to do. I could be playing paintball right now.”

  “I should be finishing my science project!” said a stressed JP.

  “Guys, I—I don’t know what to say, but—” Neil started.

  “Save it for another time, Andertol,” said Sam, her eyes scanning the crowd. “I think I’ve got an idea.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, AT THE OPPOSITE END OF THE building—at a completely separate entrance—a group of twelve arrived in an elegant party bus. Its pulsing neon lights were turned off, and soft classical music played inside.

  Sam was the first to leave the bus, again, as Neil and the others silently followed.

  “Tell everyone Mr. Beed sends his regards,” said Vinny, the bus driver, in a fake British accent.

  Everyone wore baggy, neon-green shirts plastered with the logo of Beed Industries.

  “Tickets, please,” asked a different security guard. She was taller than the first and wore a black baseball cap with the official RebootCon insignia.

  “What for? We’ll be in and out—just here to help behind the scenes,” Sam said, her usually gruff voice seeming the tiniest bit raspier. “Booth three hundred and thirty.”

  She handed over Harris’s card. It was very thick paper, and the guard ran her fingers over the grooves of Harris Beed’s family insignia.

  “What is it you all are doing exactly?”

  “Fixing the booth for Feather Duster 3. The game keeps glitching.”

  The woman looked puzzled. “Beed Industries?”

  “You don’t know Beed Ind
ustries?” Sam asked. “Lady, they’re the main sponsors of RebootCon.” She pointed up at the show’s banner; it read REBOOTCON: PROUDLY SPONSORED BY BEED INDUSTRIES.

  “There’s no time to waste. If we don’t get in to fix his game, we’re all in trouble,” Sam said. “Especially anyone responsible for keeping us from fixing Mr. Beed’s game.”

  Sam made a pretty convincing negotiator. The guard inspected the card once again, then studied the group’s T-shirts, and finally looked back at the banner.

  “We’ll be in and out, promise,” Sam said.

  “Fine, just be quick about it,” she replied. The guard unclipped the blue rope and waved the twelve fake Beed Industries employees into the convention center. Neil Andertol smiled, proud of Sam’s quick thinking. RebootCon. We did it. We’re in.

  “THIS . . . IS REBOOTCON,” A VOICE THUNDERED THROUGH hidden speakers that lined the long, tunnellike hallway that led to the main floor.

  “Why is it so dark in this place?” asked Corinne.

  Fake fog began to ooze across the floor, and the tunnel began to widen. The group kept walking through the bluish haze.

  Roaarrr!

  A giant shark swooped down from the ceiling, its jaws opened wide. The beast had huge, sinister eyes and was headed straight toward Neil.

  “Flying sharks! It’s finally happening!” screamed Biggs, tucking his head and arms inside his XXL Beed Industries T-shirt.

  “Relax, weirdo, it’s just a hologram,” said Trevor.

  Neil looked at the shark and saw that Trevor was actually right—it was a hologram, and an incredibly lifelike one at that. As the shark swam away, the same voice boomed again.

  “Be the first to play the never-before-seen Captain Jolly’s Shark Hunt. Only at RebootCon.”

  Cool, a brand-new game.

  They finally entered the convention center, a genuine gaming paradise, full of everything Neil had dreamed of. The maze of booths contained game prototypes and lots of free swag—from coffee cups to sunglasses. Crazed convention-goers ran from one booth to the next, arms full of goodies.

  “Dudes, there’s a game about tying knots for speed,” said Dale. “This is the best day of my life.”

  “And, my heavens, a game about saddle oiling!” Riley cried.

  Practically all the games were new, with a few using some of the latest motion-capture technology. One offered the most realistic sled-riding simulation, while others re-created ancient battles.

  “Hey! How’d you guys get in?” said Harris. Neil looked around but couldn’t see his friend.

  “Harris!” Neil said, a little surprised. “Harris?”

  “Down here,” said his voice. He was sitting on the floor, repairing his game’s console. It was a retro stand-up arcade game, like the one Neil had played at the pizza parlor. A few kids in Feather Duster 3 outfits were manning the booth. Neil glanced up to see he was in front of booth 330.

  “I’m glad you guys made it in,” said Harris, half his attention still on his malfunctioning game.

  “Us too,” replied Trevor.

  “This place is pretty cool, right? My employees said that Reboot might come into the building—I can’t believe it,” said Harris. “Pretty risky move. He’s wanted by, like, five different countries for not taking down his website.”

  Neil could hear the eagerness in Harris’s voice. International gaming fugitives could turn even Harris into a fanboy.

  “Hey, JP, mind taking a look at this with me?” asked Harris. “I could use any help I can get. I’m getting error messages I’ve never even encountered before.”

  As JP and the others crowded around Harris and his ostrich arcade game, Neil’s, Sam’s, and Biggs’s attention was drawn to the back of the room.

  Along the wall was a big stage with a huge screen in the shape of a hundred-foot shark. In front, black curtains covered two bulky objects the size of bulldozers.

  “RebootCon! Are you ready?” announced a voice through the speakers.

  “What is that game?” asked Neil in a trance. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, that? Another world premiere,” said one of Harris’s assistants. She wore the same Beed Industries T-shirt as Neil but also sported an ostrich-beak nose. “Captain Jolly’s Shark Hunt. It’s from a new designer; nobody really knows anything about it. Looks pretty cutting-edge, though.”

  “Sharks, really?” Neil questioned. “I mean, they’re cool—I just need something faster.”

  “Oh, it’s plenty fast. So powerful it takes three people to control it.”

  “Oh, whoa, three people? That sounds intense.”

  “It’s supposed to be the best game here.”

  Neil looked toward the stage and began pushing through the crowd. The new game pulled him like a magnet. He had to play it. Lately, Neil had been desperate for a new game. He had been breaking all his high scores, whether it was controlling jets, ostriches, or spacecraft. Not from a cheat code, but from Neil being too good, apparently. It was as if the games were letting him know he needed a new challenge.

  “And looks like you’ll be playing second, ManofNeil,” said Sam, edging a few steps ahead of Neil. She happened to be a big fan of sharks. Neil went faster, breaking into a run—his first exercise since last week’s gym class.

  “And I call dibs on third!” said Biggs, his frame bobbing with long strides.

  The trio dodged a small army of ax-wielding goblins before arriving at the huge shark-shaped screen. They watched a girl in a shark costume grab hold of the black curtains hiding the two giant objects.

  “People of RebootCon. I’m Miss Jolly Rogers the Third. And behold, Captain Jolly’s Shark Hunt,” announced the girl. The stage and convention center went dark as she pulled back the curtains.

  The spotlights revealed two monstrous shark heads. Each had room for three players to stand in its open jaws and view the screen through the foot-long teeth.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “I’m your host, referee, and commentator, here to take you all on the hunt.”

  She wore a headset microphone, and her long hair was a dark crimson that framed her slender face. It was dotted with tiny freckles, making her skin look like sunburned porcelain.

  In a foam shark costume, she walked the stage confidently, giving the crowd a big smile. She strutted like a runway model.

  “Who dares to brave the sting of defeat for a chance at fame?”

  Neil stepped closer to the stage.

  “We dare!” shouted Biggs, waving his hands. “We will dare that sting!”

  “Well then, step right up!” answered Jolly.

  “Wait, but how do you play?” asked Neil.

  “Who knows!” said Biggs.

  He took the stage with a giant leap, while Neil and Sam took the stairs. They met up in one of the fake shark heads. It was incredibly lifelike, and Neil had to touch its skin to make sure it wasn’t actually slimy and wet.

  “Is this supposed to be a megalodon?” asked Sam. She studied the fake teeth intensely.

  “Indeed,” said Jolly. “The fiercest, most gigantic prehistoric shark that ever existed. The most powerful sea creature there ever was.”

  “Even compared to those mythical squids?” said Biggs.

  “Biggs, if the megalodon were still alive today, every single creature would be in trouble,” said Sam. “It probably would’ve evolved, grown legs, and eaten all of us. These sharks had hundreds of giant teeth, each up to seven inches long!”

  “Be warned, Beed family,” continued Jolly. “This will not be easy.”

  “We’re definitely not a family!” corrected Sam.

  “Well, you’re all snazzy dressers, that’s for sure,” the host said. “And, facing off in the megalodon jaws across from you, your opponents.”

  Jolly welcomed three young ladies dressed as mermaids who would pilot the other shark.

  “Now—battle stations, everyone!”

  Neil, Biggs, and Sam shuffled to the three control podiums. Neil was
in the center, with Sam to his right.

  “Before we get started, enter your names from Reboot’s site to pull up your profiles,” said Jolly. “We want to keep any records set here today.”

  Neil looked out to the crowd that had formed. So many people were watching, and he tried to forget the fiasco that had happened with his drone.

  “My, my,” said Jolly as Neil, Biggs, and Sam tapped in their screen names. Their high scores for games hosted on Reboot Robiskie’s server popped up. “You lot are very impressive. Take your positions.”

  The lights on the stage dimmed as a countdown from twenty seconds began. Neil clasped his hands together to stretch his fingers.

  16 . . . 15 . . . 14 . . .

  “I call next game,” shouted Trevor. “I’ll show you all how it’s done.”

  “This match is a timed event, and winners will receive a free copy of the game as well as a lifetime supply of Rogers ketchup, the main sponsor of Captain Jolly’s Shark Hunt!” said Jolly, raising her hands to drum up applause. She had the endless energy of an infomercial salesperson. “Throughout the level, there are gold coins in a pirate shipwreck. Steer your shark to collect the gold. The team that collects the most coins and deposits them back at their team treasure chest wins.”

  9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . .

  Neil surveyed the game. The level was a rocky underwater scene, with glimmering coins buried in groves of seaweed and coral cliffs.

  “And one more thing,” said Jolly. She pushed a button on her tiny control console, and two massive holograms of the sharks appeared over the audience. The sharks swam in place with realistic fin movements as gold coins twirled overhead. It was like the stage, and the entire convention center, was one huge video game.

  3 . . . 2 . . . 1

  In a flurry of bubbles, Neil’s shark quickly began to cruise through the level. Biggs was in charge of the tail fin, which controlled the speed. Using a motion-sensing control, Biggs waved his arms to help their shark accelerate.

  “Prepare to watch the most graceful tail wagging you’ve ever seen,” said Biggs.

  Sam was in charge of biting, diving, and surfacing, and Neil steered. After logging countless flight hours together, both real and in virtual reality, the three worked well as a team.