Well, there was still a little more time before it was her turn to play Pac-Man, so she was free to stand in front of the cabinet a bit longer. "That's good," she said, playing along with the coincidence. It had to be one; any other explanation would need plenty more proof. "If you're still there, anyway."
The blue drivers appeared for another split second, just for Turbo to pass them. "Oh, there you– never mind." They disappeared just as quickly as they'd appeared, and Michelle shrugged. "Have fun racing, Turbo."
She felt a tap on her shoulder. "Excuse me?" someone said.
Michelle turned to look at this person, another visitor to the arcade. "Yeah?"
"Any idea whose quarter this is?" The person pointed to the Pac-Man machine, and the quarter at the front of the line was upside down and tails side up.
"Oh, that's…that's mine. Sorry."
"It's fine."
Michelle stepped in front of the Pac-Man machine and inserted the quarter. From what other people had done, it had been easy to get a grasp of how the game worked, so she didn't need to read the instructions. Eat dots, avoid ghosts. Unless you eat a big dot. Then you can eat the ghosts. It was simple enough.
But simple didn't necessarily mean easy. Michelle managed to make it through the first level, but in the second, avoiding the ghosts became harder. And all too soon, one final "Dang it, Blinky!" made it clear she'd been sent into a Game Over.
"Eh, I'll get better," she said, shrugging. It was too bad other people were waiting. It would be nice to be able to try again immediately.
But now, she had to settle for finding a different game to play, so she embarked on another journey around the arcade. A few steps in, she heard a faint "bang" coming from the machine next to her. One glance to the side told her that it was the TurboTime machine. Of course.
She faced it directly. "What do you WANT from me?"
No one onscreen answered this time, but there was one part of the demo that kept changing slightly. The part where Turbo drove across the screen. Normally, he was smiling, but when Michelle looked this time, he had a surprised expression. The next time, an angry one. And the time after that, he wasn't in the car at all. The thing just sat there, parked in the grass.
And the girl standing in front of the game had a feeling this wasn't supposed to happen.
Of course, when Michelle told this story years later, she wasn't able to describe everything that happened. There was an entire side of it she was missing, because the twins hadn't bothered to fill her in on what they'd been doing. At least, not in detail.
But they, too, remembered that day quite vividly. They'd only been plugged in for a few months, but they already knew it was going to be a long stay at the arcade. Turbo wasn't the most pleasant protagonist to work with; he had the ego the size of a monster truck tire, and the game's popularity only helped inflate it.
And as if Turbo himself weren't enough to make their jobs difficult, the players didn't show much appreciation, either. They saw the "Turbo Twins" only as obstacles, little blue blips on the screen that they had to outdrive. The only time they paid the two any mind, it seemed, was when they lost. And that attention was just shouting at whichever twin occupied the top space on the winner's stand.
Which is why, when that one girl took a moment to ask if one of them was okay, it had such a big impact on him. He was the optimistic one of the pair, so he'd managed to get by with a smile, but that same optimism that kept him going also told him that someone out there, someone who didn't even know he had feelings, had cared about him, if only for a second.
And that made him even happier than usual.
"What are you smiling about?" his brother asked as the girl left for another machine.
"Come on, bro!" he replied, laughing. "Don't act like you didn't hear that!"
"Oh, her? You know she didn't mean it, right? She was just talking to the screen. Gamers tend to do that."
"Not like this!" he insisted. "I sure hope she comes by again to play."
"She doesn't want to! Didn't you hear her before?"
"Oh, she'll warm up to Turbo! First impressions aren't everything, you know."
The more cynical brother shook his head. "I worry about you sometimes, you know that?"
For a next few minutes, one twin kept jumping up to get a better look of the world outside, still visible through the demo projection, and the other stood with arms crossed, wondering how long his brother could keep this up. Turbo, meanwhile, was driving in circles, ready to show off for the passing gamers every time there was a break in the projection.
And it was one of those very breaks when that girl came back into the field of view, just passing by.
Thinking quickly, the one twin stopped jumping and pulled his helmet off, hurling it at the screen as soon as he could. The girl outside whipped her head around in surprise, sharing the shock with the other two racers.
It was a little muffled, but the residents of TurboTime could easily tell what this girl was saying. "What do you want from me?" she asked, as if the racers were trying to mug her.
"I just wanna talk!" the optimistic twin shouted before his brother covered his mouth.
Turbo was already out of his car. "What do you think you're doing?" he whisper-shouted. "You can't just throw things at the screen, you idiot! People might think the game's broken, and I am NOT getting unplugged. Do you hear me?"
"Mmm-hmm," he said, nodding frantically.
"And you, let go of his mouth. It's not like she can hear us."
A bit amazed that Turbo knew what was going on, the other twin complied. "Speaking of breaking the game, Turbo," he said, "shouldn't you be in your spot?"
"I was gonna go there!" And Turbo rushed back to his car, where he began to drive it in circles again.
The girl had already walked away.
