When I spotted the discs outside my window, I knew I had a good chance of making it down to grab them immediately. My mom was almost definitely working again, descended back into her office where she could be busy with paperwork and not have to deal with her deadbeat son. I crept down the stairs on tiptoe, not wanting to alert her that I was out of my room. It seemed to work. Not a peep.
The front door was another issue. My mom's office faced directly out onto the hallway which led to the living room, which opened out to the outside by the front door. I could probably sneak past her office door without getting caught - she was invariably facing away from it, buried in her work - but opening the front door would be a dead giveaway.
I thought about it for a moment, and retreated back through the kitchen and quietly out the back door, further from my mom's earshot. Outside, the air was warm and damp, like it had either just rained or was just about to. A breeze whistled very softly through the tree in the neighbor's yard.
For a moment I just stood outside, enjoying the weather, but I really had no time to waste. Carefully ducking under the window of my mom's office, I scurried around to the front of the house. Rounding the corner, I saw the mailbox; the flag was still up, my game would be in there. My breath caught with excitement. Frantically, I opened the mailbox and reached inside. I pulled out two discs, wrapped in brown square envelopes and stamped with the green logo of Sburb.
There it was.
I wanted to scream with joy, but I remembered that I was still on a stealth mission. I was, after all, supposed to be grounded. With a stupid smile on my face I ran around the house, past the window, through the back door and back up the stairs. I probably wasn't close to as quiet this time, but somehow my mom failed to catch on. Through whatever quirk of fate, she didn't stop me. I kept the game. I made it back up to my room, the discs clutched against my chest.
I felt thrilled with adrenaline. That had been risky. If my mom had turned around at just the wrong moment, I could have been grounded for much longer than a week - and I might never have had a chance to play Sburb.
But here I was, and I had them. I sent Robert a text: "I got the game! Just came in the mail. " After a moment of consideration, I sent another: "!"
He texted back. "Excellent. I'm installing mine as we speak," he said. This tamped my enthusiasm quite a bit. "You got yours already? Why didn't you tell me?" I wrote. "Dude, it's fine. We have to play this thing in tandem anyway," he wrote back. "Okay, so what do I do? Which disc am I supposed to be using?" I said. "Put in the client player disc. I'm already playing as server, so that way we could connect to each other," he said.
"How do you know so much about this, anyway?" I asked, slightly peeved. "An educated guess," he wrote back. I rolled my eyes. His instruction made sense, if that was how the game was set up. And why two discs? It felt strangely retro. With a little bit of a mental shrug, I stuck the "CLIENT" disc into my computer. With a flash of blank green, the Skaianet logo appeared. A spinning spirograph filled the screen. My heart raced; this was it. Keeping with the retro theme, white lettering started to scroll down the display:
SBURB version 0.0.1
(c) SKAIANET SYSTEMS INCORPORATED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SBURB client is running.
A SBURB host user is attempting to connect with you.
Client has established connection with host.
Press [ENTER] when ready.
I hit Enter. Seemingly just a second later. a text appeared from Robert: "Oh my god, this thing is fucking scary. Can you see that?" "See what?" I sent back, irritated. My screen had just gone blank. He texted back, "Call me. Now." It seemed curt, urgent. I felt a weird rush of adrenaline, like an understanding that something very serious was going on.
We had begun to play.
"Dude, do you have some kind of rotating webcam setup? And you just leave it unprotected for -" "I don't have any kind of webcam. And I definitely don't leave anything unprotected. What do you take me for? But seriously, is your game working? Because I'm just getting this blank screen, and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing," I said.
On the other end, I could hear Robert breathing heavily. "I'm looking at your room, dude. I see /you/. I can see you talking on your phone right now. But I can move it, and pivot it, like it's part of the game."
I stood still for a moment, trying to take this in. "You're fuckin with me, dude. Come on," I said. Robert wasn't the kind of person who would do that, he was always reserved in his humor, but this- how did a camera get in my room? Why would he be able to /control/ it, like it was part of the game? It was too unreal. I could understand using webcams of the other player for immersion or whatever; it was a good idea. Very immersive. But where the hell was the camera?
"I wouldn't do that to you, dude. I can see you right now. You look like you're trying not to freak out," he said. "I'm not freaking out. I'm saying that I think you're lying. Here," — I held up three fingers — before I could finish the question, he said "Three fingers. Wait, you're putting them down. You are freaking out." Hastily, he added "It's fine, dude, I'm freaking out too. This is weird. Oh, watch out, I'm gonna try doing a tight swivel around your face with this. That should force it to come out in the open."
I waited, but nothing seemed to happen. My room was still and quiet as a grave. A light breeze from the open window fluttered the corner of a poster on my wall. It was a nice Pink Floyd poster, and I made a mental note to fix the adhesive. Nothing else was moving.
"Nothing. I can't believe it," Robert said. I startled a little bit; I'd almost forgotten about the phone at my ear. "This is creepy. I don't like this at all," I said. At that moment, a thought occured to me. "Can you hear me, too?" I asked, pulling the phone away from my ear. "Hello? One two three, testing," I said. I lifted up the phone again. Robert said "What are you doing, dumbass?" "So you can't hear me," I said. "Not except through the phone. It's just a camera, I guess," he said. Paradoxically, I felt a wave of relief at this revelation. He couldn't hear me. No microphones. There were limits to what this thing could do.
I breathed out a slow sigh. "This thing is creepy. I don't understand it, and I don't like it. But I guess we might as well keep playing."