I thought quickly. I knew from my studies that lasers are made of light and therefore will pass harmlessly through anything that’s perfectly clear. I rearranged my molecules to be transparent to visible radiation, and, sure enough, I passed through the machine and emerged on the other side entirely intact—well, except for my book bag, which I’d kind of forgotten to make invisible with the rest of me.
I swiftly hopped off the conveyor belt and flung the flaming thing to the ground before it burned my back. At least my teachers wouldn’t have to hear that the dog ate my homework.
Suddenly, the machines stopped and quiet returned, except for the ringing in my ears. Dad had paused time once again.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve earned yourself another question. Ready?”
I nodded wearily.
“Who said, ‘Success is 99 percent failure’?”
My mind was blank. I was thinking it was somebody Japanese, but—
“Answer the question, Daniel, or if you’d rather, we can play this level again.”
I racked my brains and did a quick search through the virtual Wikipedia I’d installed in my head. “Um,” I said, playing it cool, so Dad didn’t discover I had kind of, sort of, cheated. “Soichiro Honda, the guy who started the manufacturing company.”
“And I trust you see why that, too, is applicable to your current situation.”
“You mean I should assume Number 1’s going to have some serious failures coming soon because he’s had 99 percent successes so far?”
“I’m saying you can profit from your mistakes.”
“Ah,” I said, not following him, but once again not exactly having enough time to speculate. Because now I was standing on what looked to be a near present-day Tokyo street. Judging by the big white-and-orange concrete barriers lining it, it looked like it was closed off for a Grand Prix street-race course.
“Next question,” Dad continued. “What two words did General MacArthur, supreme commander of Japan in the years after World War II, say summed up the history of failure in war?”
This one I knew all too well.
“Too late,” I said.
Dad nodded and was gone.
My ears were still ringing from the car factory, but I detected a sort of roaring, thunder-like sound in the distance. And it was getting louder by the second.
Chapter 30
IT WAS NOT a mystery that took long to figure out. In a moment, I saw the source of the noise—motorcycles—1400cc Hondas, in all poetic probability.
Dear Old Dad had transported me right into the middle of a MotoGP exhibition street course in downtown Tokyo. A pack of overpowered, smooth-tired street racers was now rounding the corner about a half mile away and coming straight at me. They’d have plenty of time to stop or steer around me, assuming they took pity on me.
But it was soon obvious, mainly from how they were laughing and pointing, that they had no interest in avoiding me. The fact that the racers were barb-tailed, cloven-hoofed, red-horned demons—or, at least, a species of alien that very much looked that way—was also something of a warning sign.
Fortunately, the course was less than one hundred and fifty feet wide, so I didn’t need to sprint much faster than Usein Bolt to get to safety. When I glanced back at them from the side of the road, it looked like they didn’t care I was escaping. They were still speeding forward and laughing their pointy heads off.
I turned to see what they were looking at and spotted their real target: a little girl clutching a big Hello Kitty doll and frozen in pure horror at the sight of the approaching demon bikers.
“RUN!” I screamed, skidding to a stop at the barrier. This would be close—the demons were about to go by me, and the girl wasn’t much farther. If I was going to save her, there weren’t even seconds—
Time-out! If I could stop time, but I knew immediately I couldn’t dive below the surface right then. It’s one of those things you either can or can’t feel, and I definitely didn’t have the feeling.
So I did the next best thing. In an instant, I gauged the distance, studied the ground by her side, and teleported myself there.
“Grab hold of me!” I yelled
Teleporting others is not a good idea unless you happen to know the location and nature of every molecule in their bodies, because if you make any bad assumptions, well… just be sure to bring a bucket and a mop.
So that meant right then I had somewhere on the order of 1.043 seconds in which to physically carry her out of harm’s way.
She started to grab me as I turned and glanced into the yellows of the approaching demons’ loathsome eyes. I quickly calculated the leap I was going to have to make to get us airborne and to safety. But there was something wrong with how she was holding on to me—something painfully wrong. I turned to look at her and saw what it was.
She was no longer a cute little girl with a cute little stuffed animal in her arms; she was a long-tailed, red-skinned demon—a demon with very sharp teeth that she had just sunk into my left arm. The pain was beyond anything I’d ever experienced. To complicate matters, the Hello Kitty doll had grown an evil monobrow and six-inch-long claws that it was using to climb up my back, probably so it could slice my throat.
Time seemed to slow, and all the panicked stretched-out split-seconds made me realize that, aside from the raging pain of being bitten and clawed, (a) I could no longer leap clear of the oncoming motorcycles, at least without leaving my arm behind, and (b) I was about to become 110 pounds of alien roadkill.
I was about to die.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d come this far and then, just like that, it was the end.
Only, of course, it wasn’t exactly.
The scene disappeared, and I was back in my deluxe suite at the Fujiya Hotel with Dad.
“Daniel,” said Dad in a sad voice, “if this training exercise had been a test at school, you would have received a forty-seven point four out of a hundred. In other words, an F. It’s entirely clear that you can’t possibly win against Number 7 and Number 8 right now, much less with Number 1 in the picture. You should leave Japan. Immediately.”
“But I can dive back through time and take it again, can’t I?”
He shook his head. “No. No, you can’t, Daniel. These training exercises are all in your mind. You’ll see that if you try it in real life, you won’t be able to. Since your last adventure, Number 1 has put a disruption field over the entire planet.”
“What the heck does that mean?” I asked, suddenly remembering what Number 1 had told Number 7 and Number 8.
“It means you couldn’t time-travel if you tried.”
“I don’t believe you!” I said, and tried to visualize the surface of time so I could dive through. I was going to jump back thirty seconds, just to prove my point; but I couldn’t see it! Everything was gray and filled with static, like an old TV set when you don’t have a good signal.
“You see?” asked my father. “Leave Japan, Daniel. There’s no hope for you this time.”
“I can do it anyway,” I insisted.
But there was nobody there to hear me. Dad was gone.
Chapter 31
YOU KNOW WHO wins in a fight between Exhausted and Stressed Out? Yeah, Stressed Out. I not only didn’t pass that all-night test with Dad; I managed to fail it with flaming colors.
I decided against taking a much-needed nap and soon found myself standing a block away from the GC Tower, contemplating the best way to get inside and do some more spying on Number 7 and Number 8. My window-washing gig had worked out okay, but it definitely had certain drawbacks. Like the fact that if they didn’t happen to be in a penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows, I’d have no idea what they were up to.
I didn’t have much time to rig up the window-washing gondola now anyway. If there was one thing Dad’s test had done—besides making me even more tired—it had proved that I needed to become better prepared—and fast. I needed to learn everything I could about these two. I needed
unlimited access.
I considered a few options. In theory I could make myself into a computer virus and infect the building’s security systems, hacking into the cameras and microphones they had doubtless installed throughout the facility. But that was probably too risky. Although I’d been doing a lot of research on digital information systems lately, I hadn’t actually tried to be a computer program before, and, judging by Number 7 and Number 8’s success with their video games, their digital security would probably be light-years better than anything Earth had ever seen.
I also considered disguising myself as a security guard again. But this time I was going to be among top-ten List aliens, and it was highly unlikely I’d be able to bluster or brainwash my way past them.
No, if I really wanted to be a fly on the wall, the best thing to do was to make myself into a creature as common to Japan as it is the United States: Musca domestica, the ubiquitous housefly. One with a miniaturized Alien Hunter brain in its tiny head.
When nobody was looking, I transformed myself and flew over to the uniformed shoulder of a passing teenage boy who, sure enough, was headed straight into the GC flagship store for an early-morning video-game session before heading off to school.
Now I just needed to hope that Number 7 and Number 8 weren’t as high-tech with the building’s pest control as they were about other things.
Chapter 32
TWENTY THOUSAND HIGH-RANKING alien thugs were making their way through the building’s lobby. Well, that’s how it looked through fly eyes anyhow. It took me a moment to get used to my new senses and to realize there were just a dozen of them. Still, that was a lot.
I flew as fast as I could to catch up and landed on the hat of the tallest one, just as a security guard waved him through the turnstile.
My steed and his buddies then crammed into a single elevator that shot us up to the fifty-first floor where we entered a conference room whose walls were lined with alien antlers, bones, stuffed heads, pelts, and other hunting trophies. The conference table also looked to be from some sort of creature—the hip bone of an enormous animal. And, by “enormous,” I mean the bone must have been at least a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. When intact, the actual creature was probably big enough to accidentally inhale a city bus.
The aliens took their seats around the table, and the meeting was called to order.
Number 7 presided from the head of the table as the thugs took off their human disguises. The hat I was riding was unceremoniously tossed to the middle of the table, and, unfortunately for me, it didn’t have ribbons or feathers or anything I could use for cover. I was totally out in the open. My only defense was to stay perfectly still. Fortunately, for the moment, nobody seemed to notice the little black fleck on the brim of the gray hat.
“As you know,” began Number 7, “today marks the launch of a new level. It will be the most challenging—and rewarding—hunt you’ve ever undertaken.”
He had them all on the hook, and he knew it.
“What is it?” demanded one of them. “A Mahoneyian Stinkbear?”
“A Corruscated Fosterite?”
“An Endomorphic Nebulan?”
“A Pleionid,” replied Number 7, cutting short the welter of speculation as if he’d fired a gunshot.
The thugs straightened in their chairs and went wide-eyed, or, if they didn’t have eyes, widened other things.
“But—” began the tall one I’d ridden in on.
“No, they’re not quite extinct,” said Number 7. “There’s one left. And it’s here—here in Japan.”
The hunters looked like they were about to break into applause, but Number 7 would have none of it.
“The mission brief, which I’ll feed into your consoles at sundown, will contain a link to the creature’s location. Because of its shape-shifting and self-healing abilities, we couldn’t use a traditional transponder. Nevertheless, we have another way to track the creature that will allow us to send you rough coordinates.”
A murmur of speculation rippled through the room. I too wondered how they might be tracking the Pleionid.
“Also,” said Number 7, glancing at Number 8, “to make things even more challenging, a new hunter will join us tonight, a truly formidable competitor.”
“Who is it? Is he here?” asked one of the hunters.
“You’ll see.”
“This sounds like a tough assignment,” said another. “Are there any special incentives?”
“First of all,” said Number 7, standing to his full height and briefly, somehow, turning a disturbing shade of gray, “this is not an assignment. This is a hunt. All of you signed up for this. But, yes, if you like to think in terms of what’s in it for you, I can tell you that whoever successfully kills the Pleionid”—he paused dramatically—“not only gets the trophy, but gets to live.”
Now it was every other alien in the room’s opportunity to turn gray.
“You mean—?” began one of them, an owl-headed goon with eyes like mirrored lawn balls.
“I should clarify,” continued Number 7. “Because of your miserable failure with the Mahlerian bird-cat, it has been decided to thin your ranks and recruit new players. Those of you who fail to bring down the Pleionid will be terminated.”
Another ripple of shock and surprise rounded the room, but not as quickly as I would have expected in a group that was just told they were about to die. One of them, with a face like a giant squirrel—if the squirrel didn’t have any hair on its face (very creepy)—was even smirking.
“I don’t care. I’ve been getting pretty tired of this game,” he said.
Number 7 smiled. “What, you mean this 5G edition of Intergalactic Safari Hunter?”
“Duh,” said the creepy squirrel.
“Do you know what ‘5G’ means?”
“Fifth Generation,” said the owl-headed goon. “It’s a marketing thing to make it sound advanced, right?”
“Actually, it’s a number we developers use to indicate the final phase of a video-game arc. Previous generations of the program entice players to continue, thereby helping us to optimize programming to ensure we have maximized its addictive properties.
“For instance, with the humans, right now we’re up to the 4G version. The next edition will be the 5G, just like yours.”
“So?” said the freaky squirrel.
“So,” said Number 7, “at 5G, it stops being a game. And when we release that edition here—as we’ve done on several planets before, including your own—all the world’s gamers are going to start acting out the ultraviolent competitions we lay before them in real life.”
So that was how they were going to make humans extinct. They were going to turn all the first-person shooting and war games into the real thing. The game players of the world would go berserk across the planet.
“What does that mean for us?” asked the owl-headed one.
“Have you tried to pause the game lately? Tried to get up from your machine and go get a snack?”
The aliens looked a degree more nervous. Some of them nodded gloomily.
“You see, now you are not playing Intergalactic Safari Hunter. You are living it. This is not your video-game self—this is your real self. In other words, no more restarting the level if you happen to die.”
You could almost hear the sickening realizations dawn around the boardroom table. This was why they hadn’t been able to pause the game. This was why everything had seemed so real. And this was why Number 7’s threat to terminate them should be taken seriously.
I wasn’t sure what kind of a long-term management technique it was, but something told me that Number 7 had just lit quite a motivating little fire under these greedy, selfish aliens, and that this night’s hunt was going to be particularly hard fought.
That poor Pleionid didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, whatever its abilities were. I cleaned my eyes and flicked my wings, which I guess is the fly equivalent of a discouraged head shake.
“H
ow disgusting!” screeched Number 8. “A fly! There on that hat! Somebody vaporize it!”
Uh-oh.
Chapter 33
I ZIGGED, I zagged, I climbed, I dove, and somehow I actually managed to dodge a half dozen swipes from hands, claws, tentacles, and even several blasts from a variety of alien weapons.
Being small, fast, and nimble was a huge advantage. Fortunately, such an accomplished gathering of intergalactic safari hunters was used to going after larger and more interesting prey, and somehow I made it away from the conference table, and then under the door, and then out into the hallway, without any of them in hot pursuit.
Still, next time I tried spying as a fly and found myself in the middle of a table surrounded by alien safari hunters, I resolved to do a better job blending in.
I landed on the ceiling a little way down the hall and tried to recover my fly breath, but a moment later the conference-room doors burst open and the aliens poured out, readjusting their human costumes and grumbling like a bunch of high-school students who’d just been given five hours of homework.
“I can’t believe this,” whined one of them.
“Should we just take those two out and run the hunt ourselves?” suggested another.
“Yeah, you give that a try. They didn’t get top-ten rankings for nothing.”
“Maybe we should just get the heck out of here.”
“Great idea,” another chimed in. “Let’s all just leave this backwater planet.”
“I mean, if we don’t try to hunt the Pleionid, then we can’t fail, right? And, if we don’t fail, they won’t terminate us.”
“Yeah, seriously, that’s a great idea! We know it’s not a game now, right? So we just need to get away!”
“Hey, wait a second. What guarantee do any of us have that we’d all leave? I mean, how would I know if you decide to stay? This hunt would be pretty easy to win if there was just one guy in it.”