In Beta Read online

  Jay took a deep breath and punched in $1,000.

  It won’t work, he thought. It’s too crazy.

  The machine blinked, whirred, and twenty-dollar bills dropped into the compartment below. Jay’s eyes widened as the bills piled into a messy stack. He gathered the bills, mashing the wad into his back pocket, then he quickly glanced around. The cashier was leaning over the counter, apparently suspicious, trying to make out what had in his hands. Jay was about to go when an onscreen message caught his attention:

  would you like to check your balance?

  He pushed the Yes button.

  There was a whir, and a white receipt printed. Jay grabbed it and inhaled sharply. His heart pounding, he touched the bulge of money in his pocket, forced his head down, and hustled from the store.

  Colin was waiting in the Batmobile, seat reclined, staring blankly at the roof. Jay settled into the passenger seat, sweating. He pulled the contents from his pocket and put them onto the divider.

  “A thousand bucks.”

  Colin looked down at the cash.

  “And there’s more.” Jay showed Colin the receipt. Colin’s eyes bulged at the balance.

  $68,342.

  “Yeah, right.”

  Jay waved a stack of twenties. “For real. Check it.”

  Colin’s voice was slow and heavy. “You have to give it back.”

  “What do you want me to do? Stuff it in the ATM?”

  “It’s illegal.”

  “I mashed a bunch of keys on a keyboard. There’s no law against that.”

  “Janet Reno will destroy us.”

  “Janet Reno!? You think Janet Reno would set foot in Cascadia?”

  Jay was only paying Colin partial attention. His mind was grasping for possible explanations. For as much as he knew about video games, the internet was still a bit of a mystery. Could it connect computers to the very fabric of reality? That seemed unlikely. He thought of all the government conspiracies he’d ever heard.

  “Someone’s out there, Colin. Somehow, somewhere, some wires got crossed. The Build can tap into the real world. I think this is proof there’s a God.”

  Colin gave an involuntary tremor. Jay continued.

  “Einstein once said God doesn’t play dice. But, Colin, what if God plays SimCity?”

  Something strange was happening. Colin’s forehead, which had been scrunched up as if he were in pain, suddenly relaxed. His breathing slowed, his eyes dilated. He straightened in the driver’s seat, staring into the distance, as if no longer listening.

  Jay waved his hand in front of Colin’s face.

  “Hello? Hey. Did you hear me?”

  Colin was opening his door, stepping out into the parking lot.

  Jay followed. “What are you doing?”

  “Just getting some lunch,” Colin said vaguely, moving toward the Mark.

  “What about the sixty-eight thousand dollars? Do you not care about that?”

  Colin turned to Jay, but his eyes were unseeing.

  “I already have lunch money.”

  Jay put a hand on Colin’s shoulder, trying to stop him, but it was like an invisible line was pulling Colin toward the Mark.

  “Dude, are you okay? What’s happening to you?”

  Colin murmured, his gaze still slack.

  “I just need . . . some lunch.”

  Then he disappeared through the doors of the Mark. Peering past the paper posters covering the glass, Jay could barely make out Colin’s massive form heading to the deli counter.

  Jay stared, thinking. It was as if Colin’s memory had suddenly vanished. Had he had a stroke? It felt connected to the disk. But how?

  The Lottery

  Jay didn’t wait for Colin to return. He ran the six blocks to his house, mind reeling. An Isuzu Trooper passed him, and Jay heard Tag Team’s Whoomp, There It Is playing as the car headed for the Mark. The pulse of music made him dizzy.

  The small dead end he lived on was empty: all the cars had been driven to work, including his mom’s. He ran up the rickety steps on his front porch and burst through his front door. The house was still, except for the flies buzzing over the kitchen sink and TV, which was playing an interview between Kurt Loder and Neil Young.

  He strode to the Garfield phone on the wall and dialed.

  “Bickleton High School?” Ms. Shirell answered.

  “Hi. Miss Rotchkey, please?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Jay Banksman.”

  Ms. Shirell sighed and recited her worn spiel: “If you’re tardy to third period, we need a parent to call and we’ll—”

  Jay slammed down the receiver. The last thing he wanted to think about was the petty politics of high school. He had to tell someone else about the money, about the game. As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard the low guttural mutter of an engine outside. He peeked out a window to see his mom’s Rabbit roll up. He watched her get out and struggle with the trunk, then haul out three plastic grocery bags. He ran out to help.

  When she saw him, she frowned. “What are you doing home?”

  “Something came up at school.”

  “Is the power back out?” She set plastic bags down in the kitchen. “I think we have a blown fuse; the bathroom light won’t go on. Can you check the fuse box? Also, when you see Colin, ask him to ask his mom if I left The Firm at their house. I can’t find it anywhere.”

  Jay followed, carrying bags of Kid Cuisine and Crystal Pepsi. She began sorting things into the fridge.

  “Has the mail come? Our welfare check is late.”

  He fished into his pocket, pulled out his wad of cash, and put it down on the counter.

  “Forget about welfare.”

  Kathy froze. “What’s that?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  She picked up the pile, staring at it. “Where’d it come from?”

  Jay took a deep breath. A flood of thoughts and feelings swelled up inside him. He felt guilty for making such big changes so easily, excitement for what this money meant. And beneath everything else, fear swelled in his chest. Fear that instead of gaining control over the disk, he was losing it. His inability to explain what had happened to Liz, Todd, or Colin was eating away at him. If he told his mom, would she think he was crazy? Would she be right? He decided to lie.

  “I, uh, I won the lottery.”

  “You . . . won the lottery?”

  “Yep.” Jay tried to smile. “On my birthday I–I bought a ticket down at the Mark.”

  A grin slowly creased the corners of Kathy’s mouth. Then she screamed. “We won? We won?”

  Jay nodded, encouraging, feeling his smile strain.

  “Oh my God!” She screamed and reached for the Garfield phone. “First Liz Knight, now the lottery! God loves the Banksmans.”

  She stopped. “How much do we have?”

  Jay shrugged, cagey. “Plenty.”

  His mom grabbed his shoulder and pulled him toward the door. “Let’s go. Let’s go buy stuff.”

  “I thought you’d want to tell everyone?”

  “I want to buy stuff.”

  “Look, Mom.” He peeled off six hundred dollars. “You get started. I have to go back to school. I just wanted to tell you the good news first.”

  His mom beamed at him in pride. “Oh my God. I’m gonna buy that armoire I’ve always wanted. Oh, I can get that ThighMaster from Suzanne Somers.”

  She grabbed her purse from the counter and ran back out the door, leaving Jay alone. His mind was racing. What if Liz wasn’t the crazy one? What if he was crazy? He felt desperate to share the news with someone else. He grabbed his book bag and the rest of the money and ran back to school.

  Metaphysics

  C-Court was mostly deserted when Jay burst through the doors, winded. The drama room was
open, and he saw a banner for the student-written play The Pope Loves Sinead O’Connor over its door. Jay peeked in to see a half-moon of chairs facing the chalkboard, where there was written in bold letters “Search for Todd, 1:00 p.m.” The classroom was empty.

  Down the hall, outside the journalism room, a small crowd had gathered. Jay saw journalism kids handing out yearbooks. Jay caught sight of Colin in the crowd, thumbing through pages, and made his way over.

  “Colin. Colin!”

  Colin looked startled to see him but gave a small grin. He closed the book and Jay saw the cover featured a yellow brick road, and a hand-drawn Jeremy McKraken in a leather jacket, standing next to a motorcycle and giving a thumbs-up. In big type, it said: “Bickleton High School ’92–’93: You Are Here.”

  Colin read aloud the first page: “The theme of the yearbook is You Are Here. This is a democratic yearbook; we wanted to represent everyone, regardless of grade, popularity, academics, and athletics.”

  Colin grunted. “Take a look at this . . .”

  He thumbed over to the senior portraits. At the very end were two gray squares above the text: “Not pictured.” Underneath were his and Colin’s names.

  “Great,” Jay muttered. “Look, about the money. I know that came out of nowhere but—”

  Colin looked at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  “An hour ago? Do you not remember?”

  Colin furrowed his brow. “In Secret of Mana?”

  It was too much. Jay pushed past the crowd battling for yearbooks, toward a lone dirty door at the end of the corridor. The door opened, and Ms. Molouski escorted a disgruntled-looking freshman from her office. Jay saw her hair was thinner than ever, and deep lines were crisscrossing her face. When she saw Jay, she paused.

  “Your eye’s better.”

  Jay’s hand went to his face. He’d almost forgotten about his black eye, so much had happened since then.

  He stepped into her office, which was freezing, as always.

  “I’m going crazy.”

  “If you’re sane enough to self-reflect, you’re not.”

  “I broke my best friend. The crazy stuff that’s been happening recently . . . I think I caused it. There’s something wrong with reality.”

  “Jay, there are lots of things wrong with reality. We’re on the verge of a war with Iraq. There’s no end in sight to the Haitian refugees streaming into our country. If you want to change the world, I suggest you write President Clinton a letter—”

  “No, no . . . not talking the sociopolitical reality. I’m talking ontological stuff. ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ Immanuel Kant. Metaphysics.”

  “Sounds like you need a priest, not a guidance counselor.”

  “Either I’m going crazy, or everyone else is. I just took a thousand bucks out of the Mark ATM machine.”

  Ms. Molouski raised an eyebrow.

  “And there’s $68,000 more in my bank account.”

  Jay threw the money on her desk.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “A disk. On Friday, I used it to summon a tornado. This morning, I filled up my bank account. Here, look.”

  He pulled out the ATM receipt and defiantly held it up for Ms. Molouski. He waited. She looked at the receipt and her gaze softened. Her eyes glazed over, pupils dilating. Jay watched the muscles in her jaw work.

  “Miss Molouski?” Jay got up slowly from his chair.

  She murmured something.

  “Miss Molouski?!” he yelled, feeling a surge of dread. He backed away from her desk, out into the hall.

  The crowd around the journalism room had dispersed, and he saw the journalism teacher and some students packing up boxes through the window. Otherwise, the campus was empty for third period. A cool sun was out, and a lonesome raven cawed from atop a budding oak tree. He turned to the cove of pine trees that hid Tutorial. The answer to whatever was happening was on that disk.

  SubFolders

  Jay waited in the cold for several hours, careful not to be seen by teachers. A good fifteen minutes after the final bell had rung, he moved into the quiet of the Tutorial trees and paused to listen. Robins rustled in the dry pine needles, but no noise came from the classroom. Good. That meant they’d probably all gone. He swung a leg onto a low-hanging branch, and hauled himself up, peering through a window. It was dark and empty. Ms. Rotchkey, Jay knew, kept the window to her classroom unlocked. He pushed on the glass until the window slid open, then leaned in and tumbled onto the carpet inside.

  He pictured how livid Ms. Rotchkey would be if she knew he’d broken into her classroom. His heart pounded. The closest he’d ever come to breaking the law was in eighth grade, when he and Colin had pretended to shoplift from the Morning Market. Being there without express teacher permission went against every bone in his body. He saddled up to the computer and slipped in his disk. The Build popped open, and Jay found himself staring at his pixelated avatar in the dark classroom.

  There had to be some answer in the program. He clicked around, searching for clues. In the lower left-hand corner was v0.84. He tried clicking on that with no luck. He went to the top-line menu and scrolled down to about,

  then waited patiently while synthetic jazz pop played and the game credits rolled. He squinted at the screen. A list of names scrolled. lead developer: harry butts. associate producer: long wang. key artist: amanda hugnkiss. A long list of joke names. He’d seen easter eggs in games before, but nothing like this. On the left-hand side of the screen were a dozen folders that did not come standard with The Build. He clicked one labeled characters.

  Pixelated figures cascaded down the screen. The figures were just big enough for Jay to make out backward baseball caps, denim, and blond hair. Underneath each were names: john e, john r, john u, john v. The list seemed to go on forever: an entire folder of Johns. Jay shuddered and dove into the clothes folder. A wardrobe filled the screen. There was an entire folder dedicated to Lisa Frank. Another had baby-doll dresses and miniature backpacks. A third had pajama pants, Reebok Pumps, and overalls. Jay scrolled through.

  He clicked on a pair of jean coveralls. They froze under his mouse cursor, and he found he could move them around. He dragged them into the digital classroom, over his desk, and released. The small coveralls appeared in the game. He spun around. There they were, lying rumpled over his desk. He tried it a few more times, dragging different items into the room. Combat boots. Blue windbreaker. Matching blue bucket hat. Oval sunglasses.

  He opened the folder named luxury and his mouth dropped. There were hundreds of the most coveted icons in Bickleton. Miatas. Timex watches. Walkmans. Baskets of Hickory Farms cured meats. Gameboys. Game Gears. It was like every catalog of everything he’d ever dreamed about. He clicked open a subfolder called arcade games. It was filled with games he’d only ever seen glimpses of in the back pages of his comic books. There was Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug, and The Simpsons arcade game.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. But there was something he had to take care of first. The C-Court parking lot was still empty. He went back to the luxury folder, then dragged a Miata into the parking lot. A color palette popped up, and Jay selected blue. The car appeared on the map.

  “Ha!”

  He dragged luxury item after luxury item. He got himself a pocket watch and chain, a lacquered cane, a cerulean ascot, and a jeweled ring. He capped it off with another chunk of cash, twenty-five thousand dollars, sitting neatly across his new pile of clothes.

  The wind picked up, bumping a tree branch into the portable, and Jay jumped, his heart pounding. This would have to do for the moment. He was no closer to answers, but he had a brand-new Miata to test out. He shut down The Build, ejected his disk, and clambered back out the window, sliding it carefully into place.

  When he pushed his way out of the trees, the sun was touching the distant Cascade peaks, casting purple an
d orange shadows across the school. Dandelion seeds drifted through the air, and cottonwoods fluffs fell like snow. The only sound was the moo of Highland cattle. Jay stood on the edge of the parking lot, eyes bulging. There was his Miata: sleek, blue, top already down. Waiting. He walked carefully toward it, taking in every detail, and ran his hand over the paint. The keys were in the ignition. He slid in, appreciating the cool leather. He ran a hand over the seats and began to laugh. He had a Miata and Jeremy didn’t. He brought a trembling hand to the ignition and turned. The car rumbled, its power quivering his limbs.

  Jay yanked the shifter in reverse and unsteadily popped the clutch. He’d had a little practice driving the Batmobile. The car shot backward and Jay laughed again. He put it in first and the car immediately died. After several false starts of popping the clutch too early, Jay found himself zipping down Simmons Road, wind threatening to blow his new bucket hat off. He cornered onto Main Street so hard his tires squealed, and he screamed with delight. A Chevy truck blew by and Jay caught the incredulous glance of John W. Jay turned on the radio and switched it to 669 AM. A honey-sweet melody poured from his speakers. It was perfect, almost as if Marvelous Mark knew he was riding top down in a Miata. He pointed his car toward the main drag and gunned the engine.

  The Well-Heeled Hick

  Jay woke the next morning to the Garfield phone ringing in his kitchen. He closed his eyes, willing his mom to pick it up. It stopped, then began ringing again. He slid out of bed, grumbling, still in his clothes from the night before. His mom’s door was shut, and he was mildly surprised to see it was 10:37 a.m.

  The living room was filled with his mom’s purchases from the day before. There were two new stereo speakers in the living room, clothes draped over every chair, and a new credenza that almost blocked the front door. Jay was wondering how his mom had managed to get inside, when he picked up the receiver.