Cliffhangers

This has to be the worst nightmare ever.

The last thing I remember is feeling unusually tired when I went to bed. Now I am lying, bare-chested in my pyjama bottoms, on some sort of drop sheet hanging from a crack in a cliff a gazillion feet in the air. My twin brother Gabriel is sitting tranquilly with his back against the rock face, reading.

And I have to pee. I always have to pee when I wake up.

"Gabe! What are you doing?" I gasp, because I know that whenever something weird happens, he is the instigator. We are supposedly identical twins, but he got all the daredevil genes, and I got left with the risk-averse ones.

He grins. "Reading the instructions. How do you like the game so far, Boohoo?"

My name is Michael, but he always calls me Boohoo because occasionally I burst into tears when I am frustrated. And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.

"What game?" I ask, taking a quick, furtive glance downwards and trying not to throw up.

"Mom’s latest VR prototype. We have two hours to figure it out before the spikes come loose and we plummet down, down, down to our deaths." He grins devilishly.

"Can you put it on pause?" I plead. "I really have to pee."

"Sorry. We're fully engaged until we solve the problem, or the clock runs out."

I consider peeing over the edge of the sheet. But since we're in VR, that would probably make a puddle on the carpet in Mom’s game room.
I lie back and close my eyes. If I go back to sleep, I will wake up in my own bed and everything will be okay. Maybe.

I open my eyes again. Nothing has changed. I look up. The perpendicular cliff face seems to be infinite. A stairway to heaven, except that there are no stairs.

"How did I get here?" I ask.

"I put a little something into your hot chocolate and hooked you up after you passed out. I thought this would help you overcome your fear of heights."

"Thanks for your concern," I say as sarcastically as I can manage. Gabe always makes it sound like he is the good child.

I sit up and scan my surroundings. Once the dizziness passes, I notice how beautiful the view is. Not even a tiny flaw. And there’s other sensory input – a warm breeze, distant birdsong, and a faint aroma of cedar and alpine flowers. Mom’s latest updated technology is sure to take the VR gaming market by storm once she gets all the bugs ironed out.

Mom is a genius with street smarts. She can read market trends with clairvoyant accuracy, and understands the mechanics of profit. She began as a lowly programmer, quickly worked her way up to a six-figure salary, and founded her own VR start-up which she sold for three million dollars three years later. She invested it all in a new venture, Dreams Unlimited, which is going to make her a billionaire.

She met Dad at a Mensa meeting. He’s a theoretical physicist specializing in superstring theory. He lives in a metauniverse of his own and spends most of his waking hours at symposiums and conferences. I don’t know how they ever found time to organize a wedding, let alone conceive children. 

Gabe and I are the babies of the family. Our brother Jacques is a tenured professor of quantum mechanics at Harvard, and our sister Annabelle is off touring Europe on an Immersive Probability practicum.

After Gabe and I were born, Mom decided she needed to spend more time at home. She converted the basement into a game development and testing paradise. Often she spends all night there, emerging bleary-eyed and distracted in the morning. When we ask her how her testing session went, she responds with a laconic “light years to go”, “in progress” or “almost there.”

The door is secured by a keypad, and is strictly off-limits to curious intruders, especially us, except by invitation. An official-looking plaque proclaims TEST CHAMBER. TRESPASSERS WILL BE DIGITIZED. Of course, that doesn’t stop Gabe from trying to break in. I don’t know how he did it, but we’re here, unsolicited testers of Cliffhangers, scheduled to be released in three months.

It's just VR. Death is not an option. All I have to do is help Gabe solve the puzzle without peeing myself, and figure out some devastating way to get even. It's time for Gabe to learn that I am the senior member of the team. I was born eight minutes earlier than he was, and I deserve to be the Alpha.

Gabe looks up from his paper, eyes widening. "What the hell is that?"

I turn my head, and there he is. Mr. Spock from Star Trek, floating on jet boots.

He grabs me and we descend. It all happens too quickly for me to voice any objections. I may have screamed; I don’t recall. Anyway, if I can’t trust Spock, who can I trust? I close my eyes and hang on for dear life. It’s just VR. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing…

We land with a gentle bump. Spock strides to a shed-like building with me dangling in front of his chest like some sort of weird appendage. He whistles four notes and the door opens.

Then we are in Mom’s test chamber, where we’re hanging in silvery hammocks like prey in a spider’s web. I hear her grunting impatiently, and then she’s lowering me to the ground, pulling off my helmet, stripping a couple of hundred sensors from my body.

“Sorry, Mike. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she chants. “I thought it would be fun to let Gabe try the game, but I never imagined that he would take you along.”

“Bathroom,” I gasp.

She pulls off the last set of sensors. “Go.”

When I return, I’m feeling much better. I’ve made a detour to my room and pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt.

Mom is sitting in front of a giant screen, observing Gabe. It warms my heart to see that he looks just a tad apprehensive.

“Feedback?” she asks, as if this were just a normal game test.

“It’s awesome,” I say. “The best I’ve ever seen. But you really need to address the bathroom problem.”

She nods. “I’ve had issues too, on my longer visits. We have some really good ideas for a 48-hour game, but we can’t move ahead until we’ve figured that out. We also need to deliver nutrition. We can make VR food taste just like the real thing, but you’ll still be hungry.”

I sit down in the chair beside her. “So what happens now?

She swivels to face me, mischief glinting in her eyes. “We can let him stew in his own juice. Or we can rescue him. Your call.”

“He was smart enough to get up there,” I remind her. “He’s probably smart enough to get down.”

“Oh, he’s smart enough. But he can’t.  This is a co-operative game. It takes two people working together to crawl up the cliff.”

It takes me a couple of minutes to digest the fact that my insufferable, know-it-all brother brought me along because he needs me. And now I get to decide what to do about it. 

I shake my head. “What possessed you to let him go on a solo test?”

“I didn’t let him, exactly. I just let him think that he’d cracked the access code. I was hoping he’d get in over his head and learn something useful.”

That is Mom’s unique parenting style. She rarely tells us what to do; she just sets up a scenario that allows us to learn from our mistakes. Just like her games.

“If you ever want me to learn something,” I say, “will you please talk to me before you throw me into the deep end of the pool?”

Her pupils widen. She’s really listening. I love it when she listens.

I blunder on. “I like talking to you, even if I’m not learning anything.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “I haven’t been very available lately, have I? Tell you what. After science camp is over, I’ll take some time off and we can explore the real world together. Maybe we can find a mountain to climb.”

“Does it have to be science camp?” I blurt. I hate science camp. Gabe makes a point of making me feel stupid every chance he gets, and I don’t like science that much anyway.

She tilts her head, looks at me quizzically, and waits.

“I’m not a science geek,” I tell her. “I’m an arts geek.” There, I’ve done it. I’ve told her that I don’t fit in, and I will always be an embarrassment to her.

She doesn’t look upset at all. “That’s good. This family can use some civilizing influence. I take it that there is something else you’d rather do?”

I nod. “Drew and Irena Sharifsky. They collaborate on graphic novels. He draws, she writes. They’re doing a two-week workshop in July.”

“Sounds great. Give me the information, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“It’s expensive. And I’ll need a ride.”

“We’ll make it work.”

I sit there, stunned. Then I jump up and hug her. I don’t know if there is a space available on the Sharifsky workshop, but my science camp days are over.

“Thanks for telling me,” she says, her eyes glistening. “Sometimes I am too distracted to see what is going on right in front of me.”

She looks at the screen. “There are 37 minutes left on the clock. Are we going to intervene, or wait things out?”

“Supermike to the rescue!” I shout, puffing out my chest. Accepting help from me will be more humiliating for Gabe than failure ever could be.

“Would you like to try using the jet boots?” she asks.

“What’s to keep Gabe from taking off with them and leaving me stranded?” I ask suspiciously.

Mom smiles. “No worries.  I’ve made sure that can’t happen.”

Of course. She’s a master programmer. How could I doubt her?

“When you get to the top,” Mom continues, “you will be greeted by fireworks and asked if you wish to continue to Module 2. If I know Gabe, he’ll plunge ahead without consulting you.”

“Unless he really has to go to the bathroom.” I grin, thinking about what glorious revenge it would be to watch my smartass brother pee himself.

“Once you’ve solved that puzzle, you’ll be automatically disconnected. The other modules are still under development.”

“How many modules are there going to be?” I ask, hoping to gauge the amount of stress my family will experience in the next three months.

“We’re aiming for eight. We have thirty-six cooking. If Cliffhangers does well, we want to be prepared.”  

“Cliffhangers: Freefall,” I chant. “Cliffhangers, Aftermath.  Cliffhangers, Primal Screams. Cliffhangers, The Complete Collection with Bonus
Features. Cliffhangers, the Movie. Cliffhangers ad Nauseam. Cliffhanger Billionaire Mom, in Search of a New Project.”

She puts her hands over her ears. “Spare me! It might be Cliffhanger Mom in Search of a Therapist. Shall I hook you up now?”

My stomach feels queasy, and I shudder. I’m scared, but in a good way, the way it feels just before a roller coaster hurtles downward and everyone screams in delicious terror.

“Bring it on,” I say. “This is going to be fun.”