Chapter 1 - Getting through the Terminal

“Don’t play with your dinner like its play-dough.” I groaned at my child sitting next to me at the marble-top kitchen table with half of it covered with junk mail, toys, and kids’ drawings.

I was in the middle of raising two kids and still had no answer as to why a child enjoyed smearing blueberries across their face. This kind of behavior would deserve a lecture and some nagging to get the youngest to stop and just eat his food like a normal human being. But the old-fashioned clock ticked away on the kitchen wall as a constant reminder of how I was out of time.

“Eat.” I demanded, then rubbed my son’s face clean with a washcloth. “We have to go.”

Tristan squirmed under the assault of the clean cloth, yanking at my wrist. “Stop! I’m not a baby.”

“You sure? Six-year-olds know how to eat their food.”

A blueberry smacked my cheek, then landed in the waiting jaws of our four-legged vacuum, Ghost. Tristan giggled, even though his sister had thrown the fruit. I locked my jaw and counted to three. By two, my son had yanked the washcloth free and scrubbed my five-o’clock shadow to clean it.

“You missed a spot,” he teased.

His attempt at helping made me smile and made it easier to not glare at the blueberry archer. In these situations, you stick to basic gaming and parenting mechanics. Reward good behavior and ignore the bad.

“Thanks, Tristan. Elaine, save the shooting for the game tonight.”

An exasperated sigh came from my daughter across the table, followed by the annoying tapping of her sending a message to her clique. It didn’t matter what she sent, as long as I didn’t become a meme on the internet about blueberry faces. Dads were frequently the butt of many jokes. It is the cost we pay for all our puns.

I tossed the washcloth at the sink and missed. To think Elaine’s accuracy was better than mine. It landed on the stack of dishes next to the sink filled with pots and pans.

Close enough. I’ll get to the dishes later when the kids go to bed.

“Did you finish your homework?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer me. I could barely see her eyes through her mop of brown hair.

My mind wandered over to the hallway, where their backpacks hung on the wall. Tristan was only in first grade, too young for any real homework that I had to check in on. The game had a tighter deadline right now that forced me to do a bad parenting choice.

“Do your homework later.” I lectured because she didn’t reply.

Another small, wet fruit smashed into my chin, causing me to nearly bite my tongue. Tristan cackled and took off running toward the hallway where the office and bedroom were, shouting, “Blueberry bomb!”

“Get to the bathroom!” I shouted after him. “We’re going to be gone for a while!”

Lumbering over to the sink, I grabbed the dirty washcloth and rubbed my face clean, only to notice a new food stain on my NFC North Champion’s shirt. I groaned. Everything in the house was a mess and the stress of the to-do list haunted me. Dinner needed to be cleaned before Beth got back. Another late-night work shift trapped her and coming home to anything but a pristine home would make her angry. She never had to battle cooking and the kids at once. She was more focused on her job as a lawyer these days.

The clock’s ticking drew my attention. It was twelve minutes until the top of the hour. We were in danger of arriving late at the docks.

The battlefield of blueberries and unfinished chicken could wait.

“Chop, chop,” I told Elaine, clapping my hands with each word. “If we don’t get there soon, we’ll miss the ship.”

“So what? Maybe it’ll do Tristian some good. Make him grow up, be out there on his own.” She put the phone down and stretched in her chair, exaggerating that she was not rushing. “It’d be kinda nice to do some hunts without him.”

“Think of it as playing the game on hard mode. With an NPC escort mission,” I countered. “Now, stop dawdling and go get ready.”

Her point was not technically inaccurate, but it was not why we played. Especially with how fun the last hunt was taking down some giant rats and their boss. Father and daughter hunting was a lot more entertaining than the recreational center’s father-and-daughter dance.

However, this was our thing: Tristan, Elaine, and I. Seeing Tristan’s face light up as he caught a toad was the best.

Jeez oh pete, another minute on the clock vanished away with the reminiscing. Fortunately, past-Blaine accounted for the extra time for nudging kids out the door. The whole family was making progress in the right direction.

As long as we stick to the schedule, we should be fine.

I am a master at getting them out on time at this point.

With nimble steps, I avoided the highway setup that Tristan prepared in the hallway. From miniature cars, to tractors, to eighteen-wheelers, he created his own traffic jam. Or a real-life frog hopping course. I had three lives to get across this traffic jam. Elaine stood off to the side like the Statue of Liberty, her phone lighting up the dark hallway. If the Statue of Liberty wore baggy sweatpants and let her hair cover her face.

I attempted to grab her elbow to refocus her, but she effortlessly evaded me and avoided being nudged down the hallway.

“Seriously, I’ve grown up. Stop treating me like a kid,” she snapped. Finally, locking her brown eyes on my face.

“You became my kid fourteen years ago and you’ll remain that way thanks to time,” I explained.

Tristan shouted from inside the bathroom. “Dad! There’s no toilet paper.”

Elaine groaned and pinched her nose as she passed by to avoid the smell. She jogged toward the gaming room at the end of the hallway. That’s one kid in the capsule room. One more to go.

I did not waste a second looking at my watch. They were going to need each precious moment to get in on time with the current disruption. “There is a roll under the sink,” I explained.

While waiting by the door, I pulled out a handy package of disinfectant wipes that sat ready in my cargo pants for moments like this. It came as no surprise that Tristan opened the door immediately after the sound of the toilet flushing. He still didn’t wash his hands.

“Let me see your hands and let’s go,” I nagged as I rubbed the disinfectant wipe all over the boy’s hands and then the inside doorknob. On the tile of the bathroom floor rocked an empty toilet roll inches from the open trash bin.

Tristan was definitely not going to be a basketball all-star if he couldn’t even make that shot. Buckets filled the small tile room, one sitting under the sink to catch the leaking water line, and another on the counter with all my plumbing tools in it. Towels laid scattered about on the floor. Another item on the to-do later, not now.

Hygiene and cleanliness didn’t matter in this second-life situation. Since Tristan’s birth, my gaming cred vanished. Yeah, newborn life and magical first moments with the child and all that. That snotty phase is a wet, slimy blast. Snot bubbles are still funny, though.

Still, I wished I had more support from Beth. She did her share, even if she wasn’t here because of work. Thanks to her, we could afford four VR gaming capsules. She even bought us early access to the new game Seconds-Over. The technology had jumped since the last time I played an augmented game. It also made character leveling a lot of fun. The first time Tristan hit level two, he was so excited and danced all around that he leveled up his dance skill as well.

The actual gift of Seconds-Over was being able to share my favorite hobby with the kids.

All of that would vanish if they didn’t get online in time.

I did a mental checklist as we hopped over cars to get to the gaming room:

[Pre-requirements for Gaming]

1. Kids fed a healthy dinner (They at least ate the wheat bread rolls)

2. Homework

3. Bathroom breaks

4. Clean kids

5. Chores completed

Sixty percent chance, in any shooting game, that was a nail biter or a no-go.

I was going to take the risk. We could finish the rest later.

I repeatedly nudged Tristan along, not watching my feet. Doing so, I stubbed my toe right into a semi-truck toy. Like a tank in the game, I was going to be covered with bruises. With a grimace, I walked carefully around the last of the toys into the gaming room. Mentally, I added highway cleanup to the to-do list for later.

In the blue LED strip lighting of the gaming room, Elaine was helping Tristan climb in and strap up to the child-size capsule.

I touched the fourth dusty gaming capsule. Papers from Elaine’s school sat on top of it, along with a few cooking recipes and Tristan’s artwork. One day, it would be all four of us. For now, we had to keep all three of us together.

Everyone had to be on this ship before it left, or everyone had to get off it in time.

We could not split up.

“Everyone ready to log in?” I asked.

Tristan did not reply, already going through the menus based on the dim blue light in his capsule. Thank goodness he could finally read. It was the last requirement for all of us to play a game like this.

“No, obviously.” Elaine said to me as she shut her capsule and started logging in. The power lit up on the side, stating she completed the hook-up.

The digital clock in this room showed that it was five minutes to the top of the hour. Eight minutes until the ship left. In the dim light, a spider web glistened from the burned-out lamp connecting to Beth’s capsule.

With the kids in, I focused on myself. As I sat down in the machine, feeling my muscles relax, I was ready to game after a long week. I rubbed my curly graying brown hair, adjusting my shoulders to fit in the “standard adult size” capsule. It was a little too small.

Everything was being thrown at our family, the Davidis, this week. From sickness, to detention, to leaking pipes, to now a toy truck, everything but rest and downtime hit us.

We had to get online now to save Tristan in the game, or lose him - and his - levels in Seconds-Over. If that happened, that would probably be the end of this game, and all games with Elaine. Gaming didn’t seem to hold her interest, she only played because Triangle asked her. If he left us, why would she stay? I had to find a way to keep us together and get her excited about the game.

The terminal finished connecting, and I passed through the first gate to see a message pop-up.

[System update required]

“You’ve got to be flipping kidding me,” I moaned.