"We could do Immersive. Maybe it'll like a scavenger hunt?" Judy offered after the group had discussed the options (while Peter had more or less checked out, laying his head back and closing his eyes as he fought the urge to just go play some more Madden).
"Oooh, yeah! Like, it'll probably give us prompts as players to find items and then we type in the objects we find and it'll respond like a MUD! Oh I bet there's a procedural algorithm in there!" Lindsey said excitedly as her green eyes glittered with energy, only yo be met with a confused stare from the surprisingly sheltered goth girl.
"...What's a 'MUD'?" Judy asked slowly, suddenly unsure about suggesting immersive and feeling a bit embarassed about the technical terms that the surprisingly bright blonde was tossing out. The first thing that came to mind was going out and diving in a mud pit, and Judy definitely was NOT going to do that.
"Like what!? How can you have, like, not known about MUDs! They're SO fun!" Lindsey gasped in shock. Already the geeky, code-crusader portion of her brain was kicking into high gear, having already been stoked into activity by the retro-styled machine on the table between the four friends. But right as she was about to launch into a detailed explanation of MUDs, there was a cough from Eugene.
"It's just an old text-based computer game, Judy. It plays a lot like Dungeons and dragons but you can just type the stuff in and the game will respond on it's own"
"Oh"
Lindsey pouted as the wind was taken out of her proverbial sails. Usually she didn't mind playing the 'fool' as it helped her stay on the low end of everyone's attention, which was pretty advantageous for sneaking into places under the radar, but something about the way Eugene had just said that, she felt EXTREMELY offended and talked down at. And just when Lindsey had been getting closer to letting down her guard and letting the little fatso loser into her 'inner circle' of friends!
"Can we just play, please?" Peter groaned from the couch.
"Yeah, all this talking is, like, SO boring!" Lindsey said as she nestled back into her bean-bag, a dark look on her face, "Kinda feel like just watching a movie now. Oh, maybe we can WATCH a mystery? Maybe then you won't have to explain things for me"
Seeing the situation begin to deteriorate, Eugene quickly leaned over and typed in MYSTERY on the console's tiny and fragile looking keyboard, pressing enter and earning a shriek from Judy, who had been leaning in to inspect the machine just as two large black buttons labelled 'TRADITIONAL' and 'IMMERSIVE' popped out of the top of the machine like two pieces of toast from a toaster.
"Holy shit! Was it supposed to do that!?" Judy gasped as she flopped backwards onto the couch as Peter's head snapped upwards as he searched for the source of the disturbance.
"I...think so? I think a lot of this is analog..." Eugene muttered as he leaned in to inspect the buttons. They were large ovals, about as large as his thumbnail and made up of thick looking plastic. On the tops there were the words 'Traditional' and 'Immersive' in chipped and faded white stenciling along the top. "I guess this is how we choose?"
"Like, guess so Eugene. You seem like a pretty smart bean" Lindsey yawned with (well done) feigned disinterest as she pulled out her phone as Eugene's face fell.
"Yes, let's pick this one, Gene" Judy said, shooting Lindsey a dark look. Lindsey was pretty chill but sometimes she could get pretty pissy and petty. The goth leaned forward and pressed the 'Immersive' button, the hard plastic sinking back into the machine and locking into place as the machine began to buzz loudly like the old fax machine that had been in her dad's home office when she was little. A burning smell filled the room and Lindsey did her best to ignore anything that was happening while the others wrinkled their faces.
"Is...Is it on fire? Smells like melting plastic!" Peter grimaced as he waved a hand in front of his face while Judy just covered her face entirely.
"I don't know!" Eugene said, his eyes stinging as he moved around the device, searching for some spark of flame or trail of smoke. He really, really hoped he hand't been duped out of fifteen bucks...
But after a few moments the noise and the smell faded away, and with a mechanical clack and a DING! a small tray slid out from the side of the machine.
"SELECT AVATAR" The game blared noisily, causing Judy's hands to spring from her face to her ears.
"Why is this thing so LOUD!?" She moaned.
"Don't know. Probably because it's old or something" Lindsey said, continuing to look as disinterested as possible as she scrolled through her phone, looking at...nothing, really, as she nursed her bruised ego. As Peter, Eugene and Judy leaned in though, she flicked her green eyes upwards and caught a look of the small tray filled with bright figurines. She couldn't help but feel her curiosity begin to poke through her bad mood and she gave a dramatic sigh as she pulled herself up from the bean bag and joined her friends in inspecting the small pile of plastic.
'Must a be 3D printer...Though I've never seen one this old be this...small' The mercurial young adult thought to herself as she inspected the pile of plastic. Either this machine was not as old as it looked or whoever had made this was REALLY ahead of the curve. And the details! Lindsey's eyes wandered across the somewhat messily deposited pile of plastic as her eyes were drawn to the four figurines that were set apart by all the rest, widening at how each little character had more details than modern 3D printers were capable of doing, especially so FAST.
'Yeah, I really want to take this thing apart now' The rainblonde whispered to no one but her own mind as her eyes settled on the four figurines that were raised above the rest on tiny black spars.
A blue, classic Sherlock Holmes styled inspector, long jacket, deerstalker and crooked tobacco pipe all modeled with remarkable detail, a red figure with slicked back hair, a cape and a knife held in one hand, a yellow, skeletal figure with sharp facial features and a twin-tailed coat, and the final figurine was a green figure in what was clearly some sort of evening gown and a exquisite looking brooch above a dangerously low neckline. On the back of each character was a bright number, Blue was 1, Red was 2, Yellow was 3 and Green was 4, clearly indicating their starting position in the game. The strange thing was that there didn't seem to be any defining characteristics beyond their overall silhouettes and the defining objects.
In the pile though, Lindsey spotted a mixture of other characters, such as a gumshoe detective, a racy looking femme fatale, a fat figure with a cigar, and a short, stout looking figure with a stylish hat and a tommy gun. There were many, many others though, but in her mind she'd already come to the conclusion that whatever the pre-loaded games were, the four offered figurines were clearly meant to be played first.
"So I guess we pick one of these? Did the box say we pick a character and type in the number and press start" Peter said, reach across the table and grabbing the box, pulling it upwards and reading over the faded, scratched text, "Yeah, we just pick and play"
"Sounds simple enough. Eugene, it's your game so you choose first, okay?" Judy said with a smile.
"Well he's clearly the smartest one in the room. Just pick Sherlock Eugene" Lindsey said snidely as she leaned back in her bean bag and stared, non-plussed, at the annoyed looks on Judy and Peter's faces and ignored the hurt look on Eugene's.
"I don't see anything on here saying all FOUR players need to participate, Lindsey" The athlete hissed, crossing his muscled arms. The sorority girl just shrugged and placed her phone back in front of her face.
After a moment of tension, Judy coughed.
"Well, uh, if we're playing, let's...pick our guys?"
"Y-yeah! Yeah let's, uh, g-get started!" Eugene stammered as he eyed his muscled friend as the jock loomed over the unimpressed blonde.
"Whatever" Lindsey said, tossing her phone down on the inflated bag of beans as she reached up and swiped a piece from the tray at random. The goth, geek and jock shared a look of concern, anger and dismay as they reached up and grabbed their own pieces before Eugene quietly typed in the information into the game's tiny keyboard.
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