Adventures of imagination were ready to begin. 

Johnny sped his bicycle to the new arcade in town, set on a quest to explore its labyrinth of rooms and the countless wonders hidden within. 

With a crisp five dollar bill from his weekly allowance in his jeans pocket, he vowed with a paladin's fervor to find every new game since his last visit, and to beat some high scores in the process. Or at least he’d continue until his tokens ran out, or it got close to dinner time. 

He was zooming down a residential street on a pleasant afternoon, with the sun glinting off mailboxes and chrome bumpers of cars parked along the curb, and the wind carrying the smell of pine trees as it whooshed by his face and fluttered his t-shirt.

He swerved casually around a cluster of slow-moving traffic, then zigzagged past heaps of soggy telephone books, hopped up onto the sidewalk for a stretch, and then back onto the pavement when a gaggle of pedestrians blocked his way.

All he needed was a limitless supply of newspaper bundles to fling at targets along the way like a devious paperboy, he thought, and smiled impishly as he tallied up the points from all the mayhem he’d cause. 

He reached the next block, and with his legs really aching now from the crazy pace, he shifted his ten-speed to an easier gear and settled in for a leisurely ride.

Over halfway there already.

He glanced at his wrist out of habit, and remembered again for the millionth time today that he’d slept through his alarm this morning and had forgotten his watch in the mad scramble to get to school in time. 

He had jolted awake and hopped out of bed in a frenzied panic, thrown on the nearest light gray t-shirt strewn across his chair and jumped into his usual jeans (luckily, he’d put his money in the back pocket the night before), and then flown out the door – leaving his wristwatch and lunchbox behind, and his breakfast cereal untouched.

No backpack either: it was still sitting in his bedroom where he’d ditched it to carry less weight.

As it turned out, he hadn’t needed most of his books anyway. After his morning PE and woodshop class, there had been an all-school assembly that burned a few hours, so for once his laziness had panned out.

But then, having to sit through the last couple of classes, with the minutes seeming to drag on and on and on for days … until finally, the last bell had sounded not ten minutes ago, and he'd dashed out of the classroom, booked it across his middle school courtyard, and hopped on his bike to start on his way. 

Usually, his arcade buddies would be right here with him, whooping and shouting and racing alongside, but one had been out with the flu this week, and the other hadn’t been at school at all today. Probably playing hooky, that dingus. 

Oh well, sometimes you just had to go on the quest alone.

The only thing he really missed was his Walkman, still inside his backpack. It would’ve been nice to have some music to listen to on the way, but soon enough the quiet sounds of the neighborhood lulled him into a daydream.

He imagined himself on the back of a sleek, silver-scaled dragon, aloft in the sky with the sunlight shimmering off the scales and his own suit of armor, gleaming.

And off in the distance, thunderclouds were gathering above the arcade, as monstrous shadows crawled across the city skyline – and he, Johnny the Dragon Knight of Legend, soared forth to claim his destiny ...

The street ahead began to incline and he leaned into his pedals to climb the hill, his legs and lungs straining with the effort. Then, up and over the other side, he let go of his brakes entirely and let gravity do its work.

The exhilarating speed kicked his visions into overdrive. He visualized himself now swooping down from the skies like a bolt of lightning toward a snarling, foul-fanged shadow …

Ouch. He felt a sharp pinch in his nasal passages – he was getting one of his sudden nosebleeds.

A split-second after that, something tingled in the back of his head – an onset of the weird but familiar feeling that he realized was one of his otherworldly mental spells. A thrilling wave of cold sensation washed over his brain, and his perceptions started to shift in that almost-cozy, out-of-phase way –

Craptastic timing, he thought, and clamped hard on his brakes. His bike shuddered as he brought its speed under control – luckily, there was no traffic to deal with.

He rolled on downhill, as he fought to keep his mind clear and his bike steady. 

And then as he leveled off at the bottom of the hill at a manageable speed, the sensation evaporated as abruptly as it had arrived.

With one hand on the handlebar, he brought the other up and wiped at his nostrils. Only a runny nose. Maybe it was just allergies from some dust or pollen in the air; probably made worse from the effort of going up the hill and the speed coming down.

Shaking his head but feeling relieved, he pedaled on at a cautious pace and tried to get his mind back on track. Hopefully, the next time he felt one of these unpredictable spells, it would be a better occasion. 

Several blocks later, he reached the end of the neighborhood and took a right turn onto the main street. From here it was just a straight shot to the arcade. 

Anticipation of reaching his goal soon took over his thoughts and now he forgot about the incident. He picked up his pace to get there already, and his mind began to wander to what he knew about the place. 

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Arcadia Funtastic Gameplex: the new and mysterious game center that had seemingly popped up overnight and out of nowhere, in the outskirts of town where the old industrial buildings still stood. 

No one had ever seen or even mentioned it just a few weeks ago, and suddenly now it was the hotspot for all the kids after school – even kids from the neighboring suburbs. 

It was a huge building with multiple levels but seemed even bigger somehow when you got inside, like a shipyard warehouse or what a NASA hangar might feel like. 

And all throughout its dozens of smaller game rooms, the gameplex had the most far out, most tubular, most massive trove of arcade games ever. Hundreds of games, maybe thousands.

Games from all over the world: never-before-seen and off-the-wall games in all sorts of weird languages, and some with jaw-dropping graphics.

Strangest of all, every time you went, there was always a brand new section or a layout totally different than before …

Scenes of expert gameplay danced through his mind, and for several minutes he spaced out again and didn’t notice when he passed the record store that marked the start of the street. 

But the next minute, through a break in traffic, he saw the marquee sign “ARCADIA” pulsing with neon letters up ahead. Finally!

He coasted into the front parking lot, hop-skipped to a stop, and with fingers trembling with excitement, clumsily locked up his bike next to a payphone.

He dashed toward the entrance and pulled open the tinted glass door, and with a whoosh of warm air, the full atmosphere of the arcade – the outlines of the machines and glowing bright screens in the cozy dimness, the computerized music and sound effects, the smell of baking pizza – everything immediately rushed out to embrace him. Stepping inside, with the door whipping shut behind him, he felt himself sealed within as near to paradise in the real world as he had yet experienced. 

Kids were milling about everywhere in a bustle of noise and activity, laughing and shouting over the beeps and ringing notes and background music, in a Thunderdome-level of pandemonium.

Grinning from ear to ear, he darted around the crowds toward the coin change machines and got his twenty five tokens (the extra ones for exchanging a five dollar bill), and scooped the heap of shiny golden coins into his jeans pocket like so much treasure.

He started by making a tour around the front of the arcade where all the most popular games were, and the row of movie-based games like TRON and Krull and Star Wars – every one of them with a line of people waiting.

Within a few minutes, he had scoped out the other areas and his favorite games which were all currently occupied. Typical for this time of day, the arcade was starting to fill up quickly with kids arriving after school, just as he had. In a half hour it would get way busier. 

Eventually, after another walkaround, he found an open game during a brief lull and he rushed over to claim it. For several minutes, he blissfully zapped away at wave after relentless wave of alien insectoid spaceships.

He found some more available games and got started on his usual routine of jumping around enemies, shooting blasters, and hurling newspapers at windows across the street; even managing to get an early high score.

For the next hour – or so it seemed as there were no clocks to tell the time – Johnny stayed in the arcade section, and ambled along casually, looking from game to game, with the jingle of tokens in his hand, happily watching the other kids playing and appreciating their skills. 

Whenever a spot opened up at a game he liked, he stepped in with a token or two and played for a while.

In the course of that time, Johnny got his fill of racing laps around a track, jumping across and over various platforms, running away from fast food monsters, zapping asteroids, roving over the moon’s surface, casting fireballs while navigating through a maze, driving a vector tank, and hurling discs of light that ricocheted off the walls – and scoring high enough to enter his initials several more times.

And then, to ration his tokens for the higher floors, he took a break from playing and walked around the rest of the first level.

Much of this floor was actually dedicated to the funplex activities, and divided into several main areas. The section near the entrance where he’d started was just one small part of it, stocked with the most popular arcade games at the moment. Farther along the right wall as you entered were the older classic games like Pong, and a huge assortment of pinball machines that together sounded like a casino. And farther beyond this busy, sound-filled area was the rest of the huge room and its other activities, with everything shrouded in the same dusk-like atmosphere.

He walked toward the farthest wall, past the pinball machines and dart boards and mini basketball hoops, to the very back area with the batting cages, then he circled around to the left wall and the ticket-dispensing machines and games that you’d find at the carnival or amusement park.

He paused to gawk at some bodacious high school girls sporting side ponytails and shoulder-baring sweatshirts who were crowded around a claw crane machine full of prizes, and nearby, another group of girls giggling uncontrollably as they played the whack-a-mole machine.

Then he found himself circled back at the front entrance again, but on the other side next to the food court. He heard and saw the animatronics band, gyrating and moving mechanically at the stage inside, playing some weird music probably from a video game.

He hadn’t intended on spending any of his precious tokens on food today, but the delectable smell of sizzling hot pizza and other food wafting across the floor sent his stomach grumbling, reminding him painfully that he hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch today.

Reluctantly, he walked into the checkered-tile food court and went to the selection area at the far wall.

Like everything else about this place, the food court was also unique. Everything was automated: there was no counter to take your order, no cash register, not even a kitchen. 

Along the walls were vending machines for all sorts of soda and juice and other beverages, and a wide assortment of snacks like sandwiches and donuts and bowls of ice cream.

And most notably, at the back wall, were the special food-making machines with glass enclosures where you could get amazingly fresh, piping-hot pizza slices and other cuisine that a robot arm would prepare and send down the chute for you.

All that without a trace of any cooks or restaurant staff. In fact, as he thought about it, he realized that he’d never seen any workers in the entire arcade, ever. Not only that, he didn’t recall ever seeing any adult customers in here, either. Only the crowds of kids who came here to play video games. 

He shrugged. Just another weird thing to add to this mysterious place. Maybe the animatronic band did double duty as cooking and cleaning robots, he joked to himself.  

He stopped to check out the menu in front of each food-making machine. Burgers at this window. Pizza and pasta next to it. And over there, even a machine for Chinese food. 

He remembered having some deliciously spicy Szechuan Beef here last week. Or was that at Jade Palace? He shrugged. He couldn't remember. He'd been at both places the past month. 

Today, though, he wanted something more substantial. He selected a slice of thick crust pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, and the robotic arm got to its efficient work. 

He snagged an empty table and wolfed down his first meal of the day as he listened to the band playing. 

Next to him was the wall with his favorite mural: a fantastical scene of a brick path receding into a distant castle on a stormy night. He daydreamed for a while imagining what it’d be like to step through into that painting.

Then, his snack break over, and his stomach full and fueled up with pizza, he took the nearby stairwell up to the higher levels to start the real exploration.