“OK, Walter,” Walter said to himself, “this is good. You got yourself back to the dentist’s office.” He looked around the game’s lobby. “Now…” He looked around once more and nodded. “What exactly am I doing now? And how is it that I will be getting help?” He scratched the back of his head and was disappointed to find lingering clumps of dried mud.
Well, he thought. Whatever I’m going to do, I should do it quick, because I think this part of the game isn’t as fast as the other part. He remembered when Reeve first explained game time and real time to him. He was still stunned by how quickly time passed in the game. In just the time he’d been standing in the dentist’s office thinking, minutes—no probably hours—would have passed for Reeve. Could it even have been years? Would his little girl grow up without him there? No, that was all game time, he realized. Their bodies were at home, and almost no time would have passed there. “Too much to even think about, Walter,” he said. “Better get moving.”
Walter looked around the walls, platforms, and pedestals of the lobby, which were crowded with information, controls, equipment, and many, many things he could not identify. But one thing he certainly did identify.
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“Faaaaaaaaantastic!” Walter said. He examined the particular control that he’d spotted. “Now,” he said, “would I change this by—oh!”
He looked down at this chest. He giggled.
“That’s the ticket,” he said, his smile on the verge of reaching from one ear to the other. He adjusted the control again and then again looked down at his chest. “Well, I do like that.”
When he finally settled on the suspender color that he thought the best among the seemingly infinite selections offered by the control wheel he’d become quite adept at adjusting, Walter looked up.
“Recall party!” He shouted, seeing the gently glowing text floating below representations of his and Reeve’s characters. His attention drifted up to the characters. “Am I really that short compared to her?” He said. He chuckled. “Good thing my confidence doesn’t come from my physical appearance. And look at those beauties!” He fingered his Pure Green suspenders as he gazed lovingly at the identical set of suspenders that peaked from inside the open duster being worn by the version of his character that floated before him.
His eyes drifted down again. “Oh! Right. Recall party.”
As he tried to decide whether this was the kind of button he needed to actually press or just mentally think about pressing, something to his right caught his attention, and he turned.
“Now, what does that mean?” He said.