Archimedes

“Arc! We’re coming! Just stay alive!” Lucy yelled as the group of them ran through the opening lobby of the World of Soda museum.

“Wait! Don’t go farther!” Archimedes yelled back to the group below as he examined the subtle changes to the architecture that were only visible from above, changes that showed him how the museum had been trapped.

But it was too late. Chedderfield took a step and the floor beneath his foot opened up to reveal a blender of spinning blades. Chedderfield lost his balance for a second and leaned forward before he turned his head to the right and activated Meat Slam, shooting his body backward to crash into Lucy. The two tumbled backward until their bodies came to a stop at the glass entry doors. Lucy pushed Chedderfield off, and the man rolled to his feet and then groaned. His left foot was shredded, most of the shoe he’d been wearing was torn away and the sole of his foot was a bloody mess. His hand motioned in the air for a moment before his body flashed yellow from a healing skill, likely I’m Not Dead Yet.

“Need monster meat,” Chedderfield said as the skill slowed the bleeding but came short of fully restoring his foot.

“Monster . . . Oh, he convinced you to slot Undead Delight too, didn’t he?” Lucy asked. “He wouldn’t shut up about it last night until I equipped and upgraded it too.”

“I got you covered,” Danielle said as she reached into the small backpack she carried, pulled out what looked like sushi, and handed it to Chedderfield. “I brought it for lunch, but it hopefully still counts since it was made from the aggressive fish at the aquarium.”

He popped the proffered food into his mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed. His face lit up, and he gave a thumbs up and asked for more.

“Damnit!” Nguyen shouted from next to Archimedes. “There was a trap outside. Did they think there wouldn’t be any inside?”

Archimedes couldn’t argue with their scout. It may have been harder to spot from the ground floor, but from his vantage point above in the glass hamster tube, the white floor beneath them showed slight angular changes in wavy marble patterns that indicated trapped squares in the old video games he used to play. There were even button-shaped mechanisms hidden behind signs, next to the stair banisters, and in the pillars that supported the second floor of the building.

Chedderfield’s foot stopped bleeding, and he slipped off his other shoe, leaving him barefooted just like Archimedes, though Archimedes’ preference to go shoeless had developed after a month on an alien world. Chedderfield got to his feet, hugged Danielle, and looked up at Nguyen with an apologetic shrug.

“There’s a trap two feet in front of Emma,” Nguyen shouted, a little frustration evident in her tone as she pointed down toward the teenager and where she was going to step.

Archimedes hadn’t seen the trap plate until Nguyen mentioned it, but he could see the shift in the floor when he looked carefully. “Can you see any other traps, Nguyen?”

She put away her gun and pulled out a monocle and equipped it to her right eye. “For now, my Sight Beyond Sight skill lets me see system tags like monster names, some character sheet stuff, and apparently traps if they’re system made. For one minute every five, it’ll highlight anything and everything with system energy.” She tapped the red crystal monocle over her right eye. “After that, this little guy shows me thermal variations on the floor. I just hate that I don’t have the extra equipment slots to keep it on all the time. It would have saved us a lot of trouble earlier. Those traps are radiating heat. I think they’re all hooked up to electricity or something.”

“Are you two done figuring out how fucked we are down here?” Emma asked from below. “Or do the adults need another minute?”

“It’s fine, kid,” Nguyen said with an annoyed tone in her voice.

Archimedes could tell by her scrunched-up eyebrows and pressed lips that she didn’t appreciate the attitude from a kid, but she kept her cool and started to describe the path the four people below should take to avoid the traps she could see from her vantage point.

While Nguyen helped those below, Archimedes turned his attention to their own situation. The two of them had a perfect view of the entire floor beneath them, but the way the plastic blocked and obscured the light, they couldn’t see far down the clear tubing. He could see that it continued on past where they were but couldn’t budge the spiked wall blocking their progress. Pushing and pulling on the wall didn’t budge it, and while he thought about physically destroying it, he was sure there was another solution.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“So that’s how we can help them go forward without dying, but, uhhh . . . how do we get past that?” Archimedes asked, keeping his voice loud enough for the group below them to hear as he pointed at the giant wall of spikes.

“We could always just try pressing buttons until one of them works—like this giant red button,” Lucy said before reaching for a four-inch-wide button on the wall.

Chedderfield shouted, “Wait!” but it was too late. She’d pressed it. There was a moment of silence as everyone expected some terrible doom to befall them, but instead there was a click, and the spiked wall that had prevented Archimedes and Nguyen from continuing their journey through the clear tubes swung back into a recess and allowed them to pass.

“So . . . buttons activate traps but also unlock the doors,” Danielle observed with a heavy sigh. “How pleasant. The two upstairs need to help us through the downstairs traps so we can make it through alive, but those of us downstairs need to survive through the button traps so they can make it out, period. How freaking wonderful. A co-op communications game built into a crappy sugar water museum.”

“You okay there?” Lucy asked as she put a hand on Danielle’s back. “I got you if you need to vent or something, but we’re going to be fine, you know?”

“I don’t feel super confident hearing that from the girl who literally just a second ago pressed a random red button in a room full of traps because it was there.” Danielle’s exasperation was tangible even from where Archimedes was. He didn’t even have to see her face to envision the displeased expression she was making.

“I know. You’re super impressed with my problem-solving skills and good luck,” Lucy replied, shrugging off the valid criticism. “They need a way forward; we figured one out. Now all we need to do is figure out which red button sends us to the Taste of the World room on the second floor to get them down so we can all be on the same level, literally, and get some fresh cola, maybe the flavor from India, or Morocco, or something.”

“Do you— Do you really not . . .” Danielle looked like she was about to say a few choice words when Chedderfield came up behind her, reached out, and took her hand. The touch seemed to calm her, but she still kneaded the bridge of her nose like she was trying to rub away all the stress Lucy was causing her.

“We were lucky indeed,” Chedderfield said, playing peacemaker, “but if you follow the tubes and where they go, there’s a set that seems to go downward if you follow them toward the Factory of Tomorrow. We should follow those, and then it’ll be easy to break into them and get Arc and Nguyen out. Plus I think the factory would be a reasonable place to find a ladder and some tools to work with.”

“Exactly. Which is why we shouldn’t be going there at all,” Danielle replied. “Or at least only as a last result.”

“What?” Chedderfield asked, a confused expression on his face.

“Where do you think that raccoon’s techno gun came from?” Nguyen asked. Chedderfield looked up at her and Nguyen continued, “It had to be made somewhere, and a fully automated factory is the perfect place to make it. They sure as heck didn’t make it in the movie theater or the hallway filled with history facts.”

Archimedes shrugged. “So? If there are raccoons there, we can just subjugate them.” “What are they going to do to stop us? Chedderfield could probably trash them—”

Nguyen shook her head. “Nope. No, no, no—”

“Ha! Trash! Racoon joke,” Lucy snorted.

Ignoring Lucy, Nguyen promptly continued, saying, “You almost died because of just one of their traps, and you think you can walk into a room likely filled with dozens, fight them at the same time, and still come out unscathed? Because what? Because you’re big and strong, and even a dimension-collapsing portal bomb couldn’t kill you? How many times are you going to nearly die before you stop acting like you’re invincible?”

“Dozens? We saw two,” Chedderfield argued in Archimedes’ defense.

“Where you see two raccoons, there are a dozen you don’t see. Anyone with an unattended garbage bin can tell you that,” Nguyen stated with authority. “They were annoying enough before all this apocalypse stuff. We don’t want to face that many if they’re armed with frickin’ lasers.”

“I agree with Nguyen. We go upstairs,” Danielle declared with a nod. “Plus, the theater is upstairs, and they have to have a projection room near the ceiling. That’d be perfect for getting close to these tubes.”

“You know you two aren’t the only votes, right? Who cares if there are monsters if it means potentially getting those two free faster,” Lucy replied as she pointed toward the workshop. “And I’d also like to kill the bastards that are trying to kill us sooner rather than later.”

The four below argued for another minute before Danielle smugly grinned and gave a bouncy little jump that showed she’d won the others over. She looked up at Nguyen and said, “Show us the way past the traps to the theater.”

Nguyen and Archimedes tried to point out or describe every trap they could see, and the group below leapt over trip lines, walked around pressure plates, and avoided drop-away floors. Yet, even with the two of them guiding the quartet, they still set off two traps. One was a buzz saw set into the floor that would have cut Danielle at the ankle, but Chedderfield dropped the thick bone Macuatlt in the saw's path. The trap broke off a few of the weapon’s teeth, but the macuahuitl otherwise remained undamaged. The second trap they set off was intentional, a long pressure plate that was unavoidable to anyone not confident enough to clear a five-foot-long jump. So Chedderfield used his whip to activate the plate, which shot a dozen sharp darts where they would have been standing had the group not been forewarned. Testing the plate again, he confirmed that it was a one-time trap, and the group moved past it.

Finally, they reached the top of the stairs and walked through the double doors that led to the Theater of Pop.

“They’ve made their way there. Now we just have to make our way through these tubes to join them,” Archimedes commented as he crawled past the recessed spike wall and saw the maze of smaller clear tubes ahead and on either side of them.