Disclaimer: The characters are owned by Roger Price and Thames/Pearson TV/Freemantle Media or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Big Finish and Revelation currently license the rights. All hail Revelation! :) The game is apparently owned by Namco these days. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's notes: Felt like reading some TP fluff. Couldn't think of any. Wrote some.
This takes place after Section 46, circa early 1981. Thanks to my gaggle of beta readers: Mike, Megan, and Wendy for looking at this story at various stages of development. Also thanks to Jackie for help with plotting the course of Andrew's schooling.
Weird conventions:
[telepathy (as usual:)]
'thought'
//telepathic impressions//
Hsui Tai was not easily irritated. At least she tried not to be, but Andrew was running more than half an hour late. Matsu Tan would tell her to let the irritation roll off her back like a duck; she was a goddess, and nothing could touch her. Except, of course, she wasn't a goddess. She, like Andrew, was a Tomorrow Person. Andrew was her friend, though it seemed since he started year 11 at Canthro-Pressman School in London that Andrew was avoiding her.
When she had pointed this out the other day, Andrew had cited her ever-evolving relationship with Mike as a contributing factor. She'd suggested meeting for ice cream and Andrew had picked the day and time. And now he was late.
And it wasn't like he couldn't let her know why he was running late.
[Andrew?]
//stale cigarette smoke and flashing lights//
[Andrew? I know you can hear me, where are you?] Hsui Tai telepathed.
//tinny music... spicy pizza... blue dots...//
The smell of food was making her hungry. The impressions she was picking up left no doubt that Andrew was safe and well... he was either ignoring her or concentrating too intently to "hear" her.
Hsui Tai bit her lip. Should she go looking for Andrew or let it slide?
[Hsui Tai, are you all right?] Mike 'pathed.
Hsui Tai sighed. Mike could be pretty protective when he wanted to be. [Andrew's late. I know he's OK, but I cannot decide if I should go looking for him or give up and go back to the lab.]
Hsui Tai could practically *see* Mike rolling his eyes at her in frustration. [Go talk to him. Knowing him, he probably just forgot, but it's not exactly polite of him to have you waiting for half an hour if he's going to be goofing off with those friends of his.]
Hsui Tai sighed. She knew Mike was probably right. [TIM, can you jaunt me to somewhere near to Andrew please?]
[Certainly, Hsui Tai.]
* * *
Following TIM's directions, Hsui Tai walked into a pizza parlor. The tables were fairly empty; there were many people clustered around a row of oblong boxes roughly the size of a phone booth, but instead of containing doors, they each had an indentation containing a large television screen with various controls in front of it. Two men in stood in front of one of the screens. A sign above it read "Space Invaders". They wore black leather jackets each with matching skull designs and metal studs on it.
"Blast them out of the sky." The man who wasn't playing egged on his cohort.
Hsui Tai glanced at the screen-- the display showed white lines heading towards an ever sinking line of cute animal-like creatures that she supposed represented aliens. Each line decreased in number as lines that probably represented laser shots intersected with the creatures. 'What did they ever do to you?' Hsui Tai wondered to herself.
More men in matching leather jackets sat eating pizza directly behind them. Tendrils of cigarette smoke wafted from the ashtray in the middle of the table. The white smoke reflected the flashing lights, making Hsui Tai feel more as though she were sneaking into an alien space ship to foil some evil plot, than in a restaurant on Earth looking for one of her friends.
Speaking of which... she looked carefully down the row of booths. There were several boys around Andrew's age in small groups huddled around several of the booths. And there, at the other end, was Andrew. He was standing at a booth labeled "Pac Man", surrounded by a group of boys all wearing Canthro-Pressman uniforms. Hsui Tai walked down the row, carefully avoiding the men in leather jackets. She noticed that her white shirt had started to glow purple. Apparently, it wasn't that this end of the restaurant wasn't lit; the area was lit with a black light like Mike and the Fresh Hearts sometimes used in their club gigs.
Hsui Tai noted with interest the displays on each screen as she passed. One showed a giant ape dropping a barrel onto a little cartoon man wearing a mustasche. She jumped about three feet when the boy at the controls-- who was not much older than Andrew-- uttered a word he was most definitely too young to be using.
Hsui Tai frowned. That kind of language from one so young could not be a good sign.
Hsui Tai approached Andrew's group of friends quietly. She wanted to see what Andrew was up to. This whole place seemed eerie and... not safe. Hsui Tai suspected it wasn't a good thing that Andrew was here, and that he most certainly shouldn't have been up to... whatever it was he was up to.
The simulation seemed pretty straightforward. Andrew was piloting... no, controlling a little yellow blob with a mouth like a greater-than sign that was moving around the screen eating little blue dots. Perhaps he was training it for a sport or to run mazes for psychology experiments or something... At any rate, the feeding of this... creature was complicated by the fact that it was being chased by multicolored blobs that resembled the drawings of ghosts that Elizabeth had brought home to grade from one of her youngest classes. Andrew was having the "creature" duck through tunnels that led to the other side of the screen in order to dodge these "ghosts".
Hsui Tai shrugged. While the other simulations seemed somewhat mean-spirited, this one, by comparison, seemed nearly cute. Maybe Andrew wasn't in immediate peril and she should wait until he was done with the game to interrupt. Then Andrew's yellow creature ate a larger white dot in the corner of the screen, and suddenly all the ghosts turned blue. The creature reversed quickly and then devoured the two ghosts that had been almost on top of it.
Hsui Tai jumped. Had Andrew just killed something? This couldn't wait.
"Andrew, what are you doing here?" Hsui Tai inquired.
Andrew and his friends all started in shock.
Andrew glanced over his shoulder. "I could ask you the same question..."
Beep beep beep, whirr! The yellow character melted down into a lump as it was attacked by a red "ghost".
"Great, you just made me lose!" Andrew snapped.
Hsui Tai was even more upset. "Bad enough you were helping it kill ghosts, now you caused the death of that poor yellow creature!"
Andrew looked at Hsui Tai incredulously for a moment while Andrew's friends snickered.
"Excuse me," Andrew said, dragging Hsui Tai away from the row of booths by the arm. "What are you doing here? Other than trying to ruin my social life, I mean?" Andrew was positively fuming-- though he had the sense to lower his voice before asking: "And why didn't you just telepath to me?"
This was too much. Hsui Tai took a deep breath in order to prevent herself from echoing Andrew's tone. "I am not trying to ruin anything, Andrew. We had agreed to meet after school for ice cream..." ...she checked her watch "... forty-five minutes ago. But you did not come. I tried to telepath to you, and you did not reply; neither of these things is like you, so I came to see what was wrong, and I found you killing ghosts..." Hsui Tai cut off abruptly when she saw Andrew's exasperated look. "What?!"
"Killing ghosts? Um, Hsui Tai, first of all, it's just a computer game-- everything's just pixels, it's not real."
"But those men on the other end..."
"...have very little brains and no grip on reality. Besides, Hsui Tai, ghosts, by definition are already dead. It's nothing to get worked up over."
"Andrew, everyone here is acting very strangely. You're acting very strangely..."
"For me living in Scotland, maybe, but not for me going to school in London now that John's my legal guardian," Andrew grumbled.
"You're acting more aggressively. Did you really have to go after those ghosts?"
Andrew frowned. Hsui Tai was really hung up on this ghost thing. "Look, Hsui Tai, it's not even personal, you just get more points that way. Besides, with names like Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde they deserve to get eaten."
"Andrew, listen to yourself! I'd be very surprised that those are just games, everyone's so absorbed by them. It's worse than that, they could have sublim..."
"They're just games, Hsui Tai."
"Yes, and next you will be telling me that bubbleskin jumpsuits were just clothing and everyone wearing Nazi gear before you broke out was just a fashion and..."
Andrew glared at her. "Not every fad is an alien plot."
"Name two that weren't."
"Blue jeans and disco," Andrew replied.
"According to Mike, you are being hasty about disco," Hsui Tai snapped back at once, grabbing his arm. "We're going back to the lab!"
Andrew yanked away from her, suddenly calm. "You go on, I'm not leaving. I'll see you at dinner after you've calmed down."
Hsui Tai turned on her heel and stalked out of the pizza parlor, straight into the alley she'd arrived in and jaunted back to the lab.
* * *
Dinner turned out to be an awkward affair. Hsui Tai refused to look at Andrew, who had decided to pretty much ignore her. Mike, Liz, and John tried to carry on the conversation, but after awhile, the tension in the room became too much.
"That's it, what is with you two?" John sighed.
Hsui Tai surprised everyone by speaking first. "I am concerned that Andrew is being affected by an alien influence. He is playing these strange 'games'..."
"It's just Pac Man!" Andrew scrunched his face in frustration, "Look, Hsui Tai, I'm sorry I forgot we were meeting for ice cream, but don't you think you'd better drop this before Mike thinks he has something to worry about?"
"This was Mike's idea in the first place," Hsui Tai replied.
Andrew turned to glare at Mike.
"I'm staying out of this," Mike replied.
"Thanks. You should've taken that attitude this afternoon," Andrew snapped.
Andrew looked at John and Liz-- looking for help. They exchanged glances, but didn't act immediately.
"It's just as well he didn't, Andrew. Then we wouldn't know you were being influenced by..." Hsui Tai started.
"They're just video games!" Andrew retorted.
"Ouch!" Liz started rubbing her temples. "Do you two think you could keep this to a suitable volume?"
"There's nothing to worry about, Hsui Tai. We'd know if any video games had subliminal messages in them," John soothed. "We've been monitoring them since we found out that the Trixons were putting subliminal messages in Pong."
Hsui Tai shot Andrew a half smile that screamed "I told you so."
"I said I was sorry," Andrew sighed.
Hsui Tai looked at Mike.
"I'm staying out of it."
Hsui Tai glared at Andrew. "Just don't do it again."
"OK."
"There were aliens putting subliminal messages in Pong?" Mike asked as Andrew and Hsui Tai settled back into eating dinner.
"Yes, it's a funny story actually, you see Kenny..."
"Uh, John?"
"Yes, Andrew?"
"I don't want to know."
The End