"It feels good to think about leaving it all behind and going somewhere I've always longed to go," Sienna had explained. "Where would you go? And you can't say Paris."
"Las Vegas," I had told her.
"We live in Las Vegas."
"The Strip. All the lights, all the people from other places," I had tried to explain.
"All the flashing screens and video games?" Sienna had cocked an eyebrow at me. "You sound just like Owen. He's always wanting to go there. I mean, it’s fun once or twice, but I'm not into playing video games on wall-sized screens or whatever it is you two like to do."
I fought the overwhelming urge to get in the car and drive the 15 minutes to the Strip. People who lived in and around Las Vegas generally avoided that area like the plague. To me, it had a comforting aspect – like a part of my imagination come to life. And it did not hurt that no one there knew me or Sienna or what had happened.
#
"If you're ready now, we can take the long way into town. I know you love that drive," my father said. He strolled into the kitchen, checking his watch.
"That was Sienna," I said. "Sienna liked to take the long way because she had a dream house picked out on top of the hill."
Summerlin was a relatively small community, so the long way was actually just a tour of the neighborhoods. The houses were impressive and it was fun to drive at nig
ht and peek into other people's lives.
The pizza place we liked was only a few minutes away, but Sienna and my father were sometimes gone for nearly 45 minutes. They drove around and plotted her perfect future. She wanted to be surgeon at one of the exclusive private hospitals in Las Vegas where she could treat rich people from all over the world without leaving her hometown. My father had even taken on clients from those hospitals to make sure Sienna would have the contacts she needed.
My father stopped and his watch arm dropped. He just stood in the corner of the kitchen and stared at the floor. "Well, the pizza will be ready soon. We should leave in about 15 minutes."
He shuffled back towards the front room as I leaned on the counter. I clung to Sienna's idea of a daydream city. It was easy to picture Las Vegas. I always started with the Paris Casino, the faux Eiffel Tower was something I often teased Sienna about. From there, I pictured the Bellagio's dancing fountains and the Luxor's sleek black lines. I also loved the rollercoaster facade of New York, New York and the white columns of Caesar's Palace.
I focused in on the arcade at the MGM Grand. Beyond the normal kid games, they had interactive and full-sized gaming consoles where you could actually feel like you were inside the game. I wanted to step inside one and let everything else fade away.
Still, my daydream was not holding. Sienna was right. Tonight, Las Vegas was not far enough away, and I had 15 minutes to escape. I put my head on my arms as I leaned on the counter and tried again.
This time my daydream city was a foreign land. Dark plains that held pockets of fog, black granite cliffs that jutted up before shadowy mountains, dim forest glens and silent stands of towering pine trees.
I had enough time to at least cue up Dark Flag and take a look around. I headed downstairs to the basement. There, I brushed aside the items Owen had returned and settled in on the worn leather sofa. Our widescreen television buzzed to life on the home screen of the video game, and I quickly booted up my character.
Dark Flag was the perfect daydream city. Sienna would have scoffed at it, but it made sense to me. She planned trips to Paris in her head, and I was jumping into the virtual rendering of the place I wanted to escape to. The game started with a dark screen full of black thunderclouds. Lightning flashed across the screen and the surround sound exploded. The game then dropped you through the thunderstorm and deposited you on the starting grid, a rainy road outside the walls of a looming city.
I thought for a moment about entering the city walls. It was easy to wander around there and people watch. The multiplayer online game attracted millions of people from around the globe. Walking through the virtual city was what a lot of new players did. It was a chance to see what other people had done with their avatars. You could also purchase weapons, charms, and spells, instead of earning them in the field. Or you could head to one of the many taverns and interact with other avatars, as Owen had explained.
I turned away from the city. The whole point of my daydream was to escape from people, even virtual people. I knew Owen had been playing the Black Fields with his clan, so I turned in the opposite direction. I had never been inside the Pitch Forest, and I had just enough time to explore before my father expected me to join him in the car.
The Pitch Forest was a massive landscape of huge pine trees and redwoods. My human avatar was tiny in comparison. The animation was amazing, and for a while, I was perfectly content to look around and admire the quality of the game. Here and there the trees had carvings on them – signs from other players about which way the wayside inn was located and where the ogre caves could be found. The players themselves had created an entire language of symbols that I had just begun to unlock.
"My next victim," an underling player said.
All new players to Dark Flag started off as underlings. The lower evolved humans scuttled along on hands and feet like hairless dogs. Players stayed in that form until they fought others and earned their evolution. Dark Flag did not make it easy to sit down and start playing.
It had taken me three days to evolve into an avatar I wanted to play. "Wrong, newbie," I said.
The underling jumped at me and I knocked it back with an easy sequence. I could have killed it, causing the other player to have to wait an hour before rejoining the game, but the hand-to-hand combat was a good distraction.
The underling found its footing again and picked up a rock. "I'm not helpless," it said.
"You're not smart either," I sent my avatar forward with a sharp kick.
The rock slipped out of the underling’s hand and we grappled again. Underlings used teeth and nails to fight, but my leather jacket and pants, purchased in Black Wall City, kept me safe. I punched it back and we circled around again.
Just when I thought it was going to attack again, the underling spotted a Green Elf and decided to go after easier prey than me.