His face falls. “Maybe there’s a way for me to talk to her.”
“Even if she could hear you, she wouldn’t do it. She wrote this book for her son. She’s not going to make any changes. It means too much to her personally.”
“She has a son?” Oliver says. “Have you met him? Maybehecan convince her.”
“Yeah, I’ve met him.”
“Well, what’s he like?”
“He could be your twin,” I say.
For a moment, Oliver gets very quiet. “So you’re in a house,” he sums up, “with a guy who looks just like me, but who’s real?”
I think of what Jessamyn said about Edgar. “He’s not you,” I state simply.
Whatever Oliver says in reply is drowned out by the strangest sounds coming from the room next door to mine. There are high-pitched screams and whistles and weird sirens.
“Well?” Oliver says. “What do you think?”
“I didn’t hear what you said….” Now, in addition to all the crazy noises, I hear a voice:“I’m going to get you, you bloodsucking, boneheaded monster!”
“What the—?” I look down at the book, careful this time not to slam it shut. “Wait here,” I tell Oliver. I get up and walk into the hall, then knock on the door beside mine.
There’s no answer. This isn’t a surprise, because who could hear with that racket going on? So I turn the doorknob and peek inside.
Edgar is sitting in a strange reclining chair at floor level, holding a game controller in his hand. On a computer screen in front of him, there’s an asteroid explosion in a galaxy. “Take that, Zorg!” Edgar hollers, and he punches a fist in the air. Letters roll over the screen:
HIGH SCORES
EDGAR ….….….. 349,880
EDGAR ….….….. 310,900
EDGAR ….….….. 298,700
EDGAR ….….….. 233,100
I wonder if Edgar’s ever even played his video game against another person.
I remember what Jessamyn said about him being a loner. “Hey,” I say. “You want company?”
He whirls in his seat. “Who told you I was in here?”
“I could pretty much hear everything through the wall….”
Edgar narrows his eyes. “Have you ever played Battle Zorg 2000 before?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
He digs around in his desk for a second controller. “Then I suppose I’ll have to teach you.”
He fumbles through the opening screens of the game to set it up for two players instead of one. “I usually play solo,” he says casually. “I’m actually sort of legendary, in terms of scoring.”
I let Edgar explain to me about the Galactoids from Planet Zugon who are coming to take over Earth. “Our job,” he says, “is to kill them before they plant a mind-control ozone bomb in the San Andreas Fault, or create a force field of incineration that burns everyone to ash the minute they come in contact with it.”
It makes me think of the Pandemonium.
“If you can get past the foot soldier Galactoids,” Edgar continues, “you can be admitted into the Astrochamber, where you have to complete fourteen tasks in order to face Zorg.”
