“Who’s Zorg?” I ask.
He snorts. “Only the biggest, baddest robot-android hybrid in the Aphelion galaxy!”
I gingerly take the controller and press a button. “No!” he shouts. “Not until we’ve set up your avatar!”
With a few clicks, I become Aurora Axis, a geophysicist from Washington, DC. I follow Edgar’s avatar through the levels of the game, getting knocked out almost immediately by a low-flying asteroid. “Shoot!” I say, angry at myself. “I should have been able to see that.”
Edgar grins. “It takes a little bit of practice.”
For three-quarters of an hour, we battle aliens with an array of weapons. I get killed more times than I can count. Finally, just when I think it’s virtually impossible, Edgar and I double-team an Amazon made of starlight who is shooting electromagnetic radiation from her fingers, and we manage to drown her in a micrometeorite lake. Just like that, we are admitted into the Astrochamber.
“Yes!” we both scream as the door to Edgar’s bedroom opens.
“Edgar!” Jessamyn cries, “have you seen—Oh!” She looks at me, and then at Edgar, and then back at me. “You’re here.”
Edgar pivots in his chair. “She wanted to learn how to play.”
I grin. “Turns out I’m a natural with a neutrino ray.”
Jessamyn seems surprised—by my comment, and maybe by the fact that her son has made a friend. “Good!” she says. “Can I get you two anything? Cookies? Milk?”
“Privacy?” Edgar suggests.
Jessamyn backs out of the room, and Edgar lifts his controller again. “Awkward,” he says. “Now, where were we…”
“About to kick some Zorgian butt,” I reply.
Edgar lifts his controller and points to the screen, but the computer blinks a steady neon green. “Shoot,” he mutters. “Notagain.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Stupid old computer. It freezes up all the time. I just hope our game saved….” He starts pushing buttons and rebooting the system. “My mom won’t let me load my games on her new computer because she says they take up too much of the memory, so I have to work on this total dinosaur.”
“It doesn’t look that old to me—”
“That’s because it was state-of-the-art when my mom was still using it to type her books. But believe me, I had to upgrade this puppy with major video cards and speakers just to get it compatible with Zorg 2000.”
I sit up, alert. “This used to be your mom’s computer?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Do you know if her old files are still on it?”
“They’re there,” Edgar says. “She won’t let me delete them.” He rolls his eyes. “Every time I go to start a new game, I see that dumb fairy tale.Between the Lines. It’s listed right belowBattle Zorg 2000,alphabetically.”
I lean forward. “You don’t like that story?”
“Hate it,” Edgar says. “How would you feel if the whole world knew your mother thought you were a loser?”
“I’m sure she doesn’t think—”
“She wrote that idiotic prince character wishing I could be more like him. But me, I’m not going to catch a dragon and talk it into getting its teeth cleaned. I’m not quite the fairy-tale type.”
“The reason I came here is because your mom wrote that book,” I tell Edgar. Taking a deep breath, I blurt out, “Can I ask you something that’s going to sound a little strange?”
“Okay.”
“When you play Battle Zorg 2000, does it sometimes feel like you’re a part of it?”
