With his homework and Chariot practice done for the day and no news about the crater cave expedition, Zed decided it was as good a time as any to give this "Bubble in Time" game a try.

  If it was anything like most VR games, it would work best with a little room to play in. He decided to see if any of the Monstro vehicle bays were currently empty, which would give him plenty of space.

  There were half a dozen people working in the hangar now. Thankfully, Andy wasn’t one of them. Jonah was still working on one of the Monstros just as he had been earlier when Zed had talked to Janice. The bay next to him, however, was empty.

  “Hey, Jonah!" Zed called out.

  Jonah pulled his head out from under the massive vehicle and looked around. “Oh, hey, Zed! What’s up?”

  “Mind if I use the empty bay for a bit?”

  “Yeah, that should be just fine. I’m not expecting to fill it until tomorrow. Those back-and-forth trips to the crater for prep they’ve been doing have kept the Monstros in high demand.”

  Zed’s heart hammered in his chest. “Wait, are they ready to go? Like, ready to start the expedition?”

  Jonah pantomimed zipping his lips. “I’m sure they’ll announce specifics when they’re ready. It’s not just you chomping at the bit for this, you know. I hear back on Earth they want the whole thing televised live, though I’m not sure how you’d manage that from deep inside a cave.”

  “Man, I’m just so ready to see for certain what’s in there, you know?”

  Jonah nodded in sympathy.

  “Anyway, thanks for letting me use the bay.”

  “Sure thing!” Jonah said, returning to whatever he’d been working on under the belly of the giant transport.

  Zed made his way to the center of the empty bay and snapped his fingers. “Douglas, show me any games made specifically for the CIG.”

  As expected, three names popped up in front of him. He selected "Bubble in Time" and made his way to the center of the vehicle bay.

  Douglas’s head dutifully appeared, gave the expected cartoony wink, and vanished as the words "Bubble in Time" appeared in front of Zed.

  A moment later, the menu appeared. Zed selected "New Game." He realized he had no clue what kind of game this even was. Text appeared above a dozen option buttons.

  Select your Bubble

  Zed looked at the buttons. They were labeled things like “Apartment Building,” “Cul-de-Sac,” “Village,” “Bunker,” “Palace,” and “Cave.” He had no context for the options, so he pressed the button labeled “Village.”

  The menu disappeared and was replaced by another.

  Select Your Time

  Buttons appeared with options for various time periods. Zed selected “Twelfth Century.” Once more, the menu vanished, but now Zed found himself standing in the middle of a muddy street with a horse bearing down on him.

  Adrenaline and instinct took over. Ignoring the fact that neither the horse nor the street was real, Zed threw himself back as a stirrup narrowly missed his chin.

  “Watch where you step, filthy maggot!” cried the well-dressed man who sat atop the horse.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He looked like every hateful nobleman Zed had ever seen in Robin Hood-style period pieces. Taking a look around, it was clear that's what this was. True to his menu choices, this was definitely a twelfth-century village, or at least what he assumed one would look like.

  Zed saw more horses and carts making their way down the road and decided to get off the street before someone trampled him. He made his way through the mud toward a gap between two huts. There was no point in wandering around until he figured out how to actually play this thing.

  He had walked about fifteen meters before he stopped and realized that something was very wrong. He should have hit the edge of the vehicle bay in half that distance. Zed made a quick gesture that temporarily returned him to his real environment. He was standing not far from where he’d started, near the center of the bay.

  “What the hell?” Zed said, a little louder than he intended.

  “You OK, Zed?” It was Jonah, peering at Zed over the barrier between the bays.

  “Yeah, fine, I guess. I just fired up one of the CIG games for the first time, and I can’t figure out how the locomotion works. I just walked what felt like forever in the game, but I’ve hardly moved in real space.”

  Jonah laughed. “Oh man, yeah, that freaked me out the first time I noticed that too. Turns out, you’re actually walking in circles.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, the CIG messes ever so slightly with your inner ear and vision. You think you’re walking straight, and in the sim, it looks like you are, but it’s steering you around and around. Wild, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s—that’s actually super clever. Thanks, Jonah. At least now I’ll know I’m not losing my mind.”

  “Sure thing, have fun!”

  Zed pushed the real world away, and the simulation resumed. One mystery solved; now to figure out how to actually play this thing.

  Right on cue, a prompt appeared on one of the wooden shack walls.

  Use LEFT wrist controls to change viewpoint.

  Use RIGHT wrist controls to shift time.

  Zed looked at his wrists. His left wrist had a series of icons on it that seemed to suggest different scales. On his right wrist was some kind of watch with an adjustable outer dial.

  He pressed one of the icons on his left wrist. In an instant, he found himself standing in the street again, but this time his body was transparent, like some kind of ghost. That, and he was now twenty meters tall.

  “Whoa.”

  Zed stepped to the side to avoid crushing a hut, only to look down and realize that his legs were transparent as well. More text appeared before him.

  Pick a figure to follow. Make a change, big or small, and travel through time at your chosen speed to watch the results.

  Hurt or help, the choice is yours, but beware. Ripple effects can be unpredictable…

  Hurt or help, huh? Zed thought.

  Zed looked down the road in the direction the ever-so-polite nobleman had gone. He could see his horse about to enter a modest castle that sat atop a hill overlooking the village.

  Bingo.

  At his current scale, it only took Zed a half dozen steps to reach the front gate of the castle. As Zed was about to change his scale again, he had an idea.

  “Hey, can I change how I look?”

  The game paused, and an in-depth character creator menu appeared.

  “Can I just be a beggar?”

  The creator menu vanished, and Zed found himself standing by the castle gate. He looked down at his hands. They didn’t feel like his hands at all. They were cracked and filthy. He was dressed in what looked like pieces of a burlap sack sewn into a rough garment.

  “Perfect.”

  Zed sat down to one side of the gate and watched the nobleman and his horse approach. As the horse neared the gate, it swung open. Presumably, there was a servant inside who had been waiting all day for this moment.

  Before the nobleman could enter, Zed the beggar stood and held out his hands.

  “Please, sir, can I have just a scrap of food? Even some potato peelings. Anything you can spare, my lord.”

  Atop his horse, the nobleman was silent. He stared at Zed in utter indifference.

  After a drawn-out moment of silence, he said, “I will tell you what I shall do for you.” He leaned forward ever so slightly, as if to make sure the beggar didn’t miss a word. “If you go just around the corner and look straight up, you’ll see a hole in the overhang toward the top of the wall. I want you to go stand under the hole and wait.”

  The nobleman now drew himself up to his full height, or as much as he could while sitting on horseback.

  “After dinner, I shall go to the hole. I shall sit there above, and by God’s bones, I shall rain a most foul stream of shit down upon you.”

  He paused, letting his words hang in the air like the stench he described.

  “And even that gift is more than gutter trash like you could ever deserve.”

  And with that, he dug his heels into the sides of his startled horse, which lunged through the gate, which the servants were quick to close behind him.

  Zed grinned. “And that was all I needed to know, good sir. Hey Douglas, show me what powers I have.”