September 29, 2005
Week 22 - The Quest 2
Episode 4
Rantz and Hal sit on the train.
"You did a good job," Rantz says. "I'll give you the cash as soon as we get home."
"Sweet!" Hal grins. "Can you drive me to the mall tonight, to pick up the game?"
"You know the rules. Mom said you could buy it with your own money but that we couldn't help at all. I think driving you to pick it up counts as helping."
"Fine! I'll just bicycle there tomorrow. Why does mom have to make it so hard?"
"Your mother's a woman of strong convictions. That's part of why I love her. But sometimes... Sometimes it's a little tricky to maneuver around them. But it worked out okay in the end! You got a taste of the business world. Now you'll understand what I do all day, a little better."
"Yeah, well... no offense, dad, but I don't see how you can spend your whole life staring at all those numbers. I would claw out my brain after a month!"
"No, it's... You don't understand... It's different when the numbers mean something to you... Magazine circulation... it's like a big puzzle... how do you get the subscribers you need without spending too much money? There are all these cool patterns, like different people expiring at different times and some people not paying their bills. Predicting it all... it's actually a lot of fun. It's like a giant game."
Hal shakes his head. "Let me tell you a story… You know my clan? I mean, my team? The guys I play Death Zone with on-line? Usually, we play against other clans, same amount of guys as in our own, so it's fair. But sometimes... The best players, the real top notch guys, at the top of the rankings... They put out these standing challenges to clans. They'll match them single handedly, one dude against, like, five.
"So our clan, one time... we had a match against this guy... Kill Ravage... We all use handles like that, real violent... I'm Entrail Lad... It's just, like, a kind of joke... So this guy, Kill Ravage, this guy is tough, he's, like, the number three ranking player in the world. So... all five of us in my clan... we're running around, trying to pick up ammo and weapons... and he keeps fragging us. We can't even get a shot in, he's so fast. Fifteen kills would win. So, the score is fourteen to zero, and we... we didn't want to be humiliated, you know? We wanted to get at least one frag.
"But Kill Ravage was just... we couldn't hit him. But I noticed... when he was out of ammo, he always ran to this one spot where he picked up new rockets... So I snuck over there, behind this corner near it, and I waited with my sniper rifle... And, after a while, just like I figured, I see him running toward me, and he don't see me. So, I played it cool, you know? I just waited, like, till I saw the whites of his eyes. Then I fired! Bam! Head shot! I took him down. And... we still lost, but... we weren't shut out, you know? I took down the third ranking player in the world! I think that was the greatest moment of my life.
"So... staring at numbers all day is a game?" Hal grins. "You can sell it, dad, but I ain't buying!"