Free Doomed by Tracy Deebs

young, only a senior in high school, he has that indefinable way about him, and that translatesto the game. There’s none of the brooding now, and as I watch him get things organized it’s easy to forget what happened this morning.
    Especially since right here, right now, I’m more than willing to do whatever he tells me, just so long as I don’t have to make the decision myself. Fighting Campe as I feared for my digital life took a lot more out of me than I first suspected.
    “To beat the game, obviously, we need to advance through the levels. To beat this level, I think the task is to put these seeds in the ground so that all these NPCs can get some food.” He walks over to a clear, unmuddy patch of grass and squats down. But when he tries to empty the seed packet into the ground, nothing happens.
    “What’s going on?” I ask. “Why isn’t it working?”
    “I don’t know. You try,” he tells me.
    I follow his lead, try to dump out the seeds. Again, nothing happens.
    Eli tries, with the same result, as do all of the other players.
    “Why won’t it work?” I ask again, frustrated. How are we supposed to beat the game if we can’t complete the task?
    Theo shrugs, presses a few buttons and tries again—to no avail.
    “We’re missing something,” Eli finally says.
    “We defeated the monster, got our reward. This is obviously our task, right?” I shove my computer away, stand up, and walk to the sliding glass door that leads to my backyard. Everything out there looks so normal—the grass is green, the trees are swaying lightly in the breeze while a squirrelscampers past a light, a nut clasped in its little paws. So how can everything in here be so screwed up?
    “I don’t know. But we need to figure it out. Go back over the places we’ve been and try to see what we missed.” Eli retraces our last steps.
    I start to tell him I’m out for a while, that I just can’t do any more right now. But before I say anything, Emily comes flying through my front door.
    “Major change of plans,
chica
.”
    Now that the action is over, the game lets my avatar drop out. I turn to my best friend, who—despite the beginning of technological Armageddon—looks as fresh as she did when I drove her home from school this afternoon.
    “Obviously.”
    “So you know?” she asked. “I tried to call you, but my phone’s out and so are all the ones in my neighborhood.”
    I can’t help it—I start to laugh. It’s not funny, but I laugh until tears roll from my eyes. Hysterical much?
    Theo, Eli, and Emily are all staring at me like I’ve lost my mind, although Emily keeps stealing glimpses at the guys, like she can’t believe they’re sitting in my family room. Of course, if the last two hours hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be able to believe it, either.
    “I take it that means you already know?” she asks, when my hysteria finally calms down.
    “You could say that.” I point to Eli and Theo, introduce them to Emily. “They’ve been helping me try to figure out what’s going on.”
    “Good luck. Someone in the government contacted my dad an hour ago. He’s working on it but can’t seem to getanywhere yet. Whatever it is, it’s a huge mess, some kind of blended threat. He’s using words I haven’t heard since he helped map out the Stuxnet worm.”
    I exchange uneasy glances with Eli and Theo. “So this thing is really bad, then?”
    “That’s the impression I get.” She leans back against my couch and blows a bubble with her trademark strawberry gum, looking completely relaxed. Like we’re talking about what shade of lipstick she should wear instead of a worm that has shut down nearly every form of communication we’ve got. “Close to an hour ago the game opened up for everyone, and my dad tried to slip through the matrix to get a handle on it, but he said he couldn’t get through. There’s something blocking him and all of the other government hackers.
    “He says this is unlike any worm or