After several months lying low in rural Arkansas, getting horribly maimed in a Game was beginning to look appealing. You know life is treating you poorly when you begin to reminisce about bleeding from the rectum while being menaced by scarecrows.
If you consult my notes and theories about Harbingers (hwallbanger.odt), you'll see my suggestions about their spanning multiple quantum realities. I was finally prepared to begin a grand experiment with the identical hand-crafted limos which Mr. Smith and his ilk always use. My theory is that they're all the same limo, brought from variable realities, although I suppose they might be the same limo from different timestream points. Either way, I had a brilliant experiment ready to go when the latest limo came to pick me up, which went to waste because as it turns out The Director doesn't use 'em.
He uses a yacht.
Did I mention that the yacht met me in Maine? Have you ever tried hitch-hiking in Arkansas?
At least I saw a few familiar faces—Zane, under a different name, and Aaron Adams, my old scientific colleague. Zane seemed to be moving with confidence and grace; Aaron showed the effects of wounds, although it seems he's developed other skills since we last met. Then there were three guys who didn't give names: a sniper, a monk, and the other guy. The other guy seemed slick enough, but after our little adventure I'm still not sure what he's good for, exactly, besides reminding everyone of our mortality. Then again, I wasn't much good this time around, either.
Oh, yes, it turns out that the Director has his own little web-series, You Bet Your Life. His games operate as entertainment for someone (or something? Stupid human tricks, for sure). He insisted that he wouldn't coddle us. Our mission was to get good ratings by traveling through the Temple of Mu before time ran out and he dropped a neutron bomb on our heads. He refused to tell us how long we had, too. Did I mention that he had cameras which dug themselves into our nervous system in as painful a manner as possible? Because he did. Given that it was probably alien tech, I suppose I should be glad we received versions which attached to our necks from our shoulders. Don't do porn for The Director, is all I'm saying.
So Mr. Throatwarbler-Mangrove dumps us off on the shore of an island. Now, you know a fair amount of mythology, but you may not be familiar with Mu, the underwater continent. This island had a certain lack of underwaterness to it. By the time we reached the mountain on its center, it was clear we were not actually on Mu, but an incredible simulation of it. Well, simulation in the same sense that environmental science and technology is accurately represented by the movie Bio-Dome.
But I'm getting ahead of my own outrage. First we had a long slog through the jungle, watched by invisible flying things. Not No-See'ums-a few months in Arkansas made me accustomed to their ilk-but some sort of large, invisible predator. The sniper and Mr. Personality tried shooting a few, but they didn't seem to bleed or become visible or anything else. Probably some sort of robotic or bio-mechanical creature under some sort of cloaking field. Zane could sense them, so I speculate that they manipulated the visual field of those around them to edit themselves out of the vision. They couldn't be fully transparent because they had vision, since Zane could feel them looking at him.
In any event, by the time we reached a clearing in the jungle, which led to the not-nearly-large-enough mountain with a cave near the top, it was clear that The Corman wasn't even making an effort to be historically accurate. I'm not sure which was more offensive: the faux-Mayan statues standing guard over the cave mouth, or the dozens of invisible predatory gargoyles circling the clearing waiting for the moment of maximum drama to attack. Around this time, I decided that we were in movie-land and movie logic applied, which made most of my academic knowledge useless because most of what I know is accurate. In movie logic, the heroes would do something dumb like sprinting across the clearing and making it to safety mere inches ahead of the invisible thingies (invisible! Could they not afford CGI?), so I pushed for that plan.
Turns out that The Alan Smithee's love for blood meant some dangerous twists on the old standards. Nameless guy and nameless martial arts guy didn't make it up the mountain fast enough. Sniper-guy and I tried to distract the fliers. Meanwhile, Aaron and Zane were trying to work out the statue puzzle, which was presented in English and required us to declare the most important thing. "Ratings" seemed the obvious answer, but was the answer supposed to be what Alan thought most important? Or what his faux-Mayans cared most about? (Mayannaise, perhaps? At least we avoided rampant product placement on this adventure.) I ended up letting Aaron try "ratings," which resulted in the first of what would prove to be a series of second and third-degree burns, while Zane tried "life" and failed before deciding that the whole test was a trick and simply walking past the statues into the "temple." Zane managed to dodge the lasers, BTW. He dodged LASERS. I guess the statues were Star Trek surplus or something? I don't know—I've seen magic, I've seen creatures which can't exist in this reality, I've seen the dead walk, and I still can't accept someone stepping out of the way of a weapon which should be traveling at LIGHTSPEED. Did these lasers travel slower than the speed of sound? I guess the Force is with Zane, or something.
Did I mention how stupidly the "Temple of Mu" related to the actual article? A temple at the foot of a mountain turns into a cave atop what's more like a small hill… what can I say? Worse near-death episode ever.
Movie logic, remember? They wanted to proceed slowly and check for traps, but that's never movie logic, so we proceeded to a large "door" and when Zane prodded it with my shovel we were dropped into a dark pool of water filled with Facehuggers. What, were there ten different writers for this mess? Cliche seems to be the dramatic unity of "You Bet Your Life." Someone suggested later on that if we'd been careful, we could have avoided this trap, which suggests to me that someone completely missed the point. I doubt they even bothered with a set behind the "door."
Pulling facehuggers off of wet monks is outside my disciplinary areas-I didn't attend business school-but the others managed that. Obviously, movie logic said we couldn't make a stand against the Aliens here, so we made a run for it. Aaron and Zane managed to dodge past some aliens with a little help; sniper guy and Zane are definitely the MVPs of this game and deserve to win the immunity challenge or to say the secret word and win $100 or whatever this stupid game show is supposed to be about. I drop a pull-string alarm in the hopes of distracting the Aliens, though I suspect the rations Faceman dropped in the lake were more effective.
Did I mention that the corridor out of the Aliens' cavern was filled with randomly-firing fire jets? Because the corridor out of the Aliens' cavern was filled with randomly-firing fire jets. Actually, there may have been a pattern to the firing, but none of us saw it immediately and I, for one, had my doubts that the scientific benefits of experiencing a neutron bomb first-hand would outlive the experience. Bruce Lee managed to dive his way past the flames without difficulty; in fact, we all made it through fine except for Mr. Personality, who got singed, and poor Aaron Adams, who is going to need serious reconstructive surgery. Thank you so much, Galaxyquest corridor.
Getting past the thin curtain of flame past the fire jets wasn't too bad, first-degree or so. Fabio tossed his con-art kit on the flames to get over safely, though the multiple explosions and kit shrapnel suggested to me that avoiding a few mild burns that way wouldn't be a cooperative venture for me. We arrived at a dark shaft leading up and down, with two ropes suspended in its center. I should have expected that I'd take it on the chin now that we'd arrived at a thin piece of evidence that The Uwe Boll was capable of independent thought. Aaron did his mind trick and identified fifty or so identical minds above us in the shaft. Given his physical condition, I figured we'd only be able to manage down anyway. Sniper-guy continued to take point. Concerned about the weight the ropes could support, I remained above with Zane until we were forced onto the ropes by a robot pursuing us from the fire passage; since Zane moved first, my ass was literally hanging when the first of the midget clones started their suicide drop down the shaft. Their tiny clubs really shouldn't have been more effective weapons than the Aliens, but I still have bruises to prove otherwise. Zane may well have saved my life by catching me; after this one I owe him several.
We were finally at the Indiana Jones portion of the Temple. At least it wasn't Temple of Doom, which would have fit pretty well, too. I can't stand mine carts and I've had quite enough of magical rituals to pull people's hearts out. Spiders and cobwebs, spikes coming from the walls, idol on an altar in a room full of arrow-traps… well, you've seen the movie. Mr. Monk managed to get to the altar but decided to display suicidal courage instead of trying the bag-of-sand trick. (He said that if Indiana Jones couldn't get it right, it wasn't worth trying. I figured with the quality of design we'd seen so far, he could well be 20 pounds off and still succeed, but it was probably rigged to fail regardless.) He grabbed the idol and threw it to sniper-guy before anyone could shout "I throw you the whip!" He then leapt over some of the pressure plates for the arrow trap, just ahead of the boulder, and dodged over a dozen shots before the last struck him and knocked him unconscious. Sniper-guy grabbed him and dragged him down the corridor ahead of the boulder; the rest of us were already booking it for the pit (and yes, you saw this coming, I'm sure, because the pit from the movie was there despite not being there a moment ago). Nobody actually HAD a whip, so we were forced to jump it, with sniper-guy throwing Ryu's limp body over first. Fortunately, it slid under the wall that was coming down. (You do remember this scene, right? Maybe you should go watch it again. I'll wait.)
No Belloq on the other side to take the idol away, just a 50' sheer drop into the water. The Michael Bey and his boat were waiting for us. I have no idea how Aaron managed to make it given the extent of his injuries, but he survived the dive into the water although he was out afterward. (I think Zane saved him. There was a lot of saving going on and Zane and sniper-guy accounted for most of it.) I made the dive OK but wasn't able to keep my head and the monk's above water while sniper-guy jumped off. Things go kind of desperate and then black at that point, but we must have gotten good ratings because I'm still alive.
Remind me never to go into show business.
So I'm set up with a new identity now, though my cover won't be as good as Aaron's once they finish rebuilding his face. The Director took his cameras back, so I didn't even get a chance to try to reverse-engineer one. Tell you what, Winston, you can deal exclusively with movie magic from now on. I'm sticking to the real stuff.