Chapter 2: Movie Night
A couple days passed without much incident. School had been going alright. Mr. Brewer was helping a group of seniors write the spring play and mostly gave us menial writing assignments, one of which was a mystery short story. I hated mine, honestly, but I got a 96. The twist of the man having a long-lost twin brother seemed both too far-fetched and also incredibly obvious, and to be honest the twin really didn’t contribute much to the end result of the story, but whatever. Our senior physics teacher was out for a couple days after getting a bit close to a pendulum he hung from his ceiling and we were doing mostly book work. Francisco, Twitch and Randy were out both days for some reason, and Felix was mostly using his break class to gather ideas on how to outshine Sebastian. I’ll give him credit on coming at this with a positive outlook.
Franklin was spending a lot of time with the theatre crew, and Nathan was hard at work designing graphics for a Christmas livestream he had planned. George, on the other hand, was already hard at work playing the new Pokémon game. I hadn’t played much Pokémon since maybe Diamond and Pearl, and couldn’t help him with much other than a few type effectiveness matchups and what abilities to ditch. Alex was busy doing design work for a few clients and was in the process of trying to find a Dota league. As for me, I was still mostly blasting my way through TF2 servers and racking up quite the kill count. At about 5:00 in the evening, the phone rang. I headed downstairs and answered it. “’Sup?” I asked into it.
“Oh, hey Ash! I’m starting the movie at 7:00. Thought I’d let you know. I’ve got popcorn going, and we have plenty of cider and hot chocolate. Are your friends and family going?”
“I know Alex is setting time aside to go, but Mom is busy tonight. Franklin, Nathan and George are all going, too.”
“That’s great. Tell your mom I said hi, and I hope to see you there tonight. You know where it is?”
“Yeah, we’ve been over this a hundred times. Capitol, right inside the library.”
“Alright. I’ll be in my workshop until then, but if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask!”
“Alright, see ya,” I said as I hung up.
“Who was that?” Mom asked.
“Felix. He says hi.”
“He’s a nice young man.”
“Alright, Alex and I are probably going to head out at about 6:30. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
“Okay. Dinner will be done in about 20 minutes, though. I made some soup, and we probably have some sandwich stuff in the fridge if you take a look.”
“M’kay.”
I purchased a few games (picking up a copy of Lethal League for Isaac as well, and getting the two of us the new Game of the Year bundle for Payday 2), headed downstairs to have dinner, and Alex and I headed off to the capitol. Franklin, George and Nathan were to meet us at the front. “Hey, Ash. And this is your brother Alex, I take it?” Franklin asked.
“Yeah, nice to meet some of Ash's friends,” Alex replied with a handshake.
“Alright, we should probably be heading in.”
Quite a few people had already arrived. Felix’s desk was cleared off with a popcorn machine and two silver drink dispensers set up in place of the phone and papers, and the shelves in the library had been pushed aside to make plenty of room for people to watch the film. I noticed that Randy, Francisco and Twitch were all there, but were doing a bit of snooping around. Sebastian also showed up, packing a messenger bag along with him for some reason. Felix set up the projector and then covered the lens, and stepped up in front of the screen. “Alright, the film’s set up, but I’ll start it at 7:00. That’s in about half an hour. Thank you all for arriving!”
And with that, Felix headed up towards the front door to hold the door open for people and welcome guests in. “Nice place he has here,” Alex said.
“It’s alright,” I said.
“Well, I’ll go find a place to sit. I have a bit more work to do. If you need me, Ash, come get me.”
“Alright.”
Alex went and found a chair in front of the library and set his laptop down on a coffee table. Franklin, Nathan, George and I headed towards the snacks. George took a bag of popcorn and I poured a cup of cider for myself. Just then, Francisco walked past us and glared at me. I glanced back. “Is there a problem?” I asked.
“Yeah, thanks to you, all my stuff stopped working.”
“What do you mean?”
“Twitch proved it to me. We had it working during Halloween, but you and Felix broke it.”
“What makes you think that Felix and I are working together?”
“Felix has dark plans, Twitch can prove it. He did to me. And Felix likes you. He’s given you things and has only taken and taken from me.”
“Felix has no reason to help me—“
“but you help him, so—“
“Hello, there!” Felix said walking up to the counter and pouring a glass of cider.
Francisco stopped talking the moment Felix showed up.
“So how are you, Ash?”
“Doing alright,” I said.
“And you, Francisco?”
“Meh.”
“Alright, I’ll get back to starting things up. Thanks for showing up!”
We headed away from Francisco and Twitch, and Alex looked up. “Whoa, what was that?”738Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡntQ6MlFuW2
“Francisco. He’s a bit… short-tempered.”
“Yeah, I got that. Hey, who’s the dude in the suit? Never seen him before in my life.”
“Sebastian. Felix is trying to impress him.”
“Okay, but why?”
“They’re in a bit of a rivalry right now.”
“Ah, okay then.”
“Yeah, I know, what a weirdo,” Randy said, cutting in.
“Randy, what are you doing here?” Nathan said.
“I wanted to see a movie,” he said sadly.
“No, here? With us?”
“Oh. Francisco got a bit snippy with me and needed to speak with Twitch on his own… So… what are you guys up to?”
“…This,” I replied, vaguely gesturing around.
“Can I join you?”
“I mean, I guess.”
“I don’t see why not,” Nathan said.
“So how is Francisco?” Franklin said.
“Oh, he’s been super busy recently. Like, he’s always discussing things with Twitch and—“
“What types of things?”
“Twitch did some research, and New Infinity shows a lot of signs of being… well, not real. It’s digital or something like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was apparently a company that ran towns right off a computer. They weren’t real towns, I mean I mean, it wasn't like SimCity or anything, bu-- whateber, Twitch says they even killed, like, thousands of people on them. It was crazy.”
“Is it for real, though?”
“No clue. I can’t find anything on any of that at all. He's going somewhere deep on the web to find this stuff, I think.”
“And you think Felix is doing this to his people?”
“I mean, he might be.”
“He’s much too nice, though, and what good would it have for him to move people in from all over the place if he’s lived here in Oregon his whole life?”
“Maybe he’s lied about his past, Frank. Maybe!”
“Attention, everyone, the movie’s ready to go!” Felix cried.
“I’ll keep looking, but Francisco’s been having me do the heavy lifting for him recently. He might find out I’ve spoken with you.”
We parted ways and found a place to sit. Alex arrived a couple seconds after, followed by Francisco. Twitch did not once show up. Felix was periodically walking through and taking popcorn and drink orders as the film progressed, and checking in on Sebastian. Once the film was over, Felix announced another movie night on the 27th, this time he planned to show Tintin. He turned the lights back on and walked up to Sebastian. “So, how was it?”
“It was alright, little man.”
“Thanks, Se—“
“Unfortunately, I have been building a theater and we are having a red carpet event for a number of new films set to release in early 2015. Never before seen stuff. Celebrities will be there, press, it’ll be a bash. And it’ll be on Christmas Eve!”
Felix was speechless. Sebastian left wordlessly, leaving behind a few pamphlets, and a black Maserati drove off into the evening towards the Great Unending. “Well, that’s a bit of a damper on the mood,” Felix said after almost a minute, “but we’ll be a good sport and go to Sebastian’s little event. I don’t see the harm in it. Well, I guess that concludes movie night. Help yourself to what’s left of the popcorn and drinks. I’ll be in my workshop if you need me.”
And with that, Felix headed down one of the halls and a few steps down some stairs could be heard.
From there, we headed off to Nathan’s for a couple hours and Alex just walked home. He had picked an original copy of Mario party 2 and the four of us played through a board. “So Twitch says that this is a digital city,” Nathan said.
“I guess,” I replied.
“I guess I could see it, but this is a lot of attention to detail for a simulation. If anything, it might be a hybrid of real and digital, but whatever. The big question is what his source is. Where did he learn of this?”
“I don’t know,” Franklin said, “Randy thinks it was something buried on the deep web, but whether it’s true or not, I don’t think Felix is up to something.”
“Okay, but what if he is?” I asked, “I mean, we don’t know much about him. Maybe he is evil. Maybe not, probably not, but why would he be so secretive about his life?”
“Good point,” George replied. “Oh, and Franklin, by the way…”
“No, don’t you dare steal that star! You didn’t earn it!”
For some reason, Franklin got irrationally angry at Mario Party. Maybe he just doesn’t like it or thinks he does bad at it. Nathan won, and George was in a close second. Franklin and I were tied for last with zero stars and 46 coins each. After watching a bit of Back to the Future (with commentary), Nathan dropped us off. From my house, I could see the white spotlights from Sebastian’s theater in the distance illuminating the night sky.
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