chapter 1 Mayhem louder EEEEEEEEEEEEEE The vibrating in my chest grew as the sound got EEEEEEEEEEEEEE It almost felt like a volcano could erupt from my chest at any second Do you know that feeling It’s not a good feeling EEEEEEEEEEEEEE Of course the noise wasn’t even the problem The problem was the cause of the noise hundreds of six-foot-tall computer towers all malfunctioning at the same time spitting out video game bad guys at an alarming rate EEEEEEEEEEEEEE Human-sized praying mantis aliens Dinosaurs Slime blobs What looked like a flame-throwing robot dragon
EEEEEEEEEEEEEE All of them seemed a little confused and a lot angry about getting transported from the comfort of their fake video game worlds to the very real very loud basement of an evil video game corporation I covered my ears backed against a computer and yelled for the only person who could do something MR GREGORY DO SOMETHING Mr Gregory kind of caused this whole mess in the first place by inventing a way to put people into video games then breaking everything to get our friend Mark out of one An arm cannon hit me in the chest just as a praying mantis noticed me Here Mr Gregory said without looking up from his laptop Hold them off while I try to turn off the power Before I could remind Mr Gregory about my poor aiming skills the praying mantis screeched and leaped at me I jammed my arm into the cannon fell backward and blasted up in the air SCREECH The mantis disappeared in a flash of light I sat up and looked around me Mayhem Absolute mayhem
After getting over the initial shock of transporting into the real world the video game characters started doing what they do best destroying everything in sight To my right a rhino with a long sword-horn was impaling computer towers over and over To my left two slimy swamp things fought each other And straight ahead five oversized cockroaches were circling something The circle parted just long enough for me to see what they’d trapped ERIC I yelled My best friend Eric Conrad was huddled on the ground kicking his legs wildly I got up and blasted five times missing horribly each time HEY I blasted again and finally hit one They all turned at once I blasted again That may have been a mistake because as soon as I did they all flew directly at me AHHHH BLAST BLAST BLAST AHHHH BLAST BLAST One of the cockroaches batted away my blaster and then they all started circling and chattering I tried raising my arms and yelling like you’re supposed to do when you see a bear but all that did was make them close in tighter and chatter angrier because cockroaches are not bears One of them began feeling me with its long creepy antennae This was it I was going to be eaten
