By the Squoishomellow Squad
Chapter 1: How?
The year is 2199 and me and my friends and I had just gotten the brand new Best Perspective controller for the game called Spele. The box said, “makes you feel like you are actually there!” My friends Lojals, Uzticams, Laimigs, and Zaglis had started to set it up in each of our gaming rooms. We talked to each other through a talkpad.
Uzticams said, “This Spele upgrade is going to be great!”
Zaglis said, “Unless something goes wrong,” and he murmured something else to himself.
“Nah…it’s pretty good technology, it probably won’t have any problems,” Laimigs said. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Zaglis continued telling everybody the instructions.
I said, “I thought it said on step number 25 was to put the red and black wires together, and the green and blue wires together. Not the red and green wires and blue and black.”
Zaglis replied, “You must be seeing things because it clearly says to put the red and green wires together and the blue and black wires together.”
I double-checked the epper and sure enough, it said exactly what Zaglis had described.
“You know what?” I answered, “You’re right Zaglis!”
Finally, we finished the set up of the BP austinas.
“Ok, now who’s ready to play Spele?” Laimigs said.
Everybody replied, “me!”
So everyone put on their BP austinas. When I put on the BP austina, I started to hear a whirring sound. So I yelled to Zaglis over the din, “Is it supposed to make a loud whirring sound?”
Zaglis shouted back, “No-”
Then I blacked out…
Chapter 2: Decisions
When I became conscious again, I was perplexed. I looked around, and I wasn’t in my gaming room. Instead, I turned my head to the right and saw Lojals, and near him was Uzticams. To his right was Zaglis. Laimigs was less fortunate, and he was half-buried in some sand. We were near the coastline of a very large island. There were some spiky and grey snow-capped mountains to the north side of us and a semi-dense forest to the south side of us. An ocean with a rough tide and spiky coral was to the east of us.
“I wouldn’t want to go in there,” said Uzticams.
Zaglis pointed to some big green hills and said, “Those look much better. Let’s go that way.”
Laimigs exclaimed, “But where exactly are we?!”
I answered, “I think we are in Spele.”
The others said, “You’re crazy!”
But I argued, “I think we are because one, that looks like a Spele forest. Two, that ocean and coral look like Spele oceans. Three, those hills are exactly like Spele hills. And finally, where else would we be if we just put on the BP austinas that was set to go to Spele.”
Zaglis shrugged, “I don’t know how we even got here but you could be right.”
“I think we need to find some civilization to help us,” suggested Lojals. “There are more supplies in the forest and we can get what we need to survive. And there is always the Capital in the forest.”
Zaglis said, “Well, there might be some more dangerous stuff in the forest. If you want to go that way, you’ll probably get eaten by some bears.”
But everybody else had already made up their mind to go into the forest. “It’s worth the risk,” said Laimigs.
“Oh well,” said Zaglis, “I guess I’ll have to go through the hills by myself.”
As Zaglis marched away toward the hills we marched straight into the forest.
Chapter 3: Discoveries
As we walked, I stuck my hands in my pockets. And as I did so, I noticed that there was a weird object in my pocket. So, out of curiosity, I pulled out this item and studied it. It was dry, light, smelled faintly of trees and the weirdest part of all: when you touched it, nothing moved around.
So I asked the group, “Does anybody know what this is?” They looked at me dumbfounded. Then, everybody except for Uzticams said, “No.” Uzticams was studying the object. After a moment he replied, “I think that thing is a map. A paper map. That’s why it doesn’t move around when you touch it.”
I was putting it back in my pocket when Lojals said, “But where did you get it?”
I answered, “it was in my pocket.”
Instantly, my friends checked their pockets and each and every one of them retrieved something different. Laimigs had a ring with a banana on top. Uzticams got a sack of money and Lojals somehow retrieved a long, deadly-looking stick that shouldn’t have fit in his pocket but apparently did.
At first, we were all jealous of Uzticams because he got a lot of money. But we realized that Lojals had a weapon, so then everybody (except for Laimigs) was jealous of Uzticam and Lojals. But then, when we realized that Laimigs’s ring had the power to produce bananas, so we thought he might be the luckiest one in the group. And all I had was an old paper map—whatever that was. Nothing even moved on it!
After everybody found the thing in their pocket, we continued going through the forest at a quicker pace. I noticed that the sun was getting low. As we hiked through the forest, we noticed a giant cobblestone wall. We all halted with our mouths open.
“What the…” I said. We heard some shouts up above calling something about intruders. We shouted up, “We’re not intruders, we’re just travelers,” but we did not get a response. Several minutes later a small army of knights came through the wall and seized us. We kept on repeating, “We’re just travelers. We’re just travelers.”
But the hilt of a sword hit me on the head and knocked me out.
Chapter 4: Welcome to the Capital
When I regained consciousness we were in a portable jail on the back of a wagon being pulled by a tired-looking horse.
I noticed that the people in the crowd looking at us all seemed really upset and angry.
The crowd was murmuring things like, “Dude, what were those guys trying to do? Kill us?” And “are those servants of Him-”
“Dude, they say, dude?” Uzticams said.
“Who is Him?” Laimigs said.
I was just opening my mouth to agree when the wagon jolted and I toppled over and fell on top of Lojals.
“Ow!” Lojals shouted.
The wagon rolled to a building that said “The Court” and looked like a futuristic style courthouse but made out of wood and stone. We were dragged inside and a man wearing black silk robes waddled over to the judge’s bench. He was short, plump, and looked important. He cleared his throat and said, “You are charged with being unlawful intruders. What time have you come from? What is your mission here? Bring me some e-pap— er…I mean some tree paper.”
Laimigs looked at me in confusion and shrugged. But Uzticams took charge. “Your honor, we are not trespassers. We were just passing by. We are not from these lands or anywhere nearby. That is why we don’t know your way around this place.”
“Then how come you have a map of this area?” the judge boomed.
“We… bought it from a traveling merchant less than an hour ago,” Uzticams lied. “We didn’t have a chance to study it entirely.”
The judge stared at us a minute then said, “Do you know anything about Him?”
I responded, “we have no clue who you are even talking about, let alone know anything else.”
“I do not believe you! The sentence for lying is death!” the judge shouted.
“Maybe we can help you. We might know some stuff about Him but first, we have to know who Him is.” Uzticams said.
The next morning we left the walled city and headed for the mayor’s house. The judge said he would tell us about who Him is. On our way, we noticed that nobody smiled. I wondered how Zaglis was doing and if he was having any better luck than we were. The mayor’s house seemed to be the most advanced and fancy house that we had seen. When we went inside there were electric lights in the hallway instead of candles. Laimigs said, “Hey look this house has normal lights, not those burning wax sticks I’ve seen in our video game.”
As we were talking to the mayor and the judge, we figured out that they used to be a really advanced society but then a giant robot person came and took all their advanced stuff, forcing them to start from scratch again. “He never gave his name to us, he just took away everything. ” the mayor whispered. “We have only one clue: a piece of scrap metal with a signature on it:
“I wonder who’s signature that is,” said Uzticams. “Yes,” said the mayor, “we’ve been wondering that, too.” I asked, “ do you have any other leads on this?”
“ No,” said the judge.
“That stinks,” said Lojals.
“So what do we do now?” laimigs asked happily.
Chapter 5: North Sector Extractor 777.777
It was the next morning and we were riding north. The townspeople had given us horses. We had decided to investigate the North Sector Extractor 777.777, aka the only mine on the island. The mayor had said the mining town was the closest settlement and we might be able to find a clue to Him there.
We rode along. Laimigs’ horse was lazy and would stop to eat grass every few inches. Laimigs would laugh and say, “this is funny.” But Lojals got annoyed after a while and said, “At this rate, we’re not going to go anywhere but the end of today. Not a mile. Not even a few yards!”
It was 11:59, 59 seconds, and 99 milliseconds pm when the last of us made it into the town. The next morning the townspeople told us that when we arrived we were all asleep in the saddle. They had brought us into a stable, pulled us off the horses, and laid us down onto hay bales for the night. We had been so exhausted we never even woke up.
These townspeople were also stripped of high tech stuff. The only thing that remained of the high tech stuff was the names. We asked if anyone recognized the signature the people from the capital had shown us. A traveling merchant said in a whisper, “I will tell you where I have seen that signature before and that type of metal in large quantities before. But, it will cost you… what can you pay with?” Uzticam reached into his pocket and brought out the money sack.
The traveling merchant looked at the small sack and laughed, “that’s not enough!” Laimigs came in and produced a banana from his “Banana Ring” (We still didn’t know the real name). The traveling merchant said “ok, I’ll take one of those bananas. The only place you can get them on the whole island is from a Ring O Plenty, and you need every type of food to make one of those. You don’t have to pay me anything else although,” he eyed the money sack from Uzticams, “a tip is welcome too.”
We all looked at Laimigs with happy, yet jealous, faces because we wished we had started out with a Ring ‘O Plenty ourselves.
The merchant told us, “In a valley not too far away, there was a lot of metal like this with the same signature on it. The weirdest part of all is that sometimes people go there and never come back…”
We thanked him for this information and just as we were leaving, I noticed a flash from a shiny object embedded in the ground. I went over to pick it up. When I pulled it out of the ground it was small enough to put in my pocket, so I put it in my pocket. Since it looked high tech, we might be able to sell it for something later. Still, it didn’t look like it could be used for much.
As we were on the road to the valley the merchant had shown us on the map I said, “I hope Zaglis is all right. There are so many strange things happening on this island, he could be in trouble.”
Lojals agreed, “I hope he’s all right, too. I wish we had stayed together.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about that now,” said Laimigs. “We just have to keep going.”
Uzticam muttered to himself, “I wonder how much money I really have in here?” and started trying to count his money.
Our horses walked along slowly and we got closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer… to the valley.
Chapter 6: Weird Help
Because we had already been captured once at the Capital, we decided to be more cautious and scope out the valley before going in. We crept out on a stone ledge and saw that the valley was a darker green than all the surrounding grass; it was shaped kind of like a circle. To the north side of the valley, there were a bunch of mountains. To the west side of the valley, there was an ocean. Looking a little bit farther south we saw a giant bridge that was breaking apart. It was guarded by a knight in black armor wielding a thirty-story tall sword. He was also wielding a mace the size of a biggish small island.
“Hope we never meet him,” said Lojals.
“Which Him? Him the guy that we’re looking for? Or Him as in the Black Knight?” I asked.
Just then, Laimigs notices a squoishomellow squad (we would soon learn that was their name) of four flying animals rocking back and forth through the air.
The squoishomellow squad said, “Oh look, there are some humans down there.”
“Let’s go down and say hello.” said the flying shark.
“Yeah! Maybe they need help. It seems like they’re hiding from something?” said the small shark.
The octopus said, “Or maybe they’re looking for something. Humans are always looking for something.”
“It’s been two nanoseconds since we helped someone, let’s go down and see what they need.” said the big blue shark.
So they flew down to us.
“Please don’t hurt us!” said Uzticams. “We aren’t here to harm anything.”
“They seem friendly enough,” said Laimigs.
“Yes, we are friendly and I’m Charles,” said the bear. Then the four animals said together, “We are friendly! And we’re the Squoishomellow Squad. You seem ever so slightly disoriented. Is there anything we can help with?”
“Oh yes,” Laimigs said. “We are—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “We just met them a few seconds ago. This could be a trap. How do we know we can trust you.”
“Because we’re the Squoishomellow Squad and we’re friendly!” the animals said in unison.
“So…that’s all the proof you have?” Lojals said. “We need a bit more than that.”
“But being part of the Squoishomellow Squad means you need to take a vow to be nice for all eternity.” Before Lojals could answer the octopus said, “Oh yes, and where are our manners? I’m Bob.
The small shark said, “I’m Gordon and this is Felix.” as he pointed to a big blue shark.
Felix said in a funny-serious voice, “And I carry them around from place to place.”
“And I’ll introduce myself again,” said the Bear, “I’m Charles.”
In my head I thought ok, if they really are as helpful and kind as they seem, maybe they can really help us. Plus, if they weren’t nice something bad would probably have happened by now. I looked at Laimigs and he nodded so I said, “We’re looking for where this came from…This type of metal and the signature of it.” I showed them our artifact.
“Yes I think we can help you,” said Bob. “We have seen a lot of that signature and this type of metal in the area.”
Lojals answered, “Yes, we’ve heard. That’s why we’re here.”
“And, there’s also a secret entrance underneath that green tarp,” Gordon said.
“Where?” I said. I looked closer at the grass on the valley floor and saw that in fact, it was not native to this area because it seemed unnatural.
“Where?” Lojals asked.
“The edges, all of the edges can be lifted up” said Felix. “We see a lot of activity or robots taking equipment in and out.”
In a hurry we paid them with a banana and some money and started running toward the nearest edge.
As we ran away I overheard Bob say, “Wow, they have a banana! Sometimes humans can be very nice… and sometimes humans can be very mean. I hope they’ll be ok.”
I hoped so, too…
When we reached the nearest edge I lifted it up. Sure enough, I could see there were stairways on all four sides of an oval excavated in the ground, leading down to a building that had a high tech steampunk theme. We started going down the stairs, and as we went down we heard clanking and clicking. Then: all the noise ceased and we saw Zaglis poke his head out of one of the many rooms of this giant monstrosity underneath the tarp.
We rushed toward Zaglis and said, “How are you doing? How did you get down here? Are you ok? We were worried? What’s going on? Are you investigating Him too?”
Zaglis replied, “No…because I AM him.”
I felt stunned by surprise. I couldn’t believe it. I had never imagined Zaglis would be Him. I looked over and each of my friends was frozen with their mouth wide open and their eyes like big circles.”
While we stood there in shock Zaglis slapped down a button that said: “Emergency! World Restart.” In bold red letters on a note attached to the button it said: “If in the world when restart happens, you’ll get deleted.”
Chapter 7: It Mostly Unfolds
Zaglis dashed back inside the room he had come out of and we sprinted to wherever he was going to seize him. We ended up in a giant room filled with robots and one giant robot suit called a Mek, it looked like the one from one of the many video games at home. Zaglis climbed into it and seemed to be searching for something. The Mek looked just as the mayor had described it: Like a bit robot person.
We looked at each other in shock. This confirmed that Zaglis was Him.
Lojals said, “I think there’s a countdown.” We strained our ears through all the ruckus Zaglis was making and sure enough, we heard a cold voice say, “Four minutes and forty-three seconds until World Restart. Four minutes and forty-two seconds until World Restart…”
Zaglis was shouting something about how his transporter was lost. Then he looked at me and noticed the shiny metal object that I had picked up earlier poking out of my pocket. He shouted to his robots, “Seize Stastitajs! He has my transporter!”
All the robots in the laboratory started to rush toward me. “Laimigs, Uzticams, Lojals! A little help here!” I shouted.
Because of his happy world, Laimigs could not understand this kind of betrayal by his friend Zaglis and was in a shocked state. If an explosion could come out of people’s heads when they are surprised, a nuke would have come from Laimigs’.
Lojals was in a confused state because he wanted to be on both sides. He had always been very loyal to Zaglis, but since being betrayed by him, he did not know how to respond. He asked Zaglis, “Did you know that we would end up here?”
“Yes!” said Zaglis. “I was the one who told you to do the wrong wirings. I was the one who reprogrammed the Epaper to have the wrong directions. I was the one who is going to destroy you all!” he laughed maniacally.
Lojals said, “Then we shall stop you!” He started attacking Zaglis. The robots saw the commotion of Lojals attacking their master and decided that was a bigger priority than getting the transporter.
Uzticams decided to take what was left of the money and use one of the coins to hack one of the robots that were going to save its master. He tinkered with the robot until both its arms and head fell off. He used one of his arms as a vice grip and the head as ammunition to hit other robots.
I grabbed the other arm and started helping Uzticams defeat the robot army. Lojals said, “Use the transporter! Get us out of here!”
This reminded the robots about the transporter and they again turned toward me. Laimigs was still in his confused state but snapped out of it just in time. He summoned a banana from his Ring O Plenty and threw it on the ground. All the robots slipped on it and broke their Central Processing Units (CPUs). He defeated the entire robot army with one banana!
“Why did you do this?” asked Lojals.
“Because you were trying to hurt me!” said Zaglis.
The countdown clock said, “One minute until World Restart.”
“We would never do such a thing!” said Laimigs.
“Shut up, Lame-Eggs,” said Zaglis.
“But that’s the truth,” I said. “We weren’t planning to do anything bad to you. We just wanted to have fun.”
“Lies!” shouted Zaglis. “My master has eyes and ears everywhere. He knows everything. He told me that you were planning to do me harm.”
“You have a master now?” I asked in surprise. “Who?”
But before he could answer the timer said, “Ten seconds until world restart, nine seconds until world restart, eight seconds until world restart…” I looked up and down the piece of metal and found a button that said, “Hit to go back home.” I decided it was either now or never to use the transporter.
“Four seconds until world restart, three seconds until world restart…”
I instinctively knew that everybody I wanted to transport would have to be touching the transporter. I called out, “Everybody, come here!” They all rushed to the transporter, including Zaglis. Lojals, Uzticams, and Laimigs were the first to get to the transporter. “Sorry Zaglis,” I said. “But you’ve got to pay for your crimes.”
“ I have committed no crimes—”
wwwwWwwwWwwwWWWWrrrrrrrp-p-ppppppOOOOO… We didn’t hear anymore because we were transported back home.
Epilogue: The Dream
I woke up in my bed. Was that adventure I’d just had only a dream? I thought yes, it must be. Zaglis could never be that evil. I got out of bed and went to my friends’ houses. They, too, had had the same weird dream last night. “That’s odd, maybe we all shared the same dream?” I wondered. We decided to go to Zaglis’ house.
When we got there, nobody answered the door. We knocked again. That was strange, Zaglis was usually in a pretty good mood. “That’s odd,” said Lojals. “Maybe he had the same dream as us and he’s in a bad mood because he’s the villain in the dream.”
We decided to play some Spele. We grabbed our BP austinas. I considered the thought that the dream had actually happened to us but I struck off that ridiculous idea as too crazy. But, in my head, I also thought that’s too crazy for me to imagine. Was it real?
I discarded that feeling and went on putting on the BP austinas. I hit the ON button and heard a familiar sound. It was a loud whirring sound. A sound I had heard at the beginning of the dream. The others heard it too. It was coming from all of our BP austinas. Then, I blacked out—again.
To be continued…
Glossary
NAMES
Narrator “I” Stastitajs Map
Friend: lojals (loyal) Stick of Justice
Friend: Uzticams (trusty) Money
Friend: laimigs (happy) Ring O’ Plenty
Fake Friend: zaglis (thief)
Spele (Game)
Please note that the names where all based in Latvian
By the Squoishomellow Squad
Felix, Charles, Bob, and Gordon make up the Squoishomellow squad. They are Squoishomellows that enjoy flying around on Felix’s back. Felix is a giant blue shark. Bob is a turquoise octopus. Charles is a dark blue bear. Last but kind of least and kind of not, Gordon is a small grey shark. The Squoishomellow pledge is to be nice to everyone you meet!
Studio Phillips 