Sneaky characters

“I’m not sure I like this, Nancy.” Ned, Bess, George and I were gathered in a small storage room next to the Seaver Hall cafeteria, pulling on our last pieces of black clothing.

“Come on, Ned,” I urged, giving my boyfriend a reassuring pat. “We’ve been over this a hundred times. We’ve got the map of the tunnels under the campus, and you got that guest ID from your friend who works for campus security — we’re all set.”

Ned frowned. “I just hope we’re not all set to be caught.” He gulped, then looked at me. “You know midterms are coming up in two weeks, right? This is not the time for me to be caught sneaking into faculty offices.”

“I thought you didn’t have any classes with Professor Frank,” Bess said, twirling her fluffy blond hair up into a messy bun and fixing a black baseball cap over it.

“I don’t,” Ned responded, “but I don’t think that means I’m allowed to break into his office.”

George shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to check the R.H.U. honor code next time we have a chance.”

When Ned shot her a look, she smiled.

“Come on, Ned. We’ll be fine.”

Ned took a deep breath and pulled a R.H.U. student ID out of his pocket. It wasn’t his own ID, but a special ID marked “guest” that security gave visiting professors, potential students, or anyone who wanted to use certain university facilities without actually being enrolled here. With a final glance at us, he walked over to a heavy, locked metal door with a card reader to its right. He flashed the ID in front of the reader, and when it beeped in recognition, opened the door onto a dark stairway leading down.

Silently, Bess, George, and I followed Ned down the dark steps. We each carried a small flashlight, which we flicked on as soon as the door was shut behind us.

“Wow,” Bess breathed, as the four of us arrived at the bottom of the stairs — and a dark, empty tunnel, about ten feet wide and eight feet tall, stretched out in front of us. “How long have these tunnels been here?”

“Since the 1800s,” Ned replied, “when the university was first built. Since then, they’ve been updated to connect to all the new buildings.”

“And they were built to transport food?” I asked, looking around in amazement.

“Mostly,” Ned replied. “They make it easier to move food from the cafeterias to big fancy events. But they also make it easier to set up the events themselves.”

I glanced at George. “Have the map ready?”

“Yes indeed!” George smiled and unfurled a map that Ned had downloaded from a little-known university website. George had highlighted the route from the tunnel we were standing in to the tunnel that ran under the computer science center. According to the map, there was a door that would let us exit from the tunnel into a back corridor near some restrooms — and it should be easily accessible with our “guest” ID.

We walked swiftly through the tunnel, each beaming our flashlights ahead of us. We passed other tunnels connecting to different buildings, and stairways leading up to different points around campus. Every so often, we’d pass odd items stored in the tunnels: stacks of banquet tables or chairs, or the odd bookcase or desk. In the corners and dead ends, dust and cobwebs flourished. But in the main part of the tunnel, where we were traveling, the tunnel was clean and looked relatively well-traveled.

Suddenly, after we’d been walking for about fifteen minutes, Bess froze. “Do you hear that?”

I stopped too, biting my lip. “Hear what?”

But within a few seconds, the sound became clear. It was a rumbling sort of sound, followed by what sounded like the echo of a laugh.

“Are we near a building?” I asked urgently. “Could it be coming from above us?”

George consulted her map. “According to this, we’re about a hundred yards from the nearest building,” she replied. “Although, possibly, it could be coming from outs —”

RRRRRRRR. The sound was suddenly right behind us. We all whirled to face an offshoot of the tunnel we were in about twenty feet back. It sounded like somebody was wheeling a large cart or object right into our path….

I almost shrieked as I felt a hand suddenly grab my shoulder. But I quickly realized it was just Ned, and he was trying to urge us to hide.

“We’re not supposed to be down here,” he whispered urgently. “Students aren’t even supposed to know about these tunnels. I only heard about it from a friend who used to work in food service.”

There was a door to our left — there seemed to be storage closets and electrical breakers scattered throughout the tunnels. Ned tried the handle, and miraculously, it opened. Inside, though, was a dark, creepy, dust-filled closet heaped with cobweb-covered furniture.

RRRRRR. Whoever was coming, they were even closer now.

Ned pushed us and we all dove into the closet.

I sneezed immediately. I couldn’t help it. I was pretty sure I was inhaling fifty years or more worth of dust. But fortunately, the cart or whatever it was made enough noise that I don’t think anyone heard me. Ned pulled the door almost shut, so we had an inch or two to see out. A few seconds later, two janitors passed though, pushing a huge pallet of folding chairs on wheels.

“So then I said, I don’t care how many things you’ve invented, buddy,” the older janitor said to the younger, “you’re going to need an ID if you want to…”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed like they hadn’t seen us or even suspected anyone was there. After a few minutes — giving them enough time to get well ahead of us — we came back out, uselessly trying to brush all the dust off ourselves.

“When do you think that closet was last opened?” Bess asked with a sneeze.

George pointed to her map. “According to this, this part of the tunnels was built in 1934,” she explained. “I’d guess around then.”

Ned glanced around nervously. “Let’s go, girls,” he suggested. “I don’t want any more close calls.”

We made our way through the remainder of the tunnels quickly, and thankfully, we didn’t see or hear anyone else. We had to take a few turns, taking legs of different tunnels leading in different directions, but finally George announced that we were under the computer science center.

She gestured to a small tunnel off to the right that led to a relatively modern-looking staircase. “If we go up there and open the door, we should be in a hallway with a storage closet and a pair of restrooms off the computer lab. Hopefully we won’t run into anybody.”

I nodded, and we all proceeded down the tunnel and up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, Ned swiped his Guest ID through another card reader, and the door opened. We all silently piled out into a surprisingly bright, clean, modern corridor.

“All right,” I whispered. “Now we just need to get to Professor Frank’s office without being seen.”

Unfortunately, it seemed that the corridor we were in led right to the student computer lab. We probably could have passed for students — were it not for the ridiculous all-black costumes we were wearing. (Bess thought they would be “better for sneaking” than regular clothes.)

We crept closer to the lab. Two students were inside, chatting over a state-of-the-art computer.

“I just don’t want to make the wrong decision,” the first student said, a young Indian girl with long, perfectly straight, inky black hair.

“I know,” her cohort agreed, a tall freckled boy about the same age with flaming red hair and glasses. “Your choice here will either impress him, or make you look like you haven’t been listening at all.”

The girl nodded. “It’s just, I’m not sure what would make the most sense….”

George smiled, turning back to us. “They must be working on some really big assignment,” she said.

Just then, a familiar noise came from the computer — the telltale beep that told you you had a message in BetterLife.

“Oh, my God,” the girl said. “I cannot believe he would say that to KafkaLover45! That’s it, she’s breaking up with him. I don’t care about his big plans to open a virtual pet store at the virtual mall.”

I turned to George. “They’re playing BetterLife.”

She sighed. “Well, that’s good for us,” she said, sneaking out into the open a little. “They’re so engrossed in the game, it should be easy for us to slip right by.”

And so it was. The girl and her friend never even glanced up from the screen, where it seemed KafkaLover45’s boyfriend was not taking the breakup well. We easily ran by and ran up the flight of stairs that would lead us to the offices of the computer science department.

It was late, so the upstairs offices were completely empty. George and I easily pointed the way to Professor Frank’s office, where we’d had our unpleasant conversation earlier that day. Bess examined the lock, and after some deliberation, she grabbed a paper clip off the department secretary’s desk and bent it into a long, straight wire.

“That looks pretty high-tech, there,” George teased her.

Bess just smirked. “Not everything has to have a hard drive and a charger, Ms. I-Eat-Computers-for-Breakfast.”

Carefully, she inserted the wire into the lock, wiggled it a few times, and then we heard a click.

“Voila!” Bess whispered with a smile, turning the knob and opening the door to Professor Frank’s office. “Easy as pie.”

“Thanks, guys,” I said, shooting grateful glances at Bess, George, and Ned. “I know I couldn’t have done this without your help.”

Bess smiled, flicking on the light. “I think we’re okay using this, yeah?” she asked. “This whole part of the building seems pretty deserted.”

I nodded. “I think it’s okay, but let’s make this snappy. Divide and conquer! Ned, you take the filing cabinet; Bess, you take the bookshelves; George, you’re on his computer, of course.”

George grinned. “Of course.”

“And I’ll tackle the desk,” I added, allowing George to get by me to get to the computer. “Now let’s get some evidence!”

For a few minutes, we all just dug, each of us searching our appointed location for anything that might give Professor Frank a reason for harassing me or my friends. I was hoping that everyone else was having better luck, because my search of Frank’s desk merely turned up a Dilbert day calendar (almost blank — my guess was that he entered his appointments into the calendar on his computer), a photo of three completely normal-looking children, and some department memos and programming papers, none of which seemed to relate to our case at all.

But then George spoke up. “This is weird,” she observed. I turned to see that she had called up the Internet browser and was on the professor’s BetterLife login page. “It looks like Professor Frank has not one, not two, but eight different avatars on BetterLife.”

“Wow,” Bess murmured. “Well, we know from the lecture that he really likes the program.”

“But the weird thing,” George went on, “is that the avatars are all completely different ages, genders, ‘types’ — and he’s playing in several different worlds. Some we’ve come across in our research the last few weeks, but some I’ve never heard of.” She paused. “Did you know there was a Star Wars fans world on BetterLife? Or a world just for insurance salesmen?”

I frowned. “You’re telling me he has an insurance salesman avatar so he can go online and pretend to be an insurance salesman, among other insurance salesmen?”

George nodded. “But that’s not even the weirdest. He has a thirteen-year-old girl avatar named PrincessF that he uses in the middle school forums. He has a high school avatar too, and several university avatars.” Suddenly she gasped.

“What is it?” I asked, drawing closer to the computer.

“And he has this avatar,” she showed me, leaning back from the computer. I moved closer and gasped.

“Oh my gosh.”

The screen showed a sort of profile of the professor’s most recently-created avatar — GuitarLvr15. The avatar looked exactly like Rebecca’s had, with a blue streak in his hair and punky clothing. The avatar looked just like the barista at Rebecca’s favorite coffee shop that both she and Shannon had been crushing on. It was almost eerie to see him again. Somehow, the professor had gotten all of the details of Rebecca’s creation and re-created him, this time under his control.

“It was him,” I breathed. There could be no question now: The message with my dad’s private files had come from Professor Frank.

“Professor Frank?” a voice suddenly called from the hallway. “Professor Frank? Are you there?”

My friends and I all looked at each other and froze. Who could be looking for Professor Frank this late at night? Wordlessly, Bess clicked off the office light, and we all scrambled for a place to hide — all ending up behind Professor Frank’s huge desk. (There just weren’t many good hiding options in his office.)

“Professor Frank?” the voice called again, drawing closer. I recognized it now as the same girl who’d been breaking up with her BetterLife boyfriend downstairs. “I could really use some advice on what to do now that SoupMan and I are broken up. I was thinking I should start a new avatar, but I wanted to ask you about the Star Wars… ”

She trailed off suddenly, now close outside the office.

“I could have sworn that office light was on,” she muttered, then we heard her turn and walk back down the hall she’d come from. “ Losing it…”

Slowly, after a few seconds, the four of us reanimated. This time we just flicked on our flashlights, though, and didn’t turn on the office light.

“His students come to him for advice on BetterLife?” George asked wonderingly.

“I think we’ve established,” I said, still reeling from the revelation that Professor Frank really was GuitarLvr15, “that he’s kind of obsessed with the game.”

“And there’s more,” Ned added, standing up to grab something from the top of the filing cabinet. “I just found this while you guys were checking him out on BetterLife.”

He handed me a sheet of paper. It was written on BetterLife Inc. stationery; that caught my eye right away. And as I read through the letter, my jaw dropped.

“It’s a letter from Robert Sung,” I whispered to Bess and George, “ thanking him for his recent investment of twenty-five thousand dollars in their subscription-service plan!”

Bess gasped. “No!”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, reading through the rest. “Wow. Well, guys, this is our motive. If Professor Frank was a huge investor in BetterLife, and needs the subscription plan to succeed…”

“…then of course he would want to squash any perceived threats to the brand,” George finished, shaking her head. “Like you, and your questions about security, and your accusations of cyber-bullying. Which explains why he was such a pill to us this afternoon. And why he probably just mimed calling Robert Sung and Jack Crilley to get rid of us.”

I nodded. “Exactly.” I had to admit, it didn’t quite seem real. Professor Frank was clearly GuitarLvr15 — but did that mean he was UrNewReality too? It seemed likely, but something still didn’t compute. Why would he bother using two avatars? Just to throw me off? That was definitely possible. And, I had to admit to myself as I looked over the professor’s scattered belongings, it seemed most likely. “Well,” I said, arranging the professor’s desk items back in their original places. “I guess we’re done here. We can go.”

My friends nodded, also seeming a little stunned by how neatly this had all come together, and began restoring their own areas to look like we’d never been there. Suddenly, the silence was cut by a loud, electronic musical tone. We all jumped.

“Sorry!” George said, sheepishly fishing her PDA out of her pocket. “I didn’t think anyone would call me this late.”

She quickly answered it, silencing the loud ring. “Hello?” she said, looking a little nonplussed, like she expected a telemarketer.

But it clearly wasn’t a telemarketer. Her eyes widened as her caller spoke, and she looked straight at me.

“Oh yes,” she said politely, her expression turning to utter confusion. “I really appreciate your calling me back, Mr. Crilley. ”

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14