Real
(This short story was written for a fiction writing class at UVA a couple of years ago.)
There were thirteen of us squished into somebody's family minivan driving down 66 West...actually, I really couldn't tell you if we were still on 66. Two people were sitting on either side of me and someone was sitting in my lap. I couldn't see out the window; I couldn't see anything except the back of my friends' heads. But how many times have we been in situations like this before? I can't help to think what would happen if we got in an accident. I would never even see it coming. Then suddenly I'd hear yelling and feel the vehicle rumble and crunch and the people around me fly in all directions. And in the sad aftermath we'd just be labeled as "wild teenage kids," none of us wearing our seatbelts, all of us drinking, stuffing way too many bodies into a minivan that doesn't even fit seven comfortably.
Morbid, I know. I was picking up traces of the conversations around me from these friends and friends of friends and instead chose to isolate myself in my backseat jail and just think. Sort of like how you think right before you fall asleep, when you're lying in bed staring at a shadowed ceiling with nothing else to do but think. Think about yesterday, think about today, and think about tomorrow. This particular situation made me slightly anxious about my present personal safety, but my thoughts scattered when I heard Craig yell something from the driver's seat. Slowly the words trickled back from passenger to passenger: we had arrived. The minivan felt like it was turning into a parking space and stopped. Everyone started to rise up and pour out of the sliding door on the right side. I was one of the last to hop out and see our destination.
Treasurehunt had opened only three weeks earlier. I knew very little about it, but this was a Friday night and usually I have no idea of what's going on anyway. The brick building we were walking towards was about four stories tall and surrounded with several towering pine trees. The only distinguishing features of this four-story brick wall was a single revolving door and a narrow black sign above it that read Treasurehunt Virginia in small white print.
"Somebody got the tickets?" A voice from the back of our group asked.
"Yeah, yeah," Craig the family minivan driver answered. He produced a manila envelope and began handing out cardboard tickets from inside. "I made these reservations like five months ago...which reminds me, Damon and Kelly, you two still haven't paid me back yet."
Kelly and I promised that we would reimburse Craig as soon as we got home. Honestly, I hadn't paid yet because $49.99 seemed a little steep for something I didn't know much about. I had seen the ads on TV. They simply showed flashes of people running around in a forest with an ominous voice-over in the background. "Treasurehunt Virginia: the extreme adventure that's never the same twice." I became intrigued by the idea of an extreme treasure hunt, whatever the hell that meant. Craig had rounded up this group of thirteen and supposedly three more people were meeting us inside. Even Craig seemed like he wasn't entirely sure what this thing was about either. I knew that it sounded fun and different, so instead of staying at home watching three rental videos in a row, I agreed to come along.
We all started to talk about how much we loved revolving doors as we entered the building. A few people spun through it several times, one person tried to hold it shut and another three went in at the same time. Our ages ranged from 16-19, but we were acting like elementary school kids. There was a simple gray desk in a spacious room decorated with plants and aquariums built into several of the walls. I watched a few goldfish swim through my reflection before I heard a woman's voice from behind the desk.
"Dinner or Adventure?" She asked. She wasn't dressed in any cheesy explorer or pirate outfit like I expected. She was wearing a simple blue dress shirt with the same logo as the outdoor Treasurehunt sign on her breast pocket.
"Adventure," Craig smiled as he turned around and faced us, nodding his head. "I like the sound of that." We agreed and wondered what the dinner option meant.
"Name?"
"Singway, party of sixteen," Craig replied. I noticed that the additional three people had joined our party. I must have missed them when I was staring at the aquariums. One of them, a small redheaded girl, looked vaguely familiar. She was probably from one of my past classes in high school, though I wasn't sure about the other two guys. The lady behind the desk was typing something into a computer. She finished and looked up at the sixteen of us.
"I need all of you to sign these waivers," she said, handing out several clipboards with pens and paper attached. Waivers? I skimmed over the fine print and didn't see anything about the consequences of accidental death, so I signed. We finished fairly quickly and handed our completed forms back to the woman.
"Pausley will be your guide," she said after shuffling through our papers. "The briefing room is to your right, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy your adventure."
Another group walked into our places as we walked down the hallway to our right. I overheard them asking about a birthday party package that they had read about in the newspaper.
The hallway ended at a sliding metal door. A man who I assumed was Pausley stood next to it, counting our heads. When I saw him mouth "sixteen", he pressed a button and the metallic door squealed open. We curiously walked inside and sat down around a glass oval-shaped table. I ended up sitting between the redheaded girl and a very excited Craig. The door closed behind us and Pausley sat down at one of the remaining chairs.
"Welcome guys," he said, hands folded and mouth grinning. Pausley was dressed in khaki pants and the same dress shirt as the woman at the desk wore. He seemed college-aged, maybe a little older, looked like he had missed shaving this morning. Wisps of short sandy blond hair almost curled over his almond eyes. I was sizing everything up: Pausley, this room, this table and these chairs, trying to get a grasp of what I was about to do.
"Treasurehunt is simple. You have two hours to find a specific golden coin hidden somewhere in our playing field. It's entirely up to your group how to go about finding it. You can team up, go solo, or trick others into helping you. At the end of the two hours or before, whoever brings me the medallion will be given half of the total money your group paid today - which is roughly $400, plus 25% of our dinner profits - how that person splits the money up is up to them. They are also eligible to compete in our Treasurehunt Championships, which will be televised on our local networks on March 23."
Reality television. That's the first thing that popped into my head, because I was sick of reality shows like Survivor. Then again, I felt like a contestant after Pausley's last comment. This was a game and there would be winners and losers. I had a one-in-sixteen chance of winning over $400. Pausley continued.
"You agreed in your waivers not to hurt anyone else or destroy any property. If this happens, the treasure hunt is forfeit and your entire group loses their chance to find the medallion. Is that understood?" Everyone murmured something that sounded affirmative.
"Before I take questions, let me tell you about our playing field, what makes Treasurehunt Virginia unique. The field is exactly one square mile. It is entirely surrounded by a solid brick wall, although there are occasional fire exits in case you give up or there is an emergency...you'll be able to see the signs. The field is open-air, so it will be shut down temporarily if there is any sign of lightning. Your group will enter through one of our twelve portals in the central building, and this will also be where you report at the game's end when you hear the buzzer."
My head whirled with all of these rules and restrictions. Why couldn't we just play the game? I didn't think that Pausley was doing a very good job of explaining how this thing worked; this was getting too technical. I knew I was going to be let loose in some forest terrain to find a gold medallion - what more explaining did there need to be? Then I started to wonder about how something like this could possibly pass state safety regulations. What if someone gets lost or injured? Are they watching us at all times? How could they?
"The playing field changes every week. The location of the treasure changes every day. There is no advantage to having played the game before except for strategic matters. There are secret passageways. There are hidden clues. There are puzzles. There are strange structures built everywhere. It's up to you to unlock the secrets of today's playing field to find the medallion. Okay? Everybody understand? Any questions?"
"What do you mean by strange structures?" my friend Robert asked, raising his hand while he spoke. "You mean like temples or buildings or something?"
"You'll see," Pausley answered bluntly. Robert frowned and slumped down in his chair.
"Um, if we get lost, do we call for help? Are there maps?" The redheaded girl beside me asked.
"There is a small staff that will be walking around the field," Pausley said. "Ask them if you have a problem or need help. I'd suggest going to the bathroom before playing the game." This got only a few laughs.
"Any more?" Pausley waited for a few seconds. The room seemed excited. Whispers mixed with the sound of feet shuffling. "Then I'll give you all five minutes to talk amongst yourselves and strategize." He opened and walked out of the single doorway, which shut its metal doors behind him. The room shook a little and buzzed a continuous deep bass tone.
A few random comments shot out before Craig, the student government president and therefore the natural choice for a leader, shared his thoughts.
"Every man for himself. If we create teams, someone's going to complain about how they're unfair. And there's no way I'm splitting the $400 up with any people following me doing nothing when I find the treasure." This arrogance got a loud, equally arrogant reaction. Everyone was claiming how he or she would find the treasure first. Then we started to make fun of Kelly because she thought that Pausley was cute. This discussion was pointless. How were a bunch of teenagers supposed to strategize over something they had never seen before? When Pausley returned, all of us were quiet and overly ready to start the adventure.
The room had somehow moved. The doors opened into a forest with the trees blocking out most of the daylight. Pausley wished us good luck and told us to remember our starting point. The doors shut one last time with Pausley behind them. The sixteen of us were alone.
"How are we supposed to find a coin in all of this mess?" One of Craig's friends yelled, motioning to the dozens of huge trees in front of us. "How big is it anyway?"
"You'll know it when you see it," Craig suggested. "What the..."
Craig was looking up the trunk of one of the trees. I couldn't see much through the thickly leafed branches, but it looked like there was some sort of treehouse starting at about two stories high. Everyone was crowded around the tree, forgetting about the pact against teaming up. Craig noticed this too.
"This one's mine, find your own," he boomed, grabbing a lower branch to start his ascent.
I wanted to just run away from everyone and explore somewhere by myself. I ran away from the safe perimeter of the brick wall and towards what I guessed was the center of the field. I heard people shouting my name behind me, but the voices slowly trailed off as I passed all sorts of similar tree trunks. I saw a staff member walking around from a distance and waved. He didn't wave back. I picked up my pace.
From a distance I could tell that my section of he forest emptied into a small grassy clearing with something shadowy plunked into the middle. As I got closer and closer I realized that it was some sort of circular spaceship, a stereotypical UFO, halfway buried in the ground and tipped on its side. White sprays of steam hissed from pipes running out of its underside. They built a crash-landed UFO in the middle of this arena. Insane. It looked sleek and metallic but felt like something harder, probably better for longevity in the outside weather. From the moment I laid my eyes on it, I knew I had to go search inside.
The UFO looked like a large gray plate covering a shiny black bowl, slanted sideways so it was about eight times my own height. There were several creases that looked like they could be doors; I wondered if the staff locked certain ones and opened others on different days. Whatever the case, I couldn't pry any open. I hesitated and almost sat down for a second, visibly frustrated. Was this how I was going to spend my two hours, trying to get inside a UFO? There were flashing buttons and slots near some of the doors, so I concluded that I needed a key that I didn't have to get inside. I continued running, back into another patch of forest.
I had completely left the outside world. I was engrossed in this secluded fantasy game and had forgotten about the crowded minivan ride over. That felt a little unsettling. I had just spent five minutes trying to enter a UFO and gave up. Anywhere else, this would have been surreal. I thought I was prepared for anything now.
I ran into a small stream and began to follow it. I heard voices coming from the direction that I was headed in, so I began to walk cautiously and hide behind trees. I made out three male figures walking towards me, so I strayed from the course of the stream and slumped down behind two trees that seemed to twist together at their bases. I peered through a hole in the branches. I was catching the middle of a conversation.
"...and should really go back and check the pirate ship again, guys," one of them said. I recognized him as my friend Robert, but not the other two; they were probably friends of Craig.
"What about underwater? Could something be hidden there?" One of the trio asked. "Are they allowed to do that? I mean, what if someone can't swim?"
"Yeah," Robert agreed, "that's why I don't think there's anything down there. But the pirate ship, we only spent like ten minutes there. Maybe I just didn't spin the wheel right." He stopped in his tracks. "Yeah, I'm sure I didn't. I'm going back."
"Too many people are at the pirate ship now," another teammate pleaded. "Pausley said this thing's a square mile in size. There's probably hundreds of other things."
Robert adjusted his baseball cap slightly. "I guess so. There's something more with the ship, I know it, I know it!" He glanced down at his watch. "We've got an hour and 45 minutes left. We're going back to the ship before this thing ends, okay?" The other two agreed and they started running in the opposite direction of the stream's natural flow.
I soaked all of the new information in. There was a pirate ship floating in some sort of body of water at the end of this stream. That was a guarantee. Robert had teamed up and, even with two other people, had reached a dead end in exploring the ship. I didn't want guarantees. I wanted something different that hadn't been found yet by the rest of the group. I decided against following the stream. I could see pieces of the brick wall hiding behind the trees to my right, so I ran towards it. Coasting alongside the perimeter was probably a safe way to go about exploring the rest of this place.
The brick was pressed up against the sides of the trees, but I immediately noticed windows at the very top above me. There was a couple there behind it, sitting down at a table and talking to each other. The woman sipped a drink and the man fumbled with a piece of silverware. He accidentally dropped his fork or knife or spoon and bent down to pick it up. That's when he noticed me staring up at his fourth story perch. He sat upright and hurriedly tapped the woman, pointing down to me with his other hand. She waved. He waved. They turned their heads towards something in the other direction, then spun back around and waved again. I uncomfortably waved back. They stared in the other direction again.
So this was dinner. I was the entertainment. I was the caged animal. The game suddenly lost its appeal to me. I was lost, thrown into a fake world where strangers watched me in between bites of their meals. I felt awkward. The couple turned their heads the other way again. What were they staring at?
I began climbing a tree. The people seemed to enjoy this, so much that they started calling over some people from other tables. All I could see was pointing and staring behind the window. They would all turn around occasionally to glance at whatever was on the other side. I felt sap ooze between my fingers and drip onto my jeans. Before I reached the top of the tree, I closed my eyes and could feel the viewers' eyes staring through the branches at me. I grasped on a sturdy upper branch and pulled myself up and over it, staring down and realizing how high I was. I was face to face with the people on the other side of the window.
The dinner guests were blocking my view to the other side, so I waved my hand in hopes of making the crowd part. Someone snapped a photo. They slowly got the message and started to move away. Behind them was a huge projected television screen. I was staring at an image of myself.
The number 14 blinked in the bottom right hand corner. My eyes were fixed on my projected eyes looking back at me. After about fifteen seconds, the screen switched to the redheaded girl and her two friends climbing up what appeared to be a fake dormant volcano. The numbers 2, 7 and 13 blinked in the corner. We were numbers. The redhead reached the edge of the volcano opening and peered over the edge. The camera angle switched to an overhead shot. She was looking into a pitch black hole with a ladder leaning against the rim as the sole means of descent. Ghostly manufactured steam rose from the uncertain depths. The redhead was about to climb down the ladder when the scene switched to #5, Craig, inside a warehouse filled with boxes. A necklace with a key hung around outside of his shirt, and he was holding and examining a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.
The crowd reclaimed their positions blocking the screen. I instinctively turned away from them and realized that I had an elevated view of the playing field. I could see the brick wall stretching above the trees far into the distance. I could see the outlines of a castle, a suburban neighborhood, a pyramid and a few miniature mountains peeking out from the trees. A waterfall could be heard crashing down somewhere. I saw windows expanding all across the brick wall and could even make out some faces pressed against the glass, watching us.
I had forgotten about the treasure, to tell you the truth. I thought about how this would undoubtedly expand to Treasurehunt Florida and Treasurehunt Arizona and maybe eventually Treasurehunt Tokyo. They would make a fortune.
When the branch broke from under me, I was sure this synthetic world would save me. A trampoline would pop out of the wall, a net would shoot out of the tree trunk, or a person would be at the bottom to catch me. Surely they were prepared for this. Surely they would save someone drowning in the pirate ship lake, or the redhead if she slipped into the volcano.
My face smashed into the branch below me and I fell straight down, breaking through branches as I hit them and hearing the bones in my left arm and possibly my spinal cord snap. I hit the ground on my back, staring up at the debris falling down on top of me. Immediately a loud buzzer screamed from all directions. I closed my eyes, with nothing else to do but think. Reality entertainment had claimed its first victim. I managed to cough out a subtle laugh, remembering how paranoid I had been earlier while stuffed in the minivan. As I heard a rush of feet crunching leaves and getting progressively closer, I realized that I had no idea what was reality anymore.
Wednesday, July 23 at 8:27 AM
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