After the murder, and the complete lack of a police response:
For several days Bernard sat
alone in the upper story of his beach house, lost in an orgy of video games,
cartoons, movies, and TV shows, usually playing simultaneously on various
screens—on the large TVs surrounding the desk, on the laptops, on the desktops and on several models of tablets.
On one: Skipping from shadow to shadow, Ninja King
(Bernard) effortlessly outflanks his enemies and teammates alike with a skill that younger players did not even know possible . . .
On another: “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? . . .”
On yet another: “Caution, speed trap ahead, the police are dropping tire spikes—” This game has been automatically paused. You have a phone call from—
Call ignored.
And another: Pizza Hut, click to order online . . . I’m sorry, we do not deliver in your area.
The wrappers of frozen foods and candy bars began to pile up among empty bottles of Pepsi, half-empty pizza boxes, and cartons from the few distant restaurants Bernard dared order delivery from.
The Evil Iberian King finds himself retreating from the Balkans, but he has a plan; no, in fact the retreat is a ruse, he flanks to the east, attacks at the enemy’s weak point . . .
By the end of the first evening his land-line answering machine had filled up and stopped taking messages, and the voice mail notifications of his various mobile phones were, like their ringers, silenced.
These are not the droids you are looking for," Obi-Wan says to the lead storm trooper. “These are not the droids we’re looking for,” the storm trooper repeats obediently.
Even the trips to the minimart had subsided, then ground to a halt, leaving Limei to wonder what had happened to her new friend, and putting a noticeable dent into the shop’s revenue numbers.
And every once in a while Lester Argyle or one of the other engineers would find Bernard in a video game world somewhere, be it on a World War II battlefield or the other end of an iPhone air hockey game, but as soon as they revealed their identities, Bernard would switch to another screen, another world, another reality in which to lose himself.
The only person able to keep some track of him was Limei across the street, looking up from her kitchen window at the mass of flickering bluish light shining out the windows above.
On another: “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? . . .”
On yet another: “Caution, speed trap ahead, the police are dropping tire spikes—” This game has been automatically paused. You have a phone call from—
Call ignored.
And another: Pizza Hut, click to order online . . . I’m sorry, we do not deliver in your area.
The wrappers of frozen foods and candy bars began to pile up among empty bottles of Pepsi, half-empty pizza boxes, and cartons from the few distant restaurants Bernard dared order delivery from.
The Evil Iberian King finds himself retreating from the Balkans, but he has a plan; no, in fact the retreat is a ruse, he flanks to the east, attacks at the enemy’s weak point . . .
By the end of the first evening his land-line answering machine had filled up and stopped taking messages, and the voice mail notifications of his various mobile phones were, like their ringers, silenced.
These are not the droids you are looking for," Obi-Wan says to the lead storm trooper. “These are not the droids we’re looking for,” the storm trooper repeats obediently.
Even the trips to the minimart had subsided, then ground to a halt, leaving Limei to wonder what had happened to her new friend, and putting a noticeable dent into the shop’s revenue numbers.
And every once in a while Lester Argyle or one of the other engineers would find Bernard in a video game world somewhere, be it on a World War II battlefield or the other end of an iPhone air hockey game, but as soon as they revealed their identities, Bernard would switch to another screen, another world, another reality in which to lose himself.
The only person able to keep some track of him was Limei across the street, looking up from her kitchen window at the mass of flickering bluish light shining out the windows above.
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See also:
A loud bang echoes from the hill, and half a second later an oversize dead body shoots through the air, arms flapping, and splats against the beach house’s upstairs window, smashing the glass, then falls to the street below.
After the murder, and the complete lack of a police response:
Several more days passed, then another week, then another, and still Bernard could not think of work. Even his engineers, the only people in the company who understood him, told Bernard he should leave the studio until the rooftop structure was down and the murder business taken care of.
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Check out early previews of Clouded Ambitions. the coming sequel to Flying the Coop:
Woeful WasteWorld: Within a hundred miles of Transylvania , the zombies were replaced by vampires and occasional werewolves. These new obstacles didn't come in the numbers the zombies had, but if Bernard hadn't been ready (he had already been killed and re-spawned several times), he wouldn't have made it this far. You see, vampires being dead, after all, were not easy to kill—until you learned to buy silver bullets.
It was getting late as Patricia and Chen made their way out of the mall, but Patricia had promised to find some sightseeing for Chen. Walking to their rental car, she took out a list of sights O’Brian had given her, hoping to find somewhere worth stopping on the way back to the Pendrite.
"Wo zhende buliaojie tade zhao ben (I really don’t understand the story),” Guo Shangzhen complained, and judging by the agreeing murmur echoing through the room, his colleagues were equally confused. Oh, the project was intriguing. They were creating rooms and halls, as they would be for any video game project, but the plans called for novel features—audio and temperature sensors, as well as cameras built into the ceilings, the walls, and even the floors in some places.
Read more.
Read more.
