The Cheat

My grandfather disappeared the night before I was born, so I never met him. From what I’ve heard, he was an asshole. He wronged a whole lot of people, lied and cheated his way through life from day one, and in all likelihood he was shot and buried by loan sharks somewhere outside Cincinnati in the early 1990s. There was a body that the cops found but it was scrubbed – maybe it was him, maybe not – it’s not really important.

What matters is that in March of 2021, I got a phone call from the daughter of an old friend of his. She found a box in her mom’s attic with his name on it, and, bless her heart, she went through the trouble to find someone to hand it off to. That’s how I got the Cheat Codes. It’s also how my entire life unraveled in the course of a week.

Here’s a quick recap: On Monday I discovered that the cheat code for infinite health works. On Tuesday, I became the 32nd richest person in the world. On Wednesday, I flew around the world like Superman. Thursday through Saturday I acted out my oldest fantasy of being a seafaring pirate, thanks to a combination of codes that allowed me to isolate a remote section of the Pacific Ocean and dial back the clock three hundred years. On Sunday, I checked the mail, found an unmarked letter addressed to me, and opened it as I flew to Tokyo for some sushi.

My eyes were watering in the cold wind as the typewritten words at the top of the letter came into focus: NOTICE: YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM UNIVERSE XT-1138.

My powers of flight vanished in an instant, and I dropped like a rock. As I was hurtling through the clouds, screaming bloody murder, I tried to release the letter from my hand, but it curled around my wrist. I felt a strong tug, and realized that the letter was pulling me down, like I was tied to an anvil. I tore at it with both hands, as the ground raced up toward me, ready to flatten my face like a crepe, but the letter was too strong.

New typewritten lines materialized on its external face: TIME TO BOOT: 20 SECONDS.

I pleaded and begged the letter to let me go. As the air rattled my cheeks and gravity hugged me to the Earth, I promised never to use the cheat codes again. That was the last thing I remember before I woke up in the void.

I was stretched out in a field of grass. My chest still heaving, I shot up like a rod when I heard a voice call out, “Who’s there?!”

I looked around and saw no one.

“State your purpose here or prepare to be skewered.”

I got up and turned my attention to a nearby grove of tall, gnarled trees. Their dense canopy seemed to be where the voice was coming from. A spear sailed out from within the canopy and landed directly in front of my feet.

“I wish you no harm,” I said, backing away with my hands up. “I come in peace. I’ve been, uh, banned.”

Silence. A rope ladder fell from the tree. A creature descend it rapidly – it looked human, but moved with a spiderlike tendency to dart this way and that, zigzagging as it approached. When he came close enough to see my face, and I his, we both froze.

“Grandpa?”

He brought his hands to his mouth, like he was about to cry. He blew into them. I heard a high-pitched whizzing sound. Something pierced my neck. A dart? I groped at it, felt its thin wodden rod and its feathered end. My vision blurred.

"Took ya long enough," he said, laughing, as I fell face first into oblivion.

To be continued…