“...” Everyone’s bracelet crackles for a moment, before the voice begins speaking, “Hello everyone, this is your Sky Vista Cruises representative speaking. It is time for an important announcement. Please gather in the ballroom as soon as possible.”
“Trust me, nerds, this announcement is gonna blow the last one out of the water!” He laughs before hanging up.
“O-oh no. I don’t think the last announcement was very good…” Abby shudders.
“I concur, I haven’t been impressed so far at all,” James huffs “Totally derivative stuff, this whole ‘killing game’. Not to mention how amateurish this announcer guy comes across as. He’s totally directionless.”
“Anyway! Koichi and I should go to this meeting, since we are trained in combat!” Raul commands. “Of course if there’s any sign of trouble, we’ll make it back immediately to report! You hear me Koichi!?”
“Y-yes sir! My expertise will be essential to-”
“Quit kissing ass,” Mitzi cuts Koichi off. “We’re all going, you idiots are over-complicating things. If we fight back we’re dead, so let’s just get in and out as quickly as possible.”
Raul blushes. “You’re right! We must all go!”
“Oh, Mitzi! You humbled Raul’s passionate heart!” Circe gushes as everyone begins to make their way to the ballroom.
In the ballroom, the passengers are greeted by Otto, flitting about in front of a stack of what looks like eighteen tablets.
“Oh-ho! There you are!” Otto zooms uncomfortably close to the passengers and leers at them. “What took you so long? My warranty doesn’t last forever, you know!”
V.A.L. says, “Bzzt, time elapsed since initial message: ten minutes and forty-two seconds.”
“Exactly! That’s about ten minutes we could have saved if you all hadn’t been dilly-dallying!” Otto continues, “We at Sky Vista Cruises operate on a very strict schedule! And
that is precisely why we brought you all here today!”
“So you called us all here just so you could complain about your scheduling problems?” Urumi asks.
“No! …Well, yes.” Otto replies, “The point is, our journey can’t continue with all eighteen of you. And our schedule called for someone to get murdered approximately…” Otto trails off, producing a watch from inside his chassis and looking at it. “…right now. And there are eighteen passengers in this room. Do the math.” Otto shakes around erratically. “Do you see the problem here?!”
“Indeed, I do.” James says, “Your game is shoddily run and horribly ineffective.”
“And that is quite excellent, I must say,” Irene says, “We may yet escape before a single incident occurs.”
“Bzzt, calculation,” V.A.L. says, “18 - 18 = 0. Zero passengers have been murdered.”
The room goes silent as everyone stares at V.A.L.
“I was only trying to help, bzzt.”
“Uhh… In any case, we’ll not stand for any more of this boring bon-amie!” Otto flies back over to the stack of tablets. “Allow me to show you.”
Otto passes around the tablets, and soon everyone has one. A few of them press what seems to be the power button, turning it on. The only thing that shows up is a large display in the center of the screen. “23:34”... and then “23:33”... and on down.”
“A c-countdown?” Abby says.
“But… a countdown to what?” Koichi asks.
“Try tapping the screen! That’ll give you a bit of a clue!” Otto explains.
The display changes to show 18 smaller screens, displayed in a six by three array. Tapping on the screens enlarges them. The passengers soon notice that they all seem to feature houses… A huge variety of them, in fact. One is an apartment above a convenience store called “Smiley’s”. Another building looks like it’s in a tropical setting, perhaps in the Caribbean. Others look like they’re showing parts of a mansion or a castle.
Inevitably, the students eyes widen in surprise as they pick out something from among the many screens… Their own place of residence.
Boetius voices everyone’s concerns. “Wh- What… You know where we
live?”
“Yep!” Otto replies, “Not only that, but we also planted a few bombs in those buildings. Remember those countdowns? Once they reach zero, we’ll blow a random one to smithereens!”
Within an instant, the room is filled with a cacophony of enraged or horrified shouts. However, all of the passengers’ enraged reactions are drowned out by the general outcry.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm down guys, it gets better! After one detonation, the countdown starts again… but this time, we’ll blow up two buildings! And that number gets multiplied by two each consecutive time the timer ends… which doesn’t work out evenly, unfortunately… so once two are left, we’ll just blow them up too.”
Kyle’s voice comes in through the bracelets. “Oh, uhh… In case you didn’t pick up on it… that puts the detonation at around eight AM tomorrow. The bad news about that… it’s pretty early, so anyone else who lives there… might still be hanging around. The good news is… that puts the detonation at around eight AM tomorrow. …Wait, what just happened?”
Catching on to the implications of Kyle’s poorly-organized comment, Bryan shouts, “Wh- What? You mean… you’re going to try to kill our families?! Y- You goddamned monsters!”
“Bzzt, calculation,” V.A.L. interjects once again, “18 - 2 = 16. Log2(16) = 4. After four days, all bombs will be detonated.”
“Four days?!” Florian shouts, “That’s barely any time!”
“H- Hold on,” Oscar says, “I- It’ll be fine! M- Maybe the houses will be empty when the bombs go off!”
“Well, you can take that gamble if you want…” Otto says, “But I wouldn’t bet on it. These things are pretty powerful, anyway! They’d have to be to do a decent amount of damage to something as big as a mansion, after all…”
“Wh-What are you getting at?” Abby asks.
“All I’m saying is…” Otto flies over to the pad Abby was looking at and taps one of the smaller screens, pulling up a feed showing an apartment in an urban environment, with numerous people walking or driving on the street below. “…it’s not just your
friends you should be worrying about…”
The message is clear. If the bombs were really as powerful as Otto claimed they were, there was no telling how much damage one would do if it went off in a crowded place.
“N- No way! This is absolutely ridiculous!” Koichi shouts, “I bet they’re just making this up to make someone kill! There’s no way they’ve actually done this, right?”
“Well, you guys can believe that if you want…” Kyle adds, “You’ll find out for sure tomorrow morning, anyway… assuming nothing happens before then, at least.”
“In any case, that’s all for the meeting!” Otto chirps. “I hope you’re all looking forward to the next leg of your journey. Until then, farewell!” Otto flies out of an open window in the back of the ballroom and disappears.
