Excerpt
Futureland: The Architect Games
1
Abracadabra
Sunday, May 30, 2049
10:00 a.m.
You ever forget how bright sunlight is? No?
Well, the reminders aren’t fun.
I rubbed a combination of sleep and sunshine out of my eyes. Then I stood up and finally dragged myself out of my room. I heard Uncle Trey snickering just a few feet away.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.” He slurped from his favorite mug--one that said #1 DAD on the front. Uncle Trey always drank out of my dad’s mug when he wasn’t around. He reached out for a dap. I put my hand in his.
“Yow! What was that?” I jumped back and rubbed my palm. My entire hand tin-gled with the aftershock of the vibration. Uncle Trey doubled over laughing.
“High-voltage handshake buzzer. One of my old pranks. Found it under that pile of dirty clothes in my room. Makes meeting new people a shocking experience.”
I rolled my eyes. He kept laughing, then wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“Hey, did you finish recording your thingamajig? I heard you up late last night working on it.”
I nodded. “Mm-hmm. Finished the New York episode of the official Futureland Mysteries video journal. I can’t wait until I can upload them all.”
Uncle Trey smiled. “Wow. Detective. Genius. Streamer. What can’t the kid do?” He tousled my hair. “Hopefully, you can upload your series ASAP. We’re still invisible for now, but I got a feeling that once we come out of hiding, your mom will be okay with you sharing your videos.”
I shuffled over to the counter and poured myself a glass of orange juice. Mom and Dad hadn’t said much about why we’d been cruising on invisibility mode for so long. They talked about it as a break, a chance for a vacation. But secretly, I won-dered if it had anything to do with the Architects. They’d been on my mind. Where are they? What are they planning to do next?
“Uncle Trey. What if . . . what if we just stayed invisible?” I asked.
Uncle Trey let out a laugh and scratched his beard. “That would be something, wouldn’t it? I mean, can you ever remember Futureland being this fun?”
I knew exactly what Uncle Trey meant. Sure, Futureland was fun every day. We brought joy, excitement, wonder, and imagination to the entire world! But since we left New York and dropped the crew off in Atlanta, we’d been having a ball. Just plain old family fun. The only thing missing was my best friend, Dooley. Some-times I’d look to my side, expecting her to be next to me. Her absence was the biggest reminder that things weren’t like old times. No matter how much fun we were having.
Mom and Dad had engaged the invisibility feature on the park as we made our way around the continent. Camping under the stars in Wyoming. Selfies at Niagara Falls in Ontario. Letting the sounds of smooth jazz lead us through the streets of New Orleans. Every single stop had been a different kind of adventure. A break from all the madness we had to deal with since last August. I never wanted it to end, even though I knew it had to.
“Hey, nephew.” Uncle Trey snapped me out of my juice-fueled daydream. “Can you believe the news is still acting like sad puppies because we’re ‘gone’? Every day there’s another story about how great Futureland was. How much they miss it. They didn’t have that energy when the whole world was blaming us!”
I laughed. “Maybe the world needed a break from us just as much as we needed a break from them. As soon as we left, everything changed, like abracadabra.” I snapped my fingers. “But when we come back . . . maybe everything can finally be how it’s supposed to be.”
“Let’s hope so.” Uncle Trey smiled and gave me a fist bump. I think the bump must have activated my memory.
“Uncle Trey!” I shouted. “We forgot about breakfast!”
He grinned. “Why do you think I’m here? I’ll be your personal escort to the tree house this morning. Your parents are waiting. You ready to ride?”
Me and Uncle Trey raced through the halls, pulling and tugging at one another, laughing all the way. When our Jet-Blur pod came into the station, we hopped in and blasted into the sky, soaring high above all the destinies. The living book trees of the Word Locus danced in the breeze. Each of the planets in Galactic Gallery spun on its axis. The digi-water of Future Ring shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow. Our pod swung us wide to the western side of the park and lowered us deep in the rainforest of Future Trek.
Uncle Trey held my hand as we stepped through the jungle. Sunlight broke gently through the canopy and twinkled off the water droplets coating the leaves. When we stopped to wait for the elevator at the base of the tree house, I closed my eyes and listened to the symphony of chirping birds. I breathed in the aroma of the des-tiny--fresh earth, fragrant blossoming flowers, and . . . French toast?!
The elevator let us out at the entrance of the tree house, and I rushed inside to find my parents already standing next to a fully set table.
“Good morning, Cam-Cam!” Mom smiled.
“Right on time, Big Man!” said Dad. “We just set the table.”
I hugged Dad first, and he gave me a big bear squeeze. Mom kissed me on the forehead, like usual, but I didn’t even rub it off this time. I eyed the spread: a stack of Dad’s famous French toast with chocolate chips on the side, eggs, sautéed veg-gies, fresh fruit, yogurt, home fries, veggie sausage, and turkey bacon. Muy deli-cioso.
“Hold hands, everyone. Let’s go around and say what we’re thankful for before we dig in,” said Mom. She took one of my hands and one of Dad’s. Uncle Trey took my other hand.
“I’ll go first,” she started. “I’m thankful for our beautiful family. We have been through so much together. We are strong and resilient. I always believed that--”
“Blah, blah!” interrupted Uncle Trey. “I’m thankful for all this food y’all made, but I’ll be more thankful if I get to eat it sometime today.”
“Trey!” Mom growled. “I ought to whack you.”
“Try it and see what happens.” Uncle Trey stuck his tongue out at Mom. She tried to go after him, but Dad and I held fast to her hands. Dad started speaking to dis-tract Mom.
“As for me--I’m thankful for my amazing wife. I wouldn’t be half the man I am without her. I love you with all my heart, darling.”
Mom’s face softened. “Aww, baby, I love you, too,” she said.
Uncle Trey and I traded glances and held back our laughs. Dad to the rescue, as usual.
“What about you, kid?” Uncle Trey asked. “Best for last.”
I thought hard, wrinkling my brow. “I guess . . . I’m thankful for a lot of things. Mom, Dad, Uncle Trey. My friends. Inaya, Jordan. All the adventures. All the bat-tles that brought us together. Things we overcame, you know? And even though I know we can’t be invisible forever, I’m thankful for this time right now, too. If I’m being honest, there’s only one thing I would change.”
“What’s that, son?” said Dad.
“Well, I just . . . I wish Dooley was here. To be a part of it all, you know?”
Uncle Trey let go of my hand. I watched him turn and rush to the exit of the tree house.
“Uncle Trey? Where ya going?” I called.
“Got something important to handle,” he said.
“Huh? What is it?” I asked.
With one foot out of the door, he turned his face so that I could just see the side of it. He never stopped moving, but he called out over his shoulder as he bounded out of the tree house.
“Abracadabra,” he said, and was out the door.
2
DD
Sunday, May 30, 2049
10:20 a.m.
All right, Cam-Cam, time for some updates. We’ve already talked to Trey about this stuff, so we’re just bringing you up to speed.” Mom wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin and put on her serious face. I gulped down a big bite of French toast, took a swig of water, and folded my hands on the table.
“Okay. I’m listening. What’s up, Mom?”
“As you know, the whole family has been taking a much-needed break from run-ning Futureland. But it’s time to get back to work. In a couple days we will turn off the invisibility feature and reopen the park. Your father and I went over your list of suggestions for our next destination, and we’ve made a selection.”
I smiled wide and my heart did a backflip. “Really?! Where are we going?” My leg bounced under the table so fast I thought it might knock our plates down.
“Haiti,” Dad chimed in. “It fits perfectly with our reappearance plan.”
“Awesome!” I pumped my fist. “That was my first choice!”
“Mm-hmm,” said Dad. “We’ll be back in Atlanta soon to grab your grandma. She’s coming with us for the first couple of weeks for her own vacation. Speaking of which . . .”
“Update number two!” Mom picked up where Dad left off. “We talked it over, and . . . we think it would be a fun idea to have your little crew come with us to Haiti for a couple weeks. After everything we’ve put those kids through, the least we can do is welcome them for a vacation.”
“What do you say, Big Man?” asked Dad. “Do you want your friends to come to Haiti with us?”
“Are you kidding me?!” I sprang out of my chair and jumped all around the tree house. “Grandma Ava and the crew? This is going to be the best trip ever!”
Mom smiled. “We thought you’d like that. I’ll call all the parents after breakfast and get permission. You kids deserve some fun.” Mom’s smile drooped a little and she cleared her throat. She and Dad looked at one another before starting again.
“That brings us to the last update, Cam. And it’s a serious one,” she said.
“I’m ready,” I responded, returning to my seat.
Mom drew in a big breath. “It’s about the Architects.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“You haven’t heard anything from them, right?” Mom asked.
I shook my head.
“We haven’t, either. But your father and I are almost positive they will attack us again. We assume they know how to track us, even if we’re invisible. And there’s still no telling how much of our information they stole.”
“We don’t want to wait around for the next bad thing to happen,” said Dad. “We’ve been thinking about New York a lot. Looking back, it’s easy to see that if we’d listened to you from the beginning, we could have saved Futureland--and everyone else--a lot of trouble.”
“Cam-Cam,” Mom started, “the longer I’ve thought about this, the angrier I’ve be-come. They tried to take everything from us. Our park, our inventions, but most importantly, they tried to separate us from you. They put our baby boy in harm’s way. These Architects . . . they’re not the type of bullies who will give up or get tired. We have to make them stop.”
“Well . . . how do we do that?” I asked, wringing my hands in my lap.
“That’s what we want your help figuring out,” said Dad. “We want to make a plan to reach them before they reach us. You’ve got a great investigative mind. What do you think we should do?”
I knew this moment would come. My nightmares about evil revs, creepy carnivals, and losing Dooley hadn’t stopped. You can’t run from the type of terror that the Architects bring to the world--you have to face it head-on. But it felt good to hear my parents say they wanted to listen to me. We would make a plan. We would beat them together. Like a real team.
Like a real family.
I knit my brow and rubbed my chin. “Hmm. Well, I still have that old corrupted Fu-turewatch,” I said. “We used to get messages from the Architects on it. Maybe we could use it to send them one, too. We could challenge them. Bring them out of hiding,” I said.
Dad stroked his beard. “I wonder what it’ll take to get them to face us straight up and not be sneaky.”
“I think we have to offer them something,” I said. “Something they want. That’s what their last note said. That they had something we need. And we had some-thing they wanted. Maybe we can offer a trade.”
Silence fell over us all as we pondered. They’d taken our data. They’d stolen our revs. They’d even kidnapped some of our people for a short time. The elephant in the room between Mom, Dad, and me was that there was only one thing left that the Architects could want. . . .
Futureland itself. But nobody dared say that out loud.
The door to the tree house flew open and slammed against the wall. Mom, Dad, and I jumped at the sound and whipped around to face the entrance. Uncle Trey stood in the doorway, hands on his knees, huffing and puffing.
“Did we . . . already . . . do updates?” he panted.
“Just finished, slowpoke,” said Mom.
“Got time for one more?” Uncle Trey stepped into the tree house, sweat lining his collar. He cleared his throat and looked right at me.
“Cam, I . . . well, we’ve . . . aww, rats, I’m nervous. Getting my words all jumbled up.” Uncle Trey took a deep breath. “Maybe showing is better than telling.” He turned back toward the open tree house door and called out.
“It’s okay. You can come on in.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes as she walked through the door. My breath caught in my chest. Purple sneakers, blue jeans, a Futureland T-shirt, and two afro-puffs. A star-shaped birthmark right below her left eye.
Just like mine.
I tried to speak but got choked up. My eyes shot from Uncle Trey to Mom to Dad, back to the person who had to be a mirage. There was no way she could be real.
“Dooley?” I squeaked.
“Hi, Cameron. Good to see you,” she said, beaming.
I stood up, then froze. My heart wanted to rush to Dooley and hug her with all my might. But my body was confused. How was this possible? Tears started to flow, and I didn’t even bother to wipe them.
Dooley stepped toward me and extended her hand with a smile. I wrapped both arms around her and squeezed as tight as I could, tears still falling. She hugged me back. Her face was just like I remembered. I never wanted to let go.
