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When Alec first glimpsed the shimmering sphere from the corner of his eye, he thought it was probably time for another salt tablet. Or, maybe it was just one of those glowing points of light that he had seen just last Saturday after eating a Big Angel at Pizza Heaven.

Against the backdrop of the sky darkening to a strange yellowish gloaming, Alec’s imagination drifted. He envisioned his escapades there last weekend with Lenore and Jake. Perhaps it was the oppressive heat of the late summer afternoon, but Alec Booner merely shuffled a push broom across the back patio of the Centroid Café as he drifted off into Pizza Heaven musings.
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Alec saw himself, together with Lenore and Jake, all huddled around the Inner Edge, currently the most popular hi-res arcade game in Hawkins Falls. Next, it was his turn. He and Jake climbed into the Distracto Field to duel with the cruel Sarnk from the Inner Edge. The Sarnk was animated by some very sophisticated neural network programming that successfully extracted money from Pizza Heaven denizens. Alec and Jake had already spent most of their pocket money to get to Ring 13, the place where most players throw up their hands in frustration and spicy language. But today, with Lenore’s hearty encouragement, they spent their last twenty credits to confront the crazy Ring 13 world spinning in Sarnk’s Distracto Field.

The "field" was actually a clever, gyroscopic mount for a tumbling, two-seat capsule. Strapped into hard plastic lounges that vibrated at varying intensities, and wearing the latest in real-time holo goggles, Alec and Jake were assaulted by a continuous stream of riddles and puzzles and dynamically generated 3-D images. Disorienting and gaudy visual illusions floated around them wherever they looked. And hanging over all was the malevolent, drooling, hissing sneer of the Sarnk itself.
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