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It all started when Rita hauled the ancient video game cabinet into the mess hall of the Carte Blanche, the whole of it too shiny and new for something that should have rightly been in a museum.
“Where the hell did you get this?” Juno asks, leaning in close to get a better look at the neon art splashed across the case—newly renovated by the look of it, and meticulously repaired. He can hardly tell how old it really is, though it clearly isn’t something he would have played on as a kid. It’s not even something his mother’s mother’s mother would have used. The thing is probably worth millions to the right collector.
“Oh, you know…” Rita scuffs her shoe against the floor, all faux innocence. “It was just sittin’ around that old warehouse we broke into last week. She would’ve been wasted down there Mistah Steel, all alone in the dark! She deserves better!”
Juno’s muttered “She?” is drowned out by Jet’s voice when he chimes in:
“I helped carry it to the shuttle. I was an accomplice.”
“We were all technically accomplices darling,” Buddy drawls, giving the game cabinet a perfunctory once-over. “We were robbing them after all.”
“I doubt they’ll even miss it,” Nureyev pipes up from across the room, busy preparing a cup of nutrient paste. “The clutter in there was awful. It’s a shock we found what we were actually looking for, nevermind this.”
“I don’t see what the big deal is.” That’s Vespa, leaning forward to frown at the pixelated art lighting up the screen. “It’s just some old junk. Does it even work?”
Rita’s scandalized gasp echoes off the ceiling as she rushes forward to wrap her arms around the machine.
“She’s an antique Miss Vespa! I fixed her up real good too. We can play games on her whenever we want now, watch!”
She demonstrates while the rest of the Carte Blanche crew gathers around with varying levels of interest. It looks to be a standard side-scroller, the player navigating a small spaceship through the perils of virtual space. Ever the expert, Rita easily clears the first three levels before losing her last life, rewarded for her effort with the honor of entering three initials into the High Score screen: RTA.
“They only let you add three,” she explains, with a thoughtful scrunch of her nose that says she’s already figuring out a way to program around that. “If any of you get a high enough score then you can put yours in there too!”
“Fat chance.” Vespa drifts away towards the door. “I’ve got better things to do.”
“I never was a fan of games.” Jet similarly makes himself scarce, Buddy right on his heels.
“I’m not so interested myself,” Nureyev admits. “And what about you, Juno?”
“Definitely not.” Juno loops an arm around Nureyev’s, shooting him a grin. “But I can think of a few other things I’m interested in.”
“Oh?” Nureyev laughs, pressing a kiss to Juno’s temple. “Shall we go back to your room, where you can regale me with the whole list?”
“Gladly.”
***
There are two new entries onto the high score list the next morning.
“I thought you said you had better things to do!” Juno turns from the sight of the number one name—VES—hovering just over JUN in second place. She flashes a sharp-toothed grin at him and raises her coffee mug in salute.
“Didn’t think you were that sore of a loser, Steel. Gonna throw a tantrum about it?”
“Is this why you left early this morning?” Nureyev asks him. Juno feels his face growing hot and raises his mug to his lips just to hide it.
“I obviously wasn’t the only one,” he grumbles, eliciting a cackle from Vespa.
They spend the rest of the day vying for first place, seeing nothing of each other but their initials. Juno sneaks in when he knows Vespa is doing a wellness checkup with Jet, only to come back for lunch and find his score already overtaken. The letters VES taunt him as a blurry old-school rocket blasts across the screen, sharp-edged little 8-bit stars blinking behind it.
“Oh, it’s on,” he growls to himself, slipping another cred into the machine to start a new round.
“I’m afraid I really don’t see the appeal.” Nureyev leans against the cabinet’s side, arms folded as he watches Juno progress through the first level. “This tech is so… crude.”
“It’s more fun than it looks.” Juno curses as a bit of something—an asteroid maybe, or a shot from one of the UFOs flitting around the edges of the field—nicks his spacecraft, costing him a life. “You just really have to concen—”
The sound of a metal door slamming behind him makes him jump, his virtual spacecraft exploding into pixels as it’s hit again.
“Oops.” The voice is Vespa’s and absolutely void of contrition. “What, are you trying to concentrate on something?”
Juno whirls around on her, stomping up so he’s close enough to look brave without being within knife-wielding distance. “Is that where we’re at? You having to cheat to get the best of me?”
“Like I would need to cheat to beat you, Steel. Whose name is at the top right now?”
“That would be mine,” Nureyev says, pleased as anything. He is in fact entering RAN to the scoreboard when Juno and Vespa turn to stare.
“You’re kidding me,” they say in unison, glaring at one another soon as the words leave their mouths.
“You were right,” Nureyev says with a laugh, a sharp lilt to his smile. “It is fun.”
***
The highest score continues creeping ever upwards from there, and the fight to keep the coveted spot grows more cutthroat. Juno locks the door behind him one night to preserve his score until morning, only to find that a certain thief had somehow slipped in, beaten his score, and then left again with the lock still intact. Later on that day, he and Nureyev are both summoned to the med bay for two separate appointments that don’t seem to actually exist while the doctor is mysteriously absent. They find out why, of course, when they rush back to check the highest ranking set of initials.
It should be less surprising then when JET is the top name come evening, the man in question already halfway across the ship before anyone notices.
“It’s a surprisingly nuanced flight simulator,” he says, and that’s when Juno knows they’re in trouble. Jet will wipe the floor with them easily unless they figure out a plan.
“You weren’t supposed to fight over it!” Rita protests, but they don’t seem to hear her, too busy debating the best approach to distracting Jet. Juno suggests a controlled fire somewhere, while Vespa pitches setting up an elaborate goose chase off-ship.
“He’ll buy it more easily if someone goes with him,” Nureyev suggests, earning him a suspicious glare from Vespa and a look of betrayal from Juno.
“Now you’re just trying to get rid of us!”
“It’s nothing personal, my dear detective. Why don’t we all pull straws for the role so it’s fair?”
“Like hell am I trusting you with it.” Vespa starts rummaging through the drawers. “You keep your hands where I can see ‘em. I’ll cut the straws.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Not as far as I can throw you, thief.”
“I’m wounded, truly.”
Rita huffs and makes her way towards Buddy, who is watching the whole affair from a safe distance across the room.
“Could you try gettin’ ‘em to stop?” she asks, leaning back against the same wall Buddy is lounging against. “They might listen to you.”
“Oh, let them go at it.” Buddy’s eyes are twinkling as she watches the three of them bicker. None of them seem to notice when Jet sidles back up to the game at their backs. “A little healthy competition is fun, don’t you think? Maybe I should give it a try.”
“Not you too!”
Buddy’s laugh drowns out Rita’s dismayed sigh as she wanders out of the mess and into the garage, plopping down beside the only member of the Carte Blanche crew who hasn’t been caught up in the mayhem in one way or another.
“The thing is, I know I could mop the floor with ‘em!” She tells the Ruby 7, getting a sympathetic series of whistles in return. “But then they’d just fight harder to beat me. Maybe I could just program the whole scoreboard away… but this old code is real particular. I’d have to move the whole cabinet to do it anyway, and there’s no way they wouldn’t notice. I thought it would be fun bringin’ that old video game onto the ship. At least half as fun as it was gettin’ it all fixed up! But maybe I shouldn’t’ve brought it here at all.”
The next whistle sounds almost like there, there. Rita pats Ruby gently, swearing the car feels warm beneath her touch.
“Thanks. I guess I’ll figure out what to do about it tomorrow.”
***
“What did you do to it?” Vespa growls at Juno. It’s the next morning, bright and early, and the entire crew is crowded around the game cabinet.
“What makes you think I know how to do anything like this?” Juno counters.
“You don’t. But I know somebody you could ask who’d help you out with it, no questions asked.”
Everyone in the room looks at Rita, who quickly puts her hands up in defense.
“I promise it wasn’t me! I would definitely remember programming something like this.” She frowns. “I would, right?”
“It does seem to be working normally,” Nureyev observes, squinting at the screen. “Except…”
Except that the tiny ship in the game is now a shade of bright green that looks suspiciously familiar. And the high score screen is—
“Gone.” Juno groans, staring at the list that previously held the evidence of all their hard work. It’s been replaced with symbols that look kind of like letters, if those letters had been put through some kind of digital shredder. They twitch and glitch out, the shifting shapes and colors rendering them completely illegible.
But weirdest of all is the new Game Over graphic. It’s made up of tiny 8-bit versions of the whole Carte Blanche crew, simplistic in design but too specific to be mistaken for anyone else. Juno’s eyepatch is visible, for example, as is Vespa’s shock of green hair. They stand lined up in a row, arms raising up in unison over their heads as if to cheer the player on.
“I think it’s cute.” Buddy coos over the little cartoon Vespa, wiggling a finger at it while the real Vespa’s face grows red. “Adorable, really. Whoever did this has quite the eye.”
The in-game ship—no longer triangular but rectangular, more land vehicle than spacecraft at a glance—arcs over the pixel crew’s heads as the words Try Again? blink at the bottom of the screen.
“It might be for the best.” Jet watches the display, arms folded over his chest. “Now we can play for the fun of it, rather than the thrill of the win.”
“But the thrill was the fun part!” Juno protests, huffing as Nureyev soothingly pats him on the back.
“I had no idea you were so competitive, Juno.”
“I’m not,” Juno grumbles.
“Maybe I did do it,” Rita says quietly to herself, voice tinged with awe as she stares down at her palms. “Maybe I was sleep programming!”
“Pretty sure that’s not a thing.”
“You don’t know that Mistah Steel!”
Meanwhile in the garage, the Ruby listens to the distant conversation and whistles contentedly to itself about a job well done.