Collision Course [+ Additional Levels]

Level Fourteen - Strange Feelings

Moe stepped away from the coin-op game he had been leaning on, and his hand dropped from his chest. "This is weird," he muttered.

He needed to get some sort of help. He didn't feel dizzy, or lightheaded, which he took as a good sign. Maybe. He was pretty sure that meant that he wasn't going to pass out. Or maybe he already did. This was all too weird for him to be imagining it, though. He needed to figure out what was going on, and set himself straight. He figured that the best place to do that was at a restroom. His plan was to find a faucet, splash water on his face, and try to clear his head. Yeah. Good plan.

He looked around, struggling to see through the darkness. He suddenly started to rethink the efficacy of the plan. How was he going to find the restrooms?

Moe started walking around, resisting the urge to swing his arms out in front of him like he was as blind as a bat. Which, really, he was. As far as he was concerned, this was only happening to him. As a result, he bumped into a lot of things. Most of them people. He stubbed his toes a couple of times too.

"Sorry, excuse me, sorry, coming through, pardon me, sorry," he said, trying to dodge the shadows in the dark room. His breath hissed through his teeth when his hip rammed into something hard, like a corner of something. He couldn't tell if he had run into another arcade game or the edge of one of the picnic tables.

Then he yelped as he stubbed his toe on a particularly unfriendly who-knew-what object. With that, he growled and stopped walking, frustrated. "What is happening here!?" he asked himself exasperatedly, trying to peer through the darkness as if he would find his answer there.

He did.

Ahead in the darkness, Moe saw something. It was a distinct, white flash of light. His eyes widened, and he moved towards it, brushing past people on the way. He kept walking, and then suddenly stopped. The light had only been there for a brief second, and then it had disappeared. He spun around, afraid that he had walked past it. But then another flash to his right proved him wrong. This time, Moe didn't move. He wanted to see if there would be another flash. He didn't have to wait long. The flash appeared again, brighter this time. Whatever it was, it wanted to lead him somewhere.

"I think I'm losing it," he stated aloud.

He had to come to a decision: to follow, or not to follow?

There was another flash.

With a shrug, Moe decided to follow. He might as well. "It's not like I can see anything else," he reasoned out pointedly to himself under his breath. When he made it, there was another flash ahead of him. This continued. There would be a flash, and he would follow it. When he stopped at where it was, there would be another flash somewhere. As he went along, the flashing became faster, so he moved faster to keep up. Chasing the light in the dark made him feel a little bit like he was playing laser tag. No, he felt like a cat, hopelessly drawn to laser point, trying to catch it. Moe had no idea where he was anymore. He knew he was in the same building though; the shoves and bumps from the people around him made sure to remind him of that.

Then, after almost a dozen flashes, something changed.

Moe walked up to the most recent flash, a little breathlessly, and expected to see another one right after. He didn't. He frowned, looking around himself. "Hey, where did―"

He yelped and jumped back in surprise as a flash showed up at his feet.

Moe looked up and saw another white flash light up in front of him. But instead of flashing and disappearing again, it kind of just. . . hovered. And pulsed. He tilted his head as he looked at it, feeling more curious of it than scared or confused. The light then suddenly did something that he least expected; the light darted straight up―and hit his hand.

A startled cry escaped from him, his left arm jerking back. It felt like somebody had punched him. The light latched onto his sleeve, and started to tug. His arm was lifted up out in front of him, and was roughly yanked forward by the light.

"Hey!" he blurted without thinking, barely catching himself before he fell. "What are you doing?"

In the back of his mind, he knew that because this was only happening to him, and nobody else, he probably looked like he was crazy, but he wasn't thinking about that at the moment. All he could think was "How do I get this thing off my arm?" and "Where is this thing taking me?" Though a different thought did quickly flash by, that he probably looked crazy because this was crazy. In fact, he hoped that he looked crazy, so someone might help him wake up out of this crazy―

Suddenly, the light stopped.

After that... a few different things happened right after another.

First, going from a near sprint to a screeching halt threw him off-balance. He stumbled forward, and ran into something with a yelp. A hard something. Moe groaned and staggered upright, groping about with his hands. There was a cool, glass-like surface that faced him, but was slanted. He pulled his hands back to feel another hard surface, but a different texture. This surface faced upward, and he identified a rod sticking out of the surface with a ball around the end.

Second, the light that had been dragging his arm let go, and flew directly in his face, causing him to jerk his head back. After hovering there a couple moments, it disappeared. Poof. Just like that.

And just when he was about to ask "Now what?", the third thing happened.

In a rush, light and sound came back. He blinked a couple times when the lights cranked back up and everything unblurred, and he actually felt his ears pop as the coins, voices, video games, and music returned. Everything was bright, sharp and clear again.

Ouch.

Moe grimaced and clasped his hands over his ears, shutting his eyes, using his elbow to steady himself against what he had landed on. After getting used to his blind-bat-vision and pillow-covered-hearing, everything was too bright and loud. It was a rather rude awakening. He squinted through his lashes, trying to gain his bearings. As he looked down, he found that the rod with a ball on the end that he had found was a joystick in a dashboard. Black arrows outlined in red pointing away from it towards northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest were printed at its base. The smooth glass-like surface that he had felt was the screen.

He closed his eyes again, and felt a heavy knot tie up in his stomach... If he had seriously just hallucinated his way to the space games section of the arcade, he was going to scream. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and, after blinking hard a few times, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the lighting, he looked up at the arcade game to identify it. Where was he? What game was this?

What he saw made him instantly break into a cold sweat. He stumbled back, away from the machine, his breath leaving him. It wasn't Space Invaders. It wasn't Asteroids. It wasn't even Galaga.

It was Q*bert.

"Oh, crap," Moe muttered, rubbing his head. "Now I know I've lost it."