Plants vs. Zombies

Chapter 3

Finally, after an hour, Dave came upstairs and told them he was finished. They quickly bolted downstairs and instantly saw their TV displaying a live overhead image of their front lawn, with the house on the left and the street on the right. The lawn itself appeared to be sectioned in squares on a 9X5 grid.

In front of the TV, sitting on a table, was Dave's laptop. To the far left of the screen there was a picture of Peashooter and right below it was a picture of Sunflower. In the direct center was a grid very similar to the one shown on the TV. On the top left corner there was a box with the number '150' in it. It all looked rather interesting.

Finally, also on the table, was Peashooter and Sunflower sitting in flowerpots that looked slightly different than before. These pots had giant red flashing buttons right in front of it.

"Alrighty," Dave told them. "Here's how all this works. Remember that red light I put in the living room?" They all nodded in response.

"Well, I placed one in every room in the house," he continued. "It's a special alarm that activates when zombies are approaching the house. When that alarm goes off, I expect all of us to head to the basement ASAP." He then pointed at the television.

"This is your lawn. As you can see, it's divided up into squares. Each square is big enough to hold only one plant. Now, since you can see your lawn clearly, you can quickly know where to place your plants."

"Makes sense," Alex said, "but how do you plan to plant multiples of the same plant?" Dave just smiled.

"I was getting to that," he replied and then pointed at the plants. "As you can see, these new pots have a button on them. Pressing that button activates a unique microchip already installed on my laptop. The chip then adds that plant's DNA to your inventory shown here on the screen." He then pointed to the pictures of Sunflower and Peashooter on the laptop.

"Here's where the cool part comes in," he continued. "You technically aren't planting the actual plants, but rather clone versions of them!"

"Clones?!" asked Josie. "That's even possible?"

"Hey, why not?" Dave replied. "So anyway, to plant a plant, you simply click on its picture on the inventory. You then simply click on the square on the lawn you wanna place it using the laptop! Observe." He then clicked on the picture of Peashooter. Then he placed the mouse over the middle row, second column from the left.

"Watch the TV," he commanded, and with that, clicked the mouse. Instantly, a Peashooter popped out of the ground in the same spot on the laptop!

"Wow!" gasped Freddy in amazement. "This is actually easier than I thought it would be!"

"Hold on there, boy!" Dave told him. "There's one important thing you need to keep in mind, and that's your sunawatt count!" He then pointed at the box with the '150' in it, but now it read '50'.

"100 sunawatts were spent to plant that Peashooter," Dave explained. "It takes 50 sunawatts to plant a Sunflower, so right now we're good." He then turned to Alex. "Go ahead. Try it!"

Alex then proceeded to walk up to the laptop and click on Sunflower's photo. He then placed the mouse in the middle row, far left column, so that it was directly behind the Peashooter. Then, he clicked the mouse and turned to the screen. Sure enough, a Sunflower popped out of the ground right where he had clicked!

"Now, it takes about 10 seconds as well for Sunflower to spit out sunawatts," Dave continued, "but like I told you, if you have a lot of Sunflowers at once, it shouldn't be a big deal!"

"How many Sunflowers would you recommend having at once?" Josie asked. Dave paused in thought before responding, "At least enough to fill up the back row, so 5." She simply nodded in response.