Chapter 35: Space Invaders II

Your screen flashes violently as the final alien ship explodes. But are you really done? Suddenly the screen turns green and says:

STARFLEET TO STATION COMMANDER, WELL DONE!!
THE ALIENS ARE NOW RETREATING!!
NEW RANK IS ADMIRAL

You and Melvin hug each other and shout for joy.

“We did it!” shouts Melvin.

“Yeah..!” you say woozily.

“Wow, you’re so excited, you’re hyperventilating!” says Melvin.

“Yeah…” you say. It’s becoming hard to think straight. You start gasping for air. “Melvin… is… there… oxygen?”

Melvin looks around. “Uh… warp engines, photon launcher, phasor weapon, scanners… um… no…”

“Then… we… might… suffocate…” You are seeing spots now, and think you are going to pass out. “Tell… the Queen… I’m sorry…” you gasp as your vision starts to blur.

Just then, you feel a whoosh, and your “warship” bangs down hard on something, and you bang down too, as you feel the familiar pull of gravity reappear. With a clang and bang, the rear panel of the crate comes off, and with it comes dank, but breathable air. You crawl out of the crate, so glad to be in a place where you can breathe.

Once your vision stops blurring, you look up to see the rolling robot looking down at you. He hits presses a button on his chest with one of his robot arms, and slowly, a piece of curly gray fax paper grinds out of a slot in his belly. He tears it off, and hands it to you. It just reads “NEW RANK IS ADMIRAL.” You take it, still panting, and say, “…Thanks.”

You stand up on wobbly legs, and he leads you over to the teleportation platform. You and Melvin climb up, and as you reach for the red button, you read:

GOODBYE ADMIRAL

YOU SAVED US

You look at the dank spaceport garage room, and the beleaguered “warship,” and shake your head. Not knowing what to do, you and Melvin each salute the robot, not that Melvin has hands, and you push the button, and everything turns white.

When the whiteness fades again, you are back in the grandeur of the Mothership, and again, there is the Administrator, scribbling away at his high desk. There seem to have been some repairs in your absence. Most notably, you see out the massive windows that the huge concrete orange shields above the laser cannon appear to have been replaced.

You call over to the Administrator. “Hey! We did it!” and start to jog across the marble floor to his desk.

He adjusts his glasses with his tail and glances at you briefly, and then returns to his work. But then he does a double take. “Wait! You survived? In the Terran Warship?”

“We sure did!” shouts Melvin. “We blew up every alien in thirty-six quadrants!” He gets a puzzled look on his face, not that he has a face. “You’d think, with quadrants, there’d be four of them, cuz, you know, ‘quad’, but somehow there were thirty-six.” 

You thought that was strange too, but it was hardly the strangest thing you’ve seen today.

“Do you have any documentation?” the Administrator asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure!” says Melvin, and you hold up the curly piece of fax paper that declares you are an admiral. He sends down his little dumbwaiter tray. When it returns to the top, he snatches it up with his tail, and peers at it through his pince-nez. “Admiral?!” he shouts, incredulous. “Why… their ship doesn’t even have an oxygen tank!”

Just then, you notice something disconcerting through the massive glass wall of the Mothership. The giant orange shields that float above the station… are drifting. Maybe they are being moved for… maintenance? But suddenly you hear a familiar and terrifying sound – laser bombs hitting the space station. The whole place shakes and rumbles, as it did when you first arrived.

“In the name of Martin Champion,” the Administrator shouts, “they’ve found us again! How is it possible that they are following us across dimensions?” He looks up at the shields, and his face becomes a mask of terror. “And somehow they’ve destabilized the shield fields!” He starts madly scrambling with both hands and his tail at various knobs and switches at a control panel by his desk.

“Shield field shield field shield field…” says Melvin. “Hey, that’s fun! Try it!”

“Not now, Melvin, come on!” you shout, sprinting towards the airlock door that leads to the Laser Cannon. Melvin tags a long behind, giggling and singing “shield field shield field shield field shield field…”

Place the Space Invaders cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 2, and set both difficulty switches to b. Play until you get 8000 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.