Chapter 73: Captain Fantastic

Pew pew pew, and one final PEW! You finally blast the last of the food mutants! Melvin staggers out of the loading chamber, his glow faded and wavering. “Was that… the last of them?” he asks.

You peer around in every direction, flying your little toothpaste tube around the few remaining teeth. “I think so… man, that was weird.”

Melvin is still panting. “Yes… but was it the weirdest thing we’ve seen today?”

Just then, a small readout on the console says “Mission Accomplished,” and out of a small slot a patch slides out with a picture of smiling teeth wearing berets, and a legend that reads “NO PLAQUE PACK.”

You take the patch, and add it to your collection, saying “no… I think this patch might be the weirdest thing.” Suddenly, you see the Doctor peer down from outside the mouth, saying “Great job! You’ve done it! Now, come on out of there!” The pair of tweezers, now incredibly gigantic, come down and seize the withered and squeezed out S. S. Toothpaste. He places you gently on the dental tray. He turns to the patient. “Well sir, we’ve relieved you of your Snack Attackers, not to mention your Food Mutants, and you even have some teeth left! I would say this was a tremendous success!”

The patient seems angry, but with so few teeth, all he is able to say is “mmbuffummut! Fubbmmmuut teef!” He is exhausted, and the nurse escorts him out. The Doctor turns back to you. “What a tremendous success! I built the old S.S. Toothpaste years ago, in hopes that one day my shrink ray would actually work, but it never did! Who would have guessed that a misfocused enlarging ray could shrink things! This is an incredible discovery!”

You roll your eyes. “Yes, but…” and then you wonder if he can hear you. You open the dome of the ship, and looking up at him, take a deep breath. “Doctor, can you hear me?” you shout.

The doctor is peering at you intently. “Are you saying something? You are too small to hear… just a moment.” He brings down a small microphone, which to you is as big as a house. “Now, shout,” he says.

“Doctor,” you shout, and hear your tiny voice echo over the building’s loudspeaker system. “Now that your patient is cured, can you please enlarge us!”

He nods. “I wish I could. But… you don’t know what an important discovery this is! A working shrink ray combined with an experienced spaceship pilot? This is an opportunity that only comes along once in a lifetime!”

“Great!” Melvin shouts. “Make us normal sized again, and we can talk about it!”

“Oh no,” says the Doctor. “Don’t you see, this is the solution to all my problems! Come, I’ll show you!” He tweezes up the ship, and plops it into a petri dish, along with the microphone, and carries you out of the room, wheeling the misfocused enlarging ray in front of him. After going down many hallways and three elevators, you find yourselves in a large space that reminds you of a docking bay, because in it is a large… Spaceship? Submarine? You aren’t sure.

“What is that?” you shout, and over the loudspeaker it echoes through the hallways of the building.

“This, my friends,” says the doctor proudly, “is the Proteus. When I was young, I saw the movie Fantastic Voyage, where a ship gets shrunken to microscopic size to be injected into a human bloodstream in order to save lives. Making this vision come true has been my dream, and so, I built a life-size working version of it!” He pauses, beaming. “Sadly, though, I could never get my shrink ray to work. Only my enlarging ray! At one point I tried enlarging a patient to be so big that I could inject the full-size ship into them, but it didn’t work.”

“Why not?” Melvin shouts.

“Did you ever try to fill a giant syringe?” He shakes his head. “No, I realized that until I could perfect the shrink ray, the Proteus would have to stay in dry dock.”

“Well, that’s great,” you shout, “You should do more research with your shrink ray. It could save a lot of lives!”

“Yes it could!” says the Doctor excitedly. “Starting with mine!” You and Melvin look at each other.

The Doctor becomes serious. “My body is full of blood clots… probably caused by a… certain virus. It’s why… my skin is so red. I only have hours to live.” You see now how exhausted he looks.

“I thought this would be my last day. However, if I shrink down the Proteus, I can inject you into my body, and you might be able to save my life!”

You and Melvin look at each other. “Is he kidding us?” asks Melvin. You look up at his throbbing red skin and bloodshot eyes. “I don’t think so, Melvin… I think he’s serious.” You shout into the microphone: “It’s kind of crazy, Doc, but we’ll do it!”

“Wonderful!” he says, brightening a little. He fires up his ray, and points it at the Proteus. There is humming, pulsing, and a bright purple glow surrounds the ship, and it shrinks down, down, down, until it disappears from view. The Doctor laughs tiredly but excitedly, and runs over to the shrunken ship, retrieving it with the tweezers. You see him lowering it into your Petri dish from above, and he places it right next to the worn out S.S. Toothpaste. He is wearing his magnifiers again, and he giggles excitedly as he watches you. “Come on,” he says impatiently giggling. “Get in!”

You climb down from the toothpaste tube, and walk over to the Proteus. It’s a really cool looking ship. You open the hatch, and you and Melvin climb inside. Everything gleams – clearly, the Doctor spared no expense building this. You take your place on the white leather captain’s chair, and strap yourself in with black seat belts. The joystick controls are intuitive, and Melvin starts flipping through a manual on a shelf by the ship’s console. The Doctor giggles from above. “You’re going to love it! It’s been equipped with medical technology’s finest laser ray! Oh! But wait…” he says, peering down at you again through his magnifying eyeglasses. “The ship is still too big for an injection… I need to make you just a little bit smaller.” Again he fires up the ray, and there is the briefest flash of purple light. You are now so small you can’t make out anything above you. It’s all vague shapes. You wonder how to talk to the Doctor now that you are away from the microphone, but then you see a radio console in front of you. “Doc, can you hear me?” you ask.

“You’re coming in loud and clear,” he says delightedly.

“What’s our mission?” asks Melvin.

“I have five major blood clots. What you’ll need to do is to pilot through my bloodstream, avoiding hazards, blasting bacteria, until you find your way to a blood clot. When you get there, blast it with your laser. It’s very big, it will take at least a dozen shots to destroy it.”

“Okay,” you say, “Blast bacteria, find the blood clot. Five times. Anything else?”

“Hmm…” Says the doctor. “Yes. If you see any enzymes, blast those. That will release their healing properties.”

“What do they look like?” you ask.

“Kind of like a… big key?” the Doctor explains. “I’m going to fill your dish with fluid, so I can inject it into my bloodstream.” You see him pour something in from above, and suddenly the sub rocks from side to side as you swirl about in the dish. In the distance, you see the now huge S.S. Toothpaste drifting sadly away.

“Doc,” you say, “you might want to get that toothpaste tube out of here – you don’t want that in anyone’s bloodstream.”

You hear him over your radio. “I’m picking it out now with the tweezers.” In the foggy distance, you see the S.S. Toothpaste pulled up and away, and you feel the sloshing caused by the giant tweezers. “Alright,” he says excitedly. “We’re all set. I’m sucking you up into the syringe. Hold on!”

The water around you swirls in all directions, and it gets dark, and then light again. You are glad you are belted in, because it feels like the ship has been doing somersaults. “Are you still there?” asks the Doctor.

“Yes, we’re here,” you reply. “But stop shaking us around! Is there anything else we need to know?”

“No…” says the Doctor. “Oh wait! Yes, yes there is! I don’t know how I forgot this. Whatever you do, don’t hit the artery walls with your ship, it will release dangerous antibodies. Oh, and if you see blood cells, don’t shoot those! It will harm the patient… that is… me!”

Melvin is still studying the manual. “I don’t see blood cells here… what do they look like?”

The doctor pauses, then answers. “Kind of like a lumpy figure eight?”

“Hmm…” says Melvin. “I see that here in the manual, but it says that’s a ‘clotlet.’”

“Argh!” says the Doctor. “That’s a typo! I can’t believe I never fixed that. No, clotlets look like, I don’t know, diagonal french fries. They are indestructible, don’t bother with them. Blood cells look like figure eights, please don’t shoot them.” He gasps. “I need to lie down… I’m nearly critical. You have to get in there. Hold on tight, and good luck!”

Again the water swirls around you, and things go from light to dark, and as the ship’s lights come on automatically, you hear the thump, thump, thump of the Doctor’s heart, and feel it too, as you are swept along through the bloodstream.

“Look, Melvin!” You shout, pointing at dart shaped cells ahead of you. “What are they?”

“Defense cells,” says Melvin. “Good for target practice!” He jumps into the loading chamber. “Fire when ready, Captain!” You press the fire button, and Melvin flies out and blasts a cell.

“Wow!” he says, reappearing in the loading chamber, glowing with excitement. “That really is medical technology’s finest laser ray! Come on, Player, let’s see if we can save the Doctor!”

Place the Fantastic Voyage cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1. Play until you destroy five blood clots. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.