Chapter 74: Fuel Me Once...

You destroy the fifth blood clot. Your screen reports “ALL CLOTS DESTROYED.” Again you find yourself hurtling through the bloodstream. “Doctor,” you call, “Are you there? Are you alright?”

 Suddenly everything is shaking, like some tremendous earthquake, and you hear coughing over the radio. “Doc, are you okay?” asks Melvin, trying not to bounce around the cockpit. But there is no response. But then, a quiet voice.

“Player… I… think you saved me…”

“That’s great, Doc!” says Melvin as you steer around more defense cells. “Now, how do we get out of here?”

“My… readout says you are near the lacrimal glands… you head there… I’ll do the rest…”

You can see on the control screen a clear path to the gland, and you steer the ship into it. You are seeing fewer blood cells now, everything is clearer and less murky.

“Doc?” asks Melvin. “Where… are we?”

Suddenly, light bursts all around you, and you feel yourself falling, completely weightless. “Hold on!” you shout to Melvin, and you are glad you are strapped in. There is a sudden impact that shakes your ship, but then… everything is quiet and calm. It is nice to have things be so quiet, after the incessant pounding of the Doctor’s...

“Doc! Are you okay? We can’t hear your heart beating?”

Quiet laughter comes over the radio. “Oh, Player, you aren’t in my body any longer.”

You and Melvin look at each other. “What?” you say, “Where are we, then?”

Another quiet chuckle, and a sniff. “You came out through one of my tears, and I caught you in a Petri dish.”

“Doc, are you crying?” asks Melvin.

You hear him laugh and sniff some more. “I’m crying tears of joy! Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Well, sure, Doc,” says Melvin. “We saved your life!”

The calm, quiet voice of the Doctor replies, “You’ve done much more than that… you might have saved the lives of the whole world.”

“What are you talking about?” says Melvin.

The Doctor sighs. “I must apologize for my terrifying appearance, earlier. I wasn’t always a mad doctor, you know. I used to be plain old Julius Jekyll, DDS. But at a dental convention on a strange tropical island, I was infected with terrible viruses. They not only affected my body, but by filling my brain with blood clots, they affected my mind.”

“But what does that have to do with saving the world?” asks an exasperated Melvin.

“Viruses,” he says quietly, “want nothing more than to replicate. The viruses I contracted filled my mind with an insane desire to build virus factories. And so, I did. These four skyscrapers you climbed each house factories that are producing two of the deadliest viruses known to man, and there is no way I can stop them.”

“And… how is that good news?” you ask, trying to stay calm.

“Because although I can’t stop them, you can! They must be battled at the microscopic level!”

Melvin smacks his forehead, not that he has one. “Oh boy, here we go again…”

You feel the ship shaking. “Doc, what’s going on?” you ask.

“I’m going to take you up into the skyscrapers. But first, how’s your fuel?”

You look at the fuel gauges of the Proteus. “Not good, Doc, they’re pointing to E, and I don’t think that stands for electric!”

“Just as I thought,” says the now calm Doctor. “Okay, here’s the plan. The nuclear reactors in buildings 1 and 3 store energy in microcrystals that the virus needs to multiply. If you can raid the power crystal supply, it will fuel you up, while weakening the viruses, and… just maybe, we’ll have a chance of stopping them.”

“And how do we do that?” asks Melvin.

You feel the ship shaking again. The doctor is clearly doing something with the Petri dish. “We’ve reached the power station in the sub-basement that connects all four buildings. I’m going to inject you into the fuel grid. Things will go dark, don’t be alarmed.”

There is more shaking, and things do go dark. But then... glowing purple walls come into focus, and you can see the grid that you are in. It is far from static, with portals gliding in various directions.

“Can you see the grid?” asks the Doctor over the radio.

“Yes, we see it,” you say, but you are interrupted as the control screen lights up. “FUEL GRID DETECTED. ENTERING FUEL GATHERING MODE.” You see and feel the ship changing shape around you. “Doc!” calls Melvin. “Something’s happening!”

You see the ship turning into something that looks less like a submarine, and more like a pair of giant jaws.

“Doc, we’re set of crazy choppers! Are we gonna do more dental work?” asks Melvin.

The calm doctor chuckles. “You make it sound like I’m obsessed with dentistry! No, no, you are just going to gather up some fuel. It should look like little wafers. Think of them like candy bars.”

“I see them!” you respond, steering your munching ship over them, and noting that your fuel tank is slowly filling. “This is going to be…” you were about to say “easy,” but then you see a terrifying sight: a giant whirling smiling face headed right at you.

“The only danger in the fuel grid are the guardians,” says the Doctor. “I hope you don’t run into those.”

You dodge around it, only to see another one, green this time. “Doc, they’re everywhere! What do we do?”

“Oh dear,” he says. “Look for a power booster… it’s sort of like… a vitamin pill. It will make the guardians turn red, and you can attack them.”

“Yow!” says Melvin. “Even filling up the gas tank is deadly around here! Wish us luck, Doc! We’ll get all the power we can!”

“Sounds good,” crackles the still calm voice over the radio. “You keep gathering energy, and I’ll try to activate the repair vessel.”

“What does that look like?” asks Melvin.

“Kind of like… a toothbrush.”

“Doc!” cries Melvin, rolling his eyes. But his aren’t the only eyes that are rolling… another smiley face is headed right at you!

Place the Jawbreaker cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 3. Set difficulty switches to b. Play until you score 20,000 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.