Olympic Mind Games
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About this ebook
It is 2012 - Britain is gripped by Olympic Games fever, the world has a climate crisis, and his twin sister is an Olympic swimming sensation, but 13-year-old Jack Donovan has something much more worrying on his mind. A sinister face from his nightmare has appeared as a game icon on his computer and he is convinced a superior intelligence is responsible. The supposedly simple computer game becomes hypnotic and draws him in, totally. Someone or something is playing mind games. Hiding out in the safest place in the UK - London's Olympic Village - Jack is fighting a force committed to global destruction.
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Book preview
Olympic Mind Games - Robert Ronsson
Olympic Mind Games
by
R o b e r t R o n s s o n
–00–
First published by Robert Ronsson in 2007
This revised edition copyright Robert Ronsson 2011
Published by Robert Ronsson at Smashwords
Cover design by Jacqueline Abromeit,
taken from the original paperback,
ISBN 13: 978-1-906206-15-4 published by
Pen Press, 25 Eastern Place, Brighton BN2 1GJ
e-conversion by Gary Smailes
http://www.bubblecow.net/
To my writing chum Fiona Joseph
and members of Severn Valley Authors.
Thanks for your advice and support.
http://www.robertronsson.co.uk
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
It may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.
If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, please return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
–00–
Contents
About the author
The man with the burnt face
Barbecue summers
Another day in Zombietown
Fame
Game over
Amnugen Corporation
Talking to Audak
Power surges
Audak's new plan
Jack runs away
Olympic Park
Calling Audak
Sophie's swim
Jack discovers fencing
Amnugen in London
Zavorus
Closing ceremony
About the author
From my early days at school, writing was the only thing I was good at. When I grew up I spent my time being good at my job and trying to get on and earn money. I was lucky because my work allowed me to travel all over the world. Writing was always in the background but it was like a hobby I never had time for.
Now, thanks to the support of my family, I’m able to write full-time. I’ve won some prizes in writing competitions and written two novels for adult readers. The third is a work in progress.
I wrote Olympic Mind Games for young readers in 2006 and have brought the story up to date for this e-book version. I have two more adventures about Jack and Sophie Donovan in my head and I would love to write them for you. However, I can only do it if this version finds enough readers. So, if you enjoy this book please tell your friends. If enough people like you buy it and contact me to say they want to read more about Jack and Sophie, I’ll have to write the other adventures, won’t I?
robert@robertronsson.co.uk
–00–
The man with the burnt face
‘Why can't you be more like your sister?’
If Jack had known his mum was in this sort of mood he wouldn't have come down so early.
‘It's a lovely morning; you've got no school ...’
Jack studied the piece of toast he was eating. Any moment his mum would mention Sophie.
‘Look at the time,’ Mrs Donovan said. ‘It's gone eleven and you're only just out of your stinking pit. Sophie's been training for three hours by now.’
‘She's doing what she wants, Mum.’
‘Why can't you find something like that?’
‘You know I hate sports.’
‘More's the pity!’ His mum often used phrases he didn't understand.
Jack had one way out of this – to shift his mum’s focus onto his twin sister. ‘D’you think Sophie will make the British team, Mum?’ he asked, his eyes wide and innocent.
Mrs Donovan stopped fussing round the table and sat down opposite him. ‘Dan thinks so.’ Dan was Sophie's coach. ‘He says, if you're good enough you're old enough.’
‘Thirteen though, Mum. She'd be the youngest Brit ever to make the Olympics.’ Jack had read this on the Web.
‘I don't know.’ Mrs Donovan shrugged. ‘They say Team GB is going to be the biggest ever because the games are in London. Sophie's times are good enough. She’s qualified.’
‘When will they announce it?’ Jack asked it even though he already knew the answer.
‘Some time next week,’ Mrs Donovan said. She frowned. ‘You're OK about it, Jack, aren't you?’
Jack examined his toast even more closely. She'd bring up the twin thing next.
‘It must be difficult being the twin of somebody who's found out she's good at something so early in life.’
Jack took a bite and munched carefully. His mum came round the table and sat next to him. She put an arm round him. He made sure his eyes were fixed on his plate. His mum was wearing one of her scoop-necked tops. She had bought loads of them since getting her boobs done.
‘Don't worry, Jack, there's something you can do well,’ she said. She ruffled his short hair. It stayed in place like a thick-pile carpet. ‘Perhaps, if you didn't spend all your time hunched over your computer, if you got out more, you'd find out what it is.’
He ducked his head out from under his mum's hand. He needed to get away.
Jack didn't notice the unmade bed. Nor did he see his pyjama bottoms. They were on the floor alongside the school trousers he'd taken off a week before. Instead, his eyes went straight to the metal box under his desk. It housed the computer his dad had made for him.
Mr Donovan was a hardware developer and he had been working on something he called Silicon Net technology. No chips, no hard disk. It had a hundred times the memory capacity of normal PCs and, because of something else his dad was working on called Electronic Retrieval, it processed data over twenty times faster. If only his dad could reduce the size of the component parts so it could go into a laptop it would be a real breakthrough in the home computer market. Until then, there were only two of these SN-ER machines in existence, the one his dad was working on and this prototype. Luckily Jack’s dad understood how much into computers he was.
The room seemed to grow bigger when Jack sat down. It had something to do with his height – he was nearly two metres tall already. He always had to show ID to pay half-fare.
He touched a button on his combi to bring the computer and wall-screen to life. His domain appeared on the screen and he checked the counter. ‘Nothing again,’ he said to himself.
At the top of the page, the diagram he had designed pulsed back at him. It was a simple model of the solar system. Alien scanners, if they were out there, were bound to latch on to it. He had put the site together specifically so that any distant life form would respond to his invitation to make contact. He was convinced they were watching but the counter told him his was still the only computer logging on to his site.
Jack's eyes were drawn to the bottom left of the screen. There was a new icon. How could he have missed it?
Somehow, someone had added an icon to his site without triggering the hit counter. That was weird. Weirder still was the icon. It was a strangely coloured man's face. It was exactly the same face Jack had seen in a dream. His hair tingled on the back of his neck. It was the face of a man whose features had been burnt away.
Jack had woken from the nightmare early that morning. In the dream he had been in a dark street under a weird, green light. The air made him feel like he was in a forest but it was actually a town. Jack was alone except for a man in a brown suit who walked towards him. The man shuffled as if he couldn't lift his feet. His face was hollow. Where the flesh should have been prominent – the forehead, the cheeks and the chin – his was sunken. He came up close, threateningly close. He was hissing like a reptile through a slit where his mouth should have been. It looked as if his lips had been burnt beyond use.
Jack felt his skin crawl even as he remembered it. He had felt the man's breath on him and it stank of rotten meat. Jack knew the man was going to hurt him but he couldn't run away. He had to keep looking. The man put his hand out to touch Jack. That was when he woke up.
He had come to sweating, feeling small and very alone. He heard someone moving about. It was Sophie, getting ready for training.
He called out, ‘Soph, is that you?’
She made a shushing noise from the other side of the door.
He needed to talk to someone, to forget the dream. He called out more quietly, ‘Soph, are you okay?’
He could tell from her tread that Sophie had been heading for the bathroom. She popped her head in. Even at this time her cropped, blonde hair was tidy and her blue eyes were clear. ‘What? I'm late for training. This better be good,’ she whispered.
‘I just wanted to say, good luck with training,’ he said lamely.
She shook her head. ‘Are you crazy? It's six o’clock in the morning.’
‘Yeah, well, I want you to get in the team.’
‘Thanks, Bro. That’s really sweet.’
Now he wished he hadn’t called her in. ‘Yeah, but Olympics and in London too.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ Sophie pulled her head out of his room. He heard the words receding down the hall. ‘Just being there – that’s enough for me.’
He rolled over and pulled up the duvet. He was asleep even before Sophie left the house.
His next dream was more like a memory of something that actually happened back when Jack was younger. His father was with him outside in the garden on a clear night and they were studying the stars. Mr Donovan pointed out the constellations and the bright planets and told Jack how Pluto had been demoted from being a planet earlier that year because it was so small. Jack was excited because people were still looking at space anew. That starry night years ago spurred Jack's interest in the solar system and the infinity beyond.
By the time he woke up much later and his mum had talked about Sophie while he was eating his cereal, Jack had forgotten the nightmare face. Now he was staring at the same man’s picture in the corner of the screen. He pressed the key on his combi and moved the cursor until it hovered over the face. He tagged it.
Jack ducked instinctively as the screen burst into life. It formed into a townscape that exploded into the room. It was an animation but he'd never seen anything so real. It was 3D but nothing he had experienced before. The roadway extended from the bottom of the screen and he could almost feel it beneath his feet. The high buildings on either side were so solid he could sense their shadows crossing behind him. He knew, if he could only unglue his eyes from the screen, he would see the strange brick buildings towering on either side. An eerie green light enveloped him.
He was still adjusting to his new surroundings when something stepped out from behind the nearest building and lifted its arm. A beam of light zapped out of the screen and Jack flinched as it exploded in his face. The room was barren and lifeless. The screen showed nothing but his domain page. The icon was there in the corner and seemed to be smiling at him. He looked closer. The slit mouth hadn't changed.
Jack went over what had happened. The thing that had shot him had been there for only a second but he had seen enough to know it was a classic cartoon zombie. It had ragged clothes and staring eyes. Lumps of white flesh dropped off it to reveal putrid insides. It was crude and contrasted with the care which had gone into the detail of the streets and buildings.
‘Hmmm. Zombies that get you. Let's have another look,’ he muttered.
He tagged the icon and was back in the same scene. This time, Jack noticed the barrel of some sort of gun was showing at the bottom of the screen. It was pointing out into the town. Jack moved to his combi but he was too slow. The zombie stepped out and blasted him again. Jack had felt a new vitality in his body when he was inside the strange world and now he felt empty.
‘Right. Some kind of shooting game.’ Jack's brown eyes narrowed. ‘Let's try again. I'll get him this time.’
When the townscape next appeared, Jack's fingers were ready on the combi keys. He touched them so the gun was pointing to where the zombie would step out. When it did, Jack tagged the trigger. A ball of fire shot out and hit the zombie in the chest. He rolled on the floor like a bad actor doing death throes, before shrivelling away to a small pile of ash.
‘Not very sophisticated,’ Jack whispered. ‘What next, I wonder?’
As if in answer, a new box appeared on the screen. It had a set of arrows and two icons, one for feet and one for eyes. ‘OK, I can move, and I can look around.’ Jack was already getting bored by the simplicity of the game. Where was the challenge? As if to answer him the screen flared briefly and