The Mall by Bryant Delafosse Page A

stripes of the east sector had just entered in a rush.   He was scanning from left to right as he stepped deeper into the arcade, stopping suddenly when he spotted Owen.
    The ten-year-old stiffened as its sensors locked on him and glowed bright blue.
    Feeling a burst of rage, he knew somehow that his mother was staring out at him through the eyes of that machine.   She found me, Owen thought in frustrated anger.
    That was when the Di-Lithium Mine went as black as the inspiration for its name.
    “No!” the player bellowed, his screen winking out.   “No way in hell!”
    Owen backed a few steps away in the darkness and felt his heels strike something solid.   He slowly panned from right to left and tried to glimpse some evidence of light, but there was nothing.   If people started trying to reach the exit in the dark all at once, this might be bad.
    “Lights,” someone started to chant and before long everyone had picked it up and began to repeat in like a mantra.   “Lights-Lights-Lights.”
    “Shut your nerd holes,” a rugged adult voice yelled above the din.   “There’s nothing I can do until the emergency lights kick on!”
    “I’m suing this place for the ten dollars in credits I just invested in this game,” someone shrieked in frustration.   “And two million for my pain and suffering!”
    Since Owen had arrived, he’d spent the intervening time watching others play and periodically finding quarters on the floor dropped in a white hot moment of panic before the timer ran out on them and they were forced to start completely over from level one.   (Though most of the newer machines now took only cards, some of the classic games still took hard currency.)
    He’d played Stargate and Joust and had even found a free credit on Frogger.   Once he’d even taken over an on-going game of Gauntlet that a couple of skateboard kids had left behind, but he hadn’t lasted very long on the advanced level they had left him.
    Owen had intended to be back at the theater before the movie let out.   What time had it been the last time he checked his watch, he wondered.   He was never going to hear the end of it.   Not that it mattered.   Lately, she came down on him for breathing.
    He hoped she was panicking now.   It would serve her right after the way she treated him.
    “Hey, kid,” the college student’s voice floated to him out of the darkness.
    “Yeah?”
    Owen felt a hand reach out and tentatively touch him, grab a handful of his shirt, then step past him to the wall.   He heard him loudly patting the wall with the flat of his hand.   “Got it,” the other murmured.   “The exit’s got to be this direction.   C’mon.”
    “Hold on and follow me,” he told Owen.   “We’re getting out of here.”
    After several awkward minutes of bumping and excusing themselves around game consoles and video game zombies, Owen and his guide eventually made it out of the Mine.   As they spilled out into the yellow sector hallway along with a few others, they saw the silent dimly lit artificial city stretched out before them.
    The first thing Owen noticed was the hush that had settled over everything.   The almost constant ambient chatter produced by the scrolling electronic banners strategically posted for maximum exposure across the Mall had ceased, their screens black.   The audaciously lit signs over each store had gone dark and muted.   He could actually hear the echo of human voices calling out in the distance.   One female in particular called out over and over for a “Graham,” with the plaintive urgency of a mother cat.
    The overall effect--like stumbling into the empty street of a normally busy section of a big city—was wholly unnatural.   An unconscious shudder rolled through Owen.
    A single yellow sector Bot led a small group west past the arcade.   He watched as the party split into two as they diverted around another Bot lying on its face in the center of the corridor.   Looking