Game Over

Chapter 19





THERE WAS ONLY one reasonable thing to do to ease my nerves: check in to a luxury hotel.

The Fujiya Hotel, a Western-style hotel dating to 1878, is down in Hakone, a mountain resort town south of Tokyo. Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Lennon, kings of England, and, of course, emperors of Japan—you name a celebrity or VIP from the past couple centuries, and if they visited Japan, chances are they stayed at the Fujiya.

You reach it by bullet train, not a bad hour-long hop out of Tokyo, and then take a switchback train up into the hot spring–studded mountains. It’s inviting and beautiful and classy and just the sort of spot where you can escape from the modern hubbub and luxuriate in true old-world opulence, replete with the most deluxe room service you’ve ever seen.

I placed my order as soon as I got to the room: “Yes, I’d like eight bowls of the Imperial consommé, two dozen orders of the assorted sashimi, seven gratin-of-shrimp with the sole Queen Elizabeth II, eight Chaliapin steaks—actually, better make that nine—and why don’t you throw in twenty orders of shrimp tempura. As for drinks, I’d like two pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice, four liters of Coke, two liters of Sprite, three liters of Pineapple Crush, and some of that fancy sparkling water—what’s it called—Pellegrino? Oh, and dessert. Do you have baked Alaska? Great, how many people does it serve? Yes, in that case, I’d like three of those too. Domo arigato.”

And then—so you don’t think I’m a glutton or anything—I placed another order, only this one happened entirely inside my own head. I materialized Dana, Willy, Joe, and Emma, as well as Mom, Dad, and Pork Chop (aka Brenda, my little sister).

There was a lot of hugging, high-fives, low-fives, jumping on the bed, and general jubilation. And when I told Joe what I’d ordered from room service, he just about went catatonic on me.

“This sure seems festive, Daniel,” said my mom. “What’s going on?”

“Attention, everybody,” I said, standing on the mahogany credenza and waving at Emma to turn down the sound on the Dance Dance Revolution game she and Pork Chop had begun to play on the room’s Wii console.

“As you know, we’re once again faced with what some might think is an insurmountable challenge. Not one, but two Listers are with us in Tokyo, and all signs suggest that they’re about to go critical. What you don’t know is that there may actually be three of them—they appear to have a son.”

“I’m really good with alien kids, you know,” said Joe. “Do you think they ever need a sitter?”

“And,” I continued, ignoring him, “if that weren’t enough, it appears that they might be getting some help from yet another Lister.”

“Another in the top ten?!” demanded Dana, putting down her iPhone and looking at me in disgust. “Which one?!”

“Umm,” I said, coughing out the answer. “Number 1.”

The expressions on their faces ran the emotional spectrum—from Willy’s steely defiance to Mom’s outright queasiness—but as I dropped that bombshell a uniform look of terror appeared.

“Let’s not lose our heads,” I said, forcing a smile. I had one more piece of news that I was quite certain none of them would see coming.

“Does anybody know the date?”

“April twenty-ninth,” said Joe.

“Not that date,” I said as the room began to shake and a noise like thunder filled our ears.