Sonic Championship-Part I: The Newcomers

   I know you won’t believe the story I’m about to tell you, but I’ll tell you anyway.  
First, allow me to introduce myself: the name’s Ryan Carroll, but you can call me Ryan.  
Anyway, my best friend Jason McLaughlin and I were working on a little project that 
seemed metaphysical at best: a device that would transform actual matter into electronic 
information in the form of a 3-D virtual object.

   "You know, Ryan," Jason had said, "you amaze me.  We’ve been working on this thing 
for three months straight with nothing but failures at every turn, and you aren’t one bit 
discouraged."
 
   I had to explain.  "That’s because I discover a new problem to solve with each new 
failure.  If I can fix all the bugs in the program and the Virtualizer itself, we will 
eventually be successful."  Jason had still been skeptical, but only for a few seconds.  
While I was typing and retyping code, Jason was flipping cards into a hat.  The fact that 
he was on one side of the Virtualizer’s door-like portal frame and the hat was on the other 
had something to do with what happened next.  Just as I finished retyping the last line of 
code, the portal frame began glowing and an image that looked like a hologram of a 
whirlpool appeared.  As this had happened with all the failures before, Jason took no 
notice of it.  But as he continued to flip cards, they disappeared halfway through the 
portal and appeared in the virtual object window on the computer screen.  I sat staring at 
the scene, checking to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. They weren’t.  Jason 
noticed my glazed look.

   "What are you staring at?" he inquired.  I called his attention to the screen.

   "You mean..."

   "Exactly."

   Once we had saved the code and uploaded it into the frame’s memory, we wondered 
how to test it on ourselves.  A black nothingness wouldn’t do; we needed an environment 
to travel in.

   "How about that Sonic Championship game in The Hideaway?" Jason suggested.  We 
agreed that that would work out well.

   The Hideaway was a hangout for people who wanted to play games, eat, surf the 
Internet, and just have a good time.  The Sonic Championship game was a rare video 
game because Sega of America had claimed that it was too violent for a Sonic the 
Hedgehog game.  Since we were regulars to the place, the owner decided to give us our 
own key to get in whenever we wanted.

   We got in and locked the doors behind us.  We picked a day that The Hideaway was 
normally closed, to avoid interference from other people who might get a little too 
inquisitive.  I readied the portal while Jason booted up the arcade machine.  When both 
were ready, we walked through the portal.

   The sensation of having all your molecules transformed into electronic information is 
best left undescribed.  Although it wasn’t agonizing, it wasn’t painless, either.  We 
arrived (if you could apply the word to an action as simple as walking through a door) in 
a large hangar.  To our left were two figures backlighted by a huge screen.  To our right 
was a huge spaceship with a small canopy bubble high up near the top.  By their 
silhouettes I recognized the figures at the computer as Sonic himself and Miles Prower, 
better known as Tails.  On the screen was something that looked remotely like the Death 
Star from Star Wars.

   "What the heck is that?" I exclaimed without thinking.

   Both Sonic and Tails whirled around to look at us.  I realized my blunder one second 
too late.  With suspicion, Sonic asked, "Who are you, how did you get here, and why are 
you here?"

   Jason and I were speechless.  We didn’t know how to respond.

   To Be Continued...