2

Mason came to with a sharp inhale, blinking against the bright lights of the community centre ceiling. His head throbbed, but the world slowly came back into focus. Beside him, Riley lay on a padded mat, still groaning softly.

Mason pushed himself upright. “Wh… what happened?”

A man in a polo shirt with the PuzzleTech logo knelt beside him. “We experienced a power outage. Whole convention lost power for a split second. It caused a surge and shorted the machine while you were inside.”

Another staff member muttered under his breath, “Darn it… we can’t release this to the public yet. Not with a fault like that. We need to fix the surge handling issue.”

Mason’s eyes widened. “Riley — what happened to Riley?”

“He tried to pull the headpiece off you,” the first man said. “Got caught in the surge. The on site doctors checked him — he’ll be alright. And so are you. See? He’s already waking up.”

Riley groaned and rubbed his temples. 

Before Mason could reach him, a new voice spoke behind him.

“Glad to see you’re both okay.”

Mason turned — and froze.

“You’re… you’re Mr. Melvin Sletch.”

The man smiled, adjusting his glasses. “That’s me.”

“The game designer? The creator of Mr. Puzzles? I’ve been playing your games since I was a toddler!”

“That makes me very happy to hear,” Sletch said warmly. “Glitch aside, what did you think of the new game?”

“It was unreal,” Mason said, excitement bubbling through the headache. “The virtual world felt real — the sun, the wind — and the puzzles were incredible. Like… mind bending.”

Sletch chuckled. “That’s the goal. But this glitch? Yeah, no way we can unveil it to the public yet. Can’t fry our fans, right?”

He laughed, but then his expression shifted — a distant, troubled look, as if a dozen problems were swirling in his mind at once.

“We’ll need to redesign the surge buffer… maybe rewrite the feedback loop… but that’ll take—”

Mason suddenly felt something spark in his mind.

A pattern.

A solution.

Clear as day.

He blurted it out before he even realised he was speaking.

“You don’t need a full redesign. Just add a dual phase current limiter between the neural feedback unit and the main power relay. It’ll isolate the surge before it reaches the visor. Cheap, fast, and you won’t have to rebuild anything.”

Sletch blinked.

The technicians blinked.

Even Mason blinked, before grabbing his head that still throbbing slightly.

“…What?” he whispered to himself.

Sletch stared at him, stunned. “Kid… that’s… actually brilliant. That would work. Why didn’t we think of that?”

Mason had no answer. His brain felt like it was humming — alive, buzzing, overflowing with ideas he didn’t remember learning.

Before he could process it, he heard a groan behind him.

Riley.

Mason rushed over. Riley sat up slowly, holding his head like it was full of bees.

“Riley! Are you alright? I can’t believe you did that.”

Riley gave a weak grin. “Heh… of course I did. You were in trouble. That’s what friends do, right.” 

The rest of the afternoon felt almost normal.

Once the doctors cleared them, Mason and Riley left the community centre and wandered back into Kellidale’s main street. The science fair buzz faded behind them, replaced by the familiar sounds of their town — cars rolling lazily by, kookaburras laughing in the gum trees, and the distant hum of cicadas.

“Mate, that VR thing was wild,” Riley said, stretching his arms. “Still got a headache, though.”

“Yeah,” Mason replied, rubbing his temples. “Same.”

But beneath the headache, his mind felt… different. Sharper. Faster. Like thoughts were lining up before he even asked for them.

He tried to ignore it.

“Arcade?” Riley suggested.

“Arcade,” Mason agreed.

They spent an hour at the Kellidale FunZone, smashing buttons on old fighting games, racing each other in dodgy kart machines, and trying (and failing) to win a plush toy from the claw machine.

Riley groaned as the claw dropped his prize again. “Rigged. Completely rigged.”

Mason laughed. “You say that every time.”

“Because it’s true!”

Everything felt normal. Comfortable. Familiar.

But every now and then, Mason’s brain did something strange — like predicting the arcade machine’s pattern before it happened, or knowing exactly when the claw would slip.

He kept it to himself.

After the arcade, they headed to Sunny Scoops, Kellidale’s tiny ice cream shop. The bell jingled as they stepped inside.

“Two scoops of choc mint,” Riley said immediately — his favourite.

The shopkeeper winced. “Sorry, mate. Supplier’s been late all week. We’re out again.”

Riley’s face fell. “Again? Seriously? Why does this keep happening?”

The shopkeeper sighed. “Our freezer’s too small. We can’t store enough stock, and the supplier only comes once a week. We keep running out.”

Mason blinked.

A solution popped into his head — clean, simple, obvious… but only after his brain rearranged the problem like a puzzle.

“You don’t need a bigger freezer,” Mason said. “Just rotate your flavours based on demand. Keep the top three sellers stocked every day, and cycle the rest weekly. That way you never run out of the popular ones, and you don’t waste space on the slow flavours.”

The shopkeeper stared at him.

Riley stared at him.

Mason stared at himself.

“…Did I say that out loud?”

The shopkeeper’s eyes widened. “That’s… a great idea. Why simple but brilliant?”

Riley shrugged. “Damn! Mason. You just can't shut off that puzzle brain in your head, you are like the Puzzle kid or something.”

But Mason felt a strange flutter in his chest.

That solution hadn’t felt like normal thinking.

It had felt like… instinct.

Riley, meanwhile, just sighed dramatically. “Fine. I’ll get strawberry. But I’m not happy about it.”

The shopkeeper chuckled and scooped the ice cream.

Mason smiled — but something tugged at the back of his mind.

A pattern.

A feeling.

A sense that today had changed something in him.