[Galaxy Of Fear] - 04(11)

Danna Fajji grinned. “Oh. I wouldn’t say that.”

As he spoke, the lights went out and Zak was plunged into complete darkness.

“Tash! Deevee!” he called out in fear. “Lando!” There was no answer but a sudden soft sound coming from the floor around him.

Scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch.

“Tash?” he said faintly.

Scratch, scratch.

Zak heard the skitter of tiny feet. Thousands of tiny feet. They scraped along the ground all around him. Something brushed across his foot. Then again, and again.

Scratch, scratch, scratch!

Something crawled up his pant leg. Panicked, Zak tried to brush it away, and felt something soft and hairy and many-legged cling to the back of his hand. Then it started to crawl up his arm.

More of the skittering creatures were crawling up his pant legs. He felt them crawling inside his pant legs and inside his shirtsleeves, pushing their way up his shirt, crawling out from under his collar and scrambling around the back of his neck. Zak wildly thrashed his arms and legs about, trying to get the horrible creatures off him.

He felt something tugging and biting at his hair. Zak opened his mouth to scream, and a dozen hairy legs scrambled past his lips.





CHAPTER 6


Zak stumbled around the pitch-black room, crushing little insect bodies beneath his feet, scratching and pulling at the creatures that covered his body.

“Get off! Get off me!” he cried, spitting the creatures out of his mouth. Using his hands, Zak blindly groped around until he found the wall, then began searching for the door. But it was impossible to concentrate-small, hairy insects were crawling through his hair and across his eyes.

Just when Zak thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, a door opened in the darkness. A wide beam of light poured into the room, and through it stepped Danna Fajji, Baron Administrator of Hologram Fun World.

“End simulation,” Fajji said calmly.

Quicker than lightspeed, the feeling of creepy-crawly legs vanished and the lights went on. Zak looked at the floor, expecting to see bloodstains and the squashed bodies of the creatures he had stepped on, but the floor looked like it had just been polished.

“What-what was that?” Zak gasped.

“That,” Danna Fajji explained, “was a hologram of one of your fears.”

Zak shuddered. “Tash, Lando, did you feel them, too? Little crawling things. They were everywhere.”

Tash shook her head. She looked a little pale. “No-no crawling things. Heights. I was on this tiny ledge, hanging over a bottomless pit. I was just about to fall when the lights came on!”

Lando stroked his mustache thoughtfully. Whatever he had seen, he kept it to himself.

“What is this place?” Zak asked.

“Let us step outside and I’ll tell you,” Danna Fajji replied. As soon as all five of them were outside the building, Fajji proudly announced, “This is The Nightmare Machine. It’s the latest addition to Hologram Fun World.”

“What does it do?” Tash asked. “I mean, besides scare people.”

Fajji laughed. “Nothing! That’s what it does. It’s The Nightmare Machine. Once you enter this room, The Nightmare Machine scans your mind for your greatest fears. Then it shows them to you.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun to me,” Lando said. “Who would pay to be scared?”

“Actually, Master Calrissian,” Deevee answered, “being scared is a popular form of entertainment in many cultures. Humans actually pay to take heart-stopping roller-coaster rides, watch frightening holoprograms, and even read horror stories. It’s quite beyond my capacity.”

“Exactly,” Danna Fajji agreed. “People like to be scared. And this machine takes fright to new heights. It reaches into your brain, pulls out your worst fears, and re-creates them in a hologram.”

“Then… what I saw earlier… with the scientist and The Nightmare Machine creature…” Zak began.

“.. was just The Nightmare Machine doing its job,” Danna Fajji said. “Obviously the image of this scientist represents something scary in your mind, and The Nightmare Machine just made it real.”

“It makes sense,” Tash whispered to her brother. “That is what was on our minds.”

Zak shook his head. “But what I saw earlier was so real. I mean, these little hairy legs in the dark were bad”-he shivered, remembering-“but it wasn’t as realistic as the scientist and the monster and those two kids.”

The baron administrator nodded. “Unfortunately you’re right. The program isn’t always consistent. The Nightmare Machine still has a few bugs to be worked out. That’s why it’s not open to the public yet.”