Chip's Challenge Level Pack 1 storyline: Difference between revisions

Awareness slowly returned, as a frantic girl's voice cried, "Chip! Where are you?!"

With a crackle of static the speaker shut off. Feeling very alone, Chip turned his attention to the room surrounding him. Two locked doors of differing colors led into the unknown, and there between them lay what must be the promised hint. Gathering his resolve, he went over to read it. His past lay frighteningly shrouded in mystery; but he sensed that answers waited in the Challenge before him. Could he be clever enough and strong enough to solve the puzzles both ahead and behind? There was only one way to find out....

Flushed with success, Chip strutted into the next level, only to find himself trapped in a claustrophobic corridor facing a green door. Just as he began hunting around for the key, the buzz of a hidden loudspeaker announced the return of the voice he had been longing to hear.

With that she was gone. But it seemed to Chip that he could still feel her presence, watching over him; he knew somehow that she would never be far. Encouraged, he turned back to the level at hand. Somewhere there must be a green key....

As he gratefully exited the the blob-infested ballroom, Chip felt a stirring in his memory. A faint recollection began to surface, of another, distant dance, and him, and - Melinda! ''Is that right?'' he thought incredulously. ''Did I really take a girl like her...to a dance?!'' The more of the memory returned, the more sure he became that it had indeed happened, and a glow of pride filled him.

He hurried into the next room, hoping to hear her voice on the loudspeaker. But all that awaited him there was hard, unfeeling static.

Opening the door to the next level, Chip was greeted with a cold blast of air and a warm welcome, from someone who was not Melinda.

As Chip laced up his skates and headed onto the ice, his heart felt a frozen void begin to grow. ''I wish she were here. Here, watching over me.''

Chip approached the next level with dread. He had felt Jude's eyes on him too much in the past several levels. Where Melinda watched over him with concern, offering advice and encouragement, this man's scrutiny was cold, silent and calculating, and it was starting to get on Chip's nerves.

Her confidence filled Chip with determination as he entered the next level. Melinda needed him! And no matter what happened, he would not let her down.

Chip staggered breathlessly off of the endless moving sidewalk, into the corridor leading to the next level. ''I'll do one more before I take a break'', he decided, waiting for the room to stop spinning. But when he had recovered sufficiently to try the door, he was puzzled to find it locked.

"Hey!" Chip called, angry and frightened at once. "You can't keep me here! When Melinda finds out, she'll hack you into submission!" There was no response, and he felt cold inside. ''When Melinda finds out''...but when would that be? For now, it seemed, he had no choice. He would have to attempt to find his way through the flames and ashes of Maximus's domain.

"That's odd," Chip said to himself, groping his way out of the maze of secret passages. "A teeth monster that calls itself a 'frog', and tries to help me, instead of just chasing me? Wonder if I'll ever see anything that bizarre again!"

The answer quickly became clear. Every elevator he now tried took him to a different floor - but each one without an exit! It appeared that Maximus's latest scheme was to trap Chip in a vertiginous maze of up-and-down.

"Ha!" shouted Chip as he walked into the next level. "You thought flipping the walls and floor around would stump me, Maximus? This Challenge is a cakewalk! How about letting me go now?" He waited hopefully, but Maximus did not deign to answer. Resignedly Chip turned to examine the huge room he had entered.

But Chip was determined to prove him wrong.

"I made it!" Chip cheered as he climbed through the hatch of the rocket's crew capsule. He sat down gingerly in the pilot's seat, examining the complex controls in front of him. "Now how do I fly this thing out of here?"

There was no answer, only the roar of the ship as it broke through the clouds into the immensity of space.

Despite the tremendous fun of exploring new worlds and collecting exotic electronics, Chip was beginning to feel uneasy. It had taken him days just to learn how to take the ship off autopilot, and he didn't have a clue how to make it turn around and take him home. He constantly dreaded what might be happening back on Earth. That computerized creep that called himself Maximus had sounded very dangerous, and Melinda didn't have any idea that he was lurking beneath her clubhouse! Chip was the only one who could warn her. He didn't even want to consider the possibility that he might already be too late.

Something seemed to shift in his brain, and hazy recollection directed his feet down a particular road. He wasn't sure what route he was taking. But he knew that eventually, it would bring him back to the Bit Busters Clubhouse - and to Melinda.

As Chip entered the busy lobby of the clubhouse, he stopped dead. Everything around him was so familiar. It pressed at his mind, triggering endless half-memories in a chaotic sea of flashbacks. There - the seat where he had waited to take the IQ test that determined whether he could attempt the club initiation. And there - the now-sealed doors that led to the old clubhouse, where he had proved himself worthy to become a Bit Buster. And there - the spot by some potted plants where Melinda, smiling, pink-cheeked and radiant in a silver gown, had met him for their first date at the e-prom. And there - Melinda herself, turning toward him with the same smile. That smile seemed to reach into his mind and flood it with light, driving out the last shadows of oblivion. He remembered.

"Well," she said with a mysterious smile, "you never know. Goodbye, dear Chip."

Having left the city and successfully crossed the swamp and the diseased forest, Chip found himself before the main aboveground entrance to the Bit Busters' abandoned laboratory. But the portal itself was hidden within a large, sprawling industrial building. Even if he managed to get safely across the creature-infested courtyard, he would need to figure out a route through the twisting corridors inside.

"Hmm, wonder if I'll be able to find any hints along the way," he thought as he started dodging walkers.

The moment Chip stepped into the underground laboratory, the door clanged shut behind him. Even as he swung around to look, he heard the clicking of bolts sliding home, sealing him inside. He wasn't too alarmed, though; he noticed a card-reader slot beside the door, and had faith that Melinda's keycard would let him out. But, he decided, it might be wiser not to play that card too soon.

"This time, Chip McCallahan, there will be no escape."

"Impressive," Maximus noted coldly as Chip emerged into the next room. "Your deductive capabilities exceed my most optimistic estimates. You are solving my puzzles far too quickly; I fear you will interfere with the precise timing of certain plans."

"You'll find out in due time," the computer-voice promised ominously. "Meanwhile, I'm going to slow you down a little. This is the perfect opportunity to test my new time-suspension device. Within this puzzle, your time will flow at half the speed of external time. Let's see how quickly you can solve it now."

With a jolt, Chip's surroundings seemed momentarily to blur as he stepped out of the time-suspension field. "Ha!" he shouted. "Finished already! It wasn't even that hard."

He opened the door cautiously. His gaze was immediately arrested by the row of teeth monsters waiting for him. Their enormous jaws were open, and they looked hungry - but they gave no sign of movement. It was working! Apparently the field generated by his wrist-device was strong enough to stop time completely, for everything caught inside it. Quickly he slipped into the level and began hunting for the exit, amid rows and rooms of eerily frozen creatures.

As Chip left the "impossible" level, the faint humming of the band on his wrist abruptly ceased. Now it felt merely like an ordinary, lifeless plastic wristband. He removed it, somewhat regretfully.

He just had to find the command center!

Chip slowed and frowned as he rounded a corner. Here was something new: an huge doorway filled with an enormous, reinforced steel door. The thing had to weigh tons! And Chip couldn't even begin to count the number of complex locks and bolts that secured it in place.

But what was the purpose of this map? Did it perhaps mark some significant location, the ultimate target of Maximus's plans? He needed to explore it and find out.

He had found it. Chip now knew both Maximus's master plan, and the evil AI's connection to the saboteur among the Bit Busters.

''Not if I can help it!'' Chip promised. He had to get this information to Melinda as quickly as possible. First, however, he needed to find a way back to the surface.

Finally! Daylight! Chip scrambled eagerly out of the elevator, somewhat surprised to find its exterior disguised as a simple metal shed in the middle of a huge wheat field. The scene rang a bell in his memory, but there wasn't time to think about it. The buildings of Chip Grove City were faint in the distance, and he had to get to the cluhouse post haste.

''Oh, not them again'', he thought. He realized it was up to him to stop them. But to make matters more difficult, they were still multiplying from somewhere on board.

Chip and a few other brave passengers finally managed to herd the last of the blobs out through the plane's emergency doors. But while they were checking for any stragglers, they discovered that the nasty creatures had forced open the door to the cockpit and suffocated both pilots. "Does anyone know how to fly this thing?!" Chip shouted desperately.

Suddenly, sparks flew, red lights flashed, and an alarm began ringing. The train shuddered, then began accelerating! Chip realized that he had made a mistake. The train was running out of control!

Chip leaped off the runaway train just in time. As he tumbled down the railroad embankment, he glimpsed the locomotive failing to negotiate a sharp curve. The ear-shattering roar of the subsequent derailment and explosion followed him down the steep hillside and into the water-filled ditch that broke his fall.

Then he noticed where he was. The ditch he had fallen into was actually a storm sewer, and just ahead of him it flowed into a ten-foot-high pipe burrowing through the hill. ''That must empty into San Franchipsco Bay'', he realized. ''It's a perfect shortcut!'' He felt a rush of nervousness at entering that impenetrable blackness, and facing whatever might lurk within it. But for Melinda's sake, he had no choice. Gritting his teeth, he groped his way into the sewers.

The suffocating darkness of the sewers gave way to a vista of sunlight and fresh air. The sparkling waters of San Franchipsco Bay spread out before Chip, and his heart lifted as he breathed deeply of the fresh salt air.

Chip turned red, and stumbled over his goodbye to her. But as she was climbing the bank toward the buildings of San Franchipsco, and he was heading along the docks in search of a ship, his head felt like it might float off his shoulders. It seemed childish now to worry about Melinda's secrets. Her praise inspired him, and he was determined to prove that he deserved it. Whatever it took - he would stop Maximus and save the MystChip.

After navigating the large, complex harbor for a while, Chip finally found a ship that looked large enough to transport him to Isla Mystica. He hoped its crew would take him aboard. "Hello?" he shouted up at the figures moving around on deck. "May I speak with your captain?"

The captain winked. "Th' boys 'as been lookin' for some fun lately. How'd ye like ta play 'Escaped Pris'ner' while yer aboard?!"

The pirates' costumes and accents might be fake, but at least they knew how to sail their replica ship. They reached Isla Mystica in a matter of hours.

As Chip moved warily into the forest, he noticed a strange sound that pervaded the air all around him - an oddly familiar, chomping sound. Then he saw a flash of movement behind a tangle of tree limbs. "Teeth!" he exclaimed. The carnivorous monsters were all around him! Fortunately, though they were trying their best to reach him, the dense forest hindered their movements. ''I'll just have to be careful not to clear the branches too close to them'', Chip told himself.

Chip slowed as he emerged from the jungle of Isla Mystica. The building ahead of him was far larger and more important-looking than any of the trap-filled ruins he had encountered in the forest. Was this it? The secret vault of the Mystical Chip of Epic Coolness? And if so, where were Maximus and his minions? Chip had seen no sign them during his journey from the coast.

Maximus's laughter boomed through the room, mechanical, soulless. "I see your precious Melinda still has not trusted you with all her secrets. You do not know the purpose and power of the MystChip. But I do. And nothing, no one, shall prevent me from obtaining it for my own. I am done with you, human. Attempt to stop me, if you are so foolish. After the trouble you have caused me, I will greatly enjoy watching my servants tear you apart!"

"Gotcha!" Chip exclaimed triumphantly, shoving the block into place. "I know one of Melinda's blocks when I see it. Not even a tank can get through! It's over, Maximus. You can't steal the Mystical Chip of Epic Coolness while stuck in this corner!"

''Oh, no!'' thought Chip. ''How could I be so stupid?!'' Then it hit him. Maximus had let something slip! Looking around for confirmation, he could see that none of the minion tanks were left in the building. So, then, this wasn't the actual vault! That was on the other side of the island! And that was where he had to go.

It was odd. Maximus's minions were well ahead of him, but Chip could still feel the ground quivering slightly, like it had done inside Maximus's bunker. He hoped the island wasn't prone to earthquakes. He also noticed that it seemed to be getting warmer.

"The vault! That must be it!" Chip cheered. "I just have to find a way around this lagoon. Oh, and when I get there, find a way to deal with all those tanks. But after all the practice I've had recently, that should be easy, right?"

Chip had finally made it around the lagoon. But as he had progressed, the air had grown hotter and steamier, and clouds of vapor accompanied him up the slope to the far side of Isla Mystica. The ground was trembling worse than ever, and the once-placid waters at the center of the lagoon were beginning to roil like an enormous stockpot. Chip had a very bad feeling about the tension building around him. He paused on a ridge to look back.

Only one part of the island remained relatively unscathed - the hill ahead of him, crowned by the ancient, temple-like structure that guarded the Mystical Chip of Epic Coolness. But the area between had borne the full brunt of the eruption. It was tangled maze of broken water-channels, burning rivers of lava and walls of smoking rubble. And to reach his goal, he had to get through it somehow.

He had made it! The smoking maw of the newly-risen volcano lay safely behind Chip. He stood, at long last, upon the threshold of the vault containing the Mystical Chip of Epic Coolness. He had passed Maximus's minions buried and broken under flattened trees, and there was now nothing left to stop him. Nothing, that is, except whatever traps the Bit Busters had placed to guard the vault.

He was almost there! He could do this, for Melinda! Pushing away his exhaustion, and the pain of his bruises, he entered the ancient temple.

Running for his life, Chip burst from the door of the ancient temple and dove to one side as the giant boulder rolled over a cliff into the ocean. He stood, panting, and brushed the dirt from his glasses.

Behind, the flames and ashes of Maximus's tomb slowly sank below the horizon, and were gone.

It had been quite an adventure - pursuing Maximus all the way to Isla Mystica, trying to stop him from reaching the Mystical Chip of Epic Coolness, and ultimately seeing both Maximus and the MystChip destroyed in the volcanic eruption that had shattered the island. When Chip disembarked from the ''S.S. Deus Ex Machina'' outside of Chip Grove City, he hoped to be able to relax in the clubhouse while filling Melinda in about all that had happened. He was unpleasantly surprised to see the large, agitated crowd of Bit Busters surrounding the building, seemingly afraid to enter.

After a moment, he broke into a run. If Melinda hadn't come out yet, that probably meant she was Jude's prisoner. The traitor thief had taken her from him, and she needed him more than ever. He had another chance to help her; this time, he must not fail!

Chip moved warily. He was almost to the top level of the clubhouse, and so far he hadn't seen any sign of life. Jude and Melinda had to be up here somewhere!

It seemed that Jude had laid a trap for whoever tried to come after him. He had placed a teeth monster patrolling the far end of the room, armed with a sniper rifle! Getting past it would be no cakewalk, but Chip had to try. He had to save Melinda.

Chip burst into the very last level of the clubhouse, and there they were. Jude stood tall and strong on a ledge near the ceiling, next to a door marked "Helipad", glaring venomously down on Chip. Melinda, handcuffed, stood behind him, looking small and helpless in her pink dress. But her face reflected determination and pride as she saw him. "Chip!" her voice rang out. "I knew you would come for me!"

"Chip!" she said urgently, struggling as she was pulled along. "Jude underestimates you. You're the best puzzle-solver I know! You can do it. I believe in you." She gave him one last, determined look, and was gone.

"Hey, Jude!" Chip yelled, emerging onto the windswept roof of the Bit Busters Clubhouse. The lights of Chip Grove City twinkled in the coming twilight beyond the helipad, where Jude waited tensely with the captive Melinda. Chip had solved the last level in record time, and Jude's helicopter had failed so far to arrive.

Chip couldn't speak, could only nod, embarrassed. They looked outward again as the last rays of the sun disappeared and the stars began to dance across the darkening sky. After all they had been through, it was good just to stand there, feeling the comfort of each other's presence. Chip found himself wondering what the future would bring. He hoped that he and Melinda would have many exciting years, even a lifetime, together, solving the puzzles that were their joy. He hoped he could always be there for her. Even when this latest adventure of theirs had faded into the past, and become no more than a fleeting memory.

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