Another failure. Damnation.
This one was actually quite the spectacular failure, and the way you know that you’ve failed at a Choose Your Own Adventure book is that the number of pages you read is far greater than the number of decisions you made.
Things started out in the future, where things seemed pretty good. I lived in a dome, the classic sure sign of living in the future. For some reason, we will decide that dome life is…actually, fuck whatever I was just going to say because now all I can think of is a half-circle welcome mat that says Dome Sweet Dome. Pete, you are hitting this one our of the park.
Anyway, it was time to leave my dome because none of these books can be something like Pleasure Dome or Leisure Dome where you choose between different refreshing beverages, and the worst outcome is regret. No, this is the world of Choose Your Own Adventure, where all you’re really choosing is how you will die. Sort of.
When it was time to leave the dome, we got Future Hint #2 which is that I traveled by tube. Again, the future is really into tubes. I guess somewhere around 2050 everyone will say, What if we did your idea, but as a tube? Sort of how everyone does with apps right now.
Future Hint #3 was a Martian friend whose name was consonant heavy. Aliens hate vowels, perhaps because they have misinterpreted Wheel of Fortune and believe that one must actually purchase a vowel in all contexts.
Here is where things go off the rails.
There is this dude called the Power Master. By perusing title lists, I’ve come to understand that the Power Master is the evil villain of the CYOA universe. It seems he keeps popping up. In this context, he has figured out something about molecules that has given him the power to disintegrate planets. So you, as a smart dude, are trying to figure out whatever it is he figured out in order to stop him.
I love that stuff. Where we figure the best way to beat a bad guy is by doing exactly what he perfected 20 years ago, and then do it better. For example, when Superman fought Doomsday, he didn’t just wing him into outer space towards the sun. No, better to punch each other in the face for 3 or 4 days.
Anyway, for some reason my plan in the book involved working with miniaturization, and when other portions of the research team disappeared we decided to miniaturize ourselves and go looking for them.
I’d like to point out that making myself tiny was not my choice. This has to be the most idiotic plan when it comes to searching. When someone is lost in the woods, I bet there are very few rescuers who think, “If only we could miniaturize ourselves and effectively search an area the size of an entire PLANET.”
After we got smalled, it took me exactly two decisions to piss of my martian friend and discover that I had misplaces the de-miniaturizer. After a brief argument along the lines of, “Smooth move, Ex-Lax” followed by a resounding, “Hey, don’t call me Ex-Lax, Dum-Dum” my martian friend decided to meditate, and I was all by myself, tiny and screwed.
Now, this was the end of the book. So again, I didn’t die. Not exactly. But I was the size of a grain of rice. It’s a little unfair as I do feel that I could somehow alert other scientists to my presence. Hell, those kids crossed an entire backyard with the help of one ant and a piece of cookie attached to a stick. All I’d have to do is bite the foot of that one jerk in the office who insists on wearing flip-flops even though this is a place of science.
Speaking of ants, I only met one ant who died almost immediately. So as far as being Prisoner of the Ant People, my role was pretty limited. This makes me suspect that I made it a very short distance into the potential story. I guess the dying ant made me a sort of conversational prisoner. He was pretty boring. Maybe a more appropriate title for my adventure would have been Social Prisoner of the Ant Person.