The Ubani Code
by Pan
Chapter 2
Lenny’s Mom is a fox.
I know I shouldn’t say that—I’ve known her my whole life, she’s been like a second Mom to me, blah blah blah, but…yeah. It wasn’t hard to see where Evie had gotten her looks from.
You know that old song? Some kids from our school had found it on Youtube and sang it with different lyrics—Lenny’s Mom has got it going on.
I’d been supportive as he griped about it, of course, but like…they weren’t wrong. Her skin was darker than Evie’s—Lenny’s Dad had been white, before he disappeared—and she had bigger tits than her daughter. I guess she’d had more time to grow ’em.
Big tits wouldn’t have been enough to draw the attention of the kids at school, of course, except that she had no issue with showing them off. You know the bikini Stacy’s Mom wears in the video? (Yeah, I’d watched it. My parents installed a pornblocker—one of the good ones, too. I knew how to get around it, but as often as not I’d just Youtube a hot music video to get off to.)
Well, Lenny’s Mom owned a bikini like that. And wore it. Not like, around the house every day or whatever, but she wasn’t exactly shy about her figure. I’d seen her in that thing at the pool, at the beach…Lenny’s house had a hot-tub, and one time she’d worn it in that with me and Lenny and Evie.
That’s what had started the teasing. A bunch of kids had seen Lenny’s Mom wearing the bikini at the beach. The next day at school, the singing had started, and five years later, it still hadn’t let up.
Lenny hated it, of course. His Mom would just roll her eyes when he complained, tell him not to be ridiculous. I thought Indian women were meant to be modest or whatever, but I guess Lenny’s Mom was different.
Not that I was complaining.
And it wasn’t just the bikini. All of Lenny’s Mom’s outfits seemed to higlight her body. She sometimes wore a dress to work, and they’d always show off her legs and her cleavage. Even when she was just hanging around the house she’d wear, like, tight jeans and something that displayed her midriff.
Evie was similar, but…like, Lenny’s Mom seriously just didn’t seem to care. She wore what she liked, and showed no signs of caring about her effect on other people (like me). But when Evie showed skin it was…it was almost like she was weaponizing it.
She’d watch whenever my eyes were drawn to her legs, her exposed belly, her tits. God, her tits. How could they both be smaller and hotter than Lenny’s Mom’s?
And when Evie caught me looking, she’d smirk.
She never tattled, though she definitely could have. No, she just smirked, knowing the power she had over me. Knowing that she’d won, that even though I hated her, I still wanted her.
God I hated her.
God I wanted her.
Karl and I wolfed down the curry his Mom had made, exchanging barbs with Evie, then raced back upstairs as soon as we could. For the next few half-hour, we scoured the web.
The first thing that struck us was how little information there was online about the Wand. Obviously the company wasn’t going to freely release their tech specs, but even professionals trying to figure out how it worked had been stumped.
Ken Ubani was sort of like Nikola Tesla—capable of doing amazing stuff which, even once you saw it being done, you couldn’t replicate.
A few other people had worked out the same thing that we had, that the Wand could somehow tell when you were pointing it at yourself.
I’m not claiming to be a brain scientist or anything—after high school, my plan is to become a programmer—but that seemed like pretty advanced technology to me. It was frankly incredible that they’d managed to sell these things for $299 each.
But nobody knew how it worked.
“Okay,” I finally said. “So maybe it can…I dunno, read your thoughts?”
Lenny started to laugh at the suggestion, but he paused mid-scoff.
“Fuck,” he eventually said. “Maybe…”
He had that look in his eye, but he didn’t say anything—he just picked up the Wand and held it to his head. To my surprise, his face went slack, and I recognized the signs of the fifteen-second relaxation.
But he hadn’t pressed the button.
When he came to, Lenny was beaming, his excitement only slightly tempered by the fifteen minutes of calm he’d just experienced.
“It worked!” he exclaimed, and I couldn’t help but smile back at him. His grin was infectious.
“What’d you think at it?”
“Activate,” he said. “And it did. Without me even doing anything.”
The next ten minutes felt like ten years, as we waited for the Wand’s painfully-slow refractory period to complete. Finally, it was done, and we looked at each other.
Neither of us had explicitly stated the next thing to try, but we both knew what it was.
“Do you want to…?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“It was your idea,” I said.
“You’re the one who worked out it could read thoughts,” he countered.
“Just do it,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
“Fine.”
Lenny held the device to his head. His hand twitched, subtly moving in the sequence we’d both memorized so many years ago.
Right, right, right, right, left, up, left up down, left, left, up
My mouth fell open as the illumination around the button changed color.
It was normally green, for ‘ready’. After you pressed the button, it would change to orange—‘waiting’, I guess. If it ever went ‘red’, it was like the Xbox’s red ring of death—it meant something had gone wrong, and it wasn’t safe to use. That was pretty rare, and only happened if you like, dropped it off a cliff, or brought it next to a magnet.
But as Lenny finished thinking the Ubani code at the wand, the illumation changed to blue.
I hadn’t even known it could change to blue.
“What the eff,” I said in awe.
“Whoa,” he said.
We stared at the button, not sure how to proceed…when, to our surprise, it turned back to green.
“Crap!” I exclaimed. “Turn it back!”
“You try it,” Lenny said, pointing the Wand at my head.
I closed my eyes, and tried to ‘think’ the directions at the Wand—right, right, right, right, left, up, left up down, left, left, up. Sure enough, when I opened my eyes again, it was blue.
“What now?” Lenny said. “We could…—”
“…three, four, five, six, seven,” I interrupted. “Eight, nine, then, eleven, twelve…”
As I hit twelve, the button changed back to green.
“Twelve seconds,” Lenny said with a nod. “You want to try it again?”
“Do it,” I said, and Lenny held the Wand up to his head. A few seconds later, the light was once again blue.
We stared at each other, knowing we only had twelve seconds to decide.
“Should we…”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
In response to Lenny’s nod, I placed the Wand against my head, and pressed the blue-bordered button.
For the next fifteen minutes, I entered the familiar state of great calm as the world slowed down around me. But it was…different to last time. Last time, my attention had been entirely focused on myself—my thoughts, my body, my state.
This time, I was aware of everything.
Lenny had a clock on the wall. Like, an analog clock. I knew it was there, of course, but I don’t think I’d ever noticed it before.
The few times I’d been Wanded, I’d completely lost track of time. This time, Lenny’s clock wouldn’t allow me—every time it ticked, my entire body was aware of it—the long, slow sound of that tick was all I could think about. Then it passed, and my senses kept on exploring the room, itching to find something to latch onto.
Fifteen long, loud TICKS later, I was awake, and Lenny was looking at me anxiously.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. I was. There were no noticeable side-effects from the blue state of the Wand. I still felt just as relaxed, despite the antsy feeling of expectation I’d had while I was under.
“What was it like?”
“It was…weird. Different.”
“But you’re alright?”
“Of course,” I nodded. “Totally fine.”
As we waited for the Wand to be ready again, I told him how it had felt, exactly how it differed from a normal use of the Wand, and we discussed a few theories. We’d worked out how to apply the Ubani code—now we just had to work out what it did.
In his games, Ken Ubani had always made the codes do something different but game-breakingly powerful. And more than that—fun. It wasn’t just God mode; it was something that made you play the game in a different way, while being stronger than everyone else. In the Pakki Pakki series, it gave you access to the rocket’s flight, or the submarine’s swimming, even in levels with no vehicles.
In Gunslinger Island, the Ubani code made your bullets bounce, allowing for trick shots around corners (and almost-guaranteed kills in close quarters). In Doctor Bolthead: Cyborg Island, it had let you swap heads with the cyborgs even when you weren’t near a workshop. And in Headmatch X (which—despite the title—was the first in the series) it had simply allowed you to duel-wield the gravity gun and the teleporter.
Lenny and I had a running bet as to whether they’d include the Ubani code in the second Headmatch game, even though it had started development after Ken Ubani’s disappearance. He said they wouldn’t dare, and I said they wouldn’t dare omitting it. Either way, we were looking forward to trying to work out where it was hidden—not knowing whether or not it would be included at all was sort of exciting.
While we were chatting, we were also messing around the Wand, trying stuff out. Lenny had held it to his head and thought ‘Activate’, ‘Unlock’, ‘Recharge’…no luck. The light had stayed orange, no matter what we did.
Finally, it was ready to go, and Lenny insisted on seeing what it felt like. I thought the Ubani code at the device, and as soon as the light turned blue, handed it Lenny. He held it to his head, his face went slack, the light went orange, and a thought struck me.
While I’d been under, I’d been so aware. Everything had seemed so important. And Ken Ubani had clearly unlocked something—the ability to manipulate brainwaves? Not to mention what the Wand could apparently read them too.
The unignorable ticking of the clock told me when there were only a few seconds left, and I was unable to resist. Just as Lenny was about to wake up, I leaned forward and said it:
“Your favourite color is pink.”
A confused look appeared on Lenny’s face as soon as he awoke.
“How was it?” I asked. He answered me slowly.
“Interesting,” he said. “Exactly like you described it.”
He glanced at his clock.
“I never noticed how loud that thing is.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Maybe don’t pack it when you go. You’ll never be able to sleep again.”
He chuckled. “I dunno; I don’t mind it so much.”
I could see what he was saying. It was so rhythmic, it was almost comforting. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
“Did you hear what I said while you were under?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Lenny answered, a slight frown appearing on his face. “I totally forgot you’d said anything until you mentioned it.”
“That’s odd.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “‘Your favorite color is pink,’ right? What a weird thing to say.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I was just testing something out.”
“What?”
“Well, I wanted to see if it would…y’know. Change your favorite color.”
Lenny crinkled his nose.
“So then why would you choose pink?”
“I dunno. I thought it would be funny.”
“I guess,” Lenny said, scratching his head. “It just would’ve been funnier if you’d picked another color.”
“What?”
Now I was confused.
“Like, pink’s always been my favorite color,” Lenny replied. “It would have been funnier if you’d picked black, or blue. Something I don’t like.”
My eyes widened. I stared at Lenny he shifted uncomfortably from my gaze. “What??”
“Are you messing with me?”
“No,” he replied immediately. “Are you messing with me?”
“No! What’s your favourite color?”
“Pink.”
“For real?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “You know that. It always has been.”
This probably won’t surprise you, but Lenny—a healthy, American male—has never really been a huge fan of pink.
My eyes widened. It had worked.
The Ubani code worked.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to continue. Lenny clearly hadn’t worked out what the Wand had done, what it was capable of. But he was an intelligent guy—smarter than me, for sure. It wouldn’t be long before he caught up.
Besides, he was my best friend. I’d just made one of the most important discoveries in the history of the world—I didn’t want to, like, lock Lenny out of it. We did everything together; we always had, we always would.
“…then why,” I asked slowly, “isn’t anything in your room pink?”
Lenny looked around, and a worried expression appeared on his face.
“Huh…” he mused, then looked at the Wand, then looked at me. “Oh! Oh, shit.”
“Right?” I said excitedly.
The Ubani code turned the Wand into more than just a relaxation tool.
Lenny was holding the world’s first bonafide mind-control machine.
“Oh, shit,” Lenny repeated, his eyes wide. “Holy crap.”
“Right??”
“Dude, we can…we can…”
Lenny trailed off as his mind presumably exploded with all the possibilities in front of us. The world was our oyster.
We could make everyone’s favourite color pink.
I laughed at my own stupid thought, and Lenny—just out of pure excitement, I guess—joined in.
A minute later, we were wiping tears out of our eyes, gleefully picturing the world of opportunity in front of us, when a sobering thought struck me.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “Lenny…”
“What?”
“Ken Ubani.”
Lenny’s eyes widened as he realized what I was saying. Like I said, he’s the smartest guy I knew.
“I told you he was disappeared!” he replied, and I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, yeah. We just…we have to be careful, okay?”
“Of course,” he nodded, his eyes gleaming as he looked at the Wand in his hand. “But…who do we use it on first?”
“Follow me,” I said with a grin. “I know exactly how we should start.”
* * *