Dose of Virtual Reality

Molly Murphy has been counting the days until her school's parent-child video game competition, but her plans fall apart when her partner and best friend, Allison, has to fly out of town because her grandmother is in the hospital. Molly begs her mom to take Allison's place, but her mom insists she is hopeless at video games, and suggests Molly ask her grandfather instead. Molly is doubtful - she isn't even sure video games existed when he was a kid - but one round of puppy-dog eyes later, Gramps agrees.

The competition uses an augmented virtual reality system with a headset and glove controllers, technology created by a local inventor named John Whittaker, who runs the Whit's End ice cream shop. Players start in a virtual library, then race through a dangerous jungle, solving puzzles along the way - no fighting allowed. Practice does not go smoothly. Gramps mixes up the controls and gets squished while accidentally doing jumping jacks, and it takes him sixty-three tries to swing across a fiery pit. There is a silver lining: every failure raises his stats, until he can practically jump to the moon. He also keeps stopping to study mysterious signs posted around the game, like "Do not be surprised at the fiery trial." Molly waves them off as decoration and tells him not to think about them so much.

Then Allison calls with news: her grandmother has made an almost miraculous recovery, and the family is coming home in time for the competition - including her dad, who cut his business trip short and will now be her partner. Molly congratulates her, but something about the call leaves her upset. At their next practice she snaps at Gramps for chasing clues instead of listening, and he calls a time-out. As a police detective, he says, he is starting to figure out how she thinks. Gently, he draws out the truth: Molly used to play video games with her dad before he died, and they were great together. Hearing that Allison gets to play with her dad has stirred all of that up. Gramps admits he wasn't much of a grandfather when Molly was little, until her mom told him after the funeral that she needed him to step up. He tells Molly he loves being with her more than just about anyone, but he can't be her dad - no one can. All anyone can do is help in their own way, and he promises they'll do their best to live up to those great memories.

On competition day, Allison's dad turns out to be a confident gamer who brags about his teenage-level hand-eye coordination and offers to cut a path for the beginners. Gramps politely declines - and then surprises Molly by declaring, "We're not having fun, Molly. We're gonna win this thing." Instead of chasing the elephant like everyone else, Gramps follows his gut. He is sure the signs are clues - phrases from Bible verses - reasoning that Mr. Whittaker would only lend his technology to something with a positive purpose. Sure enough, searching the library shelves, they find a Bible that works like a game guide, its tabs matching the signs. Pulling it from the shelf throws a hidden switch, and a giant gorilla crashes through the wall to open a new path.

The clues keep paying off. A sign reading "The wide and the narrow" leads them to crawl through a narrow gap under a tree - a shortcut straight to the end of the level, where Molly and Allison always got stuck before. But the giant gorilla blocks the finish, and the countdown is running. The final sign says "Get thee behind me," words Jesus spoke to Peter, and a footnote explains that Peter's name means rock. They dash behind a boulder, only to find themselves cornered - until Gramps realizes they have it backwards: they need to get the rock behind them by stepping out in front of it, right where the gorilla waits. "Sounds like a step of faith," he says. Molly trusts him, they pull a hidden lever, and the gorilla tumbles into a pit - with the ground crumbling beneath them too. Gramps hoists Molly onto his back and uses his sky-high jump stat, earned through all those failures, to leap the chasm and win the competition.

Afterward, an amazed Molly points out that Gramps claimed he'd never played before. Not exactly, he admits - he'd never competed before, but he's played plenty of handheld games, because you need something to do on long, boring stakeouts. The whole group heads off to celebrate with ice cream at Whit's End, with plans to invite Molly's mom along too.