Into Temptation

It is Jimmy Barclay's birthday, and he is mad. He has saved up his own money to buy the fully portable Mach 10 Bible Action computer game, but his mom has told him she doesn't think he should. Whit knows exactly what Jimmy is thinking of doing about it, so instead of taking him to the Imagination Station, he leads him to something brand new: the Room of Consequence. Rather than carrying a person into the past, this invention plays out the future, letting Jimmy see the options and consequences of a decision as if it were really happening - not only to him, but to everyone his choice touches. Jimmy steps inside, the door closes, and the adventure begins.

The room replays his morning. Mary Barclay tells Jimmy he shouldn't buy the game, and after he trudges off to his paper route, she reveals to Donna why she played it so tough: she is hoping to surprise Jimmy with the very same game, if she can talk his worried father into it, since money is tight. Jimmy, knowing none of this, stands at the computer store window and talks himself into a loophole - Mom didn't say he couldn't buy it, only that she didn't think he should. Whit pops up as Jimmy's conscience, the voice that tries to talk him out of every bad idea, but Jimmy plunks down his $39.70 anyway. Since he can't take the game home, he hides it under a box in the treehouse at Wonderworld, where he loses track of an hour playing it, then swears Lawrence Hodges to secrecy before rushing off to deliver his papers.

Lawrence's conscience doesn't stand a chance. He digs the game out, plays until he is setting records, then panics when he realizes Jimmy will see the scores and know. Fumbling with buttons to erase them, he leaves the screen flashing "error" - the game looks broken. When Donna finds him with it, Lawrence blurts out that he found it in the forest, so Donna takes it to turn in to the lost and found. But her own conscience gets an argument too: the game is exactly what Jimmy wants, the family can't afford one, and the owner is probably long gone. When Jimmy rides up on his paper route, she stuffs it into the next-door neighbor's mailbox to keep the surprise safe. Mr. Chambers finds the mystery game in his mailbox, and since he has no kids of his own, he hands it to George Barclay for Jimmy's birthday. When George brings it home, Mary showers him with praise for buying it, calling him a marvelous father, and George lets the glow wash over him instead of telling her the truth.

At the quietest birthday dinner ever, everything unravels. Mary announces that Dad bought Jimmy the Mach 10, but that the one they sold him was broken - it kept flashing "error" - so she marched it back to the store and, without a receipt, argued her way to a refund. Jimmy opens his present and finds a gift certificate. Confession follows confession: George admits Mr. Chambers gave him the game, Donna admits she put it in the mailbox and "sort of" found it, Lawrence admits he wasn't supposed to have it and broke it, and Jimmy admits it was his all along, bought that very morning after his mom said no. As George says, every one of them was tempted to do right or wrong, and they all chose wrong - even Mary, who admits she was pretty brutal on that poor sales clerk.

The lights come up. It has all been the Room of Consequence, and Jimmy feels terrible - which, Whit points out, is the point. That was only one option; the other is to resist temptation and go home to a nice birthday dinner, and Jimmy doesn't need a special room for that. He asks Whit for one thing, though: a ride home, because resisting temptation will be a lot easier if he doesn't have to walk past the computer store. Whatever it takes, Whit agrees. Whatever it takes.