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RESPAWN
experimental ­f utures
Technological lives, scientific arts, anthropological voices
A series edited by Michael M. J. Fischer and Joseph Dumit
 Colin Milburn
GAMERS, HACKERS,
AND TECHNOGENIC LIFE
Duke University Press Durham and London 2018
RE SPAWN
© 2018 Duke University Press This title is freely available in
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca an open access edition thanks
to the tome initiative and
on acid-­free paper ∞. Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker
the generous support of the
and typeset in Minion Pro and Knockout by Westchester University of California, Davis.
Publishing Services. Learn more at openmono​
graphs​.o
­ rg.
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data
This book is published
Names: Milburn, Colin, [date] author.
­under the Creative Commons
Title: Respawn : gamers, hackers, and technogenic life / Attribution-­NonCommercial-­
Colin Milburn. NoDerivs 3.0 United States
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018. | (CC BY-­N C-­N D 3.0 US)
Series: Experimental ­futures : technological lives, License, available at https://­
creativecommons​.o ­ rg​/­licenses​
scientific arts, anthropological voices |
/­by​-­nc​-n
­ d​/­3.​ ­0/​ ­us​/­.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2018019514 (print) Cover art: Nyan Cat.
lccn 2018026364 (ebook) © Christopher Torres.
isbn 9781478002789 (ebook) www.nyan.cat.

isbn 9781478001348 (hardcover : alk. paper)

isbn 9781478002925 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Video games. | Hackers. |
Technology—­Social aspects.
Classification: lcc gv1469.34.s52 (ebook) |
lcc gv1469.34.s52 m55 2018 (print) | ddc 794.8—­dc23
lc rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/2­ 018019514
 CONTENTS

Introduction. All Your Base ​1

1 May the Lulz Be with You ​25

2 Obstinate Systems ​51
3 Still Inside ​78
4 Long Live Play ​102
5 We Are Heroes ​134
6 Green Machine ​172
7 Pwn ​199

Conclusion. Save Point ​217

Acknowl­edgments ​227
Notes ​231
Bibliography ​271
Index 293
This page intentionally left blank
 INTRODUCTION. ALL YOUR BASE

The screen flickers. A siren blares. The f­ uture has arrived: “In a.d. 2101 war
was beginning.” As flames engulf the bridge of the lead ­battle cruiser, the
captain of the zig fleet asks, “What happen?” The mechanic responds, “Some-
body set up us the bomb.” Amid the chaos of explosions, the ­communications
operator shouts, “We get signal.” While the captain strug­gles to understand
the catastrophe, bellowing an incredulous “What!” to his crew, the operator
connects the incoming transmission to a holographic display screen: “Main
screen turn on.” As the image comes into focus, the captain cannot hide his
shock: “It’s you!!”
Sure enough, it is the leader of the cyborg invasion force known as cats:
“How are you gentlemen!!” The cats leader—­humanoid in appearance yet
radically other, a hybrid of alien flesh and mechanical components—­taunts
the h­ uman defense fleet with imminent doom: “All your base are belong to
us. You are on the way to destruction.” It seems that cats has managed to
infiltrate all the ­human space colonies and outposts, taking over the bases
while the zig fleet looked the other way. The captain seems unwilling to ac-
cept this turn of events: “What you say!!” But cats assures him that all hope
is lost: “You have no chance to survive make your time.” The holographic
transmission fades out with the mocking laughter of cats echoing through-
out the bridge: “Ha ha ha ha. . . .”
The captain clasps his hands, uncertain how to react. The crew urges
him to action: “Captain!” Fi­nally, the captain steps up, back in the game. He
figure i.1. Zero Wing: cats leader. Eu­ro­pean version of the Sega Mega Drive port,
Toaplan, 1992. The original arcade version of Zero Wing was released in Japan in 1989.

­ rders a counterattack: “Take off ­every ‘ zig ’!!” As the zig pi­lots scramble to
o
take off, the captain commends their skills and ­orders them to engage the
alien ­enemy: “You know what you d ­ oing. Move ‘ zig.’ For g­ reat justice.” The
­battle for the ­future of humanity is on.
This opening scene to the Japa­nese video game Zero Wing—or rather,
its oddly translated 1992 Eu­ro­pean release for the Sega Mega Drive—­has
become legendary.1 In this game, the player takes the role of a h ­ uman space-
ship pi­lot fighting against the cats army. cats vividly represents the threat
of total cybernetic takeover, embodied in the smirking face of the leader: a
fusion of the organic and the robotic, the h ­ uman merged with the computer
(fig. i.1). According to cats, the posthuman f­ uture is already inevitable: “You
have no chance to survive make your time.”2 The game pres­ents an allegory
of the information age, our increasing dependence on computational sys-
tems, and the risk that “all your base” might already be controlled—­whether
by a po­liti­cal force or a technically sophisticated intruder. At the same time,
cats ’s notoriously cryptic dialogue in the En­glish translation suggests the
instabilities and failures that likewise characterize the practices of high-­tech
globalization.3 Indeed, while the international circulation of digital games

2 Introduction
and other media may help constitute a common global culture, mistransla-
tions and epic malfunctions abound.
Wildly embraced by geeks and gamers precisely ­because of its multiple
levels of irony, and above all, the bad­ass way that cats threatens complete
annihilation while hilariously failing to execute proper grammar or cultural
awareness, Zero Wing has become a familiar touchstone for online lore,
laughs, and leetspeek. In par­tic­u­lar, the line “All your base are belong to
us” is now a widespread catchphrase for technical prowess—as well as its
precarity. cats ’s boastful claim has spawned a profusion of remixes and weird
appropriations.4 Among the myriad and sometimes baffling applications
of this meme, several have reinforced the sense in which Zero Wing serves
as a meta­phor or a playable simulation of our own historical moment, the
age of computational media and the mass digitization of culture. For many
gamers, the phrase represents the promise of video games in par­tic­u­lar, the
astonishing growth of the games industry over the last thirty years and the
rising dominance of games as a medium of expression (fig. i.2). The journal-
ist Harold Goldberg, for example, makes this claim in his 2011 book, All Your
Base Are Belong to Us: How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture.
For ­others, it is indicative of digital technologies and ubiquitous computing
more generally, where cats becomes a figure for the internet as such (figs.
i.3 and i.4). ­After all, what could be more emblematic of the internet and its
cultural modalities than high-­tech cats? Lol!
From this perspective, the momentary paralysis of the zig fleet captain is
especially significant. The captain—­a highly trained officer of Earth’s defense
force, eminently prepared for military engagements of all kinds—­does not
know how to react to this par­tic­u­lar invasion ­because, before it has even
begun, it seems already to be over. The explosive cats attack is not the be-
ginning of a war but its conclusion, the endgame, and this is why the captain
is so shocked. The alien is already inside. Posthumanization is already u ­ nder
way. The distressing implications of this situation (especially for the captain,
who can barely keep up) are uncannily evoked in the mangled En­glish trans-
lation, which affords a set of interpolated meanings and partial significations
precisely by virtue of its grammatical hybridity, its semiotic mashup. For “All
your base are belong to us” is an assertion that is less about mere possession
or appropriation than an ontological condition, that is to say, the belonging-
ness of the h­ uman base—­all the base—to the cyborg world. It is an essential
belonging, emphasized by the copula and the infinitive: “your base are be-
long,” as if always already. Crucially, it is not simply the bases at stake, the
colonies and outposts. Rather, it is “all your base,” in other words, the base

All Your Base 3

figure i.2. Cover image for bornon413’s 8tracks play­list: “A hard cyberpunk mix for play-
ing Space Invaders, or any shooter with aliens, r­ eally.” bornon413, “All Your Base Are Belong
to Us,” 8tracks, June 23, 2014, http://­8tracks​.­com​/­bornon413​/­all​-­your​-­base​-­are​-­belong​-­to​
-­us. The scan lines call attention to the medium, the electronics of gameplay. Gamers
often creatively mix Space Invaders with Zero Wing, highlighting thematic continuities—­
and implying that games about high-­tech invaders (“any shooter with aliens, r­ eally”) are
also about the ascendency of video games in the field of cultural production.

as such: the very foundation of civilization, the infrastructure of society, the

wellspring of culture, the basis of what it means to be h ­ uman—­all utterly
transfigured ­under the regime of alien science. At least, according to cats.
In this light, the cats leader pres­ents a claim about technogenesis—­and
an affirmation of technogenic life. As a philosophical concept, technogenesis
refers to the entanglement of ­human evolution with technological evolution,
the individuation of technical objects, subjects, and collectives altogether.5
On the other hand, as a trope of science fiction, technogenesis suggests

4 Introduction
figure i.3. Gamer cat. Created by Davieeee, just for fun: “A lolcat i made for the lolz.”
Posted at DeviantArt, November 30, 2009, http://­davieeee​.­deviantart​.­com​/­art​/­All​-­your​
-­base​-­are​-­belong​-­to​-­us​-­145307166. The lolcat phenomenon emerged on 4chan as early
as 2006. Its popularity accelerated in 2007 thanks to the commercial site I Can Has
Cheezburger? It is one of the genres of feline-­oriented media that dominate the modern
internet. This par­tic­u­lar lolcat is playing the StarCraft II multiplayer beta in late 2009.
Yet Blizzard Entertainment did not release the beta through its ­Battle​.­net online ser­vice
­until February 2010. How did the cat get access prior to the official release? Must be
some kind of 1337 h4x0r.

something yet more speculative, namely, the emergence of new life-­forms,

artificial entities, and synthetic organisms from within systems of technol-
ogy. For example, in Syne Mitchell’s 2002 novel, Technogenesis, the billions of
­people linked through global telecommunications systems evolve a network
consciousness: “It was as if the crowd was a single entity and the connected
­people its cells.” They form a vast posthuman creature called Gestalt: “A flash
image of Gestalt, not as a separate entity hovering above humanity, but dis-
tributed through the minds of billions. Each ­human contributing part of their
­mental pro­cesses, part of their being to the ­whole.”6 Similarly, in Wil McCar-
thy’s 1998 novel, Bloom, self-­replicating molecular machines represent a phy-
lum of inorganic vitality, a species of living hardware: “A tiny machine, like
a digger/constructor but smaller than the smallest bacterium, putting copies

All Your Base 5

figure i.4. “lolcats.” Created by bico-­kun (a.k.a. Michael James Brew). Posted at De-
viantArt, December 10, 2008, http://­bico​-­kun​.­deviantart​.­com​/­art​/­lolCATS​-1­ 05995322.
The cats leader speaks in the idiolect of lolcats to indicate the depth of the intrusion—­
“in ur base,” root access—­fiddling with the secret, private parts of the system (“movin’
ur’ zig”). The cyborg cat, meanwhile, dreams of pwning “cheezburgerz”—­“All your
cheezburgerz are belong to us”—­recalling the base, that is, the origin of the lolcat meme
and its influence on internet culture (“I can has cheezburger?”).

of itself together with cool precision. . . . ​In short, a pretty typical piece of
technogenic life.”7 In t­ hese stories, the emergence of a specifically technologi-
cal form of life—­dif­fer­ent yet fully equivalent to biological life—is also the
occasion for discovering the technical aspects of the h ­ uman, the degree to
which technics are not merely ancillary or extrinsic to the proper base of hu-
manity, but fundamental and constitutive.8 Hence, the development of new
kinds of technogenic life is itself interwoven with the technogenic condition
of ­human history and its ­future.
This much is suggested in Zero Wing. The mechanic’s observation, “Some-
body set up us the bomb,” certainly seems to mean that someone has attacked
with explosives. Yet the sudden technological upheaval provokes a syntactic
chaos, rife with alternate meanings: somebody set up a situation that we can-
not escape, a setup that triggers high-­tech combat, making us the bomb. The

6 Introduction
cats attack sets up or reveals our own explosive potential, our own techni-
cal acceleration. In bombing us, we become as the bomb. ­Human life—if it
is to survive—­has no choice but to internalize the shockwave of this detona-
tion, its fallout and its meanings, and launch into the game (“Take off ­every
‘ zig ’!!”), exposing an intrinsic capacity for technoscientific response, that is
to say, responsibility. At least, in the world of Zero Wing.
In this book, I therefore use the term technogenic life to describe how the
conditions for life as such—­nature as much as nurture, lifeworld as much as
lifestyle—­emerge, evolve, and transmogrify in the era of advanced techno-
science, especially in relation to pervasive computerization. It is about the
development of new forms and practices of life through digital media, and
video games in par­tic­u­lar. ­These practices of technogenic life include po­liti­
cal interventions and direct action at the level of technics—­that is to say,
technopolitics—as well as affective productions and per­for­mances, collective
mobilizations, and a set of subversive pleasures known as the lulz: corrupted
laughter, weaponized lols. As practices, they animate a set of subject positions—
or rather, dispositions—­characteristic of our high-­tech culture: shockwave
rider, hacker, geek feminist, pirate, troll, maker, modder, gamer. Th­ ese subject
dispositions—­invariably grassroots and bottom-up, even if s­ haped by a cer-
tain degree of privilege and a proximity to hubs of expertise—­are situated
and contextual.9 They respond to the massive technical and epistemic shifts
taking place in the world t­ oday, what the media theorist Alexander Galloway
describes as “the current global crisis . . . ​between centralized, hierarchical
powers and distributed, horizontal networks.”10
We see it everywhere, even in Zero Wing. In the midst of crisis, with
every­thing at stake, the captain—­the figure of top-­down command—­falls
down on the job. The illusion that every­thing is ­under control, that the sta-
tus quo ­will prevail, unravels when faced with the insidious force of cyborg
technology. But from below, from within the ranks of technicians and ma-
chinists, media operators and communications specialists, the h ­ uman survi-
vors of the cats attack rebound. They spring to action, prodding the captain
as they maneuver the command ship through the explosive field, tuning sig-
nals and modulating the technical surround.
And let us not overlook the heroic zig pi­lot who speeds off to confront
the alien menace (“You know what you d ­ oing”). The pi­lot fends off wave
upon wave of enemies—­not from the outside but already in the m ­ iddle,
embedded in technoscientific systems and linked into the computational
network, exhibiting the same cybernetic condition as the cats collective.
The pi­lot zigs and zags across the screen, fighting against the cats calamity

All Your Base 7

figure i.5. Zero Wing: The hand of the pi­lot, moving zig. Toaplan, 1992.

precisely through the instrumentation of the zig (fig. i.5). The pi­lot is vis­i­
ble in the narrative only as a component of the machine, accessing the zone
of conflict through this privileged device.11 To say the least, the zig pi­lot is a
mirror image of the player of Zero Wing—­the player who controls the zig by
keeping a tight grip on the Mega Drive controller, mashing buttons as fast as
fin­gers can fly. The player . . . ​in whose hands the ­future lies.

Reload
Zero Wing offers a model of engagement. It fabulates, speculates on the ex-
panding regime of computation, and then bodies forth a way of grappling
with this situation in the mode of high-­tech play. In its own ludicrous way,
then, it suggests the capabilities of games to defamiliarize and recalibrate
our sense of t­hings, becoming instruments of repre­sen­ta­tion as well as in-
tervention. The designer W ­ ill Wright has even argued that games are like
the tools of laboratory science in this regard, enhancing our sensory and
cognitive capacities, our intuitive understanding of complex systems and
pro­cesses of historical change:

And what’s in­ter­est­ing to me about games, in some sense, is that I

think we can take a lot of long-­term dynamics and compress them into
very short-­term kind of experiences. B ­ ecause it’s so hard for p
­ eople to
think fifty or a hundred years out, but when you can give them a toy,
and they can experience t­ hese long-­term dynamics in just a few min-
utes, I think it’s an entirely dif­fer­ent kind of point of view, where ­we’re

8 Introduction
 actually mapping, using the game to re-­map our intuition. It’s almost
like in the same way that a telescope or microscope recalibrates your
eyesight. I think computer simulations can recalibrate your instinct
across vast scales of both space and time.12

Extending our perception while presenting tricks and tactics for inhabit-
ing the world differently, games are technoscientific contraptions, engines
of experimentation. They are toys, certainly. But according to Wright, they
enable tacit knowledge of phenomena that extend above and below the
­everyday ­human scale. By playing in fictive worlds, experimenting with
their rules and affordances, we get a feel for futurity, potentiality—­the vir-
tual as such. The world not only as it is, but how it might have been, or how
it yet might be.
The logic of experimentation inheres to video games at ­every level. It is
rooted in the procedures of exploration, testing the capacities of the game,
discovering the laws and limitations—­even if trying to break them. More-
over, ludic structures of repetition hold forth the possibility if not the
requirement of playing again, learning from previous errors and serendipi-
tous discoveries to play better each time. While some games punish failure
harshly, for example, so-­called permadeath games that make us start over
from the very beginning if we die, ­others enable restarts in the ­middle of
­things, allowing us to spring back into action a­ fter a fatal blunder, hopefully
wiser for the experience. Among gamers, t­ here is a term for this springing
back, this returning to life, this continuance of the game: respawn.
The language of respawn first appeared in Doom, explic­itly in the
command-­line pa­ram­e­ter “-­r espawn ” (introduced in 1994 with version 1.2
of the software), which would set all dead enemies to rise again a­ fter a brief
hiatus, and also implicitly through a gameplay feature that the instruction
manual described as “eternal life a­ fter death”: “If you die, you restart the level at
the beginning with a pistol and some bullets. You have no ‘lives’ limit—­you
can keep restarting the level as often as ­you’re killed. The entire level is re-
started from scratch, too. Monsters you killed are back again, just like you.”13
Try, try again. ­Today, respawn broadly means the resurrection of any video-­
game character a­ fter death, defeat, or disintegration. It expansively informs
gamer discourse, as well, under­lying favorite proverbs such as “Gamers ­don’t
die, they respawn!” and “I am a gamer, not ­because I ­don’t have a life, but
­because I choose to have many.” Respawn stands for a surplus of vitality,
a reserve of as-­yet unexpended life, a technologically mediated capacity to
keep on ­going even while facing dire adversity.

All Your Base 9

 It recalls the biological while si­mul­ta­neously estranging it, soliciting a
postbiological way of seeing. That is, while many forms of life are known to
spawn, only technogenic life can respawn. As a trope, respawning echoes
and affirms the cyborg vocabularies of digital culture. In computer science,
for example, the meta­phor of spawning to indicate the pro­cessual creation
and execution of another pro­cess is quite venerable, dating back at least
to the vms operating system in the 1970s. Its repurposing in the context of
video games has only further enhanced the sense of reproductive, evolu-
tionary potential immanent to computational systems. Like other concepts
from computer science that draw parallels to the realm of organic nature—­
swarms, worms, viruses, bugs, and so forth—­respawning performs the liveli-
ness of algorithmic media, the fecundity of digitized information, the uncanny
animacies of code.14
It aligns with the orientation of many fields of technoscience t­ oday, such
as nanotechnology and synthetic biology, which increasingly figure life as
programmable, compilable, and rebootable. The sense of “eternal life ­after
death” inherent to the respawn function is shared by the methods of bioin-
formatics, for example, which promise a surfeit of generative information to
emerge from genomic databases: dna sequences extracted from dead cells
become endlessly searchable data brimming with f­uture phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal
­interventions, genet­ically engineered machines, and new forms of synthetic
life to come.15
Respawning is therefore a sign of the times, indexing the computerization
of our biology, the vitality of our machines, and the convergence of video
games with the molecular sciences. As if to emphasize t­ hese connections, in
2012 researchers at the Eu­ro­pean Bioinformatics Institute developed a soft-
ware application for the Illumina Genome Analyzer to improve the accuracy
of dna sequencing. This software application for high-­throughput nucleo-
tide base identification is called—­what else?—­All Your Base.16 “You have no
chance to survive make your time. Ha ha ha ha. . . .”

Reset
All video games produce an excess of high-­tech vitality, a controlled overflow
of technogenic life. It is vis­i­ble in vari­ous signifiers of the respawn function that
have characterized video games from their earliest days: +Life, 1-­u p, Health
Pack, Power-­Up, Extra Life, and so forth. But it is also tangible in the inten-
sive motivation, the urge to keep playing, that ludic structures of repetition
seem to cultivate, infecting players with an immoderate and sometimes ob-

10 Introduction
nonscientists alike—to think about high-­tech research and its implications
for the ­future: “It occurred to me that it might liven up the place to have a
game that p ­ eople could play, and which would convey the message that our
scientific endeavors have relevance for society.”34
In other words, the tennis game was r­eally an exercise in science fic-
tion, symbolizing the potential for scientific innovations to impact society,
perhaps to transform the ­whole world. ­Today, gamers looking backward at
this primordial moment in video-­game history often affirm the specula-
tive dimensions of Tennis for Two, overriding the superficial sense in which
it might be understood as a repre­sen­ta­tion of tennis. “While it was only a
primitive tennis simulator, [Higinbotham’s] creation must have seemed like
science fiction to the hundreds of visitors that lined up to play,” writes Andy
McNamara, the editor in chief of Game Informer magazine. “In many ways,
video games are science fiction come to life—­a virtual real­ity we control,” he
suggests. “Someone who played Tennis for Two in 1958 could never imagine
opening up a portal to another world on a g­ iant screen in your living room
or a virtual-­reality unit on your head, yet that is the world we live in ­today.”35
Certainly, the video-­game industry has vigorously promoted the future-­
ladenness of its own products, indexed by marketing slogans for every­thing
from the Commodore Amiga (“The F ­ uture Is H
­ ere”) to the Nintendo 64
(“Welcome to the ­Future”) to the Microsoft Xbox One (“Beta Tested in the
­Future”). Everywhere we look, the culture of video games transforms com-
puters into toys and toys into time machines, portals to another world.36 It
encourages players to engage in anticipation, foresight, and “what if ” with
­every push of the button.
Video games are speculative media, science fiction to the core. They pro-
vide a grammar, a vocabulary, a regimen for dealing with rapid technosci-
entific change and its worldly ramifications—­the conditions of technogenic
life. They also represent a playful, experimental style of engagement, a way
of using technical systems to make other ­futures imaginable. As the critical
theorist Michel de Certeau has argued, “A way of using imposed systems
constitutes the re­sis­tance to the historical law of a state of affairs and its
dogmatic legitimations. A practice of the order constructed by o ­ thers redis-
tributes its space; it creates at least a certain play in that order, a space for
maneuvers of unequal forces and for utopian points of reference.”37 Experi-
menting with computer games and other forms of digital media can expose
diagrams of power, revealing hardware and software as inherently po­liti­
cal ­things. Learning to play with them introduces the possibility of playing
other­wise—­hacking, gaming the game.

22 Introduction
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Frank was in the box, while Bart Hodge adjusted his mitt behind the
plate.
The batting-order of the two teams is here given:
MERRIES. REDS.
Ready, 3b. Jones, 1b.
Carson, ss. Davis, rf.
Browning, 1b. Croaker, 3b.
Gamp, cf. Favor, c.
Hodge, c. Gresham, cf.
Swiftwing, lf. Arata, lf.
Rattleton, 2b. Sawyer, ss.
Carker, rf. Mahoney, 2b.
Merriwell, p. Park, p.
“Play ball!” rang out the voice of the umpire.
Merriwell placed his foot upon the pitcher’s plate and prepared to
deliver the ball. Every man was ready.
Frank was cautious about using speed at first, and he tried Jones on
a slow drop.
Crack! The bat met the ball, and Jones lifted a pretty single just over
the infield, prancing down to first like a long-geared race-horse, while
the crowd gave a shout of satisfaction.
“The very first one!” laughed Morley. “Why, I knew it was a snap!”
“Mr. Umpire,” said Frank quietly, “if that gentleman is going to make
remarks, kindly ask him to leave the players’ bench.”
“That’s right, Morley,” said the umpire, “you will have to keep still
while you are on the bench.”
This caused the crowd to howl derisively, and it seemed that the
Merries had very few friends present.
Davis was ready to strike, and Frank gave him a wide out drop. He
let it pass, and Jones took the opportunity to hustle for second in an
attempt to steal.
Hodge took the ball, did not swing, but seemed to pull his hand just
back to his ear, and then threw to second. It was a quick, easy throw,
and it did not seem that Bart put enough force into it to send the ball
down.
“Slide!” yelled the coacher.
Jones had been running like a deer, for he was the best base-stealer
on the team, as well as the surest hitter. Forward he flung himself,
sliding gracefully along the ground with his hands outstretched.
The ball came into Rattleton’s hands about two feet from the ground,
and Harry had it on the runner when Jones’ hands were yet a foot
from the bag.
“Man is out!” announced the umpire.
A hush fell on the crowd, and then somebody started the clapping,
which was rather generous.
“Say, that catcher can throw!” cried a man on the bleachers. “Bet you
don’t steal many bags on him to-day.”
The first man was out, and the Reds had been taught a lesson they
would not fail to profit by. They had found that Hodge was a beautiful
thrower, so that it was dangerous to try to steal.
“Hard luck, old man,” said several of the players, as Jones came in.
“But he got you, all right.”
“And I thought I had a good start, too,” said Jones. “I’d bet my shirt I
had that bag.”
One ball had been called on Frank. He tried a high one next time,
and another ball was called.
Then Davis fouled, which caused the umpire to call a strike on him.
“Put another in the same place,” invited the batter.
Frank seemed to accommodate him, and Davis cracked it out,
driving it past Carson, who did not touch it.
Another base-hit had been made off Merry.
“That’s two of the five!” exclaimed Elrich, in satisfaction. “When three
more are made I’ll have won one thousand dollars, anyhow.”
Croaker was a heavy hitter. Merry suspected it, and he tried his arts
to pull the fellow, but three balls were called.
Davis had not attempted to steal, for he remembered the fate of the
man ahead of him, and Merry held him close to the bag.
It seemed, however, that Frank was certain to give the next batter a
base on balls. He was forced to put the ball over, which he did.
Mahoney, the captain of the team, had advised the batter to “play the
game,” which prevented him from striking, although he afterward
declared that the ball came sailing over the plate “as big as a house.”
A strike was called. Frank calmly put another in the same place, and
it was another strike.
Croaker gripped his bat. The coachers warned Davis to run, as the
batter would be out on the third strike, anyhow, if the first base was
occupied.
So, as soon as Merriwell drew back his arm, Davis started hard for
second. The ball was a swift high one, but Croaker met it and drove
it out for a single that landed Davis on third.
“Here is where we score a hundred!” cried the coachers. “Oh, say! is
this the wonder we have been hearing about?”
Hodge called Merry in, and said to him, in a low tone:
“Speed up!”
“But——” said Frank.
“No buts,” said Bart.
“Your hand.”
“I’ll hold them.”
“All right.”
Then they returned to their places.
“Down on the first one,” was the advice of the coacher near first.
“With Davis on third, he’ll never throw to second.”
Frank sent in a swift in shoot, having compelled Croaker to keep
close to first. Croaker, however, confident that Bart would not throw
to second, scudded for the bag.
Hodge seemed to throw to Merriwell, and Frank put up his hands, as
if to catch the ball, which had been thrown high.
Seeing Davis had not started from third, Frank did not bring his
hands together, but let the ball pass between them over his head.
The ball struck the ground about ten feet from second and bounded
straight into Harry’s waiting hands.
The runner slid, but Harry touched him out, and then sent the ball
whistling home, for, having seen the ball go over Merry, Davis had
started to score.
Davis had been fooled into clinging close to the base too long. The
trick had worked well, for Hodge had thrown the ball so that Merry
could catch it in case Davis started, but with sufficient force to take it
to second on a long bound, if Merry saw fit to let it go. Had Davis
started, Frank would have caught the ball and cut him off.
Now, although Davis ran as if his life depended on the issue, he
could not get home in time, and Bart was waiting for him with the
ball.
“Out second and home!” cried the umpire.
The spectators gasped, for they had been treated to a clever piece
of work that showed them the Merries knew a thing or two about
baseball.
Three hits had been made by the first three men at bat, yet the side
had been retired without a run, through the clever work of Hodge,
Merriwell, and Rattleton.
The Reds were disgusted over the result, but Black Elrich said:
“They can’t keep that up, and Merriwell is fruit for the Reds. Every
man can hit him. Two more hits mean a cool thousand for me, and
there are eight innings to make them in.”
“They’re going to get twenty off him,” said Dan Mahoney. “My brother
Pete is the worst hitter in the bunch, but he can lace that fellow all
over the lot.”
On the bleachers Old Joe Crowfoot was grimly smoking his pipe, but
by his side sat an excited boy, whose face was flushed and whose
eyes shone.
“They didn’t get a run, did they, Joe?” asked the boy eagerly.
“Ugh!” grunted the Indian. “Don’t know. White man’s game. Injun
don’t know him.”
“But they did hit the ball,” said Dick, in disappointment. “I didn’t think
Frank would let them do that.”
“He throw um ball pretty quick,” said Joe.
“He’s afraid to do his best, I’m sure,” said Dick. “He’s afraid Hodge
can’t catch it.”
“Hodge he heap big catch,” asserted Crowfoot. “Not afraid of stick
when it swing. Him good.”
“We got out of a bad hole that time, fellows,” said Frank, as the team
gathered at the bench. “If we keep on playing ball like that we’ll win
this game.”
“Those fellows will know better than to chance such takes—take
such chances,” said Rattleton.
“How is your hand, Bart?” asked Merry.
“All right,” said Hodge.
Ready had chosen a bat.
“I’m going to drive the first one over Old Baldy,” he said, with a
motion toward the distant mountains. But he walked up to the plate
and proceeded to strike out on the first three balls pitched.
“Speed!” he said, as he came back to the bench. “Whew! That
fellow’s got it! They didn’t look larger than peas as they came over.”
Carson went out and fouled twice, getting strikes called on him. Then
he drove a short one to the pitcher and was thrown out.
“See if you can’t start the ball rolling, Bruce,” urged Merry.
Browning, however, did not seem much more than half-awake, and
he, too, fell before the speed and sharp curves of Park, making the
third man.
Favor took his place at the plate, and Merry faced him in the box.
Frank gave the fellow a high one to start with, but Favor was
confident and hit it safely past Ready.
“Four hits!” counted Elrich exultantly. “One more gives me a
thousand.”
Before the ball could be fielded in Favor had reached second and
was safe.
“Everybody hits him!” shouted a voice from the bleachers. “Is this the
great Frank Merriwell?”
Tears of rage came into Dick Merriwell’s eyes, and his hands were
tightly clenched.
“Why doesn’t he use the double-shoot?” panted the boy. “He hasn’t
tried it once.”
Frank was as calm as ever. Gresham, a stout, solid-looking chap,
grinned tauntingly as he took his place to strike. Frank tried to pull
him, but two balls were called. Then Merry put one over the corner,
and Gresham batted it down to Ready.
Jack should have handled the ball, but he did not get it up in time to
cut Gresham off at first. Seeing he was too late, he took no chances
of a wild throw, and did not throw at all.
“Oh, wow! wow!” roared the crowd. “All to pieces! How easy! how
easy!”
Hodge was looking black as a thundercloud. The game was not
pleasing him at all. Was it possible Frank has lost some of his skill?
Arata, a stocky young Indian, advanced to the plate. He showed his
teeth to Merry, who gave him a pretty one on the outside corner.
Arata smashed it hard, driving it on a line over Frank’s head.
Like a flash Merriwell shot into the air and pulled down the ball with
one hand. Like a flash he whirled round and threw to Rattleton.
As the bat met the ball, both Favor and Gresham had started to run.
They did not realize Merry had caught the ball until Frank threw to
second.
Rattleton took the throw, touched the bag and drove the ball
whistling to first.
Gresham had stopped and was trying to scramble back to first, but
the ball got there ahead of him, being smothered in Browning’s mitt.
“Batter out!” announced the umpire. “Out second and first!”
It was a triple play!
Dick Merriwell flung his hat into the air, giving a shrill yell of joy. The
yell was taken up by the crowd, for this was the sort of ball-playing to
delight the cranks.
The Merries were fast winning friends.
The shout of applause having subsided, somebody cried:
“Why, you fellows don’t need a pitcher! You can play the game with
any kind of a man in the box!”
Mahoney, the captain of the Reds, was sore, but he told his men that
it would not happen again in a thousand years.
Gamp was the first hitter of the Merries, and the long youth from
New Hampshire drove the ball out to Gresham, who made a very
pretty catch.
Hodge hit savagely, but his temper was not right to connect with
Park’s curves, and he fanned.
Then came Swiftwing. Again the collection of boys whooped like a lot
of Indians from the bleachers. The Indian put up an infield fly, and
was out.
“Give us the double-shoot at your best speed, Merriwell,” said
Hodge, in a low tone. “Just show these chumps you can pitch a
little.”
“All right,” nodded Frank; “if you can handle it with that hand, you
shall have it.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Bart.
“Now,” said Dan Mahoney, “you’ll see my brother get a hit.”
“I hope so,” said Elrich, “for it wins the first thousand for me.”
Mahoney came to the plate. He had seen others hitting Frank, and
he felt fully confident he could do so. Merry gave him a swift double-
shoot to start with, and he fanned, gasped, rubbed his eyes and
looked amazed.
“Do that again,” he invited.
Merry did, and again he fanned.
The third one was a slow drop that dragged him, and he did not hit it.
Frank had struck out his first man.
Park was not much of a hitter, and Merry found him easy, striking
him out quite as easy as he had Mahoney.
“Those are the weak men!” cried somebody. “Now, let’s see you do it
to Jones.”
Being thus invited, Frank sent in his prettiest double-shoot, and
Jones missed the first one.
“Hello!” muttered Jones, as he gripped the bat. “That was a queer
one. If I didn’t know better, I should say——”
He did not mutter what he should say, for Frank was ready and
another came buzzing past, only the curves were reversed.
Again Jones bit at it and failed to connect.
“Two strikes!” called the umpire.
“Oh, he’s doing it now!” breathed Dick Merriwell, in delight.
Every ball hurt Bart’s hand, but he held them all and showed no sign
of pain.
Jones was mad and surprised, which made him easy for the third
double-shoot, and he, like the two before him, struck out.
Not one of the three men had even fouled the ball.
“Well, well!” roared a spectator. “It seems that you’ve got a pitcher
there, after all!”
“Thanks, most astute sir,” chirped Ready, doffing his cap and bowing.
“He hasn’t begun to pitch yet. He’s just getting warmed up.”
 CHAPTER XXX.
ONE TO NOTHING.

It was the beginning of the ninth inning, and neither side had scored.
Never before had there been such an exciting game in the city of
Denver. The crowd was throbbing, and Merriwell’s team had won a
host of friends by its clever work. Since the second inning, however,
Frank had given his men no chance to show what they could do, for
he had struck out man after man, just as fast as they came up.
Never in all his life had he been in better form, and his work was
something to amaze his most intimate friends.
Bart Hodge, with his arm paining him from the tip of his fingers to the
shoulder, looked very well satisfied.
Dick Merriwell was wild with delight and admiration. He heard the
crowd wondering at the work of Frank and cheering at it, and it
warmed his heart toward the brother he had once thought he hated.
“Oh, Joe!” he panted, “did you ever see anything like it?”
“Ugh! No see before,” answered Crowfoot, still smoking.
“Isn’t it fine?”
“Heap big noise. Ev’rybody yell lot; nobody get killed yet.”
Three times had Merriwell’s men reached third, but, by sharp work,
the home team had kept them from scoring. Now, however, Morley
was desperate, and he went among the men, urging them to win the
game.
“You must win it!” he said. “Elrich loses five thousand and five
hundred dollars if you don’t. He won’t back the team another day.
We’ll have to disband.”
“We’d win if we could hit that devil in the box,” said Mahoney bitterly.
“He’s the worst man we ever went up against, and we all know it
now. You’ll never hear me tell anybody after this that there is no such
thing as a double-shoot. Why, that fellow can throw regular
corkscrew curves!”
Morley swore.
“You’re quitting!” he growled.
“Did you ever know me to quit?” asked Mahoney angrily.
“No, but——”
“Then don’t talk! They have not scored, and we may be able to make
this a draw game, if we can’t get in a run.”
Black Elrich was worried, although his face looked perfectly calm,
with the strained expression of the gambler who is unchangeable
before victory or defeat. At his side, Dan Mahoney was seething.
“Hang it!” he grated. “If it had only been that catcher’s right hand!
The woman made a terrible blunder!”
“No one would have thought him able to catch, anyhow,” said Elrich.
“The big mitt protects his hand.”
“Still, it must hurt him every time the ball strikes, for Merriwell has
been using all kinds of speed.”
Morley came up to the place where he knew Elrich was sitting.
“What do you think?” he asked, in a low tone. “The boys can’t hit
Merriwell, and it’s too late to try to buy Harris, the umpire, now. Can’t
you start a riot and break up the game?”
“If you start it, it is worth a hundred dollars to you,” said Elrich, “even
though that will throw all bets off, and I’ll make nothing. What say?”
“I can’t!” muttered Morley. “If I did so, Harris would give the game to
the other side, and you’d lose just the same. If the spectators start it,
it will be all right.”
“The spectators won’t,” said the gambler. “More than three-fourths of
them are Merriwell men now.”
“Then,” said Morley, “I am afraid for the result.”
Well might he be afraid. In the last inning Frank was just as effective
as ever, and the batters fell before him in a way that was perfectly
heart-breaking to the admirers of the home team. Denver was
unable to score in the ninth.
“We must shut them out again, boys,” said Mahoney, as his men
took the field.
But Merriwell’s team went after that game in their half of the ninth.
Carker was the first man up. He had not been hitting, and Park
considered him easy. That was when Park made a mistake, for Greg
set his teeth and laced out the first ball in a most terrific manner.
It was a clean two-bagger. But Carker tried to make it three,
encouraged by Ready on the coaching-line. Ready believed in taking
desperate chances to score, and he waved for Greg to come on.
The crowd was standing again, shouting wildly as Carker tore across
second and started on a mad sprint to third.
The center-fielder got the ball and threw it to Mahoney at second.
Mahoney whirled and shot it to third.
“Slide!” shrieked Ready.
Greg heard the command and obeyed, but Croaker took the ball and
touched him easily.
“Runner out!” decided the umpire clearly.
Then there was another roar from the bleachers.
Jack Ready fiercely doubled his fist and thumped himself behind the
ear.
“All my fault!” he moaned. “I did it!”
Carker looked sorrowful.
“My last game of baseball,” he said sadly. “I do not care to play the
game any more. It is a deception and a humiliation. No more! No
more!”
Merriwell was the next batter. Park knew Merry was a good hitter,
and he was cautious. Frank did his best to work the pitcher for a
base on balls, but, with two strikes called on him, he was finally
forced to hit.
He did so sharply, sending the ball shooting along the ground
between third and short.
Frank crossed first and turned to the left, knowing it was best to have
all the start he could if there was any show of making second.
“Go on!” roared Browning, who had reached the coaching-line at
first, Ready, having come in from near third.
Then Frank ran at his best speed. He knew it would be close, and he
flung himself forward for a slide at second, which enabled him to
reach the base safely a moment ahead of the ball. By fast running,
he had made a two-bagger out of an ordinary single.
Everybody knew now that Merriwell’s team was out for the game in
that inning if there was any possible way to capture it. Such work
turned the fans into howling maniacs.
For once in his life, Jack Ready looked grave when he took his place
to strike. He realized the responsibility on him, and it had driven the
smile from his ruddy face.
Park was pitching at his best, and he did not let up a bit. Ready
made two fouls, after which he put up a high infield fly, which
dropped and remained in the hands of Croaker. Two men were out,
and the admirers of the home team began to breathe easier.
Merriwell was taking all the start he could get from second when
Carson got ready to hit.
Park seemed to feel absolutely sure of retiring the side without
further trouble, and he did get two strikes on Berlin. Then something
happened, for the cattleman’s son did a thing to delight the heart of
his father. He made a beautiful safe hit to right field and won the
game.
Merriwell was running when the ball and bat met. He knew it was not
a high fly, and instinct told him the fielder could not catch it. As he
came toward third, Hodge was on the coaching-line, madly
motioning for him to go in.
Frank obeyed. The fielder threw from right to cut him off at the plate,
but, by another splendid slide, he scored.
The game was over.

In the newspaper accounts of the game the following day Merriwell’s

team was highly praised, and the reporters took pains to mention
that it was the hit of Berlin Carson, a Colorado lad, that brought in
the winning run.
THE END.
 “BEST OF ALL BOYS’ BOOKS”
THE FAMOUS

Frank Merriwell Stories

By BURT L. STANDISH
No modern series of tales for boys and youths has met
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Frank Merriwell Down South Frank Merriwell’s Loyalty
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Frank Merriwell’s Hunting
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Tour
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Afield
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Frank Merriwell’s Courage
Frank Merriwell’s Daring
Frank Merriwell’s Set-Back
Frank Merriwell’s False
Friend
Frank Merriwell’s Brother

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 THE MOTOR POWER SERIES
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 BOYS OF LIBERTY LIBRARY
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