Ali Cross

PlayStation 4, or PS4, is a video gaming console, and Ali, Gabe, Ruby, Mateo, and Cedric play on it an online action game, Outpost. When Gabe disappears, the others try and fail to break into Gabe’s game bunker in search of clues. Ali later receives a private message that gains him entry to the bunker, where he talks to Gabe, who makes him promise not to tell the others about their conversation. Ali agrees; when the others learn of this betrayal, they break with Ali. Later, they reconcile and send online messages to Gabe, urging him to return home. When Ali gets locked inside the Qualls’ storage unit, he sends frantic messages to his Outpost friends via Gabe’s PlayStation console. The messages get through, and the boy is rescued.

Many of the story’s clues and plot changes hinge on the Outpost game and the PlayStation consoles. Ali’s friends bond over the game, use the console as communication devices, and pick up useful info about Gabe inside the Outpost game. When he disappears, Gabe takes his machine with him, and Ali realizes that the Qualls plan their burglaries using their PS4s. The Outpost game’s challenges seem to enhance the kids’ mental skills, which helps them solve the mystery. The game also points up Gabe’s genius-level smarts, which he uses to manage his disappearance with online resources.

Children aren’t always up-front with their thoughts, and the game action on the consoles sometimes stands in for their deepest feelings. Gabe’s game bunker, with its inventory of crime on the main floor and fancy apartment buried beneath, symbolizes the oppression of his regular life that lies atop his dreams. When Mateo learns, during an Outpost session, of Ali’s betrayal, his avatar turns and shoots Ali, knocking the boy out of the game and symbolically rejecting his friendship. The kids later reunite and enter Gabe’s bunker, where they post notes urging him to come back to them.

The PS4 world thus contains many symbols of the kids’ unspoken or subconscious desires and values. The consoles also suggest that, even within the artificial worlds of online gaming, the rules of detection still apply, and clues and solutions to mysteries might well be found there, just as in everyday life.