Derrick Williams greeted his teammates at the door. “Thank you guys for coming! There’s nothing better than chilling with all my friends!”
A large group of Sacramento Kings players followed him into the house. “So, where’s the party?” Ramon Sessions asked, looking around for other visitors to Derrick’s abode.
“Oh, it’s just going to be us tonight,” Derrick answered. “A more intimate gathering, if you will.”
“Well, when you said ‘Party’ on the invitation, I thought it would be more like, you know, a party. Not a chill-out sesh,” Ramon said.
“We’re going down to the basement,” Derrick explained, ignoring Ramon’s complaints. “That’s where the fun stuff is.” He led his teammates down a flight of stairs to an unlit room, or rooms. It was too dark to see; the assorted Kings waited blindly in the darkness for Derrick to turn on the lights.
After a minutes’ waiting, hearing Derrick fumbling around in the darkness, Reggie Evans announced. “Screw this noise. I’m getting out my phone so we can find the lightswitch.”
“No you’re not!” Derrick shouted with such urgency that Reggie immediately dropped his phone back into his pocket. “The surprise needs to be maintained!”
“What surpri-” Reggie began to ask, before an unbearable racket began to emanate from unseen speakers around the walls. Simultaneously, an elaborate lightning system rigged from the ceiling began to pulsate and strobe.
“It’s his dubstep!” Rudy Gay yelled in explanation as his teammates covered their ears and winced. “He’s always tricking people into listening to it and it sucks!”
At the far end of the room, Derrick stood on a raised platform, surrounded by at least ten laptops. Somehow, in the confusion of the darkness, he had changed his clothes to match those of a mad scientist. Now, he flailed his arms and bent his torso in a primitive imitation of dance, jumping all around his makeshift stage. As a backdrop to this demented display, a row of server racks lined the back wall, also flashing a myriad of colors. Network cables connected the whole thing in a jumble of wires, and it was from these servers that the algorithms composing Derrick’s dubstep did their heinous computations. Derrick was only intermittently visible as the lights around him flashed at a seizure-inducing speed.
“We have to get out of here!” Rudy yelled in a panic, trying to find the door they had entered through. However, it was not there; the doorway had been replaced with a smooth steel panel.
“There is no escape from Professor Dubbenstein’s Dungeon!” Derrick yelled into a microphone as Rudy beat his fists feebly against the exit. His words echoed menacingly, distorted by some kind of post-processor to sound utterly alien. “I welcome you to your prison of beats, where your chains are fashioned from my sick drops and your cages from brutal wubs!”
All around them, the raucous noise continued unabated. One by one, the Kings players slumped to the ground, knocked unconscious by the heavy wubs and ear-piecing bleeps. There would be no escape for them.