Once upon a time, in the great simulation beyond Mapleworld, the mayor of San Francisco instructed his City Hall to grant marriage licenses to same- sex couples. It was a few days before Valentine’s Day, and Simon and Ant were deep into postproduction on Counterpart High: Junior Year. While both agreed that this was an interesting political development, they had never discussed marriage as it pertained to them personally. Had they been inclined to marry, there could not have been a less convenient time for them to take off from work. CPH3 had been playtested too long, and they’d added so many new elements that the game was extraordinarily buggy. To ensure the game would be delivered on schedule, they were regularly putting in eighteen-hour days.
“Do you think we should go, though?” Simon asked. It was four in the morning, and Ant was driving them back to their apartment to shower, change clothes, and perhaps, even sleep for an hour or two.
“Go where?” Ant said, yawning. “To San Francisco,” Simon said. “For what purpose?”
“To get hitched,” Simon said.
“I didn’t know you wanted to get married.”
“Well, it wasn’t an option before,” Simon said. “You can’t know you want something until it’s an option.”
“I think we have to finish the game before we can even think of doing anything else,” Ant said.
“You’re right. Of course you’re right.”
By 8 a.m., they were on the congested road back to Unfair.
“I’m feeling Torschlusspanik,” Simon said. He was the one driving, while Ant tried to catch some extra sleep.
“Nope,” Ant said, without opening his eyes. “You can’t throw German at me when I’ve only slept two hours.”
“Who knows how long before they stop giving out marriage licenses?” Simon said. “While we’re busy making a wormhole prom fantasy, we could have completely squandered our chance to get married in the real world.”
“I’m sleeping, Simon.” “Fine. Go to sleep.”
Two minutes later, Ant opened one eye. “I honestly didn’t know you were so conventional. Next you’ll be wanting a white picket fence.”
“If you mean a house in Santa Monica or Culver, that sounds about right. I’m so bloody tired of driving to and from West Hollywood.”
And, at 3 a.m., Ant drove them home again.
“I think I want to go to San Francisco,” Simon admitted, sounding pissed off about the whole situation. “Will you come with me, Anthony Ruiz?”
They had met six years ago, as freshmen, in a character animation class. Initially, Ant had not been attracted to him, thought he looked like a muscular genie, not his type. Worse than his looks, Simon was obnoxious. He corrected their professor, hated American animation, had a habit of dropping long German words and making references to obscure films, had a laugh like a leaf blower.
About two weeks into class, Simon had presented his first twenty- second, animated project. “The Ant” began with a repulsive kid holding a magnifying glass over an ant. The camera zooms in on the ant, a leather jacket–wearing, eye-rolling, proto-hipster. The ant delivers a mordant monologue detailing his final thoughts about existence, and then he combusts spectacularly. No one in their class had anything nice to say about it, and although Ant thought it was the best student work he’d seen, he hated speaking up during critique. At the end of class, he went up to Simon. “That was brilliant,” Ant said.
“Thanks, man,” Simon replied. “I based that character on you, you know.”
Ant rolled his eyes and zipped up his leather jacket. “I don’t know how to take that.”
“Not the combustion,” Simon said. “The rest of it. The sexy ant.” He grinned, causing the eruption of a heretofore unseen dimple, and Ant thought, God help me, he’s cute when he smiles.
They asked Marx to go to San Francisco with them in case they needed a witness and, also, so he couldn’t possibly be angry that they were taking off in the middle of finishing the game. Once Marx was going, Sadie decided to go, too—someone needed to take pictures. And then, since everyone else was going and the event was of civic and historical interest, the mayor of Mapletown decided he, too, wished to attend.
They flew to San Francisco on Tuesday morning. By the time they arrived at City Hall, the line stretched around the perimeter of the building and only grew longer as the day progressed. Despite the cold, damp weather, there was a low-key music festival vibe—not like Coachella, more like Newport Jazz—mixed with the giddy bureaucratic tension of a day in traffic court. Simon feared that marriage licensing could be suspended without warning, and that cops, lawyers, homophobic protesters might show up to spoil everything. “Torschlusspanik,” Simon said.
“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll bite.” “Don’t encourage him,” Ant said.
“What’s Torschlusspanik?” Sam said.
“It means ‘gate-shut panic,’ ” Simon said. “It’s the fear that time is running out and that you’re going to miss an opportunity. Literally, the gate is closing, and you’ll never get in.”
“That’s me,” Sam said. “I have that constantly.”
When the rain picked up, Sam and Sadie were dispatched to go buy umbrellas, which the group from eternally sunny Los Angeles had not thought to bring. The vendor in front of City Hall was sold out of umbrellas, and so they had to walk farther down Grove Street. The second vendor they encountered was selling dodgy, used/stolen umbrellas. It’s our
friends’ wedding. We can do better than this, they told each other. A half mile or so farther, they arrived at a sporting goods store that sold colossal umbrellas designed for golf spectators. By then, Sam and Sadie were both drenched, and they agreed that they probably should have settled for the dodgy umbrellas a half mile back. Why are our standards always so high? they joked. Lacking other options, they bought three of the monster umbrellas. They opened two of them and began the trek back to City Hall.
Thirty seconds later, they came to the realization that it was impossible to share the sidewalk when deploying two umbrellas with five-foot-wide canopies. Sadie told Sam to close his umbrella and come under hers, and then, she offered him her arm. Sam interpreted the arm as an indicator of improved relations between them, and he decided to mention that he’d seen some of the Master of the Revels work. “I like the desaturated color scheme. Not quite black-and-white, but very stylish. It’s smart.”
“Thanks,” Sadie said. “That’s nice of you to say, considering how much I know you disapprove of it.”
“I don’t disapprove of it,” Sam said. “And anyway, it didn’t matter what I thought, did it? You were going to make that game no matter what I said. And now you’re making it. Which is good.”
“So, you don’t think Master of the Revels is the worst idea ever, and it’s going to single-handedly destroy our company?”
Sam shook his head, no.
Four hours later, Simon and Ant were the 211th couple to be married that day. After the ceremony, everyone was starving so they went to a nearby dim sum place, where they stuffed themselves with dumplings. Marx ordered an expensive bottle of cheap champagne, and Simon, who liked bloviating as much as Sam did, decided to give a toast. “Thank you to our friends and colleagues for taking the day off to bear witness to our nuptials. And for producing three CPHs with us. I think we can agree, once and for all, that it should have been called Doppelgänger High.”
“Agree to disagree!” Marx called out.
“Contrary to popular belief,” Simon continued, “my favorite German word is not actually doppelgänger. It’s ‘Zweisamkeit.’ ”
“The alternative title was Zweisamkeit High,” Ant said. “I talked him out of it.”
“Thank you,” Sam whispered.
“ ‘Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.” Simon’s eyes were moist. “I know I’m impossible, and I know you don’t care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.”
Ant raised his glass. “Zweisamkeit,” he said.
By the time Counterpart High dropped in August, Simon and Ant were no longer married. The California Supreme Court declared that the City of San Francisco had overstepped, and the marriages that had been performed based on those licenses were now void. Strangely, Ant took it harder than Simon. Simon had felt the Torschlusspanik for a reason, and he wasn’t surprised to find that his legal marriage was now over, considering the country and the times they lived in. He did a few lines of old coke, which he had been saving for a special occasion, and he went back to work. “I’m sorry if this whole thing has been a Verschlimmbesserung boondoggle,” Simon said to Ant, who had decided to take the day off.
Ant pulled the blanket over his head. At first, he had wanted to call their congressman, go to Sacramento to protest, write angry letters and op- eds, but in the end, he had to resign himself to the reality that he wasn’t a protester, an organizer, or even a political person.
After he’d missed a week of work, Sadie drove to Ant’s house to see him. “I didn’t think it would feel different to be married,” Ant told her, “but somehow, it did. And now I feel as if I’ve been tricked.”
—
Back at the office, Sadie called Marx and Sam into her office. “There should be marriages in Mapleworld.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in marriage,” Marx said. “Why force an antiquated institution on innocent digital people?”
“There will be some people for whom Mapleworld will be the only place they can get married,” Sadie said. “And what is the point of having your own world if it can’t right a few injustices of the real one?”
Three years after Mapleworld had launched, Marriages was quietly introduced as one of a handful of new features in Mapleworld. Marriages, much like marriage in the real world, allowed residents to combine property and Maplebucks. In Mapleworld, marriage was defined as between two consenting adults, no explicit mention of sex or gender. And indeed, it would have been foolish to define sex or gender as a requirement for marriage in Mapleworld when so many of its residents adhered to neither binary nor human characteristics. There were many hipsters, like Mayor Mazer, but there were also elves, orcs, monsters, aliens, fey, vampires, and a variety of other supernatural-presenting, nonbinary folk.
On a rainy October morning in Mapletown, Antony Ruiz and Simon Freeman were married for the second time in a Special Mapleworld Event. Sam and Sadie did not have to go for umbrellas. The programmers had added them the night before.
Because he wanted the wedding to have verisimilitude, Sam had gotten ordained as a minister in the real world, and after he had completed Simon and Ant’s ceremony, Mayor Mazer invited anyone else who wanted to be married to step forward. Before closing shop, he had married 211 couples.
In the weeks that followed, fifty thousand people canceled their
Mapleworld accounts. An additional two hundred thousand joined.
The hate mail began immediately. Death threats—emailed and paper— for Sam mainly. A convincing bomb threat that forced everyone to evacuate Unfair for an afternoon. Boycotts from various anti-equality organizations that felt Mapleworld was being needlessly political. Boycotts from equality groups that felt Sam had made a jest out of a serious issue and had then used that issue as promotion. A handful of op-eds in the usual places, both
in support of Mayor Mazer and against him. (Newsweek: “Should Games Be Political? Mayor Mazer Thinks So.”) Sam on TV talk shows, quoting Marshall McLuhan, “The games of a people reveal a great deal about them.”
Marx decided to hire security, and for a few weeks, Olga, a Russian former weightlifting champion, dutifully followed Sam around.
Sam made a point of writing back to everyone who wrote to him, responding to even the vilest hate mail. Once, Sadie found him at his desk, replying to a letter that began with the salutation, “Dear Chink Jew Faggot Lover.”
“I like that the person writes ‘Dear,’ ” Sadie said. She tossed the letter across the room. Sadie felt guilty. Marriages had been her idea, but Sam, because he was the face of Mapleworld, took the abuse.
If anything, Sam was encouraged by the hate mail, and because of his experience with Marriages, he would use Mapleworld to make even more political statements. He did not consider them to be political statements but sensible governance and, not insignificantly, an excellent source of promotion. He banned user-created gun stores and the sale of weapons. He supported conservationism and the building of an Islamic cultural center by a group of Muslim Mapletownies. He arranged mass avatar protests about the war in Iraq and offshore oil drilling. He held town halls where he’d talk to residents about the issues facing Mapletown and the country. Every time he took a controversial stand, there’d be the same flurry of hate mail and cancellations of accounts, and then life would go on in Mapleworld, and the world beyond it as well.
