You are flying.
Below, a checkerboard of country life. A pair of Jersey cows graze in a lavender field, tails swatting at imaginary flies. A woman in a chambray dress rides a bicycle over a stone bridge. She hums the second movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, and as she passes, a man in a Breton cap begins whistling the tune. From a hive you cannot see, the susurrus of bees. In the valley below the bridge, an ink-haired boy feeds a sugar cube to a horse with a wild look in her eyes. A grove of apple trees waits patiently for fall. Unobserved, a graying man watches two teenagers swim in a pond. You can smell the man’s longing, stronger than lavender, and you think, Humans want so much. I am glad to be a bird. In a field of strawberry plants, waxy berries companionably mingle among white flowers.
You have never been one to resist a strawberry, so you descend.
As a winged creature, you are occasionally called upon to explain flight to the flightless. Your standard answer is that it’s a combination of Newtonian physics, concerted flapping, weather, anatomy. But honestly, it’s best not to think of the mechanics of flight while you’re doing it. Your philosophy: Surrender to the air, enjoy the view.
You have arrived at your destination. Your small beak surrounds the berry, and you are about to snatch it when you hear the click of a trigger.
“STOP, THIEF!”
You feel the bullet penetrate your hollow bird bones.
An explosion of brown and beige feathers, like dandelion seeds dispersing. Blood on the berries—red on red—but to you, a tetrachromat, the two reds are distinctive.
You land in the dirt: an almost imperceptible thud, an unimpressive dust cloud that only you can see.
Another shot. Another shot.
Your wing is flapping. You choose to interpret this as an attempt at flight, and not an involuntary death spasm.
Some hours later, you become aware of someone holding your hand, which means you have a hand, which means you are not a bird, which means you must be on some pretty terrific drugs, like LSD, which you have never done even though Zoe always wanted you guys to do LSD together, said she knew the perfect guide. For a second, you experience competing melancholies: sadness that you cannot fly, sadness that you didn’t do LSD with Zoe, sadness that
—
You are dying.
No, that came out wrong. What you meant to express was the existential grief that comes with the knowledge that all things die. You are not dying, except insofar as you have always been dying.
—
To repeat: You are not dying.
You are thirty-one years old. You are the only child of Ryu and AeRan Lee Watanabe—respectively, a businessman and a design professor. You were born in New Jersey. You have two passports. You work at Unfair Games on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, in Venice, California. The nameplate on your desk reads:
MARX WATANABE TAMER OF HORSES
You have had many lives. Before you were a tamer of horses, you were a fencer, a high school chess champion, an actor. You are American,
Japanese, Korean, and by being all of those things, you are not truly any of those things. You consider yourself a citizen of the world.
You are currently a citizen of a hospital. A machine is breathing for you. Regularly spaced chirps indicate that you are still alive.
You are not awake, but you are not asleep either. You can see and hear everything.
You cannot remember everything. You don’t have amnesia, per se, but you don’t immediately recollect how it is you have ended up in a hospital and why it is you cannot wake up.
You pride yourself on your memory. At the office, someone is always saying, “Ask Marx. He’ll know.” Often, you do know. You remember the usual. People’s names and faces, birthdays, song lyrics, phone numbers. You remember the slightly more unusual: entire plays, poems, character actors, the meanings of obscure words, long passages of novels. You remember the names of people’s parents, children, pets. You remember with granularity the geography of cities, hotel room floor plans, video game levels, the scars of ex-lovers, times you’ve said the wrong thing, and the clothes people wore. You remember what Sadie was wearing the first time you met her: a black tank dress, with a white cap-sleeved T-shirt underneath it, a red flannel tied around her waist, burgundy oxfords with lug soles, sheer socks with a rose print on them, those tiny oval-shaped, yellow-tinted sunglasses that everyone was wearing that spring, her hair parted in the middle, in two Brunhilda braids. “You must be Marx,” she said, holding out her hand to you. “I’m Sadie.”
“I know you already,” you replied. “I’ve played two of your games.”
She surveyed you over the top of her yellow sunglasses. “You think you can know a person from playing their games?”
“I do. No better way, in my humble opinion.” “So, what do you know about me?” she asked. “You’re smart.”
“I’m Sam’s friend, so that is to be assumed. I could guess the same about you. What specifically do you know about me from playing my game?”
“That you’re a little bit wicked. And your mind is an interesting and unusual place.”
Sadie may have rolled her eyes, but it was hard to see them beneath those sunglasses. “Do you make games, too?”
“No, but I play them.”
“How will I ever know you, then?”
Memory, you realized long ago, is a game that a healthy-brained person can play all the time, and the game of memory is won or lost on one criterion: Do you leave the formation of memories to happenstance, or do you decide to remember?
So, where were you when this began?
—
You are in a meeting with Charlotte and Adam Worth.
They are blue-eyed innocents, brand-new to Los Angeles, strapping and healthy, like pioneers or folk singers. They remind you of Sam and Sadie, if Sam and Sadie were tall, married ex-Mormons from Utah.
The Worths are pitching their game, tentatively titled Our Infinite Days. (You used to joke that if you ever wrote a memoir, the title would be All Titles Are Tentative.) Our Infinite Days is an adventure shooter about the end of the world. A woman and her young daughter travel through a desert apocalypse, fending off people and a gauntlet of what the Worths were calling “desert vampires”—a cross between a vampire and a zombie. The woman has amnesia and the young daughter, who is only six years old, must act as her memory. The daughter believes her brothers and fathers are on the West Coast, but can you trust the memory of a six-year-old?
“Amnesia is a gaming chestnut,” Charlotte apologizes, “but we know we can make it work.”
“Actually, we were inspired by the original Ichigo,” Adam says. “The challenge of having to rely on a child’s memory and perceptions to win a game. It’s brilliant.”
“We can’t wait to meet Green/Mazer,” Charlotte says. “We’re huge fans.”
“She even loves Both Sides,” Adam says.
“Don’t say even. It’s my favorite game of all time,” Charlotte says. “Myre Landing is genius. I cosplayed Rose the Mighty.”
“No one knew who she was,” Adam says “I’m somewhat obsessed with Sadie Green.” “Not Mazer?” you ask, amused.
“They’re both great, but Sadie Green’s Myre Landing and Both Sides, Sadie Green’s Solution, and those are the kinds of thing I want to make,” Charlotte says. “I cannot wait to play Master of the Revels.”
“Solution,” you say. “That’s deep. You really are a fan.”
Maybe this is a fan service vaudeville, but you still appreciate it. It’s amazing how many people you meet—people who want things from you, after all—who can’t be bothered to research any of Unfair’s games.
You thank the Worths for coming in and you tell them that you will discuss Our Infinite Days with Sadie and Sam when they’re back from New York. You promise they’ll hear from you no later than the end of next week. You look at Charlotte and Adam, and you see how much they need you to make this game with them. You see how many times they must have been told no, the wanting in their eyes. You wonder what they’re doing for day jobs and how long their relationship will survive if it isn’t bolstered by some success. (They say success kills relationships, but the lack of it will do it just as quickly.) One of the absolute best parts of your own job is being able to tell an artist, Yes. I see you. I get what you’re doing. Let’s do this thing. Even though it’s a breach of professional protocol, you contemplate telling them your company is going to make Our Infinite Days right now. You like these people; you want to play this game; it’s a no-brainer.
You are about to walk them to the elevator bank when you hear what sounds like thunder, or a car driving over a metal plate, or a wrecking ball hitting the side of a building a block away.
It is loud, but not necessarily grave.
It is a bang, but Los Angeles is filled with sounds and furies signifying nothing. It’s famous for them.
You do not think it’s a gunshot.
You hear a muffled shout, but you cannot say whether it is coming from the lobby a floor below, or outside.
You smile at the Worths, and you laugh and, to put everyone at ease, you say, “The never-ending excitement of working in video games.”
The Worths laugh at your weak joke, and momentarily, everything is normal. “Should we leave our concept art so that your partners can look at it?” Charlotte asks.
You’re about to reply when your office phone rings. It is Unfair’s receptionist, Gordon. “Hi, Marx. There’s someone down here to see Mazer.”
You sense tension in Gordon’s voice. “Is something wrong?”
“I—I can’t talk,” Gordon says. “They say they need to talk to Mazer.” “Okay, hold on.” You smile in the Worths’ direction. You lower your
voice and whisper into the phone, “I’ll ask questions. You say yes or no. Should I call the police?”
“Yes,” Gordon says. “Do they have a gun?” “Yes.”
“Is there more than one?” “Yes.”
“Is anyone hurt?” “No.”
Through the earpiece, you can hear someone yell, “Get the fuck off the phone! Tell that faggot-lover to get down here.”
“Tell them Mazer isn’t here, but that the CEO of Unfair is coming down to see them, and that’s just as good.”
“Okay,” Gordon says, sounding dazed. He repeats what you’ve said. “It’ll be okay, Gordon.” You hang up the phone.
You turn around, and the Worths are staring at you, awaiting instruction. “What can we do?” Adam Worth asks. Like their characters in
Our Infinite Days, the Worths are prepared for imminent apocalypse.
You explain the situation and you ask him to call the police. Adam Worth picks up the phone.
As you’re leaving, Ant comes toward you. “What’s going on?”
You repeat what you know, and Ant offers to accompany you. “Sadie’ll kill me if I let you go down there alone.”
“There are things for you to do up here,” you say. You tell Ant to contact maintenance to get them to turn off the building’s power, so the elevator won’t work. You tell him to block off the stairwells. You tell him to keep everyone calm and make sure no one comes downstairs. You tell him to take the staff up to the roof and block the door.
“But Marx, for God’s sake, are you sure you have to go down there?” “They just want to talk to someone. They probably have some
grievance with the company. I’ve talked people off the ledge before.”
Ant says, “I don’t know. Maybe you should wait for the police. Sadie and Sam’ll both kill me if anything happens to you.”
“I’ll be fine, Ant. And it isn’t right to leave Gordon down there alone. Whatever these peoples’ grievances are, they’re with Unfair, not our receptionist.”
Ant embraces you, and you walk toward the stairs. “Be careful, my friend,” he says.
Charlotte Worth calls after you. “Marx, should you take a weapon?” This is the question of a serious gamer. A gamer should never enter a potential combat situation without checking one’s inventory and confirming the availability of a weapon.
“What weapon?” you say. You have no weapons. You have lived an easy life that has required no defenses of any kind. Your privilege probably makes you reckless. “I’m going to have a conversation. I’m sure this will just turn out to be a person who needs someone to listen to them.”
Before you descend, you take a quick, final look at your office. You feel as if you’ve forgotten to do something. In a game, the out-of-place object is often the solution. You notice the Worths’ portfolio, which
Charlotte has left on your desk, and you scribble on a Post-it: S., TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS. —M.
You hand the portfolio to your assistant, and you run down the stairs, and that is all you want to remember for now, because Sadie is in your hospital room.
“Are you his wife?” the doctor asks. “Yes,” Sadie lies.
This strikes you as funny because Sadie has a thing about marriage— i.e., she doesn’t believe in it. You don’t know where this comes from exactly—her parents have been happily married for thirty-seven years; her grandparents for longer than that. If anyone should have a problem with marriage, it should be you. Your parents have been unhappily married for nearly as long as Sadie’s have been happily married. You can’t remember the last time you saw your parents together. After your freshman year in college, you came back home to find that they had moved into separate apartments in Tokyo.
“Where’s Dad?” you’d asked your mother.
Your mother seemed unconcerned. “He said he wanted to be able to walk to work.”
Over a decade later, they still aren’t divorced, and you can’t explain this either.
You proposed to Sadie last year. You asked her father for permission, which he granted. You bought a ring. You got down on one knee.
“I don’t see myself being someone’s wife,” she said. “You wouldn’t be a wife. I’d be your husband,” you said.
She was not convinced by this argument. Her resistance was surprising, so you asked for reasons. She said that you already owned a house together, so you didn’t need to be married. She said that she didn’t want to be married to her business partner. She said that marriage was an antiquated institution that oppressed women. She said she liked her name.
“I like your name, too,” you said. “I love your name.”
But now, here Sadie is, telling a doctor that she is your wife. If you could speak, you would say to her, “All I had to do was fall into a coma for
you to marry me. If only I’d known it was so easy.”
—
You have not, technically, fallen into a coma.
The coma has been medically induced.
From overhearing doctors, you have surmised that you have been shot three times: in the thigh, in the chest, in the shoulder.
The most problematic of those injuries is the bullet that went through your chest: it raced through your lung, your kidney, and your pancreas. The bullet is now chilling somewhere in your intestine, waiting until your body is well enough for it to be removed. They say it could be worse—you, like most humans, have redundancies built in. Your pancreas is, heartbreakingly, single. The trauma of the injuries has caused your body to go into shock, which is why you find yourself in the coma. You are young and healthy, or you were, and depending on the day, they say your chances for surviving this are good, better than average, not bad. You take some comfort in this.
Sadie leaves, and a nurse comes into the room to deal with the dueling portmanteaus of waste and nourishment that hang by your bed. He carefully wipes down your body with a sponge, and despite everything, you find a small pleasure in being cared for.
—
You are in the lobby of Unfair Games.
A white boy, dressed in black, with a red bandanna tied around the lower half of his face is holding a small gun to Gordon the receptionist’s head. Another white boy, also dressed in black—this one, with a larger gun and a black bandanna, is pointing the barrel of his big gun at you. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” the boy with the red bandanna wants to know.
You have no idea why these boys haven’t gotten into the elevator to come up to the main floor yet. Don’t they want to wreak havoc on the most people possible? You have no idea how Gordon—sweet, baby-faced, ball- of-clay Gordon—has managed to contain them to the lobby. You remember
Gordon at Halloween. He had modded his Pikachu costume so that he could make actual electric sparks.
You don’t know much about guns, other than the guns you’ve used in video games, like Doom. And even when you play Doom, guns are not your weapon of choice. You prefer a chainsaw or a rocket launcher, weapons with more Grand Guignol–style thrills to them. You determine the smaller gun is a pistol, and the larger weapon is an assault rifle.
“Hi, I’m Marx Watanabe. This is my company.” You hold out your hand in case anyone wants to shake it. The boys look mystified by this gesture. You bow your head slightly. “What can I do for you? Gordon says you want to talk to Mazer, but Mazer’s not here.”
Red Bandanna screams at you, “I don’t believe you! You’re a goddamn liar!”
“I promise you, he’s not here,” you say. “He’s in New York, promoting our new game. But why don’t you tell me what I can do for you?”
“Show me the office,” Red Bandanna says. “I want to see for myself that little faggot isn’t here.”
“Okay,” you say, desperately stalling to give Ant time to evacuate everyone to the roof. “I can do that, but can you do me a favor—”
“Boy, I cannot fucking do you a favor.”
“Explain to me what you want with Mazer. Maybe I can help.”
The one with the black bandanna has a slight stutter. “We don’t want to hurt anyone else,” he says. “We just need to talk to Mazer. If we wanted to go shoot up your office, we’d have gone up there already. We want Mazer to come down here.”
“Let’s call him,” you suggest. You dial Sam’s number, but Sam doesn’t pick up. He must be in the photo shoot with Sadie. You leave a message, keeping your voice neutral: “It’s Marx. Give me a ring when you have a chance.”
You look at these two kids. You can’t tell how old they are because of their bandannas. They’re probably your age or younger, and you aren’t afraid of them, though you are afraid of their guns.
“He’ll call back,” you say casually. “How about while we wait for Mazer to call, you let Gordon here go?”
“Bitch,” Red Bandanna says. “Why would we do that?”
“He’s not important,” you say. “He’s an NPC.” They’re gamers, obviously, so you know they will know this term.
“You’re an NPC,” Red Bandanna says.
“You’re not the first person to call me that,” you say.
—
You are in a hotel, just outside of San Simeon.
Sadie has fallen asleep, so you go down to the bar. Sam is there. Your friend, who never drinks, is drinking.
You ask him if he wants company, and he shrugs and says, “Do what you want.” You sit down on the stool next to him.
“I don’t know how it happened,” you say lamely. “I don’t think either of us meant for it to happen.”
“I don’t have even one iota of desire to hear the story,” he says. He is drunk, but he doesn’t sound drunk yet, only edgy and nasty. “What you have with Sadie is nothing like what I have with Sadie, so it doesn’t even matter. You can fuck anyone,” he says. “You can’t make games with anyone, though.”
“I make games with both of you,” you point out. “I named Ichigo, for God’s sake. I have been with both of you every step of the way. You can’t say I haven’t been here.”
“You’ve been here, sure. But you’re fundamentally unimportant. If you weren’t here, it would be someone else. You’re a tamer of horses. You’re an NPC, Marx.”
An NPC is a character that is not playable by a gamer. It is an AI extra that gives a programmed world verisimilitude. The NPC can be a best friend, a talking computer, a child, a parent, a lover, a robot, a gruff platoon leader, or the villain. Sam, however, means this as an insult—in addition to
calling you unimportant, he’s saying you’re boring and predictable. But the fact is, there is no game without the NPCs.
“There’s no game without the NPCs,” you tell him. “There’s just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.”
Sam orders another shot of Grey Goose, and you tell him he’s had enough. “You’re not my father,” Sam says.
The bartender looks at you, and you order a beer.
“I wish I’d never met you,” Sam says. “I wish we’d never been roommates. I wish I’d never introduced you to Sadie.” Sam is starting to slur his words.
“Sadie doesn’t belong to you.”
“She does,” Sam says. “She’s mine. And you knew that, and you pursued her anyway.”
“No. People don’t belong to each other.” “Why not?” Sam says. “Why not?” “Sam.”
“Are you going to marry her?” Sam asks. He says “marry” like he means “murder.”
“Not at the moment.”
“What’s so great about marriage? What’s so great about s*x? What’s so great about making babies or playing house? Why can’t you belong to the person with whom you share your work?”
“Because there is life, and there is work,” you say. “And they aren’t the same.”
“They’re the same for me.”
“Maybe they’re not the same for Sadie.”
“Maybe they’re not,” Sam says quietly. “I’m so screwed up, Marx. If I hadn’t been such a screwed-up coward, maybe I’d be the one going up to Sadie’s hotel room. I know it’s my fault. I know I had time.” Sam puts his head down on the mahogany bar and he begins to weep. “No one loves me,” he says.
“I love you, brother. You’re my best friend.” You pay the bar tab, and you help Sam up to his room. He goes into the bathroom, and he closes his
door, and then you hear him throwing up.
You sit on Sam’s hotel bed. You turn on the television and a rerun of a medical show is playing. A man has brain cancer, and he is going to die, unless he has an experimental brain surgery. But in the end, the experimental brain surgery kills him anyway. It is strange, you think, how much people hate going to doctors, but how much they love watching shows about doctors.
Sam is taking longer than you’d expect so you call his name, “Sam?”
When he doesn’t answer, you go into the bathroom, and he’s standing in front of the mirror with a pair of grooming kit scissors. He’s hacked off approximately half of his hair.
“I got vomit on it,” he says, “And it wouldn’t wash off, so I cut it. Now I want to shave the whole thing, but I’m too drunk.”
Without commentary, you take the scissors from him, and you cut off the rest of his hair, and then you take out his electric shaver, and you shave his hair down as close as you can.
“Who’s the NPC now?” you say to him. “I’m the one with the controller. I’m the one with the task.”
“You find your crazy roommate in the bathroom. He’s cut off half of his hair in a fit of nonsensical despair. What do you do?” Sam says, imitating the form of interactive fiction. He runs his fingers through his hair. “Don’t tell Sadie about any of this.”
“Brother, I think she’ll notice.” You take his head in your hands and you kiss him on the crown.
—
You are in the lobby of Unfair Games.
“You guys play a lot of games?” You’re both stalling and you genuinely want to know.
“Some,” Red Bandanna says.
“Which ones?” you ask. “Don’t worry. It’s a professional question. I’m interested to know what people are playing.”
They report that they play Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Unreal Tournament, and Call of Duty. Gordon, who is sitting under the desk, comments, “You guys sure like shooters.”
“No one asked for your opinion, fat-ass,” Red Bandanna says.
Years ago, you were on a panel about violence and games, and the most knowledgeable among you was a guy in a corduroy jacket with elbow patches, who’d literally written a book on the subject. He said that most, if not all, gamers were able to make the distinction between playing a violent game and committing a violent act, and that kids might even become psychologically healthier from indulging violent fantasies through play. You are no expert, but what you know is this: No human has ever been murdered with a video game weapon.
You look at your phone. Five minutes have passed since you called Sam.
You go to the mini fridge underneath Gordon’s desk. “You want a Fiji water? We have some PowerBars back here, too.”
Red Bandanna shakes his head, but Black Bandanna accepts the drink. He lifts up his bandanna to drink, and you can see his face. Boyish, a gathering of tender, red marks, irregularly stubbled.
“So, what’s your beef with Mazer?” you say. “From what I can tell, you guys aren’t playing any of our games.”
“It’s Mapleworld,” Black Bandanna says. “Don’t fucking tell him,” Red Bandanna says.
“Why? He’ll find out soon enough,” Black Bandanna says. “His wife got married to a woman in Mapleworld, and now she left him for the woman she married, and…”
“Fuck you,” Red Bandanna says to his partner. “That’s none of his fucking business.”
“So, you blame Sam.”
“Who’s Sam?” Red Bandanna says. “Mayor Mazer.”
“I blame Mazer. And I will have my vengeance,” he says, speaking like a character in a video game that has been poorly translated.
You turn to Black Bandanna. “And you? Why are you here?”
“Because I don’t think it’s right,” Black Bandanna says. “Little kids play Mapleworld. I’m not prejudiced, but why should all this gay stuff be forced on kids?” He looks at you to see if you’re agreeing with him. You keep your face impartial. “Also, I’m his best friend since kindergarten, so I had to come.”
You nod. These guys are saying this like it’s perfectly reasonable to show up at an office with two guns and demand to shoot a game designer. They’re acting like they’re on a fishing trip, a groomsmen’s weekend to Vegas. You imagine them choosing the bandannas they’re wearing before they left the house, debating whether bandannas set the right tone for shooting up an office. “So, what’s the plan?” you say.
“I want to kill Mazer,” Red Bandanna says.
“But Mazer’s not here. So, maybe the best thing for you to do is go home?”
“Fuck you,” Red Bandanna says. He pushes the barrel of the gun into your cheek. “This is taking too long. I want to see the office now.” He moves the gun to your spine, and you lead them up the stairs. It sounds promisingly quiet on the second floor, but you’re still holding your breath when you go to open the fire door.
The entire floor is empty, and you try not to look relieved.
“Did you lie to me?” Red Bandanna says. “Where is everyone?”
You make up a story about a company retreat. “Look, Sam’s office is right over here.”
“If you’re important, then why aren’t you on the company retreat?” Red Bandanna asks.
“Because someone has to mind the farm. I’m an NPC, right?”
The Bandanna Boys begin to knock things off Sam’s shelves. Ichigo memorabilia everywhere. “I hate that game,” Red Bandanna says. “Fucking little boy in a dress.”
The phone rings. Red Bandanna tells you to answer it: it’s the police. They’re outside, and they have a hostage negotiator with them. They want to speak to Red Bandanna. But before you hand over the phone, you cover
the mouthpiece. “You should decide what you want out of this,” you tell Red Bandanna. He has light brown eyes, and you can see fear in them. “No one’s gotten hurt yet, and that’s in your favor. So, ask for what you want, and move on with your life. You’re not going to be able to shoot Mazer today.”
Red Bandanna reaches for the phone, and then he hangs it up. He starts to weep, and he takes off his bandanna to wipe off his eyes, and for the first time, you can see his face and he looks like a boy. He looks like Sam the night he shaved his head. He looks vulnerable and, despite everything, you want to help him.
“It’s okay,” you say. You try to put your arms around Red Bandanna.
This is a mistake. He pushes you against the wall with both of his hands. “Get off of me, you goddamn queer.”
“Jesus, Josh,” Black Bandanna says.
“Don’t say my fucking name,” Red Bandanna says.
At that moment—what could he possibly be thinking?—Ant comes down the stairs into the office. He has his hands up. “Marx,” he calls, “It’s Ant. Are you all right?”
Red Bandanna points his gun at Ant.
“Is that fucking Mazer?” Red Bandanna says. “Did you lie to me?” He turns to you. “Has he been here this whole time?”
“That’s not Mazer,” you say. “That’s another one of our employees. His name is Anthony Ruiz.”
“It looks like Mazer to me,” Red Bandanna insists. Maybe he truly believes that Ant is Sam. That day, Ant is unluckily wearing a red plaid shirt like the Samatar in Mapleworld. Sam and Ant don’t look that much alike, other than being slightly built, dark-haired, and olive complexioned. They aren’t the same races. You realize that, to the boy with the gun, it probably doesn’t matter what particular “other” he is looking at.
Or maybe he doesn’t mistake Sam for Ant. Maybe he just doesn’t like the look of Ant. With his Mohawk and his tight jeans, Ant instantly becomes a symbol of the liberal agenda of game companies.
Maybe he just wants to shoot someone.
You hear Red Bandanna’s finger move the trigger, and you jump between Ant and the gun. “Josh, don’t shoot,” you say.
You’re too late. Red Bandanna fires the five bullets in his round. One hits Ant—you don’t know where.
Three hit you.
I felt SHOOT
a Funeral, SHOOT
in my SHOOT
Brain SHOOT
The last one, Red Bandanna uses to shoot himself in the head.
“Oh my God, Josh,” Black Bandanna says, “what’d you do? What’d you do that for? We said we were just gonna scare them a little bit.” Black Bandanna falls to his knees, clasps his hands, and begins to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
A few seconds before you pass out…
Your phone rings. It’s Sadie.
Sadie, by the way, is pregnant. You thought you wanted the baby, but it’s her body and you followed her lead. You discussed the impedimenta: what it would mean for work, for life. You are a game producer, and so you drew up a spreadsheet, the same way you would for a game you were thinking of producing. You listed pros and cons, divisions of labor, potential hazards, costs, benefits, dates, and deliverables.
You showed her what you had worked out on your laptop. “Our theoretical baby can’t be called Spreadsheet1.xls,” she commented. She retitled the spreadsheet “Green Watanabe Summer 2006 Game.”
She requested a printout, and a day or two later, she said she wanted to have the baby. “It’s never a good time, but it’s also a good time,” she said.
“Master of the Revels is done. I can work on the expansion pack through the spring, and the baby will drop in the summer. With any luck, it’ll fare better than your Tamagotchi.”
You and Sadie began referring to the baby as Tamagotchi Watanabe Green.
—
You are in a hospital.
Down the hallway, carolers are singing, but you can’t quite hear the song. As they travel closer to your room, you determine it’s that Joni Mitchell song that makes everyone want to kill themselves, and if anything, the song is even more depressing when sung by carolers in a hospital. You can’t remember the title, and this disturbs you. You always remember the title.
Someone has decorated the hospital room with a single string of star- shaped Christmas lights. You can’t imagine who that could be. Everyone close to you is Jewish, or Buddhist, or atheist, or agnostic.
If it’s Christmas, that means you’ve been in a coma for three weeks. If it’s Christmas, that means you didn’t call the Worths.
If it’s Christmas, that means Master of the Revels is in stores and available for download.
If it’s Christmas, that means Sadie is almost in the second trimester.
Your mother and father are here. They are so rarely together that you know your condition must be grave.
You remember that the song is called “River.”
Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly colored origami cranes into garlands. You know what she’s doing: It’s a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health.
Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can
string them.
This is marriage.
After a while, your father leaves. Your mother continues to string the cranes, but without your father, her supply quickly diminishes. Cranes can be strung faster than they can be constructed.
When Sam arrives, he introduces himself. “You must be Marx’s mother.”
“Anna,” she says.
“That’s my mother’s name,” Sam says. “Marx never mentioned that our mothers had the same first name. I thought you had a different name.”
Your mother explains, “AeRan is my Korean name. When I’m in the U.S., everyone calls me Anna.”
“Anna Watanabe.”
“Watanabe is my husband’s name. I’m Anna Lee.” “Anna Lee was my mother’s name, too,” Sam says. “Do I look like your mother?”
“Not at all,” Sam says. “It’s strange that Marx and I never discussed this.”
“Maybe he didn’t think it was notable,” your mother suggests. “Lee is quite a common name, as is Anna.” Your mother is not in the least sentimental about anything but fabric. “Maybe he didn’t know?”
Sam walks over to the bed, and he studies your face. “No, Marx always knew everything about everything.” When you figured out Sam’s dead mother’s name, you decided that it was fate, and from that day forward, Sam would be your brother. A name is destiny, if you think it is.
Sam turns back to your mother. “You’re almost out of cranes,” he says. “If you teach me how to make one, I can help.” Your mother demonstrates, and then Sam sits down on the hospital room floor, and he begins folding cranes, as well.
—
You are still alive.
Sadie is brushing your hair, and she is telling you that Master of the Revels is the best-selling game in America. “I don’t think they even like the game,” Sadie says. “People feel sorry for us, I guess.”
You want to tell her to stop with the false humility, if that’s what it is. No one drops sixty dollars on a game out of pity. Without warning, your mind flies away.
—
You are still alive.
“Ant’s out of the hospital,” Sam says. “He’s going to be fine.”
Good, you think.
“Gordon was here. He brought you lavender.”
You can’t see the flowers, but you think you can possibly smell them. There is an ungenerous part of you that wishes you had left Gordon in the reception area and gone up to the roof with everyone else.
Video games don’t make people violent, but maybe they falsely give you the idea that you can be a hero. Without warning, your mind flies away again.
—
Still alive.
You wake in the middle of the night. Someone is in the room with you.
You see her Titian hair. You hear the scratch of pencil against paper.
It’s Zoe. You wonder what she’s working on.
“It’s a score for a movie,” she answers, as if she’s heard your question. “It’s some dumb horror movie, but it’s so hard to get it right. I had this intellectual idea, but I don’t know if it will work. I want to limit the instrumentation to only percussion and brass, but I’m worried it sounds a bit high school marching band. I might have to throw everything I’ve done out and start again. And they’re paying me about thirty cents. And deferrals, of course, which I’ll never ever see. The movie’s called Bloody Balloons.” Zoe rolls her eyes. “Bloody Balloons is never going to see deferrals.” She smiles
at you. “Marx, you had better be all right. I absolutely can’t bear the thought of a world without you.” She squeezes your hand and then she kisses your cheek. “No, I won’t bear it. I refuse to bear it. Love you madly, my sweet friend.”
Love you madly.
The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.
—
You are going to die.
Some hours, days, or weeks later, you are listening to a doctor tell your mother and father, in an outrageously serene voice, that you, Marx Watanabe, citizen of the world, are going to die.
You are a gaming person, which is to say you are the kind of person who believes that “game over” is a construction. The game is only over if you stop playing. There is always one more life. Even the most brutal death isn’t final. You could have taken poison, fallen into a vat of acid, been decapitated, been shot a hundred times, and still, if you clicked restart, you could begin it all over again. Next time, you would get it right. Next time, you might even win.
But it cannot be denied.
You feel the body. The blood is sludgy, moving through the circulatory system at the speed of the I-10 at rush hour. The heart is not beating on its own. The brain is
Slowing.
Down.
Increasingly, the brain is
Flying.
Off.
Soon, you will not be you. You, like all of us, are a deictic case.
—
You are a Tamer of Horses.
For your thirty-first birthday, Sam makes you a nameplate that reads:
MARX WATANABE TAMER OF HORSES
You laugh when you see it. “Technically,” you say, “some sources translate it as ‘Breaker of Horses.’ ”
“But that’s not what you are,” Sam says.
The first time he had called you that, it was meant to be an insult, but over the years, the name had transformed into something loving, a joke between friends.
And so you accept it. This is what you are.
When you were a boy, you never thought you would be a producer of video games. You must admit there were times when you wondered if it was a mortifying passivity that had led you to this employment. Had you become a video game producer because Sam and Sadie had wanted to make video games, and you had nothing else you were doing at the time? Had you become a video game producer because you loved people who wanted to make games? How much of your life had been happenstance? How much of your life had been a roll of the big polyhedral die in the sky? But then, weren’t all lives that way? Who could say, in the end, that they had chosen any of it? And even if you hadn’t exactly chosen video game producer, you were good at it.
You are thinking of Our Infinite Days. How you wish you might play it. You can anticipate problems with the game, and you want to help the Worths solve them. For instance, they will have to choose vampires or zombies. They will have to choose a single mythology, or they will have to make a new one. Or…
But it is not your problem anymore.
Sam is holding one of your hands, and Sadie is holding the other. And your parents are there, but they are standing behind your friends. And this
makes sense, because Sadie and Sam have been your family, as much as your family has been your family. Behind them, a thousand paper cranes festoon the room.
“It’s okay, Marx,” Sadie says. “You can let go.”
As the brain is detaching from the body, you think, How I will miss the horses.
—
You are in a peach orchard.
Here is a perfect day. Your high school classmate, Swan, is in town, and he knows a guy who has adopted a peach tree on Masumoto Family Farm, near Fresno. Swan’s guy says that you and your friends can take all the fruit they want from the tree, but the only day you’re allowed to go is Saturday morning.
“People adopt peach trees?” you ask.
“These aren’t ordinary peaches,” Swan tells you. “The fruit is too delicate to be shipped to grocery stores. The farm has been owned by the family since 1948, since just after internment. My friend had to write an essay and fill out an application to be allowed to adopt the tree.”
You tell Zoe, and she wants to go. And she invites Sadie, who invites Alice. And you invite Sam, who invites Lola, the girl he is seeing. And then you invite Simon and Ant, because they should take a day off from making Love Doppelgängers every now and again. The group leaves Los Angeles at 6 a.m. and by 9:30, you’re in Fresno, but it seems like a whole other world.
The peaches are impossibly large and almost fluffy. They aren’t engineered to survive the indignities of shipping, of grocery store shelves. Zoe samples one, and she says it’s like eating a flower. And then she hands it to you, and you take a bite, and you say it’s like drinking a peach. And then you hand the peach to Sam, who bites down and says, it’s like a song about a peach more than it’s like a peach.
And your friends begin to make increasingly absurd similes and metaphors about peaches.
“It’s like finding Jesus.”
“It’s like finding out the things you believed in as a child are actually real.”
“It’s like eating the mushrooms in Super Mario.” “It’s like recovering from dysentery.”
“It’s like Christmas morning.”
“It’s like all eight nights of Hanukkah.” “It’s like having an orgasm.”
“It’s like having multiple orgasms.” “It’s like watching a great movie.” “Reading a great book.”
“Playing a great game.”
“It’s like finishing debugging on your own game.” “It’s the taste of youth itself.”
“It’s feeling well after a long sickness.” “It’s running a marathon.”
“I’ll probably never have to do a single other thing in my life, because I tasted this peach.”
The last one to taste is Sadie. Somehow, the peach—what’s left of it— makes its way back to you, and you hold it up to the tree, where Sadie has been industriously harvesting.
Sadie wears a big straw hat, and she has climbed up the ladder and set a wicker basket on the top step. She looks so fine and wholesome, like a girl in a WPA poster. She is smiling at you, exposing the narrow gap between her teeth. “Do I dare?” she asks.
“You dare.”
—
You are in the strawberry field.
You are dead.
A prompt comes up on the screen: Start game from the beginning? Yes, you think. Why not? If you play again, you might win.
Suddenly, there you are, brand-new, feathers restored, bones unbroken, sanguine with fresh blood.
You are flying more slowly than last time, because you don’t want to miss any of it. The cows. The lavender. The woman humming Beethoven. The distant bees. The sad-faced man and the couple in the pond. The beat of your heart before you go onstage. The feel of a lace sleeve against your skin. Your mother singing Beatles songs to you, trying to sound like she’s from Liverpool. The first playthrough of Ichigo. The rooftop on Abbot Kinney. The taste of Sadie mixed with Hefeweizen beer. Sam’s round head in your hands. A thousand paper cranes. Yellow-tinted sunglasses. A perfect peach.
This world, you think.
You are flying over the strawberry field, but you know it’s a trap. This time, you keep flying.
