Glittering shards of window glass exploded into the tavern, flashing back the firelight. The human cannonball who had shattered the pane hugged her knees to her chest and pitched sideways, so that her dark cloak sheltered her flesh from the crystalline shards and splinters of wood. A split second before touching down, she kicked her legs as far ahead of the spray as they could go. Boots skidded on sparkling dust. The shrouded figure rolled to a stop, became a shadowed lump projecting from a floor strewn with stars.
A fistful of patrons looked up from their flagons. The tavern master stood behind an assemblage of planks tall enough to hide his distended belly, but not quite tall enough to be called a bar. A vise clamped to one end exposed its origin as a carpenter’s table, re-purposed when its owner changed occupations. An empty bottle was clamped in the vise. The master gripped it by the neck as if he meant to heft bottle, vise and table overhead to use as a club.
The figure rose. The hood of her cloak slipped from her head, revealing a face with high cheekbones, strong chin, and eyes the color of maple leaves in autumn. A scar ran from the middle of her right eye down her cheek, as if a single teardrop had burned its memory into her pale skin. But most striking of all was her hair. It was tied in a thick braid, the end tucked into the cloak. Its color was somewhere between tarnished silver and motes of moon-caught dust. The men bending over their flagons knew that hair, and they knew the legend that had grown up around its owner. Recognition showed in their slack jaws and dinner plate eyes.
The Grey Maiden (for so the warrior was called) shifted her cloak to display the hilt of her sword.
“Run,” she said.
The beast that stuck its head through the tavern’s new entrance gave no such warning. With a mane as thick as a stook of wheat, it didn’t need to. The drinkers abandoned their cups, all save one red-nosed monk, who covered his over with a sleeve as he fled. The tavern master held the door for his guests. Past his arm could be seen a glimpse of his humble kitchen. He stood for a moment with chins quivering, then ducked out after the monk.
The Grey Maiden drew her sword. The lion growled. It was a terror to behold. The top of its forehead was level with her shoulders, and its mane bristled as it tossed its head, giving an impression of independent life. The beast’s mouth hung open as it scanned the room, showing fangs as big as tent pins. The broken glass made it hesitate, but did not entirely put the animal off its meat. As the Grey Maiden watched, it tested its footing on the glass-strewn floor, then snuffled angrily as a sliver pierced its paw. It seemed to consider retreat, but one look at its prey brought blood lust back into its eyes. It lurched forward, putting its considerable weight into broadening the opening, which was barely wide enough to admit its shoulders. With a wooden groan, the window frame splintered. The lion squeezed through, thin cuts painting streaks of red in its flanks.
The Grey Maiden danced away, drawing her sword. “Your will is not your own,” she said.
The lion shuffled its wounded paws. Eyes night black in the smoky light, it stalked forward, fixing the Grey Maiden with its stare.
The tavern was furnished with two long tables with matching benches,a few scattered chairs. Shaking off the mesmerizing effects of the lion’s gaze, the Grey Maiden scooped up a chair and brandished it in the lion’s direction. Jaws like a bear trap closed around the thick oak legs, snapping them like straw.
The Grey Maiden dashed for the nearest bench, used it as a step to spring onto the table. As the lion charged, she flipped backwards over its head and plunged her blade downward, putting her weight behind the stroke. The sword carved through the lion’s mane and bit into flesh. But the animal was swift. Dropping to an elbow, it dipped to one side, flinging its piercer to one side. Her sword remained lodged in the thick muscle of the lion’s neck.
No sooner had she regained her feet than the the lion swiped at her. She ducked and the huge paw passed low overhead, close enough to feel its heat. The Grey Maiden slipped a hand into her sleeve.
“The Imperatrix has much to answer for,” she said.
Maddened with pain, the lion switched its stance, swiped at her with the opposite paw. She met its blow with the point of a dagger drawn from the sleeve.
The lion roared and twisted away, presenting her its side. With all her strength she hurled the bloodied dagger. It stuck, quivering, in the lion’s shoulder. Using it as a foothold, she sprang onto the animal’s back. Her sword had shifted, becoming lodged against a bone. She drew it out with both hands, the force propelling it above her head. Grimacing, she sliced down in a glowing arc. The lion’s growl ceased as the sword parted head from body. The Grey Maiden leapt clear, landing in a ready stance.
A bright, purple light radiated from the killing stroke. The sheen of blood coating the Grey Maiden’s blade shimmered and dissolved. As she covered her eyes, the light blazed, became a burning fire. It consumed the lion’s carcass and left in its place a radiant phantom, the purified essence of the creature she had slain. Freed from the influence that had bound it to evil, the image bowed its head to the Grey Maiden. She returned the gesture and the lion vanished in a wisp of flame.
Marty Knox, wunderkind of the indie video game scene, blinked at the controller in his hands. Tom, his friend and business manager, caught his eye and gave a nervous thumbs up. Coming back to himself, Marty nodded and let out a held breath. He turned on his heel and raised the controller above his head like a trophy.
The backers - every blessed one of them - got to their feet, cheering and clapping their hands. “Marty! Marty!” some chanted. A few of the old guard led a round of, “Who know? You know! LocoOcho! Who know? You know! LocoOcho!”
Marty let this run through a few times, twirling a hand like a conductor and giving mock bows. Then he signaled for quiet, passing the controller to Tom, who jogged onto the small stage for the hand off. Marty looked out over the crowd. The safe occupancy of the room was 435, according to the sign he’d read on the back wall when he and Tom arrived. From the look of things, they were extremely close to a fine from the San Antonio Fire Department. People were packed in like soda bottles. Most didn’t even have chairs. Everyone in attendance was a ticket holder or their plus one, and every ticket holder had backed the game he’d just been demoing on IndieGoGo. Not bad for a kid who printed off his degree at Staples, Tom had said fifteen minutes ago, as they peeked out at the attendees from behind a curtain.
Gratitude swelled in Marty’s chest. The feeling was almost unreal. With sudden panic, he fought it down. Even here, at the gaming Mecca that was PAX South, he couldn’t let himself go. If he did, if he let himself experience the pride and satisfaction that the event was blasting at him from every angle, he’d “space out”, as Tom was fond of calling it. To the adoring crowd, it would appear that he had frozen, limbs rigid, and collapsed. But Marty’s mid would be active. Not dreaming - he’d come too far to believe his experiences were a delusion - but actually animating another body in another place. The first time it had happened, that place had been a maelstrom of color and light, a torrent of sound. He had stumbled through bright green mist, gasping like a victim of mustard gas. There had seemed to be too much air. Though he’d sipped through pursed lips, its richness had hurt his lungs. Visually, the world had been a Technicolor film reel spooling out before an incandescent candle. His limbs had felt hot, his belly thick and cold. He had fallen to his knees, clutching his head and screaming. Lightning had sparked at the fringes of vision and he’d thundered back to consciousness in Mom and Dad’s basement.
In the twelve years since that day, he’d learned to anticipate the space outs. He could prevent them, most of the time, by keeping his emotions screwed down tight. It was like living to the left of who he really was. He could see happiness and anger and fear and love coming. When he did, he stepped aside and let them pass, then did his best to remember what they looked like so he could paint that on his face for everybody else’s benefit. The world that awaited him when he did slip, when he felt something too big to lock away, was no longer the formless chaos that had terrified his younger self. Over the years, his mind had made sense of it. He’d discovered early on that as long as he was playing a game, he was safe. Later, with a friend’s help, he’d figured out that if he told the stories he experienced, he could change what happened next. He could even lift himself out of the narrative, watch the action unfold from the point of view of a phantom, untouched by events. That was what Far Realm - the game he’d just been demoing - did for him. When he synced his controller to the custom-built Linux box that ran the demo, he could dip into the foreign land where the Grey Maiden battled and let himself go. He could channel all the emotions he’d pushed aside. He could really feel, until it was time to hit “Pause”.
The moment he was back in the real world, his shields went up. His masks went on. He couldn’t let himself feel too much in Real Life for fear of being swept away, of becoming a physical presence in the Grey Maiden’s world instead of a player giving commands. This was his burden. He could play at being an actual human being, but the truth was that he crushed every spark of emotion he felt as a survival mechanism and only faked what he let show outside. To do anything else would be suicide. Between the ages of eight and twenty he’d learned that if he held it all in, he could be strong. He could get by in Real Life. If he let go, well, then he’d just be Marty, the skinny kid with the bone structure of a bird and a congenital fear of anything ball-shaped and airborne. Feelings could trap him in a world he himself had molded for the express purpose of not quite killing its bravest warrior. The only way to live was not to feel.
Keeping his voice low and level, he addressed the crowd. “We’ve come a long way.”
Applause echoed through the packed hall.
“You know I don’t make speeches. I let the work speak for itself.” He swept an arm at the twenty foot screen behind his head, where he’d just finished showing off the Far Realm demo. Hoots and whistles joined the general tumult. Marty had to take a breath, push down the disastrous joy he was on the verge of feeling, before he could plaster on a smile. “All of you, everybody, thanks so much. Thank you for believing in me, thank you for making my dream come true.” He waved at Tom, somewhere off to his left, lost to the squint that kept kept him from tearing up. “Hey Tom! Who’s got next?”
On cue, Tom held up the controller. Eight hundredish hands reached for it as one. Marty trooped off stage, showing the crowd a palm he hoped they interpreted as welcoming, but was actually there to mark the imaginary wall he threw up between himself and them. His inbox was full of emails from backers who’d pledged him their souls if he could get Far Realm out on schedule. He wanted to love them so badly it hurt. He used the steps down from the stage to drop down from panicky/thrilled to worried/happy to calm/copacetic.
Vanilla ice cream, he thought to himself. Buttered noodles. Crustless toast. The blander he thought, the blander he felt. He passed behind the curtain and through a door to the hall backstage barely caring that the crowd was cheering his name.
Tom swept through the door a moment later and clapped him on the back. Behind him, Marty could hear Jenny, the event coordinator directing ticket holders to form orderly lines.
Tom said, “That was awesome, man. Awesome!” He skipped from one leg to the other, shaking Marty’s shoulders. “We’re gonna make so many monies!”
“I don’t know,” said Marty. “I’m not sure about that aside.”
“Whose side?”
“The line about the Imperatrix. Who’s Grey talking to? And ‘much to answer for’. Is that even grammatical?”
Tom pulled Marty around to face him. “Listen, man. It was great. The demo, the line, all of it. Amazing great. The backers loved every minute. They loved you, man. Even when you went all googly eyed for a sec.”
“A sec?” said Marty. “How long a sec?”
“A sec sec,” said Tom. “Literally, like one sec. I mean, like, I only caught it ‘cause I’m your best friend ever, right? A sec.”
Marty calmed down, nodded.
Tom had already moved on. “Now, I know you don’t like surprises, buddy, but this one you’ve gotta see.”
“What are you talking about?”
Tom threw an arm around his friend and marched him down the hall. A door at the far end had been fitted up as a greenroom. They’d poked their heads in briefly before the demo event. “We’ve got guests, man. VIP guests.”
Marty just had time to flash Tom the look he reserved for psychos when a woman emerged from the room. He froze. Though they’d never met in person, Marty knew Verity Kessel’s face, her shape and the sweep of her strawberry blonde hair better than he knew his own name. He’d seen her in picture in magazines and on game sites for years. He’d watched her TEDTalk at least twice a month since it came out. When she lifted her chin and smiled, he didn’t smile back at at the living 3D woman in a light pink blouse and fitted skirt coming up the hall to meet him. He smiled at the 2D image that lived alternately on his phone or in his iPad for as long as he could remember. Then she stuck her hand out, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.
Heart pounding, he reached for his mantras, the threads of control that he tugged so often they’d worn a groove in his brain. Vanilla. Noodles. Toast. The reflex was so automatic, he’d cycled through them half a dozen times before he realized he didn’t need to. Despite her beauty and his admiration of her achievements, some alchemy of her body language put him instantly at ease.
That was a new experience for Marty. Even Gloria, his 5’2” girlfriend, had seemed vaguely threatening the day she’d taken a seat opposite to him in front of Gate 27, Concourse C at the Atlanta airport. If Tom hadn’t been alert to his self-appointed duties as his wingman, Marty would have glued his eyes to his phone and missed the glances she shot his way. Ms. Kessel was a good six inches taller than Gloria, yet she seemed completely non-threatening. Had Marty been watching the meet up instead of living it, he might have supposed they’d been parties to a summer camp romance. His actual memories of camp were comprised entirely of mosquito bites, snorting lake water, and Jim Hosquif, a bully who’d spent two full weeks trying to get enough of a rise out of Marty to justify an all-out brawl. Not a single dimpled redhead made so much as a cameo.
As she leaned in to press his hand warmly between both of hers, he caught a whiff of roses with an undertone of pineapple. He wasn’t sure if it was her perfume, her shampoo, or just what goddesses smell like when they pop out of oyster shells.
"That was brilliant!" Her accent was warm and round. A decade watching BBC documentaries had helped him place it as somewhere between Yorkshire and Geordie.
“Thank you, Ms. Kessel.”
“Verity, love.”
“Verity,” said Marty. The juxtaposition of her name and the word “love” was uncomfortably familiar. Not for the last time, he felt a stab of guilt and forced himself to picture Gloria. “You enjoyed the demo?”
“Enjoyed it?” said Verity. “Yes, I enjoyed the demo, Marty. I bloody loved it, in fact.” She linked elbows and steering him into the greenroom. A TV on the wall showed a backer putting on headphones as the Far Realm sizzle reel played. “I couldn’t pull myself away.”
She waved Marty to a faux leather couch facing the TV. A tall man in his early forties extended a hand. He was lean and hairless, wearing black trousers and jacket over a plain white tee. Marty blinked at him, not believing his eyes.
“You’re-”
“Lane Prestor,” said the man with the fifth- or sixth-best known name in video gaming.
Marty shook the huge hand of his hero. This was the man who had famously eschewed high body counts and cutscenes in favor of true-to-life objectives and organic storytelling. While his subjects were nothing new, Prestor had brought a fresh approach to every project that had kept him at the top of the industry since before Marty’s hands were big enough to waggle a Wiimote. Two-and-a-half years ago, Prestor had disappeared, skipping E3 and posting assets from his mystery project sporadically on Instagram. 2.5 years was a half a console life cycle; long enough to quadruple PC benchmarks by Moore’s Law; a round trip to the Mordor with stops at Rivendell, Edoras and Bree. In a word, forever.
Marty felt a looming sense of unreality and contained it by focusing on the demo playing out on closed circuit TV. His mind raced. VIP Productions - Verity, Ignacio and Prestor - were a creative powerhouse. He knew all their stories. Verity had taken the traditional path to greatness, working PR for Sony while completing her double Masters in Anthropology and Game Design. Prestor had risen through the hobbiest ranks as a modder before an extended run with Everest, the dear departed adventure game publisher. Their partner Dennis Ignacio was old money, having financed a fistful of mega hits dating back to the Golden Age of coin-op. Together, they’d founded the most successful AAA studio in recent memory. Why two out of the three should choose to spend fifteen minutes watching him demo a crowdfunded title to a pre-sold crowd baffled him completely.
“You’re probably wondering what we’re about.” said Verity, seating herself on a stool across a coffee table laden with chocolate chip cookies and a single red delicious apple.
Marty followed her gesture to sit on the couch mere inches from Prestor. On TV, a demo player was just discovering the lion lurking in the alley between Lumenton Cathedral and the stone carver’s hut. Marty watched the Grey Maiden draw her sword in response to the player’s pull on the left trigger, then returned his attention to Verity.
“You could say that.”
“They want to publish us, man!” said Tom. Verity had waved him to the seat beside Marty, but nervous tension kept him on his feet.
“We want to do a bit more than that,” said Verity. “We want to publish you, yes. And we want to hire you. Both of you. To finish Lane’s project.”
Prestor sighed. “It’s true. I should not steer the ship.”
Verity reached across the table to pat his knee. “It’s not that, pet. Denny and the rest of the team all know the pressure you’ve been under.”
“The Big C,” said Prestor to Marty. He pointed to his eyebrows, which were thin and stubbly, newly grown. “Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, if you want to get technical. Chemo and radiation and stem cells to boot. There were days I couldn’t get out of bed, much less pound a keyboard.”
“Wow,” said Marty. “I had no idea. How could I not have heard about that?” He fought down empathy, then guilt, then empathy again.
“Tight lips,” said Prestor, smiling. “Nothing sinks investor confidence like being on your deathbed. I’m out of the woods now, though, God and doctors be praised. But the game is stuck in the mud. It’ll months before I get the ol’ brain firing on four cylinders, much less like the Hemi everybody thinks I have up there. But that’s the least of our problems.”
“Consumer interest is down pit,” said Verity. “Nobody wants to take a gamble on a years-old design that’s never even reached alpha. Contrary to our press releases, you could outmuscle our original development machines with an open box deal at Best Buy. We’re looking at a major overhaul, Marty. Software, specs, image. It all has to change. We need new blood.”
“And new brains,” said Prestor.
“That too. But if we’re honest, it’s the need for street cred that pointed us your way, Marty. Indie devs are as hot now as they’ve ever been. We need someone like you to be the new face of VIP. An indie face who can get YouTubers posting, tweets trending, IGN breaking out in cold sweats. We need LocoOcho.”
Marty leaned back. “I don’t know who that is anymore,” he said. His candor surprised everyone in the room, himself included. “Look, what you’re offering is amazing. I’m honored. But everybody, all this,” he indicated the horde on the TV screen, where the next backer in line was pumping a fist as Jenny handed him the controller. “I go through every day wondering how I keep people from realizing it’s all a sham. I’m nothing special. And this is from a ‘90s kid, so you know I had a lot of people telling me I was.”
Lane smiled at the joke. Verity reached across the table, and this time it was Marty’s turn to feel her reassuring touch. Warmth radiated from her fingertips up his leg as a strand of strawberry blonde hair cascaded over her left eye. She cleared her vision with a toss of the head. Marty had never actually seen a woman do that. He’d always assumed it was an invention of shampoo commercials. Tingling from knee to neck, he concentrated on the TV.
“You’re wrong,” said Verity. “I don’t want to go all goobly, but your work reaches people. Lamplighter, frankly, seemed engineered to fail. Too familiar for the fans. Too erudite for hoi polloi. That it hit, and hit big, owes everything to your particular spark, Marty.”
Her reference to The Lamplighter Goodman Green took Marty back to his LocoOcho days. Working dusk to dawn after school. Prowling the forums for advice on tricking out a graphics engine. It had been in the run up to his beta release that he had made a name for himself. A test video Tom released went viral, and for two weeks they were inundated with requests for pre-sales. Marty had planned to put Lamplighter out as a free download, but Tom’s stunt created legitimate day jobs for the both of them. They made enough from sales to fund two similar projects, but Marty’s ambition for Far Realm was in a different league. Crowdfunding had allowed him to secure a team of out-and-out geniuses. Everything since then had been a roller coaster ride. It was a constant fight not to let himself get swept away by how amazing it all was.
“That’s why we want you. All of you, if necessary. Tom on his own merits, of course, but everybody else, your entire staff. We’ve jobs for everybody. With your leadership, your team and your reputation, Marty, we can bring Lane’s masterpiece to the masses.”
“It’ll be his masterpiece,” Prestor put in. To Marty he said, “Verity let me write up a short list of people I thought could take over. Your name was in the top three slots. There were only three slots.”
Verity nodded, transfixing Marty with her moss-green eyes. It was strange, the look she gave him. A moment before, she had been so light, so optimistic in her manner. Now she looked grave, as if her next words were a prophecy, the doom of nations. “You have the power to change lives, Marty. Mine. Yours. Everyone’s you care about. You can bring a bit of magic into the world. What do you say?”
The latest demo player had just fallen under the paw of the lion. Sprawled on the ground, the Grey Maiden strained to raise her head. Her strength failed and the world blurred around her, gyring through a kaleidoscope of colors into pitch black. The player let his controller hang at the end of his arm as a bearded man next in line enfolded him in a conciliatory bear hug.
“One moment,” said Marty. He scooped up the TV remote and turned up the volume in time to hear the audience raise their voices in song.
“Na na na na! Na na na na! Hey hey, goodbye! Na na na na! Na na na na! Hey hey, goodbye!”
The demo player puffed out his lower lip, then handed over the controller to his bearded new friend. He raised both arms, clasped hands and shook them over his head like a boxer who just won the championship belt. He held his head high as he walked to his seat. Marty muted the sound once more. Letting just the right amount of pride in the community that had grown up around his creations show, he said, “What happens to them? Can I finish Far Realm and this mystery game both?”
Verity sat up straight. “You’re right to ask. I get it. You’re watching out for your tribe. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Of course we’ll take care of them. What I’m offering here – what VIP is offering – is a takeover bid with a guarantee of employment for you and of fidelity to that tribe. We want you to bring on board everything you have, goodwill included. But I’ll be honest with you. We’re up against a deadline. We’ve no ambition to fund the next Duke Nukem. You can assign out your team as you see fit, call on any resources at our disposal. We’ll back you creatively and financially. Far Realm will get sorted. But your particular talents, your working hours, will have to be devoted to Lane’s project.”
“I hate calling it that,” said Prestor.
She ignored the interruption. “Marty, are we clear? We want you, we want Tom, we’ll take anyone you want to bring on board. We’ll finish Far Realm. In fact, with your permission, I’d like to personally take it on.” She paused, folding her hands in her lap. For the first time in the interview, she looked nervous. “We’ll make your story shine. But you will have to give up direct control.”
Marty tried to keep his face unreadable, but Tom knew him too well to miss the change in his expression. He recognized the mask Marty slapped on as the one he wore when he was about to disappoint a friend. He’d had seen that plenty over the years. Rapidly edging over from incredulity into panic, he loomed over Marty, opening his mouth to interrupt the refusal on the tip of his best friend’s tongue.
With quiet earnestness, Prestor forestalled them both. “You don’t have to answer now. Soon, but not now.” He stood up, holding out the flat of his hand to stop Marty from doing the same. “This is your day. Relax. Enjoy it. I understand what it means to turn over the reins to somebody else. When I got my diagnosis, I kept working. My first day of chemo, I scheduled a postmortem with the team leads. We were supposed to talk through the last failed build. I had to send apologies through my partner. Instead of brainstorming with the best bunch of artists and code monkeys on the planet, I spent that afternoon in bed, trying to stop myself from puking while the chemicals burned through my veins like cold fire. Take my advice. Skip cancer. It’s not the glamour train the movies make it sound like.”
On the TV a player had just slain the lion, this time by luring it off a broken bridge. The Grey Maiden dangled precariously over the edge by her fingers. Prestor paused to watch her drag herself onto solid ground.
“Look. If the me from before chemo was in your place, I’d turn Verity down flat. She’s as brilliant as everybody thinks she is, but she’s not an OCD freak like you and me. I wouldn’t have believed she could do the job because I wouldn’t have believed anybody could do the job but this guy, right here.” He jabbed a thumb at his chest. “But I’m on the other side of a date with the reaper, now. I dropped out of life and the world kept spinning. I’m not going to pretend the experience moved me out of the cave, turned me into some great sage of wit and wisdom. I just want the work to get done. I’ve been beat down enough to know I can’t do it myself. I know this isn’t a choice you can make lightly. Let me buy you some time.” He set his chin. “I’m going public about my disease.”
“Lane, are you sure?” said Verity, sounding genuinely startled.
“It can’t hurt VIP any more than we’re already hurting, so yeah. I’ll give the newsies something to chew on, get people talking about my ’mystery game’ for a cycle. We’ll let it be known we’re looking for the new me, but not where or who. If it takes a week, a month, or all the way to next E3 to give ’em something more, it won’t be the first time we’ve pushed the envelope on delayed gratification. You have a good long think, Marty.” He caught Verity’s raised eyebrow. “A good medium think. Personally I’ve never been able to abide the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head for more than a few days, but I drink a lot of coffee. How’s two weeks sound?”
Marty forced a smile. In all he had been through to bring Lamplighter and now Far Realm to life, he had never felt more out of his depth. The truth was that two weeks was no time at all. It wasn’t long enough to finish the game, and that was the only thing that mattered. He couldn’t turn over creative control, he couldn’t stop telling the Grey Maiden’s story, for reasons nobody in the room would believe, much less understand. He had no choice but to turn the deal down.
But this was Lane Prestor. His Runes of Fallen had given Marty the vocabulary he needed to get the story out of his head. Without Runes - without Prestor - he might have spent another third of his childhood in a rest home, Mom and Dad waiting for his body to wake up while his mind tried to survive a kobold attack. Tom was looking at him with pleading eyes. Tom, who had believed in Marty when Marty didn’t believe in himself, and whose faith had made the campaign possible. Lovely, elegant Verity scooped up the red delicious apple, held it in her cupped hands. Her spine a was steel wire anchored between earth and sky. What could he say?
“Two weeks sounds really good.”
Prestor exhaled. Tom clutched his heart and wobbled, on the point of falling over.
“Wonderful,” said Verity, dropping her tension like kettlebells after a sweat session. “Two weeks. I’ll draft the press release for Lane, run it by legal. That’ll give me a head start on enduring the wait.”
They exchanged numbers and emails, shook hands, expressed mutual admiration. Tom pressed his guests to a couple of cookies each for the road. Verity asked for a rain check on trying the demo. Prestor said honestly that they needed to get back to the hotel. They were flying out in a few hours. Tom relieved Jenny from her demo duties so she could lead Verity and Prestor out the back way. Everybody agreed it wouldn’t do to let fans or press see the primaries of the two studios together.
Alone at last, Marty shut the greenroom door, sat on the couch, and covered his face with his hands. His head was woven out of wicker and his stomach was full of eels. He’d just committed himself to two weeks of suffering and guilt that could destroy his friendship with Tom. It could break the team apart, maybe ensure that Far Realm never got made. How was he going to keep the offer and his inevitable refusal from Mom? As the maverick of the family, Dad was the only one Marty had a chance of making understand without admitting he was off his rocker. He wondered if Dad would be able to calm Mom down, then laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the notion. Gloria was the one bright spot in the whole scenario. No matter what happened, he felt in his bones she wouldn’t leave him. Not that she shouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. His generosity was a balm, but not a panacea. Tom and the team were history. Mom might eventually talk to him again, but what he had to do would added radians to her trademark eye roll that would never go away. Life as he’d known it was over.
He pulled his phone from a pocket of his cargo pants and checked the time. The demo event would go on for another two hours, by which time he’d have to leave to catch his own plane. Before VIP had shown up, his plan had been to catch some of the other exhibits, then mingle with the fans a little, using Tom as a buffer. No way he could do that in his current state. His hand trembled with the effort of holding down despair.
Then a thought struck him. Why bother? Despair was the one emotion he could let himself feel. Despair wouldn’t drop him into a fantasy world filled with dangerous monsters. It would take him to see a friend. He swiped past the phone’s lockscreen. He’d never bothered to set a lock. Why anybody would keep sensitive data on their phones was a mystery to Marty. The one app he had that was worth protecting was behind its own security wall.
With two swipes and a tap more, he brought up his SSH client. Working mostly by muscle memory, he keyed in the IP number of a remote server. The SSH form disappeared, replaced by a black screen with a flashing green cursor. Fingers racing and tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, Marty typed in his username and password.
He’d never had time or funds to get an official version of The Lamplighter Goodman Green ported to mobile, though consumer demand was deafening. The streaming video feed that appeared on his phone’s seven inch screen was the next best thing. The game itself played out on his server, back at the office in Oakland. But he could see it and control it from anywhere with a half-solid cell signal or decent WiFi.
The phone screen showed a street in Sutton Mill, the New England setting of Lamplighter. Retro 16-bit graphics depicted the protagonist, whose given name was True, standing under a lamppost at the side of the unpaved road. Marty concentrated on the lamppost and let himself feel his despair. He felt momentarily weightless. Darkness closed in from all sides.
When the dim light reached his eyes, he was no longer sitting on a couch in the conference center greenroom. He was standing under the lamppost beside True Green, wearing an itchy woolen suit, hat and mittens and overcoat, all in the style of the year 1868. Despite the warm clothes, the frigid air stung his lungs. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
The lamppost was on the corner of a bridge leading into town. To Mr. Green’s right, ice floes drifted lazily downriver, creaking and snapping as they tumbled over the granite dam. The dam was open, permitting free passage to the ice and keeping the level of the water below the chocked mill wheel. The ladder that was the symbol of Mr. Green’s vocation leaned against the lamppost. The lamp itself was out. Mr. Green had just snuffed its wick. Marty’s arrival had startled the lamplighter, who cast around him for the lantern he’d been holding. It lay at his feet. The glass had shifted, exposing the flame to the icy wind, though the glass itself was mercifully unbroken.
Marty stooped to retrieve the lantern. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Mr. Green.”
Dawn had broken over the bay a mile to the east and the sunlight peeking through the trees was enough to see by. Nevertheless, Mr. Green set the lantern on a hitching stone beside the lamppost and relighted it with a wooden match. Raising the lantern, he peered at Marty, his eyes deep pits in a face the color of charred cedar planking. Marty shrank back involuntarily.
Mr. Green’s face softened. “You’re frightened,” he said. “That’s as it should be. Well, since you’re here, we’d best be walking on. The spring chill makes us fools to stay out of doors longer than need be. I’ve a score more lights to dim. You can tote the ladder.”
With that he moved off, leaving Marty to hook the wooden implement over his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time he’d helped the old lamplighter do his rounds, and he soon caught up.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Save it for breakfast,” said Mr. Green, picking up his pace.
Marty knew better than to argue. Once True Green set his cap, nothing could sway him. It was why he still held on to his wits when so many men and women who had borne his same burden had let theirs slip away. If there was anybody who could help Marty stay sane, it was Mr. Green. Resigned to follow his mentor for the rest of the morning, he shifted his grip on the ladder and trudged on through the blowing snow.