In Real Life

by Lawrence Tabak

  As I step outside our high rise I immediately wish I had taken my coat. It’s at least as cold as Kansas, a few snowflakes are drifting down and tiny waves of snow are blowing across the sidewalks. Everyone is wearing ski jackets and scarves and it’s odd, because some of the young women are walking with umbrellas open, as if it were pouring rain.

  The traffic is already heavy and the chilly air is filled with the smell of bus exhaust and the sound of horns, and a distant siren. Even the siren is different, kind of a wha, wha, wha sound. I’m surprised to see so many bundled up business people hustling along the sidewalk. So many people in such a hurry towards a place where they have jobs they know how to do, colleagues they can talk to.

  I step into the flow of foot traffic and at the corner there’s a little cart, cooking something that smells like real food. I get in line, stomping my feet back and forth to stay warm. When I get to the front the old guy in a greasy coat working the cart looks at me funny but hands me something hot in a paper wrap. I pull out my wallet and hand him a bill. He just stares at me so I hand him a couple of more and he hands one back with a few coins.

  When I step to the side and open it up it’s still steaming and smells great. It has two pieces of bread with what looks like a scrambled egg inside. The bread is sticky with a coating, like a sugar donut. I open it up and stare at it. While I’m looking a younger guy in a black coat and a red tie stops and says, “Tost-u.”

  “Tost-u?” I say, stupidly.

  He says it again, slowly, like he’s talking to a two year old. “Very delicious.”

  I bite into it and agree. I would have never thought of putting a sugar topping on an egg McMuffin, but I would now. The guy smiles and bows and then walks away. I eat the whole thing on the spot, get back in line and get another one and carry it back upstairs. I’m just relieved, knowing that there is now a distinct possibility that I won’t actually starve to death.

  5.

  I have a little time before eight o’clock team breakfast so I log on and check email. My heart skips, and I blink, before clicking on a message from Hannah.

  “Can’t believe u r halfway round the world and I’m still stuck here. Sent out my portfolio to the art schools—fingers crossed! Thanks for helping. Hope u r getting used to it and like it there. I know u will do gr8t…gtg”

  And that was it. Nothing about how she might feel about me. Nothing about whether she was missing me, or already hooking up with someone new, like that guy from the environmental club. But, I’m thinking, at least she wrote.

  I sit and stare at a blank email screen, trying to think of a response. Something that will make her want to write back, and then I can write again, and pretty soon it will be like we’re talking all time. But before I come up with a clever message I see that it’s a couple of minutes past eight and I log off and hurry down the hall. I swipe my apartment card and the door clicks and I step inside. Same scene as last time—a buzz of conversation, the team all dressed in the same shirts, working through their food with chopsticks. Only this time they don’t stop and stare. I guess they’re getting used to me, which is some sort of progress.

  I look for Sung Gi, but I don’t see him. Although I’m not hungry after the Tost-us I get a little bowl of rice and sit in an empty spot at a table with three of the guys on the team. I actually know most of the names from studying the team before I left Kansas. But I haven’t been able to match them up with faces yet.

  When I sit down the guys all acknowledge me with a little bow of the head. Then they go right back to their Korean chatter. I play around with my bowl of rice and try to look like I’m deep in thought. Which I am, still trying to figure out what to write back to Hannah.

  I jump when the guy across from says, “American girls, is it true…”

  I look up and all three of the guys at my table are looking right at me.

  “How you say, easy to go to bed?”

  I sort of shake my head. First of all, I’m shocked to hear English. But what kind of thing is that to ask, first time you say a word to someone?

  So I say, “So you speak English?”

  The three of them all laugh.

  “Every Korean study English in school,” the questioner says. “We just more good studying Starfare, not studying school.”

  This sparks an animated round of laughing and Korean.

  “You have American girlfriend?” he continues.

  “I used to.”

  The three of them lean into the table and talk slowly. Probably trying to interpret what this means.

  When they’re done the original questioner asks, “So this girlfriend. She do everything?”

  I redden a shade.

  “Look,” I say. “I’m not talking about stuff like that. Not even if we were friends. And to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure what your names are. How about we start there?”

  The three of them lean in and chat. One of them points at my bowl of rice, where I’ve left my chopsticks sticking into the air. “Very bad in Korea. Big…” He looks at the other guys and it seems like he is asking them how to say something. I reach for the chopsticks with my left hand and as I do all three of the guys start yelling at me. “No! No! Bad!”

  Finally the guy across from me points at my left hand and says something in Korean. He wrinkles his nose and points at my left hand and says, “Bad. Bad hand.” He leans across the table and lays my chopsticks across the bowl.

  Then they tell me their names, speaking slowly. I repeat each one and they smile, either because I got it right, or because I botched it in a funny way.

  Then Yeong barks out some orders. Everyone puts away their plates and then we line up for exercise. Afterwards I’m relieved when Yeong leads me to a chair in front of a glowing monitor.

  He leans over to me and says, “Today we test new map. Beta map. It’s called Mordant Isles.”

  “You get to see maps before they’re published?” I never heard of that before. After all, getting a head start on a map before it was issued would be a huge advantage in tournament play.

  “All the big teams test maps,” Yeong says, as if he were telling me the world was round. “Part of sponsorship. Help pay for wonderful apartment!” He motions around the room and grins.

  “We have three groups, work as team,” Yeong said. “You start here with Yeun, Choi and Kim. You and Kim partners.” Kim is one of the guys from breakfast. “Start game and you see.”

  A few minutes later I’m live in the new Isles map. I pull back and see that it’s a series of islands. It looks like you have to build bridges or boats to navigate from one island to the other.

  Before I can even get started I hear team members yelling out stuff. I look over to Kim’s monitor next to me and see he’s found something on the far side of the starter island. I send some troops to the same spot, but he’s already got his men there, mining ore and setting up a refinery.

  I decide to see if I can get established on the opposite side of the island and I find these caves, which may have some important resources. I try to tell my partner that we should check them out, but there’s so much chatter, much of it in some sort of hybrid, English/Korean script which is inscrutable. About every thirty seconds one of the team members shouts out something in Korean. Probably some new resource or tip which, of course, means nothing to me. I realize I have to develop some firepower fast, but I can’t find any energy sources anywhere. I finally find some vortices just off shore and start transferring energy from them into my troops.

  I’m still looking when suddenly a whole line of some sort of new fighting ships comes sailing around the corner of the island sending out a cloud of explosives, which destroy the scouts I have checking the caves, and then take my base and troops out too.

  A screen automatically pops up and I see that it’s some sort of log. My partner is keying
something in and I’m pretty sure it’s the coordinates of the ore mine. He leans over and asks me something in broken English.

  I shake my head and then he motions me to look and he opens up the map and focuses on an area near the caves. I try to tell him about what I saw in the caves and he types something into the log and then I point where the energy vortices were and tell him what the energy flows were. He types in some more coordinates and some numbers which correspond to my energy gains.

  Then I see that he’s scrolling through the log, probably picking up the tips from all the other teams. I try to keep up, but even though it’s written using English letters, he’s going way too fast and even if I could stop and study I wouldn’t know all the shorthand and abbreviations and Korean words using English characters.

  Then we do it again. In this game the other three players develop power so much faster than I do that even though Kim is doing fine, we’re doomed as a team. But they let me live and I do my best to help Kim discover how to develop the bridge-building capability that you need to jump to the next island, and the one after, each one hosting a precious commodity that gives you a huge boost in power. I may be having trouble keeping up, but I keep thinking that the Starfare developers have done it again, because it’s an awesome map, with all kinds of new twists coming out of the island geography.

  After about three hours of this, we break for another kimchi avoidance exercise. White rice for me. When I’m about to head back to my computer, Yeong puts his hand on my shoulder and leads me the other direction. In the hallway I see the driver from the day before.

  Yeong says, “Choi will take you now. You go to see tutor. Learn Korean. She very best in Seoul. Soon you be talking to fans!”

  6.

  Within a few days I’m into the routine. Breakfast, morning practice, lunch and then I get pulled away for Korean lessons and various meetings. Then back with the team for an evening session where I just struggle to keep up. By the time I get back to my apartment I’m wiped. Still, I always check for messages from Hannah. I’ve written her three short ones in the last few days, but nothing.

  DT is another story. He wants a replay of every minute of every day. He writes at least twice a day about how boring school is and how cool it must be to be able to just game all day with some of the greatest players in the world. I guess it is pretty cool, but somehow it’s better in theory than in practice. I mean, it’s not like hanging out online with DT and my other Starfare buddies at home. For one thing, I can’t even talk with these guys and as far as I can tell, they don’t goof or joke around or even go out. They just grind away, hour after hour. And while we get Sunday off, it seems like they all go home to their parents.

  The weirdest thing I do in the first week is go on what I finally figure out is a Korean talk show. They put me through the makeup thing and then I get led out onto a set where I sit next to this animated guy in an odd, electric blue suit. Naturally, they provide a translator, but the whole thing is so manic that I’m never quite sure what’s going on. Then, in what turns out to be a grand finale, they release about a dozen Korean school girls in uniform and they sort of jump me and knock me to the floor. As I fight to get up I see the cameras teams jockeying around us, trying to get the best angle.

  Then an older guy who looks like he’s in charge comes running out shouting and seems pretty happy. The school girls disappear and the host shakes my hand and bows and, before I know it, Yeong is leading me out of the studio.

  “Very big show,” he says. “Very big. Like your Jay Letterman. Sponsors be very very happy.”

  The sponsors may be happy but I’m not. First of all, Choi shows up at my door that night with a big duffle. As I take it from him I smell something rank.

  “What the hell is this?” I ask.

  He answers me with a flurry of Korean and I just shake my head. He tries some obscure sign language, but I can’t follow. Finally he grabs the bag from me, pushes past me into the apartment and heads over to the small doors. He takes the duffle and upends it on the floor. A big pile of crumpled team shirts and discolored socks and boxer underwear.

  He points at me and says, “You.” And then he points at the washer and dryer.

  Then I remember what Yeong said the day he showed me my apartment. About how the washer and dryer would come in handy for the youngest member of the team. Choi gives me a look like I’m the village idiot and then stomps out.

  So I’m up to two in the morning doing laundry. Playing my English lectures from my online course, which are infuriating. They’re set up so you can’t fast forward. And they have these interactive popups where the lecture stops until you answer some questions. So I have to keep an eye on the screen. Then type in a response to questions like, “Can you think of a modern example of the sort of treatment Hester receives from her pilgrim community?” Just begging for you to type AIDS. So I do.

  Then I just daydream as the lecture plays and the dryer spins. Thinking, sure, I can now see how these Korean pros get so good. First of all they’re absolutely cranking, four hours in the morning, four in the afternoon, three in the evening. Six days a week. Plus the guys will actually squeeze in extra games online for fun. Instead of one guy working on a map for ten hours a day, you get twelve guys working on the same map, sharing all their discoveries. The problem is that between Korean tutorials and mall appearances I’m missing every afternoon and when I’m on board I can’t follow what they’re shouting and sharing. I pick up what I can by watching and absorbing what I can from the logs. But at best I’m getting maybe ten percent of the benefit of the team’s insights.

  After two weeks of frustration, I finally tell Yeong that we need to have a talk. We’ve had breakfast and exercises and I say, “Mr. Yeong. We need to sit down and discuss a few things.”

  “Very good,” he says. “But not today. Too much things to do.”

  “Well,” I tell him, heading back to the meal room. “I’ll just sit and have some tea until you have time.”

  “Tea?” Yeong says. “You no like tea.”

  “I’m not drinking it,” I explain. “I’m just going to sit in there and stir it until you get a few moments to talk.”

  A couple of team members who were close enough to hear me are staring at me like I just insulted their ancestors or something. Yeong turns and barks some orders and they scramble to their stations.

  “Very well, we have that talk.”

  The two of us head to the far table in the meal room and I sit down. Yeong stands.

  I’ve got a pretty good idea what I’m going to say. That if my game is going to progress, I need to practice full time with the team. And I’m going to need help understanding what’s going on. A translator on site, for at least the time being. And Korean lessons are fine, but they can’t take up half my afternoon. I’m going to propose that the tutor come here and we do it during lunch, which I barely touch anyway.

  “Mr. Yeong,” I begin. But before I can say another word Yeong takes a step toward me and leans in very close, so it seems like he’s shouting at me. Even though he’s more hissing.

  “You are not in America anymore Mr. Seth Gordon! You are here in Korea. Part of the great team Anaconda. My team! I am the coach! I am the leader!” He’s got his face about two inches from mine, and even when I lean back he stays right with me. His eyes are bulging and his face is glowing like a stoplight.

  I stutter something but he’s not about to stop.

  “In Korea, no player tells coach what he is to do. No one. Not even the greatest star in Starfare. Not the world champion. And not American teenager. Especially not American player who cannot beat Korean grade girl!”

  I want to tell him that I’ll never beat anyone if I don’t start getting more out of the practices. That going to autograph sessions and making TV appearances don’t do anything for my game. But I figure there will be a better time.
I let him rant for a while longer and then I stand up and do my best imitation of a Korean bow and say, “I understand Coach Yeong. May I get back to practice now?”

  He nods and I scoot out of there as fast as possible. I just tell myself that I’ll have to learn to decipher the logs and maybe get Sung Gi to take some time to explain things. I’m sure as hell not going to ask Yeong, who seems to think I don’t need any extra coaching now that I’m with the team all day.

  7.

  That night, after evening practice, I sign back onto the team’s intranet in my room. I download the day’s log on the new map and I start going over it, line by line, trying to understand it. Some of it is straightforward, when it talks about map coordinates or landmarks, but every so often there’s a couple lines that I assume are transliterated Korean. Google translator is as weirded out by this text as I am. I take out my English Korean dictionary and try to sort it out, word by word, but after about a half hour, I’m nowhere.

  Without really thinking I just drift over to one of my old favorite Starfare message boards and I start reading a thread about the relative merits of deflector shields versus force fields when countering cruiser attacks.

  DTerra: hey, ur a hard guy to reach

  I look at the computer clock and calculate back to about 7:50 in the morning in South Dakota.

  ActionSeth: u2 isn’t this a little early for you?

  DTerra: back 2 school u don’t remember? School? They herd all the young Terrans into a massive building and make them sit in hard wooden chairs and listen to droning speeches from elders.

  ActionSeth: the trick is not 2 listen.

  DTerra: Easy for u to say. I have to get decent grades or I’m going to end up stuck in Fargo forever, going to school with your brother at ND State. So how’s the training going? When u going to enter ur 1st pro event?