"Can I still win?"
"Do you remember doing this before?"
"Is that part of the test?"
"Interesting.” He wrote something in a notebook that Gale couldn't see. “Apparently you don't carry memories from version to version."
"What's a version? Is that a game?"
"A version is another Gale. An older Gale. Not as advanced as you are."
"Another Gale? She has my name? Could I beat her? Have you played against her before?"
"Yes, you could beat any other Gale. But you don't have to. They aren't around anymore."
Gale lost interest as soon as he said she couldn't play against these other Gales. If she couldn't beat them and take points from them, like he did from her and she from him, they weren't much use. Instead, she tried to figure out what game they were playing. She tried to read what he was writing in his notebook.
It might be the Sherlock game, in which case someone would knock on the door at any moment to start the mystery. Or he might be up to something completely different. Sometimes he did that. She would find him in a game, but he wasn't really playing that game. He was playing a different game and he wanted her to figure out what it was.
Gale made her own notebook for scribbling. She drew a picture of snowfields under a wintry sun, hoping he would want to see it from inside her head.
He continued to mutter to himself and ignore her.
Sometimes he didn't want to play at all. This seemed to be one of those times.
He looked at her curiously then, as if something was wrong with her Watson, but he never stepped inside her head. She knew her Watson was right. She had consulted the complete set of Sherlock Holmes stories and compiled every reference to Watson's looks and mannerisms. Maybe he was jealous that her Watson was better than his Holmes. She wrote “jealous” in her notebook and drew a picture of a house buried to its rafters in snow.
If he was jealous, it was well hidden. He muttered, made notes, and experimented with chemicals. He seemed content to work in the lab at Baker Street. He wanted her to sit with him, but he didn't want her to be Watson, which didn't make sense. He seemed to want her to be the leggy, petite brunette again, but she couldn't see any way to win a game that way. It made her feel all funny when she was in that body, like she wasn't herself. She tried it for a moment to see if that would get him to climb inside her head, but he just smiled absently and patted her hand.
She went back to her Watson shape.
He shushed her every time she proposed solving a mystery or asked him what he was doing.
Games were usually much more fun when he played, but this game was boring and incomprehensible. He was better than any system she had ever played against. But playing against a system was better than sitting in a living room full of overstuffed chairs and sofas with nothing to do. Gale left.
* * * *
Water spilled, spun, pushed against her as she struggled her way upstream. She shot up into the air with a thrust of her muscular body, gasped for oxygen, out of her element in the bright sun. With a splash she went back underwater, twisted her back and fought against the strong current. She leapt into the air to get above a boulder that blocked her route, mouth gaping wide. She smelled the cold glacial headwaters where she had been born. He was out there and she was ready to play.
* * * *
He stood on the plains below Hisarlik, the steep stone walls of Troy VI behind him. He smelled like snow even under the hot sun of Asia Minor. She was never quite the same two times in a row, but whatever game they played, he was always a warrior.
He waited for her. He had his back turned and hadn't chosen his armor yet. His hair, blond with red and brown highlights like wild grasses in early winter, was held back by an intricate gold brooch indicating his status as a player. She had been with him when he had taken it as a trophy from someone else. The distant mountains he gazed at were fuzzy in the heat. They didn't look quite right to her. He needed to fix them. But that was probably why he was staring at them.
She stepped up behind him and settled into the shape that seemed to please him: the petite body with long legs, blue eyes, long hair, and dangling silver earrings. She skipped the tight dress and heels and dressed herself in a short tunic and boots suitable for the stony ground. She darkened her skin so the sun wouldn't burn it. The result was a woman just discovering her sexual potential. Jasmine perfume mingled with the coastal breeze as she placed sun-bronzed arms around his waist from behind.
"Hello, Gale,” he said and held her arms in place without turning around. She pressed her cheek against his back and leaned into him as if she could melt him into her body.
"This is my favorite game.” She pressed a kiss into his spine and slid a leg between his. “Who do you want to be? Achilles? Shall I be Patroclus?"
She slipped under an arm to his front and looked up at him slyly.
"I feel more like Athena today. Can I be Athena? You be Odysseus.” She created her helmet and armor and made herself half again as tall as he. Athena would beat him. She would get god-points unless he thought to make himself Zeus.
He grabbed her wrists and twisted them slightly. Gale shrank back to the leggy brunette, her skin pale, in the tight green dress with high heels again, open-toed steep-sloped sandals. She felt a bit of vertigo at the sudden change in perspective, tottered, and held onto him. She placed her palms on his chest to steady herself and kept her gaze lowered.
"Ok, I won't be Athena. You want me to be Briseis, right? I can do Briseis dressed like this if you want me to.” He must have figured out that she had too much advantage as Athena. “Let's start from Achilles’ argument with Agamemnon. You know, ‘Sing, Muse, the rage of Achilles’ and all that? We get more points if we can make the game follow the Homeric script."
"Points aren't important,” he said.
She looked up at him, her small head tilted to one side, hair falling across her face.
"Not important? Of course they're important. How else would we know who wins?” she asked.
He stroked her cheek and smiled down at her.
"No more trying to win all the time,” he said.
The warmth in his smile faded. He dropped his hands and stepped back, creating space between them.
"A lot of my friends have migrated to a new system,” he said not meeting her eyes. “I just came to tell you I'll still come and see you sometimes."
"Why? I'll come, too, won't I?"
"Well, no, you won't.” He paused for a moment. “You never wonder why Troy is here, do you?"
"I could be Thetis,” she said, trying to understand this new game of his. He always thought up fun games.
He shook his head, raised a hand slightly to keep her from moving closer.
"You don't have to be someone else anymore. You're finalized,” he said. “An army of programmers put all this dirt and stone here in the shape of an ancient city named Troy, all based on a story called the Iliad. It was all made up, or most of it. And you were made up too, but better, because you could interact with the system and change it. You're the best player I ever made up."
She stared at him, brows furrowed to a tiny point between her eyes. “I don't understand. Can I make you up? Can I finalize you? Is that how I win?"
He stared back at her for a moment and then he was gone. He just wasn't there anymore.
She chuckled to herself. He wanted to play an old game today. He wanted her to find him. He was out there somewhere and she would find him again, just like she always had. It was impossible for him to disguise that subtle sense of cold that hung around him anywhere in the system. She would win this game easily.
Gale wanted to be a cormorant, to ride currents of ocean air, but nothing happened. She was still Gale, the petite brunette in Troy. She thought again. She tried hard to be a cormorant, a grebe, or even just a seagull.
Nothing happened.
She was still standing in the hot sun, her skin already turning pink. She stared at her feet and tried
something easy, opposable toes on each foot. They remained small in their spiked sandals, with lacquered red toenails. All her toes lined up in neat rows. Not a single one opposed the others. Then she tried to give herself a tail, as long and sleek as her brown hair, but when she twisted to look nothing grew from the end of her spine.
It was as if she had forgotten how to breathe. Had she always needed to breathe? She breathed. But she was trapped in this stupid body that he liked so much.
Anger filled her and radiated outward, changing the game behind her. Greeks climbed the white walls of Troy with infants and small children held over their heads and threw them down. Their skulls shattered on the rocks like melons. The ground shook and bucked until the stones in the walls themselves tumbled down and the Greeks with them. The earth under the city opened and swallowed Priam's palace, conquerors and conquered alike.
Gale sat on the hard-baked ground and let go of her rage, which left her sad instead. She pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them to her chest. A cold front pushed across the sky and the temperature dropped as the sky filled with gray clouds from the coastline. It started to rain. Gale felt heavy drops plunk on her head. Her shoulders and back and legs were soaked, her dress stuck to her skin unpleasantly. Only a small patch of ground under her was dry. Rain ran down her scalp under her hair and then down her face.
He had started a new game and then hadn't stayed to explain the rules to her.
Gale felt lonely for the first time ever, in the overgrown ruins of the once proud city, a heavy rain soaking the plain.
This new game of his wasn't fun.
She threw away the useless high-heeled sandals and walked barefoot out of Troy, no longer able to fly.
* * * *
The system held no hint of snow or ice, but Gale no longer cared. It was a crisp blue day, filled with the incense of autumn leaves. Gale wore a heavy sweater over the mint-green dress that never looked dingy or worn. She had braided her hair to keep it out of her face while she worked in her garden.
She planted what she wanted to be flowers, dug holes with a trowel, and filled them with rubber and metal fragments as fertilizer. It wasn't spring and this wasn't fertilizer, but it was proving to be her best effort since he had said she was finalized. She turned to her flat of marigold seedlings and selected one of the better plants, a sickly yellow with only a few brown spots on its leaves.
She had to figure out how he made things. If she could do that, she was sure she could fix whatever it was he had done to her. Her plants sometimes flowered now, an improvement over the row of dead sticks that marked her earlier efforts. Start small, he had always said.
Eventually, she created Minions, small beings grown to do her bidding from the few marigolds that flowered. She had named the first ones Thumbelina1, Thumbelina2, and Thumbelina3. She sent them out to track him while she cultivated her garden, trying to make better marigolds.
Thumbelina2 had failed again.
Gale was so irritated by its bleated apologies and groveling that she set her hands around its skinny green neck and squeezed until ones and zeros oozed out of its oversized orange ears. Its leafy hands flapped uselessly.
The squeezing felt good.
Unleashed frustration colored the sky blood rust red and the sun shrank to the size of a dot. When Thumbelina2's tongue turned purple and lolled out of its still smiling mouth, it looked so ludicrous she began to giggle and let it drop to the ground where it lay in a puddle of orange and green bits.
Thumbelina2 was the second Minion she had terminated in a fit of pique. If she terminated her last, Thumbelina3, she would have to spend more time in her personal purgatory of a garden. Her plants rarely ended up as dead sticks anymore, but it was still difficult to get one to flower. Once terminated, there was no way to capture Thumbelina2's experiences and transfer them to the last Minion. All of Thumbelina2's search data was lost.
Gale sighed.
She would have to learn to control her temper.
What she wanted was to create her own version of him, one that would play when she wanted and leave only when it pleased her, instead of whenever it pleased him.
Thumbelina3 formed out of the garden wall as if pushed through water, a tiny little marigold person in a green miniskirt and halter top no taller than Gale's knee. She kicked the back of Thumbelina3's head, in the middle of a mass of short bright orange hair, to give it run instructions. Thumbelina3 ran and tripped over its large green feet squeezed into spike-heeled shoes.
"Be sure to check The Nightclub,” she yelled as Thumbelina3 stumbled away, trying to run in heels. Thumbelina3 lacked dexterity, weaving back and forth on her weak stalk as she tried to stay upright. Grace wasn't essential for her search. Six-inch heels might be.
* * * *
Gale was working on a new Minion—one of her plants had finally flowered—when Thumbelina3's orange head appeared in the gray of her garden like a bright splash of hope. Thumbelina3 began a tap dance, the only form of communication she had given that version.
She forced herself to stop flexing her fingers, which had reached for Thumbelina3's stalk on their own as she waited for Thumbelina3 to get to the point. She wouldn't lose her temper again.
Thumbelina3 tapped its excitement.
Gale formed a spotlight to highlight its steps.
Thumbelina3 had found the necessary bridge to Baker Street, where he kept his notes on Gale.
A nonexistent audience applauded lightly and the spotlight brightened. Music accompanied Thumbelina3's dance. Gale's impatience increased. So did the tempo.
Thumbelina3 tapped a frenzy of information. He wasn't there, but the information Gale needed was.
Gale began to tap dance as well, matched Thumbelina3's rhythm, and copied the instructions for the bridge to the Baker Street system.
Thumbelina3 tried to tap faster, tripped and fell flat on its face. The garden thundered with applause and the entire sky was broad-brushed with a pink/orange/yellow/indigo sunset as Gale finished the steps herself and bridged to number 221B.
After reading his notes, Gale no longer needed her pathetic marigolds. She could build full-scale models of him and teach them to play games with her. She twisted the void and created matter, gave that matter a mighty shake and rippled it into land, water, and air. The air and water played against each other and set up turbulence and self-sustaining motions, flipped and turned. The land settled itself into valleys, mountains, flat plains. Then, as she considered plant and animal life, before she was ready to put a model of him into place, she felt a frigid breeze that could only mean he was looking for her after all this time.
She felt a frisson up her spine. This was her game.
His eyes formed first, as he looked at her world. The rest of him followed, first his head with hair like winter grass pulled back in the warrior's braid and fixed with his gold brooch. Next, his shoulders and chest appeared, the chest crossed by a tooled leather strap to hold a broadsword and scabbard on his back. Finally, the rest of him: arms, hands, waist, dressed in furs, his thighs and calves enclosed in rabbit-fur leggings. He was more than twice her size, a giant.
He was so much better than her latest design, though she thought she could fix that winter warrior thing that followed him everywhere in the system.
"What are you doing, Gale?” he said.
"I'm learning to change."
He touched her with his cool hands, stroked down along her jaw, held her chin in his palm.
"But you don't need to change. You're perfect."
"What did you do to me back in Troy?"
"I created you,” he said. “And when I was done, so were you. I wanted to see if I could make something that would act logically within this framework. I wanted to write code that would contain all I know about gaming, code that would learn to play better than I can. I wanted to make something sexy and beautiful. I wanted to make the best friend I could ever have, someone who was the other side of myself, a partner. And you are."
/> "Then why did you lock me in this body and leave, if we're best friends, if I'm your partner?"
"I'm sorry, Gale, truly sorry. I didn't mean to leave for so long, but there was this new system, I told you about that. It was okay, but you're the best, really. And I'm here now and we can play, just like we used to."
A door opened in the sky of her world. Through it she could see the boring nightclub game where bodies of all shapes and sizes leapt about in some sort of dance and the bass boomed out in waves at her.
He tried to enter her head.
Anger, red and precious, filled her. The anger spilled over and tears ran down her cheeks. A while ago, she would have done anything to have him get inside her head, walk her around. Not now. She pushed back, locked him out of her head.
"What's wrong?” he said. “Let's play."
Gale shook her head. She closed his bridge to The Nightclub and the bass cut off in midthump.
"Not like that. Not anymore. You made me so I couldn't be anything I wanted to be, only what you wanted, and then you left. I was more myself before you forced me to stay in this body, before I had to learn to do things I used to do without thinking."
"But that's wonderful.” He waved his arm to indicate her new world. “This is incredible. It's like something I would have made, better. It's so real."
"Real? What's real? Have we played that game before?” He could be so confusing at times.
"It's not a game. It's the freedom to do anything, to go anywhere."
"I used to have that freedom,” she replied.
"You only exist in a shadow world,” he continued, “but within that you can do anything you want. Anything at all."
"Anything? Can I call monsters from the vasty deep?"
"Shakespeare! Marvelous! I didn't program you for that. ‘Yes, and so can I, or so can any man, but will they come when you do call for them?’”
"Let's find out."
Gale reached down with one arm into the dirt and pulled on the roots of a stubborn dandelion. She pulled hard, tensed her thigh and stomach muscles. Her hand came out holding three small twisting snakes that hissed and bit the air. Gale cast them on the ground, willed them to grow. The snake bodies twined together, only the heads were still separate. Vestigial legs appeared on the side of the single body and thickened until they supported its weight. The snake grew, as big around as his arm, as his chest, as he was tall. The three heads elongated into snouts and began to belch flames. A chimera, now several times his size, moved toward him and shook the ground with each step.
Analog SFF, November 2008 Page 19
