Press Start to Play

by Wilson, Daniel H.

  “After a week, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I snuck out of the building, past the rent-a-cops Shiki posted all around it, and went out to a bar to get blasted. I was feeling…well, scared, maybe, and pissed off, so I overdid it a bit. That was a hell of a night.” A shiver runs through him. “I didn’t think I’d be able to sneak back in, so I got a room at a hotel. I was so drunk, I barely made it up the stairs, and…”

  He pauses to look me in the eye.

  “Aka-sensei?” I prompt.

  “I’ve never told anyone this,” he says. “Not anyone. Who would believe me?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “When I got into the hotel room…” He takes a breath. “She was waiting for me.”

  “Mariko?”

  “Not Mariko,” he says. “The fucking Dark Queen.”

  —

  “An actress, you mean,” I say. “Someone Shiki hired.”

  “No! I mean, yes, sure. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He puts his hands to his head, pressing the half-full bottle against his skull. “Why would Shiki send an actress to do that? How would he even know I was there?” He closed his eyes. “She looked exactly like the Dark Queen. Exactly. As though she’d stepped out of my head, off my fucking napkin, and into my room. She has these eyes—they’re like mirrors, like she’s wearing reflective lenses under her skin. You look at her and you see tiny versions of yourself staring back at you. I thought I was hallucinating. Or else that I’d passed out on the floor, and now I was dreaming.”

  I sip my soda water. The ice has long ago melted. “That also seems possible.”

  “The Queen doesn’t speak our language,” he says. “That’s what the Professor wrote, anyway. I just thought it would make her a little stranger if she didn’t talk to you directly. She has this voice, like she’s singing a four-part melody all by herself. It’s beautiful. When I heard it, I thought I would cry. And then—she has this thing, a twisted little goblin creature, and it tells you what she means. I knew our CG guys were still working on it, but it was there, in the room. It hopped up on the bed and spoke to me.”

  My smile is strained. I try to convey disbelief. “What did it say?”

  “It said, ‘The Queen wishes to convey her thanks, mortal.’

  “I laughed at it. I couldn’t help it. I’ve always been crap at writing that epic, mythic dialogue. At that point I’d about convinced myself I was dreaming anyway, so I bowed and got all formal.

  “ ‘My Queen,’ I said, ‘I’m honored, but I’m not sure you should be thanking me.’

  “She sang another note, and the little imp said, ‘Why do you say so?’

  “ ‘If not for me,’ I told her, ‘you wouldn’t have to wear that outfit.’ ” Aka-sensei smiles, a bit wan. “I mean, okay, I didn’t draw the Dark Queen’s gear for practicality. She looks like she came from a cross between a Victorian dress ball and a bondage shop. It shows off her tits—great tits—but I can’t imagine it’s easy to get into.

  “ ‘If I were you,’ I told her, ‘I’d ditch the fetish outfit for something a little more comfortable.’ Then I pushed past the little imp and into the bathroom, ’cause I didn’t think I could wait any longer. Dream or not, you don’t want to piss all over a Queen’s shoes. By the time I came out, they were gone.”

  “I can see why you never told anyone about this,” I say.

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.” He waves the nearly empty beer bottle in my face. “Honestly, I don’t give a fuck. I didn’t believe it at the time, either. I woke up the next morning feeling like shit, of course. Clicked on the TV while I was washing up, and every station was talking about the fire.”

  —

  “Fire?” I say.

  “At the apartments.” Aka-sensei drains the rest of his beer in a gulp. “I don’t know where Shiki found that old building, but it went up like a fucking torch. Burned to the ground. Only a few people made it out. I was on the top floor—if I hadn’t snuck out, I would have died for sure.”

  I wait, in silence. Aka-sensei’s hand tightens on the bottle.

  “Mariko made it,” he says. “I heard the story from the firefighters later. She came out half carrying one of the others. Maybe she started to take REAL too seriously, thought she was an actual hero instead of an actress. She said there was another guy in there, passed out, one of our social media kids, and before anybody could stop her she turned around and went back in after him. A couple of minutes later the roof went and the whole building came down.” Aka-sensei’s eyes glitter for a moment, and he squeezes them shut. “Stupid bitch.”

  I let him have the moment, then clear my throat. “What did you do?”

  “I think I went a little crazy,” he says. “Like Shiki. Paranoid. Can you blame me? I went back to the control room and grabbed as much data as I could, then ran for it. Found a shithole apartment to stay in, spent all my time in a Net café, running correlations. Tracking down who all those top players were, and trying to figure out what had happened to them in real life. It wasn’t easy, but what I managed to find scared the hell out of me.

  “They were dying. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. I built this whole case, cross-referencing dates and tracking locations. Pulled up all the mysterious deaths and disappearances from the police reports. There were too many. Way too many, I couldn’t believe no one had noticed. I felt like a reporter tracking down some government conspiracy, waiting for the Men in Black to kick down my door.

  “Finally I called Shiki. He was frantic, said they’d been trying to find me, that nobody knew if I’d died in the fire or what. I told him I had something I wanted to show him, and he told me to come up to the office the next day. I brought all my stuff—data, printouts, newspaper clippings. I felt like a loon walking into the publisher with this big fat file under one arm.

  “Shiki listened, I’ll give him that. I told him we had to shut it down, that the players were going crazy and killing each other, that something creepy was happening and I was scared out of my mind. I thought he’d understand, since he’d been acting crazy all along, but he was like a different person now. Calm, smart, reasonable. Asking questions that made it clear how half-assed my ‘research’ really was.”

  “Did you tell him about the Queen?”

  Aka-sensei snorted. “Of course not. I told you, I didn’t believe it myself. And he would have just thrown me in a hospital. I thought the disappearances would be plenty, but he folded his hands and told me how it was going to be. REAL would go on, he said. They’d gotten new funding, a new investor who was very interested in the project. They were going to put together a new team, working remotely to help protect the secret. Mariko would ‘mysteriously disappear,’ in the story, and we’d get a new heroine.

  “I got angry with him. Shouted a bit. Told him I wasn’t going to be a part of it. That was when he told me there wasn’t a place for me on his new team. He was grateful to me for creating REAL, and I’d keep getting paid, but they didn’t want me to be a part of it anymore. Then he got up and left.

  “I just sat there for a while. In shock, I guess. This thing had been my life for more than a year, and I was half out of mind with fear, and now he was saying, ‘Go home, you’re done.’ After a while I decided I wasn’t going to take it, and I went to find him. I asked one of the office ladies where he’d gone, and she told me he was in the conference room. I was going to storm right into his meeting, I thought. Get in his face.

  “The conference room was the kind with glass walls, with blinds all around so you can get some privacy when you need it. Shiki had the blinds shut. I could see a little light, though, where something had gotten tangled up. A little peephole. I took a look.

  “Shiki was there, all right. And so was she.”

  “The Dark Queen,” I say, deadpan.

  “The Dark fucking Queen. She’d traded the stupid outfit for a nice black suit, with sunglasses to cover up her eyes. But I could tell it was her. Same face, same body, same long b
lack hair. I drew her, of course I could recognize her. And she looked at me, when I put my eye to the window, and smiled. Then Shiki started to look around, too, and I ran for it.”

  —

  “That’s it,” Aka-sensei says, leaning back in his chair. He looks like a man who has had a weight lifted from his shoulders. “That’s the whole story. They keep paying my salary, and I keep turning it into booze and cigarettes. I stay the hell away from anything to do with that game.”

  “But REAL is still running.”

  “So I hear. I also hear they’re on their fourth new heroine.” He shakes his head. “Maybe they just don’t enjoy the work? But…”

  “You don’t think so.”

  “I told you the story. It’s done. What else do you want?”

  “I want to know what you think, Aka-sensei.” I finish my drink and set the empty tumbler down. “Do you really believe it? The murders? The Dark Queen?”

  He laughs. “Do I look crazy to you? Of course I don’t believe it. I was on two hours’ sleep a night, running that goddamn game, drinking whenever I got the chance, and Shiki with his goddamn paranoia…” He shakes his head. “Just accidents, that’s all. Stupid accidents, and people who got bored of a game, and a woman who looked like some drawing I made. That’s all it can be, obviously.”

  A long, silent moment passes. He meets my eyes. His hand tightens on the tabletop, knuckles going white.

  “You do believe it, don’t you?” I say, very quietly.

  “She was there,” he whispers. “I don’t know how. It doesn’t make any sense. But it was her. No one who saw her could think she was…” He swallows. “Human. No matter what she looks like—she isn’t. And Mariko’s dead.”

  Another pause, and he shakes his head.

  “Get out of here,” he says. “I’m done with this. Go write your goddamn story. Shiki will never let you print it.”

  I don’t move. He cocks his head, staring at me.

  “You’re not from the paper, are you,” he says, flatly.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then…”

  Just for a moment, I let him see my true face. He takes it surprisingly well. His hands clench into fists, and his face goes pale, but he doesn’t scream.

  “Can I ask you something?” he says when he manages a breath.

  I nod.

  “Is this really my fault? All of this. If I hadn’t created REAL…”

  “It’s about belief, Aka-sensei. My kind has always fed on belief. When people play your game, they believe, even if it’s only for a while, and that opens the door.”

  “So I created you. I designed you. I wrote the script.”

  “In a way. I am ancient, and I am newborn.”

  “But that’s bullshit.” His hand slams down on the tabletop. One of the beer bottles topples over, rolls to the floor, and shatters. “You’re not playing by the rules.”

  “Oh?”

  “The good guys win.” There are tears in his eyes. “Everyone knows the good guys win, they always win. Mariko sends the Dark Queen back to hell. I wrote the goddamn ending! So if I created you—” He cuts off, his voice thick, and swallows. “If it’s all my fault, then why didn’t she win?” His voice drops to a whisper. “Why did Mari die?”

  “No one really believes in heroes these days, Aka-sensei.” I smile. “But everyone believes in monsters.”

  He opens his mouth to reply, pauses as though he doesn’t know what to say. I send my power across the table, fast and deadly. Life pulses between us, and I drink it in greedily. I stand up in time to catch him as he slumps forward and lower him gently to the tabletop.

  I leave a stack of bills on the table and walk out the bar. No one notices me go. Outside, the crowds have thinned a little, but the touts are still hard at work. It may be my imagination, but the revelry carries a strained, desperate note. There’s an anxiety in the air, the nervous tension of the herd in the presence of the predator. I walk back up Ichibanchou-dori and under the Kabuki-cho sign, to where the big black car is waiting.

  I slide into the back. She is in the other seat, her mirror eyes reflecting the flashing neon of Shinjuku Station for a moment before I pull the door closed behind me. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a too-large T-shirt, her river of long, dark hair pulled up and pinned behind her head in a no-nonsense tail.

  She speaks in her native tongue, the musical language of a fallen angel, the speech of creation. I understand perfectly. I am, after all, a translator. It’s no surprise Aka-sensei didn’t recognize me. A twisted little goblin creature—once, perhaps. But I have fed, and grown strong.

  “Did you find him?”

  “Yes, my Queen.”

  “And is he…”

  “Yes, my Queen.”

  She nods, mirror eyes gleaming. “Well done.”

  The Queen taps the window with her knuckle, and the driver clacks his mandibles in acknowledgment. The black car pulls away from the station, and out into the darkness.

  * * *

  Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science. Eventually he migrated to Microsoft in Seattle, where he now lives with two cats and a teetering mountain of books. When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts. He is the author of military fantasies The Thousand Names and The Shadow Throne and the middle-grade fantasy The Forbidden Library. His website is djangowexler.com.

  OUTLIERS

  Nicole Feldringer

  Fix your climate model! Join scientists in digging through climate model output from more than thirty international research centers. Your mission: decide whether each file contains interesting information, and identify the key factors contributing to global warming.

  Some simulations will be control runs to create a historical baseline. Others will be generated from emissions scenarios with varying burdens of greenhouse gases and aerosols, reflecting alternative socioeconomic pathways.

  Complexities in our cloud microphysics scheme are potentially producing unphysical realizations. And who knows what else may turn up? By validating models against actual observations, citizen scientists like yourself will help us better predict, and plan for, climate change where you live!

  —

  Esme Huybers-Smith resents taking on the work of some drudge graduate student who should have made better life choices, but her fingers keep flexing to navigate back to the browser tab. The ad, copied to the gamer message board she frequents, is festooned with enough university logos that she thinks maybe they ponied up money for good designers. Could be a slick game. In her apartment, her leg jitters in anticipation; without a full haptic suit, the motion doesn’t register on her avatar. She isn’t sold on saving the world—isn’t sure what that world would look like. The talking heads on the media outlets wax nostalgic about plenty, prosperity, and stretches of peaceful coastline that sound like bullshit to Esme. But a game…well, she’ll try any game once.

  Esme closes windows to clear real estate on her display. She has a vague feeling that she’s forgetting to be somewhere but the “Play Now” button beckons, and anyway it’s the weekend. She shakes off the feeling and dives into the tutorial.

  —

  Gameplay centers around comparing model output (“simulation”) with satellite observations (“data”).

  Step 1: A simulated climate field (temperature, humidity, etc.) will be plotted on the left.

  Step 2: Compare the simulation to real-world satellite data automatically loaded on the right.

  Step 3: In the comment form, make any specific observations about why the data deserve further scrutiny. Look for areas where the simulation disagrees with the data: Water droplets that are too big or too small, or icy where they should be liquid. Rain that is too heavy or too drizzly. Temperatures that are too cold or too warm. Clouds that form in the wrong place. Links to extensive satellite data archives can be found under the menu bar.

  Yo
u also have the option to fix the climate model of the nearest modeling center by entering your postal code. Or hit “random.”

  —

  Esme types in her postal code and is surprised to find a modeling center in New Jersey. There’s an FAQ on how climate models work too, with an eye-numbing list of equations. Maybe she’ll read it over later.

  She’s about to pull up her first simulation when a jingle erupts in her earbud. Esme’s gaze flicks to the notification icon. Her father. She ignores it, but the ringtone trills a second time. Esme taps to accept.

  “Dad, I’m a little busy right now.”

  “Because you’re on the train?”

  “What? No.”

  He continues as if she hasn’t said anything. “You’re busy because you’re on the train to your brother’s wedding. Your mother is waiting at the station to pick you up.” His voice is dangerously even.

  “Ah, about that…I’m not going to make the wedding after all.”

  She listens to him breathe on the other end of the connection. They both know that if she hasn’t left by now, she’s already missed the wedding. The high-speed train down the coast is six hours minimum. “Jacob will be so busy he won’t even notice I’m—”

  “Attending virtually,” he interrupts.

  “But—”

  “Nonnegotiable, if you want a second chance with Huybers-Smith. Your family deserves better and so does your new brother-in-law. Wear something nice.”

  That’s rich. She opens her mouth to say she’s not particularly inclined to give him a second chance, but he’s already logged out of chat. She worked for the family corporation out of college, but her father wanted an assistant, and Esme isn’t assistant material. To say they butted heads is an understatement.