A Cat, a Hat, and a Piece of String

by Joanne Harris

  I hesitated a moment or two, fingers poised to hit the keys. The SAVE OR SPEND message started to flash.

  I looked at OC, flaked out on the couch with a half-eaten cookie in his hand. ‘You ever get one like this, man?’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘An option to spend your kudos.’

  OC sat up at that. He looked completely wasted, but anything new about the Game and he was on the ball at once. ‘Show me,’ he said, and frowned at the screen.

  ‘So I guess old Charlie was right, after all. What do you think?’

  The message was flashing insistently now.

  ‘Hit it, man,’ he said at last. ‘Hit the SPEND, and see what transpires.’

  ‘Trans-fuckin’-what?’

  ‘Just hit it,’ he said.

  And so I did. I hit the switch. For a second or two the screen went blank, then came the message: PLAY OR QUIT?

  Obviously, I hit PLAY. And then – well, I guess I zoned out for a bit. OC’s dope was unusually strong, and I hadn’t slept much the previous night, and when I came out of the whispery, skunky haze I found that my kudos rating was back to square one, that OC had taken off and that dawn was just a beat away. Weirder still, I’d somehow managed to go up 35 levels of the Game all in one night – which wasn’t just good, it was fucking impossible – must be a glitch in the software, I thought, because no one’s that good, I mean no one—

  Still, I felt OK, I thought. Better than I deserved, perhaps. So I showered, got dressed, ate a massive breakfast and went off to school feeling mellow and wide awake and looking for a chance to discuss last night’s Game with someone who really understood.

  OC wasn’t there, though. That didn’t really surprise me. I guessed he was still wiped out from last night – he’d been hitting the Game harder than I had, and he never knew when to give it a break. I guess that’s the OCD behaviour, but by then it was already getting so bad that sometimes he’d forget to eat – and it was starting to show, too. He had that Gamer’s stoop you get, and the kind of complexion that comes from too little sunlight and too much tube. His parents didn’t seem to care – or if they did they couldn’t stop him. They were much older than most parents – all grey hair and Sudoku – and I guess they thought it was normal for him to spend his time the way he did. Anyway, he wasn’t at school, which was how I got talking to Charlie.

  I found him eating his lunch at one, all alone up in the sports grounds. Which was kind of weird, as usually in those days he’d be sitting in the JCR, surrounded by girls and wannabe Gamers, holding court and basically being awesome. Today he looked off-colour, though, as if he was coming down with flu. His hair was kind of greasy, too, and there was a patch of red across his face that might have been eczema or something.

  I sat down next to him; opened my lunch. Cheese and ham on rye bread; not bad. Ma goes through these phases of healthy eating, and you never know what’s going to be in there – couscous or mung beans or pasta or what; once it was fucking falafel—

  Charlie had a French baguette. He hadn’t eaten much of it. I said, ‘How’s the Game? You still in?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘Course I am.’ He didn’t sound too happy, though. I tried to bring him out of it. Not because I really cared about his state of mind, but because I wanted a chance to talk about what had happened that night. Not that I remembered it all; I guess the weed makes things hazy, but I did remember the whispering, and the way I’d reached in behind the screen – or so it felt to me at the time – like some kind of delicate instrument made up of nothing but numbers and light, and how my hand was like the bow or something, and the light was like the strings, and the music – if you could call it that – was like tuning in to some distant and strange, like, resonance or something—

  I know. I’m beginning to sound like OC. But that was how it felt to me. Cosmic. Important. Mysterious. And Charlie knew something, too; I could tell. It was written all over his face. Maybe not a good thing. But still, important. Important to me.

  I said: ‘I thought you got to X, man. Where d’you go after Level X?’

  He gave me a sour look. ‘Give me a break. There is no fucking Level X.’

  ‘So all that was bullshit?’

  I’d suspected it was. Guys like Charlie are born that way, with a silver spoonful of shit in their mouths. I doubted he’d even played the Game; let alone earned kudos. But now I started to wonder again. Perhaps it was something in his face, or because he’d said the F-word. Guys like Charlie are way too clean to use the F-word. His dad’s a lay preacher, his ma’s a psychotherapist, and he gets baguettes for lunch. Probably with Gruyère or something. Bet he can pronounce it, too.

  ‘You know what it’s like,’ he told me at last, looking down at his baguette. ‘People get curious, that’s all. I got carried away in the moment. Emily was there, and—’

  Emily. I understood. We’d all seen Charlie’s girlfriend. One of those girls that get you like a fish-hook in the guts. Way, way out of my league; but somehow sweet with it, like she genuinely didn’t know how the scummy half lived.

  ‘And when someone mentioned Level X—’ Charlie shrugged. ‘I let it slip. So what? No harm, no foul. Anyway, there’s no Level X.’

  ‘So tell me about kudos,’ I said.

  He shrugged again. ‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s just their way of keeping score.’

  ‘What’s yours?’ I asked him.

  He looked down at his uneaten baguette. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said.

  Well, that was a lie. When you play the Game, you always know your kudos score. It’s like the followers on your Twitter account; you always know when you’ve lost one, and you always feel that little sting when one of them stops following you—

  ‘You don’t remember?’ I told him.

  ‘Look, leave me alone, man. I don’t feel well.’

  That was probably true, I thought. Old Charlie didn’t look well at all. I wondered if Emily had dumped him, and whether I might be in with a chance. I knew I wasn’t really, but dreaming never hurt anyone. Besides, I felt good. Maybe because of last night’s Game; maybe because of the sunshine. Summer was coming in by then, and I could feel the sun on my face, like I’d spent ten years in the dark. I’d have to spend more time outside, I told myself as I left him there with his baguette. Too much Game makes Jack a dull boy, and I needed to clear my complexion.

  Still, I kept on playing the Game. A couple of levels every night, just so the link wouldn’t expire. I didn’t want to get timed out just when I was doing so well. And I was doing very well – up to Level 100 now, and back to 1000 kudos, although since that first time I’d never again got the SAVE OR SPEND option. The Game can be kind of random that way – just like life, I guess you’d say – and I kept it under reasonable control. Partly because of my parents – they were a lot more technically savvy than OC’s, and I didn’t want them to start taking too much of an interest in what I was doing online. But mostly because of Emily, who turned out not only to have dumped Charlie, but to be in the market for someone like me—

  I know. It sounds too good to be true. Me and Emily – so good it’s almost wrong, like finding smoked salmon in my sandwiches instead of cheese and pickle. My school grades improved. I started to groom. I gave up swearing (well, almost). My complexion cleared right up. I started to run in the evenings, and soon I could do a couple of miles without even breaking sweat—

  Not that I ever forgot the Game. OC was right: it’s addictive. I told myself it was therapy; something to help me wind down after a hard day’s work. Some people had music; some had TV. I had the Game. Simple as that. And if sometimes I wondered where I’d been during those whispery hours in the dark, with my face so close to the flickering screen that I felt I could almost push myself through – into what? A cradle of pixels? A matrix of light? – I never let it get to me, but stuck to the rules, and kept in play, and never talked about the Game.

  And then, Charlie died. Very suddenly. Some kind of undiagnosed condition,
they said, though his mother and father blamed the Game. Turns out there was some kind of support group going, of parents whose kids had suffered what they called ‘adverse reactions’ – including, if you believed them, such varied symptoms as antisocial behaviour, depression, spots, loss of appetite, mood swings, secretiveness, narcissism, poor grades at school and so on.

  So – welcome to Planet Teenager, huh? Except that Charlie’s mother insisted that Charlie was never like that. And Charlie’s mother had influence, plus Charlie’s dad was a lay preacher, and so then the press got hold of it all, and there was a piece in the local rag and something else on the local news, and then the nationals got hold of it, and before anyone knew what was going on, some middle-aged officious bitch had written a piece in the Daily Mail blaming the Game for the tragic death of this popular student (funny how dead teens are always popular students, unless they did a Columbine, in which case they’re always misfits and loners who everyone knew was going to turn bad). Go figure. Anyway, all of a sudden, the net was jammed with comments and angst. The Game was hashtagged on Twitter and everyone had an opinion, even those who’d never played. OC’s parents finally twigged that their precious son was playing the Game, and took away his computer, which meant that every night he was back at my place, wanting a turn on my PC, wheedling, ‘Just half an hour, man,’ and generally driving me crazy.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him or anything, but what with the Game and Emily, I just didn’t have enough hours in the day, and besides, old OC was getting to be a bit of a liability, what with his twitching and his staring eyes, and let’s face it, his dubious hygiene—

  So anyway, I thought he must have found an alternative place to play. Maybe the games arcade, or the library, because for a few days I didn’t see him at school, and I guess I forgot to call him. His parents called by mine once, asking if he was with me. I told them I hadn’t seen him, but I didn’t give him much thought after that. I figured he’d turn up soon enough. Besides, I had concerns of my own.

  And then it happened to me again. I got the SAVE OR SPEND option. Except that this time I got a third choice: one that said GAMBLE.

  I was on a roll – 300,000 kudos and up to Level 999, though still no sign of Level X. And I thought to myself as I sat by the screen, watching that cascade of numbers: What if this is all I get? Just playing the Game every night, reaching for something that never comes? What if this is the point of it all?

  SAVE, SPEND OR GAMBLE? the screen said, and I thought: What the hell?

  I pressed GAMBLE.

  For a moment the screen went totally blank. Then it flickered back into life, showed me my kudos as 500,000. I waited to see what level I’d reached. The Game was slow in responding.

  Finally, the main screen came back, with the PLAY OR QUIT? buttons, just like before. Except this time they didn’t just say that. Now they just said DOUBLE OR QUIT?

  I frowned over that one for a while. What was it supposed to mean? And then the screen began to flash, almost like it was getting impatient, and a message popped up:

  TEN SECONDS.

  NINE SECONDS.

  And now, behind the screen, I could see numbers moving up and down; swimming in schools like tiny fish, bound by morphic resonance, occasionally breaking formation or blurting out like broken glass from a shattered windscreen—

  The countdown went on.

  EIGHT SECONDS.

  SEVEN SECONDS.

  SIX SECONDS.

  FIVE SECONDS.

  DOUBLE OR QUIT?

  I figured my kudos was off the scale. I was in the fucking Zone. My head was filled with those numbers, my body was nothing but pixels and light; I felt like in a second I’d be able to reach through the screen and touch the face of Almighty God—

  And so I typed Double, in a hurry.

  The screen went blank again. Twenty seconds later, my inbox blipped and I got an e-mail from admin@. All it said was: GAME OVER.

  No TRY AGAIN. No second chance. No Level X. No kudos.

  Game over. I was out.

  I stared at the screen. ‘No fucking way—’ I remember reading in English Lit the story of this poet who’d taken acid or something and started to write this amazing poem, but some random guy had turned up at the door and stayed, like, for ever, and when he’d gone, there was nothing left, no poem, no soul.

  Well, that’s how I felt, being out of the Game. I felt like I’d seen a glimpse of God and then somebody had snatched it away. I phoned OC. No answer. I guessed he must have his plugs in, so I texted him instead.

  WTF? I lost the Game!

  His answer came almost immediately. I know, man. Sorry.

  How? I said.

  I’m there now. I felt it. Level 10,000 and counting.

  Level 10,000? Bullshit. No one spends that much time online. Still, I guess that solved the mystery of where OC had been getting his kicks. His folks must have relented and given him his PC back.

  You got to be shitting me, I said.

  No shit. Amazing. Like nothing I’ve ever seen b4.

  I’m not sure what pissed me most: that I’d lost the Game, or that OC was still in it. I even wondered if he was winding me up; but OC isn’t subtle like that. Wasn’t. Isn’t. Whatever.

  I had to ask him. What’s it like?

  Amazing. Wow. Amazing.

  Well, OC was never going to be the most articulate of guys, and in the heat of the Game, plus whatever he was taking, I figured that was all I’d get.

  Can I come over to your place? I said.

  I kind of knew it would break my heart, but I had to see it for myself. It wouldn’t be the same, of course, but—

  Not at my place, he said.

  I was starting to ask him where he was when another text bipped into my inbox. For a moment the words on the screen swam blurrily, like something on the ocean floor.

  I think this is it, man. Finally. Level X.

  Bullshit! But I knew he wasn’t lying. OC’s never lied to me, not even when we were little kids. No time to reach him now, I thought: all I could do was stay where I was and try to make him talk to me.

  Oh, man. This is awesome, he said. 4kin indescribable.

  Well, thanks, OC. The man of words. Talk to me, I urged him.

  The pause before he answered me seemed like an eternity. Then he said: Can’t. You’re not in the Game.

  What? You can’t be serious! Suddenly I was so angry that I almost slung the phone against the nearest wall. I couldn’t believe he was blowing me off, not after all we’d been through; not after it had been him who’d started me on the Game in the first place. All those nights I’d taken him in; all the times I’d protected him against the other kids at school who made fun of his OCD and wanted to steal his glasses—

  I dialled his number. This time, he picked up. The line was freaking awful, but I could just hear OC’s voice against a background of white noise, and the frantic, familiar tap-tapping of his fingernails against the desktop.

  ‘Where the hell are you, man?’ I said.

  He sounded a million miles away. Everywhere, I thought he said. Everywhere and nowhere. Charlie was right. It’s all space. Nothing there but empty space—

  Well, of course, he was out of his head. God knows what he’d been taking. But it creeped me out to hear him like that, his voice all grainy and distant, like he was on Mars or something instead of just around the block. I strained to try and hear him, but his voice kept fading out, like there was interference.

  I wish I could tell you what it’s like, the dreamy, druggy voice went on. But I guess you have to see for yourself. If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke – huh, man, what then?

  His voice was starting to zone out. ‘Tell me where you are,’ I said.

  He gave a tiny chuckle that raised all the hairs on the back of my neck. Gotta go. Take care, he said—

&n
bsp; And that was the last I heard of him. They found him two days later, in an abandoned warehouse. The coroner reckoned he’d been dead for at least a week, though the cause was inconclusive. Of course, his parents blamed the Game, but it could have been drugs or anything. The Daily Mail described him as a popular, promising student, and the school declared a holiday for those who wanted to attend the funeral, which gained him more friends and more popularity than he’d ever had in his life.

  I don’t play online games any more. Instead, I keep my head down. That last conversation with OC was creepy enough to put me off, but recently I’ve been hearing his voice in the damnedest of places. Once it was from the radio as I searched between stations. Once I was talking to Emily on the phone – the landline; I don’t use my mobile so much any more – and I could have sworn I heard him then, tapping against the receiver. Once I was on my laptop, checking my Facebook messages, trying to ignore the one that keeps coming back from his account – Would you like to reconnect? – and I thought I heard his laughter. And then I sometimes hear his voice when I download stuff from YouTube; or mixed low in a soundtrack, or sometimes from my guitar amp, like signals from the other side—

  And people keep asking about the Game. Am I still playing? Did I quit? Do I still have kudos?

  Nowadays, I try not to think about those things any more. Because when I do, I find myself almost believing that maybe Life is like the Game, with nothing but empty spaces between the cradle of pixels and the grave; and that somewhere outside of space and time, there’s a Player, glued to a monitor, one giant hand on the keyboard, ready to press Control/Alt/Delete on the whole damn universe—

  And Level X? There’s no Level X. That’s just a story we tell our kids to keep them happy and playing the Game. Because if we told them the real truth, that there’s no control, no enlightenment, no winners, no losers, no Level X, they’d all go crazy, like Charlie and me.

  That’s why we never mention the Game. That’s why we keep pretending. And that’s why the kids keep playing it – earning their kudos, counting their points, moving up the levels towards the final GAME OVER …