Lost Signals (55 page)

“Hey,” he said. He continued to stare at their vehicles.

“Hey.”

He took a deep breath. “I would’ve called—again—but my phone was gone.”

“Mine, too.”

He looked at her with one eye, head slightly canted, like he was examining her. Fat droplets fell from his hair. “It’s where I think it is, isn’t it
 
?”

She crossed her arms, cupped her elbows. “Where do you think it is
 
?”

He nodded, as if he’d expected that answer. “I’m sorry, Carrie.”

She didn’t respond.

He turned back to the cars. “None of this makes sense.”

“We’re not in our world, anymore.”

He glanced at her.

“I mean,” she said, looking down the street, at the streetlamp growing brighter, “it’s our world, but where I didn’t miscarry. We’re just in the world next door.”

He rubbed his face with his hands. “Fuck, I’m not good at this. I teach post-modern lit, for Chrissakes.” He dropped his hands. “Why
 
? Do you know that
 
?”

She shook her head. “Not a clue. Maybe you wished it. Maybe we both did.”

A light came on in their house, the downstairs living room, its soft yellow glow falling across the darkening lawn and highlighting half of Danny’s face, showing how tired and worn he was. He’d aged ten years in the past ten weeks.

They moved across the lawn without speaking, not going to the door, but to the window itself. Carrie saw herself, slumped on the couch, in a baggy shirt she’d never owned. She was dozing, but trying not to, her head cocked as if she were listening to someone talking.

“Jesus Christ,” Danny whispered.

Carrie had read about doubles and doppelgangers in fiction, but she felt no strange vertigo
 
; it was like looking into a warped mirror, where what you saw wasn’t how you perceived yourself. This was a version of Carrie who had given birth, who had gone on maternity leave.

(that isn’t standing outside the window with her shoes slowly sinking into the soft cold mud)

Carrie took in her other’s skin, the way the hair needed washing, the soft brown bags under her eyes, the way how, in spite of all that, she exuded that aura others called a
glow
.

She’s content,
Carrie thought.

“Holy shit, hon,” Danny whispered, taking her hand. “Look.”

He pointed and his double came into the room, holding Evelyn, wrapped in the receiving blanket from the hospital.

“Oh, holy shit,” Danny repeated, and his voice was thick. “Holy shit, holy shit.” He squeezed, and she squeezed back, hard.

The other Danny sat down next to Carrie, still talking, and Carrie turned so she could view the child. From the window, Evelyn was mostly turned away, but Carrie saw a plump cheek, the infant version of Danny’s nose.

Carrie’s eyes burned, and tears mixed with the rainfall.

They watched their doubles talk to the child and each other, both exhausted, both glowing, both ignorant of their childless, other versions watching.

Danny raised a hand to touch the glass and she said, “Don’t.”

He stopped and looked at her.

She tried to smile. “That’s not us, hon.”

He stared. His eyes were wide and glassy and wet. His Adam’s apple bobbed frantically.

“This isn’t ours. It’s theirs. Okay
 
? It’s theirs.”

His face crumpled. “Why not us
 
? Why couldn’t we have had that
 
?”

She sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, began to cry even harder. “I don’t know, Danny. But we couldn’t.”

He pulled her in and she cried into his shoulder and he cried into hers as, through the window, the other Danny and other Carrie cooed to their daughter.

“I’m sorry, Carrie,” he said into her neck. “I’m so sorry.”

She hugged him tight.

Slowly, the fierceness of their grips lessened and they looked first at each other, then through the window.

The family was gone, but Carrie caught flickers of movement through the archway leading to the kitchen. She bit her lip. Did she breastfeed
 
? Formula
 
?

Holding his hand, she turned away and led the way back down the lawn. “Let’s go. Let’s let them live their lives. We have ours to fix.”

“How
 
?” Danny asked as they were reached the street.

She shrugged. “I haven’t a goddamn clue. We have our own version to live.” A glance at the house, with its warm lights and center. “It just isn’t
that
.”

Danny followed her gaze and his face rippled. “At least we got to see how it would’ve turned out.”

“
Did
turn out. For them. Not us. Those are ghosts, Danny. Ghosts of What Might’ve Been.”

“
We’re
the ghosts.”

She looked down at the streetlamp on the corner, its bright cone of white light on the wet pavement. “They got their happy ending.”

“What about us
 
?”

“Let’s start with a walk, figure it out from there. Shit, it’s not like we can go into the house, anyway.”

He surprised her by laughing and squeezed her hand.

They started walking, heading for the corner. To anyone who looked, they would’ve appeared glowing. Then the watcher would blink, realize he or she could see
through
Carrie and Danny, see the bright flare of the corner streetlight.

They faded, faded, and, by the time they reached the corner, they were gone.

The Earth is UNDER ATTACK, and only YOU can save it
 
!

ALIEN INVADERS from the planet Hellstarr have traveled through TIME AND SPACE, ravaging galaxies wherever they go. Their most recent goal
 
: to enslave the human race
 
!

The war has waged for 1,000 YEARS. MANKIND WILL FALL.

But now, using newly-developed time travel technology, Earth’s forces have stolen ADVANCED WEAPONRY from the invaders themselves. A glimmer of hope can be seen through the clouds of smoke and ash, a silhouette wielding a BIG GUN and a desire for REVENGE . . .

Enlist now, for YOU are humanity’s LAST HOPE
 
!
 
!
 
!

—unused selling copy for
Galactic Recon
(
©
1993, UltimaTech Entertainment)

***

From
Gamers Gonna Game
 
!
(Internet podcast), Episode #209
 
:

EDDIE SPAGHETTI
 
: Speaking of worst gamesever, how about that
E.T.
game from the ’80s
 
?

PIXEL PETE
 
: Dude
 
! That thing was so freakin’ lame Atari literally
buried it in the middle of the desert
where no one would ever find it.

EDDIE SPAGHETTI
 
: Like a dead hooker. So the story goes.

PIXEL PETE
 
: I heard they hauled, like, a million cartridges down to Mexico, left ’em to rot in some landfill.

EDDIE SPAGHETTI
 
: Kinda reminds me of what happened with
Galactic Recon,
if you believe the rumors. Except the only thing
E.T.
was guilty of was sucking goat balls. At least it never—

***

From
Paranoid Punks
(Internet podcast), Episode #113
 
:

CYNICAL STEVE
 
: —killed a bunch of kids, right.

MISS RAVEN
 
: Happened in the mid-’90s, in a place called Jakesboro, North Carolina. Our listeners shouldn’t be too surprised if this is the first time they’re hearing about it. The government swooped in, made the whole mess go away, then stole the tech for their own nefarious purposes.

CYNICAL STEVE
 
: Of course they did. Meanwhile, the sheep don’t have a clue what’s going on right under their noses.

MISS RAVEN
 
: It’s why this show exists. To keep shining the light on Uncle Sam’s bullshit.

CYNICAL STEVE
 
: At least until he cuts the power
 
!

MISS RAVEN
 
: We need to talk about this some more. But first, how about some mood music
 
? Here’s the Clash, with “Clampdown” . . . .

***

From
Carolina Profiles
 
: Business Edition
—Spring, 1990
 
:

Ask a hundred people the first thing that comes to mind when you mention North Carolina, and chances are most of them will say “tobacco” or “college basketball”.

Before long, though, you might find a few who look to the Tar Heel State as a leader in the
video game
industry.

Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains is a town called Jakesboro. Its population
 
: just under six thousand.
Economics Today
recently referred to Jakesboro as “the little Silicon Valley of the South,” and if business continues to thrive for UltimaTech Entertainment, the company at the heart of its growth, the town’s nickname is well deserved.

UltimaTech’s titles have won numerous awards for their innovative graphics, and since the company’s inception in 1979 they have consistently outsold those of its competitors two-to-one. UltimaTech’s main site of operations in Jakesboro handles not only the design and programming of its merchandise, but all manufacturing, packaging, and distribution as well. At press time, nearly seventy percent of the town’s adult population is employed by the growing enterprise.

UltimaTech C.E.O. Edmund W. Stern jokes, “The secret of my success
 
? Free (product testing). I have a lot of employees. My employees have children. And children love video games. Especially games they get to play before the rest of the world
 
!”

***

From the
WNCW Channel 12 6:00 News
—September 12, 1994
 
:

ANCHOR
 
: Residents of one local mountain town are concerned about the escalating suicide rate among children between the ages of five and seventeen. In fact, some are calling what is happening here a disturbing “epidemic”.

For Jakesboro, North Carolina, the trouble started this past spring. During February and March, a dozen children took their own lives. By early June, a total of thirty-four youths had committed suicide, some of them barely old enough to attend kindergarten. Most recently, the tragedies at Lake Ramsey—in which nineteen high-school seniors drowned themselves in a bizarre mass suicide—and Maples Farm—in which a group of over forty middle-school students gathered inside a barn and doused it in gasoline, before setting the building on fire—have left this community desperately searching for answers.

Earlier today, a visibly shaken Jakesboro Police Chief Raymond White had this to say . . .

CHIEF WHITE
 
: We’re trying to find some connection, but . . . these were all good kids, ya know
 
? Kids from happy homes, never been in any kind of trouble. I spoke to one mother who lost her twin sons to the thing at Maples Farm, she told me she never had to fuss at her boys about anything except for staying up all night playing videogames. I’m sorry . . . that’s all I’ve got . . . ”

***

From
Game On
 
: Your Home Entertainment Newsletter
—October, 1994
 
:

Tragic news for gaming fans
 
: UltimaTech Entertainment’s lead programmer and “rock star” game designer Darren McKay—author of such best-selling titles as
Werewolf Wars, Secrets of the Ninja,
and the
HeroQuest
trilogy—was found dead last week in his Asheville, NC condominium. The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

UltimaTech recently cancelled the release of its much-anticipated title
Galactic Recon
(for reasons unknown at press time), which the thirty-year-old McKay called his “dream project” in interviews conducted during the game’s development over the last two years.

McKay is survived by his mother and one sister.

***

UltimaTech Entertainment

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

Re
 
: existing copies of “Galactic Recon” (Job# UT-477644
 
/
 
0)

ATTN
 
: ALL EMPLOYEES

Note that pre-production of the UltimaTech property “Galactic Recon” has ceased, and the project has been cancelled. All existing (prototype) copies of the game should be DESTROYED immediately. This includes copies approved for home use, product testing, etc—NO EXCEPTIONS.

Please see your immediate supervisor or the Human Resources Department with questions or concerns.

***

From an abbreviated
Fox News
interview with UltimaTech Entertainment C.E.O. Edmund W. Stern—January 5, 1995
 
:

STERN
 
: Darren McKay suffered from severe depression, and any speculation that he took his own life because of his work on a
videogame
is not only ridiculous, it is offensive to my friend’s legacy as one of this industry’s most brilliant programmers. Now, I am not a vengeful man. But you all should know that UltimaTech will seek swift legal action against those who choose to libel the company’s good name with talk of . . . ahem, I can barely say it with a straight face . . . a
game that kills anyone who plays it
 
?
Asinine.