Scavenger (20 page)

“A massively
what?
You’re not making sense! Shut up!” Viv pleaded, gripping the door.

“One of the most popular massively multiplayer games is called
Anarchy Online
. A player pays a monthly fee for the right to assume the identity of a character on the alternate-reality planet of Rubi-Ka. It’s filled with exotic creatures in a spectacular locale with a humanoid culture.”

The rain became icy. When Amanda couldn’t move her fingers, she released her right hand from the door and blew on it, trying to warm it.

“No!” Viv told her. “Don’t let go!”

“Amanda,” the voice asked, “do you know what an avatar is?”

“Leave me alone!” Amanda switched hands, blowing on her left while her right hand gripped the door.

“Surely someone with a Master’s degree in literature knows what an avatar is.”

Again, Viv gave her an angry look.

“An avatar is a god in bodily form,” Amanda answered.

“Your education wasn’t wasted on you. In massively multiplayer games, the character a player assumes is called an avatar. An alternate identity. Sometimes a player wants to assume another identity because his identity in so-called real life isn’t satisfying. Maybe he’s overweight and has pimples, and he’s thirty years old, but he still lives with his mother while he earns a minimum wage in a fast-food restaurant. But when he functions as his avatar on the planet of Rubi-Ka, none of the other players knows what he looks like or how big a failure he is. On Rubi-Ka, he still needs to get a job in order to have a place to live and buy clothes and eat. But there, his mind is all that matters. He has a chance for a brand new start, nothing holding him back. Using his intelligence, he can improve his avatar’s life. Indeed, it’s amazing how failures in
this
life become achievers on Rubi-Ka, and it’s interesting that half the male players choose to switch genders and portray women.”

Blowing on her numb fingers, Amanda felt sensation seep back into them. She understood now what hypothermia was and how she could die from it.

“
Anarchy Online
is owned by a company called Funcom, which has an array of computers in Oslo, Norway,” the voice said. “They need enormous computing power because at any given time perhaps as many as two million people play the game. All around the world. Every country imaginable. Millions of people simultaneously assuming identities in an alternate reality, playing the game all day and all night, because their life here disappoints. A massively multiplayer online game. If studies show that there’s validity to the psychological power of massive simultaneous prayer, how much more validity is there to the force of a massively multiplayer game? Which is more appealing? The pimply face, the room next to his mother’s, the loneliness of masturbation because no female will go out with him? Or living an alternate reality as a female avatar in a virtual world where everyone has equal opportunities?”

As the wind howled, a few drops of water seeped from the roof and landed on the hip of Amanda’s jumpsuit.

“On Rubi-Ka,” the Game Master said, “avatars accumulate possessions the same as we do in our version of reality. Some are precious objects. Others are valuable tools or expensive dwellings. Players covet these. If their avatars don’t manage to gain these objects on Rubi-Ka, a player can sometimes buy them on eBay. In theory, these are imaginary objects, but they take on their own reality. On eBay, you can even buy and sell avatars, assuming new identities if the old ones no longer suit you. One reality merges with another.”

Shivering, Amanda noticed another drop of water dangling from the ceiling. “It’s seeping through.”

“As long as it doesn’t soak us,” Viv said.

Amanda told the Game Master, “I’ve got news for you.
This
is reality.”

“So you say. Perhaps this is a good time for me to tell you about Reverend Owen Pentecost.”

“Who?”

“The genius who created the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. You survived another obstacle. You deserve more information. Ray, can you hear me?”

No answer.

“Ray?”

“I hear you.” Ray sounded bitter.

“How are you getting along out there?”

“Just fine.”

“Not too cold?”

“I’ve been through worse.”

Ray’s anger was palpable through Amanda’s headset.

“Well, as long as you’re comfortable,” the Game Master said. “Reverend Owen Pentecost. That wasn’t his real name, and he wasn’t a minister. His father
was
a minister, though, and after Pentecost was expelled from Harvard medical school, he assumed the mantle of a minister and left Boston, heading toward the frontier to spread the good word. He arrived in Avalon in April of 1899. There was a terrible drought, but Pentecost knew that it couldn’t last forever, so he encouraged the town to pray and keep praying. When the rain didn’t come, he told them it was because they hadn’t truly repented their sins. They needed to pray harder. Finally, when the rains arrived in June, they couldn’t thank him enough for helping to end the drought. But that was the only good news. The first sign of what was to come involved a shopkeeper named Peter Bethune, who was struck and killed by lightning as he ran from his wagon toward his store.”

Something bumped against the door.

Amanda flinched. At first, she assumed it was Ray making another effort to get in. But the bump was accompanied by a cluster of quick, guttural breathing. She heard numerous paws splashing through puddles and recalled the German shepherd that attacked the rabbit. But now it wasn’t alone.

A snout appeared to the right of the door.

“If they pull it down—” Viv warned.

Amanda heard a snarl. “We can’t use our hands to hold the door. They’ll bite off our fingers.”

A snout appeared on the left now, teeth bared.

“They’re pressing against the door, holding it in place. But if they start pulling ...”

“Our belts,” Viv said. “We’ll hook them to it.”

Amanda tugged at hers. “Mine’s sewed to the back of my suit.”

“Tear it loose.”

“No. We don’t dare rip the suits. Our boot laces.” Amanda freed one hand and squirmed to reach her boots. Fumbling with her cold fingers, she pulled a lace from one eyelet and then another.

The snarls got angrier. The next bump made the door tremble.

“I’ve got one free,” Amanda said.

“So have I.” Viv tied the ends, making a circle.

A snout shoved past the door.

Amanda banged it with a chunk of board. “Get the hell away!”

The dog jerked back.

Viv looped the lace around the door’s middle board. As the dog recovered from its surprise and lunged, Viv tugged on the lace, holding the door in place.

Amanda heard her own hoarse breathing.
I sound like one of those dogs
, she thought . She tied the ends of her boot lace, eased her fingers past the edge of the door, and looped the lace around the middle board. She yanked her fingers back just in time to avoid getting bitten.

Claws scraped the door. Snouts tried to wedge it free. The lace cut into Amanda’s palms. She prayed that it wouldn’t break. Then she feared that the
door
would break.

“We’re going to be all right for now,” Viv tried to assure her.

“Yeah, we’ve got them where we want them.” Amanda laughed strangely, hysteria seizing her. “Not eating us.”

“God help me,” Viv said, “what I wouldn’t give for something to eat.”

Amanda stopped laughing, suddenly cold sober. “It’s right outside.”

“What?”

“If I need to, I’ll kill one of those bitches and make Ray build a fire with his lighter so I can cook it.”

Viv stared at her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I never would have thought of that,” Viv said.

The snarling stopped. Paws splashed in puddles. The dogs retreated.

“Where are they going?” Amanda listened closely.

“Maybe they’ve gone after Ray. Ray? Can you hear me?” Viv asked into the microphone of her headset.

No answer.

“Ray, are you safe?” Viv sounded angry. “Don’t let anything happen to you. We need your damned lighter.”

The only sound was the patter of rain. Suddenly, the dogs started yelping insanely. They seemed to fight with one another, determined to get their share of the quarry, baying in a frenzy.

“
Ray
?”

One by one, the dogs became silent.

Sickened, Amanda relaxed her hold on the lace. Her palms throbbed for several minutes. Peering warily through the gap in the door, all she saw was the rain.

“Then a child drowned in a flash flood,” the Game Master said, “and a farmer fell from a hayloft and impaled himself on a pitchfork, and a family died from . . . ”

2

“Hidden cameras?” Professor Graham couldn’t get over her shock. “Jonathan spied on me?”

“On
us
.” Balenger sat across from her in a coffee shop on lower Broadway, a few blocks from the university. “The son of a bitch wanted to monitor my progress in the game.”

“Game?”

“If he had cameras in your office, it’s logical to assume he put cameras other places as well. The theater. Outside the library. Outside your faculty building. In the building that was being renovated.”

“But someone would have noticed.”

“Not after 9/11. Anybody wearing a uniform marked SECURITY doesn’t get questioned. We take video cameras for granted. They’re next to traffic lights, above building entrances, inside stores and hotel lobbies—just about everywhere. That doesn’t include cell phones with cameras, many of which have video streaming. It’s almost impossible to walk down any city block and not get photographed. With careful planning, he could have followed my progress.”

A waitress brought tea, coffee, and a ham sandwich for Balenger. Professor Graham didn’t have an appetite. Desperation had destroyed Balenger’s, but he warned himself that he was useless to Amanda if he didn’t maintain his strength. “Tell me how you met Jonathan Creed.”

“He showed up one afternoon, standing in the hallway outside the open door to one of my classes. He looked so pitiful, all I wanted to do was help him.”

“Pitiful?” Balenger knew the one thing Jonathan Creed wouldn’t get from him was pity.

“Short, thin, geeky. Frail voice. Wispy blond hair. He reminded me of pictures of Truman Capote when he was young. He was thirty-five, I found out, and yet he looked like a boy. ‘Would you care to join us?’ I asked. He nodded, entered, and took a seat at the back. What attracted him to my class was its subject: the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”

Hearing the name again, Balenger shivered.

“I eventually learned that he’d suffered a nervous breakdown because of a new game he had in mind. Apparently he’d been catatonic for six months, with his mind trapped in what he called the Bad Place. He never described what it was, except that it was unspeakable. He said that, as he recovered, he decided to find Truth in anything except games.”

“He spoke like that?”

“It seemed natural coming from someone with an I.Q. of one hundred and ninety. He told me he wanted to acquire the education he never had the patience or time to pursue.” She stopped, waiting for another spasm of pain to go away.

Balenger glanced down, trying to give her privacy.

She breathed and continued. “Jonathan went to the philosophy department first, on the assumption, he told me, that Truth was most likely to be found there. He studied Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Do you know much about philosophy?”

“A little from history books I read.”

“Some philosophers maintain that the buildings, trees, and sky around us are as insubstantial as shadows in a cave. Others believe that reality is as solid as the rock a person kicks in bright sunlight. Jonathan thought it was a pointless debate. It seemed obvious to him that those who believe the world is a dream are right. To him, the world of imagination was far more vivid than so-called physical reality, as any game designer and player knows.

“He tried literature next but felt that most literature teachers believe they’re adjuncts of the philosophy or political science departments. Nowhere did he hear anything about the hypnotic way in which stories transported him to a reality more vivid than the supposedly solid world around him.

“Then he tried history. Understand, he didn’t sign up for courses. He merely wandered the corridors and paused outside any classroom where something interested him. He told me he overheard lectures about the assassination of Julius Caesar and the Norman invasion of England and the murder of the princes in the Tower of London and the Hundred Years’ War and the almost million casualties of the American Civil War. He regarded none of this as fact. Every first-hand description of an event was biased, the secondary accounts more so. All were merely stories, he told me. Shadows. There was no way to prove they happened. But their plots were fascinating and transported him from his nightmares.

“He was prepared to walk more corridors and hear stories about the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the chlorine-gas attacks of the First World War and the death camps of the Second World War when he paused outside my classroom and heard about the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. His life changed at that moment, he said. He never explained why, but for the next three months, he attended my classes and visited me during office hours. We had breakfast meetings or took afternoon walks through Washington Square.”

Her face looked grayer, emotion making her pause.

“My husband had recently died. I never had children. I felt motherly toward him. Jonathan taught me that the fantasy world within a game could be more real than the grief I wanted to escape. Then I had my first cancer scare, and he taught me that games didn’t waste time but rather extended it. The speed of the countless choices they required subdivided each second and filled it to the maximum. In the end, after turning his back on games, he embraced them again. He entered what he called his next evolution and decided that games were the metaphysics that the philosophers failed to grasp. They were the Truth.”