Vaporware (36 page)

“Blue
Lightning? Your game? That’s what you’re calling your ghost?” Sarah’s fury
blazed to new heights. “You’re telling me that you broke my trust, that you lied
to me, that you had sex with your ex-girlfriend and smiled to my face about it,
and it was because of your made-up ghost?” She laughed bitterly, the sound of
broken glass being crushed underfoot. “Oh, that’s too good, Ryan. That’s just
the cherry on top of this whole crap sundae you’ve made for us. Is there
anything else you’d like to add?”

I
took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Yes,” I said softly. “I’m sorry. I lied
to you. I shouldn’t have. I slept with Shelly. I shouldn’t have. But there have
been things going on that I’ve tried to tell you about, that you didn’t want to
hear.” I could hear my voice getting louder, feel the anger seeping into it.
“What’s been going on at work? It’s real. What I’ve seen? It’s real, and I’ve
been trying to fight it while keeping any of it from touching you.”

I
took a step forward, and she took a step back. “But you know what? Even before
then, you didn’t want to hear it. You didn’t care about my job, you didn’t
understand why I cared about it or worked so hard on it, and all I ever heard
was ‘when you get a real job’ and ‘when you’re done making games.’ Maybe I
don’t want to be done making games. Maybe I like what I do, and I’m good at it,
and I was hoping that one of these days you’d actually, I don’t know, appreciate
what I do? How hard I work?”

Sarah
looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Don’t you dare make this about me and what I did wrong. One of us went outside
this relationship and had himself a nice little screw. One of us betrayed the
other. Not both of us. Not me. One of us did, and you do not get to pin any of
this on me.”

“You
know what?” I took a step back and pressed my hand against the wall. It didn’t
drain much of my anger, but what I really wanted to do was punch it, and that
would have taken the conversation someplace I didn’t want to go. “You’re right.
It’s all my fault. And you know what else? I’m through fighting. I won’t fight
this thing at work, I won’t fight you, and I won’t fight anything else that comes
along. I’m sorry, Sarah. I really am. But if you’re not going to listen to me,
that’s all I can say.”

“Me?
Not listen to you?” She stomped past me, everything held rigid until she was
halfway up the stairs. “You know, Ryan, when I reached into that hamper, it was
like I got a physical shock. It hurt, Ryan. It hurt to think you’d do that to
me. To us. It’s like you wanted to throw it in my face, and you were laughing
at me the whole time I was sneezing and miserable and couldn’t figure out why.
Did you really have to do that? Did you?”

I
stood there, my mouth hanging open. For a second, I thought about telling her
about how hard I’d worked to get rid of the evidence because she was allergic.
Of how I’d thought if that had been it, I would have done the laundry myself,
ten times over. About how if there was a shock, I had only one horrible
suspicion as to where it might have come from, or whether static electricity,
carefully applied, might be enough to draw all the cat hair together. And then
I shut my mouth, and hung my head. “No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

Sarah
burst into tears, and fled the rest of the way up the stairs and into darkness.
I stayed behind, and below.

Chapter 28

From
down the hall, I could hear the bedroom door slam. It wasn’t an angry slam, a
hinge-rattler that said whoever had done the slamming was getting something out
of their system. This was something different, the click of a mausoleum door
shutting with someone you loved on the inside. It spoke with finality, and I
just stood there, staring into the darkness that led to the door, to the
bedroom, and to Sarah.

I
waited there a while, hardly thinking, hardly breathing. There was no sound in
the house that was not of the house, the creaking of air vents and the hiss of
unquiet plumbing, and that was all.

Sarah
didn’t come down. I strained to listen, but heard nothing of her—not the creak
of floorboards, not the thump of drawers being flung open as she packed a bag,
nothing. She’d talked of being alone in the house even when I was there, of the
palpable silence spreading out from my office. Now I knew what she meant.

There
were lights blazing all through the first floor. Slowly, I flicked them off in
turn. I turned off the chandelier in the dining room, where the light showed
off the cut glass that Sarah had tried so hard to get me interested in, and the
blue of the wallpaper set off the arcs of color that the sunlight sometimes cut
through the crystal. I turned off the living room light, three bulbs working
out of four in a fan that was set too high off the ground to ever do anything
but make the ceiling cool. From there, it was off to the kitchen, plates in the
sink and on the counter and a half dozen cabinet doors open like a dust devil
had gone through in a hurry. There were two lights to turn off in there, and I
did each in turn like I was blowing out candles, a ritual or funeral for what
had been before. One by one the outside lights went to black; back porch,
garage and front in that order, shrouding the house in darkness. No one looking
at it from the outside would see shapes silhouetted against the blinds; they’d
see nothing moving at all.

Then
and only then, with all light in my home extinguished, did I do what I’d known
I was going to do all along. Up the stairs I went, guided by the memory of a
thousand other trips in the dark. I’d done this before, done it on so many late
nights where I’d told myself that a light would be selfish, would wake up
Sarah, would….

…Would
give me away.

Up
the steps, then, while I thought about what I’d done. Third step, go to the
left—the right side creaked. Fifth step, up and over. Eighth, avoid the middle;
it made a sound like an old man groaning whenever you put any weight on it. I’d
talked about getting the stairs fixed a couple of times. Each time, Sarah had
said that she liked the nightingale floor effect, that it would tell her if
anyone was in the house.

Anyone
like me.

My
fingers itched. I clenched them into fists, cracked my knuckles, bent each one
back in turn and felt the burn all the way up to my elbows. Ahead of me, the
upstairs hall was dark. No light shone out from under the bedroom door. Sarah
had either blocked it, or kept to the dark herself.

Maybe
she was waiting in there for me. Maybe she was waiting for me to come in, to
apologize, to ask for forgiveness for what I’d done. Maybe she was hoping that
this would be the moment that would open my eyes to how destructive my career
was and how much damage it had caused, that I’d have my Saul of Tarsus moment
over having screwed my ex-girlfriend and be ready to start a new life on her
terms.

I
took slow steps down the hall now, my feet landing lightly, my ears pricked for
any sound. What was I listening for? Crying? Curses? A sign that she was still
there? I didn’t know. In front of me was the door, closed and seemingly a
deeper black than everything around it. It had a lock on it. That much I knew,
though I’d never used it myself. All the interior locks in our place were crap,
the sort of thing that you could get through with a MasterCard and ten seconds
of reasonably good aim. With that in mind, I’d never seen the point. Maybe
Sarah had, though. After all, locks were good for saying “You’re not wanted
here,” too.

I’d
never know. The doorway to my office was to my right, a rectangle of emptiness
against the mere shadows of the hallway. With a single last look at the
bedroom, I went in and shut the office door behind me.

There
was no need for light in here, either. I knew where everything was, and the
amber indicator on the monitor told me where I was going. My system was waiting
on standby, a faithful companion ready for its master’s return. I’d known I’d
be coming up here tonight, had known it even before Sarah had forced the confrontation
and revelation, and had left things prepared for my arrival.

“Still
got some docs to look at,” I mumbled to myself, a rationale as good as any, and
waggled the mouse. The red light underneath it flared and the CPU woke up with
an eager whirr. The computer, at least, seemed happy to see me.

“Better
check email while I’m at it.” Hand still on the mouse, I dropped down into my
office chair. The light on the monitor went from amber to a blinking, eager
green, then settled in as the hard drive hummed into life.

“And
maybe see if there’s a new build.” The monitor screen flickered to life, the
gray popup in the middle asking for the magic words CTRL-ALT-DEL. I hit them,
tapped the “mute” button so the Windows startup noise wouldn’t play, and input
my password into the dialogue box that made its tardy appearance. The light
from the screen washed over me, cool and blue and calming. My fingers settled
onto the keyboard, curved into QWERTY-seizing claws, the itching gone. This was
where I felt at home. This was where I felt like I ought to be.

First
order of business should have been to check email, but instead I pulled the USB
key out of my pocket and slid it into one of the ports on the side of the
monitor. The cursor changed into “I’m thinking” mode, and then a list of files
popped up—everything I’d taken home from work in order to fill my evenings and
weekends. Design files, mission thumbnails, dialogue spreadsheets, the
works—they were all there, sitting and waiting patiently for me to pay them a
visit.

I
stared at the list for a minute, scrolling down to remind myself of exactly
what I had and what I needed to do. There was a meeting with the level builders
planned for tomorrow, but that wasn’t until three and I didn’t need to look at
those docs before lunch. Dialogue? The sound engineers were making noise about
wanting to do a reorg  on the data structure on that stuff, so maybe that was
the best choice. Multiplayer game type proposals? Better to wait until morning
and see if there was bandwidth to do some prototyping…the scrolling line of
docs went on and on. I watched it go, ticked off every item there and what I
should be doing with it, and mentally shuffled them like a kid trying to get
his Yu-Gi-Oh deck just right.

And
there, down at the bottom, was the archive folder I’d pulled out and stuck on
the drive for no good reason whatsoever. Zipped up, compressed to hell and
gone, company property that wasn’t ever supposed to leave the building, it was
there. There was no executable with it, nothing that could do anything other
than sit and wait to be read, but I’d wanted it anyway, wanted to take it home
and look at it one last time at my own pace before doing what had to be done.

Before
erasing everything.

Before
killing the version control database, before wiping the backups, before setting
the entire goddamned thing on fire if I had to.

A
chat window popped up in the corner of the screen. It was Michelle, of course,
probably the last person I wanted to chat with at this moment, with the
possible exception of myself.

HI,
the IM read. It pulsed there for a minute, then another line added itself:
UOK???

No,
I typed back, as much to get rid of the alert flash as anything else.

…figured u would tell her.
It came back
quickly, as if she’d already written it before my response and just waited to
send out of courtesy.

Yeah,
well, she found out all on her own. My fingers stabbed the keys. Is there
something you wanted to say, or were just keeping score?

There
was a pause.
Screw you,
finally
popped up.
I just wanted to see how you
were doing after…you know.

After
I messed everything up. Yeah. My fingers sat on the keys for a minute. I have
no idea how I’m doing, Shelly. So I thought I’d just get some work done while
Sarah figures out if she’s going to leave me.

I’m kinda sorry.

Sorry.
It was an interesting word, and a heavy one. You shouldn’t be, My fault. I
screwed up, I should say sorry to you. I paused. And to Leon, and to the guys
who were working with Terry, and….

Yes, you should. & U should get offline&start
fixing ur life.

I
felt my lips curve into a weak smile. At that moment, being online was all I
had to keep me from doing something truly stupid, though I had no idea what
form that stupidity might take. Best that I was sitting there, then. Best that
I was chatting with the woman with whom I’d done the stupid thing that had put
me in the position to do something stupid that—

I
took a deep breath and got a hold of myself. Find a joke, hide behind it—that seemed
safest. And still, it came out dangerous for the moment, and wrong. Afraid I’m
going to start typing naughty words at you?

U always sucked at that anyway
, she wrote
back.
And I don’t want to go there again
either. Im sorry Ryan. We shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have. But its
done and now we pick up pieces&move on.

Easy
to say, I thought, instead of typing, I’m trying. I’ve got a lot of sorrys 2
say.

The
window blinked.
Yeah U do.

I
stared at it for a moment then closed the chat window.

“Yeah,”
I said to myself. “I do.” With a couple more mouse clicks, I changed the
settings on the chat to make sure that Shelly couldn’t interrupt me, and then
turned to the matter at hand.

Or,
rather, the matter that had gotten completely out of hand.

But
still, one last look at the docs I’d written wouldn’t hurt. There might be
something in there that I’d missed, something that could be picked up and
integrated into Salvador. That way, I told myself, Blue Lightning would live
on. Maybe the game and I were the only ones who would know it, but it wouldn’t
matter. I’d have saved a piece of her. I’d have made the smallest part of her
immortal.

And
blown the rest away without prejudice or mercy, because frankly, it scared the
shit out of me. Whatever it was, whatever it might have been, I needed it not
to be anywhere near me anymore. And if that meant eliminating it altogether,
then I’d happily stick a twenty-inch magnet up my ass and rub it all over every
server we owned before I’d willingly deal with whatever it was that had crawled
up out of the electronic depths and called itself Blue Lightning.

So.
One last look, and then into the virtual trash. Empty the trash, do a defrag as
follow up, and then get back to work on Salvador. It was that simple.

With
a reflexive glance at the corner of the screen where Michelle’s chat window
lurked, I clicked on the folder of Blue Lightning docs. It opened up like an
imitation manila flower, the subfolders inside the petals of this particularly
tricky blossom. And within each of them were the docs, arrayed patiently in
long virtual rows, waiting to be read again.

I
picked a subfolder at random. “Combat Model.” Perfect. Boring stuff, lots of
numbers, not much likely to arouse fond nostalgia for the game.

The
doc opened, a wasteland of charts and algorithms. Long lines of modifiers
marched down the page. Distance, weapon type, armor type, stance—all of them
lined up in endless tables and percentages. Each of those numbers had been
guessed at, argued over, and tweaked and re-tweaked as playtesting revealed the
inevitable flaws in our best-guess assumptions. Point enough multipliers in the
same direction and things could get out of control pretty quickly. Reduce the
number of modifiers or make them too small, and there was no palpable difference
between weapons and game states—and lack of difference was deadly. There had
been one session, I remembered, where Terry had been cleaning up, armed with
just a pair of pistols because the distance modifiers had been too screwed up,
and—

In
the hallway, something moved. A single creak, the sound of a footfall on a
floor that really deserved better treatment than I was giving it.

I
stopped. Sat up. Listened for a moment. Footsteps in the hallway meant Sarah.
Footsteps stopping in the hallway meant Sarah was standing outside my office
door. A clever man would realize this and make use of the information, would
call out something like “Sweetheart, is that you?” or even just her name. That
would show that I was paying attention, that I cared that she was lurking just
outside the space that we’d long ago reserved for me.

I
waited another minute. There was a second, smaller creak, the sound of weight
shifting on that long-suffering floor, and then nothing more.