Sometimes I write things

“Shoes and socks, where did I put my shoes and socks, socks socks, socks…” Ferdinand paces around the living room, staring at the floor. The carpeting is the same color as his socks (white). The carpeting is the same color as his socks (white) and the opposite color of the furniture (black) except for the parts of the furniture that are the same color (white, again). First-time visitors to the Klotz home, decorated as it is in lush blacks and lush whites, with monochromatic prints on the walls (some Escher, but also lithographs of frames from classic movies, and an entire series of black-and-white photographs of “Landscapes of the Dakotas” from many years ago), with occasional white lilies, with faux-Dalmatian-skin cushions on the ratty sofa in the back hall, with a living room full of enormous overstuffed furniture so heavy and black and deep that light cannot escape its surface, with a huge ebony armoire full of DVDs next to the big-screen and likewise matte black television, with (often) Alfonse dozing on the couch, first-time visitors are often overwhelmed and made hostile by the alien nature of the environment.

“You took off your socks?” Datur slows as she approaches the bottom of the stairs (carpeting on steps: white; banister: black; rails: white and black alternating) and hangs back, eyeing Ferdinand critically. “Why did you take off your socks?”

“I was going to…” Ferdinand gestures vaguely in the direction of upstairs. “But then…” he gestures towards the open front door.

“I thought Elvis Costello was going to be here. You said wait upstairs and Elvis Costello would be here.”

“Elvis left,” Ferdinand says. He finally spots his socks (half-hidden by the morning newspaper, which is mostly gray) and dives for them.

She eyes the door, as if considering making a run for it. “Have you lured me here under false, barefooted pretenses?”

“No! No, no, no…”

“Ferdinand, what’s this in aid of?”

“I need to act fast,” Ferdinand says. He’s putting on his socks and shoes now, sitting on the coffee table (black with white inlays). “Otho is driving Elvis Costello back to the airport, I need to catch them on the way.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ferdinand hems. “Unless I can come up with a better plan I’ll try to rear-end them and run them off the road. Where are my keys?”

“What? Ferdinand, why on earth are you going to rear-end Elvis Costello? What’s gotten into you?” Datur moves off the stairs towards him, standing now between him and the front door.

He sputters, exasperated. “Well, you know, this is the whole project win-Datur-back in a nutshell, isn’t it? I mean, I tried, first I tried a wacky scheme, and that didn’t work, blew up in my face, and then I tried a wackier scheme, and you didn’t like that, and then I tried a totally non-wacky scheme, and you were, all, oh Ferdinand, can’t you be even bothered with wackiness? So I’m pretty much out of ideas at this point.”

“You’re not making any sense –”

“I haven’t really slept in a couple days,” Ferdinand says. “Post-production on the short. Takes time.”

“And you’re planning on crashing a car?” Datur gesticulates vaguely. “Missing sleep, making plans: this isn’t like you at all. I feel like I don’t even know you any more. You’re like a whole different person, and…” She trails off for a beat before concluding, “and I’m not sure I like that.”

Ferdinand grunts. “Crap. I forgot. Jack Nelson took my car back. I don’t have a car.” He turns to her, socks on, shoes on, fully dressed. “Can I borrow your car?”

Datur blinks. “Sure,” she says, and pulls out her keys. “Wait,” she says, in the same tone, even as Ferdinand reaches for them. “You want to crash my car?”

“It’s a rental, you have collision…” Ferdinand seems nonplussed that she’s even hesitating.

“You’re a terrible driver!” She pulls the keys away from him. “I’ll drive.”

As they stumble out the door and into Datur’s rented hatchback, the camera pulls up again, sweeps through the sky, and falls to earth in Madison, looking over Andrew’s shoulder into the Lukes apartment. It’s a smallish two-bedroom on the second floor of a much larger complex, not unlike a motel. He’s still pointing.

“What are you doing here?” Andrew asks Mary Lukes.

“I live here,” Mary Lukes says evenly. “Come on inside, I’ll get you some tea.”

As Andrew enters the apartment he points to Cassie, sitting on the couch. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m having tea,” Cassie says.

Andrew doesn’t like this answer, and glances around the room looking for clues. He spots Chip, leaning against the wall not far from Cassie. “What are you doing here?”

“I love her,” Chip says. “Cassie, not Mary. I drove her up here.”

Andrew blinks a couple of times, like he’s about to try to extract from Chip and Cassie exactly why Cassie got Chip to drive her up to Madison, and what is this thing love you speak of, but before he can arrange his thoughts Mary gives him a mug of tea.

“I’m sorry about FenCon,” Mary says. “I kinda let you down, huh? You seem like a nice boy.”

Andrew gets all self-conscious. “I was hoping you were…”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t,” she says. “But there’s someone here…”

“Yeah…”

“…who’s waiting to meet you.” Mary points to a rear door.

He nods, and takes a couple of deep breaths, and approaches the door.

“Wait!” he says, freezing as his hand is nearly on the knob. “I’ve got to search for traps!”

“What?” asks Chip, but no one answers him except Cassie, who shushes him with an I’ll-tell-you-later look.

Andrew goes into trap-searching mode. He’s in a fifteen by twenty foot chamber, with a door on the south wall (leading outside) and three on the north wall. One end of the chamber is partially blocked off with a countertop, and serves as a kitchen: there’s an electric range, a sink, a refrigerator, and many cabinets. The lower bank of cabinets are large enough that a dwarf, bobbit or fuzzy could plausibly be hidden within; certainly they’re big enough for any of a wide variety of venomous crawling things, imps, or quasits.

Treading lightly, Andrew approaches the cabinets and examines each cabinet door closely before slowly opening it and checking inside. Inside: pots, lentils, aluminum foil.

“Is this going to take long?” Chip asks, but again Cassie shushes him.

Once he’s satisfied with the kitchenette, Andrew sidles past the two superfluous doors (to the bathroom and to Mary Lukes’s room) and squints at the door (it opens outward) and then knob of the door (it’s faux-brass and has a cheap interior lock on the other side) in question. He smells it (it smells like a doorknob), listens to it (he hears the faint humming of electronic equipment coming from the other side of the door), and finally with a sharp intake of breath he grasps it and he turns it.

He stops before he opens the door. “Cassie? You’re coming in, too, right?” he croaks. “Party bond?”

Cassie hops up off the sofa and steps up to support him. Chip follows her, because he’s there.

Reassured, Andrew opens the door and steps inside. Within: a wall of stacked computer components, linked together into some massive distributed Forbin Project artificial intelligence. Kestrel is Colossus! Andrew stares in awe at the many little green and red LEDs for a second or two before he notices that there’s someone else in the room, too. An old man with a wheelchair. He has a long cotton blue bathrobe, a slightly threadbare grey lap blanket, crumbs in his long white beard that hangs down below his waist, and immense black slippers (for when his feet swell up).

Gary Lukes, Kestrel, stares at Andrew during a very pregnant pause.

“Good morning,” Andrew finally says.

“Is it?” Gary Lukes asks. “I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been outside in years. But you would know. I don’t know.”

“Um…”

“I’m sorry,” Gary Lukes says. “I don’t talk to people very often. I’m not really very good at it. Let’s start again. Hullo, Andrew, my name is Gary Lukes. Kestrel.”

They shake hands, awkwardly.

“Um…” says Andrew.

Gary apparently has decided it’s Andrew’s turn to talk, so he just stares at him.

“Um…” Andrew repeats. “So… what’s with the wheelchair?”

Gary winces. This is evidently a sore point, for some reason. Behind Andrew, Cassie slaps her forehead.

“Sorry, sorry,” Andrew says. “I’m not really very good at talking to people, either.”

“It’s fine,” Gary reassures him.

“So… what’s with the wheelchair?”

Gary tells us a long, strange story: the early days of Dungeon Majesty, with Mary and the other original players. The terrible explosion that cost Gary the use of his legs, and provided him an opportunity to fake his death. (Why did Gary fake his death? He didn’t like dealing with people, and if he were legally dead he would be able to get out of most interactions.) Years he’s been alone here, his only connection to the outside world his computer system. Around him he saw Dungeon Majesty, the game that robbed him of his legs and identity, saw it flower and glow. He despises the game now, blames it for everything that went wrong in his life. He should never have invented it.

Andrew is kind of freaking out. Cassie pats him on the shoulder, to bolster his spirits.

Gary carries on with his vitriolic assault on Dungeon Majesty for some time, getting all wrapped up in the overfocus-on-fantasy-and-miss-out-on-reality portion of the spiel. Andrew starts to mutter a feeble defense, about Dungeon Majesty teaching vocabulary words like “dweomer” and “manticore” and “illithid,” and arthimetic, and stuff, but Gary’s impassioned attack on glorified daydreams drowns him out. Gary concludes by asking Andrew for a favor — they’ve been friends a long time, haven’t they? Do this one thing for Gary.

“What… what is it?” Andrew asks. His breathing is rapid.

“I want you to stop playing that game. Never again. Don’t throw your life away, don’t ruin your future, don’t miss out the way I did, Andrew. Never play Dungeon Majesty again.”

Andrew starts to shake. “I want to go,” he says. He glances around the room, as if he suspects the walls are about to collapse in on him. “I want to get out of here.”

“It’s for the best, Andrew,” Gary says. He rolls a few inches towards Andrew.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, I have to go now,” Andrew shouts as he turns and dashes back out through the door, slamming it behind him, past a surprised Mary Lukes and out into the out of doors.