Sometimes I write things

Five nerds assemble in a dank classroom. The agenda: continuing last week’s examination of the Siege of Panzerburg, or so three of the nerds believe. They arrive to find that the Lukes siblings already there and setting up. The setup — grid paper instead of hex map, most of it blank, and only four of the lead miniatures in place. The Confederate War Elephants, Union Carbide Panzerlings, and Aerial Deforestation Specialist little cardboard counters are nowhere to be seen — it’s all gone, replaced with crude lead figures of men-at-arms, painted different colors.

“It’s something different,” Mary Lukes says.

“I don’t like different things,” huffs ‘Zip’ Williamson. “I enjoy the familiar.”

“What happened to the siege of Panzerburg? My panzers were about to crush the war elephants!” protests Daniel Amundson. “Crush them I say! Crush them like Stalin crushed Trotsky!”

“Gary has this thing he wants to try,” Mary Lukes says. “Can’t we try this new thing?”

“But we are going to go back to Panzerburg, right?” asks the fifth player.

“See, we have new dice,” says Gary Lukes. He shows off some icosahedrons he’s carved from wax. “This one has four sides, and this one has eight, and this one has thirteen — it’s supposed to be a dodecahedron but the knife slipped…”

“Couldn’t we just, maybe pull chits from a coffee cup?” asks Daniel Amundson.

“Well…” Gary Lukes looks at his handmade dice. “I guess that could work, too.”

“I don’t like squad-level,” mutters ‘Zip’ Williamson.

“It’s not squad-level combat,” says Gary Lukes. “Not exactly, I mean. See, each of the figures is one character –”

“One unit, right, one man, squad-level,” says ‘Zip’ Williamson as if this is some kind of tautology.

“And you’re like heroes. It’s fantasy, like Lord of the Rings. We came up with four types of hero…”

“But there are five of us,” Daniel Amundson points out.

“Well, one of us doesn’t play,” Gary Lukes explains. There’s a game-referee who arbitrates disputes and controls what the hero units are able to see. It’s an exploration game, basically, so as you move around the map gets filled in.”

“I don’t like it,” ‘Zip’ Williamson says. “Who’s to say the game-trustee is being fair? It takes authority of play out of the hands of the participants.”

Daniel Amundson looks skeptical. “So,” he says, addressing Gary Lukes, “you’d be the game-keeper?”

“No, actually Mary would,” Gary Lukes says.

Daniel Amundson’s skepticism vanishes. “Well that’s all right,” he says.

“I don’t like it,” the fifth player mutters.

“Don’t you trust Mary?” Daniel Amundson asks him, in gentle rebuke.

“It’s like Zip says, who watches the game-master? She could just be making stuff up, like, what’s to stop her from just saying there’s a dragon and then there’s a dragon! You can’t just pull a dragon out of your pants for no reason!”

“No, I think she can,” Daniel Amundson says. He glances sidelong at Mary Lukes.

There’s a pause. It’s plain that the tide has shifted in favor of trying the Lukes’ new game, three for and two against.

“Okay, okay, if I have only one man I want him to have special powers,” the fifth player says. “He’s… really good at fighting and also he can heal with a touch and…”

“That sounds like a combination of two of the types,” Gary Lukes begins, but the fifth player is on a roll.

“And he’s immune to disease and fear and he’s like a knight in shining armor, with a horse and a sword. He’s the man on Have Gun, Will Travel, but fantasy, he’s Paladin, he’s Aragorn.”

“Sure, I mean, they’re a diverse bunch. Like the Fellowship.”

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this,” sniffs ‘Zip’ Williamson. “I don’t like the idea that some of us are Gandalfs and some of us are… Pippins.”

“If he can do all that,” says Daniel Amundson, hooking a thumb towards the fifth player, “then I want magic powers. Like I can cast spells, and make balls of fire and summon demons.”

Mary Lukes and Gary Lukes exchange glances. “Gary kind of had dibs on the Gandalf type,” Mary Lukes says.

Gary Lukes rifles through his notebook. “How about this ‘filcher’ type? You can sneak around, and climb walls, and stab people in the back.”

“I’m tired of getting marginalized,” ‘Zip’ Williamson says. “I want my guy to be completely indispensable. I want to be the most important member of the team. Without me, there should be no team. And I want a total monopoly on my special abilities, I want my unit’s inclusion to be mandatory for even a remote chance of success.”

“Can my unit stab his in the back?” Daniel Amundson asks.

“What do you want, Zip?” Gary Lukes asks.

“I want to decide who lives and who dies. I want to be the medic,” ‘Zip’ Williamson says. “I must be the only one who can heal. I demand niche protection for the medic.”

“Sure,” says Gary Lukes.

“But my Paladin/Aragorn/Knight can heal, too, right?” the fifth gamer asks.

“Okay,” says Gary Lukes.

“What! No! That’s unacceptable!” whines ‘Zip’ Williamson.

“You’re much better at it than he is,” Gary Lukes reassures him.

“Lighten up, man,” the fifth player tells ‘Zip’ Williamson. “Let’s just have fun with this.”

“This isn’t about fun,” ‘Zip’ Williamson says, dripping contempt. “I specifically said I want a monopoly on healing.”

“Okay,” says Gary Lukes. “How about, you can heal right now, as a conscript, and he can’t heal until, like, he gets a lot of combat experience and becomes a veteran unit?”

“Well, all right. So long as I get the other stuff,” the fifth player says. ‘Zip’ Williamson is placated.

“But you can’t stab people in the back for five-times-normal damage, right?” Daniel Amundson asks the fifth player.

The fifth player strokes his chin. “No… not yet…”

“You have to have names for your characters,” Mary Lukes tells them.

“I’ll call my unit Sneaky Pete,” says Daniel Amundson, which meets with general outcry.

“It has to be something fantasy! Something evocative like, like Whitestork, or Hardack, or… haven’t you read any Leiber?”

“What about you, Gary, what’s your unit named?”

Gary Lukes thinks it over, and — in keeping with the fantastic — names his thaumaturgist Kestrel.

Pull in on the miniatures, fade to OPENING CREDITS as they begin to dance and a pencil-line dungeon grows around them.

SEGMENT ONE

Alvin, sitting at a table at the Magic Beans, looks like the cat that ate the canary. He’s had the same smile on his face for days, now. It’s as if he was making a face and then someone’s Gypsy mother cursed him so it would always be that way. Cassie, across from him, is just starting to gush about how nice it was to work here over the summer and how it was with the bittersweet scent of hazelnut lattes that she picked up her last paycheck, and so on, when Andrew and Oliver rush in.

Andrew is extremely agitated, like a graduate student waiting outside in the hallway while his committee confer to decide whether he’s passed his oral exams. “Are you sure there’s no way –”

Oliver, however, is cold and hard, like a graduate student who has failed his oral exams and blames his advisor for submarining him. “I said Werdna’s dead! Dead!” Oliver shouts at Andrew. “He’s gone! You’re dead! Stop talking!”

The Magic Beans grows quiet, as this is not the kind of conversation its patrons normally overhear.

Andrew writhes and physically gnashes his teeth. “Damn it damn it damn it,” he says, slapping the wooden countertop. “I can’t believe I made such a stupid mistake, elementary mistake! Always check the results of the roll before leaving the table!”

“Well, you didn’t,” Oliver snaps.

“Like an idiot, going off to find out about the results of some lame stupid dumb election –”

(Quick cut to Alvin, who stops smiling and gives a disbelieving/pained grunt)

“Werdna failed the saving throw for half damage,” Oliver tells Andrew. “So he took full damage from GWAR’s breath weapon, which is forty-four points of smaller dragon damage, and he only had twenty-four hit points left and that means he went to insta-death! So you’re dead!”

Andrew wails. “If I’d made the save for half damage I’d still be alive! I can’t believe I failed that! I can’t believe I died because of one lousy die roll!”

“Well, that’s what happened,” Oliver says, as if he hadn’t changed Andrew’s roll from success to failure after the fact, while everyone else was preoccupied with the election results.

Andrew sighs heavily. He feels the weight of the world. “Well, in chapter twenty-six of the Dungeon Magister’s Guide there’s a DM Fiat rule, and under the circumstances –”

Oliver cuts him off before he’s even finished the thought. “No way! You’re dead! Dead! If you want to keep playing you better make a new first-level character!”

“What?” Andrew’s offended. “First level? But everyone else is sixth level!”

“Well that’s how it is!”

“No way I’m making a first-level character!”

“Well… well then I guess you’re out of the game!”

Oliver and Andrew are both near tears. “Fine!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!” they shout at each other, and storm back out of the Magic Beans.

“…Hi,” Cassie calls after them.

The camera follows Andrew and Oliver out, then pulls back, way back, to an aerial shot of Muncie, then pulls back down (through clever CGI) to a rented car driving down the road away from the Muncie Airport. In the back seat: a couple of small overnight bags. In the front seat (driver): Otho, Ferdinand’s agent. In the front seat (passenger): Elvis Costello.

“So you saw the thing with the birds,” Otho says, “which is a couple of years old, and he’s only improved since then, I mean, my boy is a genius. Genius. Ideal to work with you.”

Elvis grunts.

“Totally professional,” Otho continues, as he pulls up to the Klotz house. “Great guy, great guy. You’ll get along great.”

Elvis grunts again, and a slightly-uncomfortable silence settles on them as Otho parks and they get out of the car and up to the walk and ring the doorbell and wait.

And wait. Otho smiles optimistically at Elvis, who scowls back.

Just as Otho is about to ring the bell again, a drowsy-looking Ferdinand opens the door.

“Ferdinand!”

Ferdinand closes the door again. “Just a second!” he calls through it.

Elvis Costello turns on Otho. “Why was he naked?!”

Otho continues to smile genially, and says something about the creative process.

Elvis fumes. “You drag me all the way out here on some kind of zany adventure, but I have to say, Muncie so far is not very zany. It’s flat and boring and very annoying.”

Otho says something disingenuous.

“Klotz, Klotz…” Elvis Costello mutters. “Wait a moment,” he says as the light dawns. “This isn’t the one Sting is always talking about, is it?”

Otho says something even more disingenuous.

“Right, sorry about that,” Ferdinand says as he opens the door again. This time he’s wearing pants and a shirt. “Come in, come in, would you like some tea?”

Elvis and Otho shuffle into the Klotz home, decorated in its uniquely monochromatic style. Elvis staggers a bit, as if the overall effect is making him dizzy. “Tea, yes,” he says.

While Ferdinand is making tea, he slaps in his demo-reel DVD, the new one, the one without color. Even Elvis Costello, who has made up his mind to be petulant and aggressive, is touched by Ferdinand’s gift for composition and imagery.

Then Ferdinand himself emerges with the tea.

“What the fuck? This isn’t bloody tea, it’s Lipton!” Lipton Brisk does not meet Elvis Costello’s needs for tea.

Otho tries to calm Elvis Costello down while Ferdinand starts the actual film, the short documentary about Datur and the issues which make life as Datur so difficult, but once Elvis spots her he’s on his feet and out the door.

“I know her! That dreadful harpy!” he screeches. “What is this, some kind of zany joke?! Am I being Punk’d?! What the hell did you drag me out here for?!”

Otho shoots Ferdinand a glare as he follows Elvis out, trying and failing to mollify the enraged aging rock star. Ferdinand, barefoot, mumbles some reassuring phrases, but finds himself standing in the doorway as they drive off.

“I’m ready!” Datur calls out in a sort of sing-song as she comes downstairs. Ferdinand glumly turns back around, as she looks at him in confusion. “Where did they go?” she asks.

The camera glides over Ferdinand’s shoulder and out the front door, then sweeps up to the sky and back down to an exterior shot of the Indiana State Capitol building, then glides through the window of a nearby office.

State Senator Alvin Wasserman (I) is unpacking in his new office and fielding some calls.

“No,” he’s telling one grassroots organization. “No, that wouldn’t work. No, it wouldn’t help if you changed your name to the Green… no, that would actually make it worse… uh-huh… that’s worse. The National Green Socialist Party just… hm.” On the telephone line two starts flashing its little red insistence. “No, I’m going to have to let you go. Yeah. Thank you.”

Line two is Senator Jackson (D). “Congratulations again,” he tells State Senator Wasserman (I).

Alvin thanks him, they make nice for a bit, and then Jackson apologizes for the party’s shabby treatment. They should have gone with him over Donnie initially. And now, poor Alvin! All alone, outside the Donkey’s big tent, a foundling. A little lost kitten of the political landscape.

The long and short of it: Alvin wants to join the Democratic party again and the Democrats want him to. Not right away of course, it would look bad this soon after the election. A few months — around the holidays — that’s the best way to handle it. There’s just one snag.

Snag?

The snag’s name is Millie. In the election, moral values were a key issue in sinking Elena Klotz’s bid (though it didn’t seem to affect Jack Nelson any). Moral values play well in Indiana. A forty-year-old state senator with a nubile twenty-year-old chief of staff? That doesn’t play well.

Is Jackson suggesting Alvin shouldn’t date her, either?

Jackson isn’t amused. She scandal-fodder, she’s a potential bomb, drop her.

Alvin doubts it’ll be that easy. Maybe she’ll sue. Can you sue if you lose out on a job because you’re too attractive? Surely you can.

Jackson still isn’t amused. This is a deal-breaker.

Alvin knows that, and he’s worried. After all, in the heated aftermath of the election Millie told him that if he didn’t keep her on as chief of staff, she would defect to the GOP, and she’d wormed a great many Democratic secrets out of him.

Really?

No, Alvin was joking. But she did threaten to become a conservative columnist. Indianapolis’s own young, hot Anne Coulter.

Really?

No, Alvin was joking again. He’ll think it over, is what he’ll do.

Yes, Jackson tells him, you should think it over.

As Alvin hangs up (and, once no longer jovially playing with Jackson’s expectations, looking all pensive and thoughtful) the camera pulls back out through the window, up to the sky, and down to a highway someplace north of Muncie, to Chip’s car.

Cassie thanks Chip again for driving her to Madison. Chip tells her to think nothing of it.

Pause. Cassie looks out the window, and sees a lot of corn. Row upon row, acre on acre, entire counties of corn.

So, summer nearly over, huh? Chip drums absently on the steering wheel.

Yeah.

College starts soon.

Uh-huh.

It’ll be cool.

Uh-huh.

Ball State is supposed to be cool. He was looking into it, Chip says, he was looking into it, and he figures he’ll be living at home, with his parents. Way cooler than some lame dorm.

Uh-huh. I don’t think I’m going to Ball State.

Chip does a take, and almost loses control of the vehicle. What? Why not?

I’m going to Hawaii. To study marine biology.

Chip freaks out and does in fact lose control of the vehicle, although luckily there’s no oncoming traffic and he’s able to get back into his lane pretty quickly.

What? You are? Why? What?

“Well, there’s a lot of ocean there. There’s no ocean here. You need ocean for marine biology.” Cassie stares at the sea of corn, which proves her point. “I want to get into a program, some kind of school, but first I’m just going to move out there.”

Chip nearly drives off the road, again. “But it’s so far!”

Cassie can’t figure out why Chip is so upset, like, drive-the-car-off-the-road upset. “It’s in the middle of ocean. What’s wrong? You said I should go. You said you always knew I would!”

“Someday! Someday you’ll spread your wings and go! Not now! Someday! Hawaii’s a long way away!”

“I’ll call…”

Wisely he pulls over into the breakdown lane. “You can’t call because of the time difference! There’s like nine time zones between here and there! There’s an ocean between here and Hawaii! There’s an ocean, and a continent, and then another continent!”

“Why are you freaking out?”

“Because I love you!”

Cassie just squints at him, as to say “what is this thing ‘love’ you speak of?” As far as she’s concerned this is coming out of the blue.

Chip, cornered, backs up his profession of love with specific pieces of evidence. He’s loved her for years and years. He loved her at the graduation party at Leslie Lutz’s house and he loved her at the junior prom. He loved her at the sophomore Spring Fling. He loved her at the eighth grade PIL-SAT exams, when they had only one number two pencil between them and had to keep passing it back and forth. He loved her the weekend they tried to build a model airplane out of Popsicle sticks and glue. He’s… didn’t she get the Valentine’s Day cupcake he gave her in third grade?

It said “I Luff You!”

Because she put it in her backpack and it got squished before she unwrapped it! He’s watched so many Esther Williams movies with her he could do water ballet in his sleep. He’s devoted to her. He loves her, dammit.

Long pause while this sinks in.

“Oh,” says Cassie.

Pause.

“That explains a lot,” she says thoughtfully.

Pause.

“A lot,” she repeats, for emphasis.

Pause.

Chip sighs. “Well, this isn’t very safe,” he says, referring to the car’s position in the breakdown lane.

“No, it’s not,” Cassie says distractedly.

“I better –”

“– yeah.”

As Chip starts moving again, the camera swings away from the highway and over towards train tracks, then fixes on a certain passenger train heading north.

Within, Andrew is having a montage. To the tune of “Slate” (by Uncle Tupelo, Dungeon Majesty soundtrack available from Rhino Records) he stares out the window and recalls his life. Andrew as a small child, playing with a computer he’s built from chips, a Dungeon Majesty rulebook in his lap. Andrew wandering around Madison working his courage up. Andrew, aging from child to adult in front of his computer, graph paper images scrolling across his face, piles of game books growing bigger and bigger around him. Andrew rolling up character upon character, drawing graph-paper map upon graph-paper map, at one point going so far as to set up a table with a map in the middle, and chairs and character sheets ready for play, missing only other players. In Madison, Andrew stops in the local version of the 20×20 Room, hunting through their moldering archives, finding the one Dungeon Majesty adventure written by Gary Lukes (author of the first edition Dungeon Majesty Player’s Handbook) before his supposed death. Finally Andrew arrives at the address Kestrel gave him. He knocks on the door. Music stops. Mary Lukes answers. Cassie is sitting on couch inside having tea. Andrew points at both of them: “What are you doing here?”