A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

Hirofumi and Kaori converted those into their sleeping and living areas. The deck is like their open air living room. Once you enter that upper area, it’s like you’re in a house inside a building.

  They installed fake windows with backlit, high-res translucent prints of different scenic shots in the rooms without real ones. They even dim based on local time. In one room, you’re looking out onto the English countryside. In another, a village in the Alps surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Their bedroom is in Fiji. At night, specks and spots of blue glow-in-the-dark paint glow like stars in a night sky.

  The old shop rooms on the first floor are video rendering labs now but Hirofumi kept the old industrial power room almost exactly the same. That’s his personal workroom and office.

  How do they pay for the rent and upkeep for such a large place?

  Kaori’s grandfather amassed a good-sized fortune as a member of an old school “chivalrous organization” after World War II and her father helped that to grow through varied investments, generally more legitimate than his father’s. She has something like a trust fund. A big one.

  On the other hand, Hirofumi’s father works for one of the big electronics companies in Japan as a hot-shit, high level designer and researcher. He has been bought out from one company to the other then another and back to the first so many times that Hirofumi doesn’t know which he works for at any given time. It’s like corporate espionage tug of war except there are several ropes tied around his waist being pulled in as many directions. It also doesn’t help that Hiro and his father don’t talk much and Hiro doesn’t talk about why. His father used to send him money but he would send it back. They have enough with Kaori’s setup but I know Hiro wants to make his own money.

  People dance all around the DJ table and open area in dense throngs that only break up at the edges of the central area, which is lined and filled with rows of nice computers and monitors. The people on the dance floor are lit up by a glow from below. Felix can’t see how.

  All of the computers are taken. Felix sees a girl leave a computer and a guy who’s been waiting takes the seat. That must be H and K’s game. Past all that, there’s a projection on the back wall that doesn’t seem to be a part of the atmospheric video collage. More like an impromptu film screening. Felix wonders if the sound is important to the film, because it seems impossible for the sound to be clear over that DJ, even if it is loudest on the opposite side.

  Audrey notices something and guides Felix through the dance floor. He looks down as she gently pulls him by the hand and sees that they are walking on glowing, pulsing LED panels interconnected on the floor. Cool. They emerge from the sea of people at the far side and find a long metal table covered with mixers and handles and fifths of hard liquor of varying levels of quality and fullness. Below the table are several coolers full of canned and bottled beer and ice. Even some wine. White in the coolers, red up top.

  The music dies down a bit as an outro crossfades into the next intro.

  “I thought I saw him,” Audrey says, twirling slowly. She stops and smiles, looking past Felix.

  Felix feels long, slender fingers gently clasp his shoulder muscles from behind and rub like a masseuse.

  “You know, men have nipples too,” the voice behind him says with a noticeable Japanese accent. The hands stop rubbing and start sliding down Felix’s chest. “Ever wonder why?”

  “Nnngggah!” Felix cries as he spins out of Hirofumi’s creepy grasp. Hiro shambles zombie-like toward him and Felix pushes him back repeatedly. He smells like a brewery.

  “N–Nipples!” Hirofumi bellows then moans lustfully as he advances. Felix makes a gun out of each hand and dual-wields, firing John Woo style into Hiro’s head while making gunshot noises. Hiro makes a sound like a deflating balloon with his mouth and crumples to his knees, dropping his chin to his chest.

  Audrey laughs and says, “And… scene!”

  Without raising his head or moving anything else, Hiro’s right arm raises toward Felix like it has a mind of its own. Felix takes his hand and pulls him to his feet. Hiro’s eyes open crossed then he uncrosses them.

  “You have freed me!”

  They all laugh. Hirofumi slaps Felix on the back and gently squeezes Audrey’s shoulder. Felix goes to return Hiro’s back slap and hits a ratty old backpack.

  “Irrashaimase! Thanks for coming!” Hiro says, casually nodding a little bow.

  Having a second to breathe, Felix notices that Hirofumi is wearing a puffy, hooded vest, thick sweater, scarf, bright orange camouflage BDU pants, and unpolished secondhand combat boots. His already punky hair is also messier than usual.

  Felix turns Hirofumi by his shoulder and sees that he has a bedroll strapped under a tattered backpack. A miniature metal shopping cart the size of a small shoebox dangles from the pack by a rusty mountain climbing clip.

  “What is up with this getup?” Felix asks, smiling.

  “It will make sense. Here, what should we drink?” Hirofumi crosses to the table and picks up two bottles. He squints at them through his drunken haze. He makes a face and sets down one bottle. Cheap Canadian whiskey. Felix and Audrey approach the table.

  “I trust you. Use your discretion,” Felix says.

  “Same,” Audrey agrees.

  “Famous last words,” Hirofumi says while he studies the other bottle. He sets it down. Quality Finnish vodka. He sticks out his tongue and bends over, perusing the rest of the selection. He stops and raises his eyebrows then grabs a half full bottle of decent gin.

  Hirofumi grabs bottles of orange and pineapple juice from one of the coolers and three plastic cups then proceeds to make a trio of stiff drinks. He hands Felix and Audrey theirs and starts toward the computer area.

  “Okay! Let me show you!”

  They follow Hirofumi but don’t make it ten steps before Audrey peeps and stops abruptly. Felix and Hiro stop and look back. Two small, camouflage-sleeved arms are clamped around Audrey’s waist from behind and her arms are raised, trying to steady her sloshing drink.

  A very drunk Kaori pops her head around, looking up at Audrey from just above her waist. She’s bent over and leaning into Audrey. Audrey shakes her head, smiling.

  “You guys are so silly tonight!” Audrey says. Kaori moans and scrunches her face up. Audrey puts her hand on Kaori’s big knit cap. She has the same weird hobo look going on.

  “Oh,” Audrey coos while stroking Kaori’s head gently. “You okay, cutie?” “Ijo nashi!” Kaori says as she sticks the thumb on each little gloved hand up.

  Hirofumi narrows his eyes at her and says, “You should vomit and be in bed,” then follows with something long and fast in Japanese that Felix doesn’t understand. Loving and concerned yet stern is all he can glean from it. Audrey laughs. Kaori makes a playfully indignant face.

  The DJ transitions into another song. Kaori’s face lights up and she stands, almost spills Audrey’s drink again, and teeters for a moment but succeeds in regaining stability.

  Kaori exclaims, “Ah! I love this! Can we dance?!”

  “Do I have a choice?” Audrey asks.

  Kaori smiles big and shakes her head adorably. She takes Audrey’s free hand and pulls her back toward the heart of the dance floor. The captive Audrey dramatically waves with her drink as she is whisked away. Felix waves back and Hiro makes a sound of mild disgust then shakes his head and chuckles. “Come here,” Hirofumi says and continues toward the computer area. As he follows, Felix catches a blurry glimpse of a strange furry animal on the far wall film projection. He can’t place it.

  Felix and Hirofumi emerge from the crowds of dancers into the rows of people and computers. Hirofumi leads Felix down one aisle and stops. He takes a big sip of his drink and casually gestures around at the glowing widescreen monitors.

  Looking over several shoulders in quick succession, Felix gathers a few things immediately.

  Third-person view behind the character. Highly stylized and gorgeously so. All of these people are playing together but the sty
le seems different from one screen to the next. Sometimes subtly, sometimes more pronounced.

  “We call it Home Free. For now, at least. Lowercase with slash in-between. home, slash, free.” Hiro takes another sip and watches Felix for reactions.

  Felix leans closer and focuses on one screen at a time.

  It’s a cityscape. The skyscrapers, moving cars, and large areas of the streets and neighborhoods are stark and minimally detailed white, black, and grey like a high-contrast photocopy. Many of the skyscrapers are tall enough that they disappear into the fluffy, swirling clouds high above. In contrast, the player characters are vibrantly colorful. Exaggerated human forms. Ridiculously short or tall. Round and squat or gaunt and slender. Huge or tiny eyes, noses, mouths. Everything in-between. They all share one trait, though. They’re caricatures of homeless people. Scarves, hoods, parkas, camo, backpacks, shopping carts, books, sleeping bags.

  The atmospheric non-player characters share the photocopy look of the buildings and lack the exaggeration of the players. They are unisex and uniform, very tall, and walk too fast. They don’t react in any way to the players. Players actually get knocked over if they don’t move out of the NPC paths.

  Felix watches the screen of a girl who’s controlling a tall, thin character with huge eyes and a tiny mouth. A bright blue bird balances atop the characters head and it sings as he digs through a large wire trash receptacle on the corner of an intersection. The trash in the can is photocopy stark, but recyclable bottles and cans and edible, practically untouched food all glow colorfully. The character collects them, placing the recycle and food in separate bags with quick keystrokes of R and F. On another screen, a fat, ugly hobo sits and drinks a huge beer in an alley. In reality, it would be over a hundred ounces but he holds it one-handed. After every pug he takes, digital urine soaks his pants. So much so that he’s sitting in a puddle of it that grows every time. His tongue hangs out over his huge, gap-toothed grin. Clouds of stink form from each breath and his little eyes are red and glassy.

  Felix laughs and shakes his head.

  “What the fuck have you done, Hiro?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I love it! You guys made a damn massively multiplayer homeless role-playing game! How could I not like it? It’s funny. It’s pretty. If it’s fun to play too, you’re set.”

  Hirofumi laughs. “I hope it is fun. I think it is.” He sips. “Other thoughts?”

  “I have a hunch that you won’t mind, but some people might be a little offended.”

  “What I say to that is, ‘play it.’ It’s more than just supposed to be funny. It’s kind of like Daodejing, you know? Simple but deep.”

  Felix lent him his copy of that little, profound book years ago and it’s one of Hirofumi’s favorite things now. He once told Felix that was the biggest contribution to the game he could have ever given. Having seen it now, he’s still not sure what he meant.

  “It’s only simple at first, though. As you play, it–”

  “Hiro!” They turn and see Oscar approaching. Oscar went to school with them and works on H&K’s game now. Nice, mellow, stoner, painter.

  “What, man? I’m showing Felix,” Hirofumi asks then takes another sip of his drink.

  “Sorry. Hey, Felix. You makin’ me hella nervous, as always.”

  Felix blushes a bit and nods a greeting. Hirofumi raises his eyebrows in a “Well?” expression. He hates being interrupted. He’s all but tapping his foot, which Felix has seen him do in the past.

  Oscar says, “Alright, shit. Zhenya’s having trouble with the gravity apparatus upstairs. I’ve never smoked that way either, so I’m no help.” ‘Zhenya’ is Yevgeny, Felix’s aforementioned friend who loves movies and Alien related things especially so.

  “You just have to sink it, light it, pull it up, and…” Hirofumi curses in Japanese and shakes his head. “Okay, I’ll come up. Hey, you should play home/free, Felix.”

  “I’ll check it out, yeah.”

  Hirofumi wades back through the dancers and is quickly out of sight. Oscar extends his open hand and Felix lightly slaps it then they bump fists. “Watching Hiro go off on Yev is prime hilarity. I’ll see you later.” Felix chuckles and says, “I hear you. Later.”

  Oscar takes off after Hirofumi. Felix sips on his drink and waits for a seat at a computer. Before too long, a guy logs off and gets up. He heads toward the film projection as Felix sits in the seat.

  The login is set to default entries. Felix clicks through and sees a character customization screen. Seeing how many slider bars and options there are, he just clicks a button for “Random” and after a moment, a tall, thick character appears. Regular size eyes, huge nose and mouth. Felix takes a swig from his drink and clicks again. He gets a medium size woman with huge eyes, tiny pupils, and a big mouth that hangs open. He laughs.

  “Tell ‘em Large Marge sent ya,” he says, mostly to himself. The girl at the computer to his right looks over and chuckles lightly then goes back to her game.

  Her cityscape is hazier. The colors bleed and what look like faeries buzz around the player characters and NPCs.

  “Excuse me.”

  The neighbor girl looks at him.

  She’s cute but kind of bookish.

  Her eyes dart back and forth between his like she’s trying to figure out if they both work. She settles for focusing on the blue one. He wonders what makes different people settle on one or the other. Most choose blue. “Why does your world look different? With like the faeries and stuff?” Felix asks.

  “Oh, um, when you roll a character, there’s a randomizer that can attach a mental illness or condition to it. I happened to get something like schizophrenia. The perception is a little off and my world looks weirder. I see strange things and hear voices. They suggest things. I mean in the game.”

  She laughs awkwardly and Felix chuckles.

  “Also, at random times, my guy will just do stuff on his own. You get the control back pretty quick but it’s weird.”

  “That’s trippy. So, you like the game?” Felix asks.

  “Definitely! It’s so different but fun too. I love it.”

  “Awesome. Thanks for the heads up.”

  The neighbor girl says, “En pee.”

  “Huh?”

  “No problem.”

  Felix scrunches his face and says, “Oh. I gotcha. I didn’t know people actually did that in conversation.”

  She looks a little embarrassed and acts like she’s really focusing on the game again. Felix looks back at his screen, letting her escape. He sips his drink.

  He clicks the Random button again and gets a medium size man with intense eyes. He’s wearing a camouflage tarp like a cloak with a large hood and combat boots with spats. The eyes reflect light as they dart around cautiously in the shadow of the hood. His pack and bedroll hang low under the back of the tarp and there’s another pack slung low around the front like a forties parachute pack.

  Felix decides that his name is “Uncle Salty” and types it in, then presses the “Ready” button. Some randomized stats appear then dissolve out. Fade in to the cityscape.

  Uncle Salty is sleeping on the bedroll in the corner of a fenced-off, abandoned lot. Felix moves the cursor and sees that it changes when hovering over him. He clicks and Uncle Salty wakes up. He stretches in an exaggerated manor and hauls himself up. The bedroll rolls itself up and glides into place as the packs zip up and do the same.

  Felix rotates the camera around Uncle Salty and notices that, in addition to the intense eyes darting around, he blinks too frequently now. Sometimes the blink is really hard and the face shakes.

  Using standard WASD and mouse controls, Felix guides Uncle Salty through and out of the lot smoothly and easily. Uncle Salty grumbles the whole way. He also makes a kind of nasally humming sound.

  Uncle Salty gets to the sidewalk and Felix guides him through the city as he admires the simple beauty of the impossibly tall, stark skyscrapers. Felix’s grumbling avatar acci
dentally kicks a pair of mirrored sunglasses across the sidewalk. Felix steers him over to them and uses the action key to pick them up after Uncle Salty bends over a bit to indicate that he can do. He puts them on and the whole screen takes on a slight hazy orange tint. Felix steers him onward.

  Uncle Salty stops on the sidewalk again and hunches over a bit. Felix doesn’t see anything to pick up. His grumbling gets more insistent. Felix tries to control him but can’t.

  “Gnnnnngg–Shit! Shee-it! Fuh-Fuck! Fffnnnnn–” Uncle Salty blurts out then tries to stifle it.

  Felix leans back. He and the neighbor girl look at each other and laugh.

  Felix shakes his head.

  Felix says, “Tourette’s? There goes the all ages rating.”

  His bookish neighbor chuckles and looks at him just a bit longer than would be casual. She catches herself and looks back at her screen just in time to see her character bowled over by a passing non-player character with a big briefcase. Cans, bottles, and food fall out of her packs.

  “Shit! God damn it!” the neighbor girl says while hurriedly guiding her character to pick her items up off the sidewalk.

  “Now you have it.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry.”

  Felix says, “En double-yoo.”

  “Huh?”

  “No worries.”

  “Touché,” the girl says with a smile.

  Having regained control, Felix guides Uncle Salty toward a trashcan with glowing contents. He presses R and F to make Uncle Salty collect the objects.

  Felix takes a swig from his cup and drains it.

  “Damn. Hey, could you try to save my seat for a minute? This character’s funny to me.”

  “Sure,” she says and smiles.

  Felix gets up and makes his way back through the dancers to the bar tables. He finds a bottle of pineapple juice and makes another stiff gin and juice. He turns to head back to the computers but stops himself. Through the smoothly writhing limbs and bodies he sees Audrey and Kaori dancing in the glow of the LED floor panels.

  Audrey does love dancing. All kinds. Felix isn’t big on it but that’s just something else she doesn’t seem to mind. There are guys dancing behind her, probably enjoying the view but, as always, she seems to dance for herself and no one else.