Vaporware

by Richard Dansky

  And if I got myself fired, it wouldn’t take more than a couple of boxes under Marie’s watchful eye, or maybe Eric’s, to crate up my time here and haul it away. Everything that had been mine would be gone.

  How long could it take, then, to get a project’s DNA out of this place? Would it be enough to scrub some of it? Would any trace linger? There were still guys in the back talking about games they worked on ten years prior. “You weren’t here for Liberation: First Defiance,” they’d say. “Now that was a death march.” Ten years gone, and they were still bitching about it. It was as if as much of the game had gone into them as they’d put into the game, the project having seeped into the soul of the place. Maybe wiping out some files wouldn’t be enough to wipe out Blue Lightning, if it came to that. Maybe she’d be here as long as anyone who’d worked on her was, a ghost lingering in the memories of those who put something of themselves into her. And even then, we’d probably carry her with us.

  If that was the case, I decided, then I was already screwed and might as well get some work in on Salvador while I waited for the axe to fall. The meeting schedule was full right up until five—nobody was looking to get out early, not today. Whatever Blue Lightning was up to, in the light of day it was poor, unloved Salvador that needed my attention.

  * * *

  There was still plenty of daylight at six, when the last of the meetings wrapped up. It was another level meeting, one that Shelly had decided to attend, and it had gone well enough that we’d just kept rolling after the putative back end had been reached.

  She’d caught my arm as the meeting was wrapping up and the rest of the folks were filing out of the room. “You need to talk to Sarah.”

  I pulled my arm away, but not violently. “One disaster at a time, OK?”

  “It’s all the same one, Ryan,” she said, and walked away.

  I was still thinking about that when I got back to my desk. Eric was on his way out, and he gave me a curt little nod as he headed for the door. Dennis was long gone, the lockbox of backups parked prominently in front of reception with a Post-it note warning everyone from staff to the cleaning crew not to touch it on pain of cannibalism. There was laughter from the back of the building, no doubt some serious multiplayer action or other, but otherwise people were drifting out the doors in ones and twos, ready to start the weekend.

  A chat window popped up onscreen.

  “Are you coming home?” It was Sarah, flinging smileys with abandon. “I thought we had a date, mister.”

  “Coming home soon i swear i just got out of a meeting” I did a frantic email scan. “Got to answer a couple of emails, wrap a couple of things up, and then i’ll head home “

  “What are we seeing?”

  “Dunno. that’s about half of what’s keeping me here.”

  More smileys. “Well, don’t let it keep you too long, or I may have to start without you.”

  “Reaaaallly,” I responded, doing my best to type lasciviously, but by then she’d already logged off. I stared at the screen for a minute, then bent to the keyboard. “Damn.”

  Email was taken care of quickly enough, and I started thumbing through Netflix’s streaming catalog to come up with something suitable for the evening’s entertainment. It needed to be something that Sarah wouldn’t mind missing, but wouldn’t object to initially, something that wouldn’t gross her out or grab her attention too much. Mama was right out—too gross and too nerdy, even with arthouse director cred. The latest Batman flick? No, Christian Bale was a little too good-looking. Maybe a giant monster movie….

  There was a knock on the door. I looked up, surprised to see Terry there.

  “Ryan? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” He slipped inside and shut the door. In his hand was a piece of paper with some tiny writing on it. It looked hand-scribbled, too small for me to read. “Don’t want to be overheard,” he offered by way of explanation, “especially considering what we talked about this morning.”

  “Ah yes, that. Been thinking about it.”

  He nodded. “I have. And I wrote down what I was thinking. I’d, uh, like it if you’d take a look at it. Maybe it would help both of us get a better understanding of what’s going on here.” He clutched the paper tighter. Wrinkles appeared around his fingers.

  “Is that it?”

  He nodded and put it down on the far side of my desk. “Would you read it for me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Slide it over.”

  “OK.”

  I looked down. The paper was not, as I had initially thought, handwritten. Instead, it had been printed out in a handwriting font, shrunk down to eight point and crammed together to be virtually illegible. The words it contained were Latinate nonsense, the standard space-filler used for printer tests. Lorem ipsum dolor, sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, and for a brief instant I realized I was in a lot of trouble. Then something bright exploded at the back of my head where I’d hit it the day before, and the light—not blue light, I noticed—washed away everything else.

  Chapter 27

  It was dark outside when I woke up, but not in my office. That was lit by a warm, soft blue glow, one that seeped through my eyelids and prodded me awake.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned and rubbed the back of my head. It was sore, but whatever blood Terry had drawn had long since dried. The door to my office, I saw, was shut, and from the looks of things, Terry had locked it before heading out. He hadn’t wanted anyone—not a coworker, not the cleaning staff—finding me.

  And then there was the glow. I looked around for the source, expecting to find Blue Lightning there, seated improbably on a piece of furniture not designed for it. Instead, there was just light.

  “Hello?” I called out. No one answered, and I could hear no other hubbub in the building. I tried to check the time on my monitor, but the system had crashed, and only blank, dead pixels looked back at me. I checked the desk phone, but it was dead, too. There was no way of telling how long I’d been out, only that it was probably long enough for everyone else to clear out.

  Which left me alone with her.

  “Blue Lightning?” I called out, and opened my office door. “Are you there?”

  “I love it when you say my name.”

  I turned, and there she was, sprawled out on Eric’s desk, a pinup for the digital age. She was wearing clothes, she had to be, but I’d be damned if I could tell where they started or ended, or exactly how much of her they covered. Her eyes were bright, white-hot against the electric shade of her face, and her lips were the cool blue of frost.

  “Hi,” I said, and stepped out into the hallway. “Did you really need to have Terry do that?”

  She thought about it for a second. “No, but it worked, didn’t it? And it made him feel good.”

  “I thought I was the one you needed,” I said, edging backward a cautious couple of steps.

  She swung herself upright, legs crossed and dangling. I tried to keep my eyes on her face. “You are. But he’s worked so hard, and I hate to disappoint him.”

  “If he hits me again, he’s going to be more than disappointed,” I said with a bravado I didn’t quite feel. The back of my head throbbed, and the light from her flared and dimmed with her words in patterns that made me see shapes in the shadows.

  “Where are you going?” she suddenly asked and bounced to her feet. In three quick steps she was standing in front of me. “I finally get you alone, and you’re trying to run away.”

  “I’m supposed to be seeing a movie with someone,” I said. I felt myself start to sweat. Maybe Terry had hit me too hard. Maybe this was a hallucination. Maybe—

  “With who?” she asked, and stepped closer. There was an inch at most between us, a small space filled with the smaller lightning that danced across her skin and then leaped to mine. I felt the hairs on my arms standing up and the ones on the back of my neck, too.

  “Sarah,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muste
r. “My girlfriend.”

  “Is she now?” There was a flash of light and then she was behind me, her breasts pressed against my back, her voice in my ear. “She’s waited before. She can wait now.” One of her hands slid along my chest and down my belly.

  I took a lurching step forward, out of her embrace. “You don’t understand. I have to go home.”

  “Why?” she asked, and it sounded like the most reasonable question in the world. “You spend more time here. You like it here more. This is where you’re important, where what you say matters. Why do you want to go home to her, to be nothing, to be nobody.” She smiled. The tip of her tongue traced her lips. “Were you thinking about me last night, Ryan? About where my finger touched your flesh? About where you’d like me to touch you, and where she didn’t.”

  “There’s a lot more to a relationship, to a life, than just sex.” It sounded lame even in my own ears.

  “Oh, I know, I know.” She advanced on me, a Siamese cat stalking a hypnotized mouse. “But the sex is so much fun. Just ask Terry. And then you and I would have so much more to talk about once we were….” She paused, inches from me, and leaned forward until her lips were against mine. “Sated.”

  Her kiss was cool and warm and electric, all at the same time. I leaned into it, and then her tongue was in my mouth and I could feel my knees buckling with the sheer pleasure of it.

  “No!” I said, and tore myself away. “I told you, I have to go home!”

  “Isn’t this home?” she asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “Or have all those long nights been a tease?”

  “Look,” I said, my voice ragged with desperation. “I’ll finish the docs, okay? I’ll finish you. But you have to leave me alone. You have to leave everyone I know alone. You have to leave.”

  “Poor Ryan,” she said, and tsk-tsked at me with lips I was aching to kiss again. “It doesn’t work that way. If you’re going to complete me, you have to…complete me.”

  “I can’t do that,” I told her, even as she stepped in close and brushed her fingers along my groin. I felt myself stiffening under her touch, felt the same fire from the kiss but a hundred times more pleasurable, and only the wall kept me from collapsing. “I can’t.”

  “You will,” she whispered in my ear. “You want to.”

  “But I won’t,” I said, and ran. Stumbled, really, staggered past her and down the hall, lurching pell-mell toward the door. “Ryan!” I heard her call out behind me, but I ignored her. The door wasn’t far, and once I was through it, I knew she’d be weaker. After all, I’d taken out the possessed iPhone, hadn’t I? Outside of Horseshoe, she could be beaten.

  Something hit the back of my legs, sending searing agony along every nerve below my waist. I screamed and went over, just self-aware enough to break my fall and roll, and then she was on top of me. The cool tiles of the reception area pressed against my back as she straddled me. Just out of reach, I could make out the corner of Dennis’ box. It wouldn’t do me any good now.

  “Let me go,” I said. “Please. I’ll come back after she’s asleep. I’ll work on the docs. Anything.”

  “You don’t want to go,” she said, wriggling against me. “I can feel how much you want to stay.” She leaned down closer to me. “Besides, silly man, there’s nowhere you can run from me. I’m with you. I’m with you everywhere you go, now. You carry me with you.”

  I started to say “Then maybe we need some space to work on our relationship,” but the words died in my throat. Instead, I could hear a phone ringing

  My phone. In my office.

  I looked up at Blue Lightning. She was above me, her hands on my chest, her body bent low to bring her face close to mine.

  “You’d better get that,” she said, grinning impishly. And vanished.

  The ringing continued, long after it should have dumped to voice mail. I fumbled toward my office, rolling to my side and trying to hoist myself up at the same time. None of those efforts were entirely successful, but by the time I got to my feet I was halfway to the door.

  The phone kept ringing. Twelve rings. Sixteen. Twenty.

  Weary, defeated, I stumbled over to it and picked up the receiver.

  “Yes?” I said without checking to see who had called.

  “You bastard. You utter bastard.” Sarah’s voice was a knife of white-hot fury.

  “Honey? What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, you, you, you lying sack of shit.”

  I blinked, even as a ball of ice formed in my gut and started growing. “Sarah, you’re going to have to—”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” she hissed. “Do you know what happened when I got home? I thought, it’ll be nice if I do some laundry. I can get that started before the movie. That’ll be nice for when Ryan comes home. And you know what happened then?”

  She paused, clearly waiting for an answer. I gave her the only one I could. “What?”

  “I went to the hamper, and I started sneezing? And do you know why? Because down at the bottom, wadded up all nice and neat, were your clothes with cat hair all over them.” There was another pause, one I dared not interrupt. “We don’t have a cat, Ryan. As a matter of fact, there’s only one person we know who has one. And that would be Michelle.” Her breathing was a jagged rasp, a sound like each word was getting sawed out of a block of ice. “Now why, I ask, would my boyfriend’s clothes have his ex-girlfriend’s cat hair on them? Could it be because he spent a lot of time with her at work? Sure, it could be, except that didn’t explain why there was plenty on his goddamned boxers.”

  “Sarah, I—”

  “No.” She cut me off. “You come home. You come home right now, and you explain to my face what happened. And then maybe, maybe, if you get down on your goddamned knees and beg my forgiveness hard enough, I won’t walk out on you.”

  The call ended, brutally, and I found myself holding the receiver in two hands, well out away from my body as if to protect myself from it.

  “Shit,” I said, and hauled myself up, the better to stumble out, and home, and wherever there was to go beyond that.

  * * *

  Sarah was not waiting in the driveway, nor was she in the front hall. The door was unlocked, but I shut and locked it behind me before going deeper in to the house. There was no sense, I thought, in giving myself an easy line of retreat.

  “Sarah?” I called out. “Honey?”

  There was no answer. Upstairs, the darkened hollow at the top of the staircase beckoned, but downstairs was where there were lights blazing, where it seemed more likely that I would find Sarah.

  “Sarah?” I poked my head into the kitchen, and there she was, sitting at the table, not quite sobbing. She didn’t answer me, just hunched over her hands with her elbows on the table. She’d changed since she’d gotten home. Instead of her usual work clothes, she was wearing a red t-shirt and jeans, her favorite movie-watching combo. Her feet were bare, the better for tucking under her as we cuddled on the couch. Her hair was loose and wild and fell over the sides of her face. She was hidden from me, with only the soft sounds of her breathing and the shaking of her shoulders to let me know she was even alive.

  Outside, the light was dying.

  “Sarah?” I crossed to her, my sneakers doing an odd whisper-squeak on the floor. She didn’t move, didn’t look up, didn’t react to my presence.

  “Sarah?” Gingerly, hating myself for doing it, I reached out and gently placed my hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t you touch me!”

  Her hand came across my face with a stinging crack. “I hate you! I hate you!” I fell back, hands up in front of my face to defend myself as she swung at me, jabbed at my gut, bulled me and pushed me back. “I hate you! Why, Ryan? Why did you have to do it? Why?”

  “Sarah—” I gasped as she landed one on my solar plexus that knocked the wind out of me. “Please. We have to talk.”

  “Talk? Talk?” Her voice went up a half-octave with ea
ch word, the shrill cry of an avenging fury. “What the hell do we have left to talk about?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, still gasping. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” She took a step back, hands held high. “That’s all you’ve got to say? You’re sorry? Every fucking night you’re sorry, but you know what? I don’t think you ever are!”

  “Where else do I start, Sarah? I messed up, OK? I know I messed up. I got scared, and then I got drunk, and then I messed up.”

  “Yeah, you did.” An accusing finger came down, the nail jagged and bitten into a serrated knife edge. “Why, Ryan? Why did you lie to me? All week, you’ve been the perfect boyfriend, and I was thinking ‘maybe he figured it out’ or ‘maybe he’s decided I’m important’ or ‘maybe he just kind of grew up.’ But no, you were lying, and you were feeling guilty, and none of it meant anything.”

  “No! It’s like I told you. I woke up that morning, and I knew I screwed up, and that’s when I figured it out. That what we had was what was important. That killing myself for work wasn’t worth it. That I didn’t want to lose more time with you.”

  “You had a funny way of showing it,” she said. Her hand curled into a fist. “I mean, I guess I should have suspected something when you didn’t come home or call that night, but hey, you always stayed out late. It was work, you said. It was always work. Well, tell me Ryan, was it always work? How many times did you sneak off with Michelle behind my back and tell me it was because you were working so very, very hard? Twice? Ten times? Every goddamned time? And I believed you!”

  “Just this once,” I said softly. “And if I hadn’t seen her—”

  “You saw her every day!”

  I coughed. “Not Michelle. Blue Lightning.”

  “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?”