by Lydia Netzer
Was he his father’s son? Did he have his mother’s blood? Or did he not belong to another partnership, a past-life twin, a different scheme of things, beyond the predictable sequence of genealogy. Was he crazy? Were the gods real? Should he ever, ever tell? By the time he got back to Toledo to teach and work at the Institute of Astronomy, he was still empty. Still lost. Maybe the other side of his partnership was still out there. Perhaps it was purely hypothetical, like a plane of symmetry in the universe, or the density of a black hole, or love.
*
George addressed the goddess of the race, sitting in his Volvo on the side of the highway. He chose his words carefully. She seemed on edge.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m working as fast as I can.”
“That is something that everyone says,” she quipped. “It’s never been more false.”
“Can you tell me where the Gateway is then?”
“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know.”
She almost smiled.
George’s head began to pound.
“I have to go pick up my mother,” he said to the goddess of the race. “She’s waiting at the jail.”
“I’m not leaving,” said the goddess. “I don’t have to and I’m not. And when you turn around, and you see me, you’ll know that I’m saying go. You haven’t got a lot of time.”
When he pulled up outside the jail, his mother was chatting with one of the cops. As she pulled away from the conversation, she left her card in his palm, curled his fingers shut around it, and patted him on the shoulder. Good to meet you, she would be saying. She tapped across the pavement to George’s car, slid the door open, and dropped into the front seat.
“Alright?” he asked. He looked nervously over his shoulder and the goddess of the race mimicked him silently, “Alright?”
5
Belion was in the apartment. Irene had gone. He was deciding whether he would join her in Toledo. He felt that he probably would. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t. While he looked forward to the strenuous physical work of moving, he did not look forward to change. He sat in his chair at his terminal and played his game and worked. In the absence of Irene, not a lot had changed. In some ways, it was like she had never been there at all.
Over the twenty-four hours after Irene left for Toledo, it became hard for Belion to deny the fact that he was stalking Silvergirl, the player who had renamed the bears on his game. He didn’t want to be stalking her. That was stupid. At first he told himself that he was acting responsibly as a game administrator, keeping watch over a player who was possibly unstable or suicidal. But the reality was that he was not the kind of admin who had any reason to be in touch with players at all.
He was a world creator, not an interactive deity. However, there was something about Silvergirl that had provoked his slumbering sensibilities. She was plaintive; she was sorrowful, and somehow seductive. At first he felt angry, because he had never known anyone to leave such strange and illogical marks on his world. Renaming bears. Leaving unexplained piles of fish arranged like standing stones. Putting mulberries into the pockets of every goblin in the forest. He began looking for her signatures, blaming her whenever anything was out of order, whether she had been there or not. There was a bag abandoned in a mine shaft. It contained only silver coins. Was it hers?
With each new discovery, he became more interested. He, Belion, Archmage of the Underdark, found himself tracking the movements of a midlevel player, her stats and position filling him with excitement. Every time he learned something new, he would shut his screen down, turn away from the monitors, and lift some weights on his bench. At first he only did what he could do behind the scenes. He only looked at data he could read in his coding language, interpret according to the meanings he knew.
Then, late at night, he found he had been drinking a lot of pink lemonade. While Irene was living there, she drank it all the time. He had not drunk any pink lemonade in front of her. In fact, when she offered it to him, he had said, “Irene, that’s kind of a woman drink.” But he was wanting some, even as the words of refusal came out his mouth. Once she was gone, there was no reason not to drink it, and he found it went down so easily, he could drink the entire gallon she had left in the fridge without stopping to breathe. So late that night, in a cloud of pink sugar, he remembered Irene having asked about Silvergirl’s looks. “What does she look like?” Irene had said.
If Irene suggested it, he should do it. Irene might want to know, next time they talked. So he searched for her name in a different interface, and her avatar came up on his screen. Silvergirl was long and lean like almost every other pretend woman in this virtual world. But she was covered head to toe in a metallic slip, pointy on her head and draping over her toes. With a flick of his mouse, he could remove this metallic slip and look at her character’s naked body, but that would have been pointless. They all look basically the same. Did she choose darker nipples or lighter? Did she place her belly button nearer to her rib cage or her hips? If he wanted to spend all day looking at players’ avatars without their clothes, he could, but that was stupid. He wouldn’t do that. For one thing, he could be fired.
Belion had not really said to himself, “My girlfriend and I broke up.” He had not addressed the fact that Irene had gone to live in another state. For one thing, Irene hadn’t really wanted to talk about it. Several times she said, “You can do what you want.” If that meant coming to Toledo, she did not specify that this would be wrong or unwelcome.
Belion took a long, refreshing pull of pink lemonade straight from the jug. He took off Silvergirl’s metallic slip. Peach nipples, small. Round breasts, flat hips. Surprise, there was no belly button at all. As Silvergirl stood there on a dais in the creation screen in front of him, he turned her left and right and looked over her in every position. With her hood off, he could see she had long dark hair, standard for a druid. No tattoos or piercings. He told himself not to be such a dirndl. Silvergirl could be the avatar of a three-hundred-pound male, or a thirteen-year-old girl, or a golden retriever. He did not have access to the real-life details in her character file.
Belion spent long, thoughtful minutes looking at Silvergirl naked on his screen. He thought of the bag of silver coins, the bear named Good-bye Silvergirl, and the other enigmatic offerings. He wondered if he should interact with her, in the game. He could animate one of the computer-controlled characters sitting around on benches, and she would know it was something special. He could lead her down to the duck pond, by the willows, and say, “Why are you saying good-bye?” What would she say? Would she say, “I can explain, but first let me fellate you until your eyes pop out.” Belion had never cheated in real life on a real-life girlfriend. But he had cheated on all his girlfriends online. He could never explain what he was doing or why. He only wanted to know that his virtual cock was getting reliable attention. If there was another reason to have a virtual cock, Belion didn’t know what it was.
Belion was not introspective. His behaviors came from an immediate place of desire and fulfillment, about an eighth of an inch under his skin. In life, he was faithful. In pretend, he was a whore. But what god isn’t? He could possess the body of the stalwart warrior-guard outside the city gates, express an arrogant but urgent love for a passing maiden, and before he knew it he was sneaking with her into the robing room of the monastery chapel across the street, and she was ripping off her jerkin and yanking down her leggings, touching her pixelated hands to her pixelated crotch, drawing him between her legs, pulling him down by the neck. Women love special attention from gods. They never know who they’re fucking, they don’t really care, and it has been this way since the beginning of time. Ask Leda. Ask any of them. Let a god come down in the shape of a mortal, and see if you can keep your legs together.
*
Two days after Irene went to Toledo, Silvergirl went into a cave and stopped moving. Belion became concerned. Maybe real-life Silvergirl had shoved her head into an oven and turned
on the gas. That would be a giant bummer. He wanted more time to lay in wait for her, stalk her, seduce her, push himself into a fold in her silver slip. Belion broke down and hacked open her account information. When he saw that the log-in from her last session was from Toledo, he slid backward from the keyboard, stunned. An idea entered his mind and lodged there. Silvergirl was Irene. He scanned her logs and saw that she rarely spoke, had joined no guild, and had no allies. He was convinced. Was she spying on him? But why? Was she trying to tell him something?
It was morning in Pittsburgh. He had been up all night. He was eating some fresh salsa from a plastic container, chewing down whole-grain corn chips, shoveling the tomato squares and onion bits into his mouth. He was nervous and upset. Without Irene present to soothe him, he felt his brow must form a permanent furrow. It’s not that he missed their conversations, because they didn’t have them, or their love, because she had never loved him. It’s not that he missed the sight of Irene’s naked body, because, honestly, he had never been allowed to see it. Light or dark nipples, belly button, he had no idea. Was she showing herself to him online, through this avatar? Was he to unlock this puzzle she had set for him? How?
There were times when Belion, frustrated and cantankerous, would rise from his office chair and go to Irene, where she was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop. He would stand next to her, and put his big hand on her head. He might say, “Hey.” She would turn and look at the top of his pants. She would unbutton the button. Unzipping him, she would reach inside with her soft hand, ease him out of his underwear, and bring his balls along, too. The balls would hang out over the zipper, at first uncomfortably and then not. She would take him in her mouth and swallow everything in turns, and put her hand around to the back of his legs, to bring him in tight to her face. It was decisive.
From the moment she unzipped his pants until he was shaking, his broad hip locked in her arm, life was a blur. He could put his hands around a beam in the ceiling of the kitchen and rock against her biting mouth. Then he would stagger off. Looking back, if he did look back, he could see her spit into a paper towel. Wipe her mouth off on it carefully. Stretch her lips into a smile. Turn her face back to the glow of the laptop. Then the typing, tapping would begin again. Was it a lonely operation if it made Belion feel so damn much better? What is loneliness? How long would it take him to drive to Toledo?
He decided to go to the cave. Maybe Irene would allow him, in a virtual cave, to do what Irene, in an actual bedroom, had never allowed: to see her naked, touch her with his hands, or be near her with his face. He had always been longing to do it, and he had earnestly tried. She had rebuffed him. There was no ire in it. But still, it was a rebuff. And if there’s anything Belion knew about women, it was that when rebuffed, one had to withdraw, even if you were withdrawing your face from a crotch belonging to someone who should by all rights allow you to put your face right in it. What does the word boyfriend mean anyway, he thought.
Belion, Archmage of the Underdark, was a huge man, part ogre and part water buffalo, clad in black leather with a long sweep of a cape clasped around his neck. He wore a leather helmet shaped to his buffalo head with horns that draped down over his shoulders. He wore heavy boots, held an iron cudgel, and had no upper limit on his carrying capacity. If he had wanted, he could have picked up the whole world. If he had wanted, he could fly. Everything and anything was open to him in this world, all commands, all powers, everything. There was nothing he could not test or try.
Belion teleported himself to the grassy area outside the cave, and he marched straight in, ignoring whoever was standing around. His animated legs carried him along. He touched a button on the keyboard and changed from an aerial view to a first-person view, so that he looked at his screen as if through the eyes of his avatar. Had Zeus enjoyed this capability? Had Apollo been able to summon any item, any character, any object to his hand? Probably.
The cave was deep but lit with wall torches. Belion knew exactly where Silvergirl was hiding in this cave and exactly how to get there. He marched through the dim cave, his boots making sounds he could hear through his monitor. When he was around the corner from her, he hesitated, and his avatar sat down on a crate to think. Irene was not likely to have sex with him in a cave, with a buffalo head. She wouldn’t even have sex with him in a bed, with his regular head. “I’m a virgin from the neck down,” she would say. “Let’s keep that dream alive.” His avatar stood up. The cave lights flickered. He decided that he would try. Pittsburgh is a long way from Toledo. He got up and marched around the corner to confront her directly. His pulse elevated. His brow a Gordian knot.
She sat on an outcropping of rock above his head, her silver slip folded against the dark gray of the cave wall. She was halfway up to the ceiling. His avatar had to look up to see her. She sat with her hands in her lap, in repose. Long bare feet hung down. Irene’s real feet don’t look like this, thought Belion. Irene wears a five and a half. For a few minutes, he waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.
“Silvergirl,” said Belion. He used a special communication channel that sent a message to a player on their phone or computer even if they were away from the game screen. “Silvergirl,” he repeated. “I’m here. I found you. I got your message.” She stayed still.
Belion’s hand dropped to his groin. He was wearing very large athletic shorts, cotton knit, the kind with two layers of fabric. Under the inner layer, he was rising against the seam. He looked at the silver slip she was wearing, remembered the peach nipples she had, remembered her round breasts. He rubbed himself with one hand, as if scratching an itch. He was all alone in his apartment, and it was morning, and he was tired. But he could not sleep. He could not go to sleep without something happening. If something didn’t happen, he would just stay awake, keep working, keep trying. He shifted a little and loosened his shorts around his balls, but he did not put his hand inside.
After a few moments, Silvergirl’s eyes opened. The player had returned to the game. He put both his hands on the keyboard.
“Hello,” he said. “Irene?”
Silvergirl shook her head, hopped down from the ledge, and began to walk across the cave, farther toward the back, away from him. He had no choice but to follow, or let her go.
“I’m not Irene,” she said as they walked.
“You are Irene. You’re Irene, Silvergirl.”
“You found my messages. That’s good.”
Whatever game she was playing, whatever she was trying to teach him, he didn’t understand. Would she let him pull the slip over her head? Would she stand next to him, not wearing any clothes? Would his water buffalo head see what his human head could not?
“How are things in Toledo?” He asked. The words appeared in a bubble over his character’s head.
She halted. “How do you know I am in Toledo?”
“I know everything; I’m an admin.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m Belion, Archmage of the Underdark.”
She turned and murmured an incantation, her pixel hands waving in two little circles. Part of the cave wall fell away, and she opened a small door set into the rock. Behind it was a passage that was unfamiliar to him. He felt frustrated, and he wanted to stand up, grab onto the kitchen beam, and put himself straight into the throat of someone small and willing. I miss my girlfriend, he thought. I miss her! I should go to Toledo. This is stupid. Putting your dick in someone is enough. It doesn’t have to be in someone’s vagina.
“Go through this door,” she said.
“OK, OK,” he said, and tried to duck through the door. But it was too small. His character was extralarge size. He couldn’t get through the door.
“Shrinking spell?” she suggested.
“I’m an admin, I said, for chrissake,” said Belion. “I can shrink myself if I want to, but for what?” He would never shrink this avatar down. Not for some chick. Please.
“I need help,” she said.
/> “Are you Irene? Irene? Is that you? I think I miss you. I want to come to Toledo.”
Silvergirl went through the door. She left it open behind her, but he did not follow. Then he was alone in the cave, with nothing. It made him angry. It made him writhe in frustration. In his tired mind, he was rubbing up and down against the silken silvery folds of Silvergirl’s robe, and all of the silver was tugging at him. He pushed against the keyboard tray, his eyes closed. Her hands around him, slipping in between the fabric layers of his shorts, her eyes turned down to look at him, the way she spun around on the avatar pedestal, one hand curled into the perfect shape to hold him. In and out he went, feeling it just ahead of him, through the layers, getting warmer and falling through, until he was finally deep, deep inside, where the girl was.
6
While the Toledo Institute of Astronomy took root and flourished as an academic center through the second half of the nineteenth century, bringing about an international renaissance of star science, there was a strange sister renaissance flourishing in the shadows of the institute’s shiny new buildings: a rebirth of the art and science of astrology. Perhaps the new astrology’s lineage could be traced to that original witch, Esther Birchard, evicted from her position as chief weather scientist to the Stickney Carriers fleet. Perhaps it was a natural balance to all the strictly scientific behavior going on behind the walls of the institute proper. Whatever the cause, the symptoms were spreading: holy groves emerging in the gardens of the library. Prayer flags draping arrays of satellite receivers. Swamp voodoo huts popping up along the banks of the Maumee River in the dark, while everyone was looking up.
The first quantifiable development to emerge from the concentrated research efforts of astrologers and mystics in northwest Ohio was the practice of overlaying the lens of a telescope with the elements of a Native American medicine wheel, so that the degrees of a circle became merged with the white, black, red, and yellow quadrants and the thirty-six points: snow goose, west, illumination, mother earth, etc. This evolution of star-chart interpretation was attributed to no one and claimed by none, in contrast to the patents and named star clusters rolling out of the Institute of Astronomy at a rate of several per week. Yet the chart was widely adopted, as were several other effective practices blending scientific instruments with spiritual symbols.