I sit. I wait a while.
A man walks in. Stocky. With a goatee and a beanie.
A text box appears.
“Glad you made it.”
He sits down across from me.
“Glad to be here,” I type. I’m not sure what else to say. I’m not sure what’s safe. I’m not even sure if it’s him. How can I be? He’s an avatar on a computer. He could be anyone.
Except … this place … this landscape … it doesn’t just look like a painting. It looks like one of his.
“What do you like to eat?” he asks. “Not much on the menu yet. Still building this place. But I have two things you like.”
I think for a moment.
“Jiaozi,” I type. “And Yanjing Beer.”
A smile icon appears in the text box above the avatar.
“That’s what’s on the menu.”
Dumplings and beer appear on the table. We sit.
“So,” I type, and then I don’t know what to say.
“The Game,” I finally ask. “What was it for?”
“To go on quests. Kill dragons.” I imagine him chuckling in the pause that follows.
“To help friends,” he eventually continues.
“Your friend.” I won’t type his name, not now, not even here. “Your friend of a friend. He’s not okay.”
A longer pause. “I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
I’m not so sure about that. It seems like my fault, somehow.
“Where are you?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
“I’m in a good place. Safe. But you?”
“I’m good.”
“I hear you had problems.”
I hesitate. “A few. But I’m okay now.”
Our avatars stare at each other across a white table heaped with virtual dumplings and beer.
“I thought I was helping you,” he says. “I thought you need something to do. I did not think you would have trouble with your own people. I hope you can forgive me.”
“They’re not my people,” I type, before I can really think about it.
But that’s not really true. I brought them to Mati Village, didn’t I? Like I was carrying some disease.
That’s what it feels like, anyway.
“There’s things I never told you,” I say. “Things I did before.”
The words appear over his head: “Not important. I know what you do now.”
I think about it. Had I balanced things, somehow? Was it enough?
Maybe it never is. What’s done is done, and I can’t take it back.
But maybe that’s not the point.
“You’re right,” I type. “I needed something to do.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I think it’s time to end the Game,” Lao Zhang says. “To start something new.”
He stands up. “Do you want to see?”
“Yes,” I say.
I follow him outside. “I want to build a lot more,” he explains. “Now I work on this house.”
We walk up a winding path that roughly follows the edge of a cliff, overlooking the ocean.
A sleeping Chairman Mao with the proportions of a baby drifts by on a pillow of clouds.
Here’s the house, against a backdrop of twisted pines.
It looks more Japanese than Chinese, with a wood deck that wraps all the way around, huge open windows, rounded gray stones.
Here’s the dog from the beach, a big dog with three legs. It barks, then halts, wagging its tail, pink tongue hanging out of its mouth.
A small orange cat sleeps curled up on the stoop. As we approach, it stands, stretches, and sits on its haunches. I hear faint purring as we cross the threshold.
I still have the portrait Lao Zhang did of me. Harrison wants to buy it, but I’m not sure I want to sell. It’s not mine, of course, but it’s me. The painting sits, safely wrapped, in the small bedroom closet of my apartment. I haven’t figured out where to hang it. My apartment is small, and I don’t have a lot of wall space.
Here, in Lao Zhang’s world, the living room is big and empty, filled with light. The beams are polished, dark wood, so finely rendered that you can see the knots and whorls of grain.
“I need to make some furniture still,” he says. “And make more rooms.”
“It’s beautiful,” I type.
But it isn’t real.
“I guess you can’t come back to Beijing,” I say.
“Not right now. But the situation will change. It always does.”
I can’t nod, seeing as how I’m just an avatar. “I understand,” I type.
“I invite more people here in the future,” Lao Zhang says. “Build more houses. Create a place for all of us. But this one house is for you. Come back any time. I will be here.”
It’s not what I want. Not what I’d choose. But if we can talk, if we can connect, that means something, right?
Maybe it’s real enough, for now.
I sit in my cozy Beijing apartment, listening to the rain pounding on the balcony, the fresh ozone scent drifting in through the window I have cracked open, staring at a computer screen, at the view of a virtual house overlooking a virtual sea, my good friend standing next to me.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’d like that.”
Rock Paper Tiger Page 31