"Yeah. But—I brought your 3DS into the restaurant. It's not in there." He winces, wondering if this was really the time to break that news. "I'm sorry. Your clothes and whatever else you packed should still be in there. I didn't mess with it at all."
"Okay." Weirdly, this seems to comfort the boy a little, and Alan tries to remember what Todd packed that could possibly be capable of cheering him up. When Todd murmurs, "Thank you," Alan wonders for a moment if he's hearing things.
Then they're at the entrance to 35, and he rolls the Ford to a stop, thinking.
They need a running car in order to stay warm and keep heading south. But there won't be any gassed cars on the highway. So they have to stay off the highway to find a new car when they need one.
But they have a car with a full gas tank right now. It makes more sense to get on the highway and start heading south, even crawling through the snow in the dark, while they still have this gas to work with.
But the highway is dangerous. It involves long stretches between towns, where there is no food or other shelter.
But they can't just stay where they are. If they get snowed in and can no longer drive, they will die.
All right. You're going in circles. He grabs the tail of his own thoughts, and yanks it to a halt. There is no reason to risk the roads if they can help it. If he had a guarantee that they could find a woodstove in a house somewhere and wait the winter out, the decision would be easy. But he doesn't have that guarantee.
He tries to get creative, starts thinking about somehow getting the heat from the truck into a house, and that's when he remembers the RV lot they passed yesterday morning.
"Why are we stopped?" Todd asks. "Where are we going?" The paperclips in his hands are joined together now. A pair of long ears, a squat head, two round eyes: a bunny face.
"Somewhere with heat," Alan says, and pulls onto the black highway, heading back to the north.
The biggest risk with the plan is the possibility that he misses the RV lot in the dark, or freaks out before they reach it and turns around early, so he tries to remember exactly how far past it they were when they crashed. Twenty minutes, at maybe 75 miles per hour? His brain grinds on the simple math, nerves and sheer exhaustion gumming up the works. 15 miles or so? 18? Since he doesn't have a clock, he checks the odometer.
"Hey, try to remember this number: 67,248."
Todd cracks the glove box, finds a pen, and writes the number down.
"Hey. Even better," Alan says, and without warning the black highway beyond his high beams comes alive, the snow glowing with ghostly blue light. "Holy shit," he breathes. "What—?"
The question dies in his throat. Through the parted clouds above the fields to their right, the blue star looms as large as a gibbous moon. Alan can make out its rocky surface with his naked eye, including the ragged scar across its middle. Its azure silhouette flickers at the edges like fairy fire.
It's so close. God, how fast is it moving? It's so close.
Suddenly, questions of shelter and surviving the winter become academic. It—whatever it is—is nearly here. How long do they have? Days? Hours?
His leg muscles turn to water, and his foot slips off the gas pedal. The world seems to spin lazily around him as a scream fights for purchase in his chest. Somewhere in the truck cabin, Todd has begun moaning.
Then the clouds retake the sky. The highway plunges back into monochrome: white in the truck lights, black beyond.
"Daddy?" Todd's voice is shot through with terror.
It's okay, Alan thinks, but his tongue won't move because it's not okay. There is nothing he can say that will matter. His mind is blank with horror, reeling from the barest glimpse of the thing in the sky.
He parks the truck and Todd crawls into his arms, shivering and small.
91
Dawn, and they are still alive.
When he realizes this, Alan resumes driving.
It's a fight to keep his speed down. Some crazy instinct keeps telling him to jam down the gas pedal, that maybe he can outrace the death he saw in the sky last night. But the sane part of him knows the opposite is true: that in fact, driving an unloaded pickup faster than 20 miles per hour through three inches of snow is nearly guaranteed to crash them, especially if they run into any surprises.
So he manages his speed. Todd is quiet as they drive north. When Alan steals sidelong glances, he sees the boy's face is ashen, his eyes deadened. The wire bunny head lies on the floor, forgotten. Alan wants to comfort him, but no words can suffice. He keeps his eyes on the road.
He's just starting to fear he passed the place when he sees the sign:
HORIZON CHASERS
LUXURY & FAMILY RVs
NEXT EXIT
In ten minutes they're crunching through the snow into the RV dealer's parking lot. The place is huge, far bigger than he expected, with lines of vehicles of varying sizes just like the sign promised.
He pulls over and they go into the sales building. The place is bright, its floor-to-ceiling windows letting in plenty of grey winter light. The sales floor has some of the smaller trailers, but most of the space is given to diagrams of the RVs and sales brochures.
At the far end, near the bathrooms, are a couple vending machines. Alan helps Todd limp over, who surveys the options and says, "Oh, they have blueberry Pop-Tarts!" Alan breaks the glass, and they help themselves to breakfast.
"It says there's a model RV just outside." Alan points at a sign on the wall as he tears through a Slim Jim. "I think we should check that out first."
"What's an RV?"
"Stands for 'recreational vehicle.' It's basically... it's kind of like a house on wheels."
Todd's eyebrows furrow. "Like you can drive it?"
"Yeah. Though I don't really think we should, not with all the snow on the ground. I was thinking more a place to ride out the winter." He remembers the asteroid they saw last night and how close it was. Assuming we have that long, he starts to think, and forces the thought away.
Todd chews his bottom lip. "Do we have to start a fire?"
"No." Alan answers instantly. "No. In fact, it should—I mean, I assume it will have heat built in. Like cars do."
The boy considers this. "Will it have a bed?"
"Well, I hope so. Let's take a look."
92
The model RV on display outside the sales building is a luxury unit with a price tag of nearly one million dollars. It has a bed.
It also has a designer kitchen with a microwave and flat-panel electric stove, a water heating unit, a massive diesel generator, and a solar panel array with battery backup. The bathroom is a piece of art that might have been torn from a Hilton penthouse. There is a leather reclining couch and a hideaway flat-screen TV bigger than the one they had at home. The kitchen table and surrounding built-in benches are mounted in some kind of airtight expanding room that actually extends the wall of the vehicle to make the already-massive living area even larger.
Every surface is smooth and immaculate. It smells of equal parts new house and new car.
Todd is over the moon, bouncing on the bed and tumbling over the couch as if his sprained ankle never even happened. Alan's mind cramps as it tries to comprehend the beauty of the place—light-years beyond any temporary shelter they've taken since leaving home, light-years, even, beyond the home they left.
As Todd celebrates, Alan makes his way to the driver's seat. It feels on the verge of sacrilege to entertain the hope in his mind. This gift from the universe has already shattered every expectation he held as he walked in—surely it is asking too much to expect this incredible machine to work. He finds the keys in an empty uniform (the shirt reads, HORIZON CHASERS!) and brings them to the front cabin, where he pushes the power button.
With a gentle, rumbling hum, the lights come on. Heat starts to pour from the vents.
Todd's cry is ebullient. "It works? Oh my gosh, it actually works!"
As the boy whoops and screams, Alan sinks against the
steering column and weeps.
93
A little more research reveals that the water supply is connected, apparently to an on-site well. The toilet doesn't work—it's covered with a plastic sign that reads Not For Customer Use—but the bathrooms in the sales building are only a minute away, and the other amenities in the bathroom function perfectly.
An hour later, when Alan steps into a hot shower for the first time in months, the sensation drives him to his knees. There is no soap or shampoo, but it doesn't matter; the water alone is ambrosia. The bone-deep cold in his flesh slowly thaws. Muscle tension he didn't even realize he had drains away. He hogs the experience, relishing the heat until Todd finally calls through the door to ask if he's okay.
And the wonders don't end there. Horizon Chasers spared no expense to sell their fantasy of complete self-reliance. The solar batteries are fully charged, the two tanks of diesel gasoline completely filled. While Todd takes his shower, Alan rifles through the kitchen cabinets and finds cans of soup and stew, fruit cups, even pasta and spaghetti sauce. When Todd emerges, pink and clean, from the steaming bathroom, Alan welcomes him to a lunch of fried Spam and spaghetti, with drinks from the vending machines and dessert of actual, toasted Pop-Tarts. They eat until their stomachs hurt, then collapse into bed.
There is nothing on live TV, of course, but there is a small collection of DVDs, and Alan puts in some old romcom. Human voices—even canned ones—are like salve on a burn. He doesn't care what the actors are saying, doesn't care about the storyline. He sets the machine to repeat and they doze off, the comforting drone of voices in their ears.
He wakes to notice the sunlight waning, but the shadows that would normally creep up the walls are blunted by all the glorious, artificial light. When he realizes they once again have the power to keep the darkness away, a feeling of omnipotence, of imperviousness, washes over him.
"Can we stay here?" Todd asks, snuggled against Alan's shoulder. He sounds resigned and wary, frightened of the answer.
"Yeah."
The boy's head shoots up, a face-splitting grin on his face. "Really?"
Alan coughs a laugh. "Yeah, really. Why the hell would we leave? We're never finding anything better than this."
"I just thought—" He shakes his head, stops himself. "Thank you."
"We need to keep it gassed up, but I think I saw a tank on the way in here that they must have used just for that. If it's diesel, we'll be in business—otherwise, we'll have to figure something out." Alan ruffles his son's hair. "This is good as it gets, man. I know that. I see it."
Todd relaxes. They watch the movie. Alan is starting to drift off again when Todd says, "Dad."
"Yeah, pal."
"You want to play Chose Victor?"
Alan opens his eyes. "'Chose Victor'? What is that?"
Todd jumps up, excited. "Wait here." He throws on his shoes and is out the door. Alan feels like he should stop him, but doesn't; he can't bring himself to tamp down the boy's enthusiasm. Two minutes later, Todd is back at the door, lugging his suitcase from the truck through the snow.
"Todd!" Alan grabs the case and hauls it into the RV, then lifts his son inside, too. "You've got to watch that foot—" he starts, but the words dry up, because Todd has opened the suitcase and pulled out THE GAME.
94
It's like being at a party, and finding himself suddenly alone with an ex. The sight of it stuns him.
"You—?" he starts, then tries again: "You brought that?"
"Yeah!" Todd opens the box. Inside are all the dice and cards Alan worked on for the last two years, strewn helter-skelter.
"Why would you bring that, Todd? I told you to pack important stuff." He is fighting a surge of irrational anger. So Todd brought THE GAME—so what? Why does it feel like a personal attack? Why—
"I know, but it's really fun. I figured out how to play when you were sick on the couch. At least I think I did. I couldn't find the instructions."
"They're in a file on my PC. I haven't finished them."
Todd upends the box, and the components spill out. "The decks are all messed up," he laments. "I built a bunch of different decks. But I can make one for you real quick. The way you play is—"
"I know how to play, Todd. I made the game. You—" You weren't allowed in my workshop. You weren't supposed to touch this. It would be a painfully irrelevant thing to say, now, but it still nearly comes out of his mouth.
"Oh, yeah," Todd answers, as if this has just occurred to him. "Well, anyway, I built a deck of Andions, and a deck of Devilspar. They were really good against each other, because the Andions can pull in extra Realms, but the Devilspar can devour Realms."
Alan always envisioned that matchup—Andion versus Devilspar—would be one of the archetypes if the game caught on. How did it go? Were they evenly matched? The man who spent two years working on the game wants to ask these questions, but the rest of him hasn't caught up yet. "You—you played this?"
"Yeah, I played it all the time. I told you. I love Chose Victor."
"It's 'Chaos Vector.'"
"Oh, yeah."
"How did you play it? It's a two-player game."
"I pretended one deck was a CPU." Todd glances at his father. "Do you know what I mean by that?"
"Yeah." Alan nods, still in a daze. "Yeah, I think I do." Alan has playtested the game for hours, playing against himself.
"But I have one question. I don't know if I did this right." Todd holds up one of the cards, which reads, Advance one Realm and Devour one Mortal. The two statements are separated by a horizontal line. "Is this like, if you play the card, you get to do both? Or you pick one, or—?" Todd looks at him expectantly. When Alan doesn't answer, he finishes: "Or what?"
"I..." The honest answer is embarrassing. Alan isn't sure. It was one of the key elements of the game that he couldn't make a decision about. He had all these cards that had two effects listed on them, but he hadn't decided how to employ them. "I was trying it a few different ways."
"Oh, yeah. 'Cause I thought it would be cool if the enemy gets to pick."
Alan nods. Ridiculously, Todd's enthusiasm is pulling him in. "I had the same idea, when I was sick. But I figured..." I figured it didn't matter, because we're going to die, and there are no other people on the planet. "I don't know."
"I never really got to try it, because I was playing a CPU, but I always know what the CPU is thinking, kind of. So it was hard to do it that way. Do you think it would work?"
"I don't know." Alan shakes his head, half-expecting the game pieces to vanish, and comes to a decision that shocks him. "We could try it and see."
95
Chaos Vector was designed originally as a Collectible Card Game. The players Alan envisioned would acquire packs of 10 or 15 cards and combine them in different ways to make decks of 60 cards or more, then play those decks against each other. It wasn't a new idea—games like Magic: The Gathering had been doing it for decades—but it was still a cool one. A great CCG could be addictive, and addicted players would spend a lot of money. Best of all, the CCG format presented several unique design challenges that, when he started, Alan had looked forward to surmounting.
He had even developed the idea further by bringing in the concept of custom dice, a notion he'd thought was original when he'd come up with it, but had since been incorporated by other games. Seeing that idea get usurped before he could get it to market had been the killing blow to his dwindling morale. Afterward, he had questioned everything down to its foundation: whether the dice had only been a gimmick, whether he should come up with a different gimmick to replace them, whether the game had any redeeming qualities at all. He'd begun spinning his wheels, each day consumed with doubt and self-accusations.
None of this matters to Todd.
"Cosmic Rending!" he announces, revealing the card he asked Alan about just before they began playing. He is bouncing in his seat, eyes glowing, because he has his father in an impossible situation: if Alan chooses to let him
advance a Realm, Todd will win the game, but if Alan lets him devour a Mortal, he will destroy his father's best card.
"That's bullshit," Alan mutters, but he can't suppress a grin as he says it. It's exactly the kind of situation Alan had always hoped the game would be robust enough to develop, and not only is it manifesting, but it's his son that made it happen. It's hard not to feel proud. "Fine. Devour. You evil little bastard."
Todd cackles, grabs Alan's best card, and throws it in the discard pile. "Now there's no way—" He cuts himself off and restarts. "How you gonna win now?" The trash talk is stilted and awkward, but completely earnest. In its own way, it's as adorable as the kid's front teeth.
The TV is forgotten. The snow, the cold—even the Blurs fall away. Todd kicks his father's butt and Alan starts shuffling the decks.
"I think ten Realms is too many," Alan muses. "It's supposed to be kind of a fast-paced game. It seems like it takes too long to win."
"Yeah," Todd says. "Maybe like seven?"
"I was even thinking five. But let's try seven first."
They draw new hands and play again.
96
In the morning it snows again, but Alan risks heading outside to loot some more drinks from the sales building. He also confirms that the giant tank he saw the day before is, indeed, full of diesel. The RV burns through gas faster than he would've hoped, especially considering they didn't even drive the thing yesterday. But with a massive supply tank like that, they should be able to keep it running for a very long time.
They have 100 or so blank cards in the Chaos Vector box, and when he gets back inside, Alan finds Todd making new cards. He opens his mouth to warn his son about making sure the card is balanced—he doesn't want to waste any blanks on a stupid fantasy card that instantly wins the game or anything—but goes to take a shower instead.
His trust is well-placed. Todd's new cards present seemingly simple choices, but their effects over the course of a game back Alan into a corner. Alan takes the opportunity between games to make a few new cards of his own, and Chaos Vector continues to evolve.
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