‘Perhaps.’
Is this a real offer? Some kind of test?
‘Hang the Governor!’
‘Burn the Capitol!’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I write. ‘I’m going to do what you said first. Go ask the Monk.’
Golden Snake doesn’t move. I watch her scales shimmer.
‘Very well. I will be in touch,’ she finally says.
And Golden Snake is gone. Logged out.
I can barely move, there are so many avatars gathered in the market, on their way to the Governor’s mansion. I don’t know if I just did the right thing or if I totally fucked up.
Now, suddenly, there are soldiers swarming the Bazaar, and a large text box pops up with red letters saying: ‘This is an illegal activity. You are in violation of the Terms of Service.’
I figure that’s my cue to leave.
I make myself anonymous and go back to the Yellow Mountain Monastery.
Like the last time, fog swirls around my ankles. Somewhere an owl hoots.
‘Hail, the Great Community,’ I type.
Nothing. I continue up the path.
‘It’s Little Mountain Tiger,’ I type. ‘I need to talk to Upright Boar. I’m in big trouble, okay?’
I continue on, alone in an empty landscape, talking to myself.
‘Come on,’ I type. ‘This is bullshit. You guys invited me, okay? Are you really there?’
There’s a bridge up ahead, a rope bridge that sways in the virtual wind. I approach it. The bridge spans an abyss. Boulders tumble down its sides, disappearing into inky black.
I wonder what happens if I commit virtual suicide. Just leap off the bridge, into nothing.
‘Where’s the Great Community?’ I type. ‘Is there one? Are we really in this together, or was that a bunch of shit too?’
No one answers. I cross the bridge, and it creaks with my every step.
Don’t quit. Keep playing. Ha-ha.
Now I can see it, perched on the side of the mountain, carved into the cliffs – the Yellow Mountain Monastery.
‘Because right now, I just want to go home,’ I type. ‘I’ve had it. I’m done. I just don’t know where home is any more.’
And I can see, standing on a terrace of the Yellow Mountain Monastery’s far pavilion that juts out over the gorge, a tiny avatar.
I keep walking, listening to the slithering of pebbles beneath my feet, the rasp of crows, the erhu and pipa music, which has taken on a decidedly mournful tone as I climb the winding path to the Yellow Mountain Monastery. No Nine-Headed Birds, anyway. A few NPCs that ignore me. My anonymous command seems to be working okay this time around.
Finally I reach the monastery gates. The doors are massive, red studded in brass. And they are locked firmly shut.
Fuck. Are they enchanted? Is there some spell I’m supposed to use to get in? Am I supposed to batter them down with my magic staff and my Mutual Rings? Or what?
I just don’t give a shit.
I command my avatar to sit by the gate. I eat some virtual dumplings and drink some tea that I picked up at the market, because Little Mountain Tiger’s energy is running a little low. Then I type ‘Okay. I’m here. You want to talk to me, come and talk to me. Give me a reason not to bust you guys. Because I am in some big trouble and you aren’t helping.’
After a minute, the monastery gate slowly swings open. A figure steps out. The Monk of the Jade Forest.
‘You would not want to do that,’ he says.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you would hurt your friends.’
I think about this. ‘My friends?’ I type. ‘You mean Upright Boar?’
‘Upright Boar and people who think like him. Who don’t care about governments and their rules. Who want to help each other.’
Nice-sounding rhetoric. But what does it really mean?
‘Why was I attacked?’ I type. ‘Why the Nine-Headed Bird?’
The Monk of the Jade Forest sits down next to me. ‘A test.’
‘A test? Of what?’
‘To see if you are willing to struggle. To fight and not give up.’
I have to sit there for a moment.
‘Okay,’ I type. ‘You put me through this bullshit test to see how I play some stupid fucking game when in real life I have real-life people who are threatening me and my family so you know what, fuck you. I need to know what to tell these guys so they’ll leave me alone. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble especially not Upright Boar so you have to give me a hint here what I’m supposed to do.’
I stare at Monk of the Jade Forest, but of course he’s an avatar, an animated character, and he just sits there, blinking according to the dictates of his program.
Finally the words appear, floating above his head like a comic-book thought balloon.
‘Wait one day. Log on then. We will instruct you.’
I really want to object. To tell him that I’m pretty sure this whole thing is full of shit, that I’m going to tell someone – the Suits, Creepy John, the PSB – about this stupid game. That I’m going to, I don’t know, go home, enroll in a community college, and study dermatology or something, hope I get a job, pretend that I don’t know anything about how the world works, about the thin ice and the cold, dark waters beneath when you find yourself, by mistake, someplace you never wanted to be.
But I don’t do any of that. ‘Okay,’ I type.
After that, I go outside. I start walking, no destination in mind. Eventually I make my way up to the old city, which is marked off by medieval walls and gates. I visit the ‘ancient culture street,’ where you can buy calligraphy brushes and knockoffs of classical Chinese paintings. I sit and have a local brew at a beer garden in the shadow of the Drum Tower.
I end up in the Muslim quarter.
It doesn’t look that different from the other old parts of town: low, gray buildings made of medieval bricks. Stalls crowd the narrow streets, selling leather shadow puppets and Mao memorabilia, sesame oil and spices, flatbread stuffed with meat and pickled vegetables. Mopeds and bicycles weave in and out of the crowds. Now and again I see Hui Muslim women wearing headscarves. But this is still China. It’s nothing like where I was before.
It’s mid-afternoon, just after three o’clock. The streets are too narrow for cars; maybe that’s why it seems so quiet. There’s a covered market here, selling mostly souvenirs. More leather shadow puppets. They seem to be a local specialty. Hui ladies call out to me, wanting me to come in and see their goods.
One of them comes out from her stall. ‘Miss,’ she says, ‘Miss. Come look.’ She’s a middle-aged woman, the plains of her face broad, her cheeks slightly reddened, as though she’s wearing rouge. To my eyes, Hui people don’t look any different than a lot of northern Chinese. It’s only the headscarf that lets me know.
She smiles at me. There’s something kind about her smile.
‘Sure. Okay.’
I go inside. She pats the seat of a metal folding chair, gesturing for me to sit. She brings me tea in a glass. At the back of the stall, a young boy is curled up by a stack of paper kites and folk paintings, doing his homework. Her grandson, she tells me. ‘Very smart. Good in school.’
She asks me the usual questions; I answer the usual answers; and finally, because she gave me tea, because she’s kind, I buy some paper cuttings, tranquil countryside scenes, which I tell her I’m sending to my mom. Who knows if I really will? I say I’m going to do a lot of things that I never do.
I exit the stall. As I do, I notice a man looking at the leather shadow puppets at the stall next door. Pretending to, anyway. He barely moves his head, and I can’t see his eyes through his fake Ray-Bans, but I think he’s looking at me.
I turn away. So what? People look all the time. He probably wants to sell me something.
Fake Ray-Bans, white polo shirt, black jacket.
I keep walking, down a cramped lane that runs along a low whitewashed wall. I hear footsteps behind me. Measured, calm. I slow
down, pretend to examine a tray of Little Red Books and calligraphy sets. The footsteps slow.
I start walking again. The footsteps follow. This is crazy. I’m in the middle of a market that sells tourist souvenirs. What’s he going to do?
I think about running. I think about screaming. I feel like there’s a target on my back, between my shoulders, and all the muscles there clench and spasm, waiting for the bullet.
I whirl around. There he is, maybe two yards away.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ I shout. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
The man lifts his hands in mock surrender and grins.
‘What do you want?’ I ask again. A sob catches in my throat.
He laughs. Takes a couple steps toward me, with an exaggerated limp. Imitating my walk.
I stand there. My hands ball into fists. I want to kill him. I think, if I had a gun, I’d shoot this motherfucker.
He smiles at me.
Don’t be such a bitch.
I turn around. I walk away.
I make my steps as steady as I can. I hear him follow. Not closing the distance. Just following me along the narrow lane by the whitewashed wall.
Up ahead is a ticket kiosk. Above it, a wooden sign: ‘The Grand Mosque.’
I hesitate, and then I buy a ticket.
‘The Mosque closes soon,’ the ticket-taker says.
‘Meiguanxi,’ I mutter. Doesn’t matter. I head toward the turnstiles.
Right before I enter, I turn around, and he’s standing there. Not smiling now. Just watching me.
But he doesn’t follow.
I’ve never been inside a mosque before.
This one looks like a Chinese Buddhist temple, overall. There are dim galleries and overgrown gardens, carved gates and wooden pavilions, but there are no statues, no gods and goddesses. I see maybe one or two other tourists who stop now and again to take photos. It’s very quiet here. Peaceful.
I stop at a marble bench and sit for a while, gazing at the pavilion in front of me. Above the archway is a wooden signboard with carved Arabic calligraphy. I stare at that a while. I have no idea what it means.
Finally, I head for the exit. I don’t see my stalker. Whoever he is. He could be anybody, or no one.
As I leave, I notice that there’s another entrance to the complex, farther down the wall. There are no ticket-takers, no turnstiles. Hui men wearing white skullcaps and robes enter there. Muslims going to what remains of the real mosque, the place where they worship, a place where I’m not allowed.
I go back to my hotel with a couple bottles of beer and some snacks. Kick off my shoes, climb into bed, and turn on the TV.
Do I stay in Xi’an and play the Game, or do I run somewhere else?
Run where? From whom?
I decide, why not stay here? When I take a minute to be honest with myself, I figure I’m pretty much screwed no matter what I do.
Maybe I should buy another ticket to the Great Mosque and go sit on the bench in that courtyard and stare at the calligraphy I can’t read until they come and pick me up. Whichever ‘they’ happens to find me first.
What difference does it make?
Don’t quit. Keep playing. Ha-ha.
I’m not really thinking any more, if I ever was: I’m just reacting. But that was always what I did. What I was good at. When I was a medic, I had to deal with what was on my plate. I didn’t go seek stuff out; it came to me. Then I handled it.
But this? How do I handle this?
Another day. How many days has it been? How many days do I have left?
What’s going to happen to me?
I hole up in my room, watch TV, have instant coffee and crackers for breakfast, shrimp chips and beer for lunch.
Around two P.M., I go out. Gray dust washes out the sky, fades it like an old photograph. I walk down the cracked rubber sidewalk, turning down offers of phone cards and lottery tickets and fake Rolexes. Buy myself some flatbread stuffed with pickled vegetables and spiced meat.
Next to the stall where I get my snack is a street market – booths selling cheap clothes and shoes and luggage, toys and appliances.
‘iPod!’ a hawker cries out. ‘You need iPod? I have real thing!’
On the second floor, next to a teahouse, is an Internet bar plastered with LED ads for the latest movies, Chinese, Korean, and American. Swords flash, lips kiss, things blow up.
Up I go.
The Internet bar is dark, smoky, and probably unlicensed. Well, good. I like that. Plus they sell beer. I like that too.
I sit down with my big bottle of Xian Beer, and I log on. I pick up where I left off, with Little Mountain Tiger sitting in front of the Yellow Mountain Monastery’s massive brass-studded gate.
‘Hail, the Great Community,’ I type.
I get about halfway through my bottle of Xian Beer before the gate slowly swings open and an avatar strides out, sword in hand – Water Horse.
‘Hail, Little Mountain Tiger.’
‘Long time no see,’ I type. I get my turtle shield ready, just in case.
‘Sorry for your trouble,’ Water Horse says.
‘That’s the rules of the game, right?’
Water Horse sheaths her sword and approaches me. ‘Maybe not everyone agrees how to play.’
‘Right,’ I type. ‘So you guys have me running around wasting my time because you can’t agree on the rules. Thanks.’
‘It’s not just the four of us you meet in our Guild. We have to be careful. We have to make sure we can trust you.’
‘Fine.’ I fall back in my chair, take a couple slugs of my beer. I’m so pissed off, and I’m so tired.
‘Just tell me what to do,’ I finally say.
‘Can you go to Chengdu?’ Water Horse asks.
Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, practically in the furthest southwest corner of China.
‘Why?’
Water Horse just stands there.
‘Why Chengdu?’
‘To help Upright Boar.’
‘How does me going to Chengdu help him?’ I type furiously. ‘What do you want me to do?’
A pause.
‘Maybe Chengdu too far for you.’
I think about this. I drink some more beer. ‘Maybe you’d like it if I give up.’
‘No,’ Water Horse protests. ‘I think you are Upright Boar friend and you want to help him.’
‘Okay,’ I type. But how do I know what’s true? Water Horse, Golden Snake, Cinderfox, the Monk – they could all be the same person, or they could be lying about what they want and whether they’re on my side or not.
Maybe Water Horse is some fat dude sitting in a comic-book store in Cleveland.
‘I’ll go to Chengdu,’ I finally say.
I’ve already gone this far, haven’t I?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It’s a fifteen-hour train ride overnight from Xi’an to Chengdu. I end up on a hard sleeper, in the middle, which is the best berth, because if you’re on the bottom everybody sits on your bunk, and if you’re on the top your nose is practically touching the ceiling and it’s usually stuffy and also a long way down if you miss a step trying to get to the toilet in the dark.
I don’t make conversation. I climb up on my bunk with a big bottle of Xian’s finest lager and my last Percocet, and between those and the fact that I’m so exhausted that I can barely haul my gimpy leg and tired ass up there, I fall asleep about five minutes after I finish the bottle, pulling the quilt over my head like a shield.
When I wake up, I’m in a different country.
Everything’s green here, unlike the dry, yellow north. There’s soft mist poured over the fields and hills and stands of trees and bamboo.
It’s raining when the train pulls into Chengdu.
The Sichuan earthquake in 2008 killed tens of thousands of people; no one knows how many. They don’t want anyone to know how many children died up in the mountains in collapsing schoolhouses that weren’t built right, constructed out of tofu, p
eople say. But I can’t see any signs of quake damage here. Maybe it’s been covered up, plastered over, like so many inconvenient wounds.
There’s a hotel I’ve heard of in Chengdu, a cheap backpackers’ hangout, and I figure I pretty much look like a cheap backpacker, considering that all I’m carrying is an overstuffed day pack and a plastic shopping bag from the Number 2 Pingyao Department Store. I catch a cab outside the train station, take note of the giant statue of Mao with his arm outstretched like he’s directing traffic – or maybe he’s just trying to greet the patrons of the shopping mall and the Starbucks down the street.
I get to the backpackers’ joint, wedged between a hotpot restaurant and a camping-supply store on a narrow lane.
‘No baggage?’ asks the … clerk? Manager? You can’t call somebody a ‘concierge’ when he’s sitting behind a scarred desk in a beige room containing a bulletin board leprous with notices about treks to Tibet and Jiuzhaigou and dubious job offers to teach English, a pressboard bookcase overflowing with paperbacks, and a pile of backpacks heaped in one corner.
‘My bag got stolen,’ I explain. ‘In Xi’an.’
The hotel guy, a compact man of indeterminate age wearing a Madras shirt and khaki shorts, makes a sympathetic noise. ‘Lots of thieves in Xi’an,’ he says. ‘I show you your room.’
Another cheap hotel room, beds with pressboard mattresses, pebbled brown vinyl on the walls. Backpackers wander the halls. My age, most of them. All of them fit, tanned, and relaxed. Laughing. ‘Yangshuo was awesome!’ ‘Have you checked out Hei He?’ Couples holding hands.
Shiny, happy people. Isn’t that the name of some old song?
But where there are backpackers, there must be Internet connections.
Sure enough, out in the courtyard, beneath a gray-tiled roof that I’m told dates from the Ming Dynasty, is a teahouse. In the back of the teahouse, a row of computers.
I order a pot of Dragon Well and retreat to the darkest corner. Plug in Chuckie’s little anonymizer and log on to the Game.
And here’s Little Mountain Tiger, sitting on a rock in front of the big red doors of the Yellow Mountain Monastery. Sulking, if I can attribute a mood to an avatar.
‘Hail the Great Community,’ I type. ‘Yo, Little Mountain Tiger here. I’m in Chengdu.’
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