The God Game
Page 19
Google
Scott Parker Austin Friends Crypt
The latest mention was a tenth-anniversary story in the Austin Chronicle. It mentioned Parker being released from prison. But after that there was nothing. Charlie couldn’t trace him.
A quote from Mr. Burklander was in the follow-up article: “We think we know what’s going on in teenagers’ hearts, but they’re a black box. We only see what they let us see.”
Other groups like Charlie’s had to out there. Like the FOTC. He was missing something. A back door. A way to search.
On a hunch, he went back to the original game page. The circus tent and the taunting lizard-Trump. He scanned down until he saw what was on the edge of his memory.
COme inside and play with G.O.D.
Ding!
That was it. The something he’d remembered.
It was an acronym. What did it stand for?
Good Old Dad? Game of Drones? Get off Drugs?
He googled G.O.D.
Two billion results came back. Merriam-Webster: “the supreme or ultimate reality.” Wikipedia: “omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence.” Endless pictures of white men in the sky.
Then he remembered: Google ignores periods. G.O.D. and God were the same in its eyes. He smacked the keyboard.
Still, there had to be a way.
He searched for How do you search with periods in Google?, which made him laugh out loud, partly because he was googling Google, which felt like staring down an infinite reflection of mirror on mirror. And partly because he was losing it a little.
But the search worked.
He found a forum of people who enjoyed talking about how to search in Google. Mooredc54 said, With some exceptions, punctuation is ignored (that is, you can’t search for @#$%∧&*()=+[] and other special characters).
But: The underscore symbol _ is not ignored.
Okay. That was worth a try. He liked the sound of it. Underscore sounded like underworld. Maybe it was meant to be.
He searched for G_O_D_.
Now there only 1,560 results.
Way better than two billion.
And weirder. As if he had peeled a layer off the internet and gone deeper. It wasn’t the Dark Web. That required a special browser and was filled with things he wanted no part of. But this branch of the larger Web was a strange avenue, a narrow alley. It felt like an older Web, before it was colonized by global corporations.
The links were cryptic. Bizarre, even.
Wittgenstein’s language game as practical theology—YouTube
10000 Meters.G_o_D.+2-GAYnesis_Prollcheckers—Commodore 64 …
Steam Community:: *G_O_D*
G_O_D—Summary—DOTABUFF—Dota 2 Stats
How the US worships G_O_D Gold, Oil and Drugs—We are Anonymous
[Обсуждение]—Anime, обсуждение, критика, манга, фан-арт …
He began sorting through the results. They were closer in style, but nothing relevant in substance. It was too much to go through. It would take hours. Days. Even at a measly 1,560.
He tried combinations: G_O_D_ Game secret. G_O_D_ Game hack. G_O_D_ Game underground. G_O_D_ Game dead.
The last one was a hit.
He stumbled onto a forum talking about hacking Reddit, but as he read deeper, he started seeing another conversation within the thread.
game play G.O.D. fourset suitable hax don’t play heeb’s dead
Someone quoted that deeper down and said:
KHS
No. didn’t lissen too many blaxx. bullshit KHS
Original poster:
STFU
Charlie scrolled down further.
How out?
No out
sure KYS
TT dead
ATTW 3
Charlie couldn’t help but wonder: KHS? “Killed himself.” TT dead? Another player. ATTW—and then there were 3? How out? Kill yourself.
It all had an eerily familiar ring. Like the Friends of the Crypt. Like his friends.
He scrolled further and found the conversation down to two people.
One of them kept demanding a private chat.
121
no
121
No
1TG
TN8
1TG
TN8
And then it stopped. The hacking thread went on, but the subconversation weaving through it stopped after “One to Go. Tonight. One to Go. Tonight.”
That was three years ago. In some unknown place.
The conversation went dead after that.
Charlie rubbed his eyes. He went back to Google and typed:
Google
How do I quit G_O_D_?
He hit Enter.
No answer.
But the word above the text box had changed.
Instead of Google, it said:
Golog
How do I quit G_O_D_?
He hit Enter again.
Gog
How do I quit G_O_D_?
Enter.
Magog
How do I quit G_O_D_?
Enter.
Moloch
How do I quit G_O_D_?
Enter.
Baphomet
How do I quit G_O_D_?
Enter.
Eat Shit!
How do I quit G_O_D_?
Enter.
Eat Shit!
How do I quit G_O_D_?
Enter.
Eat Shit! Eat Shit! You Can’t Quit!
How do I quit G_O_D_?
40 THE GAME OF LIFE
Charlie sped home to retrieve the bracelet. He would unwind this. His original sin was the bracelet. He didn’t know if the Game thought it was wrong or right to buy that bracelet with stolen funds, but he knew in his heart that it was wrong to him. He would fix it. Then the Vindicators could all quit, together.
His dad was there, right when he walked in the door. Fuck, he should’ve climbed the trellis. “I’m glad you’re home, Charlie. It’s been a rough day. My loan got denied. Can you believe that? They said I was a credit risk. It’s ridiculous.”
“Dad,” Charlie snapped. “Just for once, can you be the adult?”
His dad stopped midstream and just stared at him.
“I have things in my life,” Charlie said. “It’s not just about you.”
He pushed past him and went up the stairs. He pulled the bracelet from under his mattress and packed it back into the silver box. His phone buzzed the moment he started his car.
He knew what it would be before he looked.
A warning. Because the Game was always a step ahead. It said:
Don’t
He ignored it. So now he knew, the Game wanted him to have the bracelet, or at least not to return it. Fuck the Game. He stepped on the gas and headed for the mall.
The phone buzzed again along the way. He glanced at it.
Turn around now.
He ignored it again.
As he exited the highway, the phone warned:
Last chance.
Charlie didn’t care. He took West Opal to Carrington, then turned left.
The phone said:
100 Blaxx
Then, as he pulled onto Dayton, it said:
500 Blaxx
He turned off McEwen into the mall’s parking lot.
It was dark, most of the postwork shoppers having gone home.
Charlie imagined the awful lady with the arched eyebrows and silk scarf smiling at him victoriously. She’d won round one (Are you sure you’re in the right place, honey? those eyebrows had asked). He’d won round two, no question (Nine hundred dollars, huh? Do you accept … cash?). And she hadn’t even been there to see it. But now round three was going to hurt. He knew it, and it made a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. But that was fine. He’d rather do right and rise or fall on his own merits. The days of cutting corners were over. He was who he was, and he wasn’t going to fake it or cheat anymore. If the lady
with the shitty eyebrows thought that made him lower than scum, so be it. Charlie would take the cash refund, give it anonymously to the Salvation Army, and start fresh.
His phone said:
2000 Blaxx.
He hustled through the dark parking lot toward the yellow square of light from the east doors, their sliding glass panels, making his way toward the next pool of lamplight in the dim lot when a figure came from nowhere and brought a hard object down across Charlie’s thigh. The shape moved quickly. Was he a man or a boy or what? The way he appeared out of the shadows with a wool mask over his face, it was too dark to see his eyes. Charlie hit the ground, his leg buckling under him from the blow. He fell before the pain even registered, but when it did, it was a spiderweb of hot wires radiating out from the site of the impact. He broke the fall with his shoulder and felt an explosion of pain there, too.
Charlie rolled onto his back and saw the stars breaking from behind the clouds, moon wide and low in the sky. The figure was on top of Charlie, dropping an object that sounded like a bat and using his free hands to riffle through Charlie’s jacket pockets. Finding nothing, he moved to his jeans, and Charlie gathered his strength and fought back. The form put a knee into Charlie’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him, then hit him once hard on the side of the head. The stars above blurred into twins and refocused. The form went through Charlie’s jeans, finding his wallet and throwing it aside without even looking for cash. The he found the box with the bracelet in Charlie’s front pocket, as Charlie tried to raise his head and felt everything blur again. He let his head set down gently and closed his eyes, trying to gather his strength. The pavement was cold against his head.
He felt the box slide out of his pocket, and suddenly the weight was off him as the figure stood, one leg on either side of Charlie, checking his find.
What gave Charlie strength was the horrible thought that popped into his head. The object that hit his leg, the hollow wooden sound of it dropping to the concrete. A bat. It had to be a bat. Would Alex do this? Who was under that mask? Would Alex take the same bat he used to smash Mr. B.’s car and smash his own friend with it? Had the Game taken Alex that far? Charlie had to know if it was him.
The figure was satisfied and began running off, bat in hand, toward the bend in the parking lot that wrapped around to the far side of the mall, out of sight.
Charlie pulled himself up, propelled by adrenaline, and took off after him.
The man jumped a bed of shrubs and disappeared around the corner. Charlie jumped it, too, and made the turn, toward an inlet of the lot against the high concrete wall of the mall, no doors or windows here, just a dark triangle of cars and spaces. Charlie pushed harder and began to close on him. Charlie’s leg was aching but he stuffed the pain away, and when his gut told him to, he made a final leap and took the person down. They hit the ground together and Charlie rolled over on top of him. He wrestled furiously to get free, thrashing against Charlie’s weight and tearing at his hands and face. Charlie gritted his teeth, pressed his knee deeper into the guy’s chest, then ripped the ski mask upward.
The face under the mask wasn’t Alex’s. It wasn’t anyone Charlie knew. He couldn’t put an exact age on him, but he was somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five, looking like a clerk at Best Buy or an adult-toy shop. He had pale skin and patches of wispy beard on his cheeks.
“Who are you?” Charlie shouted at him.
The guy stared back, looking frightened and angry.
“Are you playing the Game?” Charlie yelled.
“What the fuck, man?” the guy shouted back, and tried to fight free.
Then something burst into Charlie’s stomach, knocking him sidelong. The guy had found his bat and shoved it hard into Charlie’s gut.
Charlie tasted grit in his mouth and rolled onto his hands, lifting himself up, but he was kicked in the side and rolled over again, moaning. The breath went out of him and the sodium lamps over the parking lot phased in and out as if a dimmer switch were on reality. The guy stood over him, waiting to see if Charlie was down for good.
He was. He moaned and let himself lie flat. The figure seemed satisfied he could leave without being followed.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, before running away.
41 UNSEARCHABLE
Charlie woke up on the pavement to the sound of his phone buzzing.
It had hit the ground and slid across the gravel. The screen was cracked.
What now? he thought. Another video? Another taunt?
Instead, it was a question:
Do you love your dad? Y/N?
Charlie felt anger surge through him. He typed back:
Is that a threat?
No! Good News!
A pause, then:
Y/N?
The answer was obvious. Of course he loved his dad. Even Alex loved his father.
And yet …
Where in that stupid Y/N was the betrayal—falling apart when Mom was sick? Disappearing into his work? Leaving the groceries to Charlie? The pills and damp cloths for her forehead? And even now, his newest midlife crisis? The crazy restaurant and blowing Charlie’s college fund?
He loved his dad, but it was no Y/N question. It was muddy as fuck.
Except now, to the Game, it was binary.
Well then, the answer was Y. It had to be. Charlie reached to push the button and felt a zap of pain in his shoulder from the fall. He winced, then pushed through.
He put his finger over the Y and felt it hover there, ever so briefly, as if the phone were a lie detector about to call bullshit on him.
42 PETER’S HOUSE
Peter’s house was a glass-and-concrete monstrosity, the kind of thing someone newly rich would pour money into, in the part of town where professional athletes and internet zillionaires built tributes to themselves. It was nowhere near the staid mansions of Mary Clark and Tim Fletcher. But to Charlie, all of it was wealth beyond belief, and he couldn’t see the difference.
Peter was on his couch, legs up on the twisting chrome coffee table, totally visible through the front windows as big as a wall. His laptop was on his lap. His dad was nowhere to be seen. He could’ve been in trial in Atlanta or Akron, or cavorting with any number of young blond women in the Bahamas or Cozumel. Charlie could count on one hand the number of times over the last few years he’d seen Peter’s father. Peter didn’t seem to care one way or another. It was just his life.
He let Charlie in. “You look worse than the last time I saw you.”
“We need to talk. You’re coming tonight, right?”
“I am. You haven’t quit yet, have you?”
“Not yet.” Charlie didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t yet found a way out—that once again he needed Peter’s help to figure it out.
“Good. Because I have a present for you. I think you’re gonna like it.” Peter turned the laptop around.
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Trust me, you do. Two treats. One for me, one for you.”
Charlie couldn’t help himself and glanced at Peter’s screen.
“That’s not the Game.”
“No, that’s the comments section of an article.”
Peter’s cursor was flashing under the name BarryH.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trolling. I needed it a break. Watch.”
Peter started typing: Its PATHETIC that the MSM is trying to force OBOZO’s Agenda down our throats! What happened to LIBERTY!!!!! Ban mUZLIMS and BURN THE MOSQUES BEFORE ITS TOO LATE.
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah. The snowflakes will be calling me a fascist Neanderthal for hours.” Seeing Charlie’s frown, Peter said, “Don’t worry, I fuck with the red-meaters, too. I’m a chaotic neutral, after all.” He scrolled down. “That’s me, too, under ILoveSoros.”
Charlie read, “‘Go fuck yourself, it’s the only way you could get more inbred.’ Jesus. Why? You’re just making people hate each other.”
�
��Saint Charlie, come to earth to make us whole.”
Peter closed the window, and the God Game was open behind it. “I needed to blow off steam.” Peter pulled up Caitlyn’s texts with Mary. “Look what she said about me.”
Peter?
Yes
Whatver
Thought you liked him
He’s fun on the side but K is popular
“We’re just trash to them,” Peter said.
“Mary didn’t say that,” Charlie said too quickly.
“That you know about. You think I’m above it all, but I’m not. I can’t get Caitlyn out of my head. It’s not love, but it’s … I’m out of my mind for her. And now this. But the Game, Charlie, it can help.…”
“You’re gonna send her poetry.”
“I did. She didn’t write back.”
“So what then?”
Peter caught Charlie’s eyes and held them. “So we turn it up a notch.”
Peter turned the screen toward Charlie. Peter was in first-person view, in his own house within the Game. They went up the staircase that was across the room from them, but instead of Peter’s dad’s horrid modern art at the top of the stairs, there was a painting that Charlie recognized from the internet. It was The Eye of God, a portrait of the mythical Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto—who might or might not be real—by Xania Dorfman.
With a double tap, the painting swung open on a hinge, revealing a peephole in the wall behind it.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?”
Peter dialed in a date, time, and location on a set of radio knobs beneath the peephole, then tapped them. The peephole zoomed to fill their screen, with an image beyond.
When the screen came into focus, they were looking at Kurt Ellers, from the view of the little round video camera over his laptop monitor. That ever-present little eye built right into the frame.
Charlie heard breathing, slow at first.
Then faster.
Kurt was locked in an embrace with someone, but it wasn’t Caitlyn. The other man was entwined with Kurt, their hands moving over each other’s bare skin hungrily, urgently.
“Turn this off.” Charlie was stunned from what he was seeing, trying to reconcile it with the homophobic beast who’d been calling people fags as he shoved them into lockers since middle school. Charlie’s fascination was overcome only slightly by his profound unease at seeing this private moment. He remembered someone saying once that you should tape over the camera on your laptop, but who ever remembered to do it?