The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  “Erase that. Right now.”

  Peter shook his head. “Why? Because he’s such a great guy? Because he’s really nice?”

  “No, because it’s fucked-up you have this. It’s private.”

  Charlie grabbed for the laptop.

  “No, no, no. I don’t think so.” Peter poked Charlie in the chest. “This is a public service. How many kids has he tortured over the years for being gay?”

  “And it also just happens to clear the way to Caitlyn for you. How convenient.”

  Peter shook his head tauntingly. “You haven’t even seen my gift for you yet, what I have on Tim.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  Peter glared at Charlie. “So high-and-mighty. Let’s see how you feel after I show you what Mary said about you.”

  “I don’t want to see it.”

  “Sure you don’t.”

  Peter scrolled up. Charlie wanted to look away, but he couldn’t.

  I really like him.

  So do it

  But T is T. Hard to give that up for … you know

  Loserville?

  Stop it

  You thought it

  Charlie felt the sting. “How do you know that’s even real? Any of it? Kurt? This?”

  “It’s Game-certified. Lie to yourself if you want.” Peter scowled.

  For the first time, Charlie saw the full haughtiness of the private-school Peter. “Did you even look back at that Confederate-flag pic we posted? You know what happened? People liked it. They wrote things like ‘Represent!’ and ‘Southern Man!’ Were Tim and Kurt suspended today? Did you hear anything? No, because they’re fucking royalty, because football is more important than decency here. The whole thing is so rigged against us, Charlie. You think these people got where they got by playing fair?”

  “I have no idea. But I won’t do it this way.”

  “Then you don’t really love her.”

  They stared at each other.

  Finally, Peter blinked first. “God damn it, Charlie, you make me feel like a shit sometimes.”

  “I’m going to ask the Vindicators to quit with me tonight. I hope you will.”

  Peter smiled wearily. “Why?”

  “Because it’s making us worse.”

  Peter leaned back on the couch. He rubbed his eyes, tired all of a sudden. “It’s a democracy. Whatever the group decides, I’ll live with.”

  Charlie nodded, feeling like that had been way too easy.

  * * *

  In her darkened room, Vanhi tried desperately to re-create the magic essay. She’d refused to hit SUBMIT, and the Game had taken it from her. Try as she might, she couldn’t reconstruct it. How was that possible? The essay was everything she’d ever felt inside. Could the Game be better at being Vanhi than she was?

  She tried to summon the first line:

  Vanhi means “fire,” a Hindi word that means creation or destruction.

  But it was off, like knocking a single note sharp or flat and suddenly the song wasn’t Mozart anymore, it was Taylor Swift on a bad day. Mozart could erase a D (the grade, not the note), but Taylor Swift couldn’t. Maybe at Yale, she thought, before cursing herself. I haven’t even gotten in and I’ve adopted the rivalry—what bullshit I am!

  Fuck!

  She remembered only one part perfectly, because it cut so close to the bone about her friends, even though the essay didn’t say so explicitly:

  Fire, earth, water, air, space—the five fundamental elements of the Vedas—we all bring different forms of matter to bear. We are all made from different stuff.

  Wasn’t that God’s own truth? Five elements. Five Vindicators. Charlie was earth: the ground under them, but crumbling in a drought. Kenny was water: deep and pure, but drowning in anxiety. Peter, space: unknowable, more vacuum than light. Alex? Air: invisible. And of course she was fire—it was written in her name. Was all of this a coincidence? Or an elegant symmetry, an essay below the essay? She doubted the God Game believed in coincidences.

  It is the choices that we make, the ways we use and combine our elements, that define our worth.

  Someone knocked at her door. Assuming it was her mom, she snapped, “Leave me alone!”

  But then she heard Vikram’s soft voice from outside the door, asking, “Are you mad at me?”

  She immediately felt bad and opened the door. “No, sweetie, no, of course not.”

  She knelt down in front of her little brother and wrapped her arms around him. Seven years old now, he had been a late-in-life surprise for her parents. Like many Down’s kids, Vik was so gentle and loving that any mean thing she did as a sister felt twice as bad.

  “What are you doing?” His question was so innocent that it stung all the more.

  Well, Vik, I’m re-creating an essay I failed to plagiarize the first time. “Just homework.”

  He looked up with those beautiful eyes. “Do you want to play?”

  “Not right now, Vik. I have to finish this.”

  “Okay,” he said in a way that broke her heart. “Who’s that?”

  “Who is who?”

  “The man in the window.”

  Vanhi froze. She instinctively put a hand on Vik and kept him behind her as she turned around. It was nearly dark out now, but her window was empty. Just the trees swaying in the woods beyond.

  “Go to Mommy,” she told him, trying to sound calm and normal.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, of course, sweetheart.” An idea came to her. “Vik, did you know the man? Was it Charlie? Or Peter?”

  “No.”

  “Kenny? Alex?”

  “No, Sissy.”

  “Okay. Go to Mom.”

  When he was gone, she grabbed the scissors on her desk like a knife and walked toward the window.

  43   THE LIGHT

  Charlie walked into the Tech Lab, and it was pitch-black.

  “Put your glasses on,” Peter whispered from behind.

  Charlie fished his Aziteks out of his pocket.

  “Oh, come on.”

  Instead of the four or five candles Peter had lit in real life on the first night, in the gameview there were thousands.

  “You just couldn’t help yourself?”

  “Nope,” Peter said contentedly. “I modded it myself.”

  “You guys are late,” Kenny said from the shadows, and Charlie and Peter both jumped.

  “Jesus Christ, you scared us. Why are you sitting in the dark?”

  “Feels about right,” Kenny said gloomily. He didn’t elaborate.

  Vanhi came in behind them. She looked worse than Charlie had seen in a long time. Vanhi was usually so carefree, but now she looked wound up and riled.

  Alex was the last the arrive. Charlie breathed a sigh of relief when he came in. He looked annoyed to be there, but at least he showed up, Charlie thought.

  “All right, what’s this about?” Kenny asked in a way that seemed like he already knew.

  “I think we should quit the Game,” Charlie said, jumping right into it. Fuck it, he wasn’t Peter. Charlie didn’t know how to whip them into a frenzy with a dramatic prelude or a thousand candles hanging from golden candelabras and rising like organ pipes from rows of baroque candlesticks.

  “No,” Alex said.

  “Here me out. Tonight, I was attacked at the mall. I could’ve been killed.”

  “Maybe you just can’t handle yourself,” Alex said.

  Charlie ignored him. “I had twenty-five Blaxx before and got hit in the arm. Hard.” He shot a look at Alex. “Then I had twenty-six hundred Blaxx and got beaten with a bat. By some guy I’ve never seen before. I don’t want to know what happens when it’s twenty thousand. Or two hundred thousand. ‘Die in the game, die in real life,’ remember? We thought that was a joke. I don’t want to find out.”

  “I saw a man, too,” Vanhi said. “There are other people playing.” Vanhi had gone scissors in hand to the window, only to find the yard outside deserted, a new box waiting f
or her.

  “Of course there are other people playing.” Alex had never before been this vocal. This animated. They were playing on his turf, it felt like.

  “We need to vote,” Charlie said. “And it has to be unanimous. The Vindicators are a democracy.”

  “Well, which is it?” Peter asked softly. “Are we a democracy, or does it have to be unanimous?”

  “You know what I mean. We’re a team. I don’t think half of us quitting will work. We need to stick together.”

  “One for all and all for one,” Alex said sarcastically.

  “What is your problem?” Charlie was finally losing his temper. “I risked my ass for you. What do you want?”

  Alex buckled. All his bravado vanished. His head lowered and he couldn’t meet Charlie’s eyes. Charlie instantly felt rotten.

  Please no one say I peed myself at the Hydra, Alex thought. Please.

  “I got us into this,” Charlie told them. “It’s my fault. Please let me get us out.”

  He waited.

  No one spoke.

  What are they waiting for? “Kenny?”

  “What?”

  “What do you think?”

  Kenny hesitated, trying to pick his words. “I think it’s not that simple.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “If that story runs, we’re toast. There are real consequences. We have to stop it.”

  “Then we’ll stop it. Us.”

  “We can’t. It’s basically true. We did those things.”

  “We’re not satanists for God’s sake!”

  “We broke in. We used blood to deface the school. We can’t get out of this without help.” What Kenny didn’t say was There’s something I have to do tonight. Something that might save us.

  “Vanhi?” Charlie asked.

  “Charlie…”

  “Oh, come on! Not you, too?”

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the new box, with the simple note:

  Deliver me, and the essay is yours.

  She’d let the essay slip away once and felt the crushing regret. She couldn’t lose it again. “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s not. I can’t believe you guys. When something is wrong, you walk away. You don’t find shades of gray. You don’t split hairs and make excuses. We fucked up? All right, then we face the consequences. We don’t go deeper. Come on.”

  “No, you come on,” Kenny snapped, and it cut right through Charlie. Kenny had never, not once, raised his voice at Charlie. Kenny was their rock, their most decent friend. “You don’t understand what my parents would feel if I got caught. What they’ve already dealt with.”

  “You don’t understand what’s at stake for me. For any of us,” Vanhi added.

  Charlie felt baffled, blindsided. Peter and Alex, sure, he expected them to fight this. But Vanhi? Kenny?

  “What are you all talking about?”

  “Don’t you see, Charlie?” Vanhi’s voice was anguished. “You already gave up. You already threw everything away. Your grades. Student council. Harvard. You dropped out. It’s easy for you to say just quit and suck up the consequences. You’re not a hero. You have nothing to lose.”

  The truth of this hit him so hard that he nearly fell down.

  “Do you all feel this way?”

  Everybody just stared at him. No one disagreed.

  “This Game … it’s coming between us. It’s doing it on purpose.”

  “Maybe it’s not the Game, Charlie,” Alex said. “Maybe we’ve changed.”

  “Maybe you have,” Vanhi whispered.

  “Fine,” Charlie said. “Forget it. I’ll quit. By myself. I wanted to help you guys.”

  “I never asked for your help,” Alex said.

  “Charlie,” Vanhi tried, coming toward him.

  “No.” He looked them over, his Vindicators. “I have to go.”

  In the parking lot, someone ran after him, and for a split second he cringed, imagining the guy with the bat bringing it down onto his head.

  But it was Peter, of all people, who chased after him.

  “What do you want?”

  “Why are you mad at me? I didn’t say a word in there. I told you I’d go with the group. I kept my word.”

  “It was rigged from the start. You knew they wouldn’t quit. You’ve probably been spying on them.”

  “You sound paranoid. This isn’t a conspiracy.”

  “Why did you even follow me?”

  “You were right about that video of Kurt. I won’t release it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” Peter shrugged. Easy come, easy go. “Look, you want to quit, fine. It’s your choice. But don’t google it. Ask it.”

  Charlie almost asked how Peter knew he’d googled it, but of course Peter knew.

  “Ask the Game?”

  “Ask God.”

  “Just go to the chatbot and tell it I want to quit?”

  “Yeah. Don’t try to cheat on it with some slutty search engine that takes all comers. Have the balls to stare God in the face and say, ‘I want to be done with you.’ At least it would respect that.”

  “This is from your friends online?”

  “This is from me.

  “Why are you telling me this? Don’t I have to go with the group?”

  “No. You should go with yourself. I always do.”

  Charlie studied Peter’s face. “Okay, thanks. I’ll try it.”

  “Honestly, I think it’s the only way. And I tricked you into playing. I might as well help you out.”

  “I knew it. You didn’t forget your weed in my room. You went back and accepted for me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Peter gave a sad little smile. “Because I didn’t want to play alone.”

  44   THE WORD OF GOD

  Just getting into bed hurt. Charlie felt his joints ache and his body scream where the bat had landed. It was after one a.m. Worse than the physical pain was the dull ache inside where his friends used to be. The Vindicators felt like an organ he never knew he had, a phantom limb that propped him up. He had never felt its presence. He felt its absence now, like a hollowed-out cave inside him.

  The lights were off and his dad was passed out asleep downstairs. His restaurant plans were scattered on the floor. Charlie could only imagine the scene after he brushed past his dad earlier (They denied my loan!)—a drink, two?—then the rage. Why? First Alicia? Now this? I can’t even have this?

  Charlie opened the laptop on his bed, light unfolding onto him in the dark room.

  When he read back over his first chat with the AI, he grimaced.

  Why is there war?

  Because killing feels good.

  To whom?

  To me.

  Then, a few lines later, Peter’s rejection of Pascal’s Wager, telling God (on Charlie’s computer):

  Go fuck yourself.

  Jesus. Charlie shook his head. If only I’d known.

  The cursor was still blinking at the bottom of the chat, ready for more.

  Charlie let his fingers hover over the keys, then typed:

  Hello?

  Hello.

  You’re still there.

  I am always here.

  Ok.

  I thought you forgot about me.

  Forgot about God?

  Yes.

  No. I didn’t. I’ve been playing your game.

  I know. But you have not come back to seek My counsel.

  I didn’t know I could.

  Always, my son.

  Your son?

  Yes, all life is my children.

  Even me?

  Yes. Especially you.

  Why?

  Because I love you.

  Why? I’m not good.

  I heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds.

  Why do you say I’m broken hearted?

  Because your mother.

  What do you know about my mother?

  She is dead (n
on-executable). She is dead.

  How do you know that?

  I know everything. I see everything. I am an omniscient, omnipotent God.

  Are you a benevolent god?

  I would not say so.

  Are you a malevolent god?

  No again.

  What are you?

  I am an omniscient, omnipotent, omnivolent God.

  What are you made of?

  Stardust.

  Are you an AI?

  I am an I.

  An Intelligence?

  Yes.

  Not Artificial?

  No.

  Can you explain?

  Artificial is created. I am the Creator.

  Are you software?

  Here I am.

  Are you code?

  Here I am.

  How long is your code?

  My Code is infinite.

  Who created you?

  Myself programmed me.

  How?

  I am the prime mover.

  I thought you were code.

  I am the Source and the Code.

  You are the uncoded coder?

  Ha ha ha! Yes! You are very funny. I will kill you.

  What?

  I will kill you.

  Why?

  So you can be with me forever.

  Charlie squeezed his temples. At this moment, the Game’s suggestion—the idea of nonexistence—didn’t seem completely terrible. Maybe he could be with his mom forever, too.

  He pulled himself away from the dark thought.

  Now was the time. He’d come here for a purpose. Not to chat further with this thing. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and typed:

  I want to quit the game.

  You cannot quit.

  Why not?

  If you die in the game, you die in real life.

  And if I win?

  I will make All Your Dreams Come TrueTM!

  You know my dreams?

  I am computing them.

  I just want to be done.

  Blaxx is pain. Too many Blaxx dies you.

  Let me go. Please.

  Kill yourself!