The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  “Alex, no!”

  Kenny pounded on the door.

  Alex’s finger pressed into the black button, shaking.

  The Game said quickly in Charlie’s ear:

  Lie to him.

  Tell him his mother is here too.

  The button moved inward, the metal couplings closing the millimeter gap between them, a spark forming. There was no time to think, but the Game’s advice rang true—Alex’s mom had always been kind to Alex.

  “Your mom is here,” Charlie yelled.

  Alex stopped. He looked up at the door. “What did you say?”

  “Your mom is here. She came with your dad.”

  “No.”

  “We saw her, in the lobby, with him.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Charlie closed his eyes. “I’m not. She’s here. Don’t hurt her.”

  “Don’t do this. Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not.” Charlie shook his head. “I swear it. On my mom’s grave. She’s here, Alex. She came for you. Don’t hurt her.”

  Alex’s eyes were wide. They welled with tears. A long, anguished moan came from deep within him. The box trembled in his hand.

  “I never would.”

  He lowered himself to the ground.

  * * *

  The sprinklers went off, sending the students out into the streets—a gift of the Game, saving them from the gas they didn’t even know was all around them. Charlie and Kenny banged on the boiler room door, begging for Alex to come out, and finally the door clicked open. But when they looked in, Alex was gone. The Game had led him out a back exit deep in the guts of the mechanical rooms, into a service hallway and out the delivery bay.

  Charlie and Kenny pressed through the crowds outside. Charlie saw a text from his dad:

  We need to talk. You didn’t have to ruin the restaurant.

  Charlie showed Kenny.

  “It could be a trap.”

  “I know. But he could be in trouble. Can you look for Alex?”

  Kenny nodded. “And Vanhi, too. She’s at a hospital. I’ll let her parents know.” He put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. You?”

  Kenny smiled. “I meant what I said. We’re brothers.”

  Charlie nodded.

  As Kenny left, Charlie turned to find Mary behind him.

  Before he could speak, she grabbed him by both sides of the face and kissed him, in front of everyone. He was startled, and when she pulled back, she said, “Thank you.”

  Charlie was baffled. “Tim?” he said carefully.

  “What about him?”

  “Nothing.… Why are you thanking me?”

  “You did this?” She grinned, nodding at the soaked students all around and giving his wet shirt a playful tug.

  “The sprinklers?”

  She smiled conspiratorially, as if they were in on the same joke. “I know what we said, and I meant it. But still … this…” She flashed her phone at him. “It’s just … no one’s ever been this nice to me. Not really.”

  Charlie looked at the text:

  Sorry about the posters. Nothing a little rain can’t wash away.

  “I know what running means for you,” she said. “And you did this anyway.”

  Charlie couldn’t find words.

  Not for the first time, he didn’t know if the Game was rewarding him or mocking him. The algorithm was incalculable.

  The water had washed away some of the concealer she’d used to cover up the red mark on her face. She didn’t realize it yet, but the bruise was now exposed in two broad streaks.

  He put a hand gently on her cheek, and she didn’t pull away.

  “Even if I won,” he told her, “how would I know it was real?”

  She looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

  Then she stood on her toes and kissed him again, in broad daylight.

  She didn’t even stop when someone in the crowd held up a phone and snapped a picture.

  95   THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

  Peter thought about the Game.

  It was in charge. But it was open to suggestions. It delighted in them.

  If you understood it.

  And Peter understood the Game. He always had, before he even knew it existed.

  Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest.

  Charlie was always crawling back toward the light. Didn’t he understand, the world wasn’t getting better? It felt that way because the people in power wanted it to feel that way, to keep the little people running like hamsters on a wheel. No one would ever give a shit about Peter or Charlie. They would always be shut out, like Peter’s dad, scrapping and hustling because the white-shoe firms wouldn’t let him in. Always have a game to play, his dad liked to say.

  The world would continue to be rigged against them, Peter knew, even if Charlie was too stupid to accept it. If they played by the rules, they would be crushed. The Game was made for people like them. But Charlie had made his choice, casting a dim light on Peter.

  Still, Charlie had offered Peter a second chance, a chance to be better than he was. So he had to do the same for Caitlyn.

  She hadn’t hooked up with Joss yet. That was the red line. It wasn’t too late.

  She could save herself. He wrote her:

  Invite me to your party

  go away Peter

  Take me. Not joss

  R U reading my texts?

  its not too late

  fuck off Peter its over

  Well, there you had it. Second chance, done. You deserve what’s coming, he told her in his mind. I tried.

  But there was still the matter of Charlie. They were the same.

  They were brothers. Twins.

  No mom, bad dad, jilted by the old world and the new.

  Except … except Charlie lost his mom. Peter’s left.

  Except Charlie was getting the girl. Peter was not.

  Except Charlie’s dad was healing. Peter’s was immune to salvation.

  Why why why?

  Yes, he had changed Mary’s texts before showing them to Charlie.

  Yes, he had framed the Dirty Laundry mod, with the Game’s permission of course.

  Yes, he’d let the Vindicators code their stupid virus, even helped them, knowing it was a farce. Kenny hadn’t had a vision—he’d been knocked out with his Aziteks on, the Game whispering in his ear the whole time he was unconscious, planting his dreams.

  Yes, Peter had thought of the swastika challenge.

  The Game had loved that idea, for the conflict. But Peter had another agenda. He wanted that swastika on the wall. He wanted Tim and Kurt to feel emboldened. He wanted Kenny and Vanhi to know, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He wanted Charlie to see the world clearly so he’d know Peter had been right all along.

  Peter could survive in a world of chaos. He could thrive in it.

  But Charlie had made his choice. He wanted to be noble with Vanhi and Kenny, leaving Peter alone in the dirt, no dad, no Caitlyn, no friend, nothing. He rejected Peter, shamed him with his hopeless optimism. Vanhi was right. There’s something wrong with you.

  We’re done.

  “You made your choice,” Peter said aloud.

  He hit Enter on the new text:

  We need to talk. You didn’t have to ruin the restaurant.

  “I sentence you to death,” Peter said, telling himself he felt powerful.

  96   WORLD’S FAIR

  Charlie crept into the restaurant.

  He knew it was a trap. But if his dad was there, he had to help.

  The restaurant was dark and locked, a CLOSED sign in the window.

  His father’s car was alone in the parking lot.

  Charlie went around to the back and tried to peer in. It was pitch-black inside. He tried the door, and it was open.

  The freezers were off. So were the washers. He listened for anything. The silence was total. He came around the co
rner and saw his father seated in a chair, bolt upright like a king, his hands and legs bound, his mouth gagged.

  “Dad!” Charlie yelled, forgetting himself, running up to his father.

  All his anger was gone as adrenaline took over. He forgot about every horrible thing his father had done. All he could feel now was love and fear. He tore at the bindings, trying to free his father.

  Charlie felt the chill of premonition, the lizard brain warning him danger was near.

  Something creaked in the main room.

  Charlie worked faster on the ropes but it was hopeless. He wouldn’t get one free before whoever was in the darkness arrived.

  He heard the sound of glass crunching under a foot.

  Charlie’s dad begged him with his eyes, Leave. But Charlie went to the knife block instead, where he drew a long knife. The skin on his father’s wrists had looked so thin, so much older and frailer than Charlie had ever noticed.

  He turned toward the dark room. He put himself between his father and the unknown. His dad was trying to tell him something, but it was too late to loosen the gag.

  He could wait for death to come to them.

  Or he could step into the darkness and face it head-on.

  97   BURNING MAN

  “Where are you?” Charlie called, feeling his way through the dark, knife raised. He realized he didn’t have his Aziteks on. He slipped them on, but they showed him nothing.

  “Here I am,” a voice answered.

  Something was very wrong with that voice. Charlie couldn’t say why exactly—it was calm and pleasant—but the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  He reached into the darkness and felt a wooden table in front of him. He was at the far row of booths, all a step up from floor level, along the rough brick wall below the neon signs that were now dark and silent. He eased down the walkway between the booths and tables, stepping backward, away from the voice. The ground creaked under his foot, and he cursed silently.

  The voice was thin and nasally. He was a mouth breather. You could hear it in the dark. The low exhale, and the high sucking in, patient and reptilian.

  “Here I am,” he said again, sounding like an inquisitor, one accustomed to whispering in intimate spaces, threatening damnation, all the while a serpent unspooling between his legs, under his robes.

  Charlie gripped the knife until his hand hurt. He had pulled it glistening from the wood block like a young Arthur testing his worth. He moved toward the voice, knife raised, and the blast was so unexpected that he didn’t feel the bullet tear through his arm. It spun him around.

  “Here I am.” The voice was feral now.

  Charlie realized he was on the ground. He had slid down the back wall. Things were slick and sticky behind him. He was leaking. Nothing good would come from this. His wound was burning with pain.

  “Just a taste,” the man said quietly, and it wasn’t clear whether he meant Charlie’s blood or his body. Charlie wondered where the knife had gone. It had spun out of his hand and landed who knew where. He reached in the dark along the floor, trying to feel it. He wondered if he could move enough to get back to the kitchen and shield his dad. He tried his legs, and they seemed to work. Could they hold weight? He used his good arm, his left arm, to reach behind him in the dark and find the table above. He gripped it and dug his heels in, and, yes, despite the slippery blood he found purchase and got his legs under him, so that he could almost stand.

  There was another blast—a bullet hit the wall behind him, and a mist of brick sprayed around his face, stinging his cheek and eyes. He wondered, Does he want to taste me alive or dead? Which was worse? Charlie almost laughed, but he didn’t because he realized that insanity lay at the end of that laughter. The knife, he told himself, focus on the knife. It’s silver. It glimmers and shines. Fear was crippling, and he needed that image, that shining light. Chop this man. Chop his evil into bits and pieces. Save yourself. Save your dad.

  He found the tip of the knife with his fingers.

  Another shot rang out and he lost the knife and ran toward the kitchen with his head down, but he couldn’t get there so he burst through the dark toward the bar. The wound on his arm screamed as he moved.

  Two more shots went off. Charlie prayed someone was calling the police, but it wouldn’t even matter if the Game just spoofed the calls. He ran behind the bar and felt for the liquor bottles closest to him.

  When Charlie heard the floor creak across the bar, he stood and swung the bottle at the man. It connected with the man’s head and smashed open, the smell of vodka burning in the air.

  The man fired once and fell back, pained but not truly hurt. He gathered himself and crept toward the bar again.

  When the man drew close, Charlie threw another bottle with all his might, and it missed and smashed somewhere behind the man, who was laughing.

  How cute, the man thought, how cute!

  He came forward again, still laughing, and Charlie cracked a bottle against the wall and splashed it over the man, the alcohol stinging his cuts.

  The man was really laughing now; the boy’s fear was sweet and desperate. Soon the boy would run out of things to throw. The man fired shots into the mirror over the bar, and glass shards rained down. But now he was tired of playing, it was time to kill the kid. He saw a light come on from the behind the bar, small and shielded.

  “Call whoever you want,” the man said, “we’ll be done before they answer.”

  As he rounded the corner, Charlie finished typing the last commands of the Breath of God into his phone, which he locked onto the nearest cell, and the man’s phone turned on in his pocket and began its infinite looping, feeding on itself and multiplying exponentially within the tiny lithium battery, just as it had for Kurt.

  The man raised his gun and aimed at Charlie, a silhouette in the dark at the bar’s gate. Then his phone ignited, and the small explosion lit the streaks of alcohol all over his body, and fire crisscrossed him like highways, zigzagging up and down while he stared perplexed until the routes converged and swallowed him up. The light was sudden and magnificent.

  Charlie was surprised to see the man’s face was shockingly normal, almost babyish. There was just a glance before the fire swirled over it from several directions and wound together, devouring him.

  Charlie pulled himself up as the flaming body fell fast toward him, the bar going up in flames around them. Charlie’s right arm hung uselessly. He stumbled over the bar and ran toward his father as the fire traveled beside him, gaining along the walls. He made it to the kitchen and dragged his father and the chair in tow with his one good arm, his strength momentarily superhuman with fear and love, and he got them out the door and into the cold night air, choking and gasping as smoke billowed out after them. He untied one bind with his good hand and his teeth, and together they got the rest off and backed against the garbage bins away from the building.

  By that time, the flames had burst through the windows and were lapping out all four sides of the restaurant, wrapping the top of the building in tendrils until the whole thing was swallowed. Charlie’s—formerly World’s Fair—was done.

  * * *

  Miles away, deep in the country, Caitlyn Lacey’s lake house was also burning down. Peter’s revenge had only taken minutes to create. The rest—the metastasis—worked on its own.

  He invited everyone to her small, intimate house party. Well, not everyone. A specially curated list of monsters: junkies, biker gangs, skinhead hooligans. You could never have done this in person without getting killed. But on the Web he could speak directly to them all from the safety of his home, in an instant. He posted:

  Rich Bitch secret party! Slutz & whorez! Secret lakehouse no cops no rulez!! Come / cum. Get crunked!

  High school was a tangled hierarchy, he thought. He’d tried to climb it, but the hierarchy won. Time to tear the fucker down.

  It had started slowly at first, a car here or there that didn’t fit in with the Audis and the Beamers parked
on the grass by the lake. You needed a map just to find the place. Peter gave them a map. The lake house was on acres. Anything could happen out here. Some motorcycles arrived, then more. A couple fights broke out, between the overconfident football crowd and the actual thugs. Then the real mayhem began—tatted party crashers flipping tables over and dumping desks. A chair through the bay window. Cigarette lighters on the curtains. A horde peeing on her dad’s busted-open file cabinet and pouring alcohol over the mix.

  Peter watched through their cell phones. Caitlyn was crying, her new boyfriend nowhere to be found. Had Peter done enough? Probably. But still, he couldn’t help it. Just one last touch, for panache.

  Your poetry sucks.

  he texted her anonymously. He signed off—the Game had summoned him elsewhere, to the roof of A. B. Turner High, and he had to obey.

  * * *

  Kurt Ellers had come to the party, just as he promised himself he would. But it hadn’t been so easy. He’d lost his nerve on the ride over, even turned around a couple times. So when he got there, people were already streaming out from the flaming house. Broken TVs and smashed chairs littered the lawn.

  He moved through it all, against the throng of people escaping. He didn’t see Caitlyn anywhere. He went into the burning house. He found her inside, pinned down by a toppled bookcase, unconscious from the smoke. A beam from the house crashed down in front of him, lighting his arm on fire. He batted it out and freed Caitlyn, slinging her over his shoulder. He took a blanket from the couch and draped it over her, shielding her against the flames. Another beam fell, singeing him savagely. He would be scarred for life, deep knotted tissue on his arm and face. He didn’t stop moving until they were far away from the danger. He laid her gently in his passenger seat and drove her far away from there.

  Though he didn’t have the words to say it, what he felt was similar to what Vanhi had told Charlie, their friendship aching:

  Just because I don’t love you doesn’t mean I don’t love you.