by Robert Maxxe
The sound filled her ears, and entranced her. It was musical, yet unlike the music of any orchestra she had ever heard. A blend of sighs and bells and the wind rushing through mountain chasms and voices in chorus and the piercing note of a baroque trumpet, along with some harsher undertones like the hum of engines, the roar of furnaces, and the pounding of surf. All of these and more . . . yet somehow combined to make one marvelous and unique noise, incapable of precise analysis or description. Obviously it was electronically produced. Carrie groped in her mind for the word applied to such computer-generated music.
Synthesized, that was it. The sound came out of the same amazing circuitry that produced the machine's optical effects.
Now Carrie saw the word spelled out on the screen. Caught up in the strange music, she wasn't sure when it had come on. Had it been there from the start? With so many other details and sensations to take in, perhaps she had missed it. But now it captured her attention completely. Letters of brilliant white set against a field of deep blue-black, made to look by some video effect as if they were shimmering, throwing off sparks—like stars in the sky constellating a single word:
SPACESCAPE
Carrie stared at the letters. At moments the meaning of the word seemed to elude her, advancing into consciousness, then receding before she could grasp it. The arrangement of the sparkling letters, one half the word echoing the other, tricked the mind.
SPACESCAPE
Escape from space?
Or the "landscape" of the infinite?
The word burned up before her eyes. The letters on the screen appeared to disintegrate like exploding stars, flaming bits of white whirling away into the dark background. The stereo system provided a whooshing noise in accompaniment, like the sound of some cosmic storm.
And new clusters of letters flew toward her out of the screen—growing larger, larger, forming into words as they hurtled into the foreground. Almost as fast as she could read them, they were blasted apart by optical tricks, separate letters zooming off at the sides of the curved screen, making them appear to soar on past Carrie where she stood:
TRY ME
FLY ME
WHY ME
PLAY AND SEE
STAY AND SEE
NEW ADVENTURES
NEW DIMENSIONS
NEW WORLDS
NEW DREAMS
SPACESCAPE
The word stayed on the screen again. The colors were different now. Letters of speckled blue set in white, as though their shapes had been cut through a plain white sheet, revealing the starry sky beyond.
The screen changed again in a flash. Balls of flickering red and yellow loomed toward Carrie, like animated meteors. As they filled the screen, the "fire" died and each became a word.
STAY
PLAY
TRY
FLY
SPACESCAPE
She stared at the word, half-smiling. She couldn't help marveling at the ingenuity of the machine.
At the same time it irritated her—this inanimate thing pitching this hard sell at her. Being asked by the machine itself to use it—play with it!—produced an eerie sense of entering into a relationship. It was as if the machine presumed to think it could deal directly with her, manipulate her. Proposition her.
She had to remind herself that what happened on the screen was conceived and programmed in by people; the machine was only another form of television, its words merely advertising messages.
SPACESCAPE
The word started blinking on and off. On and off.
Then it stayed off.
The screen remained dark.
Carrie's gaze remained fixed on the empty screen. Was that all?
She was curiously relieved when a tiny speck of light appeared at the center, and began to grow. The word again, rocketing toward her out of the void. It filled the screen for an instant and broke apart into a million separate specks of light that faded like the embers of fireworks dying in the night sky.
The stereophonic speakers emitted a low echoing boom, again with some special electronic resonance, making it sound like thunder . . . and purring cats.
A new light show began. Rainbow-colored beams shot across the screen at odd angles followed by dazzling dots that swirled into the shapes of letters.
S T A Y
P L A Y
S P A
—Carrie wrenched her eyes away from the screen and pushed herself back, retreating. The damn thing was hypnotic. You could almost say . . . seductive. How long had she been here already? She ought to be going. . . .
But what was the game? All she knew about it so far was the name. Lingering at the machine, she looked at the control board below the screen.
At the center was a lever with a knob on top—a "joystick" she'd heard it called in television commercials for the home video games. There were also eight buttons—four at the left of the joystick, four on the right—arranged in pairs. Each pair was applied to a different function, identified by a word stenciled above it; and, within that function, each button served a separate purpose, labeled below. Carrie contemplated the control board.
She looked then for the instructions, a printed panel on the front of the machine. There was none. She looked on the side. None there either. A wave of frustration swept through her. What did the words mean? How did they relate to the game? What was the game, SPACESCAPE?
And suddenly her frustration was supplanted by amusement. Of course, she was being suckered in: this was how the machine enticed you into spending your first quarter. It made you curious—the programmers made you curious—so you'd pay to see it perform. Carrie smiled as she thought of Patrick recounting his experience with the machine. An Einstein would have a hard time. . . . But not the kids. They'd have no trouble. They could figure it out, teach one another —the tribe of the computer.
The electronic sound had continued pouring from the stereo speakers. Now the synthesized music grew louder, and some subtle undercurrent of tempo abruptly quickened. Deep rumbling bass tones swelled within the mélange of noises. The extremely low frequencies made the floor beneath Carrie's feet vibrate, creating a sensation similar to what might be felt by passengers in a spaceship as it blasted off.
"Time flies, fly time."
A voice cut suddenly through the other sounds. Its buzzing metallic timbre marked it as electronically produced.
Time flies? Now, Carrie mused, the machine wasn't merely advertising itself, it was coaxing her, rebuking her for hesitating to begin the game.
It spoke again: "Stay with me. Play with me."
Her hand went into her totebag and started rummaging for her change purse. Not to obey the damn machine, but to subdue it. Put in the money, she told herself, and she would be in control; she could press the buttons, make the machine do what she wanted. . . .
Christ! How weak and gullible can you be? With a loud grunt of self-condemnation, she pulled her hand out of her bag. Why spend her money? Because a machine had talked her into it? Because she had some crying need to fight an imaginary space battle? Not her! She turned away and walked toward the door. Glancing around at the empty arcade, she felt a curious little moment of triumph, a pride in the strength of her will. She hadn't yielded to the computer. Maybe no one else would, for that matter. There were no crowds here. Maybe the game designers had made the thing a little too complicated.
She pushed open the door to leave—and practically collided with two boys who were just entering, both carrying baseball mitts folded under their arms. She recognized one of the boys as Jeff Marwick, Bev's son, who was a year older than Nick.
"Wow!" he exclaimed as soon as he saw the layout.
"Neat-o!" said his companion.
Evidently it was their first visit. The two boys ran to the machines. For a few moments they stood touching the buttons, watching the screen. Then, almost simultaneously, they plunged their hands into their pockets.
Carrie paused in the open doorway, tempted to go back and see how they played
the game.
But outside the light was fading. Nick and Em would be waiting for dinner.
Another day, she thought, when she had half an hour to kill, she might come back to the arcade. Or she might not. Did it matter if she ever understood the game, any more than if she ever learned the names of all the little toy figures in Nick's Star Wars Darth Vader Carrying Case? Intricate as they were, they were just playthings, made for kids.
8
The colors of the landscape changed from shades of green to brown and gray, the mornings and evenings moved closer together, and winds began to howl that made every loose joint in the house creak and moan. At last Carrie was able to reap that special harvest she had been long anticipating—the harvest of time. Two or three afternoons a week Patrick ran the shop alone while she indulged some postponed desire. She picked up books at the library and read them at home by a fire. She enrolled in a dance-exercise group run by a local woman. Or she took a train to the city and had lunch with Pam Underwood, a psychiatrist's wife who had been her best friend before she'd moved to Millport.
She had more time for the children, too. During her busy months, she always felt guilty about neglecting them so much. Now she spent whole afternoons with Emily baking batches of tollhouse cookies, attending an exhibition put on by her gymnastics class, or fitting and sewing a red devil's costume for a Halloween party.
She was also available for Nick, but lately he didn't demand much of her time. With his thirteenth birthday not far off, he seemed to have chosen this moment to quietly declare his independence. While Carrie went on driving Emily to school, Nick would leave earlier each morning on his bike. He had made the junior varsity soccer team and stayed after school every day for practice. Often as not, instead of coming home after dinner, he went to Dougie Bannerman's. Nick kept his guitar there in a room over the garage that Doug's father had given over to the boys. The Mindbenders would rehearse their music, have something to eat, do their homework together, and rehearse some more.
Carrie knew that Nick went occasionally to the arcade. He had freely admitted to a couple of visits a week on the way home from soccer practice, or in the evening with Dougie. Since opening, the game parlor had become a popular gathering place. Natural enough, Carrie thought. Kids always needed some territory to stake out as their own, and with the arcade situated across from Osgood's, it was virtually an annex of the soda fountain long ago established as a favorite hangout.
What mattered to Carrie was only that Nick didn't overdo it. So far she saw no cause for concern. Nick was pursuing all his other interests. Moreover, he displayed an awakening sense of responsibility. He kept his room neat, spent less time slumped in front of the television, and whenever the subject of homework came up, he boasted proudly that he was ahead in all his assignments.
On the last Friday in October, as Carrie opened the store, her eye caught the flyer that Peg had taped in the window a couple of weeks ago.
VIDEO GAMES: IS IT TIME TO PUSH THE PANIC BUTTON?
The meeting in the high school auditorium was scheduled for tonight.
Carrie doubted more than a handful of people would show up. Over the past weeks the arcade had become part of the town scene. The new establishment was clean, and the kids didn't loiter noisily on the sidewalk in front. George Patterson had abandoned his campaign for an eviction. "It hasn't damaged the tone of the street," he'd remarked one day to Carrie.
Yet when she spotted the flyer in the window, Carrie wondered if she wasn't being irresponsible to ignore it. Nick wasn't in danger of becoming a game junkie, but what about other kids in town? She remembered how seductive the game had seemed.
Later in the morning she saw Bev Marwick in the store. It was Bev who, along with Jill Sutter, had quoted articles to Carrie about the game epidemic and the threat to good academic habits. Carrie went over to her.
"Are you going to the high school tonight, Bev?"
"Oh, I don't think so, Carrie. I've got my in-laws here from Chicago."
"I thought you were concerned about this issue," Carrie said.
"Well, I was in the beginning," Bev said sheepishly. "But so far, you know, I haven't seen the arcade posing any problem. Jeff doesn't even go there."
"He doesn't?" Carrie recalled seeing Bev's son there the day she had stopped in.
"Oh, he did go a couple of times after it opened. But Jeff says there's only one kind of game in there and he isn't—oh, let's see, he used some word the kids have to explain it—well, I forget, but the gist is that he just hasn't gotten into this particular game."
It came down to a matter of taste, Carrie supposed. Some kids preferred football to soccer. It must be the same with computer games.
The exchange with Bev was enough to confirm Carrie's feeling that she could afford to miss the meeting at the high school. There was no need to "push the panic button."
She was making dinner that evening when, from the kitchen window, she noticed a figure pacing up and down near the entrance to the driveway. It was getting dark earlier, and Carrie couldn't distinguish any features through the gloom. She thought it might be Dougie waiting for Nick, shyly reluctant to ring the bell. She finished peeling the potatoes, then went to the back door.
"Hi!" she called out. "Can I help you?"
The figure stopped pacing, then came slowly across the lawn. It was a girl who stepped into the path of light from the open door.
"Isn't Nick here?" she said. "We were supposed to meet. . . ."
At the sight of the girl, Carrie was momentarily struck dumb.
She was astonishingly beautiful, with long, copper-red hair that curved softly around her shoulders, a smooth unblemished complexion still tinged by the remnant of a summer tan, and eyes that showed, even in the muted light from the doorway, as a bright aquamarine. The face, thought Carrie, invited comparison with models and movie stars—but not the most famous or popular. This girl's looks were not so banal; they could set a standard of their own. Her delicate loveliness was all the more awesome because the girl managed to seem not at all self-conscious about it. She struck no poses, gave no indication of being vain about her appearance. Waiting impatiently for Carrie's answer, she bit her lip awkwardly and squinted into the light, twisting her exquisite face into an exaggerated wince.
"Nick's not here," Carrie said at last. He had told her that morning that he would be home for supper, but he had evidently been delayed by an extended soccer practice.
"Oh," the girl said, and a sharp note of disappointment came through.
Carrie thought of telling the girl that Nick would probably be home any minute, and asking her to wait inside. But she said nothing. She felt too confused, too muddled to be simply polite. And not just because this was the first girl who had ever come around asking for Nick, or because she was so uncommonly beautiful.
The girl was no younger than fourteen, Carrie estimated, probably older. The ragged windbreaker she wore over her jeans was hanging open, unzipped, revealing some of the lines and curves of her body. Slim and small-waisted with nicely rounded breasts, it was a fine supplement to the face, certainly developed beyond the figure of any average twelve- or thirteen-year-old.
And yet there was something about the way she had asked for Nick, the pitch of disappointment at his absence, that roused Carrie's instinct, reminded her of feelings she'd known herself when she was fifteen or sixteen. Incredibly, Carrie sensed that this lovely girl—this prom queen—was gripped by some wishful attachment to her son. An infatuation, a crush.
Was it conceivable that Nick could have inspired such yearnings? He wasn't quite thirteen—and the girl was poised on the brink of womanhood.
The mere possibility of a romance between the girl and her son, even the most innocent kind of puppy love, rocked her to the core—forced her to contemplate an even more phenomenal idea. Perhaps she didn't really know Nick, had completely lost touch with who, and what, he was. The demands of being a breadwinner, the hopeless battle to be both mother and father to t
he boy might have blocked her perception of a boy's inevitable evolution into a man.
But, whatever was happening to Nick, Carrie decided that it would be wrong to encourage the girl's interest. She felt cowardly about it, prudish, but she couldn't bring herself to invite the girl inside to wait for Nick.
It was the girl who broke the silence. "Well," she said, "I guess I'll be going." She surrendered a smile of heartbreaking sweetness, and started backing away into the shadows.
Carrie fought an impulse to change her mind. "Any message?" she asked.
"You can say Dana was here. But I'll probably see him later, anyway. Bye." She loped off across the lawn.
Carrie stood on the step until the girl passed under the street lamp, running gracefully, and disappeared into the darkness beyond.
Nick slammed through the back door a few minutes later, still wearing his soccer shorts. The coach had kept the team late to learn some new plays, he explained as he looted the refrigerator for a carton of milk.
Carrie paused to observe him as he gulped the milk straight from the cardboard spout. He looked bigger suddenly, stronger. Studying his legs and thighs, she thought they were no longer so fleshy, had grown firmer, more muscular. Yes, he was going to be tall and broad-shouldered like Mike.
Funny how your kids grew up before your eyes and you didn't see, caught the changes only at moments, as if in snapshots. Nick was changing all the time. Girls, romance, sex, of course it was all going to come into his life. Any day.
She ought to find a time to sit down quietly with Nick, Carrie told herself, probe his development, acquaint herself with his current state of mind. She had a parental responsibility to know how deeply he was involved with this girl, Dana. Though it might be hard to pose the necessary questions, she thought, without somehow diminishing Nick, giving him a swift kick in the ego. Why would a girl like that want to spend her time with you? That was the basic question underlying all others. For Carrie it rested reasonably on the difference in ages. But Nick wouldn't see it that way.