by Robert Maxxe
"Ruled out? Loses at it, you mean."
"No. That's not the way they talk about it. When someone is torped that seems to be final. He or she doesn't go to the arcade anymore."
"So it's their word for saying a kid has lost interest. . . ."
"No!" Carrie snapped impatiently. "It means a kid has been rejected by the game."
"Carrie, the game can't reject being used by anyone—"
"But that's not how the kids talk about it. That's my point, don't you see? You and I can say there are other things at work if a kid stops going, gives up being a spacie—the social interplay, his own boredom. But the way the kids are wrapped up in this thing, they redefine the way the world works in terms of the game. They make decisions, then say this . . . this gadget did it. Doesn't anything about that strike you as unhealthy?"
It was Lon's turn to look exasperated. "Now you sound like one of those tiny minds from that meeting the other night."
"I was at the meeting. I was worried then."
"But when we talked afterward—"
"You made sense, sure," Carrie acknowledged, and her tone softened. "I hate sounding like a fanatic about this. But then I sit down with Nick and hear him using this spacie-talk, hear him sounding as if everything revolves around this game—"
"C'mon, Carrie, that's the way kids are. They throw themselves whole hog into some new craze, cruelly toss out anyone who doesn't make the grade. They can be egotistical, too—invent a whole universe as if it was made only for them. Hell, let's face it, their visions have shaped the real world we're living now in as much as our own, maybe more. Rock music, blue jeans, pop art, sci-fi, it all comes from them, and all the language that goes with it. Their imagination is way ahead of ours. They dream and scheme and leave us far behind, earthbound while they fly. And you want me to say I think that's unhealthy?"
Carrie had no reply. Everything that seemed strange to her he could make sound normal, even enviable. Was it because he was more truly attuned to children, the way their minds worked? Or had she failed to connect with him because she hadn't mentioned a key element in her concern about Nick's involvement with the arcade—one that had nothing to do with the game: the girl, Dana? But how could she explain that?
When she said nothing, Lon reached over and touched her hand lightly. She couldn't respond to that, either. She felt isolated suddenly, her troubles no one's but her own.
Sensing the rebuff, Lon withdrew his hand, then examined her for a moment.
"All right, c'mon," he commanded, and opened his door. "Let's go in."
She made a tentative gesture to stop him. The night was slipping away—she couldn't stay out much past one without liberating the baby-sitter—and only minutes ago she had looked forward to being with him, sharing an adventure of the heart, not some fake exploit on a video screen. If she could just drop this now, trust him, maybe they could find their way back into their private enchantment for an hour.
But he wouldn't let her. "Carrie . . . this is a little roadblock between us. Why it should be, I don't know. Because of my work, I suppose. But the doubts that are coming from you . . . I can hear that I'm in there somewhere, I can feel it. When I tell you it's cuckoo to suspect these games of—of what?—some kind of mind control, then you look at me like I'm part of a plot. And you know, it actually hurts. Because I think you're very special, and I want you in my life. So let's get past the crazy doubts. Let's go in the arcade and play the game, and I'll explain how it works. I'll take you on my turf tonight, the way you took me on yours the night we met. And we'll go on from there."
She hesitated, and then managed a smile. A perceptive and sympathetic man, he was everything she wanted, too. But he was right: the doubts were there. They had to get this obstacle out of the way.
He came around to open the door for her. Grabbing her purse—change for the machine—she got out. In the chilly mist, she shivered and paused to pull her coat around her. Then, glancing across the street, she saw the lights in Osgood's begin to go out, the last few couples being cleared from the soda fountain. Lon waited while she watched nostalgically as a girl with a tall boy emerged, high-schoolers, and paused for a kiss, foggy silhouettes against the pharmacy's display window. Then the last of its lights was turned off.
Now there was only the blue glow from the arcade signs. Carrie and Lon stood bathed in the blue light, enveloped in its aura as though trapped in the beam of some enormous futuristic ray-gun.
Then Lon put out his hand, and she saw something in his fingers being offered to her.
"What is it?" Carrie asked.
"A quarter," he said, and nodded toward the entrance of the arcade. "My treat."
16
It couldn't be long before closing time. Of the nine games only one was in use, the second from the door on the right side. Six spacies were clustered tightly around it, five watching the one at the controls. Carrie checked at once to see if one was Nick. He had orders to be in by ten-thirty on weekend nights, but there was no longer any guarantee he was obeying. Nick wasn't among these spacies, though; and the one girl Carrie saw in the group was not Dana.
Lon paused near the entrance and surveyed the quiet, carpeted space, then threw an amazed glance at Carrie, as if to say, I didn't expect anything like this.
"You haven't been here before?" she asked, surprised.
He shook his head.
"So you came to defend it to the meeting without even taking a look?"
"I didn't think I had to," he replied, his voice pressed down to a whisper by the hush in the arcade. "When you've seen one . . ."
"You were wrong, though," she gloated. "You haven't seen 'em all."
Lon moved to the fringe of the group around the machine and watched the screen. Carrie hung back a bit, as much to observe his reactions as anything else.
On the screen were images unlike any she had seen on her previous visits. No topographical grids in 3-D perspective, no whirling mazelike vortex. Now there were thin ribbons of light in multi-colored hues, hundreds of them arrayed across the wide curved screen, all seeming to unwind endlessly at incredible speed, so that the viewer had the illusion of racing over a plain of dazzling brilliance. Amid the streaks of light, Carrie could discern at moments one of a singular silvery shade. But the pulsing light effects on the screen moved so rapidly, always changing, that she had difficulty in constantly distinguishing the silver beam from the others around it. She guessed, however, that this must be related to the game's objective; the player had to steer a course along this one distinctive beam.
The skill required was clearly enormous. The highway of light didn't always remain straight and flat. The effects on the screen changed so that the colored streaks of light seemed to curve, twist, go uphill and down with dizzying roller-coaster speed, and then loop in on themselves before straightening out again for a while. Watching the screen, Carrie felt that this was how it might be to ride a bobsled not over snow, but a surface of pure energy.
Lon was impressed, too. At first he gawked and shook his head in admiration. Then he leaned over and murmured to Carrie, "Incredible graphics. Never seen anything like it."
As on her last visit, none of the kids took any notice of her or Lon. They had eyes only for the game.
The speed of light movements on the screen seemed to quicken. Even watching from the back, Carrie could sense a heightened tension among the spacies. They crowded in closer around the boy at the controls as he wiggled the joystick with one hand and, with the other, pressed frantically at some of the buttons.
The conformation of the light-ribbons entered a new phase, going through convolutions now, twirling, while at the same time their colors slowly changed. The effect was breathtakingly beautiful. The screen appeared to be the window in the cockpit of a rocket that was actually drilling into the essence of light, corkscrewing through the very spectrum. Faster and faster . . .
A low, urgent voice rose from the group of spacies, someone kibitzing the player. "Watch it, Andy, li
ghtshift coming. . . ."
A second later the colors on the screen altered radically, taking on a startling intensity, something like the result of exposing ordinary hues to ultraviolet light.
The boy at the console hunched lower over the controls, his whole body alive with furious movement.
And then the ribbons were gone, the colors faded out; the screen became a soothing tapestry of very pale shades of gray and rose and white, intermingling to give the illusion of floating through clouds at dawn. At the center, a tiny pinprick of intense white shone like a distant sun, burning light-years beyond the hazy atmosphere.
"Jesus, Andy," hissed a boy in the quintet of spectators, "you did it! You moved up!" He pounded one hand excitedly on the shoulder of the player, who leaned back then from the console and looked around, grinning broadly. The stances of the other spacies changed, too, relaxed. The release of tension was underlined by a soft communal sigh.
Carrie glanced at Lon, wondering if all this had registered on him as slightly out of the ordinary. He chose almost the same moment to turn to her with an expression that mingled wonderment and rising curiosity.
Now the screen went totally blank. An empty whiteness washed over the spacies as their attention snapped back to the game, illuminating expressions of rapt expectancy. Carrie was also able to identify the lone girl in the group as Judy Arbuckle, whose mother Lily operated the boutique on Elm Street. It was Lily, Carrie recalled, who'd been one of the merchants supporting eviction of the arcade with a donation to George Patterson's legal fund. Did she know her daughter was frequenting the place—had Judy lied to her mother as Nick had? Or had Lily's attitude softened?
A voice came suddenly from the machine, speaking in that buzzy twang produced by the synthesizer:
"Greetings, Zal Commander. You have completed your ninth flight at level five."
Carrie turned to the screen. It was occupied by the same computer-animation of a space creature she had seen before.
"Congratulations, Commander Green," it went on.
The boy at the controls put in a quick "thank you" as if to the cartoon, which continued:
"On your next flight you will be eligible to advance one level. We wish you luck on your journey. This terminal and port will now shut down. Good night, earthlings." Then it added one more word that sounded to Carrie like "oriz," as it lifted an animated clawlike limb in a jerky wave.
"Oriz," the spacies murmured in loose sequence.
The cartoon creature disappeared. A flaming meteor zoomed forward and exploded into the name of the game.
SPACESCAPE
A moment later the screen went dark and, from somewhere inside the machine, came a small whining noise reminiscent of a plane's jet turbines shutting down.
At last the spacies moved away from the machine. As they trooped toward the door, the ceiling lights got brighter.
Only now Judy Arbuckle noticed Carrie. Instantly her face lit with a genial smile.
"Oh hi, Mrs. Foster! Did you see that flight? Wasn't it terrific?" No trace of shyness at being discovered in the arcade.
"Hi, Judy," Carrie answered. "Yes, I saw. It was very impressive."
The girl's companions were all going out into the street. She edged away to stay with them. "Well . . . see ya," she said. Then, realizing that Carrie and Lon were staying behind, she paused. "Hey, you shouldn't stay around here too long, y'know. It's gonna lock up."
"We're not staying long, Judy," Carrie said.
The girl waved and ran out to catch her friends.
Lon and Carrie were alone. He turned quickly to one of the machines at the rear, its screen still ablaze with light effects forming the word "SPACESCAPE." But as he went toward it, the screen went dark, too; then, one by one, all the others. From each came the faint dying whine.
"Seems we don't get our turn tonight," he said.
"Maybe it doesn't want us to play."
"It?" Lon echoed. "Carrie, we just walked in too near closing."
"You heard what Judy said: it's gonna lock up. Maybe you see some caretaker around here that I don't. But, from all appearances, this place is really going to close itself."
Lon shrugged. "Nothing strange about that. Just rig the door with a mechanism linked to one of the same computers that runs a game. You can program the computer to perform any function you want at a pre-set time—turn off the machines, turn out the lights, lock the doors."
"But why?"
"Why not? The town's virtually crime-free. It saves enough in salaries to cover insurance ten times over."
"Well, if it's closing," Carrie said edgily, "we'd better get out fast."
"Not yet. I still have a professional yen to give this equipment a once-over. It's pretty sensational stuff." He went toward one of the machines.
"Lon—we could get stuck in here any second!"
"Not a chance," he scoffed. "You think the owners want someone locked inside all night? There'll be some kind of warning first. The lights'll flash or something. . . ."
His certainty didn't reassure Carrie. She strode to the door and pushed against it. It swung open.
When she turned back, Lon was in front of one of the game consoles examining it, doodling with the buttons. He read the labels on them, murmuring aloud. "Lightshift . . . timerule . . ." He glanced up at her. "It's something different, all right."
She came up beside him. "So I'm not just a nervous Nellie. This is odd."
"I didn't say that. Sure, it does amazing tricks. But nothing beyond the realm of computer capability. This game just happens to have more sophisticated hardware. I'd guess both the RAM and ROM in these things are at least twice the capacity of most arcade games."
"Hey, we don't all speak computerese. Ram and Rom sound like nothing but a vaudeville juggling act to me."
"Sorry—that's like name-dropping, isn't it? But I use the jargon so much I forget it isn't the universal language. ROM stands for read-only memory. That's the part of the computer's information storage that's programmed in by the manufacturer, fixed there, unchangeable. Most of the functions of the game would be put into the ROM —the way it performs particular sequences, the different graphic displays it shows on the screen, the sound effects it produces to coordinate with certain visuals. Then there's the RAM, or random-access memory. That's the part that can be user-programmed. In the case of a game, it's what registers the player's moves and reacts accordingly—in effect, acts as the opponent." He gestured to the console. "With Spacescape, the RAM receives the input from these buttons and, depending on which are used and when, it decides if the player is winning or losing and, based on the limits of the game fed into the system from the ROM, throws back a new strategy, a new challenge." He paused and judged Carrie's expression, still a bit puzzled. "Maybe the simplest way to break it down is in terms of chess. The ROM would be programmed with all the constant aspects, the basic rules, the patterns in which the pieces move—the bishop diagonally, the knight in an L, and so on—the size of the board, and the different conformations that constitute a checkmate. The RAM would be the part that constantly reworks strategy according to the moves input by the user, the computer's opponent. Got it now?"
Carrie nodded slowly. Lon's attention returned to the machine. He leaned into the screen and peered as if trying to see through its blankness to an inner world.
"And where," Carrie asked then, "does the game get the ability to talk with a player?"
"From a little gizmo called a voice synthesizer," Lon said absently, as he turned to examine one of the stereo "wings."
"I know how it speaks," Carrie shot back. "I meant something else: how does it talk with the person at the controls—actually recognize him and call him by name?"
Lon gave her a flat look. She wasn't sure if he understood her, or had been too absorbed in his inspection.
"You heard it earlier, didn't you?" she went on. "After that boy, Andy, finished his turn, a little spaceman came on the screen and congratulated him, identified him as Comman
der Green."
"Must be a random designation," Lon said quickly. "The guy who played the turn before could be Commander Red, the one who comes after will be Commander Yellow. A cute little gimmick; makes the kids feel that they're being talked to." He started to drift around the chassis of the machine, studying the construction.
Carrie was getting annoyed by Lon's glib explanations. Was he trying to gloss over the strangeness of the place?
"And how will you explain it," she said coolly, "if I find a family named Green in the Millport phone book—with a son named Andy?"
Lon thought for only a second. "Well, we weren't here when his turn started. But assume the player put his name somehow into the RAM; then it could be spit back at him at the end. It takes extra hardware, but the means exist."
The theory clicked with Carrie. In fact, she remembered being in the arcade when a player began a turn at the game. The McDowell girl, wasn't it? Via that animated space creature, the computer had indeed asked her name. Obviously that registered the sound which it later reproduced. And yet . . . She recalled now there had been something unusual about that exchange, too.
"Can the computer also converse with a player?" she said to Lon.
He had started circling around to the rear of the machine. He paused at the corner to face her.
"Not if you mean hold a real back-and-forth discussion, give variable responses based on particular random statements."
"But I was here before when it did something like that. I heard it."
Lon cocked his head and took a step forward, studying her like a connoisseur trying to determine if a work of art was real or fake.
"You couldn't have," he said. "This caliber of computer couldn't possibly handle that."
He sounded so definite, Carrie's confidence in her perception was shaken. "It seemed that way, at least," she said. "A girl was about to play, and that cartoon gremlin came on and asked her name. So she announced herself—but giving only her first name, and in the familiar form: Terry. And the gremlin wouldn't accept the answer. It asked for her name again, her full name. How could it do that, Lon? Maybe it can take a sound, put it in the memory, and speak it back later. But how can the computer know that a name it hears from a new player isn't in the form it wants?"