by Gard Skinner
First, how had Jevo even found us at that strip mall? And silently closed that gate? That was always eating at me. But there just wasn’t an answer.
Still, the second thing—how could I have missed it?
Sure, when we’d been floating in the clone soup for years, we didn’t look all that good. No hair, no muscles. We were just growth-accelerator pieces of BlackStar property.
Then we’d come out. Jimmy and Charlotte, to be precise, had pulled us out.
And we’d become human. We’d begun using our physical bodies.
It should have occurred to me before. I should have figured this out. Maybe this wasn’t a shooter game. Maybe it was a puzzle all along. The whole damn thing.
Because . . . I was Max Kode’s clone, right? So, if I was his exact duplicate, living in that guest house . . . why hadn’t Jimmy and Charlotte recognized their own father?
My eye stopped pulsing. The pain went away.
I solved it, didn’t I?
But if I did, that meant . . .
In a burst I dropped my drink and ran full speed toward the front door. Crashing through, onto the porch, I scanned left, right, up, down, everywhere.
Scrambling, crawling, poking with my hands, I scoured the yard. The hedge. The driveway. The grass and gutter and street.
Where was it? Where was the door?
“Dakota!” I screamed. “Dakota! Come back! Come back . . . You were right . . . You solved it . . . You’re the one who won . . .”
Silence.
The wind whistled slightly. Leaves rustled. Bugs crawled. Trees creaked.
But I got no answer.
Other than from Max, who came up behind me and said, “Phoenix, you’re missing the party. Mi needs you for something. Time to come back inside.”
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to Andrew Stuart, Julia Richardson, and Jon Cassir, who moved so quickly and purposefully to bring this book to you. Overdue thanks to all those editors at all those papers and magazines who let me do things in ways they hadn’t been done before.
Creative thanks go to Buck, Flash, James T., Zap, Deckard, Logan, Overman, Lara, Marcus, John Marston, and whoever that guy was in Liberty City. Cranial thanks go to Vonnegut, Thompson, Asimov, and PKD. Occupational thanks go to Mark McG., who let me store all those arcade games in the rugby house. It was quite a 1-up on anyone who still played Atari.
Also, to Mom and Dad. You put up with a lot. Dad, you once told me that society, throughout history, reserved a special place for its storytellers. Whether around a campfire or scrawling shapes on a cave wall, the exploration of our humanity is critical to learning the truth about who we are as a race and as individuals.
We’ve barely begun to reserve that same place for our digital designers. Just like writers, directors, and musicians, developers are weaving incredible tales filled with startling game characters and brilliant observation. But now we get to stand side by side with protagonists and choose our own paths based on personal morality, goals, and experience.
The best part is that we’ve barely scratched the surface of those environments. This decade is a straight throwback to one century ago. The world was just discovering science fiction. Everything was possible. Look where we are today. I can’t wait to see tomorrow.
About the Author
GARD SKINNER, a.k.a. Gard3, lives in a stilt fortress on a narrow strip of sand that’s well known for hurricanes and morons who surf during hurricanes. He spent a dozen years mucking up the ski industry, then turned his mutant powers toward books and games.
Find out more about Gard at www.gard3.com or @gardthree.