Our brains grind on that stone, clinging tight to one difference: that he is in a rigid stasis; we have grown and changed in the telling and retelling of this story more than Lewis has. He paces his living room, watching a city that never goes dark.
Let’s jump ahead a bit and look at how many nights Lewis dreams of the tail. December 17–24, 2016, his Day One obsesses over a single question: Where is it? Where is the tail? We don’t know either. Where is it? Where is the tail?
He goes to work sleep-deprived and works with two new people on his development team, hired almost immediately one after the other, bang bang. Both male. We don’t care about their names because it doesn’t matter. Consider them NPCs; they are not players in this game. They are generic people who turn out generic code and listen to whatever Lewis tells them to do. And Lewis hates them for it. He bashes out most of the real work himself, assigning mundane tedium to these two bags of skin who never complain, never want more.
Lewis misses Jean-Pascale something fierce. He tries to email him, tries to email him eight times over, ten more after that; no response. He even starts to miss Eliza—it sneaks up on him when he is going through the NPC programmers’ code. It surprises him—the thought that he would rather have Eliza back than either of these two men, both of whom have degrees and proper training and have paid their dues. Both of whom chug energy drinks and listen to classic rock through oversized headphones while working. There is something motivating about having a nemesis. Who is he, if not the opposite of her?
He begins to stay later and later at the office because he knows he can’t sleep. Even if his body is tired and he needs to drink coffee or soda or Rockstar to do work, to keep his eyes open, he knows he won’t be able to close them once in his bed. And even if he could manage to slip into sleep, he’ll only be in that “virtual reality” state for two, maybe three hours before he dreams of slicing apart an animal, seeing the white of bone as he peels back skin with his fingernails. Before he wakes up drowning.
So he begins spending the night at the office. He ignores frantic texts from his mother (where r u?) and catches naps on couches, dreaming of tails, tails, blood and the missing tail, almost as soon as the white noise in his mind gives way to black. It’s the most reliable thing about me right now, he writes. At least there are no sheets to get tangled in.
He misses Preston too. It’s only been a couple of weeks since this all started, and Preston still comes into the office, but “miss” is, nevertheless, the right word. Preston, who’s been acting weird, disappearing, closing the third floor off for long stretches of time. Lewis thinks he’s coming up with something new down there. Or that he’s pining. Either way, Preston is totally different, as is working on Guilds—the creative spark is gone, the game is just a game with Brandon in charge. It isn’t a world; only pixels. It doesn’t feel imperative to play. He can’t name the emotion wedged into the interstitial space between his heart and his diaphragm. He can’t figure it out, but we can: responsibility. He feels responsible for Preston’s sorrow or mania, for Preston’s absence. He whispers to himself in the back of his own head: your fault, your fault, your fault. And Lewis is so rigid that he can’t flow around this information. Can’t figure out how to adapt to it, erode it or excise it.
He begins to shake during the day. His heart beats fast and his legs threaten to dump him on his ass. Brandon questions why he is there so late, so early, overnight, and Lewis says, “I’m just working. There’s a lot to do with new people around.” Brandon nods, puts on a solemn face and lectures halfheartedly on work-life balance. Then he gets on a plane for a meeting in California because truthfully he doesn’t give a flying saucer.
With a liter of orange soda in hand, Lewis forces himself to turn the game on at three in the morning because there is no more work to be done. The office isn’t creepy in the same way his home is, but it’s still empty. A void. He wants to fill it with something, and Guilds used to work so he figures he’ll give it a try. He keys himself into the third floor. He’ll play with Vive.
Tonight, his lair is familiar, but not comforting. The library-esque quality of his plush digital furniture, his rugs imported all the way from imaginary in-game desert artisans, the cold fire in his fake fireplace: it all feels flat. Meaningless. Like trash. He itches to break all the glass—there is so much glass here. All of Black Hole’s possessions. He is so angry. What is Doctor Moriarty without his sidekick? But he stops himself, because that would be nuts. Because what if Jean-Pascale forgives him and comes back, plays again. Lewis prides himself on his stability.
He walks around the space. Doctor Moriarty (no tagline) doesn’t feel calm or authoritative or any of the things Lewis normally feels while inhabiting this body. He feels manic. Jittery. He remembers that, should Jean-Pascale forgive him and play again, it won’t be the same. Black Hole is being transformed into an NPC villain, full-time, and JP’s account has been discontinued. He did it himself. He’d killed Black Hole with just a few deleted lines.
Lewis pings the other two backend guys. “Doctor Moriarty (no tagline) would like to invite you to join his Guild. Only Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil characters may respond.” He paces his lair for a couple minutes, waiting. He practices at his blackboard, increasing some skill points. He smokes a pipe made of pixels. No one responds; likely they are asleep. Lewis and Doctor Moriarty are bored.
So he decides to cause mischief. Real mischief, because, in the past, that has always brought him joy. He is in possession of one of the rarer items in the game—an antique printing press. He has plenty of paper (Paper X4562), enough to make some flyers.
Bounty, the flyer says. Photos of Circuit Breaker in compromising positions. Will wire 10 credits to anyone who can provide. Never forget her lewd behavior, never forget how she fell from grace.
He stops at two flyers when he realizes that his original plan—unlocking her account and letting the hackers go for it once more—will get him fired. And that these in-game flyers will be easily traceable to him. But he can’t resist a tiny bit of mayhem. He sends each of the flyers to the NPC programmers. It is such small mayhem, nothing like his masterminded plans of yore, when the consequences didn’t spill out into the physical world. And for a few moments, he wonders if getting fired would be such a bad thing, if he shouldn’t cause larger chaos and screw the meatspace consequences. But he stops himself, because giving up his job would be nuts—would be perceived as insane. And Lewis, as we said and will say again and again, prides himself on his stability.
He removes his headset and sleeps, arms and legs splayed out like a da Vinci drawing, on the bare concrete floor. He sleeps light and fitful and dreams of blood and knives and finding the tail in the garbage can on the subway platform. He resists checking the game each time he wakes, resists the appearance of needing a reaction. Someone to ping back from the void, to validate, to agree.
Lewis falls asleep in earnest around five and wakes again around six thirty. He peels himself from the floor and checks the game: both his teammates have accepted the invitation, declaring their intention to move lairs, to perhaps repurpose the celestial observatory that Black Hole used to call home. “We could sell all that stuff,” one says. “And really make something spectacular.” The second one sends an in-game screenshot encased in a virtual Polaroid photo frame. It is of the day Eliza had been hacked, the day Circuit Breaker engaged in that aforementioned lewd behavior. In the photo, which Lewis can hold in his hands as Doctor Moriarty, NPC Programmer Two’s character, in a masked getup similar to the Phantom of the Opera, is having a go with her. “I was there,” it says in mock-handwritten scrawl on the bottom of the photo. “Never forget.”
Lewis thinks he should feel better. But he doesn’t. And he can’t articulate why. He wires NPC Programmer Two ten credits, as promised. He makes a full pot of coffee for the early-comers in the physical world. He is not a monster, he thinks to himself. He makes the coffee. He considers his co-workers.
At ten in the morning, Lewi
s is in a meeting with our NPC programmers when his vision goes a bit purple, a bit spotted. He is beyond registering alarm—he’s had visual artifacts for days. He figures lack of sleep will do that to a person, and it’ll all go away as soon as he falls back into a regular pattern. Any day now. But when the colors clear, Dog is in the room. But he is huge, as if Lewis has put on the Vive and Dog had been scaled to the size of a cow. Even if he were the size of the real Dog, Lewis knows Preston hasn’t yet brought him back to the office. Might never bring him back. He sits stock-still behind the two men, who are laughing and joking about the flyers. That’s when the alarm happens, the panic. Lewis reaches up to touch his face, to make sure the headset isn’t on. But it isn’t. And yet. There he is. Dog, looking at Lewis with sad, accusatory eyes. Dog, not in a cone but minus one tail, bleeding a river onto the floor.
“Thanks for the ten credits,” Programmer Two says. Lewis’s eyes widen as Dog, that real, solid Dog, stands. Deliberately. He points like a hunter, which Dog has never been, with his nose. If we were to draw a line between it and Lewis, it would connect with Lewis’s forehead, right between the eyes.
“What, man?” Programmer Two continues. “You don’t remember wiring me the ten credits? It’s just ten credits, man, no big—” He is interrupted by Lewis standing up and scrambling backward, knocking over his chair. The wall is directly behind him; the collaboration rooms are small. He presses himself against it.
“No,” Lewis says, “no.” He doesn’t shout. His words are small. His actions, however, are large and jagged and attract attention through the glass windows. He means to control himself, but he can’t. Fear. It’s all fear, and he is sweating. Then he is enclosed in a tank of water. It is a deep blue, it’s murky. It obscures everything, but the chains holding him down are visible. He sees his own face: the vignetted visage of this phantom is pressed, grotesque, against the glass. He bangs at it with a fist and Lewis can see the sound waves ripple through the water. Bubbles rise from his nose and mouth as Dog gets up and leaves the room, turning his bleeding behind on Lewis.
Lewis gasps for breath. He is drowning or being squeezed; he can’t seem to make his chest expand enough. He is taking in sips of air between gulps of water. Everyone is locked in a tank; everyone is drowning. But we know better. We can see that nothing is happening in the room with him. There are no tanks, there is no grand escape trick or any bleeding Dog. There is only Lewis, breaking down against the wall.
“Dude, are you okay?” says NPC Programmer One. Lewis screams, tiny again, as he watches Programmer One’s ear cleanly sever from the side of his head. “Bro”—he turns to NPC Programmer Two, whose fingers begin to unzip themselves one by one from his hand, leaving five exposed bones and cascades of blood in their wake—“let’s go get help, okay? Because he is not okay.” They leave the room; the tank stays. Lewis cowers until he passes out. He is taken to the hospital, sedated and released into the care of his mother.
These are all things that we know for sure. We post his whole Diary on r/Bright, this daily log. From there, it is tweeted. It is published in its entirety on Medium, placed side by side with news articles, tweets from Fancy Dog co-workers, all the reporting on what happened after. We read it voraciously. We devour every single word.
Chapter Ninety-Three
SChoy: okay so
PDog: yes. okay.
SChoy: it got weird
SChoy: i think we can both agree it got weird
PDog: yes. we can agree on that.
PDog: it was unexpected. for sure.
PDog: but like bad weird?
PDog: suzanne?
SChoy: no, not bad weird i dont think
SChoy: but against company policy weird probably
PDog: well i mean
PDog: its not like we never tested the patch
PDog: like, people at the company have done this before
PDog: with each other
SChoy: pretty sure not like that
PDog: what are you talking about
PDog: mechanically, its the exact same thing
SChoy: tell me preston
SChoy: did you have to wash a pair of boxers after you tested the sex patch completely platonically?
PDog: now that question isn’t work appropriate
SChoy: luckily we’re not working
SChoy: i bet the employees testing the sex patch didn’t moan into the microphone
SChoy: just a fcking hunch
PDog: okay yes.
PDog: i’m sorry
PDog: if you felt, like, pressure in any way
PDog: if things are going to be weird for you now
PDog: ill do whatever it takes to fix this
PDog: i’m really sorry
SChoy: don’t be
PDog: ?
SChoy: don’t be sorry
SChoy: i clicked yes
SChoy: or i guess not clicked
SChoy: what do we even call that now? there’s no click with these remotes
PDog: we say “selected”
SChoy: well then
SChoy: i selected yes. i chose to do this
PDog: youre not mad?
SChoy: no
SChoy: in fact
SChoy: i have a little proposition for you
PDog: ?
SChoy: we can continue this
SChoy: it was nice
SChoy: like a vacation from my life rn
PDog: i cant pretend it wasn’t nice for me too
SChoy: just dont get weird or fire me or anything, okay?
PDog: can i ask you something?
SChoy: ?
PDog: whyd you do it? select yes?
SChoy: idk
SChoy: id never done something like that before
SChoy: mostly curiosity
PDog: ouch
SChoy: ?
PDog: i mean, like
PDog: i dunno what i mean
PDog: i guess i hoped you liked me a little at least
SChoy: i don’t dislike you
PDog: ouch again. you really don’t pull punches, do you?
SChoy: not really. but like i don’t know what you want me to say
SChoy: its not like were having real sex
SChoy: this is like fucking chat roulette or whatever from a million years ago
SChoy: its just getting yr rocks off. its not real
SChoy: i guess i want to continue because its fun and its free and im locked in my house and we have neat chemistry
SChoy: were both climbing the walls in here
SChoy: whyd you do it?
PDog: idk
PDog: I guess I just wanted to connect.
PDog: with you. with this.
SChoy: this?
PDog: the vr, Windy City
PDog: i made it and mostly now i feel nothing about it
PDog: i only feel like…pressure
SChoy: i hear that
SChoy: that’s all this is. steam release
Chapter Ninety-Four
After a few days of what he thinks might be purgatory, Devonte pays to fix Aunt Ida’s door. He sends them home with assurances it won’t happen again. He is about 57 percent certain.
Now he sits, deflated, dimly conscious of the deep bruise on his left ass cheek. That is from his cousin David. No amount of space or time can make them grow the fuck up. Alone at last, he tries to play a record but he is too antsy to sit and enjoy it. He swigs some whiskey from the bottle and decides to play Guilds of the Protectorate. He slips on his Vive.
But when he gets to his character selection screen, he stands staring at the life-size Runner Quick, trying to make himself select. Proceed. Runner, we’ve mentioned before, looks so much like Devonte. He is dark with smart eyes and a mischievous smile. Devonte sighs. The point of games, sometimes, is to escape the real world. The real world is too hard right now; it is too difficult to be himself. There is too much weight on everything. There is too much at stake. It is all, simply, too much.
No
w we pause, here, because not all of us are great fans of what Devonte does next. For some of us, it makes us uncomfortable and we cannot put our finger on why. Theoretically, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it; one of Devonte’s favorite books is Ready Player One, so it’s an action that is consistent. We wonder, though, how many Black people we accidentally interact with; who hears us at our most honest? Would we be able to tell if someone was infiltrating? Will they unmask us on Twitter, come for our jobs, get us fired for banter that is otherwise completely acceptable? We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the world isn’t safe for normal white men anymore.
Devonte selects build new character instead. And he builds the lightest-skinned white boy he can build. Red hair, Roman nose, freckles. The works. He, too, has laughed at the Eddie Murphy sketch, but the voice whispers in the back of his mind: will it be different? Does everyone throw a party when he leaves a room? Will he be able to tell if they do from a computer game? How close is it to real life? What would it be like to not worry about his dreadful cousins being SWATted? Besides, he thinks, he doesn’t want to encounter Suzanne. Or worse, Eliza. He hasn’t heard from her and he takes that as a supremely bad sign. But she has to understand. Has to. The world is a dangerous place for someone like him. Hasn’t she considered that? If he slips and doesn’t turn on true invisibility, if Eliza and Suzanne are pinged that he is online and they try to find him, they won’t. He can slip into a crowd, a lowly level one, and wait until they leave. Would it be worse, he wonders, if his friends didn’t come looking for him?
Finally, he sets himself loose in Windy City. This time, he can fly instead of run. He carries a bow and arrow—when he levels up enough, he’ll attain a wolf companion. He can see very, very far away. He possesses True Strike—he can shoot even when someone has half cover; when he levels up enough, three-quarters. He wants as much distance between himself and the rest of the world as possible. He wears a cape. His name: Lone Hunter (no tagline—it sounds better without one).
We Are Watching Eliza Bright Page 23