“Is it Rabbits?” I asked, doing my best to keep the excitement out of my voice.
“The hallmarks are definitely there,” he said, “but it’s hard to say. I’m going to have to think about this.”
Then he kicked us out of his office and shut the door.
* * *
—
Is it Rabbits?
I’d asked the Magician the exact same question a number of times in the past.
The first time was the day we met.
I was a senior in college then, completely obsessed with games and gaming, and barely interested in the subjects that actually affected my grade-point average. Thankfully, I’d retained enough of my childhood ability to recall things in detail that I was able to memorize names and dates well enough to keep my academic scholarship. And as long as I remained on scholarship I wouldn’t have to get a job, which meant more time to play games.
Of course it was a game that eventually led me to the Magician.
* * *
—
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s called Wizard’s Quest Four; it works on this Apple II clone.”
Andrew Goshaluk pulled a floppy disk from an old Rolodex-style case and slipped it into a cream-colored drive from another age.
“How old is that computer?”
“Fucking ancient, mate.”
Andrew Goshaluk was slightly overweight, about five foot nine, with straw-colored feathered hair and gold-framed serial killer glasses. We’d met when we were seniors in high school and ended up at the University of Washington together. He was studying computer science and I was working on a degree in English literature with a minor in game theory.
Andrew had come over from London with his father after his mother and sister were killed in a train accident. Although a mutual interest in games had brought us together, my own parents’ subsequent death and the fact that we’d both recently experienced such significant family tragedies made us inseparable in college.
Back in high school, Andrew and I were what you’d call hardcore gamers. We played everything from The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy to Risk, chess, and the strategy board game Go, but role-playing games were by far our favorites. Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller were our top two.
By the time we hit college, not all that much had changed. Outside of the occasional unavoidable party or concert, we did almost nothing but play games.
It had been ages since I’d heard Emily Connors use the term “Rabbits” in relation to a secret game that somehow involved extinct woodpeckers and orphaned movie credits, since I’d heard that strange voice cutting through the radio static on something Emily called The Night Station—a voice that I would continue to hear in my dreams, always repeating the same thing over and over, the unmistakable phrase I’d heard that night, on that dark winding country road—a phrase I’d later learn was deeply connected to the mysterious game unofficially known as Rabbits. The Door Is Open.
Shortly after playing Wizard’s Quest Four on that old Apple computer with Andrew Goshaluk in one of our computer science labs, I encountered that phrase for the second time.
“Check it out.” Andrew pressed the return key, and Wizard’s Quest Four booted up.
There was a small box in the center of the screen that included some really primitive graphics—at that moment it was a purple wizard who looked like he was dropping some seeds—but the majority of the game was plain text.
As Andrew tapped the arrows on his keyboard and guided the characters through the first stage of their dungeon adventure, 8-bit classical music blared from the computer’s tiny speaker: a short song playing on a loop that sounded slightly medieval.
“What are you doing?” I asked, not sure I actually wanted to know the answer. Andrew had a habit of falling into some pretty deep research spirals when it came to computer games.
“What do you think? I’m playing a game.”
“A dungeon crawl from the seventies?”
“Come on, K, look at this thing.”
“What about it?”
“This is a runtime library system, my friend. Total early eighties–style.”
“Okay, then. Let me ask you this.”
Andrew leaned back in his chair and waited for me to ask my follow-up question.
“Who gives a shit?”
Andrew smiled. “You’re funny.”
“I’m serious. Why are you playing this garbage game?” I was actually a little pissed off. We were in the middle of a really great Drakengard campaign, and we’d almost reached the final battle.