“You’re thinking about it, so you see it.”
“Exactly.”
“And what does that have to do with Byzantine?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Sidney said. “But apparently Worricker was also obsessed with advanced pattern recognition toward the end of his life. He thought everything was preordained—that certain patterns were everywhere, but we didn’t notice them because we had no idea how to look for them.”
“Sounds like he might have been losing it a little,” Chloe said.
“Maybe,” Sidney said as she refilled our wineglasses.
“So what’s your new game about?” I asked. “Any reason to believe the content might be…dangerous somehow?”
Sidney shook her head. “I think it’s a super-fun game, but it’s not all that different from what I normally do. Character-first action, try to tell a cool story.”
“Anything else you can tell us?” I asked.
“Sadly, the NDA I signed was insane. I think I may have given them permission to inject me with a microchip capable of recording anything and everything I say.”
“Really?” Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” she said. “I can’t share specifics. Sorry.”
“I understand,” I said—and it was true, but damn, I really wanted to hear about Sidney Farrow’s new game.
“Did you and Baron talk about anything else?” I asked.
“He asked a lot of questions,” she said, “but nothing stands out. Although…come to think of it, there was one thing he asked that did feel a little bit odd.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“Baron asked if I knew Alan Scarpio, or if I was working with him on a game.”
“And?” Chloe asked.
“I told him I didn’t know Scarpio, not really. I met him once, at a Sundance party. We had a long talk about Richard Linklater movies. Alan told me Before Sunset was his favorite, and that he thought they’d eventually end up making a third film, but that was the entirety of our conversation. I told Baron I’d never seen Scarpio at WorGames—and, as far as I know, he wasn’t working on anything for the company.”
“Before Sunset is my favorite of the three Before films as well,” I said.
“Three?” Sidney asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Before Sunrise and Before Midnight.”
“Before Midnight.” Sidney nodded. “That’s the perfect title.”
“Yeah, it is…but—”
“So,” Chloe interrupted, “you don’t know if Baron discovered anything while he was digging around your servers?”
Sidney shook her head. “No idea.”
We sat there in silence for a moment before Sidney turned to face us. “Do you guys mind if I ask you a really serious fucking question?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“What the fuck is Rabbits, really?”
Chloe poured us all another glass of wine, and then we sat down and told Sidney Farrow everything we knew about the game.
* * *
—
After Chloe and I had answered Sidney’s questions to the best of our abilities, our conversation moved away from Rabbits and WorGames into other areas.
Sidney told us how she’d grown up writing stories. Dune was her favorite novel. She told her parents and anyone who would listen that she was going to be the next Frank Herbert.
“I never share this with anybody,” she said, “you know, outside of certain intimate moments where sharing is unavoidable.” She unbuttoned her jeans and showed us a tattoo on the front of her right hip. It was a graphic of a tiny red hawk with its wings spread.
“Do you recognize it?” she asked.
Chloe and I shook our heads.
“It’s the symbol of House Atreides, from Dune.”
I thought I was a nerd, but Sidney Farrow had a tattoo of a fictional hero’s family crest hidden on her body.
Sidney went on to explain how she’d given up writing prose fiction as soon as she met Nintendo’s Zelda. From that point forward, all she did was write games.
The three of us compared notes on some of our favorite games and debated the merits and flaws of the movies and comic books that inspired us growing up.
It was amazing sitting across from Sidney Farrow talking about this stuff. I didn’t want our conversation to end, but I was exhausted. I hadn’t been sleeping very much lately, and had been drinking semi-heavily all day. I kept trying to fight it, but I eventually fell asleep sometime after Chloe opened the second bottle of wine.