“I don’t disapprove of it,” Sam said. “And anyway, it didn’t matter what I thought, did it? You were going to make that game no matter what I said. And now you’re making it. Which is good.”
“So, you don’t think Master of the Revels is the worst idea ever, and it’s going to single-handedly destroy our company?”
Sam shook his head, no.
Four hours later, Simon and Ant were the 211th couple to be married that day. After the ceremony, everyone was starving so they went to a nearby dim sum place, where they stuffed themselves with dumplings. Marx ordered an expensive bottle of cheap champagne, and Simon, who liked bloviating as much as Sam did, decided to give a toast. “Thank you to our friends and colleagues for taking the day off to bear witness to our nuptials. And for producing three CPHs with us. I think we can agree, once and for all, that it should have been called Doppelg?nger High.”
“Agree to disagree!” Marx called out.
“Contrary to popular belief,” Simon continued, “my favorite German word is not actually doppelg?nger. It’s ‘Zweisamkeit.’？”
“The alternative title was Zweisamkeit High,” Ant said. “I talked him out of it.”
“Thank you,” Sam whispered.
“？‘Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.” Simon’s eyes were moist. “I know I’m impossible, and I know you don’t care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.”
Ant raised his glass. “Zweisamkeit,” he said.
By the time Counterpart High dropped in August, Simon and Ant were no longer married. The California Supreme Court declared that the City of San Francisco had overstepped, and the marriages that had been performed based on those licenses were now void. Strangely, Ant took it harder than Simon. Simon had felt the Torschlusspanik for a reason, and he wasn’t surprised to find that his legal marriage was now over, considering the country and the times they lived in. He did a few lines of old coke, which he had been saving for a special occasion, and he went back to work. “I’m sorry if this whole thing has been a Verschlimmbesserung boondoggle,” Simon said to Ant, who had decided to take the day off.
Ant pulled the blanket over his head. At first, he had wanted to call their congressman, go to Sacramento to protest, write angry letters and op-eds, but in the end, he had to resign himself to the reality that he wasn’t a protester, an organizer, or even a political person.
After he’d missed a week of work, Sadie drove to Ant’s house to see him. “I didn’t think it would feel different to be married,” Ant told her, “but somehow, it did. And now I feel as if I’ve been tricked.”
* * *
—
Back at the office, Sadie called Marx and Sam into her office. “There should be marriages in Mapleworld.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in marriage,” Marx said. “Why force an antiquated institution on innocent digital people?”
“There will be some people for whom Mapleworld will be the only place they can get married,” Sadie said. “And what is the point of having your own world if it can’t right a few injustices of the real one?”
Three years after Mapleworld had launched, Marriages was quietly introduced as one of a handful of new features in Mapleworld. Marriages, much like marriage in the real world, allowed residents to combine property and Maplebucks. In Mapleworld, marriage was defined as between two consenting adults, no explicit mention of sex or gender. And indeed, it would have been foolish to define sex or gender as a requirement for marriage in Mapleworld when so many of its residents adhered to neither binary nor human characteristics. There were many hipsters, like Mayor Mazer, but there were also elves, orcs, monsters, aliens, fey, vampires, and a variety of other supernatural-presenting, nonbinary folk.
On a rainy October morning in Mapletown, Antony Ruiz and Simon Freeman were married for the second time in a Special Mapleworld Event. Sam and Sadie did not have to go for umbrellas. The programmers had added them the night before.
Because he wanted the wedding to have verisimilitude, Sam had gotten ordained as a minister in the real world, and after he had completed Simon and Ant’s ceremony, Mayor Mazer invited anyone else who wanted to be married to step forward. Before closing shop, he had married 211 couples.
In the weeks that followed, fifty thousand people canceled their Mapleworld accounts. An additional two hundred thousand joined.
The hate mail began immediately. Death threats—emailed and paper—for Sam mainly. A convincing bomb threat that forced everyone to evacuate Unfair for an afternoon. Boycotts from various anti-equality organizations that felt Mapleworld was being needlessly political. Boycotts from equality groups that felt Sam had made a jest out of a serious issue and had then used that issue as promotion. A handful of op-eds in the usual places, both in support of Mayor Mazer and against him. （Newsweek: “Should Games Be Political? Mayor Mazer Thinks So.”） Sam on TV talk shows, quoting Marshall McLuhan, “The games of a people reveal a great deal about them.”
Marx decided to hire security, and for a few weeks, Olga, a Russian former weightlifting champion, dutifully followed Sam around.
Sam made a point of writing back to everyone who wrote to him, responding to even the vilest hate mail. Once, Sadie found him at his desk, replying to a letter that began with the salutation, “Dear Chink Jew Faggot Lover.”
“I like that the person writes ‘Dear,’？” Sadie said. She tossed the letter across the room. Sadie felt guilty. Marriages had been her idea, but Sam, because he was the face of Mapleworld, took the abuse.
If anything, Sam was encouraged by the hate mail, and because of his experience with Marriages, he would use Mapleworld to make even more political statements. He did not consider them to be political statements but sensible governance and, not insignificantly, an excellent source of promotion. He banned user-created gun stores and the sale of weapons. He supported conservationism and the building of an Islamic cultural center by a group of Muslim Mapletownies. He arranged mass avatar protests about the war in Iraq and offshore oil drilling. He held town halls where he’d talk to residents about the issues facing Mapletown and the country. Every time he took a controversial stand, there’d be the same flurry of hate mail and cancellations of accounts, and then life would go on in Mapleworld, and the world beyond it as well.
4
After Sam played Master of the Revels for the first time, he called Sadie and asked her if he could come over to discuss it. It was Labor Day weekend, and when he called, she was at her grandmother’s house in Hancock Park. As she was more than halfway across town, she offered to drive over to his house instead.
Sadie drove down Sunset, and past the Happy Foot Sad Foot sign （Happy Foot, but about to become Sad Foot）， and then she turned onto Sam’s street. He still lived in the little bungalow he’d rented when he’d first moved to L.A.