“And the title,” Ant added. He was wearing a baby blue tuxedo and a sash that said prom king.
“Yeah, which Sam immediately threw out,” Simon said.
“Not immediately.” Sam was also dressed in cap and gown, though his was crimson and gold. The party planner had racks of them at the door for anyone who hadn’t come in costume. “So, why do you think Marx decided to make the game formerly known as Love Doppelg?ngers?”
“No idea,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t have given us money to make a game, that’s for sure.”
“But he was right to, wasn’t he? If you look at how things turned out. It’s our most successful series by a mile,” Sam said. “What did he say to you? What did he see? I’d love to know.”
Simon thought about the question. “He said he’d read through our materials, and he was intrigued. And then he said, I remember this clearly. He said, ‘So tell me how you see it.’？”
For the next several hours, Sam socialized with the people who had come to the party like it was his job, which, in point of fact, it was. Around midnight, he was exhausted from socializing, and he found himself looking for a place to recharge. To return to his or Marx’s office would have required walking through the party again—past the gauntlet of journalists, gamers, employees, and well-wishers from other game companies—and so he went into Sadie’s office, which was the farthest away from everything. Her office wasn’t empty: Ant was sitting at her desk.
“What’s the prom king doing in here?” Sam demanded.
“The king is tired,” Ant said. “Also, I detest Simon when he’s using coke.” He explained sheepishly that he had often used Sadie’s office when he needed a break from Simon, with whom he shared a large office on the second floor. For his part, Sam had not been in Sadie’s office since before the shooting.
Ant was flipping through a portfolio of artwork that was sitting on Sadie’s desk. “Something you two were working on?” he asked.
“No,” Sam said, “I’ve never seen this work before.”
“Well, it’s not half-bad,” Ant said.
Sam pulled up a chair next to Ant, and the two of them went through the pages. It was a series of drawings and storyboards of a postapocalyptic land somewhere in the American Southwest. The drawings were done in pencil and watercolor.
On the first page, a title: Our Infinite Days. Wildflowers grew over the crumbling stone letters.
The title was familiar to Sam, but he could not yet say why.
Ant read the text aloud: “Days 1 through 109: A Dry Season. Rain has not fallen for over a year, lakes have dried up, the sea level is fallen, and access to fresh water is not guaranteed. A plague, brought on by drought conditions, has swept through the United States, killing four in five people and much of planet earth’s flora and fauna. Of those who survive, many are left as desert vampires—their brain chemistry altered by disease and dehydration. Some of the vampires are violent: the Parched. Some of the zombies are docile but lack memories: the Gentle. Without warning, the Gentle can turn into the Parched, and vice versa.”
Sam laughed. “Of course, they can.”
Ant turned the page to look at the next painting, which was a detailed watercolor of a female desert vampire in the process of feeding. The desert vampire is lunging at a man, and her tongue has morphed into a long proboscis, which she is plunging up the man’s nose. A caption read: Up to 60% of the human body is water. The heart and brain are 73%; the lungs, 83%; the skin, 74%; bone, 31%. It is not the human’s blood the desert vampire seeks, but her water.
“Conceptually, that’s somewhat interesting,” Ant said. He turned the page. A small girl and her mother walk across a surreally beautiful, Daliesque desert, their footprints leaving a trail in the caramel-colored sand. The mother has a gun; the daughter, a knife. The caption read: Though she doesn’t always have the words to express their situation, the six-year-old girl is the keeper of memories. That is why she is known as the Keeper. The player will toggle between playing Mama and the Keeper, but she will need to master both characters if she wants to get to the Coast, where the Keeper believes her brothers and father are waiting for her.
“The artist is a fine draftsman,” Sam said. “But these ideas are pretty clichéd.”
“Still, I think there’s something here,” Ant insisted. “These images make me feel…I don’t know the word. I guess they make me feel.”
Ant turned the page: The Keeper and Mama are fending off a vampire attack. The caption read: Day 289: The Burden of Memory. When we dream, we dream of the old world. Of rain, of bathtubs, of soap suds, of clean skin, of swimming pools, of running through sprinklers in the summer, of washing machines, of the distant sea which may just be a dream.
Another painting. The Keeper makes a line on her calf with a Sharpie. The line joins rows of other lines. If we did not mark the days, we would not know how much we had survived.
“Maybe there is something here,” Sam said. “I’m going to take it home with me.” He closed the portfolio and lifted it from the desk. A green Post-it detached from the folder and fluttered to the ground. Marx’s handwriting—small, evenly spaced letters, all caps: s., tell me your thoughts. —m.
At once, Sam remembered the woman who had called him the day he’d come back to the office. “I think I know who this belongs to,” Sam said. “It’s a team. A woman and her husband.”
“If you end up meeting with them, let me know,” Ant said. “Maybe I’ll sit in. Reminds me of Ichigo in a weird way.”
Sam slipped the portfolio under his arm. “Do you talk much to Sadie?” Sam asked.
“Sometimes,” Ant said. “Not as much as I’d like. The baby’s super cute, full head of hair, looks like her and Marx.”
All babies are cute, Sam thought. “Do you think she’ll ever come back to work?”
“I have no idea,” Ant said.
“Someone who loved video games as much as Sadie can’t have nothing to do with them forever,” Sam said to himself as much as to Ant.
“I sometimes think about doing other things,” Ant said. “I like video games, but are they worth getting shot over?”
“But you came back to the office,” Sam said.
Ant shrugged. “What’s better than work?” He paused. “What’s worse than work?”
Sam nodded. He took a moment to look at Ant. In his mind, he always thought of Simon and Ant as kids, because they had been so young when Marx had taken on Love Doppelg?ngers. But Ant was no longer a kid, and his eyes reminded Sam of his own. They had the patina of a person who had felt pain and expected to feel it again. Sam put his hand on Ant’s arm, imitating a gesture he had seen Marx use. “If I haven’t said it before, I want you to know that I really appreciate you coming back here to finish the game. I know it must have been incredibly difficult.”
“Truthfully, Sam, I was grateful for Counterpart High. I was grateful to not have to be in this world.” Ant paused. “Sometimes, when I’m working on CPH, that world feels more real to me than, like, the world world, anyway. I love that world more, I think, because it is perfectible. Because I have perfected it. The actual world is the random garbage fire it always is. There’s not a goddamn thing I can do about the actual world’s code.” He laughed at himself, then looked at Sam. “How are you doing?”