“Well, I’m obsessive so I’ve played through all three options. The Easter egg is behind door number three.” She clicked the third option. “In the course of regular gameplay, you can check in with the performance, or you can skip it, assuming it’s a close variation of the same cutscene you’ve had before. But hey, the game designer, Sadie Green, put something here, so why not watch a little of the performance, right?”
Charlotte turned her laptop toward Sam.
Onstage, in the middle of white Elizabethan England, improbably stands a handsome Asian man as Macbeth. Macbeth has just heard the news that his wife had died, and he is giving the most famous soliloquy from the play, the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech.
When they had been deciding what to call their company all those years ago, Marx had argued for calling it Tomorrow Games, a name Sam and Sadie instantly rejected as “too soft.” Marx explained that the name referenced his favorite speech in Shakespeare, and that it wasn’t soft at all.
“Do you have any ideas that aren’t from Shakespeare?” Sadie said.
To make his case, Marx jumped up on a kitchen chair and recited the “Tomorrow” speech for them, which he knew by heart:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
“That’s bleak,” Sadie said.
“Why start a game company? Let’s go kill ourselves,” Sam joked.
“Also,” Sadie said, “What does any of that have to do with games?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Marx said.
It was not obvious to Sam or to Sadie.
“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
“Nice try, handsome,” Sadie said. “Next.”
* * *
—
Sam watched through to the end of the cutscene. He thanked Charlotte for showing it to him, and then he returned to his office and closed the door behind him.
As soon as he was gone, Charlotte began to agonize: Had it been a mistake to bring the Easter egg to Mazer’s attention? She’d been trying to share in an experience they had both had. Though nothing like what it must have meant to Mazer, Marx’s death had been a trauma for her and Adam as well, and she had derived some comfort from Marx’s appearance in The Scottish Expansion. But honestly, she’d also been showing off for the new boss. She wanted Mazer to see how knowledgeable she was about games, wanted him to know that he hadn’t made a mistake in deciding to make Our Infinite Days.
What had she been thinking? Of course, it was inappropriate. She barely knew him. It was their first day. Adam often complained that she was too familiar with strangers.
When Adam returned, Charlotte had her head on their desk. “What happened?” Adam asked.
“I’m a fool,” she said. She explained the situation.
“Maybe it was inappropriate,” Adam said, “but in the end, he thanked you, right?”
“Yes, he barely said anything else. He might have been being polite.”
Adam considered this. “No, I don’t get the sense that Mazer’s polite.”
Sitting at his desk, Sam could not quite identify what seeing Marx in Sadie’s game had made him feel. It was not just pain, or sadness, or happiness, or nostalgia, or longing, or love. What touched him the most was the sound of Sadie’s voice, untouched and clarion, speaking to him through a game, across time and space. Others, like Charlotte Worth, might recognize Marx in the sequence, but Sadie was speaking to Sam. After a long silence, he could hear her voice again, and he determined that what he felt was hope.
An open crate contained Sadie’s favorite games, the ones she had always kept on her shelf. The top game in the box was a ’90s rerelease of The Oregon Trail. Sam decided to play it.
He lost himself in the minor stakes of the Old West world. How many wagon parts? How many sets of clothing? Do you raft across the river, or do you wait for the river conditions to improve? Do you shoot the bison for food, knowing that most of the meat will rot? How long does it take to recover from a rattlesnake bite? What happens when you get to Oregon?
It was easy to remember why this simple game had absorbed them so much when they were young. Many afternoons, they had lain side by side on his hospital bed, sharing one identity, making decisions together, passing a fifteen-pound laptop back and forth.
But it would be even better, Sam thought, if the game hadn’t been designed for one player. “Hey Sadie,” he said to the empty room, “what would you think of making Oregon Trail as an open-world MMORPG?”
I’d play that, imaginary Sadie replied. But is it Oregon Trail you want or a steampunk version of The Sims or Animal Crossing or EverQuest, set in the Old West?
Sam nodded.
Keep it simple, Sadie said. That’s always served you well. I’m the one who always makes games too complicated. Maybe you could even use the Mapleworld engines. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. They probably have one or two more games in them before they’re completely obsolete.
“I’m going to take notes,” Sam said.
For the past two years, Sam had done almost no creative work. He had never made a game without Sadie. Although he had resigned himself to her reasons for working alone, he had never wanted to work without her.
He locked the door to his office. He took out a sketchpad. He sharpened a pencil.
“How does it begin?” Sam asked. His hand felt shaky. It had been so long since he had put pen to paper.
A train arrives, she said.
“I’ve missed this,” he said.
A traveler disembarks from the train. The land is covered with a thin layer of frost, and the ground crunches beneath the traveler’s boot. Look closely: Is that grass pushing through the ice? Could it be the white head of a crocus? Yes, it is almost spring. A text box appears on the screen: Welcome, Stranger.
IX
PIONEERS
HOMESTEADER SIGHTED IN UPPER FOGLANDS
The Stranger arrived in the early spring, when the thawing ground had the texture of crystalline silicon. Her inky hair had been customized into plaits, and she wore round, silver glasses that seemed as if they belonged to someone else. The Stranger wore black, and from a distance, her cleverly tailored velvet overcoat almost concealed the fact that she was with child.
When the Editor of the Friendship Mirror inquired, the Stranger revealed that her name was Emily B. Marks. Friendship was a town of pseudonyms, so no one made the mistake of assuming it was the name she’d been born with.
The Editor held out his hand for Emily to shake. “When will your spouse be joining you, Mrs. Marks?” the Editor asked, looking significantly at Emily’s abdomen.
“It is Miss Marks, and I am alone and intend to stay that way,” Emily said.