“Some of that’s changing a little,” Sadie said. “And I’ve always owned the company, so…”
“So, like, all you have to do is own your own company?”
“Right. Then the men have to do what you want,” Sadie said.
“Can I say? I’m so pumped that you’re teaching this class? There still aren’t that many women or people of color in the department. And I love all your games, not just Ichigo. I’ve played every single one. Master of the Revels? That game was my jam. I think you’re completely brilliant.”
They had reached Sadie’s office, where the nameplate beside the door still said dov mizrah. “So, this is me,” Sadie said. “What was the question you didn’t want to ask me in front of the class?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t want to embarrass you,” Destiny said. “When I was playing Solution, I definitely thought it was good.”
“Yes?”
“But it’s nowhere near as good as Ichigo. No offense. I seriously respect you so much, Professor Green.”
“It’s okay, I know it’s true. And that’s why I brought in the game. I wanted you to see what I was starting from.”
“I guess the question I had was, how did you get from making something like Solution to making something like Ichigo not that much later? How do you get from there to here? That’s what I don’t know how to do.”
“It’s a long story.” Sadie recognized the look in Destiny’s eyes. She knew what it was to be ravenous with ambition but to have your reach exceed your grasp. “I’m not sure I have a simple answer,” Sadie admitted. “May I think about it and get back to you?”
That night, Sadie tried to remember herself back in 1996. There were three things that had driven her, and none of them reflected a particular generosity of spirit on Sadie’s part: （1） wanting to distinguish herself enough professionally so that everyone at MIT would know that Sadie Green had not been admitted to the college on a girl curve, （2） wanting Dov to know that he shouldn’t have dumped her, and （3） wanting Sam to know that he was lucky to be working with her, that she was the great programmer in their team, that she was the one with the big ideas. But how to explain this to Destiny? How to explain to Destiny that the thing that made her work leap forward in 1996 was that she had been a dervish of selfishness, resentment, and insecurity? Sadie had willed herself to be great: art doesn’t typically get made by happy people.
Sadie wanted to pose Destiny’s question to Sam. He always had an answer for everything, and Sadie had come to see that one of Sam’s gifts was his ability to cast the world—or at least her—in a more generous, flattering light. It was not the first time she had contemplated contacting him. Since she’d been back in Cambridge, every cobblestone reminded her of Sam and of Marx. But somehow, it felt impossible that a relationship as freighted as theirs could be resumed by simply picking up a phone. She knew he was alive. She often saw his name on group emails from Business Affairs at Unfair, but she had not directly communicated with him since Pioneers.
When she had downloaded Pioneers, she didn’t notice anything about who had made it or have specific expectations for what the game would be. She had been postpartum, fuzzy brained, depressed, and alone, and she had turned to games for comfort, in the same way people turn to food. She favored casual games, the kind of thing that could be played while she was distracted with the business of keeping herself and a brand-new, insatiable creature alive. She had played a resource game about the Old West, a game about growing a tribe of villagers on an island, several games about waiting tables, a game about running a hotel, a game about magical flowers, a game about amusement parks, and then at last, Sadie had turned to Pioneers.
The degree of her investment in Pioneers had immediately been greater than her investment in those other games. The world, from the beginning, had seemed comfortable and familiar, but of course it had: Pioneers had been built using her own engine. If the players had seemed unusually clever, she attributed that to Pioneers attracting people like herself, people in their thirties with a nostalgia for the games of the 1980s.
On the day she found Daedalus blowing the glass heart, she had suspected Sam, but she had also allowed herself not to know. She wanted to play more than she wanted to know. Sadie told Sam he had tricked her, but the truth was, she had tricked herself. It was embarrassing how much that silly, exquisite world had meant to her.
A year and a half later, she could tell the story to Dov as an amusing brunch anecdote, and she realized she wasn’t angry at Sam anymore. She began to feel a tenderness toward Sam and even an empathy for him. He had built that game for her, but he must have built it for himself as well. How alone he must have felt after Marx’s death. How much of the business of running Unfair had she dropped in Sam’s lap? Sadie had never gone back to that office, and she had never thanked Sam either.
A few weeks into the spring semester, she had been in the basement of the Harvard Book Store, where the used books were kept. She was shopping for used picture books for her daughter when she spotted a mis-shelved copy of a Magic Eye book. The book made her think of Sam in the train station, all those years ago. Even though it wasn’t a picture book per se, Sadie decided to get the book for Naomi, who was four.
Sadie and Naomi read the Magic Eye book together at bedtime. “I can see it!” Naomi said.
“What do you see?”
“A bird. It’s right there. It’s all around me. It’s amazing! Can we do another one? I think this might be my favorite book, Mom.”
Two weeks later, Naomi had done the twenty-nine Magic Eye activities in the book multiple times, and she was ready for the next challenge.
Sadie decided to send the book to Sam. She was going to write a note, but then she changed her mind. He would know who it was from.
When Ant was passing through Boston, Sadie invited him to come speak to her class. Counterpart High was on its seventh installment, and most of her students were obsessed with it—for their generation, it was the Harry Potter of games. It was far more popular than Ichigo, and differently popular than Mapleworld. It was the kind of entertainment that evoked youth itself for the person who could remember playing it.
After class, she took Ant to dinner, and they gossiped about people they knew in the gaming industry: Who was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal? Who was in rehab again? What company was on the verge of bankruptcy? What game’s sequel completely sucked, and had clearly been outsourced to a disinterested team of programmers in a foreign land?
They had stealthily avoided subjects that were too personal or fraught. But over dessert, Sadie asked, “How’s Sam doing?” It had been two or three weeks since she’d sent the Magic Eye book, and she hadn’t heard back from him.
“The same, I guess. He’s shutting down Pioneers at the end of the year.”
“Poor Pioneers.”
“I’m not sure why Sam wanted to make that game. It was top secret at the company, at the time. Did you ever play it? It was this weird retro thing.”
“Never played it,” Sadie lied.
“Mayor Mazer stepped down from Mapleworld, too. Sam is holding a general election for his replacement.”