[Brackets] (17 page)

He was passing the small Ullamaball amphitheater when he remembered Noh. He hadn’t been in the room when Perry
had
left. He looked around for some sign of him, saw none, and ran out to the clerk.

“Went out that way fifteen seconds ago,” the clerk said, not even looking up. Perry dropped his bag and ran out into the parking lot. Noh was getting into a sedan.

“Wait, wait. Wait,” he puffed, jogging over to hold the door open. Mr. Noh seemed impatient.

“I’m sorry for your loss today,
Mr. Lynwood,” Mr. Noh responded.
“But since there is nothing more to observe, I have to move on to other engagements.”

“Wait, that’s it? You come all the
way
over from Korea to watch me, and you take off after fifteen minutes without saying anything? You don’t even want to ask me about basketball, like you were saying…?”

“Mr. Lynwood,” Noh said abruptly, looking at him full in the face. “I came here
because of curiosity and hope
. I wanted to make sure that I did not exclude the possibility that you were the legitimate product of the city that I have been hoping for. But you are not. That was
not entirely unexpected, but it was still disappointing
.
And now
I must get to my plane.”

“Wait, wait!”
Perry was reeling so hard that he didn’t know how to put his words together. “You’re going to judge me on one bad call? That’s not fair, Mr. Noh, totally not fair. You yourself said that I had potential. What about that speech you gave me a few minutes ago? I’m not dead, not in real life, and I’m still the same
man I was before that happened. What about my bracket?”

“Is that really your bracket?” Noh asked, raising his eyebrows. Perry
froze, then knew that he had waited too long to lie
.

Noh sighed. “I thought not. I knew about that possibility when I came, but I had to be sure. Your record in t
he Tribal Wars, until today, had
been impressive. You aspired to be a General, and to your credit, you became one. But from what I observed today, you are rather a pawn than a king.”

“Now hold on,” exclaimed Perry, his hands shaking. “I have been a great leader, you said so yourself, and you can’t judge me based on
one
bad mistake. I still have a future.”

Noh shrugged. “We are not guaranteed a future in life, Mr. Lynwood, we are just guaranteed a fate.”

“
How is that any different
?”

“Fate is not in our hands. Time can be managed, inevitability cannot. My time is precious, your inevitability is…unfortunate. The city has shown us that.”

“Come on, that art-in-life-in-whatever stuff doesn’t apply to this.
What just happened won’t happen again
. It’s not like I’m going to get shot at
the Montezuma
a
second time.
”

“Perhaps not,” Noh shrugged.
“I must go now. I wish you
good luck
with your bracket,
Mr. Lynwood
.
You will need it, I suspect.
I can think of no more visible hand of fate than a bracket
, especially one that you didn’t choose yourself
.” With that, Mr. Noh closed the door of the car and
was driven
off, leaving Perry in the parking lot alone.

*
             
*
             
*
             
*

That evening, after some driving, some drinking, and some taxi riding, Perry arrived home. He stood for a minute in the middle of the sparse and unkempt living room,
then moved on to see the pile of dishes in his sink. He sat at his table and stared at a knife laden with a sticky skin of strawberry jam. Absently, he
held the knife so that the tip was pointed into the table
and let
the handle swivel
back and forth between his fingers. He thought about all the people and ideas he hated. He needed to go to sleep.

He
retreated to his bedroom
. His computer was still on.
B
y force of habit
and against the wishes of his exhausted body,
he
opened his e-mail and
scanned his
messages.
He instantly wished he hadn’t.

There, at the top of the list, was an invitation to an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington DC, to attend, by virtue of his miraculous bracket, a ball game in an arena.

[
West Division
: Final Four]

[Saturday, April 4]

Perry sat in his seat high up in the Verizon Center,
wedged between the self-important
CEO
and the
floppy-haired guy
, and
anxiously
considered his situation.

He hadn’t so much agreed to co
me as he felt compelled to come
.
In his darkest moments, he acknowledged that h
is
life had im
ploded
over the course of three weeks, and he had no reasonable explanation why. The border between fantasy and reality, it seemed to him, had become dangerously porous. It could be no coincidence that his final Kaah Mukul error had been to go to a sports arena and tempt fate, and in the same day, within mere hours, he was summoned to a sports arena to do the same thing in reality
. H
e was sure that the resolution of his catastrophe would
somehow occur over the course of this game. Why this was happening to him, he couldn’t say. Noh’s final words, like a curse on his soul, continuously echoed back to him. He realized how insane he would sound if he were to try and explain it. But a good leader…no, he was not a leader anymore. He wasn’t anything anymore. All he had left was his name and, of course, his bracket.

In his hand, he held a printed copy
of the cursed document.
He had gone through it many times over the last week. At first he was looking for the code that Typhoon150 had supposedly entered for him. After several days, he had personally confirmed that there was no code—not even the possibility of a code—embedded in the selections. It was no surprise that all of his e-mails to Typhoon’s account went unanswered. Like everything else that week, it had
been a set-up, a trick to rob him
.
The Scarmada now dominated the
Triabl Wars
.
Killergremlin was now the General of the
depleted
Warriors of Tsepes.
Perry’s former position at the clerk’s office was filled by another
.
H
is house was at risk
of foreclosure
. The only thing he had left was the only thing he hadn’t wanted,
and it was going to end
. And then what? There was no way to jump out of reality, no matter how surreal it was.

These were the thoughts that lingered in his mind like tar on his skin, difficult to shake even in his lighter, more lucid moments,
when he
laughed at himself for thinking that his fate was somehow tied to
a fictional city in a computer or a piece of paper.
There were no Ahtzon, no Scarmada, no
temples
or altars built for ripping out his heart.
Surely, life’s imitation of art had a limit
.
T
he worst-case scenario was that thi
s would all be a waste of time.
As for the bracket, he
had done his homework. He knew that no one was giving Georgia much of a chance against a bigger, faster Nebraska team. He was probably bound to lose—thanks for nothing, Typhoon150—and he realized that he should embrace the inevitable, ease the anxiety about the unknowns in his life by accepting fate as it happened to him.
But that thought didn’t comfort him. No
thing
truly
comforted him.

The pregame introductions helped him understand that Nebraska was in white and Georgia was in red. He watched carefully, trying to remember what he had read about the players. There was an especially tall one who, he concluded, had to be the leader. He had always been good at picking out the leader.

The ball was tossed into the air, and the game began with a sense of instant acceleration. Both teams were nervous and balls clanked off rims more often than they went in. Perry tried to follow the patterns in the way each team defended or moved, but it went too fast. Each possession was different, although he noticed that Georgia often found ways to get the ball to the leader, who was always standing and pushing
around opponents
near the basket. That was smart, he thought. However, he also noticed that Nebraska seemed to make just as many baskets as Georgia, and the scoreboard confirmed it. By the end of the first half, the s
core was Nebraska 45, Georgia 46
.
He was winning
.

A reporter came to them during half-time with questions. She addressed the tall, overly enthusiastic one first.

“Tucker, what do you expect out of your Nebraska team during this second half?”

“I’m happy with the way they’re playing,” he said, grinning so much that the two large red N’s painted on both cheeks
became
illegible. “They’ve got no one who can guard my man 14, he’s a beast, and Miller is playing out of his mind. I think they come back with some energy in this second half and finish it off.” Then, with sudden, game-day-testosterone-fueled euphoria, he pointed both
fingers in the air and yelled “Nebraska is Number One!” A host of Nebraska fans lower in the stands overheard and cheered their approval. The reporter high-fived Tucker, and the camera was turned onto Perry.

“Perry, Tucker seems pretty confident. What do you think about your Georgia going into the second?”

“Uh, well,
they’re up, right? I hope it stays that way
.” Some Georgia fans overheard and began a “Bull-dogs!” chant. Perry turned and gave them two half-hearted thumbs up, then put them down as if he wasn’t sure that he’d done the right thing.

“You said it, Perry. It’s anyone’s game. We’ll check in with you after the final buzzer.” The camera went off, the reporter thanked them, and they left.

Perry checked his watch and excused himself to find the bathroom before the next half started.

The bathroom was crowded with rowdy basketball fans, but he found an empty stall and sat down to take some deep breaths. It was nice to finally have some relative quiet and solitude for a few minutes, regardless of how bad it smelled.

Alone with his own thoughts, he took stock of the game thus far. What he’d told the interviewer was true—
they were up. Only by one point, one half of a basket, but winning was winning.
And what the interviewer had said was also true—it was anyone’s game. It could be his game. For the first time, it occurred to him that he might actually win. And with that thought, he began to feel a little silly for all the strange thoughts that he’d had leading up to the game. If he won,
since
he was the only one th
at had Georgia winning the championship
, he would automatically
take the Bracket Challenge if Georgia won in the Final Four
. T
hat meant
a lot of
money. He could move somewhere else. He could find a new city, a new game, a new team, he could start over. Not that there was anything like Kaah Mukul, but he could build his repertoire and reputation, maybe even attract some professional gaming endorsements. Things would work out.

He stood up, conscious that the bathroom had been getting progressively quieter over the past couple of minutes. As he did, his eyes met his
blurred
reflection in the metallic door of the stall. He
could feel that his
eyes were tired,
over-
stimulated
. He rubbed them
and reopened them. Suddenly, a glimmer of light appeared over the reflection of his forehead. It flashed and grew, completely silent,
into
a whiti
sh-yellow pool
of light that seemed to hypnotize him as he stared into it. He couldn’t move.
He fixated on it, as if there were nothing else in the world.
The light grew brighter and brighter until it dominated his field of vision. And then it was gone.

He knew that light.
The last time he’d seen
it
was in the Montezuma Arena, right before he died.

Movement came back into his limbs. He pushed the door, but it was
still
latched. His hands were too shaky to turn the lock, so he flung his shoulder into the door and lost his balance as he went through, slamming into the bathroom wall. A man washing his hands looked over and asked if he was alright. He raised his hand and mumbled that he was fine. But he wasn’t. He was terrified and sweating.
It smell
ed bad in there, like gasoline
or drying blood.
He looked above the stall to see if there was any kind of mirror or light source that could account for what he had seen, but he saw nothing.