Authors: Richard Dansky
My
fingers found the mouse again and started scrolling back through the document.
I
ran the numbers again. Range factors, too high. Armor values, too low until
nearly the very end, demonstrated by single pistol shots knocking avatars off
of rooftops and ten feet back and beyond. Trajectories that were too steep,
then too flat, then somehow off the charts and going every which way but loose.
If I closed my eyes I could see each of those sessions in turn, switching back
and forth between controller and notepad as I wrote down everything that went
wrong and the occasional thing that went right.
The
memory was a good one. One playtest session in particular leapt to mind, a
full-on six-hour fragfest that just kept going. I’d set it up to test weapons
balancing; it had only been supposed to go for an hour. After all, we were
still a long way from done, the game wasn’t polished, and everyone had other
things to do. Except, that day, they didn’t. We hit the hour mark and nobody
dropped out, so I reset the map rotation on the server and we just kept going.
Hour after hour, we kept going, with me getting my head handed to me every
which way but not giving the slightest little damn because there was something
there, something exciting and ineffably cool that made playing that game the
best thing in the world to be doing at that moment. We didn’t wrap up until
near midnight, and nobody cared. We’d found the “unknown fun,” that special
indefinable something that made a game sing, and from that moment forward, we
knew, knew that the game was going to be something special.
And
then BlackStone had pulled the plug, and it was all for nothing.
My
gut knotted up like a balloon with all the air sucked out of it double-quick.
They’d killed it. And now I was going to kill it all over again.
There
was more creaking out in the hallway, the sound of someone waiting to be told
they could come in. The pain in my belly unraveled and sorted itself out as
anger. I didn’t need that passive-aggressive crap, not tonight. I’d messed up
and I’d admitted it. If Sarah wanted to stay and work on things, I’d make it up
to her. If she wanted to go, then she should go—I wouldn’t deny that she more
than had the right. But to stand out there making just enough noise for me to
hear, to make me have to invite her in—that was pushing it.
The
anger felt good, so I went with it. Hell, I realized, that was the same button
that she was always pushing, or one of them. I’d said I was sorry, and I’d
meant it. But she always had to get me to give a little bit more, to somehow
win by wringing out just one little extra twist of apology so that the tally
ended up on her side of the ledger. And this time, I was having none of it. She
wanted to stand out in the hall? Fine. Let her stand out in the hall. Let her
wait. Let her twist in the wind a little bit instead of getting what she
wanted.
I
was working, dammit. And my work was important, no matter how many times she
might have said otherwise. It was what I did. And what I did mattered to me, to
the team, to the people relying on my work, and to the people out there who
were going to put down their hard-earned cash and play the game that I’d worked
on. My name, hell, our studio name was going onto that box, and it wasn’t like
I could tell some 5’3” physics major who called himself BAD455 that his game
sucked because I’d been too busy making nice-nice to my girlfriend instead of
making sure I’d gotten the spawn point locations placed correctly.
The
door wasn’t locked. It was her choice. Like I said, I had work to do.
With
shoulders squared, I opened another doc. It was a statement of the principles
of level design we were going to have to follow, banged out at great length in
conjunction with artists, engineers, and a wild-eyed QA analyst who swore that
what we came up with was going to kill him and his crew.
Well,
we’d never know now, would we? It didn’t matter anyway; the level artists had
broken every rule we’d come up with and a couple we hadn’t, and the engineers
had actually bought an ice cream cake to “celebrate” the day they finally
nailed the last one of the lot. A couple of the guys had been offended, until
one of the art leads—I think it was Shelly—had pointed out that they weren’t
going to get cake for screwing up anywhere else.
In
the end, we even invited the QA guys in to have some.
There
was a tap on the door. Soft, hesitant, but definitely a tap.
I
ignored it, and pulled up a map thumbnail. We’d done these to lay out the flow
through the space and give the testers—and us—some idea of what was supposed to
happen. But documentation never survived contact with the enemy, which was to
say playtesting, and we’d modified things so much that the original docs were
essentially useless. We hadn’t had time to keep them up, after all. There had
been more important stuff to do.
Another
knock, this one louder. “What?” I answered, a little more harshly than I
intended. Then again, maybe not. “I’m working!”
Nothing.
No creak of a door opening, no sound of footsteps going away and down the hall,
not even the muted whine of the doorknob’s hesitant turning. “Fine,” I
muttered, and then “fuck,” and went back to the documents.
Typical
Sarah, I told myself. Jesus, didn’t she understand that I was working? Didn’t
she know what was important? What really mattered to me? The righteousness of
my anger welled up and over me, leaving the taste of bitter copper in my mouth.
If Sarah wasn’t going to respect what I needed to do to make my stuff live—and
she’d never respected it, never respected me, I told myself—then the to hell
with her. The hell with Sarah and the hell with her fucking normal life and
normal job and taking me away from the thing I loved doing more than anything
else in the world.
Something
seemed off when I looked at the screen, and it took me a minute to realize what
it was. The documents looked washed out, largely because the brightness setting
on the monitor had apparently just crapped the bed. Now everything was too
bright, too bland—all white with a faint bluish tinge to it that told me if I
didn’t fix it fast, the monitor was going to fry itself.
“Just
great,” I said out loud, half-hopeful Sarah-in-the-hallway heard me. “That’s
all I need. A blown monitor so I can’t get anything done. Got to get things
done.” Without waiting to listen for a response—if there was one to be listened
for—I started mucking with the monitor settings. Playing with the gamma worked
a little, but not much. It felt like every time I adjusted something, the
monitor adjusted something right back. I made a mental note to send a nasty
email to the vendor I’d gotten it from, and another one to leave bad feedback
at the equipment’s listing, and a third to remind myself to look at the other
two.
The
knock came a little louder this time, slightly more authoritative but still
asking, not demanding entrance. I could feel the muscles in my back and neck
tighten with annoyance at that tap-tap-tap. Without thinking I spun my office
chair around. “What?” I said, more of a demand than a question. “I told you,
I’m working!” I meant to say that if she wanted to come in, she should, but
somehow all that came out next was “Leave me—and my work—alone!”
There
was no answer, just a short, sharp hiss of breath getting sucked up way too
fast. The doorknob rattled for a moment; the sound of someone letting go. Then
I could hear the quick steps leading away, the creak and slam of the bedroom
door. Open, shut, it was done and I was alone.
“Good,”
I growled. Now I could get back to work, to the things that I should be doing.
A little voice in the back of my head was screeching now, telling me that this
wasn’t quite right, that I couldn’t possibly be this angry, that it all felt a
little too familiar....
The
monitor, I now saw, had switched back to its normal brightness. That meant, of
course, that I had to undo everything I’d just done. With a mumbled curse, I
looked up at the ceiling, as if I were going to find answers there as to why my
equipment was suddenly acting like a coked-up toddle. None were forthcoming,
just off-white popcorn with a hint of water damage in the corners, so I set
about laboriously undoing the litany of changes I’d just made, bitching about
the time wasted when there was still so much to do.
The
sound of another door, opening and closing, came though the wall as much as the
doorway. Bathroom, I figured, and the sound of water running into the bathtub
told me I was right. I sniffed in what was presumably righteous disdain. For an
independent woman, Sarah was so goddamned girly sometimes. Yeah, we’d had a
fight. Now she was off to take a bubble bath to make her feel better. Calgon,
take her away. Hell, Calgon could take her away at this point and I probably
wouldn’t notice or care.
The
last thought surprised me, even as it flashed across my consciousness. It
seemed like everything that annoyed me about Sarah, every tic and trait and
habit that was less than absolutely fulfilling to me was taking up residence in
the lizard part of my brain, stomping around and pissing me off. Yes, we’d
fought, but even at our worst, with both of us flat-footed and screaming at
each other from two feet away, I’d never felt anything like this, never felt this
bone-deep hate for Sarah and everything she did, never dived this deep into
defensive rage. Something ugly was flopping around in my head, covering my
mental image of Sarah with acid and slime. Sarah, who’d started a life with
me….who’d seen something more in me than what I was now…who’d tried to stop me
from working so much, or so long, or so hard…who’d tried to get me to do
something else…who’d tried to come between me and my work….
From
the bathroom came a loud crash, followed by a second one. I knew that sound.
That was something heavy hitting a mirror, and a body hitting the floor.
…Tried
to come between me and my work….
“Oh,
Jesus,” I whispered and shoved myself out of the chair so fast it toppled over.
On the monitor screen behind me, jaggies danced up and down, crawling out of
the spaces between the letters on the doc I’d left behind. Most of them were
white. A few were blue.
I
took that in somehow without looking back. The chair hit the carpeted floor
with a thud and a bounce, but by the time it hit the second time I was out the
door and sprinting for the bedroom.
The
door was closed. I slammed into it full force, hard enough to hear wood around
the hinges splintering. My hand found the knob and rattled it. No luck; it was
locked.
Inside,
there was another crash, and a sound that might have been Sarah shrieking. I
could smell ozone now, sharp and vicious and an utterly wrong thing to be
smelling here and now and inside. A couple of steps back, and I threw myself
into the door again, leading with my shoulder and praying it would be enough.
It
was. The door exploded inward, the wood around the lock disintegrating as the
bolt gave way and spun through the air. The shock of the impact staggered me
and I stumbled, but somehow stayed on my feet. In front of me, the bathroom
door was locked. The ozone smell was stronger now, tearing at my throat and
burning in my lungs. From beneath the door I could see flickers of light,
impossibly bright and terrifyingly cold.
“Sarah!
Hang on, Sarah, I’m coming!” Inside, there was a moan, a sob, some sort of
hiss. I didn’t want to think about what was making the last of those sounds.
The
door to the bathroom opened out, not in. I tried the knob, just in case, and
wasn’t disappointed to be disappointed. With the lock engaged, I wasn’t going
to be able to rush my way through. That left two other options. One was
violent, one wasn’t.
I
picked the violent one.
With
studied rage, I lifted up my foot and slammed it into the door as hard as I
could. “Don’t” slam “You” slam “Goddamned” slam “Touch” slam “Her.”
Wood
shuddered under each kick. I could feel it splitting, cracking, giving way. I
could see steam curling from under the door and that drove me to work faster,
to kick harder. Palpable heat was rolling out with the steam, now, a pressure
that was trying to push me back and away. And all the time, the voice in my
head was still shrieking Screw her! Leave her! She’s not worth it!
“Yes,
she is,” I muttered, and kicked again. Paint cracked and shattered, falling to
the floor in long broken daggers. Another few kicks and I’d have made a hole
big enough to stick my hand through and open the door from the inside. A tiny
part of me hoped that none of the neighbors had heard anything, because if the
cops showed up now, it would look a lot like I was trying to kill my
girlfriend. A lot.
Then
I was through, my foot punching through shreds of pressboard, and I pulled it
back out before whatever was in there with Sarah could grab it.
Through
the hole I’d made, I could see her. Them. Whatever—pronouns were the least of
my worries. There was blood everywhere—blood on the floor, blood dripping down
the counters, blood on the broken fragments of mirror that were scattered in
every direction. Sarah lay on the floor in the middle of the destruction,
rivulets of red running out from beneath her. Jagged slashes marked her arms,
her legs, everything I could see. Her face was turned away from me, and for
that, irrationally, I was thankful. And on her arms, mixed in with the
still-bleeding wounds, were strange marks, ones with an oddly familiar shape.