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I KNOW IT SEEMS CRAZY to work on art while the world was burning down around me. But what else was I supposed to do? Ben was right: I needed to wait for Cass to scout out our next move.
Part of me worried this was an excuse. An escape. But anything else I tried to do now would only make things worse. I needed to sit and wait. But I needed to be ready for action, too.
So I needed to work. I needed something to fill my time and distract me from my worries. I needed to stay clear-headed and alert.
And someday, when this mad adventure was over—if I wasn’t in prison—I’d need something to do next.
That all would have been Ben’s argument, I’m sure of it. But I’d had time enough to figure it out for myself, so he pulled up the promotional material to get back to work, and I opened my map editor.
It showed me the apartment complex. The admin building. Part of me started suggesting a thousand little changes I could make based on my memory of last night.
The rest of me collapsed into a panic attack that lasted half an hour.
The scene on my screen brought the memory of last night back in vivid detail. So much of it still felt impossible, even though I’d described it all to Ben. But the real feelings came back—
The feelings came back like I was there. The fear that was creeping, strangling, and bursting all at once. The anger at Hauser and his thugs. At Trina for getting out of my car. At myself for leaving her...
That’s when my throat closed up and a throbbing pain stabbed into my chest. I couldn’t take a deep breath. I couldn’t focus on anything.
After a while, Ben asked me something, and I didn’t answer. He tried again, and all he got from me was a whimper. My heart was racing, I was drenched in sweat, and the only thoughts in my head were gibbering fear.
Twice we decided to head to the emergency room just in case. That’s how bad it was. We never did. He eventually gave me a glass of cold water and got me talking, and the worst of it passed.
I was scared to look back at my laptop, though. My jaw clenched and my pulse rose again just thinking about it.
“Want to go for a walk?” Ben asked. He was watching me, worried.
“A walk would be good,” I said. “Let’s try it.”
The weather wasn’t really right for it. It was hot out, this time of day, without even a breeze to cut the heat. Moving felt better than thinking, though. Ben pushed through it for my sake.
Once we were down on the sidewalk, he dove right in. “What were you working on?”
“Just the apartment complex. The map maker. It did something to me—”
“I know,” Ben said. “I saw it.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “It put me right back there. Like I was living through it.”
He thought about that for a few steps, then asked, “Can you use it?”
“Huh?”
“They’re always asking that in Creative Writing classes. ‘Can you use it?’ Sucks that happened to you, but can you put it in your story?”
“What I’m feeling?” I asked, disgusted.
“Those were some big feelings, Dave. They’re what big art is made of.”
“I don’t want anyone to feel like that.”
He bit his lip. “It...that’s not right. There are already people who feel like that. People like you. You can use your art to help them feel real—”
I shook my head so hard it hurt. “I don’t want my game to make people feel like that.”
He opened his mouth to answer. We went a few steps, and he shut it again.
We walked in silence for a while.
I started feeling bad. I knew he was just trying to help. And he’d had to watch my meltdown earlier. He was being careful.
I threw a look his way and asked, “How would I use it, though?”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to make light of anything....”
“It’s cool,” I said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But how do I use my silly game...?” I trailed off, but he understood my question.
He nodded, thinking more before he answered. Then he said, “I saw what happened to you. I’ve read about it. Heck, I’ve written about it. But I’ve never seen it in real life before.”
I wanted to say something nasty about him talking about my pain like that. But that was useless pride. I wanted his answers more.
And he had them. He went on in an almost lecturing tone. “You were trapped. You were caught between two impossibilities with no way out, and your operating system crashed. Your narrative deconstructed.”
“I flipped out.”
“Sure,” he said, “but the ‘why’ is what matters. You felt caught in a trap with no way out.”
“Yeah?” I thought back, trying to remember if he was right, but it was already a blur. It made sense, though. I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yeah. And what you can do with your ‘silly little game,’” he made air quotes with his hands to mock my word choice, “is show trapped people a way out of their traps.”
“I still don’t know the way out of mine.”
“Then you should write. You’ll find your way in work.”
“You’ve never sounded more like my dad.”
He shrugged. “Your dad is a smart guy.”
We walked a while in silence again. This time it was my turn to think.
“Dad wants me to get a job,” I said.
Ben opened his mouth to answer, but he sensed I was building to something, and he held his tongue.
I went on. “Dad wants me to live my life like it’s a spreadsheet. Cass wants me to live it like an FPS.”
“You’re good at FPS.” Ben said.
“I’m good at spreadsheets,” I said, “I just hate them. And I hate FPS most of the time, too. I’m only good at them once I know the map by heart.”
We went a bit in silence. He let me think. After a while, I said, “I think I’ve been doing it all wrong. All along. I need to change everything and treat it like the kind of games I like. Strategy. Character progression. Base-building.”
“Are you talking about ‘The Girl with the Gun?’”
“I’m talking about my life,” I said. “But ‘The Girl with the Gun’ is where I’m going to practice.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”