THE CONVENTION CENTER was a glass giant nestled along the water, with white lines dividing windowpanes and a glass walkway that connected it to the hotel. An awning of curved glass extended over an elaborately ornamented crowd mingling outside the entrance. The cosplayers represented every culture in the Cape Canaveral anthology. Some were painted red, wearing Cygnusian battle armor—neon green breastplates with lightbulbs on the shoulders—and carrying perfect replicas of Cygnusian eradicator rifles; another group was adorned with the apparatus of the queen’s guard from Ophiuchus II—spears and gray armor, blood-red handprints smeared across their breastplates. Timothy felt breathless, the galaxy spiraling around him.
In the opening scene for Caped: The CapeCon Story, the camera crew had entered the convention center and made their way through the costumed attendees while the narrator reflected on the nature of community, saying community was where you found it. Timothy rolled his beat-up suitcase, with its split seams and cracked plastic, into the hotel lobby, past the gamers and cosplayers registering for the weekend’s events celebrating the varied aspects of the Cape Canaveral universe. He took a deep breath and smiled, feeling at home.
At the front desk, Timothy checked into his room. He texted Stan and David, letting them know he’d arrived. Harry and Dennis were checking into their rooms when his phone buzzed. The reply from his teammates was written in the urgency of all capital letters. They were in the convention center waiting in line to register for the tournament and needed to speak to him immediately.
“I need to go meet the guys on my team,” Timothy said. “I’ll catch up with you later tonight.”
“Yeah,” Dennis said, looking at his phone. “Whatever.”
“Huh?” Harry said.
“I said, I need to go meet my team.”
“Absolutely. The camaraderie of competition. Let us know when your first match is.”
“Of course. Good luck today.”
“Thanks,” Harry and Dennis said in unison, then quickly hid their awkward expressions, as though they were about to rob the same bank.
The glass doors whooshed as Timothy stepped from the lobby back into the crowds outside. Not everyone was enjoying the tournament. Across the street from the hotel, thirty-six women held signs and marched in a tight circle. They weren’t dressed like characters from the show or wearing the matching shirts associated with tournament competitors. They looked like regular folks who’d decided to spend the day protesting. The slogans on their placards were too far away for Timothy to read, but their chants of “Let her play! Let her play!” drifted above the stimulating street dialogue.
Stan and David were waiting in line when Timothy found them, their adolescent anxiety obvious as they rocked back and forth and looked around as though they’d just stolen pills from their grandmother’s medicine cabinet. Timothy had never met them in person, only seen their photos. (Stan and David didn’t hide behind bogus profile pictures. Stan used his high school yearbook photo, and David used a picture of himself setting off fireworks in a Burt’s Big Beef parking lot.) A Black kid wearing a hat with the tournament’s logo on it stood next to them in the registration line.
“Dude,” Stan said. “You look nothing like your avatar.”
“I knew you were old,” David said, “but dang, you look like shit.”
Timothy ignored the teenagers, the ease of their youth making their insolence socially acceptable. “Where’s Lexlitha? I thought she was going to be here.”
“Dude,” Stan said, “didn’t you hear?”
“All week that asshole Mexticlus and his team of neck-beards have been trolling her on Capestream,” David said.
“Word got out she was being flamed, and now there’s that protest outside.”
“She got so freaked out she dropped out of the tournament.”
“I can’t believe someone would do this to her,” Timothy said. “Who bullied her into quitting the tournament?”
“Take your pick.” David pointed to the line of teenage boys teeming with acne and angst standing behind them. The line of competitors contradicted the statistics of who played the game. Roughly 45 percent of gamers were women, yet only seven women waited to register. Timothy knew what kept them away. He had heard gamers harassing Lexlitha and read the disparaging comments targeting female gamers during livestreams. Online harassment didn’t coincide with the ideology of Cape Canaveral, a universe where one’s value was based on one’s intellect and ability to have off-screen romances with extraterrestrials. Timothy feared the game’s online community had light-years to cross before achieving the utopian vision of the show.
“I’ve been in a car since seven this morning,” Timothy said. “Why didn’t anyone text me?”
“She didn’t want you to know,” David said. “She thought you’d try to talk her into playing.”
“I know it sucks, but we had to find a sub.” Stan gestured to the kid in line next to them.
“I’m Jamison.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m a huge fan. Your maneuver at the Battle of Y’lomq is legendary.”
“You think a random sub can replace Lexlitha?” Timothy asked. “She was a Level 8 Eridanian Praetor.”
“You might know Jamison from his screen name,” David said.
Timothy recognized the name. Razortronic was a Level 7 Cygnusian Swashbuckler—a rogue with the reputation of leaping into missions with inexperienced teams to help them level-scale upward. Timothy was surprised to see him at the tournament and willing to play on their disciplined team.
“Jamison and I are in pre-calc together,” David said. “When Lexlitha texted this morning, I hit Jamison up to see if he’d be willing to step in.”
“I know I can’t replace Lexlitha—she’s a beast in the game—but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to win.”
“But Lexlitha? She can’t quit…” All Timothy’s fantasies began deteriorating in front of him. His life would remain a miserable perpetuation of the last two lonely years. Then his sorrow shifted to anger, his rage escalating at the thought of someone harassing his sweet Lexlitha, denying him the opportunity to be with her.
“When exactly did you talk to her?” Timothy asked. “Tell me everything.”
“She texted this morning, saying she was staying home,” Stan said.
“Up in West Ridge,” David added.
“You know where she lives?” Timothy asked.
“Dude, she’s our English teacher.”
At the registration table, a kid wearing a Cape Canaveral Tournament of Champions T-shirt typed on his laptop, then flung his head back and cursed at the ceiling.
“Attention competitors,” someone said over the PA. “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Registration will be postponed until further notice.”
Except for the parents escorting their kids, the registration line—groaning at having their enrollment interrupted—was made up of teens, a handful of thirty-year-olds, and Timothy. Timothy had dreamed of standing in this line, the anticipation of the competition, the celebrity that would accompany his team’s victory, but lingering among teenagers and adults who behaved like teenagers, these goals seemed meaningless.
“They’ve postponed registration,” Timothy said. “That gives you plenty of time to find another sub.”
“What?” David said. “No way! We need you here.”
“Do you have Lexlitha’s address?”
“You can’t just go barging in on her.”
“We know why you really want to go,” Stan said. “I get it. My girl, Lauren, is supposed to be here for the first match. I don’t know what I’d do without her support.”
“I just want to talk to her,” Timothy said.
David shook his head. “With all the shit going on, Miss Hicks needs her space right now.” Anonymity was the internet’s central characteristic, yet this pimply sixteen-year-old knew Lexlitha’s real name.
“Dude”—Stan hit David in the arm—“give him Miss Hicks’s address.”
“No!”
“This is about more than the game. This is about love.”
“Fuck.” David sighed and typed into his phone. “Here. Don’t fuck this up.”
Timothy’s phone buzzed with Lexlitha’s address. The numbers and letters, the code of civic planning, petrified him. They were the keys to meeting Lexlitha, to talking to her, to—for once in his life—not being the shy kid who hid in his basement playing video games because he was afraid the world would reject him.
“When you see Miss Hicks, just tell her how you feel,” Stan said. “Tell her you love her and will always cherish her.”
“Just don’t make her feel weird,” David said. “She’s a special lady. She lets us write essays about gaming. Not every teacher would do that.”
Over the PA, the theme to Cape Canaveral: The Original Series soared symphonically, the triumphant score punctuated by brass and cymbals. Timothy stood up straighter. The door to the hotel opened as a deluge of gamers surged into the center. Facing it, his profile resembled the airman he used as his profile picture, courageous and daring. He thanked Stan and David for the sage wisdom of two teenagers, wished them luck in the tournament, and waded through the swells of kids and cosplayers toward the exit.
Taxis dropped off conventioneers with oversized suitcases containing their weekend costumes in front of the hotel. Timothy tried to wave a couple of taxis down but was ignored as they zipped back to the airport. He texted Dennis, asking where he was.
Dennis was in the hotel bar, staring at a full bottle of beer sitting on the wooden bar top.
“It’s a little early for a drink, isn’t it?” Timothy asked.
“Fuck off, nerd.” Dennis leaned over the bar, running his hands through his thinning hair. His hand stopped on his bald spot and rubbed the patch of skin. He shuddered as though the skin on the back of his head was frigid.
“I need a favor.”
“What part of ‘fuck off’ don’t you get?”
Dennis’s demeanor reminded Timothy of Dmitri Petrov in Cape Canaveral Season 2, Episode 19, “The Jungles of the Mind.” The crew was exploring the jungles of Lyra III, home to a rare hallucinogenic tree sap. The jungle’s indigenous tribe was guiding the crew when Petrov spotted a tree leaking the psychedelic liquid. He snuck off to collect a sample, hoping to replicate it and sell it on the intergalactic black market, but the tree squirted sap into his eye. Petrov fell backward down a cliff, breaking his leg. The rest of the episode was a surrealist masterpiece during which the drug showed Petrov scenes from his life, including every crime he’d committed. One scene blurred into the next, ending with a shocking revelation that solved a mystery dating back to Season 1, Episode 1. In a never-before-seen scene, Petrov snuck into the building where Cape Canaveral’s experimental defense system was being kept and planted explosives; he was responsible for the explosion that had opened a wormhole underneath the NASA facility. (In the series finale, Season 3, Episode 24, “The Trial of Dr. Dmitri Petrov,” it was revealed that Petrov had been a Soviet spy, under orders to sabotage the defense system. The show was canceled before the jury could deliver their verdict. Without a season four, fans would have to wait until the first film in 1981 to find out what had happened to their favorite anti-hero.) After the montage, Petrov was faced with his death; his leg was infected, and he had to decide if he should prolong his life by amputating his leg. With a large rock, Petrov bashed his leg below his knee and passed out from the pain. He woke in the sick bay, leg intact, and learned the crew had found him right after his fall. He’d been in the sick bay the whole time; the soul-rending trip had been the result of the hallucinogen burning through his system. It was Petrov’s fearful indecision as he weighed removing his leg that Timothy saw in Dennis. Dennis’s apparent alcohol-generated anxiety also reminded Timothy of someone else, someone who wasn’t a character on a TV show.
“Did I tell you about my wife?” Timothy asked.
“Jesus Christ,” Dennis said. He smelled his beer and sighed.
“Every night she drinks a bottle of wine. She can’t help herself.”
“You told us on the drive up all about how her drunk ass crashed your car.”
“When she first started drinking heavily, she knew she had a problem. Every night, she’d pour herself a glass and stare at it. I think she was wondering if that was going to be the night her willpower won over her desire to have a drink, but every night her willpower lost.”
“There’s something I have to do today, and I’m worried I won’t be able to do it if I’m sober.”
“Are you going to kill somebody?” Timothy asked.
“Jesus, no!” Dennis sighed. “I’m meeting someone. I want to be relaxed and fun. If I don’t have a drink first, I’ll be too uptight and nervous to seal the deal.”
“Can I confess something?” Timothy said. “I’m not really here for the Cape Canaveral tournament. I came here to meet someone too.”
Dennis’s stool didn’t squeak as he turned, as if it had heard a thousand barroom confessions and knew when to be silent.
“One of my teammates,” Timothy said. “I came here for her.”
“Does your wife know this?” Dennis asked.
“Deborah pushed me away a long time ago.”
“So, where is this mystery woman?”
“She was supposed to be here, but something happened and she’s at home.”
“And you need me to drive you?”
“I was hoping to conscript you to my cause.”
“You know, Professor, there’s way more to you than you let on.”
“You could say I’m wearing the stealth armor of Az’Menhral, the Lyran god of deception.”
“You had to ruin it, didn’t you?” Dennis pushed his beer away. “Well, my thing doesn’t start till one. Let’s go.”
Dennis and Timothy headed toward the parking lot, the full beer still sitting on the bar.
Dennis parked on West Morse Avenue in front of a small brick house, a classic Chicago worker’s cottage with a big bay window and drawn gray curtains. The driveway had been converted into a garden. Late-February snow smothered the flowerbeds. The large maple in the front yard was still hibernating, and when Timothy got out of the car, the thin twigs at the tree’s top rattled in the Lake Michigan breeze.
“Just wave to me if you’re gonna stick around,” Dennis said. “I’ll come back and pick you up later.”
“Okay,” Timothy said.
“Hey. Good luck. I mean it. It’s not every day you get to chase happiness. You got to do it when you can.”
“Thanks. You too.”
Icy patches polka-dotted the sidewalk. As Timothy sidestepped them in his tennis shoes, he slipped on fresh doubts. What was he thinking coming here? He was about to turn his back on ten years of marriage, and for what? A picture of a girl with orange skin? Lexlitha was a body-painted myth. She wasn’t from a distant star. She was just another human who’d never comprehend the itch he felt when he saw pictures of women from other worlds.
But he hadn’t come to Chicago to fulfill his juvenile desire of sleeping with a space princess. He was there because of the genuine connection he’d made with Lexlitha the person, not her avatar. Fighting his doubts, Timothy shuffled over the treacherous concrete, knowing his feet were steered by something more current than childhood delusions. They were guided by a fantasy he’d devised as an adult—that he deserved someone who loved him for who he was, extraterrestrialphilia included, and that he deserved to love that person in return.
Timothy blew into his hands, then shook them. At the foot of the tree, a tiny sprout had popped through the ground, a bit of green waiting for the gray skies to clear.
He rang the custom doorbell and smiled as it chimed the first few notes of Cape Canaveral’s classic theme song. (He’d found the doorbell online and wanted to install it, but Deborah had refused, saying there’s no way her house was going to have a novelty doorbell.)
A rustling arose behind the door, as though someone were spying through the peephole. But the door stayed shut.
Timothy rang again.
Nothing.
In the Porsche SUV, Dennis sang along to the radio. Timothy was too far away to hear. (If he had been able to hear it, he probably would have been annoyed. The whole trip up, Dennis had insisted they listen to a satellite radio station called Party Hits. The station played “Who Let the Dogs Out,” by the Baha Men and “All Star” by Smash Mouth in heavy rotation.) Instead, he was serenaded by wind whistling through grates canopying the chimneys, the hoods keeping embers from exiting.
“Lexlitha.” He knocked on the door again. “It’s me, Derek. The Quiet Storm.”
The door swung open, its handle gripped by a Black woman in her late thirties wearing sweatpants and a thick cardigan. Her hair was wrapped in a bonnet. In the background, plastic pieces of a dollhouse and blocks were strewn across the floor,
“You look nothing like your picture,” she said.
“Neither do you,” Timothy said. “But that’s okay. That’s not why I’m here.”
“I’m not playing in the tournament. Do you know the amount of shit I’ve had to deal with?”
“I’ve heard about it.”
“Really? You’ve heard about it? All week people have been threatening me—all freaking week—on Capestream. Here. Look at this.”
Lexlitha pulled out her phone and showed Timothy messages she’d received, people saying they’d hurt her, rape her, kill her if she showed up at the tournament.
“Someone found out I have a daughter and threatened to hurt her too,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Did you report this?”
“Did I…” She gave Timothy a look that made him sorry he’d asked. “Of course I reported it. The accounts were suspended, but they just created new ones and sent the messages again.” Lexlitha sighed and slumped against the door. “It just sucks, you know?” She started to cry. “I’d finally found something I was really good at.”
As Lexlitha cried, Timothy felt his own tears build. She was experiencing something he had experienced his entire life: being told what he could and couldn’t care about.
“I’m Timothy,” he said.
“Amber,” she said, then laughed. “We don’t even know each other’s names, do we? God, the internet sucks.” She wiped her eyes.
As Amber, the mother with a young child and clearly sleep-deprived from the stress of constant threats, leaned against her door in stained sweatpants, Timothy was struck by how human she seemed.
“I’ve been incredibly selfish,” he said. “You’ve been dealing with harassment all week, and I thought I could come over unannounced. I’m truly sorry about how you were treated by the other gamers. They’re just a small portion of the community. You would have dominated at the tournament.”
“Are you kidding me? We would have won.”
“I’ll let you get back to your day.” Timothy turned to walk down the drive. The dome of gray above trapped the winter chill and prevented the sun from melting the ice. But as Timothy walked, a beam of light peeked through.
“I can’t believe you came out here to see me,” Amber said. “You could have found someone else to play in my place.”
“This was never about the tournament.” Timothy turned back toward her, trying not to slip.
Amber smiled, then looked at the sky, the winter clouds cracking to reveal the spring sun.
“Do you want to come inside?” she asked. “I’m making sandwiches.”
“Are you sure?” Timothy asked, feeling the warmth on his face.
“Yeah. We can watch the livestream of the opening ceremonies.”
Timothy waved to Dennis from the front porch. As Dennis drove away, Timothy wiped his feet on a doormat decorated with the image of an Eridanian war cruiser and the words For G’Thoxrida’n (the Eridanian goddess of war), then stepped inside.