TIMOTHY HENDERSON CLICKED away at his keyboard, navigating his character, Derek “The Quiet Storm” Storm, through the open world of Cape Canaveral: Galactic Empire. Timothy spent most nights in his chair playing the MMORPG—Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game—his microwaved pizza bagels growing cold between intermittent nibbles, his cup of neXt-Level Energy MaX turning tepid between sips.
Bullets zipped past Derek “The Quiet Storm” Storm’s head, zinging off the shipping container he was hiding behind. A Tucanian sniper was camped in a distant building, waiting for Derek to appear. A Tucanian raiding party roamed the spaceport looking for coins, health packs, and other players to kill, then mock in the chatroom. They were four dots systematically advancing across the map on Derek’s radar—professionals, and they were closing in. Behind them, three more dots wove their way through the spaceport. The other members of Derek’s squad—Team The Dark Wing—were stalking the raiding party.
“I’m pinned down, right in this guy’s line of sight,” Derek said to the members of his team via his headset. (When Timothy was playing the game, this is how he thought of himself—as Derek Storm, an elite soldier. In real life, he was an overweight professor who taught chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington, one of the science department’s only Black professors. He wore V-neck sweaters and brown corduroy slacks. He had taken his call sign from a CD he found in the bargain bin at the dollar store, a lightning bolt on its cover. When walking to his classes, Timothy’s steps were slow and considered, but in the game, he darted like the lightning bolt, nimble and electric.)
“No worries, Derek,” Lexlitha said. “I’m almost in position. When I get to the tower, I’ll have a clear field of view.” The blip on Derek’s radar labeled Lexlitha snaked through the alleys of the spaceport toward the dock’s control tower.
“Let me know when, and I’ll draw him out.”
“It’s too risky.” Lexlitha’s blip had entered the control tower and was perched in the control room with a view of the docks. Derek knew she was scanning the buildings’ windows through the scope of her rifle, looking for the Tucanian sniper.
“Risk? I eat risk for breakfast.” (Timothy enjoyed talking like this—like a character from an eighties action film. He spent his office hours coming up with one-liners to use during the game. Unfortunately, most of them fell flat.) “And then I chase it with a big glass of ass-kicking.”
Derek’s squad was human, except for Lexlitha. She was Eridanian, an excellent pilot, a fierce warrior, and a trusted teammate.
(When Timothy had first seen Lexlitha’s profile picture—a photo of her in cosplay—on the screen, he knew he had to talk to her. In her picture, she wore an Eridanian battle suit: black leather pants, red knee-high boots, a blood-red tunic shielded by a silver breastplate, and a chain mail belt with an Eridanian ceremonial dagger in a scabbard at her waist. She had even painted her skin the right shade of orange and dyed her hair purple. Authentic down to the last detail.
Timothy’s profile picture was a forgery, an image of someone else. He had lifted a picture of a male model off the internet—a roguish Black man in his late twenties with a permanent five o’clock shadow, his hair the perfect fade, and a dangerous smirk. Then Timothy photoshopped a Cape Canaveral Season 3 airman’s jumpsuit onto him and posted it as his profile picture. He didn’t consider it lying. One’s avatar was supposed to represent one’s character. And the rogue was what Timothy thought he’d look like if he were Derek Storm.)
“I’m in position, Derek,” Lexlitha said.
“Copy.”
“You don’t have to do this. We can flush him out another way.”
“We both know this is the only way.” Derek reloaded his rifle. “Let’s just hope he’s not looking at his map when I make my move.”
Derek leaned out and fired off a couple of rounds at the building where he thought the sniper might be hiding, then quickly ducked back behind the crates.
The corner of the crate exploded next to his ear, splinters flying between the stacks of cargo. By firing on Derek, the sniper gave away his position, his muzzle fire a flare to Lexlitha. Derek didn’t hear her fire or see the body fall from the window, but when the sniper’s dot disappeared from his radar, he knew she’d gotten him.
It was just one of the many times she had his back.
(Timothy and Lexlitha had formed the squad two years earlier. When they’d first met via direct messages through the game’s chatroom, the conversation flowed like Eridanian cave-boar blood wine, messy and in awkward clumps. They’d been on Cygnus VII, in a clearing outside the village of B’Modfolious. Encircled by trees with black bark and red leaves, they talked about their favorite Cape Canaveral episodes. Hers was Season 3, Episode 5, “The Star-Slayer Gambit.” In return, Timothy shared a little about his life in Indiana as a college professor, the boredom he felt teaching students who thought absolute zero was a zero-calorie vodka. There were parts of his life he left out. He didn’t tell her he was married. He didn’t think she’d want to know that. It would have killed the conversation, and he wanted to keep her there as long as possible.
As they talked, they racked up experience points by fragging mobs—computer-controlled swarms of Cygnusian battle drones. They were there for hours, just the two of them, fighting their way through the village. Watching their avatars on the screen, Timothy thought it was refreshing to have a conversation with someone and not know what they looked like. They were getting to know each other without the burden of personal appearances. She was completely unaware of the gut and glasses he’d cultivated over the years of staring at a screen. And he was unaware of every mole or dimple she would call a flaw and he would probably call adorable. They left with plans to meet up in the game the next day, respecting each other’s anonymity. Two years later, Timothy still didn’t know Lexlitha’s real name.)
“Derek, you okay?” Lexlitha asked.
“Yeah, I’m good. Nice shot.”
“There are four more converging on my position.”
“I see them.” Something flashed on Derek’s radar, making him smile. “David, do you copy?”
“Copy,” David said.
“If you get to the building next to Lexlitha, there’s a grenade launcher in the far corner.”
“Loot box! Fuck, yeah.”
“I’ll move around behind them and pin them between the buildings.”
“And I’ll frag the shit out of them,” David said.
“Stan,” Derek said, “are you ready for some crowd control?”
“Absolutely.”
“Can you reach the alley in sector G-8 and lay down some crossfire?”
“Already on my way,” Stan said, his blip dashing toward the alley. “Let’s gank these bastards.”
(Stan “The Savage One” Desmond and David “Battleship Dick” Gilbert were Timothy’s other squad mates. They were a couple of high school kids he’d bumped into while running some solo missions. Lexlitha was awkward around them at first. Timothy thought maybe their childish humor made her uncomfortable, but after a few missions, their gameplay coalesced, and they decided to form Team The Dark Wing.)
David found the grenade launcher in the building next to the alley and dropped below the base of a window. The remaining Tucanians slowly crept down the street, maintaining a tight formation. They had their weapons raised, aiming them at open windows and doors. Derek scurried between alleys, trash cans, and the front stoops of buildings. He dove behind another crate and fired. His bullets bit the ground and the walls. The Tucanians panicked, broke their formation, and sprinted down the street, returning fire blindly as they ran. When they reached the alley, Stan popped up from behind a crate and fired on them, hitting the concrete at their feet. The Tucanians ducked into the alley and hid behind a dumpster, right under David’s window. David fired the grenade launcher down onto the raiders, a ball of flame ending their stint in the game, their bodies disappearing into the digital ether to be respawned in another arena. The only constant of the game: no one ever really dies.
“Nice shooting, David,” Derek said. “That’s just how I like my Tucanians—extra crispy.”
“Dude,” Stan said, “every time you say your own win quotes, my feed goes crazy.”
“You got to say that shit during the tournament,” David said.
“We’re all still confirmed for the tournament, right?” Lexlitha asked.
“This weekend,” Derek said. “It’s in the planner.”
(Timothy was excited to be getting out of Bloomington for a weekend. On weekends, his neighbors charged Indiana alums fifty dollars to park in their front yards. Timothy had to install a chain-link fence around his house to keep football fans from leaving tire grooves in his lawn. For Timothy, weekends consisted of grading papers at the kitchen table while listening to car accidents and fist fights after a Hoosiers’s loss.)
“Are we seriously having this discussion?” Stan said. “This is the International Cape Canaveral Legion of Battle Open Invitational! The biggest competition in E-sports. Grand prize—one million fucking dollars.”
“And,” David said, “it’s sponsored by neXt-Level, ‘The Only Energy Drink for Serious Gamers.’ I just pounded a can of Status: Red. I’m bringing home two cases of that shit.”
(Three months earlier, they had received their invites, the invitees being the teams with the highest character levels and experience points within the game’s massive online universe. When Timothy opened the email, he was ecstatic. Being asked to participate in a video game tournament was something he’d dreamed of since childhood. Between 1989 and 1992, he’d forced his parents to rent The Wizard, starring Fred Savage, seventy-four times. After rewinding the VHS cassette, Timothy would turn on his Nintendo and pretend he was playing for the grand prize. In the movie, the prize was $50,000, but Timothy changed it, imagining he won a trip to the moons of Saturn. After reading the invitation, he messaged his team to see if they were as excited as he was, but being the oldest, he tempered his enthusiasm, not wanting to seem uncool.)
“I have to book my lodgings,” Derek said.
“You haven’t booked your hotel room yet?” Stan asked.
“You need to get on that,” David said. “All the rooms will be gone soon, and we need a place to get lit between matches.”
“It’s on my list of things to do,” Derek said. (Dread consumed Timothy every time he thought about booking a room. Going out of town meant telling his wife. For the past two years, her level of sobriety ranged from hungover to passed out, making finding the right time to tell her difficult.)
They all made plans to meet up for practice over the weekend. Then Stan and David logged off. Leaving just Derek and Lexlitha.
“Hey,” Derek said.
“Hey,” Lexlitha said.
“This tournament news is pretty exciting.”
“We deserve it. We’ve worked hard, put in the time, trained. I think we’re ready.”
“It looks like we’re all going to be in Chicago. Staying at the hotel.”
“I won’t be at the hotel. I need to save money,” Lexlitha said.
“Oh. Do you live in Chicago, then?”
“We really never talked about this, have we? Yeah, I live there.”
(Lexlitha lived one state away, in the same city as the tournament. Timothy’s chest tightened. He covered the mouthpiece on his headset and took a deep breath. There was something he needed to ask her, something he should have asked when they first met. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words never came. Timothy froze. Then, as though she were wearing Rh’Xdriq, the Eridanian tiara that granted its wearer telepathic abilities, Lexlitha spoke the words Timothy had been too flustered to say.)
“I was thinking, we should get together before the tournament and meet for dinner.”
“Yeah?” Derek said, his voice raising with excitement.
“It would be great for team morale if we could all get together and discuss strategies over pizza or something.”
Derek paused for a second. “The whole team?”
“Of course the whole team,” Lexlitha said. “What were you—”
“Someone’s calling me. I need to go. Talk to you tomorrow during training.”
“Uh, okay. Talk to you tomorrow, I guess.”
Timothy ripped his headset off, chucked it at his desk, and logged off. He groaned, beating the back of his head against the cushioned headrest of his gaming chair. When he’d received his invite to the tournament, two thoughts had energized him and fueled his dreary day: one, he was being recognized for a skill he’d spent his life honing, and two, he’d finally be able to spend time with Lexlitha.
Every minute with her was agony. The desire to tell her how he felt was overwhelming and made it hard to focus. Initially, he’d been attracted to her profile picture, the Eridanian warrior, but he had fallen in love with her during their training—getting to know her as they stood over the smoking bodies of their enemies, discussing which Cape Canaveral characters they thought should have had on-screen romances. For two years, he’d fantasized about spending time with her outside of the game, and the tournament was the perfect setting.
Timothy thoroughly expected it to be a wonderful experience. He’d never been to anything like it before. His only frame of reference was the documentary Caped: The CapeCon Story. In addition to hosting the tournament, Chicago also hosted CapeCon, the annual Cape Canaveral convention. It was another dream of Timothy’s to attend wearing Colonel Gregory Jackson’s uniform from Cape Canaveral IV: Return to Mission Control. The documentary Caped: The CapeCon Story focused on the experiences of CapeCon attendees as they absorbed the pageantry of the convention. They all described CapeCon as a community, a gathering for fans who loved and celebrated the canon and ideology of Cape Canaveral. People from all walks of life attended, dressed as their favorite characters. There were costume contests, a Cape Canaveral-themed food court, and aisles and aisles of rare collectibles and assorted merchandise. There was even a wedding chapel modeled after the chapel from Season 3, Episode 19, “Wedding Bliss, Wedding Nightmares,” in which Captain Glenn Wilder was forced to marry a princess from Centaurus Prime, then escape from a labyrinth before she could murder him. The chapel even had volunteers dressed as torture drones standing guard in case someone had second thoughts about having a novelty wedding. Timothy had imagined marrying Lexlitha in a traditional Eridanian wedding ceremony, complete with the combat ritual where he fought a giant ice worm. He hoped the International Cape Canaveral Legion of Battle Open Invitational would have the same inclusive atmosphere—gamers from all over celebrating their unique cross section of sub-cultures: video games and Cape Canaveral.
This was the tournament’s seventh year. Timothy and Lexlitha had discussed the possibility of participating during their squad’s first campaign in Ry’thimic City, the capitol of the Coma Berenician Empire, and then again while flying missions through the Cygnusian Belt, the asteroids surrounding the Cygnus system. They speculated about what playing in the invitational would be like, the stress of having every one of their moves scrutinized by the play-by-play announcers, the thrill of watching their team name climb in the rankings. The goal of participating in the tournament became a coalescing adhesive; it motivated them to spend hours practicing together, Timothy falling more and more in love with Lexlitha.
When he received his invitation, Timothy hoped the anticipation of the tournament would force him to tell Lexlitha how he felt, believing winning the tournament and Lexlitha’s heart were his only shots at happiness. He had prepared multiple conversations to have with her that eventually led to a motel bed covered in purple Ophiuchusian orchids. (Ophiuchusian orchids were a hallucinogenic aphrodisiac, introduced in Season 3, Episode 1, “Tower of Flower.” While on a routine mission to take supplies to Ophiuchus IV after an earthquake cracked its largest continent, Captain Glenn Wilder’s ship experienced engine failure and crashed on Ophiuchus III. He was found by space druids, who carried him to their home, a tower covered in Ophiuchusian orchids. They nursed Wilder back to health and repaired his ship, but they realized Wilder’s spirit was as damaged as his body. So they ground the orchids into a tea and served them to Wilder, sending him on a cosmic trip to heal his psyche. The designs to replicate the flowers were online, but Timothy didn’t have a way to fabricate them; his plan was to toss a bunch of random flowers on a bed and hope that was enough.)
Each scene in Timothy’s fantasies started with Stan and David logging off. Timothy then channeled Derek Storm, being bold and direct, and suggested he and Lexlitha split a hotel room to save money, or meet for dinner. In every variation, Lexlitha said yes, revealing she had been in love with him since the first time she saw him gun down a group of Cyber-Rats from Delphinus III and had been waiting for him to ask her out. Timothy’s reveries would then drift to their weekend in Chicago, gaming by day, Lexlitha disguised as a human, then making love all night, Lexlitha as her true self—an Eridanian warrior, her chain mail at the foot of the bed, her dagger still strapped to her waist. All he had to do was tell her how he felt. He’d had plenty of opportunities. Stan and David always logged off once practice had ended, leaving him alone with Lexlitha. Yet, at the golden moment, Timothy always panicked, making those daydreams seem like they existed only in the Contradiction Dimension.
But this was not the Contradiction Dimension from Season 1, Episode 8. If it were, Timothy wouldn’t be teaching students who thought one unit of joule was the minimum amount of smoke one could exhale from a vape pen. He wouldn’t be stuck in Bloomington in a bad marriage, his only future being retirement and a dwindling pension. But the Contradiction Dimension wasn’t a place where good people succeeded. It was where bad decisions were made and evil impulses were acted upon, where Security Officer Colt Dagger, in order to catch serial killer Dmitri Petrov, adopted the psychology of a murderer, becoming a serial killer himself. It was a place where Lieutenant Megan Strata assassinated Colonel Nathan Norris to take over Kennedy Space Center and start a war between Earth and Centaurus Prime. It was bleak and dystopic, and nothing worked out as one hoped. So maybe Timothy was living in the Contradiction Dimension, and somewhere in an alternate reality, he was a famous gamer, had lost fifty pounds, and was married to his squad mate and love of his life, Lexlitha.
Timothy knew the Contradiction Dimension was a plot device from an outdated TV show and his fantasies existed only in his head. But still…
It was after midnight when Timothy turned off his computer and multiple monitors and left his office. He rotated his wedding ring around the flesh of his finger. His fingers had swelled since his wedding, and the ring was tight and pinched his thick digit. He twisted it periodically to release some pressure. The lights were still on in most of the house. In the living room, his wife, Deborah, slept on the couch, an empty bottle of two-dollar chardonnay on the coffee table. The TV blared. Women wearing expensive dresses and lots of makeup yelled at each other. Timothy turned off the TV and checked his phone.
Harry had texted. His house had burned down.