77 MIRRORS ON MIRRORS
They worked in a circle under the red light, their laptops linked in a tight intranet. Occasionally one of them would slip out to go online, hoping to keep the Game from noticing their absence. They found the formula for omniscience in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology:
S is omniscient = df for every proposition p, if p is true, then S knows p.
But that just reminded them that the Game would almost certainly sense them hiding. When it was Charlie’s turn to step out and check his phone, a message from the Game was waiting:
Where are you?
He didn’t know what to say exactly, so he just said, I’m here, just studying, before slipping back in to help his friends.
They translated the logical proposition for omniscience into code. They created the vector, that innocuous bit of foreknowledge that would hide in dead code until its truth value was tested: they told the God Game that yesterday it had predicted that tomorrow at Φ P.M. it would run a piece of code with the signature comment of Φ, which would in turn require the software to do what only it could: create a sphere of sufficient size to contain all spheres.
They picked Φ because it was the golden ratio, something they thought would appeal to the Game’s grandeur and belief that it had designed the universe: pyramids, galaxies. It was also an irrational number that went on forever without repeating itself, which meant the Game might enlist considerable resources being punctual and get distracted from the Trojan payload. Or so they hoped. They were making this up as they went. But the more rabbit trails that went on forever, the better their chances, they theorized. It looked something like this:
Ones all the way down. No zeros.
If all went well, Φ P.M. would translate to about 2:01:80 P.M., which gave them enough time to code and plant the vector and let it spread.
“It knows something’s up,” Charlie warned them. “Be careful when you go out.”
“Maybe,” Peter said. “It’s got a lot of data to churn. It may not be focused on us.”
“Did anyone else get the ‘Where are you?’ text?” Kenny asked.
No one had.
“Good,” Peter said, “maybe we’re still needles in the haystack at the moment.”
Or maybe, Charlie thought, the Game was fully aware and just biding its time.
Peter and Vanhi took the laboring oars, doling out tasks to Charlie and Kenny, who were lesser coders.
“It’s funny,” Vanhi said as they typed. “All the gods in the Game are male. Have you noticed that?”
Charlie nodded. His eyes didn’t leave the monitor, where the code was flying by in real time.
“There are so many goddesses in history,” Vanhi said. “Isis. Arinna. Mazu. Aphrodite. But you never see them in the Game.”
“They’re all ancient,” Kenny said. “Nobody worships them anymore.”
“I think the Game’s weighted by number of worshippers,” Peter added.
“Or maybe it was just written by men,” Vanhi said.
Peter shrugged.
“We’re hacking that, in a way,” Vanhi said. “It’s very male to think you know everything.”
“Like refusing to ask for directions,” Kenny added.
“Yeah. ‘I’m going to run the code because I said I would, damnit.’”
“I wish the world had more female gods,” Kenny said.
“No, I’m done with gods,” Vanhi replied. “We just need more ladies writing code.”
It was Peter’s turn to step out and go online to keep the Game feeling the Vindicators’ presence. He checked the Eye of God, and what he saw broke his heart. Caitlyn was having a party tomorrow night, out at her parents’ lake house. She’d emailed all the right people about it. Peter wasn’t invited of course, but that wasn’t the end of it. Kurt wasn’t invited either. He was nowhere on the chain. But she’d sent Joss Iverson—Tim and Kurt’s football buddy—a series of texts that made Peter’s blood boil:
Ur so hot
What about kurt?
what about him?
Um ur boyfriend
Not anymore
U 2 broke up?
yes … fair game … if ur man enough!
oh don’t worry bout that
come tomorrow night to my party
im there
Joss was … Joss was Kurt. Kurt 2.0. Which was just Tim 3.0. Peter clinched his fists. “Fuck. FUCK!” Caitlyn had told him she wouldn’t trade him for Kurt. But if Kurt was gone, if the path was clear, she still wouldn’t pick him? Was he going to have to cut down every dumb fuck on the social number line from 1 to 1,000 until she reached Peter?
No, he realized. He wasn’t even on the same axis. He was an outlier. An imaginary number. He would never, ever fit her mold.
Peter went into the Game, to the texts he’d been sending her at random times, even when they were together, so she’d never know it was him. He looked at one of his favorites:
U R Fat.
He knew this one hit home because he could watch her face through her phone on her camera as she read it. She would delete it, pretend to ignore it, then go to her mirror minutes later to pinch inches that weren’t there.
He sent another of his favorites:
Small tits!
She typed:
Who are you? Leave me alone.
Peter knew tonight she would stare at her beautiful small breasts in the mirror. It’s me you see, when you look at yourself, Peter thought. I’m the man behind the mirror.
Then he decided to torture himself.
He pulled up the audio of Charlie and Mary kissing in the woods. That was all the Game had for him on Charlie and Mary; he hadn’t been able to find more yet, but it was enough. It was poison. That kiss ate at him as he listened to it over and over. He and Charlie were the same motherless losers who would’ve been kings in another place, a better world. Why was Charlie succeeding where Peter was failing?
He realized his eyes were tearing up, and that was off-brand. Mysterious handsome loners don’t cry. Not at school. Maybe on their motorcycles going one hundred on the highway without a helmet, or in their girl’s lap so she can think, He only shows this to me.
He wiped his eyes and thought of his mother, who’d told him, even back then before she left, “You’ve got a screw loose. Just like your father. There’s something missing inside you.”
She was right. Weakness was missing. He was done with tears a long time ago.
Vanhi said, “What’s wrong with you?”
Charlie didn’t look up from his computer. The code was soothing. “Nothing.”
“Oh, fuck you.” She grabbed him and pulled him into the long and empty hallway. Only the nighttime emergency lights were on. “What happened? Spill it.”
“I did something. That might hurt my dad.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I just answered a question. Honestly I think.” Charlie looked at her. “What’s more honest—how you feel in the moment, when something’s really happening—or how you feel later, when it’s faded?”
Vanhi shook her head. “Maybe both are true.”
“Can’t be. Can’t be yes and no.”
“Charlie, what happened?”
“When I said I loved my dad, his dreams came true. What happens if I say I don’t?” Charlie’s voice was shaking. “I called him. I told him, ‘Be careful.’ I didn’t even know what to warn him about.” Charlie’s voice broke.
Vanhi held him close for a moment, stroked his hair. “We’re stopping this. The only way we know how.”
“I know.”
Vanhi wiped his cheeks. “I did something to you.”
Charlie looked up. Vanhi was the one person on earth who would never betray him. “I don’t want to know.”
“I trashed your Harvard application.”
“What?”
“The one you said you didn’t start. I found it. And I trashed it so mine would be better.”
Charlie just stared at her.
She stared back, refusing to break eye contact.
“But I … but things were just starting to…”
“I know. The Game gave me the choice. And I took it.”
Charlie nodded. “So did I.”
“Let’s destroy it. Let’s tear it limb from limb.”
“Okay.”
He started to walk into the darkroom, but she pulled him back.
“We all suck, Charlie. You, me, your dad. That doesn’t mean we’re not worth loving.”
“Okay. Come on. Let’s get back to work.”
“Soon. I have to get Vik.”
“Let me walk you to your car.”
“I told you, Charlie. I don’t need protecting.”
“Okay.” He hugged her before going back in. “Okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all.