by Jack Windeyer

This far from town, only one building lit the dark. Its holo-projector created a false facade of ornate stonework and onion domes: a glowing Russian church alone in the desert. The holo-light shone against some creosote bushes across the highway, casting long shadows through the blue that stretched into the darkness. The scene warped near the edges because the second-hand projector had been designed for a much larger building.

In the parking lot, Henry used the blue light to check his reflection in his truck’s side window. He straightened his collar and mussed his hair. “You got this. No way she can say no.” His first steps toward the arcade kicked up a cloud of dust that drifted through the facade, which illuminated one cross section of the cloud at a time.

Penny’s Arcade was the place to be, and not just because it was the only place open on weeknights. Penny’s had it all: food, drink, altered-reality and, of course, vintage arcade games. They even had an antique Galaga game in its original cabinet.

Henry walked through the holo-facade, which ended about ten feet before a grimy building front with two mirrored doors set four feet apart. A sign on the left read “Families Welcome.” One on the right read “18 and over.” Henry took the right door, and it hadn’t even swung closed before the old bartender Deb started to harangue him. “Henry Dean Thornton, get over the other side ah the line. We stay on the correct side ah the law here. You know that.”

Despite being 16 years old, Henry was tall and hairy enough to pass for 18 in the eyes of a stranger, which Deb was not. When school started up again next month, she’d be his history and science teacher, again.

“And who would know any different?” asked Henry.

Deb squeezed her way through the bartop cutout and shuffled over to him. She leaned in, keeping her voice low.

“The sheriff is here, and I’m still waiting to hear back about that candyflipping license.”

Sheriff Jones sat slumped in a corner booth with a vintage VR headset on, so Henry stood his ground.

Deb furrowed her brow. “Sheriff Jones!”

Behind her, the sheriff startled up and wrenched the headset off at the exact moment that Henry jumped over the white tape line separating the bar area from the arcade.

“Mmmhm, that’s what I thought,” Deb said.

“Whatsa matter?” asked the sheriff.

Deb walked over to him and pulled a dropper out of her apron. “Time for your next dose,” she said. The sheriff stared at the ceiling while Deb squeezed two drops of altered-reality into his eyes. The liquid foamed on contact and soon pink bubbles ran down the sheriff’s face and into his beard.

“Thanks, hun,” he said, slipping the helmet back on.

 Henry slunk away toward the blinking arcade machines. The tape line was an unwelcome reminder that he was nearing adulthood without a girlfriend. By your age, I was dating three girls at once, Dad had said last year. Meanwhile, Henry had only been on a single, disastrous date. He had to find a girl, and he had to do it quick. Dad had made that very clear: you oughta see this new generation of androids we fab at the factory. You can’t out pretty them; definitely can’t outsmart them. So you gotta show women that you’re a prime-grade cut of genuine man meat if you’re to have any shot at all.

But the pickings were slim tonight. A few women, too old for Henry, sat in barstools near the doors. Here and there skinny boys played the arcade machines. No one was Henry’s age except for Tiffany who was leaning against an arcade cabinet and drinking a soda. Her blonde hair was done up in curls so tight that they stacked one on another over her shoulders, and she’d painted an inverted triangle under each eye with lemon-yellow paint that sliced through the brown of her cheekbones.

There she stood, alone. This was his chance.

Henry hooked his finger through a belt loop and pulled his pants up. They were his best pair of jeans — with purple vinyl chaps stitched right in — and he knew he looked good in ‘em, but they fit a little loose. He ran his hand through his hair one last time as he walked over to Tiffany.

She rolled her eyes before he even got a word out. “Not tonight, Henry. I had a long day.”

“Whataya mean not tonight?” Henry smiled. “Can’t a guy just chat with a friend at the arcade?”

“Do me a favor and cut to it?”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Henry looked down at his boots; Dad used to say it made a man seem more sincere. “I was thinking maybe we could go catch the AI-improv show on Friday night. I’ll even spring for the Twizzlers.”

“Yeah ‘cause it went so well the first time,” Tiffany said with the straw still in her mouth.

“How was I supposed to know they would be closed that night?”

“Your second choice was a walk through Darryl’s soy field,” she said, hand on her hip.

“I thought it’d be romantic.”

“I was wearing pumps, Henry.”

“Well, I didn’t know that the field would be muddy.”

“Ugh, this is so far beyond the point.” She started to brush past him. “You didn’t even ask what I wanted to do. And I don’t even like Twizzlers. They’re your favorite.”

Be persistent, Dad always said.

“I’ve been learning the electric guitar,” Henry said in her passing ear.

She stopped midstep. “What are you talking about?”

“I could play you a song some time.” She tried to look unimpressed, but the hint of a smile told Henry otherwise. “I could play you Arctic Monkeys. I know you like those old songs.” She tried to hide a smile then swung her head around to look him in the eyes.

“I’ll tell you what. If you have the high score on Mx. PacMan at the end of the night, I’ll give you one more shot.”

“You mean it? A date?”

She tapped him on the chest and said, “No walks, no fields, no Twizzlers.”

“You’re on.”

 Mx. PacMan 2030 wasn’t Henry’s best game. She was probably counting on that. But it was a chance.

As Tiffany walked away, Henry saw a stranger about as tall as he was with the same haircut come into the arcade. The guy might look similar, but Henry knew he was a fake. A screenshot of a screenshot. If Henry was wagyu, this guy was soy beef. He couldn’t even dress himself: those baggy pants, that blue jean jacket with band patches all over it. I bet he doesn’t even play an instrument, thought Henry. This guy was a sham.

“Welcome to Penny’s,” Deb called out. “Can I get you anything?”

“Name’s Julian,” said Sham-Henry. “Do you sell packs of gum?” He stepped over the tape line and out of sight.

Tiffany sat at the table near the arcade machines, pulling her own gum from between her teeth, stretching it into a long strand, oblivious to the newcomer.

Henry walked over to Mx. PacMan and stepped through a gap in the safety rails. Before the game booted up, he tested out the omnidirectional treadmill to make sure there weren’t any sticky spots, then he strapped himself into the harness.

A screen flickered to life in front of him (so his audience could follow along), while he donned the player VR helmet, musty from decades of sweat. He turned his head left and right. The 360-degree vision still worked great, but no audio had come through the headphones for as long as Henry had been playing the game.

A countdown appeared while the first level rendered. One at a time, semi-transparent walls fell from the sky to build the maze. Henry could see the yellow orbs appearing in the distance. From one blue wall away, they were still yellow. Two walls away, they were green blurs. The third wall was completely opaque.

The screen flashed GO! And Henry took off running, bursting yellow orbs as he went. On his periphery, red and orange flashed behind the glassy walls. Chances were that he wouldn’t see any of the ghosts up close until at least level three.

The first five levels went fast, leaving him with a score of 67,000. He had a lot of ground to cover before he beat the high score of 170,000. “R U Mine?” by Arctic Monkeys blasted from the jukebox. Must be Tiffany, thought Henry. What a flirt.

Behind him, near the table, Tiffany’s voice said, “Good choice, I love this song.”

“I hoped you would,” said The Sham.

Henry’s concentration broke, and Blinky jumped him from behind, engulfing his vision in red wisps. Dad wouldn’t have let something so dumb break his concentration. Henry clenched his jaw and tuned out their conversation to get back into the groove. The game started to go well. Very well. He even nailed the glitch where you side-step a ghost using fancy footwork that he’d only seen John Wilkenson pull off.

The bursting of yellow orbs became a steady rhythm that lulled Henry into a deeper focus. He wasn’t just playing Mx. PacMan, he was Mx. PacMan. He cleared level after level in a near trance. And then, right after a level change, just as he rounded the first corner of the new maze, Henry broke the high score. Visions of a dark theater, Twizzlers and Tiffany played in his mind. As he relaxed, the conversation behind him came back into focus.

“Didn’t I see you play drums in Garden Valley? You were with that band, uhh, what’s their name?” asked Tiffany.

“The Valley Kings,” the Sham said. “Yeah, I play with them sometimes. Nothing regular. Just fill in when I’m not on stage in Vegas.”

“On Stage? In Vegas?”

“I play in Android’s Revenge. Been there my whole life. Made and raised in the Neon Capital.”

Made. An android. Henry had seen them in movies, of course, where they were infinitely cheaper to hire for lead roles. But he’d never seen one in person.

“That’s amazing,” Tiffany said. “You must lead an interesting life.”

“I feel like I am right now, talking to you.”

Tiffany popped her gum.

The Sham asked, “Do you live around here?”

Who did this guy think he was, asking that of a stranger? Tiffany shouldn’t answer. He could be a murder droid escaped from the military base.

“Well, I–” Tiffany started.

Henry let Mx. Pacman die and threw off the helmet. “Boom high score,” he shouted at Tiffany.

“Oh cool,” Julian said. He sounded impressed and Henry felt a rush of pride, then scorn.

“I haven’t played that in ages,” said Julian. “Did you know that the makers of Ms. PacMan 1982 didn’t have permission to make the sequel? The creator of the original wasn’t involved at all.”

“Cool,” said Tiffany.

“I knew that,” said Henry as he stepped off the treadmill.

Julian walked over to the machine. He took off his cruddy jacket and draped it over the railing, then tossed the safety harness onto the floor. Henry crossed his arms, ready to watch as Tiffany found out that Julian couldn’t even break a thousand points.

But Julian did break a thousand. He broke 100,000 without losing a life, and he did it with flair. Under Julian’s control, Mx. PacMan squeezed within half a pixel of the ghosts. He passed each level with terrifying efficiency, and at one point he got the treadmill’s belt rotating around a single center point so that PacMan spun around Blinky. At 150,000 points, everyone from the bar came over to watch Julian closing in on Henry’s top score of 190,000.

What seemed like an eternity passed, then Julian made it to 200,000 points, and everyone cheered. Julian still hadn’t lost a life, but he took off the helmet anyway and made a big show of putting on his jacket while Mx. PacMan died over and over on the audience screen. Then he looked at Tiffany.

“Can I buy you another soda?” he asked.

Tiffany swizzled the straw around her empty cup, smiling. “Okay, sure,” she said. They began to walk off together.

“Tiffany!” Henry called after her. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you know what he is?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So he’s not even a he. He’s an it.”

She squinted her eyes. “Don’t be a bigot, Henry. And you’d have better luck connecting with someone if you stopped thinking about yourself long enough to learn something about somebody else.”

Julian put a hand on her shoulder. “Be kind,” he said and gestured at Henry. “Your friend is in pain.” There was no way Tiffany would go for that kind of sappy, nice-guy bullshit. Girls around here want real men, Dad would’ve said.

Tiffany glanced up at Julian, and her frown softened. Then she turned to Henry and said, “Sorry,” before pulling Julian by the arm toward the bar area.

Henry slapped his palm down on the table and walked over to the old blue couch by the restrooms and sagged into it. What had she meant by “learn about somebody else?” He wasn’t self-absorbed; he was confident. Dad had always said that women respected men who took charge.

Henry didn’t feel any of that confidence, but what had Julian meant about him being in pain? He couldn’t possibly have known about Dad having died. Besides, why the hell would Julian say something nice to a chick about a rival. It made no sense. Even so, as Henry thought about it, something loosened in his chest — something that had been clamped tight for a long while.

Deb wandered by and started collecting empty glasses left on top of the machines.

“How’s it going over here, Mr. Thornton?” she asked.

“I’m starting to feel like I’m Sham-Julian.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Henry and his mood sank further still.

Deb paused. “You know, Henry, I saw your Dad leave this bar with many gals over the years, but not a one had much fun talking to him. He was too busy puffing his chest to ever get around to asking them any questions.” She let the words hang there between them for a moment. “My advice? Move on. Besides, you’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

“Yeah? Like what?” Henry asked.

“Well don’t look now, but I think your Galaga high score may be in danger.”

A sudden fury gripped Henry. “I will unplug the machine before I lose another high score to that asshole.” He sprang off the couch and went to confront Julian. But it wasn’t him at the machine. It was a girl Henry’s age wearing a slick red jacket with a holo-patch on her right shoulder, where a miniature Donkey Kong beat his chest and tossed barrels that rolled down the length of her sleeve. She had pink hair and a commanding control of the little white starfighter on the screen.

Henry walked over to the machine and tried to think of a good line. He would say, “Have you ever seen level 40 before? I can show it to you, baby.” Or maybe, “You really know your way around a joystick.” But now his usual lines sounded childish in his mind’s ear. Without meaning to, Henry thought back to his dad before the accident: confident, loud, and full of life — but also lonely. Had he really never asked his dates questions, like Deb had said?

The girl didn’t turn from the screen but said, “You got something to say, or are you gonna stand there mouth-breathing until it’s your turn, because you should know that it’ll be a while before I beat the chump with the high score.”

For the first time in years, Henry had nothing to say. No flirtatious comeback came to his mind. Until that very moment, he hadn’t known what the term “cold sweat” meant. Beyond the Galaga cabinet, he saw Tiffany talking to Julian, smiling and using her hands to emphasize a story.

“Well, ermm… I haven’t seen you here before. Are you from Vegas?” Henry asked.

The girl in the red jacket snorted. “Never been there. This is about as far south as I’m comfortable going. Born and raised in Elko.”

At the mention of Elko, a memory of long-grain rice and bright red sauce filled Henry’s mind.

“If you’re from Elko, then you might be able to help me remember the name of a restaurant there, where I had the best tofu vindaloo of my life. It was at this tiny, family run place called–”

“The Bombay Bustle,” she said, slamming the joystick to one side to avoid a tractor beam. “It’s my family’s restaurant. Shit, I probably made that vindaloo you ate.”

“How does food that good come out of a place like Elko, Nevada? I bet there’s a story there,” Henry said.

She destroyed the final alien ship of the level. While the cutscene showed her score tallying up, the girl turned to Henry and smiled.

“Pull up a stool, and I’ll tell you about it.”

Imagine panning for gold in the Yukon River during December with nothing but your bare hands and a pair of thermal socks. That’s about how much success Jack Windeyer has trying to remember anything he’s learned about writing, and he’s doomed to compensate by typing endless aides-memoire into his cyberdeck. You can find a smattering of these memos published at marginchronicles.com