JEFF GRATZENBERG had offered to show me the game that had made Babikian his reputation as a game designer. He had time late the next afternoon.
After work, I stopped at home first. There were no police cars out in front of my house. No alarm going
whappa-whappa.
I stood on my porch and wondered whether I'd be able to see the security cameras once they were installed. Bill from Argus had promised, “You don't know where to look, you won't know they're there.”
Why hadn't it occurred to me that security surveillance was a two-way street? Sure, I could monitor visitors. But how easy would it be for someone to tune in on the stream of video images being transmitted to the folks at Argus Security? Could Ralston Bridges somehow monitor my comings and goings? Had I improved my safety, or had I handed another tool to my tormenter?
That's when I realized, if Nick was as paranoid as he seemed
to be from all the evaluations I'd done, then why would he trust me? And if he didn't trust me, then why was he being so helpful about my home security system?
I tried to shake myself out of it. That was the problem with paranoiaâit was like a serpent feeding on its own tail.
Gratzenberg was living with his mother on a street that dead-ended at the Mass Pike. The house was a bungalow, badly in need of some TLC. The white and turquoise paints were peeling, and one of the gutters hung loose at one end. Four-foot maple saplings grew up through the front hedge.
I rang the bell. Gratzenberg opened the door. His pale face glowed in the murky light of the hallway. He called over his shoulder. “It's for me, Ma.”
A small woman in a dark house dress and carpet slippers came padding timidly from the back of the house. The sounds of a television game show were barely audible. “Jeffrey?” she said, her voice querulous. The house breathed out the smells of cooked cabbage and furniture polish.
“It's just someone for me.”
She backed away.
“Come on in,” Gratzenberg said.
He led me into the kitchen, through a door, and down a flight of stairs to a paneled rec room. A fluorescent ceiling fixture lit the middle of the room with its wood-trimmed, brown plaid couch resting on a field of green indoor-outdoor carpeting. A lava lamp on the floor in a corner glowed, the orange gunk undulating, rising, and going over with a
blup.
Shallow horizontal windows ran along the edge of the ceiling. The place smelled of mildew and ripe sneakers.
“Sorry about this place,” he said. “It was this or the street. Get you a drink?”
He headed to a bar at the far end of the room, opened a half
refrigerator, and leaned over into it. “Mountain Dew? Gatorade? Beer?” He stood. “Water?”
“Thanks. A beer would be great,” I said.
The bottle gave a little sigh when I twisted the top. It had been at least a decade since I'd had a Rolling Rock. Nothing subtle about it.
Gratzenberg's long skinny arms stuck out of his tired black T-shirt. I read the words on it: SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB!
“It's from the intro to a cheesy old Japanese computer game,” Gratzenberg said, noticing my confusion.
“ZeroWing.
A 2-D shooter?” I still wasn't getting it. “The game was an outdated hack, even when it was released. Great soundtrack, though. Too bad they can't make any money off all the T-shirts it spawned.” Jeff peered down at his chest. “Weird mangled mistranslations. I've got a whole bunch of 'em.”
He perched on a stool at the bar and set his beer down beside a computer flanked by huge speakers. “So you're a forensic psychologist? Do you, like, testify in court?”
I fished a business card out of my pocket and gave it to him. “When someone's accused of a serious crime, I'm often asked to come in and evaluate the person's state of mind. Does he know the difference between right and wrong. Does she understand the consequences of her actions? Is there something wrong with his brain? That kind of thing. And yes, I often testify as to my findings.”
“So you evaluated the Beak?”
“Nick Babikian?”
Jeff nodded. “But don't ever call him that to his face. He'd go nuts.” Jeff turned over my card. “The Pearce Psychiatric Institute. I had a friend ended up there once. Drug rehab.”
“Yeah. We've got a pretty good program.”
He put the card on top of the bar. “So you want to see
Running
Scared?
You have to remember, it came out about six years ago. At the time, no one had seen anything quite like it. Now there's all kinds of clones, a multiplayer version, plus a million MODs.”
I hoped it didn't matter that I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. I got on the other stool and wedged my leg up against the bar to stay facing forward. “I really appreciate you doing this,” I said.
“I just hope I can help get that bastard what he so richly deserves,” Jeff said. He jiggled the mouse and the screen came to life.
There was a graphic of the same face Nick had sketched for me. The Seer leered off the black screen in bold strokes of gray and white. Above the face pulsed the words RUNNING SCARED, with flames leaping from them.
Jeff turned on his speakers, and on came a deafening drumbeat and dissonant electronic music that sounded something like a metal bed scraping across a linoleum floor. The sounds reverberated through the bar counter.
Jeff had his long, thin fingers poised over the keyboard, like a pianist ready to launch into a Chopin piano concerto. He clicked the mouse, and the game fell silent as LOADING ⦠appeared on the screen. Then some menus came up and he made a bunch of clicks. A knife with a curved blade appeared, spun around, and then stopped, pointed away from us. Then a hand grenade appeared.
“This is all you get to protect yourself to start,” he explained.
His fingers danced spiderlike on the keys as the knife flew through the air, slicing left, right, up, and down, and then around in a circle. Then the face of the Seer reappeared. “Welcome to Earth-2,” said a sonorous voice.
“Usually I skip this part,” Jeff said.
The voice went on to explain that we were on a planet where
survivors of Earth's final war had taken refuge. Once again, humans were under siege, this time from a force of alien invaders.
Then the face of the Seer was replaced by the interior of a cave, walls and passageways lit by torches. Jeff did something with the mouse or the keyboardâhe was moving so fast I couldn't tell which did whatâand the knife reappeared. We were propelled forward, through a series of dark tunnels, up a rough-hewn staircase, onto a ledge. Then a leap, and we continued through a new tunnel, around stalagmites.
“Hear that sound?” Jeff asked.
I hadn't noticed it before but there was a steady beating, sharper than a drum sound, more like boot heels on cement. “Is that our footsteps?” I asked.
“It's the guy following us. No need to worry. Yet.”
From behind a boulder, a red creature leaped out, pincers lashing. It looked like a scorpion crossed with an octopus. With a sweep of the knife, Jeff cut off an arm. Green blood spurted from the wound. Then the sound of an explosion. All that was left of a second alien was a green puddle with bits of red in itâthe handiwork of the grenade, I assumed.
A human figure emerged from behind the rock, a woman in dark clothing with her hands tied. Jeff clicked on her and the bonds came free. An array of green numbers hovered briefly in a corner of the screen.
“What was that?” I asked.
“That was our score. I fragged two aliens, freed a hostage. Now I get a quantum generator.”
Fragged? Quantum generator? Jeff was already moving forward again, and now he had a new weapon that looked like a machine gun with a glowing red trigger. The sound of footsteps had grown louder.
“This was one of the first games where the object wasn't to frag everything in sight,” he said. “You've got to watch out for
the hostages. If you frag one of them, you die ⦠Shit.”
An alien had dropped down from overhead. Jeff shot but missed. A smoking hole appeared in the stone wall alongside the creature. “This is a cool weapon. It opens up a vortex that sucks in anything nearby. Got to be careful, though, not to suck yourself in.” Jeff shot again. This time, there was an explosion and the alien shrank to a candle flame that went out with a sizzle.
It was odd watching Jeff, who'd up to now impressed me as a passive kind of person, so completely in charge and aggressive in the context of the game.
The aliens disposed of, Jeff freed two more hostages. Then he knifed one of the hostages.
“I thought you said you died if you kill a hostage.”
“This one's not a hostage. Watch.”
As the dark figure lay on the ground, it morphed into another alien.
“How'd you know?”
“Experience. You play the game long enough, you figure out which things are bogus.”
He clicked on a little whirlpool of mist. The cave dissolved and the sound of footsteps ceased, replaced by the sound of rushing water and echoing chimes. We had emerged into a vaulted chamber, a waterfall in the background. I knew it was my imagination, but I could feel the temperature drop.
Two small circles of yellow glowed in a corner. We approached them and the figure of the Seer emerged from the shadows. He had his arms extended. The glowing yellow orbs had been his eyes.
“He's offering us a choice,” Jeff explained. “Body armor or a gas mask. And he's showing us a map of the new level.” The faint outlines of a maze floated in the air.
“So which is the right choice?”
“That's the cool thing about this game. There isn't one. It's just different, depending on which you choose.”
“How do you win?”
“There's two ways. Kill all the aliens. Or save all the hostages before you get killed yourself.”
That was a novel twist.
“Most players don't get that far,” Jeff said as he chose the gas mask. A moment later, we were hurtling forward through a new cave. The new level was darker. The footsteps following us were louder.
For the next twenty minutes, I watched mesmerized. To get out of the nearly unlit cave, Jeff had to annihilate a band of aliens who were building a fire at the cave's mouth. Without the gas mask, he explained, we'd have been asphyxiated. From there, he ran through a forest with new aliens that looked like apes in S&M leather, to a partially destroyed castle complete with ramparts and a neon pink sky. In a basement dungeon, hostages were kept behind bars. They reached their arms out, begging to be released as we sped past. Over the edge of a cliff, dead bodies floated on a river of red.
As I watched Jeff play, I could feel the claustrophobia of confined spaces, the relief of emerging into the open. I could almost smell the rooty coolness of the cave's interior. Hearing those footsteps, like relentless pistons getting louder and louder, made the tension build. With the continuous adrenaline high, I could see how players got sucked into playing for hours on end.
By now, Jeff had lost his quantum generator and gas mask and acquired a blade-shooting machine gun, more grenades, and a flashlight. He paused the game and showed me which keys on the keyboard controlled the weapons, the beam, how the mouse controlled movement through space. Then he handed me the controls and turned the game back on.
Thirty seconds later, I'd aimed the gun at an alien, fired, and the game went black for a moment.
“No big deal,” Jeff reassured me. “Everyone's a newbie at first.”
The game's eye retreated until it showed a body lying on the ground, bleeding. On the cave floor beside it lay a gun, a flashlight, and several unexploded grenades. “That me?” I asked.
“That's you. You killed yourself.”
“Huh?”
“You fired the blade-thrower at a brick wall and it ricocheted, killing you.”
The footsteps reached a crescendo, slowed, and stopped. A dark figure appeared and hovered over the body. It was the Seer. He gathered up the fallen weapons. “Sucker,” a voice sneered, and hollow laughter seemed to echo off the cave walls.
That night, I lay in bed, images from the game romping through my head. I had the physical sensation of hurtling forward, lurching sideways. Cave walls and torches rushed up to meet me. I felt the stomach-dropping sensation of leaping from rocky ledges. The vertigo of looking off a cliff at dead bodies floating in red water.
I remembered Nick's mother's tale of a forced march, of corpses floating down a river of blood. Her motherâNick's grandmotherâhad probably told her the same stories she'd spoon-fed to Nick. Those constant messages had formed Nick's character and convinced him: Trust no one. I wonderedâhaving used those images in his game, did they haunt him less?