Scavenger

1

The temperature cooled. The air smelled stale. Balenger’s boots made scraping sounds on the rock floor as he shifted forward through shadows.

“When I was a kid,” Ray said, “a couple of friends and I explored a cave.” He sounded like he was trying to distract himself.

“Find anything interesting?” Amanda asked.

“I got stuck.”

“What?”

“My friends bicycled for help. I was in there ten hours before an emergency crew got me out.”

“I’m not sure that helps me keep my positive attitude,” Balenger said.

“Hey, I got out, didn’t I? Can’t get more positive than that. Quit complaining. Wait. Stop. Shine the light to the left. There. On the floor.”

Amanda pointed the light in that direction and revealed two dusty rounded objects.

Ray hurried to them and picked one up. “Lanterns!” He blew dust away, then rubbed the curved glass with his sleeve. When he shook the lantern, something splashed inside.

“My God, it still has fuel in it.”

Balenger frowned. “The fuel didn’t evaporate after more than a hundred years?”

“How could it evaporate? The cap to the fuel tank is tight,” Ray answered.

“The fuel could evaporate through the wick.”

Ray pulled up the glass sheath and studied the wick. “Maybe the wick acted as a plug so the air couldn’t get at the fuel. What difference does it make? The point is, we can use this thing.” He pulled out his lighter.

“No,” Balenger said.

Ray put his thumb on the lighter’s wheel.

“Don’t!” Balenger grabbed Ray’s hand.

In the flashlight’s glare, Ray’s eyes darkened. “Let go.”

“Put away the lighter.”

“I’m warning you.” Ray’s voice was hoarse. “Let go.”

Balenger took his hand away. “Just listen.”

Ray put the lighter in his pocket.

“The Game Master didn’t object when we used the GPS receiver to blow our way in here. That’s not like him,” Balenger said.

Ray set down the lantern.

“Are we supposed to believe that we impressed him with how resourceful we are? I don’t think so,” Balenger continued.

With a scream of fury, Ray grabbed the stock and barrel of the rifle. Balenger felt a jolt when Ray shoved it across his chest and rammed him toward a wall. Balenger’s boot caught on a railway track. As he fell, Ray dropped with him, landing on him, squeezing the rifle across his chest. Balenger’s hands were pinned under the gun. He struggled to push back, but the pressure of the rifle made it difficult to breathe.

“Keep your fucking hands off me!” Ray shouted.

Balenger strained harder.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Ray’s face was twisted with rage. He was surprisingly strong, his movements a frenzy, pressing the air from Balenger’s lungs.

“Stop!” Amanda screamed.

Squirming on the tunnel’s cold floor, Balenger couldn’t free his hands. He tried to knee Ray in the groin, but Ray’s legs pinned him down. Abruptly, Ray slammed his forehead down on Balenger’s nose.

Balenger felt an excruciating crack. Blood spurted from his nose. His mind dimmed.

“Damn you, stop!” Amanda yelled.

Peering up through double vision, Balenger saw Amanda charge into view and tug at Ray.

“Get off him! Don’t you understand what he’s trying to tell you?”

Again, Ray slammed his forehead onto Balenger’s nose. Balenger groaned, seeing gray. He fought to breathe.

“The lanterns are a trap!” Amanda shouted. “The GPS unit! Why didn’t the Game Master complain?”

Ray’s eyes were slits of rage. He pressed all his weight on the rifle across Balenger’s chest. Amanda pulled at his shoulders.

“He wanted us to get into the tunnel! He wants us to feel confident and let our guard down!”

Amanda put an arm around Ray’s throat. He jabbed his head back, smashing her face. She staggered away.

“The lanterns might explode!” Amanda shrieked. “Or a flame might set off gas in the tunnel!”

Balenger felt lightheaded, his nose filling with blood, his lungs unable to draw air.

A shadow rose behind Ray. Balenger’s gray vision made him think he hallucinated. The shadow held a rock with both hands. The shadow slammed the rock down so hard that Balenger felt the shock go through him. Ray’s head sprayed blood. The shadow struck again. The crunch of bone was accompanied by a liquid sound.

Balenger saw Ray’s dark eyes widen. They rolled up. The shadow struck a third time, and now the sound was hollow.

Ray trembled, wheezing. It seemed that the strings on a puppet were snipped. At once, he dropped onto Balenger, his dead weight adding to the pressure on Balenger’s chest.

Balenger’s mind sank. Blood clogging his swollen nostrils, he felt as if something heavy forced him deep into water. The weight suddenly left his chest. Hands pushed Ray’s body away and turned Balenger face down in the tunnel. Blood drained from his nose.

“Breathe!” Amanda shouted.

He coughed and managed to get his lungs working. Air moved along his raw throat. On the cold floor, he heard the echo of Amanda’s own raspy breathing. Slowly, he managed to sit up. Dim light from the tunnel’s entrance showed her standing over him, her back against a wall. She slid down next to the flashlight on the floor. Its glare made her face look stark.

“Is he…” She couldn’t finish the question.

“Yes.”

“The son of a bitch,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I feel sick.”

“Violence will do that.”

For a while, the only sound was the continuing echo of their breathing.

“He didn’t give me a choice.”

“That’s right,” Balenger agreed. “Keep telling yourself that. He didn’t give you a choice. If you hadn’t stopped him, he’d probably have killed me.” But he knew that no matter how much he tried to assure her, it wouldn’t matter. She had something else to add to her nightmares. “How bad are you hurt?”

“My cheek’s swelling where he banged his head against it. You?”

“My nose is broken.”

Balenger pulled off his knapsack. His back hurt from the indentations the ammunition boxes made when he fell on them. He poured a palmful of water from his canteen and wiped it across his face, trying to clear the blood. Then he got his first-aid kit and tore open an antiseptic wipe.

“Let me.” Amanda crawled toward him and gently wiped his face.

Balenger tried not to react to the pain. “I hope you don’t mind rugged features.”

“I always wanted to live with a man who looks like a boxer.”

In the flashlight’s glare, Balenger studied the bruise on her left cheek.

They held each other.

“Thank you,” Balenger whispered.

He didn’t want to let go. But then he looked over her shoulder toward Ray’s body. “The tunnel. The Sepulcher. Midnight.”

Amanda nodded. “If we don’t meet the deadline, all the Game Master needs to do is blast the tunnel and bury us. We’ll never get out.”

Balenger turned toward a camera on a post. “Game Master, did you enjoy seeing Ray die?”

He listened for a response, then realized that the headset and his hat had fallen off during the struggle. He put them back on, waiting for the Game Master to speak.

“Maybe the radio signal can’t penetrate the tunnel,” Amanda said.

“Oh, it penetrates,” the voice said abruptly. “Don’t worry about that.”

Balenger gave three aspirins to Amanda and three to himself. They swallowed the pills with water. Balenger’s nose continued to bleed. He put cotton batting into it, ignoring the pain.

“Ready?” he asked Amanda.

“Ready.”

She picked up the flashlight.

He put on his knapsack and reached for the rifle.

They continued along the tunnel. Abruptly, Balenger went back through the shadows. He grabbed one of the lanterns by its handle and gave it to Amanda.

“Why?” She studied it with suspicion.

“Not sure.” He overcame his revulsion and groped in a pocket of Ray’s jumpsuit, pulling out the lighter. “We never know what we might need.”

Again, they proceeded along the tunnel, the flashlight partially dispelling the darkness.

“It’s colder,” Amanda said.

They turned a corner.

“My favorite quotation comes from Kierkegaard. It’s appropriate for a time capsule,” the voice said through Balenger’s headset.

They approached a small chamber.

“What’s the quote?” Keep him talking, Balenger thought. Keep him relating to us.

“ ‘The most painful state of being is remembering the future, in particular one you can never have.”“

“I don’t understand.”

“It refers to someone who’s dying and what it feels like to imagine future events that he or she will never experience.”

The air got even colder. Amanda’s hand trembled as she scanned the flashlight across the chamber. “Looks like we found it,” she murmured.

2

In the shadows, a man faced them. He was tall and gangly with a beard that made him resemble Abraham Lincoln. His dark hair hung past his shoulders. He wore a black suit, the coat old-fashioned, its hem reaching down to his knees.

Balenger almost fired, but the man’s posture didn’t pose a threat, and Balenger’s police training took control. As his instructor at the academy had said, “You’d better have a damned good reason for pulling that trigger.”

The man stood straight, holding something close to his chest.

“Put up your hands! Who are you?” Balenger shouted.

The man didn’t comply.

“Damn it, put up your hands!”

The only sound was the echo of Balenger’s command.

“He isn’t moving,” Amanda said.

They stepped warily forward, the flashlight providing details.

“Oh, my God,” Amanda said.

The man had no eyes. His cheeks were shrunken. The fingers that clutched the object to his chest were bones covered with shriveled skin. Dust filmed him.

“Dead,” Amanda murmured.

“A long time,” Balenger said. “But why didn’t he rot?”

“I read somewhere that caves have hardly any insects or microbes.” Amanda’s voice was hushed. “And this tunnel’s deep in the mountain. The ice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Another clue the Game Master gave us, but we didn’t realize what it was. He said, in the winter the town harvested ice from the lake and stored it in the mine. The tunnel was cold enough to preserve the ice through the summer. The town used it to keep food from spoiling.”

“The cold mummified him,” Balenger said in awe.

“The object he’s pressing against his chest looks like a book. But what’s holding him up?” Amanda stepped closer.

Now it was clear that the corpse was tilted slightly back against a board supported by rocks at its base. Ropes at the knees, the stomach, the chest, and the neck secured the mummy to the board.

“Who tied the ropes?” Balenger shivered and not just from the cold.

“The knots are in front. Maybe he did it himself.” Amanda moved the flashlight up and down. “He could have kept his hands free until he tied the final rope around his chest. Then he could have shoved his right hand up under the rope to press the book to his chest. Next to him, we see how the illusion works, but at the entrance to the chamber, he looked like he was greeting us.”

“Meet Reverend Owen Pentecost,” the Game Master said. But this time, the voice didn’t come from Balenger’s headset. Instead, it came from speakers in the walls. The echoing effect was unnerving.

“The bastard had a sense of drama,” Balenger said.

“You have no idea,” the Game Master replied.

“I suppose the book in his hand is a Bible.” Amanda tilted her head to try to read the title on the spine. When that didn’t work, she set down the lantern, hesitated, then directed a finger toward the book, reluctantly intending to nudge it and expose the title.

Balenger grabbed her hand. “It might be booby-trapped.”

In the flashlight’s beam, the bruise on Amanda’s cheek contrasted with her sudden pallor.

“Iraqi insurgents loved to hide pressure-sensitive bombs under U.S. corpses,” Balenger explained. “As soon as the bodies were lifted or turned, the explosives would detonate.”

Amanda pulled her hand back.

“It’s not a Bible,” the Game Master said. “It’s called The Gospel of the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”

“Not exactly catchy,” Balenger said.

“Pentecost wrote it in long hand. It predicts the evils of the coming century and the need for people to understand the truth.”

“So, what’s the truth?”

“See for yourself.”

Amanda aimed the flashlight toward an opening in the wall behind Pentecost. Ready with his gun, Balenger stepped forward while Amanda guided him with the flashlight. They went through the opening and entered a much larger area.

Amanda gasped.

Balenger tasted something bitter. “Yeah, it’s a sepulcher, all right. Worldly desires.”

3

A cavern loomed. Stalactities and stalagmites partially blocked what Balenger and Amanda stared at. Because of the limitations of the flashlight, it was impossible to see everything at once. Amanda needed to move the light from object to object, place to place, tableau to tableau.

Corpse to corpse.

The citizens of Avalon awaited them. They wore what might have been their Sunday go-to-church clothes, now dusty and drab after more than a century. Like Pentecost’s, their faces, too, were sunken, cheekbones made prominent by withered flesh. Mummified in the tunnel’s preserving cold, they looked tiny. Their clothes hung on their bodies like shrouds.

The group nearest Balenger and Amanda consisted of four men, who sat at a table, playing cards.

“Remember not to touch anything,” Balenger warned her.

The men were tied to the chairs, but unlike the ropes that secured Pentecost, these were concealed. The cards were glued to their hands. Their bent arms were nailed to the table. A pile of money lay before them.

At another table, men sat before a whiskey bottle and glasses covered with dust. Ropes and nails held the corpses in place.

“Sins,” Balenger murmured.

At a further table, this one long, he saw men, women, and children seated before plates that might once have held mountains of food. Indistinguishable desiccated masses were all that remained. Bones from what looked like pork ribs and chicken drumsticks crammed their mouths.

On a bed, two naked female mummies lay beneath a naked man. In another bed, a man touched two naked children, male and female. Elsewhere, a naked man lay face down over a table while another naked man lay over him. Further on, a man had congress with a dog.

“It seems Reverend Pentecost had sexual hang-ups,” Amanda said.

A woman sat before a dusty mirror, a hairbrush and containers of dried makeup before her. A man lay face down on a table, a hole in his temple, a revolver in his hand. A mummy played a fiddle while a man and woman danced in a close embrace that seemed impossible until Balenger realized that they were nailed to a board positioned between them and held up by a base of rocks.

Everywhere Amanda turned the flashlight, similar tableaus came into view.

“Music and dancing? Pentecost considered a lot of things to be sins,” Balenger said. The flashlight revealed a camera attached to a wall. Taking angry steps toward it, he asked the Game Master, “Aside from the man with the bullet hole in his head, how did all these people die? What was this, a mass suicide like what happened when Jim Jones made his people drink poisoned Kool-Aid?”

“Flavor Aid,” the Game Master corrected him. “The poison Jones used was cyanide. His church was the People’s Temple. More than nine hundred of his followers committed suicide. At Jones’s urging, they claimed to be protesting ‘the conditions of an inhumane world.” In recent times, it’s only one of many mass suicides motivated by religion. In the late 1990s, the members of the Order of the Solar Temple Movement killed themselves to escape the evils of this world and find refuge in a heavenly place named after the star Sirius. The Heaven’s Gate cult drank poisoned vodka so they could go to paradise by being transported to a space ship concealed behind the approaching comet Hale-Bopp. But my personal favorite is the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. They had visions of the Virgin Mary and believed that the world was going to end on December 31, 1999, the eve of the recent millennium. When the apocalypse didn’t arrive, they recalculated and decided that March 17 was the true date for the end of the world. More than eight hundred people died in anticipation of what they believed would be the end of worldly time.“

“So I’m right,” Balenger said. “This was a mass suicide.”

“No. Not even the man with the bullet hole in his head is a suicide. The shot was delivered after he died.”

“Then…?”

“A mass murder,” the Game Master said. “Pentecost killed all two hundred and seventeen townspeople, eighty-five of them children. For good measure, he included family pets.”

“So many people against one man.” Balenger could barely speak. “Surely they could have stopped him.”

“They didn’t know it was happening. Pentecost convinced them to come here on New Year’s Eve of 1899 because they believed they were going to be transported to heaven. They believed it so strongly that they braved a storm to get here. The mine, Pentecost assured them, was the appointed place. He needed this cavern. It was the only way he could kill everyone at once.”

“How?” Amanda insisted. “Poison? Was there enough food or water for him to poison all two hundred and seventeen of them? How could he have poisoned it without them noticing?”

“Not in food or water.”

“If he didn’t shoot them, I don’t see how he could have killed so many people at once.”

“Arsenic is an interesting substance. When heated, it doesn’t liquefy but instead transforms directly into a gas.”

“Pentecost gassed them?”

“It smells like garlic. It came from a sealed chamber with hidden air vents, so they couldn’t stop it from filling the mine. After Pentecost started the fire that heated the arsenic and released the gas, he went outside and locked the entrance to the mine. Back then, the buildings at the bottom of the slope were intact. He waited out the storm in one of them. Then he opened the door to the mine and let a ventilation shaft dissipate the gas. Later, he arranged the tableaus. He wanted the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires to be a lesson to the future. When he fulfilled his mission, he arranged his own tableau, then poisoned himself, and went to what he believed was heaven. As you noted earlier, mines and caves don’t have many insects and microbes. Along with the cold, that’s one reason the bodies were mummified. But this mine did have some insects. The reason those few insects couldn’t do their work is that the arsenic on the bodies killed them.”

Balenger surveyed the tableaus in disgust. “While I was on my way here, you told me the Sepulcher would show me the meaning of life. I don’t see what that is, unless the truth is everyone dies.”

“But not us,” Amanda emphasized. “At least, not this evening. We found the Sepulcher before midnight. We won! We get to leave!”

The Game Master didn’t respond to her statement but instead told Balenger, “The meaning of life, the hell of it is that people believe the ideas in their minds. Worse, they act on those ideas. Consider the great mass murderers of the previous century. Hitler. Stalin. Pol Pot. Millions and millions of people died because of them. Did those men consider themselves insane? Hardly. They believed that the agony they caused was worth the result of implementing their visions. The ancients thought that the sky was a dome with holes through which celestial light glowed. That was their reality. Later, people believed that the sun revolved around the earth, which they thought was the center of the universe. That was considered reality. Then Copernicus argued that the earth revolved around the sun and that the sun was the center of the universe. That became reality. Reality is in our minds. How else can anyone explain what happened in this cavern? Reverend Pentecost and Jim Jones and the Order of the Solar Temple and the Heaven’s Gate group and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Their thoughts controlled their perceptions. A space ship hiding behind the comet Hale-Bopp? Hey, if you can think it, it’s real. Poison two hundred and seventeen people so they can be a lesson to the future? For Pentecost, that was the most obvious idea imaginable. ”We create our own reality,“ an aide to the second President Bush once said. The truth of the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires is that ideas control everything, and all of it is virtual.”

“Which means that your idea isn’t any better than anyone else’s!” Balenger’s voice rose in outrage. “Your thinking’s as flawed as Pentecost’s! So is your game! But now it’s over! We won! We’re leaving!”

The Game Master didn’t reply.

Balenger motioned for Amanda to turn the light toward the exit. They stepped toward the other chamber in which Reverend Pentecost had stood for more than a hundred years, waiting to greet the future.

Balenger felt the punch of a shockwave. His muscles compacted as the rumble of an explosion reached him. The walls trembled. Rocks fell. He almost lost his balance.

“No!” he shouted as the reverberation lessened. He and Amanda ran to the tunnel, but thick dust blocked their way. Coughing, they staggered back.

Amanda spun, looking for a camera. “You son of a bitch, you told us you didn’t lie! You swore you never created a dishonest game! You promised we could leave if we won!”

The Game Master remained silent.

Gradually, the dust settled. Balenger and Amanda went cautiously forward, aiming the flashlight toward the continuation of the tunnel. They came to where they’d left Ray’s body. A barrier of fallen rocks now covered him.

“Jonathan must have detonated Ray’s GPS receiver,” Balenger said.

“Don’t call me ‘Jonathan,”“ the voice ordered.

“Why not? You’re not playing by the rules anymore. Why the hell should we call you the Game Master?”

“Who said the game is over?”

Balenger and Amanda studied each other in the flashlight’s glare.

“I don’t know how long the batteries will last. Did you bring others?” Amanda asked.

“No.”

After a long desperate silence, Amanda said, “Maybe we can make torches from the clothes in the Sepulcher.” She tried to sound optimistic, but her voice dropped. “Bad idea. The flames might ignite combustible gas.”

Balenger grasped at a possibility. “If there was gas, wouldn’t it have overpowered us by now? Wouldn’t the explosion have set it off?”

“Maybe. But now that I think of it, the flames from the torches would use the oxygen in here. We’d suffocate faster than if we waited in the dark.”

Her voice became still.

A growl replaced it. As Balenger and Amanda whirled, the flashlight revealed the two dogs that had stalked Balenger from the creek. They seemed larger. The light made their eyes red. Saliva dripped from their teeth. My God, they followed us inside, Balenger thought.

Snarling, the dogs came forward. Balenger raised the gun, but immediately, they reacted to it. Before he could shoot, they turned and raced into the darkness.

“They’re trapped in here with us. They don’t have anything else to eat. When this flashlight goes out…” Amanda couldn’t finish her sentence.

“Yeah, it’s getting harder to keep a positive attitude.” Balenger kept aiming toward the darkness.

“The lantern,” Amanda said.

“What about it?”

“If it’s a bomb, we could use it to try to blow these rocks out of the way.” The flashlight in Amanda’s hand wavered.

“Maybe. Or else the blast might collapse the tunnel.”

“What about the ventilation shaft the Game Master mentioned?”

“Yeah.” Balenger felt the start of hope. The dust in the flashlight beam seemed to drift, as if responding to a subtle draft.

They inched forward. Amanda shifted the flashlight from one side of the tunnel to the other. Balenger listened for sounds from the dogs. His mouth was dry. He and Amanda made a wide turn at the corner and faced the continuation of the tunnel. It was empty.

“The dogs must have gone into the Sepulcher,” Amanda said.

Aiming, Balenger neared the entrance to the first chamber. Amanda pointed the flashlight. Reverend Pentecost greeted them with his hand on the book on his chest.

Balenger approached the entrance to the Sepulcher. Amanda followed, leaving Pentecost in darkness. At once, a blur leapt from the cavern. Coming under the rifle, the dog struck Balenger’s chest. As the rifle jerked up, Balenger’s finger squeezed the trigger. The sounds of the shot and the ricochet were amplified by the closed space. Chunks of stone flew. The dog’s weight shoved Balenger backward. They struck Pentecost, knocking over the board that supported him. Balenger landed on the mummy, feeling the crack of dry bones.

The dog clawed at Balenger’s jumpsuit while its teeth snapped toward his throat. Balenger let go of the rifle and strained to push the dog away, but it clawed harder. He tried to squeeze its throat, but the dog snapped at his hands, saliva flying. Desperate, Balenger yanked out the knife clipped to his pocket. He pressed his thumb against a knob on the blade that allowed him to open it one-handed. He rammed it into the dog’s side but hit a rib. The dog kept snapping at Balenger’s throat. Striking again, Balenger plunged the knife under the ribs and sliced. Blood cascaded. The blade must have cut something vital. The dog shuddered against him, dying.

Balenger hurled it away and surged to his feet, aiming toward the Sepulcher’s entrance. His racing heart made him nauseous. He shouted, “Watch out for the other dog!” Amanda spun, redirecting the flashlight.

The only sound was Balenger’s frenzied breathing. He glanced down at Pentecost’s corpse, the mummy crushed into fragments. A fetid odor invaded his nostrils.

“Did the dog bite you?” Amanda asked.

“I’d be surprised if it didn’t.” The front of Balenger’s jumpsuit was torn open. The clawed skin throbbed. Blood covered the cuts, some of it from the dog.

“Even if it didn’t bite you, it dripped saliva. You’ll need rabies shots,” Amanda told him.

“Which implies we’ll get out of here. I like your optimism.” Balenger noticed that the dust the fight had raised drifted away. “Does it seem like air is coming from the Sepulcher?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“The ventilation shaft.”

They entered the Sepulcher.

The dog in here is bigger than the other, Balenger thought. If it attacks, it’ll be harder to fight off.

He must have said it out loud, because Amanda responded, “Well, if it’s bigger, it’ll be easier to see. That gives us an advantage.”

“Yeah, a tremendous advantage. The odds are in our favor. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that.” Balenger was amazed by her determination.

She waved the light back and forth, casting shadows from the grotesque tableaus, searching for the dog. When Balenger grabbed dust from the floor and hurled it, the light showed that a subtle draft nudged it past him. They went forward, trying to locate the origin of the draft. All the while, Balenger listened for a snarl or a scrape of claws. He and Amanda passed a mummified man who leaned back in a chair, his hand on his groin.

They came to a wall and searched along it, finding a barrier of rubble.

“Looks like a cave-in,” Balenger said.

Amanda illuminated a hole at the top of the rubble. “That’s where the air’s coming from.”

Uneasy, Balenger turned his back on the cavern and the dog. He set down the rifle and tried to climb the rubble to see what was beyond the hole, but the angle was too steep, and rocks slipped under him. The abrupt movement aggravated the pain of the claw marks on his chest.

“Do you think we can clear this by hand?” he asked.

“Before the batteries on the flashlight die?” Amanda shook her head. “My hands are awfully raw. I’ll work as hard as I can, but it won’t be quick.”

“If we build a platform of rocks, we can stand on it and widen the hole at the top.” Wary of the dog, Balenger picked up a rock to start making the platform. Immediately, he paused. “Do you smell something?”

“Like what?” Amanda stared toward the gap at the top of the rubble. “Now I do. It smells like…”

“Garlic.” Balenger stepped back.

“Arsenic.” Amanda’s voice shook.

As the smell of the gas intensified, Balenger coughed, sick to his stomach. They hurried across the cavern, scanning the tableaus, on guard against the dog. They reached the chamber where Reverend Pentecost no longer greeted his visitors.

Amanda stopped, forced to take a breath.

Balenger tested the air. “I don’t smell the garlic here.”

“That’ll change soon.” Amanda pointed the flashlight toward an area beyond Pentecost’s shattered remains. It showed the lantern, where she’d set it earlier. “If that thing’s a bomb, maybe we can use it to blow away the rubble and get to the chamber. Then we can put out whatever’s heating the arsenic.”

“The same problem as before. The explosion might bring down the roof,” Balenger said.

“I’d sooner die that way. At least, we’ll go out trying.”

Balenger stared at her with admiration. Mustering strength, he used his knife to cut a strip from Pentecost’s coat.

“A fuse?” Amanda asked.

Balenger nodded. He unscrewed the cap to the lantern’s fuel reservoir and shoved the strip of cloth into the opening. “We’ll need to cover this with rocks,” he said. “How long can you hold your breath?”

“As long as it takes to do the job.”

Balenger gave the lantern to Amanda. He inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again, drawing air deep into his lungs. Breath held, he raced into the cavern, ready to shoot if the dog attacked. Amanda charged behind him. They passed the tableaus and reached the wall of rubble. Balenger set down the gun and grabbed rock after rock, making a hole. His chest urged him to breathe. While Amanda directed the flashlight, he cleared more rocks. His lungs cramped, demanding air, but he kept working. When the hole was deep enough to hold the lantern, he set it inside and piled rocks over it, leaving a space for the fuse. Then he pulled out Ray’s lighter and flicked its wheel.

Earlier, he and Amanda had worried that a flame would ignite combustible gas in the tunnel, but the explosion that sealed the mine would probably have set off that kind of gas, Balenger decided. Although “probably” didn’t fill him with confidence, there wasn’t another choice — he was forced to take the risk. When the lighter flamed, he winced, anticipating an explosion. It didn’t happen. He lit the strip of cloth, grabbed the rifle, and hurried with Amanda toward the adjacent chamber.

Pain in his lungs compelled him to breathe before he got there. The smell of garlic made his stomach turn. Sensing the flicker of flame on the cloth behind him, he reached the adjacent chamber, heard Amanda gasp, and pulled her to him, taking shelter around the corner.

“Put your hands over your ears!” he reminded her. “Open your mouth!”

He held his breath again, desperate not to inhale the arsenic. One, two, three. Despite the pounding of his heart, time seemed to go slowly, like a video game in which the minute that elapsed in it was really two minutes in conventional time. Four, five, six.

Did the fuse go out? he wondered in a panic. Did the flame get smothered in the rocks? I don’t know if I can hold my breath long enough to relight it.

Maybe the lantern isn’t a bomb, he worried.

He was about to risk peering into the Sepulcher when a blast sent a concussion that felt like a punch. Dust and rocks fell from the roof. Despite Balenger’s precautions, the roar caused an agonized ringing in his ears. A rumble shook the chamber. It’s going to collapse, he thought, pulling Amanda closer. The rumble persisted, threatening to throw him to the floor. He held Amanda tight, leaning over her, determined to shelter her. Slowly, the vibration died. Rocks stopped falling. Forced to breathe, he tasted dust and garlic. Amanda turned the corner and scanned the flashlight into the Sepulcher.

A haze filled the cavern. Despite it, Balenger saw that the tableaus had been blown apart. A chaos of rags and wood chunks littered the floor. Mummies had turned into scattered bones. He and Amanda ran over them, again holding their breath, as the flashlight revealed an opening beyond the rubble. Balenger expected to see a sophisticated device heating the arsenic, but it was only a charcoal grill that was now overturned, remnants of glowing coals scattered across the floor. A yellow chunk of what Balenger assumed was arsenic lay next to them. He kicked it out of the way.

Reeling from the garlic smell, he found a door that the rubble had hidden. The explosion had blown it open, exposing a tunnel. A light glowed at its end. Taking Amanda’s arm, he lurched along it, desperate to get away from the nauseating, lethal smell.

They reached a door, above which a light bulb shone. But the door wasn’t wooden and gray with age. It was shiny metal.

Balenger reached for the knob, only to find that now it was Amanda who grabbed his hand.

“Don’t,” she said.

She pulled a rubber glove from her jumpsuit, explaining, “Where I woke up yesterday, the doors were electrified.”

She put on the glove and turned the knob, which moved freely. After pushing the door open, she dodged to the side so that Balenger could aim the rifle.

What they saw made them gape.

4

A huge, glowing area extended before them, giving off an electrical hum. The roof was vaulted stone while to the left, numerous levels of metal shelves supported long rows of computer monitors. Every screen was illuminated. They showed the valley, the drained reservoir, the mine entrance, the tunnel, the demolished Sepulcher, and the glowing area in which Balenger and Amanda stood. As Balenger walked along the monitors, he saw one that displayed the viewpoint of the camera on his headset. Another monitor displayed the viewpoint from Amanda’s headset. He saw an image of Balenger standing in profile twenty feet from her while the image he looked at on the monitor showed him in profile. The multiple levels of perception made him dizzy.

But what shocked him more than the expanse of the monitors and the ambitious scope of the surveillance was that none of the images on any of the countless screens had a conventional appearance. The valley, the reservoir, the mine entrance, the tunnel, the Sepulcher, the glowing control room, Balenger and Amanda — nothing was depicted in a so-called realistic way. Everything resembled a brightly colored cartoon.

“My God, we look like we’re in a video game,” Amanda said.

“Welcome to Scavenger.” The voice’s deep resonance filled their earphones.

Balenger turned to the right. There, numerous shelves supported a complex array of computer equipment that stretched for what might have been fifty yards. Above them, a glass wall provided a view of the monitors.

“You survived the final test,” the Game Master said. “You proved yourself worthy.”

“For what, you lying piece of shit?” Balenger shouted. Bathed in the glow of the cartoon colors, he had a partial view of the area behind the glass wall above him. A raised chair was near the glass. Its arms were equipped with numerous buttons and levers. Its occupant was short and slight with wispy, yellow hair and a tiny, wrinkled face that made Balenger think of a boy who had suddenly aged. Goggles reinforced the impression that he was a child.

“Frank!” Amanda yelled. “This monitor! Look how he sees us!”

Balenger turned toward where she pointed. On a screen, he saw the image that the Game Master received through his goggles. It was from a high angle, from the glassed-in observation area. It showed Balenger and Amanda staring toward the monitor, on which was an image of them staring toward the monitor. Again, Balenger’s mind reeled. His lightheadedness was intensified because on this monitor, too, he and Amanda were cartoons. It wasn’t just the surveillance cameras that depicted everything as a graphic in a video game. The goggles the Game Master wore turned everything he saw into a scene from a video game. Worse, Amanda’s swollen purple cheek and Balenger’s broken nose looked inconsequential in the cartoon. The blood on his clawed chest and duct-taped knee appeared merely colorful.

“We’re not cartoons!” Balenger screamed toward the boy-man in the control chair behind the glass wall.

He raised the Mini-14 and centered the holographic red dot on the tiny wrinkled face that wore goggles. When he fired, feeling the shock of the noise in the cavern, the bullet whacked against the glass but sent only a few specks flying. Balenger knew that most bullet-resistant glass could be defeated by placing five bullets in a five-inch circle. Again and again, he pulled the trigger, shell cases arcing, bullets fragmenting against the glass, but except for minor starring, the shots had no effect.

Furious, he spun toward the monitors that showed cartoon graphics of him and Amanda. He shot those monitors, destroying the video-game images that depicted him shooting the monitors. Sparks flew, chunks of plastic erupting.

His rifle stopped firing. “Amanda, there’s another magazine in the outside flap of my knapsack!” Amanda handed it to him. He shoved it into place, released the bolt that slid a round into the firing chamber, and blew five more screens into pieces.

Monitors can be easily replaced, Balenger thought. He swung toward the shelves of computer equipment to inflict greater damage. As bullet after bullet blasted them apart, sparks turned into smoke and flames. In a cascading reaction, numerous monitors stopped glowing.

He stalked toward metal stairs that led up to the observation room.

“Stop!” a voice pleaded.

But it didn’t belong to the Game Master. The voice was a woman’s. Balenger stopped in surprise. Karen Bailey.

She appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Cartoon colors still radiated from some monitors. They contrasted with her drab clothes, similar to those Balenger had seen at the time-capsule lecture. Her face looked plainer, her hair pulled back more severely.

“You won! Now get out of here! Leave!” she yelled.

“After everything you did to us?” Amanda shouted back. “You expect us just to walk away?”

“I’m begging you, take your chance! Go! Through there!” Karen pointed urgently toward a metal door behind her. “It’ll lead you out!”

“Another trap!”

“No! You’ll find an SUV!” Karen hurled car keys toward the door. They clattered on the stone floor.

“The vehicle’s rigged with a bomb, is that it?” Balenger demanded.

“I’ll prove there isn’t! I’ll get in first! I’ll start it for you!”

“When we finish, we might let you do that!” Amanda yelled. “At the moment, we’ve got business to take care of!”

“Leave now! Let him be!”

“Let him be? Hell, I’m going to kill him!” Balenger stepped forward.

“No!” Karen blocked the stairs. “This is wrong! You weren’t supposed to win!”

“We got that impression. Sorry to ruin your fun.”

“I never dreamed he’d allow anybody in here.”

“He didn’t allow anything!” Amanda shouted. “We got here on our own!”

The Game Master’s booming voice filled the cavern. “That’s true. Their survival skills are better than I expected. They honestly surprised me. At the start, I told Amanda that’s all it took for salvation — to surprise me.”

“You want a surprise?” Balenger asked. “Wait till I get up there.”

“If you kill him, he’ll win!” Karen sounded desperate.

“What?”

“He’ll win. How can it satisfy you to give him what he wants? He tricked you the same as he tricked me.”

“Tricked you?”

“If I’d known the truth about the game, I’d never have helped him! I only discovered its real purpose a while ago!”

“The truth about the game? That he’s God and we exist only in his mind? That’s not the truth! This is the truth!” Balenger fired three rounds. They blasted through several consoles, throwing up sparks and smoke.

He stormed in her direction.

“Stop!” Karen shouted, blocking the stairs.

“It’s okay if he kills people, but it’s not okay if he gets punished?”

“Not this way! He’s insane! He belongs in a hospital!”

“Then why didn’t you put him there earlier? You could have stopped this, but instead you helped! People died! I don’t care what your stepfather did to the two of you! I don’t care about the cubbyhole he sealed you in for three days!”

“You know about that?” Karen asked in shock.

“And how your mother abandoned you to a drunken pervert. That doesn’t give you the right to—”

“His mother didn’t abandon him.”

“What?”

“I’m his mother. I never abandoned him! I won’t do it now!” Karen shouted.

The depth of her delusion almost made Balenger pity her. But what he and Amanda had endured shut out every emotion except rage.

“The cubbyhole was so small that we couldn’t stretch out,” Karen said. “In the dark, we heard him hammering nails, sealing the hatch. We shoved at the hatch, but it wouldn’t move. We pounded our fists against it, but that didn’t work, either. There wasn’t enough room for us to kick. The only air came from holes around the hatch’s edge. We begged him to let us out, but he wouldn’t do it. Three days without water or food. We sat in our shit and piss. The smell made me vomit. I was sure we were going to die, but I couldn’t allow Jonathan to know how afraid I was. He started hyperventilating, and I warned him there was only enough air coming in for us to breathe slowly and calmly. I stroked his head. I told him how much I loved him. I put his hand on my chest so he could feel how slowly I breathed. He whispered stories to me in the dark — about an imaginary world called Peregrine, where birds could think and talk and perform magic. We put ourselves in the minds of falcons and flew toward the clouds. We swooped and soared and glided over waterfalls. The cubbyhole disappeared. Later, I realized how delirious I must have been. The first game Jonathan created was about that world.”

Karen’s eyes changed focus, as if she came back from another place. “I took care of him from when he was born. The woman who abandoned him wasn’t his mother. I’m the only mother he ever knew, the only person he ever loved. He’s the only person I ever loved.”

“Get out of my way.”

Karen reached for something behind her. “I won’t let you hurt him. I won’t let you hurt my son.”

“He’s your brother.”

“No!” Karen screamed.

“Frank!” Amanda warned behind him.

Karen raised a weapon. Despite the failing light, Balenger recognized the shape of an assault rifle. He and Amanda dove to the side as bullets tore stones from the wall next to the door they’d come through. Karen wasn’t able to control the weapon. Its barrel tugged upward, shooting above the door. Balenger stood, lined up the dot on his rifle’s sight, and put two bullets into her head. She collapsed, the rifle clattering.

Balenger hurried along the smoking consoles. He reached the stairs, stepped over Karen’s body, and charged up. A metal door was partially open, light glowing behind it. He kicked the door all the way open and faced the observation room, where the tiny Game Master sat in his spaceship-like chair, surrounded by controls. His goggles hid the expression in his eyes, but his wrinkled, child-shaped face made him look pathetic.

“Well, what do you know? It’s the damned Wizard of Oz,” Balenger said. “The guy behind the curtain.”

“Does that mean you identify with Dorothy?” After the damage Balenger inflicted on the computer array downstairs, the Game Master’s voice-strengthening devices no longer functioned. He didn’t sound like a news announcer anymore. His voice was now a puny squeak. “Perhaps that indicates sexual confusion. In games set on virtual worlds, half the male players choose roles that are female.”

Balenger raised the Mini-14.

“Dorothy’s a disappointment,” the frail figure said. “After the countless colorful wonders she finds in Oz, she can’t wait to go back to her drab home in Kansas. She rejects the splendors of alternate reality. What a fool.”

Thinking of the blood that burst from Ortega’s mouth after the wheel barrow crushed him, Balenger aimed. “Is that where you want me to send you — Oz? Or how about Sirius, where the Solar Temple bunch thought it was going? Or maybe you want to reach a flying saucer on the other side of a comet?”

“Any place is better than this. ”The most painful state of being is remembering the future,“” the squeaky voice said.

Balenger paraphrased the rest of the quotation. “Especially your future, which you’re never going to have. Who’s the guy who said Plato was wrong about everything being an illusion?”

“Aristotle.”

“Well, say hello to Aristotle.” Balenger put his finger on the rifle’s trigger.

“It won’t mean anything unless you know what you won.”

Thinking of how grievously Amanda had suffered and how near he’d come to losing her, Balenger yelled, “We won our lives!”

“Not merely that,” the Game Master told him. “After all the obstacles you overcame, you proved yourself worthy.”

“For what?”

“The right to kill God.”

“Kill God? What are you talking about?”

“Kill me.”

Balenger was stunned by the enormity of the concept.

“This is the only way it can happen,” the Game Master explained. “With massive effort, a character needs to take control of the game when, in theory, only the creator has the power to control it. The character becomes so heroic, he defeats God.”

“You want me to kill you?” Balenger asked in disgust. “Is that what your sister meant when she said she finally understood the real purpose of the game?”

“I need someone worthy,” the frail figure repeated. “The Doomsday Vault.”

“What about it?”

“If conventional reality exists, the threats that make the Doomsday Vault necessary show how badly the universe was conceived. Nuclear annihilation. Global warming. All the other possible nightmares. Better that the creator never invented anything. Even God despairs.”

“A suicide game,” Balenger said, appalled.

“Now I’ll swoop and soar through infinity.”

Balenger remembered that Karen Bailey had used similar words. “Like a falcon?”

The boy-man nodded. “I heard Karen tell you about the cubbyhole.” He shuddered. “Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

The Game Master was silent for a moment. When he resumed speaking, his puny voice shook. “It was inevitable. When she learned how the game was designed to end, she refused to allow it. You needed to stop her. But she still exists in my mind. Now she, too, can soar and swoop through infinity.” Tears trickled from beneath the Game Master’s goggles. “She stayed with me during my entire six months in the hospital.”

Balenger remembered Professor Graham telling him about Jonathan Creed’s breakdown.

“I was so determined to take games to their ultimate perfection, I concentrated so hard that I went longer and longer without sleep, four days, five days, six days, and on the seventh day, my mind took me somewhere else.”

He cringed. “For half a year, I was catatonic. I didn’t know it, but Karen sat next to me all that time, whispering my name, trying to bring me back. I never told her where I went.”

“Professor Graham said you called it the Bad Place.”

The puny figure nodded. “It was unspeakable. For those six months, my mind was trapped in the cubbyhole.”

Balenger realized that he was holding his breath. The nightmare implied in the reference to the cubbyhole struck him dumb.

“I sat scrunched in the dark, terrified, no food or water, the stench of my shit suffocating me. But this time, I was alone. I didn’t have Karen to stroke my head and tell me she loved me. I tried to convince myself that the cubbyhole wasn’t real. But how could I know the difference? My cramped body and the darkness and the hunger and thirst felt real. My fear was real. The shit was real. I told myself that I could concentrate on anything I wanted, and if I did it hard enough, that would become real. So I concentrated on Karen. I imagined her whispering my name. Soon, far away in the darkness, I heard her faint voice pleading ‘Jonathan.” I yelled. Her voice got stronger, calling my name, and my mind went to her. I woke up in the hospital with her holding me.“ More tears trickled under his goggles. ”But, of course, that wasn’t real, either. I never left that cubbyhole. All this is another game in my mind. I never left that cubbyhole the first time. I’m still a boy sealed in that cubbyhole, trapped in my mind in that cubbyhole. Pull the trigger.“

The anguish in what Balenger had just heard overwhelmed him.

“Think of how much Amanda suffered because of me,” the Game Master said. “Punish me. Punish God. ”I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.“ Where’s that quotation from, Amanda?”

“Moby Dick,” she answered. “Ahab chases the white whale around the world. But Ahab thinks everything’s an illusion created by God. Basically, Ahab’s chasing God himself.”

“You don’t disappoint me. Go ahead,” the frail figure told Balenger. “You have my permission. Destroy your creator. Strike the sun.”

Balenger couldn’t move.

“What are you waiting for?”

Balenger became conscious of his paralyzed finger on the trigger.

“ ‘Myself am hell.” Where’s that from, Amanda?“ the Game Master asked, his features impossible to read because of his goggles.

“Paradise Lost. Lucifer describes what it feels like to be banished from God.”

“Suppose God’s in his own hell. Do it!” he ordered Balenger.

“And reward you?”

“Kill me!”

“You identified with me in the game. You told me I’m your substitute. Your avatar. I’m you.”

“Tall and strong. God in bodily form.”

“If I shoot you, it’ll be like you’re shooting yourself. I won’t do it.”

The Game Master tried to sit straighter, to seem larger. “You defy me?”

“If you want to commit suicide, have the guts to do it yourself. Otherwise, I’ll get an ambulance up here. They’ll take you to an asylum.”

“You betray me?”

“They’ll put you in a padded room, a different version of the cubbyhole, and give you a real taste of hell.”

“No,” Amanda told Balenger. “He needs to pay. But he also needs help.”

“The only help I need is what you’re holding in your hands,” the boy-man told Balenger.

“No.” Balenger lowered the rifle.

“Like Lucifer and Adam, you disobey me.” The Game Master considered Balenger. Although goggles hid his eyes, Balenger felt the pain behind them. “You have one last chance to change your mind.”

Balenger didn’t reply.

“In that case,” the tiny figure said at last.

He reached for a button.

“Hey.” Instinct made Balenger try to stop him. “What are you doing?”

“We’ll all go to hell.” The tiny figure pressed the button.

Balenger felt a spark of apprehension speed along his nerves. “What’s that button?”

“You proved you’re not worthy.”

“What do you mean, ”we’ll all go to hell‘? What did you just do?“

“Have the courage to end it myself? Very well. If you won’t accept your destiny, I’ll finish the game for you.”

With mounting terror, Balenger stared at the button.

“In a minute,” the Game Master said, “the world ends the way it started.”

Almost every remaining light went out. The only illumination was on a console before the Game Master’s chair: a digital timer whose red numbers counted down from sixty.

“With a bang,” the Game Master said.

“You son of a bitch, you’re going to blow this place up?”

“The game failed. So did the universe,” the puny voice said in the darkness.

Amanda turned on the flashlight, but its illumination was weak, its batteries failing. Balenger groped in his knapsack and raised the night-vision binoculars. He saw a green-tinted version of the boy-man sitting in his game chair, staring through goggles toward the timer. Toward infinity. The spectral green made him look like something in a video game.

“Fifty seconds,” the Game Master said.

It seemed impossible that only ten seconds had elapsed, but Balenger didn’t have a chance to think about that. Turning to Amanda’s green-tinted figure, he yelled, “Grab my arm!”

His wounds were in agony as he led her down the stairs. At the bottom, they stepped over Karen Bailey’s corpse, the green tint of the binoculars making her blood seem unreal. They raced toward the metal door beyond her.

“Forty seconds!” the squeaky voice yelled from the observation room.

Again, the countdown didn’t seem right. Balenger felt that it took longer than ten seconds for them to get down the stairs and reach the door.

Amanda used the rubber glove to turn the knob.

The door wouldn’t open.

Something growled behind Balenger. Startled, he realized that the remaining dog had entered through the open door on the opposite side of the cavern. Ten feet away, its eyes — now tinted green — blazed at him.

“Thirty-five seconds!”

Impossible, Balenger thought. So much couldn’t have happened in so little time.

“Game Master!” Amanda yelled. “God keeps His word!”

Balenger understood what she was trying. “Yes, prove your game’s honest!” he shouted.

“Thirty-four seconds!”

“Open the door!” Amanda insisted. “We found the Sepulcher. You swore that’s all we’d need to win. But now you changed the rules!”

Silence lengthened, moments passing.

“Show us God isn’t a liar!”

The dog snarled.

Abruptly, the door buzzed, the lock thumping, the Game Master freeing it.

Frantic, Amanda twisted the knob. As she opened the door, the dog attacked. Or seemed to. Guessing that the panicked dog’s motive was to escape, Balenger pushed Amanda down. He felt the animal leap over them and race into darkness. Then he and Amanda charged through.

They found themselves in another tunnel. Hurrying along, Balenger felt that surely the remaining time had elapsed. The tunnel seemed to extend forever. Running, he silently counted seven, six, five, four and waited for the explosion’s impact. Three, two, one. But nothing happened. His night-vision binoculars showed a lighter shade of green in the area ahead as the darkness of the tunnel changed to the darkness of the valley. He ignored the pain in his knee and forced himself to run harder.

The clatter of their footsteps no longer echoed. Leaving the tunnel, feeling open air around him, Balenger heard Amanda next to him and suddenly was weightless. The roar of an explosion lifted him off his feet. He landed heavily and rolled down an incline. Unlike the blighted area in front of the mine, the slope here was covered with grass. His breath was knocked out of him. He kept tumbling and suddenly jolted to a stop. Amanda hit beside him, moaning. Rocks pelted the grass. One struck Balenger’s shoulder. Agonized, he crawled toward Amanda.

“Are you hurt?” he managed to ask.

“Everywhere,” she answered weakly. “But I think I’m going to live.”

He’d lost the rifle and the binoculars. In the glow of a three-quarter moon, he turned and saw dust and smoke spewing from the tunnel above him.

“Server down. Game over,” he murmured.

“But is it?” Amanda’s voice was plaintive. “How will we ever know if the game truly ended?”

Balenger didn’t have an answer. Motion attracted his attention, the dog racing along a moonlit ridge.

Amanda collapsed next to him. “The Game Master kept his word. He let us go. He proved he wasn’t a liar.”

“God tried to redeem Himself,” Balenger agreed.

He trembled.

So did Amanda. “What’s supposed to happen next? Do you think Karen Bailey told the truth that there was a car?”

“Would you trust it?” he asked.

“No. An exploding car is one way to end a video game.”

“The alternative is to shrivel like Pac-Man.” Balenger thought of something. “Or like the townspeople in the cave. One thing the Game Master taught me is, a lot of video games can never be won. The player always dies.”

“Yes, everyone dies. But not tonight,” Amanda said. “Tonight, we won. In the cave, when he counted down, the minute seemed to take longer than usual.”

Balenger realized what must have happened. “The countdown was in video-game time. One minute in his reality took two minutes in ours.”

The thought made them silent. In the distance, the dog howled.

“Why did he give us that chance?” Amanda wondered.

“Maybe he didn’t intend to give us a chance,” Balenger said. “Maybe the only time he knew was virtual.”

“Or maybe he knew the difference, and the countdown was the final level of the game. ”Time is the true scavenger,“ he told us. At the end of the obstacle race and the scavenger hunt, he gave us something precious: an extra minute of time.”

“Our bonus round.” Balenger had the feeling that, from now on, this would be the way he thought, as if he had never escaped, as if he were still in the game.

Amanda tried to sit up. “We’ve got some walking to do.”

“After we rest a while.” Balenger hugged his chest, trying to subdue his tremors.

Amanda fell back. “Yeah, a little rest is a good idea,” she admitted.

“It gives us a chance to plan our future.”

“No,” Amanda told him. “Not the future.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A time capsule’s a message to the future that we open in the present to learn about the past, right?” she asked.

“That’s what he said.”

“Well, the game made me realize that the future and the past aren’t important. What matters is now.”

Balenger was reminded of Professor Graham. “There’s an elderly woman I met who learned the same thing from video games. I’ll take you to see her. You’ll like her. She’s dying, but she says that the countless decisions and actions she makes in a video game cram each second and keep her in an eternal moment.”

“Yes,” Amanda said, “I’d like to meet her.”

Balenger managed to smile. He peered up at the dazzling stars. “They were right.”

“Who?”

“The ancients. The sky does look like a dome with holes poked into it. That’s a celestial light glowing through.”

“Everything exists in God’s imagination,” Amanda said.

Balenger touched her arm. “You’re not imaginary.”

“You’re not, either.” Amanda reached for his hand. “Thank God.”