@Expectations Read online

  I was damn well going to learn how to make it happen to me.

  And if Charlie came home and found me typing? Too bad. “Can’t talk,” I’d say, “I’m busy.” Fair’s fair, I thought, Charlie hasn’t been straight with me. I deserve to have a secret or two.

  The fourth night Charlie was gone I dropped the kids at a movie and went home to StElene. I set a kitchen timer to remind me to log off in time to pick them up. Then I rushed them to bed, not caring that they shook off my hugs. I had to get back to the vestibule. I cranked up the nerve to speak. “Hello.”

  Somebody typed, “NEWBIE ALERT!”

  Fearsome zoomed in on me like a singles bar smoothie. “We can’t hear ourselves think i cn here. Want to go someplace quiet?”

  Knowing the scam made me feel like an insider. “No thanks.”

  Jazzy said, “Smart guest.” He smiled. “But if you’re that smart, you won’t stay a guest. You’ll want to get a character and be one of us. Type @commit. And when you choose a name, get back in touch and I’ll show you how to build a room.” He was so nice that it made my mouth water. “I think we’re going to be friends.”

  On the fifth day Charlie was gone, Suntum International mailed my registration number and password, I thanked them and promised to make them proud of me. I got the name I’d asked for. The Directors knew who Jenny Wilder was, but to the rest of the community I was a brand new person. Forget Jenny, who is easily hurt. Meet Zan.

  ZAN

  So on the fifth night Charlie was gone, Zan turned her back on Church Street and moved bag and baggage onto StElene. It was intense. What if she messed up and they laughed? What if the regulars found out how little she knew? Fat chance. They ignored her. Even after she found her way out into the elegant foyer, regular players came and went, oblivious. She might as well not be there at all.

  W, she typed, to go west, into the grand ballroom. The beautifully described parquet, the crystal chandelier and vaulted ceiling dropped into her mind like a Japanese flower that blooms in water. The ballroom she built in her head was magnificent. And the company! Brilliant. It was like walking into a cocktail party in full cry, everybody talking at once. Speeches unfurled so fast that she couldn’t follow. Threads overlapped at such a dazzling speed that she got high on the conversation: In the grand ballroom there is always a party going on.

  Old friends took their brains out for a walk like pet show dogs: (“You really think you can establish the exact location of God with Zero Knowledge Proof?”

  “You don’t have to go through the city to prove you’ve been there, Devo. All you have to do is name an intersecting point.”)

  Three hackers with funky names were trashing Luddites everywhere (“If language and math are the two great logical systems, face it, code is the third,”) while two builders swapped intricate Chinese recipes (“only a clod would use five spice powder in a red-cook because she was too cheap to go out for anise stars”); another group haggled over, what—the possibility of freedom within a society that needs rules to survive. (“Set the rules and you control the game. Yes hell the Director-proggers are holding the reins.”) Jazzy was nowhere around.

  The players were smart, they were funny and in the dizzying freedom of anonymity, they sounded like the most interesting people she’d never see.

  Reverdy! His name kept coming up.

  “Hello?” She typed the line suggested in House Rules. “I’m new here. Who’s Reverdy?” Heedless, the regulars talked on.

  “Oh,” someone said coldly. “You are sooo new!”

  People repeated the comic airline riff (“welcome to StElene. Your tray tables should be closed and your seat backs returned to an upright position…”) while in a quiet corner, a flirtation went on—Fearsome and Basalt_Guest. House Rules said to type look at Basalt_Guest to see what people had written about themselves. This one read like a singles ad.

  Basalt_Guest is long and lean and round in all the right places. Her robe slips just a little, exposing one shoulder and the pink tip of one breast. Are you the right one for her? Page her if you want to know her better.

  Creepy. Jenny—no, Zan—felt maybe a little soiled, reading it. But she couldn’t stop watching as Fearsome asked questions

  [Fearsome is tall, 6’2”, dark, 26. Sinister, until you get to know him]

  and Basalt_Guest replied until in perfect concert, the couple disappeared. Zan was too new to know that she could type find Fearsome to see where they’d gone. Voyeurism? You bet. The combination of sex and politics was confusing. And who were the bunch in the corner, arguing DOS versus Mac?

  Reverdy’s name surfaced in the text like a silver fish. Factions formed: pro Mireya. Pro Reverdy. Thunder said every experiment needed its gadfly. Without people like Reverdy to test its motives, Suntum could turn StElene into a dictatorship.

  Dictatorship? In an imaginary place? The idea was either silly or exciting. Zan tried, “Dictatorship?”

  They ignored her. Life just kept happening, multiple conversations running like parallel trains, that she wasn’t on. It was as if the new player Zan didn’t exist for them. Am I doing something wrong? Do I smell bad? She might as well be stuck by the front door on Front Street, waiting for Charlie to come back. She tried: “*HELLO?*”

  Mireya said crossly, “Don’t yell.”

  Azeath: “If you don’t know how to act here, don’t be here.”

  It was humiliating. But she couldn’t quit. Sitting with one foot in Brevert, South Carolina and the other in StElene, Jenny Wilder was lonely and isolated. Not Jenny, she reminded herself. Zan. New name so none of these internet stalkers I read about will know who I am or how to find me and hurt me.

  Hurt me, they won’t even talk to me!

  Funny, how much you need to know to be at home in these electronic spaces. She’d forgotten what to type to quit. She was tempted to turn off the computer and walk away, but what if that was so wrong that they’d never let her come back? This place is silly, she told herself miserably, typing one thing after another to no effect. Just a bunch of misfits playing games.

  Then Reverdy spoke. She saw:

  “Reverdy says to you, ‘I said, are you all right?’”

  Startled, Zan mistyped. OK, it was a little creepy being noticed after all this being ignored; what if this player so many people loved to hate was a … She didn’t know what if. She typed:

  look at Reverdy The description he’d written for himself read,

  Reverdy is not what he seems.

  An odd description. Cerebral. Is this all we are, she wondered. Descriptions popping up on a screen?

  “Oh my,” Reverdy said after a couple of minutes in which Zan failed to speak and he learned everything there was to know about her within the game. “You really are new.”

  Moved by this fact that a player had spoken to her at all, flattered that it was he, she typed, “I’m so new that I don’t know what I’m doing here.” After a pause she typed, “What am I doing here?”

  Reverdy laughed. “Exactly. It’s existential. We’re here to find out what we’re doing here. It’s the object of the game.”

  They were setting a rhythm. “And where is here?”

  “Exactly where you think it is.” He grinned. “It’s all in your mind.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  He said, “Another of those things I’m here to find out.”

  “Then you’re not…”

  “Like Fearsome? No. If you have a few minutes, let Dr. Frankenstein explain this place to you.”

  Nice. Fine, Zan thought. The life of the mind. It was like coming into the territory. Yes. Still, she hesitated.

  He reassured her. “Remember, if you don’t like what’s happening, you can always disconnect.” They went to the end of the dock to talk—a public area, nothing like Fearsome’s lair. The turrets of the great hotel were at their backs. Reverdy indicated the gazebo where he’d brought her. “Like it?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

&nbs
p; “I built it. The dock and the gazebo are all mine.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  “Now let me show you a few things. How to have a private conversation, for one.” Reverdy taught her what to type to say things only he could read. page Reverdy He warned, “Be careful what you say and do here. It’s the first rule of the game.”

  Her heartbeat quickened; she felt altered, daring. “And we’re here to find out the object of the game.”

  “You really are smart.” He laughed. “Not too many people here understand that it’s the central question. Everybody has a different answer. It’s an analog, right? Yeah, we’re put here to find out.”

  IRL. Jenny Wilder shivered. Zan said, “Kind of like life.”

  “Exactly like life. Think microcosm. It’s what we are. The question is, why we are. What Suntum International is doing with us here. Thousands of us living inside a clever corporate design.”

  She said, “People say the corporation is out to get you.”

  His grin warmed her. “And you’re quick, too. The Directors know I’m closing on it. Whatever is the truth. Suntum’s objective for StElene. It’s clear they’re manipulating us for profit. If it kills me I’m going to find out how.”

  “You mean they’re using us?”

  “I think so. I think they’re designing an application they can use for … I don’t know yet. Profit, certainly. That’s another thing.” Reverdy whispered, “They’re manipulating us.”

  “That’s ugly.”

  “I knew there was something special about you. It’s the intelligence. Now listen. I’m about to tell you something important.”

  “Yes,” Jenny said, unaccountably committed. No. Zan said. Brand new here, attentive and grave. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s this. When you set the parameters of a society, you control what people are able to do within it.” The resonance made Zan shiver. “See how everything’s spelled out in House Rules. How to move, what you’re allowed to build, what’s done, what is not done. It’s like sociologists who determine their results by the way they frame their quiz.”

  “Or psychologists, by which questions they ask.”

  He laughed. “Yes! Did you notice how much you had to tell Suntum to get a character? Your name and age and sex, your home address? That’s only the beginning. It’s a hop, skip and a jump for them to your credit ratings, medical history, what you buy at the store, which drugs. The Directors say StElene is a democracy, but it isn’t. The corporation’s running us like lab rats.”

  “Then why do you keep coming back?”

  Reverdy grinned. “To see how far I can push the envelope.”

  “Why not just walk away?”

  “Can’t live without it.”

  Oh my God, what if he’s crazy?

  “Forget I said that. Look. If we let industry set the parameters for any society, even an electronic one, then pretty soon industry controls society. Somebody has to fight. And from within.” Then he dropped in the phrase that reverberates, filling her thoughts. “Performative utterance. What we say—is. We, not Suntum, should be the ones who say.”

  “And the object of the game?”

  “If it is a game. Too soon to tell. We can’t just play without question.”

  She was falling in love with his mind. “Explain.”

  Which Reverdy did, spinning out his theory about Suntum, about the nature of electronic space and the art of manipulation, and when he had Zan riveted he said unexpectedly, “You’re not very happy, are you?”

  Sitting at a keyboard who knew how far away from this intelligent, wonderful friend she’d never met, Jenny Wilder was blindsided by tears of gratitude. “Does it show?”

  “It takes one to know one,” Reverdy said. Astonishingly, he offered a confidence in return. “My bed is pretty cold.”

  She jumped. “You too?” Amazing how close you get and how fast when there are no surfaces to stop you: expressions to deceive, tone of voice to distract. This flexible space is more personal than any secret place, more private than the confessional. Secrets shared in the dark are privileged, as if exchanged on a remote star. Yes, she thought, it’s safe. Let the feelings out. “Oh Reverdy, you too?”

  In the crashing intimacy of space, people will tell you amazing things. The stranger Zan suddenly knew to the bone confided, “If I leave Louise, I’ll lose my children. I love them too much…”

  “Oh Reverdy, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s.” He thought the better of it. Too soon to exchange names, but too late for both of them, they’d fallen in love with each other’s minds.

  In the end they logged off because one of his children was crying in his sleep wherever Reverdy lived RL and Jenny had to feed Charlie’s children and dress for work. Without the exigencies they would type forever, separated but mysteriously and forever linked. The day that followed that first night without sleep found Jenny jangling with excitement. She knew the object of the game! It was Reverdy. This wonderful new man who saw straight into her heart. She loved the intelligence, the trust that let him confess all his needs and the way he anticipated hers.

  What the eyes can’t see, the heart supplies. She fell in love with his mind. The rest followed. In time they exchanged real names to prove that Reverdy loves Zan on StElene but in his life, wherever he is living it, Tom Dearden loves Jenny Wilder too.

  In the physical world, love is love. It feeds on itself until it runs out of fuel. Love in this invisible but very real space is love idealized. Perfect. In ideal love, there are no bad times and no misunderstandings. There is only expectation.

  It’s gotten so Zan prays for Jenny’s days to end so she can be with Reverdy. When life disconnects them, she dies every minute that falls in between.

  @twelve

  ZAN

  Jenny knows when Lark sends an e-mail to her IRL that it’s an emergency, [email protected] subject: Showtime If it was less than drastic, he’d wait for her to show up on StElene or as he puts it, snailmail her at home. This couldn’t wait. He’s kited his cry for help into what other people think of as the only real life.

  Urgent. Big trouble. Have to talk. 10 p.m.?

  She emails back:

  StElene. My place, at 10.

  When Zan and Reverdy first fell in love, Lark was a jealous third party. He and Reverdy bonded on his first day on StElene. Unlike Lark’s rigid father Howard Pinkney the pragmatic businessman, Reverdy was playful and kind. Lark fixed on him like a navigator following a star.

  Then Zan came and the configuration changed. Before she knew Lark she knew he was upset, lurking at the fringes of all their encounters, saying without having to say it, Reverdy, look at me, look at me! The first night she followed Reverdy into the Dak Bungalow and he locked the door behind them, Lark grieved as if all his stars had gone out.

  Zan could hear him outside calling, “Are you guys OK in there? Are you OK?” when what he meant was, What are you doing in there?

  “Shh,” Reverdy whispered, “ignore him and he’ll go away.”

  “But he’s your friend!”

  “And you’re more important than any friend.”

  “He needs you, Rev.”

  His next words made her go weak. “And I need you.”

  Even though she wanted nothing more than to be alone with Reverdy she said, “We can’t just lock him out like this.”

  For the first time I touch you—here! He murmured into her neck, “It’s just for now. I love you, and all that matters is now.”

  Zan trembled. She couldn’t know why she felt so disturbed. She disengaged, saying, “Please. He’s really upset. He needs you to go out and tell him it’s OK.” She meant, I need you to tell us that what you and I are doing is OK. And because Jenny Wilder has never been sure of this, Zan added, “It is, isn’t it? OK?” How odd that she should let herself fall in love this way!

  “OK?” Reverdy said gravely, “of course it’s OK. What we say and do here belongs to us here. It’s ours alone.” Seein
g how uncertain his new lover was in this new place in their online relationship, how deeply she needed to be reassured, Reverdy crooned to her, “We aren’t hurting anybody. We aren’t even being unfaithful.”

  “But we’re…” It was so new, so strange, so strikingly sexual that she thought of Charlie and felt guilty. “What is this?”

  “This is ours,” Reverdy whispered, “ours alone. Nobody knows.”

  “But we’re…” Zan was still waiting for some kind of benediction, which Reverdy freely gave.

  “Not hurting anybody. In the perfect marriage of the minds, nobody gets hurt.” He called to Lark. “Friend, five minutes. Trust us.”

  Zan thought, five minutes? She didn’t know that when she replayed the dialog in her heart it would stretch like hours.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were OK.” Later, when Zan began to hear Lark’s troubles like confessions and say just what he needed to feel better, Lark fell in love with them as a pair.

  If a couple is really in love and completely happy it should be enough, but it never is. It’s like furnishing a beautiful room. What you have is only beautiful to you for a time. You need to see it reflected in somebody else’s eyes. A third person has to come in and envy you a little, and admire.

  Every couple in love needs a mirror to prove its happiness.

  Lark is theirs.

  Jenny excuses herself from the dinner table and goes to Zan’s Tower to meet Lark at ten, as agreed. Charlie didn’t come home until 9:45, kissed her absently and sat down at the place she had left for him. Her mind was on StElene and his was on his work. He tried to explain what had kept him at the base and she tried to understand, but she couldn’t concentrate; she has Lark to take care of now. She put the warmed over casserole on a TV table for him and started upstairs. On the landing she looked back at Charlie with his sandy head bent under the light and thought: Got to do something about that soon and had no idea what she meant. She had promises to keep. She’s needed here.