The Never Game

Never surprise an animal or a human... unless you need to surprise them for your own survival.

Brad turned his head, saw Shaw and turned back to the game.

Subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.

THE HYDRAULIC PRESS WILL BE OPENING IN FIVE MINUTES. GET THROUGH IF YOU CAN. A REWARD AWAITS ON THE OTHER SIDE.

But, Shaw recalled, the Whispering Man himself was the coach. The master of the game sometimes helped you. Sometimes, he lied.

The boy turned his ruddy face to Shaw, pulling off the headphones and pausing the game. He brushed his straight, shiny hair from his eyes.

“Brad? Colter Shaw.”

He handed the young man the backpack, containing most of the items he’d taken to Jimmy Foyle.

Peering inside, Brad said, “Never liked Conundrum.”

“Ads, infomercials.”

Brad gave a frown, as if at something so obvious it hardly needed stating. “No, no. Jimmy Foyle’s smart — too smart. We don’t need a quadrillion planets. He used to be good but he forgot what gaming’s all about. He made a game for himself, not for players.”

Fun, Shaw recalled Marty Avon telling him. A game has to be fun.

Brad pulled out the disks and drives and arranged them on the desk. He looked affectionately at one as if happy a dog that had wandered out of the yard had now returned.

He arranged them in some harmonious order. “Do you know why silicon is used? Silicon? Used in computer chips?”

“I don’t, no.”

“There are three types of materials. Conductors let electrons through all the time. Insulators don’t let any through. Semiconductors... Well, you get it. That’s what silicon is. They let electrons through sometimes and not others. Like gates. That’s the reason computers work. Silicon’s the most common. There’s germanium. Gallium arsenide’s better. This whole area could have been called Gallium Arsenide Valley.” He picked up the headphones. He wanted to get back to the game. The screen pulsed impatiently in its waiting state.

Before he could put them on, though, Shaw asked, “You ever get outside?”

“No. Too much glare on the screen.”

Shaw, of course, had meant something else.

“Why don’t you grind? On Twitch?”

If Brad was surprised that Shaw knew the term, he gave no indication. The boy offered a smile but a sad one. “That’s for the pretty people. In nice rooms. With fun things on the walls and made beds and clean windows. You’re on webcam all the time. The subscribers expect that. They expect you to be cool and funny. And talk out your gameplay. I don’t do that. It’s instinct, the way I play. Only twenty-two people in the world have gotten to Level 9. I’m one of them. I’m going to get to 10. I’m going to kill the Whispering Man.”

“I want to give you something.”

No response.

“It’s the name of somebody you might want to call.”

Still silence. Then the hands lowered the headphones.

“Marty Avon. The CEO of Destiny Entertainment.”

Now a flicker of emotion.

“You know him?”

“I do.”

“To talk to?”

Shaw found the number on his phone, lifted a pen from Brad’s desk and wrote it on a Post-it. He placed the yellow square near an empty yogurt container and five books about Minecraft gameplay. “Tell him I wanted you to call. If you’re interested in a job, he’ll talk to you.”

Brad glanced at the slip of paper quickly and his attention wavered to the screen.

Then the headphones were back on. The avatars were in motion. The knives were drawn. Laser guns powered up.

Shaw turned and walked up the stairs. In the living room he glanced at the parents, mother on a couch, stepfather in an armchair, both focused on a crime show on TV.

Without a word, Shaw passed them by and stepped outside. He fired up his dirt bike and rode far too fast through the damp evening.

69

“This’s him.”

Helmet in hand, Colter Shaw was standing in the doorway of Santa Clara Memorial Hospital, the third word in the name ever curious to him in connection with a house of healing because it suggested the place had had its share of failures.

He nodded to the woman who’d just spoken, in a whisper worthy of the Whispering Man. LaDonna Standish.

From her elaborate bed, surrounded by elaborate machines, she continued: “Colter, this is Karen.”

He recognized her from the picture on Standish’s desk. She was a solid woman, tall and with a farm girl look about her. Her hair, which had appeared blond in the photo, was a vibrating tone of orange-red, two shades brighter than Maddie Poole’s.

A pretty girl of about two studied him; she held a stuffed rabbit, made from the same material as her red gingham dress. She had her mother’s blue eyes. This would be Gem.

“Hello,” Shaw said. He saved his smiles for moments like this — with his nieces, mostly.

The girl waved.

Karen rose and shook Shaw’s hand firmly. “Thank you.” Her eyes were wide and radiated gratitude.