The faces were different, but the scene was the same, and I felt oddly transported back to those earlier evenings, with their odd mix of excitement and frustrated sexual tension. What am I doing here instead of in California with Michael? I wondered. I could – Something jarred me out of that fantasy. The scene before me was a little too much the same as those early days of Lawyers from Hell. Frankie was sitting behind a game master's screen, a piece of cardboard folded into three parts so it would stand upright and keep the players from seeing all the notes and statistic sheets he was using to run the game.
In the original live role-playing version of Lawyers from Hell, Rob had always used a special game master's screen – we'd called it the judge's bench. Our niece who went to art school had painted it. Around the bottom was a frieze with caricatures of several dozen family members who'd helped play-test the game, all depicted wearing prison stripes and leg irons as part of a chain gang.
I recognized the screen in front of Frankie as that original Lawyers from Hell judge's bench. A little battered, but unmistakable. I recognized the trio of rule books at Frankie's elbow, too. Pre-trial, jury selection, and trial phases – Rob's original final version, run off on his inkjet printer arid stapled in purple paper covers, the same copies we'd given to the graphic designer cousin to typeset. No doubt with Rob's handwritten notes in the margins. At least two out of the three volumes were the originals. The third was a printed copy, and I was willing to bet the missing volume was the one I'd found in Ted's cache. Not that the printed copy wasn't rare enough, given the short period of time Rob had tried to sell the paper-based game before moving to the computer version. But not nearly so rare as the original.
“What's going on here?“ I asked.
The half-dozen players all started and whirled to see what was up; then their faces all took on a sheepish, guilty look.
“We're playing Lawyers from Hell,“ Keisha said.
“Don't tell Rob,“ Frankie begged.
“That you're playing his game?“
“That we're playing the unautomated version,“ Keisha said.
“With Rob's paraphernalia,“ I added.
They all looked guilty. I folded my arms and looked stern. It's what I always did when I wanted to make Rob confess something. I'd learned my first day at Mutant Wizards that it seemed to have the same effect on the whole staff.
“It's okay,“ Frankie said. “I mean, we all love the computer version. It's wonderful!“
The others nodded and murmured agreement.
“But if you first got into gaming playing role-playing games – face-to-face ones – it's… well, it's kind of…“
“It's not as much fun,“ Keisha said bluntly.
“I keep telling them they should let the users hear the dice rolls,“ one player put in. “We could generate the sound of rattling dice.“
“I thought one of the advantages of the computer version was that you didn't have to spend so much time rolling dice and calculating things,“ I said.
“Yeah,“ Frankie said. “But you lose something, too. That adrenaline surge you get when the Judge rolls the dice and you know something's about to happen.“
“And the human interaction,“ Keisha added. “One of the weaknesses of the computer game is that it's at most a two-player game – you don't have all the fun of a group of people playing all the different witnesses and stuff. I know the online version is supposed to fix that, but it's still not like sitting in a room with people and playing. There's no ambience.“
I looked around the room. On the face of it, the lunchroom was pretty short on ambience. Deltas of paper spread across the floor, interspersed with pencils, stray dice, and bags of snack food. Half a dozen pizza boxes were scattered over the counters. Beer and soda cans, solo or in clumps, festooned the entire room.
But on another level…
“So sometimes we borrow Rob's stuff and play a game, the old-fashioned way,“ Frankie said. “Just… because.“
“Yeah, I know what you mean,“ I said. “We had a lot of fun, playing the game, back when Rob was still polishing it.“
“You were a beta tester?“ Keisha exclaimed. “Cool!“
“Do you still play?“ Frankie asked.
“I haven't for months,“ I said. I'd almost said years; it felt like that long. “It got to be pretty time consuming, especially after Rob decided that he needed someone else to judge so he could concentrate on experiencing the game as a player, and I got drafted. Being judge is a whole lot more work.“
“You've played the judge?“ Frankie asked.
“Oh, my God,“ Keisha exclaimed. “Do you realize who she is?“
The others looked at her, puzzled. For that matter, so did I.
“She's Judge Hammer!“ Keisha said.
The others looked at me openmouthed.
“You were, weren't you?“ Keisha demanded.
“Yeah,“ I said. “Rob was already Judge Langslow, so I picked hammer. For my blacksmithing.“
“Wow,“ Frankie said.
They were still looking at me, with the sort of awestruck expressions they usually wore when listening to Rob's pronouncements. As if I were some kind of heroic figure out of legend.
Which to them, I suppose I was. Although he had little or nothing intelligible to say about topics such as game mechanics, marketing techniques, or the future of the electronic entertainment industry, Rob kept getting invited to speak at conferences. And to many people's astonishment, he'd become a highly entertaining speaker. He confined himself largely to telling anecdotes about things that had happened during the development of Lawyers from Hell. Lightweight stuff, but Rob managed to make the development of the game seem like a scientific quest at least as important as the Alamo Project. Occasionally, someone who heard one of his tales would find it a powerful metaphor for some business truth, and if they told Rob about their insights, he was always happy to add them to his repertoire. And otherwise sane people, after hearing his nostalgia-laden tales of playing the early version of the game, seemed to regard those late nights in my parents' family room with the same kind of envy other generations would feel for people who'd actually experienced Paris in the twenties or Haight Ashbury during the Summer of Love.
“Would you consider judging a game for us?“ Frankie asked, and several others began clamoring, as well.
None of us ought to be here at all, I thought, on a work night; I should confiscate Rob's paraphernalia and send them home, so I could get on with studying the floor tiles.
“Just a short game,“ I said.
In my fit of nostalgia about the good old days of playing the original Lawyers from Hell, I'd forgotten a few small details, like how absolutely horrible you feel the next day if you're trying to survive on two and a half hours of sleep.
At least I'd identified another of Ted's blackmail targets. Frankie, ringleader of last night's gaming party, was almost surely the Luddite.
I was too exhausted to protest when I discovered that the box of Affirmation Bears had reappeared in the closet. From time to time, Dr. Brown would trudge through the reception room and deposit several disheveled bears in the box. In between her trips, various staff would sidle into the room to abscond with an armful of bears. I couldn't focus well enough to keep count, but I got the feeling she was losing ground steadily.
The effort of punching the buttons to answer phone calls was almost more than I could manage, and I cringed when one call turned out to be Mother.
