isn’t enough, he reminded himself. You need luck, too.
For a moment, he forgot himself, and his problems, and concentrated on the lovely, slender black-haired woman before him. He even began to wonder if she simply needed a friend to talk to, perhaps a broad perspective from someone who wasn’t in the game anymore. Could he handle that? Could he remember that sometimes, you just gave because it was needed, not because of what you might or might not get in return?
He sighed. All right. Let’s just do this right. If this is the last time you ever see her, how do you want her to remember this conversation? That you were a good guy, in her moment of need, and agile of mind. Try that one.
“You seem stressed,” he said.
Her smile was wan. “And you’re probably wondering why, and what this is all about.”
“Well, you’ve gone to some trouble.”
She put another forkful in her mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and then spoke. “Why am I stressed? I’ve won my way into the greatest game of my life, and there’s a part of me that doesn’t want it.”
“That does not sound like the girl I knew,” Wayne said.
“I think that people are kind of like trees,” she said. “Cut down a tree, and you see all these rings, like the younger tree is still in there, just covered up with new bark. We’re like that, Wayne. That girl is still there, but there’s been a lot of mileage along the way. It’s hard to reach her sometime.”
“I tell you what. Just tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help. And if I can, I will.” Even though she was the one who had come to him, he could see that she had a hard time trusting or believing. “You’re not sure that you want the gig you’ve nailed. Why? Isn’t it everything you’ve been working for?”
Her smile was a bit haggard. “Oh, yeah. And one thing I hadn’t counted on. The Game Master.”
Her voice clearly implied the capital letters, and in his experience, that could only mean one thing. “Xavier?”
She nodded. “He’ll grind my bones to make his bread.”
“I thought it was only giants that did that.”
“Close enough.”
And dammit, she was right. So… the rest of the situation was starting to drop into place. It was the Moon game, the game people had been dreaming of since the first lunar tourist touched down in ’37.
That, and Xavier. Brilliant, reclusive. Sometimes wealthy, sometimes dead broke. A gambler, the kind of high roller the casino sent drop-jets to fetch. He’d pretty much created modern LARP gaming theory, the entire mathematical basis for the interactions of Lore Masters and Game Masters, formalizing the entire culture.
Live-Action Role-Playing took root in the 1970s, when a subculture of mad folk created an organization called the International Fantasy Gaming Society, based on a series of popular novels. The IFGS governed the interactions of “gamers” and “Lore Masters” as they posed each other intellectual puzzles and physical challenges in the midst of one fantasy game or other.
But in 2060 or so, Xavier, then a brilliant teenager who had been gaming since the age of eight, published the first formal gaming theory papers (“LARP Simulation and the Syntax of Combative Improvisation”), and modern gaming was born.
LARPing, which first leapt to world prominence when industrialist Arthur Cowles opened his Dream Park in 2020, was no longer exclusively a Dream Park experience. Still, the parks were considered the supreme expressions of the art, providing mental and physical challenges of the highest order.
Games were still competitions between Lore Masters who were players within the games, and Game Masters who designed and controlled the events from afar, deciding life and death with godlike power. In addition to these competitions, there were also power struggles between different teams within the games themselves.
Xavier, Angelique and Wayne had met at UCLA, and bonded over their love of gaming. Xavier had been six years their senior, a graduate student when Angelique and Wayne were mere freshmen. He was already an expert mime with ten years of ballet on his resume. But the campus IFGS club was a great leveler. Game points were redeemable in real-world status.
And the three of them, separately or together, were brilliant.
Wayne and Xavier had competed for Angelique. She’d been a tall, raven-haired tomboy in jeans and T-shirts, her huge dark eyes perpetually cast downward as if no one had ever told her she was beautiful. Wayne and Xavier had zoned in on her instantly, competing as they had at everything else. They’d suspected that nestled beneath her ice slept blazing coals. Wayne had been first to fan them into flame.
That was damned near the only contest with Xavier Wayne had ever won, and Xavier had never forgiven either of them. While still perfectly friendly on the surface, beneath that exterior the genius seethed with resentment. And as time went on, more and more often it seemed Xavier found reasons to play against, rather than with them.
And while it wasn’t easy for a Game Master to single out specific players for ire, Xavier knew their psychology, game play and character preferences. At times it seemed the games had become more complex and lethal for them, but not for others. Some of the fun had gone out of the play, and if it hadn’t been for their competitive natures, Wayne and Angelique might have dropped out altogether.
And then… scandal. Xavier left UCLA under a cloud of suspicion, accused of plagiarizing part of his doctoral dissertation from an obscure twentieth-century Bulgarian mathematician. Following this event, he voluntarily submitted himself to an institution for “rest” several times. His relationship with his Nobel Laureate father became painfully strained.
And that was the story as he knew it to this point. Because Xavier had been a graduate student, actually teaching some of Angelique’s and Wayne’s classes, there had always been a bit of the student-teacher dynamic about them. At this point, Xavier was… what… forty? While Wayne was thirty-five, and Angelique thirty-four. And that gave Xavier a psychological edge that might prove damned hard to beat.
In the backs of their minds, they might always see him as the teacher.
Wayne understood the problem now. Moon Maze was the game of a lifetime. Xavier was the Game Master. Xavier frightened Angelique.
The public disgrace of losing the Tsatsouline Math Fellowship, the accusations of intellectual theft, had nearly broken the man. But… Wayne remembered the last time he had seen Xavier. His old frenemy had radiated pure hate. You did this, damn you. I don’t know how… I swear to God, I’ll get you…
Wayne still felt chills when he thought about that last meeting. He wasn’t certain he’d ever seen hatred twist a man’s face like that. Deep inside, he’d suspected that Xavier was just posturing for Angelique. That under pressure, Xavier had actually plagarized data, and was blaming anyone, everyone for his problem except himself.
From Wayne’s point of view, Xavier had been gaming when he should have been working on his papers. The man had simply run out of time and tried to cut corners…
He didn’t know for certain, and doubted he ever would. He’d never encountered Xavier again. A year before, Xavier had come to Vegas for a high-stakes poker tournament, and Wayne had watched him walk the red carpet. For a fraction of a second Wayne had considered catching Xavier’s eye. Ultimately, nerve had failed.
A question niggled at the back of his mind, and Wayne sensed that on one level, he already knew the answer. “So… Angelique, you aren’t here to talk about old times. And you don’t need my advice. It’s been a long time since I could tell myself I belonged in your league. You’ve been in the game continuously while I’ve been out making a living. You’re current on things I’d have to research. What do you need?”
Now, for the first time, she seemed unable to meet his eyes. “I want you to be my partner,” she said.
“In… what?” he couldn’t quite believe his ears, even though one part of him had anticipated just such an invitation.
“Eddie can’t do the thing. If he can’t control his nausea, he can’t do the trip. You could. I want you for my partner.”
He pushed back, away from Angelique, squinting, head suddenly pounding with a nascent headache. Gaming again, real gaming, after all these years? And with Angelique Chan?
He had fallen out of formal gaming when his win percentage was circling the drain, and he was offered a job running games for paunchy tourists. Nothing wrong with a little income security, Wayne thought. A health plan. Retirement.
Those voices in his head belonged to his smallest, most fearful aspects. He remembered the way his friends
