Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

The computer screen went black and then opened on a pastoral scene, a village in the distance. The graphics were nice, if a little flat, already out of date, passed up two years earlier by the 3-D photorealistic real-time rendering stuff. Even so, there was a quality to the graphics that was soothing and familiar. Tiny electronic birds chirped, and white puffs of sheep sailed in the distance. Eli used the mouse to move us forward, and we glided, from his character's point of view, across the field, the village growing in our vision. But the computer stopped and the scene lurched and was replaced by a close shot of the village gate. "I hate that," Eli said. "That hiccup. That's what I'm talking about; it's very rough. And I'm telling you, it doesn't go very far into the scene yet."

"I want to see."

On the gate were the words USER NAME:____________________and PASSWORD: ____________________.

Eli turned to me and it took a second before I realized that he wouldn't type his password until I turned away.

"Dontes," I guessed, thinking of the name on the Pete Decker file, the Monte Cristo prison he'd constructed, and most of all, of the elaborate way Eli had helped me build up my dream of a political career, before pulling it out from under me. "Edmond Dontes," I said.

Eli looked at me in horror. "How did you know that?"

I didn't answer. After a moment, he typed his password. The gate opened, and Eli's alter ego entered his village. Children and maidens rushed up to greet him. His computer-generated arms extended stiffly on either side of the screen, rubbing the kids' heads and taking flowers from the women. Then the image on the screen swung around slowly and there was Eli Dontes himself, tall and muscular, with a bushy mustache and curly brown hair, square of features and back. Eli saw me look from him to the vision of him on the computer, and he blushed and looked down. And then, the computer screen went blank, the picture replaced by strings of code.

"There are a lot of other scenes, but we're having trouble getting them to flow together."

"That's it?" I asked. "That's all you have?"

"Like I said, it's a little rough. Some glitches. If Michael would just release the rest of the investors' money-"

"That's actually why I'm here," I said. "Michael has someone who wants to buy Empire, or the concept of it, anyway." I reached in my briefcase and pulled out Michael's fax. "They want whatever you have, all development and research materials, all rights to the name and the likeness of the game."

"It's not a game," Eli said quietly.

"I doubt they're going to still want it once they see it," I said, "but it's an offer, Eli. Any offer is good. Especially given the climate and the game's… limitations."

He glanced over, then went back to reading the fax. When he got to the price, he laughed. "Two hundred thousand dollars? Is he serious? That's offensive."

"At least it's something," I said. "And this isn't just you. Michael and Dana. Me. We could all use the money, Eli."

"That sneaky asshole," he said. "I know what he's doing."

"You've been using your savings to keep the thing afloat. How much longer can you do that?" In front of his house, the Mercedes had a For Sale sign on it.

"Michael's wanted this from the beginning," Eli said. "He's wanted it for himself from the very beginning." His eyes narrowed again.

"Eli," I said, "if you run out of money, they'll take your house, everything."

He waved his hand toward the house, across the lawn. "They can have the house."

"At least consider this."

"Tell Michael I want my money." Eli continued to stare at the fax.

"Listen to me. Michael doesn't have your money. He's as broke as you and me. Everyone's broke, Eli. You have to sell the game."

"Not a game!" He waved the fax around, then relaxed. "Don't call it a game." Then I saw the look on his face that I'd seen when he showed me the photos of Pete Decker, and I couldn't help thinking of him up here eighteen months earlier, during the election, pacing around, cursing me for betraying him again, for letting him get close and then pulling away. "Tell Michael to give me more money and I'll finish the game."

"Look," I said, "I have to be honest with you. The game isn't worth two thousand dollars, let alone two hundred thousand. Three years ago, maybe. But technology has passed it by. The things you're trying to do – wristwatches do that now."

Eli wasn't hearing a word I said. "So Langford thinks he can get Empire out from under me. I should've guessed. The levels of treachery, that's the thing. Your true enemy is always the last one to reveal himself."

"Eli, just think about it. Please."

"Don't worry," he said, "I can take care of Michael Langford."

When I left I could see him in the window above the garage, the small curtain pulled back, the lenses from his glasses reflecting the light as he watched me drive away.

That evening I called Michael to tell him that Eli had refused even to consider selling the game. Dana answered. I hadn't talked to her since the frenzy of the election, when I'd called to tell her I was getting married. Now she said she was sorry about the election, and about my divorce. We small-talked. I told her I was practicing law again, that I was going to stay. I could hear in my own voice the sense of settled defeat, of fatigue. "Maybe you were right about Spokane," I said.

"What did I say?"

"You said it was the last real place."

She laughed. "And is that a good thing?"

"Yeah, it is," I said. "You've got to be tough here, a realist. For me, yeah, that is a good thing."

She said she and Michael were at a kind of equilibrium. They'd had to sell their big house in Los Altos and were living in a smaller place in Sunnyvale, but they were clearing away the debt and Techubator was flirting with profit again.

"There's this sense among all the people down here," she said, "that if we can make it a few more months, the money will start to come back."

"You'll make it," I said. "You're too smart, and Michael's… relentless."

"Yes," she said. I could hear noise in the background. "We're having Amanda's birthday party," Dana said, and then she sighed. "Oh, Clark-" and I could hear in her voice a shadow of the huge longing that I felt.

"I'll get Michael," she said after a moment.

As I waited I could hear children laughing in the background, and Dana asking who wanted cake. That's when I started doing the math in my head.

"Congressman!" Michael said into the phone. "Oh, wait, but you lost, didn't you? Well, at least you have your wife to comfort you. Oh, wait, you lost her too."

"Eli won't sell," I said.

"He has to."

"I tried to tell him that, but-"

"Try harder." And then he hung up to go back to the party.

I sat with the phone on my shoulder, clicking off the months with my fingers. Amanda was four. The date was January twentieth. Go back four years and nine months: April 20, 1998.

I couldn't speak for that entire month, but I could account for one day. On April 16, 1998, Dana was with me, laughing and kissing my neck, sliding out of her booze-soaked skirt in a hotel room in Spokane.

We never learn anything. Our lives circle back around endlessly, presenting us with the same problems so we can make the same mistakes. We pretend we are moving forward but we live on a globe rotating on an axis, orbiting a burning sphere that is itself orbiting with a million other round hot stones. In a universe of circles, movement is just the illusion that comes from spinning, like a carousel – the faster it spins, the faster the world moves around it.

How else to explain what began to form in my mind? How else to explain how a man could lose all that I'd lost – a childhood, an eye, a woman, an election, a fortune, a brother, maybe even a daughter – and still believe that, in the end, he might win? How else to explain how I could look at my sick friend Eli Boyle, who had wanted nothing his whole life except my help, and begin imagining him as the instrument of my treachery? If I have not been standing in this very spot for thirty-six years, spinning in a tight circle, how else to explain my position today?