Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “I know how I can cheer you up later if you’re feeling up to it.” He didn’t need to look at her to know that she had a big grin on her face.

Lewis put his hand over hers on the counter and looked at her blue-green eyes, his lips forming a genuine smile this time. “That sounds–”

“Whoa, excuse me,” said a man in a checkered shirt with a Texas drawl, nearly bumping into them. He sat down on the right side of Lewis. Both he and the blonde woman with him looked to be in their thirties. With his leather cowboy boots and Lone Star belt buckle, Lewis figured the only thing he was missing was a Stetson.

The bartender came over to the new arrivals. “Two whiskey sours,” the man said. The bartender nodded and turned to the rack of liquor. The Texan couple turned their attention back to Lewis and Jenna. “And what brings you fine people to Las Vegas?” the guy said, an amiable smile stretching across his face.

Lewis didn’t feel in the mood to make small talk, but Jenna rarely missed an opportunity to chat with strangers. It was a wonder she had never gone into politics.

“He had a business trip, but we decided to make a weekend out of it,” she said, playfully leaning into him.

“You two ever been before?” he asked. “I’m Hank, by the way. My wife’s Sandra.”

“A couple of times. My name’s Jenna, this is my boyfriend Desmond.”

“Are you going to any Cirque du Soleil shows?” Sandra chimed in. She had a similar accent to her husband.

“Not this time,” Jenna said. “But I’m trying to convince him to take me nightclubbing.”

The bartender returned with the whiskey sours. Hank picked up his and took a sip as he nodded. “Vegas has great nightclubs. Sandra and I aren’t into that as much anymore, but a couple of years ago we went to a fantastic club. It was unbelievable, felt like I’d stepped into another dimension, or outer space or something. The light show was incredible.”

“Yeah, it was really fun,” Sandra said, nodding in agreement. “What was it called again?”

“I don’t remember. I was probably too drunk that night,” Hank said.

“We both must’ve been. Nine months later I had Jeremy.”

They both burst out laughing, Hank’s sounding like a drawn-out hiss and a horse neigh. He slapped the table. Lewis wanted to go.

“So what else are you two doing?” Sandra asked as Hank wiped a tear from his eye.

“We’re going to this place called Arcadia tomorrow,” Lewis said, speaking up for the first time. “It’s kind of a virtual reality amusement park.”

Hank nodded in recognition. “Yeah, yeah… oh, who was telling us about that?” He turned to his wife.

“Didn’t Dale go to that? He was always really into video games. Wrote reviews about them for the paper and stuff.”

“Oh yeah… shit.” Hank took a big swig of his drink. “Dale…” He could tell Lewis and Jenna didn’t follow. “My cousin. He went out to that place like a month ago or something, right before Christmas. Said it was really cool, like nothing he’d ever experienced. You two will have fun there.”

“What happened to Dale?” Lewis said. “If you don’t mind me asking…”

“What happened…?” Hank looked confused. “I didn’t say he was dead, how did you…”

Neither did I . “Sorry, just seemed like you were talking about him in the past tense.”

“He passed away a little while ago,” Sandra said, placing a hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Jenna said.

“What was the cause?” Lewis said, his shoulders tensing up.

“Suicide,” Hank said, nodding sadly. “Don’t know why. Seemed like he had everything to live for. Everyone figured he must’ve secretly been battling depression. There was no note or anything.”

“When was this?”

“Just a few weeks ago, actually,” Hank said.

Lewis turned to Jenna. “We need to leave now.”

They threw 50 bucks on the counter, said goodbye to Hank and Sandra, and left back into the din of the casino.

Lewis watched the bright lights of the city dance outside the window, lulled into a trance by the cars, the flashing words, the distant sounds of traffic. A horrible thought had occurred to him and now it wouldn’t leave.

How many people had played Rogue Horizon ? Did it do to all of them what it had done to Charlie? He recalled Ricky’s words, spoken a lifetime ago last Sunday: “If you could make a game with psychoactive effects, it’d probably affect everybody differently.” What if not all of its victims turned homicidal; what if the hallucinations and dreams drove some of them to take their own lives instead?

Investigators wouldn’t be looking into those cases, nor would journalists looking to pin murders on video game violence. How many more people had died because of this thing that he had no idea about? How many had gone to Arcadia, returned to their corners of the U.S., and killed themselves? He was sure nobody else would see a connection in Hank’s cousin’s death to the other gamer-related fatalities recently; and even then, only he, Richter, Ricky, Special Agent Gonzalez, and that Atlantic op-ed writer Fenster saw any semblance of a link between all of those.

If there even was a link.

But he didn’t see any other explanation. They had to be connected. The only thing he didn’t understand was how Arcadia fit into it.

Lewis felt a hand on his shoulder and lurched back, then relaxed once he realized it was Jenna. She looked concerned and took him by both of his shoulders.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah… Sorry, I don’t think I’m down to fool around tonight.”

She leaned over and gave him a slow kiss on the cheek, then leaned her head against his shoulder and gazed out the window. “No worries. We should probably get to sleep anyway.” She walked back toward the bed and turned around. “We’ve gotta get up reasonably early tomorrow to trek off into the desert. Arcadia awaits!” She was trying to be cheerful, a big smile plastered on her face.

Lewis froze, feeling goosebumps all over his skin.

Jenna frowned. “What? Was it something I said?”

The two-lane highway curved north, taking them further out into an endless sprawl of sand, dust, and low shrubbery. The land rose and fell into hills and ditches. Mountains and higher land rises were visible miles away in each direction. Power lines running on the left crossed over the rented Corolla to the right side as US-93 gradually turned into a longitudinal straightaway.

Without another vehicle in sight, Lewis accelerated into the desert and kept his hands gripped tightly to the steering wheel. He could picture this place at night, dark and moonlit. The place where Jake Miller’s life had come to an end.

Jenna sat beside him, navigating Google Maps on her phone. The stereo was tuned to a station currently playing Depeche Mode and Lewis hummed along to the lyrics.

The road gradually curved again as they smoothly slalomed through some rocky hills, then resumed a straight course. They passed by the Coyote Springs Golf Course on the right, then continued on into an interminable expanse of arid land for roughly twenty minutes.

Jenna said, “It’ll be coming up on your right soon.”

Lewis saw a turn emerge from the far distance and eventually reached the juncture, swerving the car onto an unmarked gravel road that took them into the rocky hills. Craggy rises rose above them now as the path twisted and turned through the land. Lewis saw they were headed northeast as it finally uncurled and became asphalt once more. The terrain got slightly smoother but was still much more uneven than it was along US-93.