Чарли Андерс - Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

I call George Henderson back. “Okay, fine,” I say, without saying hello first. “We’ll go to your convention, tournament, whatever. Just tell us where and when.”

I sort of expected that a lot of people at the “convention” would have RCY after the way George Henderson talked about the disease. But in fact it seems as though every player here has it. Either because you can’t become a power player of Divine Right without the unique mind state of people with Rat Catcher’s, or because that’s whom they were able to strong-arm into signing up.

“Here” is a tiny convention hotel in Orlando, Florida, with fuzzy bulletin boards that mention recent meetings of insurance adjusters and auto parts distributors. We’re a few miles from Disney World, but near us is nothing but strip malls and strip clubs, and one sad-looking Arby’s. We get served Continental breakfast, clammy individually wrapped sandwiches, and steamer trays full of Stroganoff every day.

The first day, we all mill around for an hour, with me trying to stick close to Shary on her first trip out of New Hampshire in ages. But then George Henderson (a chunky white guy with graying curly hair and an 8-bit T-shirt) stands up at the front of the ballroom and announces that all the players are going into the adjoining ballroom, and the “friends and loved ones” will stay in here. We can see our partners and friends through an opening in the temporary wall bisecting the hotel ballroom, but they’re in their own world, sitting at long rows of tables with their cat faces on.

Those of us left in the “friends and family” room are all sorts of people, but the one thing uniting us is a pall of weariness. At least half the spouses or friends immediately announce they’re going out shopping or to Disney World. The other half mostly just sit there, watching their loved ones play, as if they’re worried someone’s going to get kidnapped.

This half of the ballroom has a sickly sweet milk smell clinging to the ornate cheap carpet and the vinyl walls. I get used to it, and then it hits me again whenever I’ve just stepped outside or gone to the bathroom.

After an hour, I risk wandering over to the “players” room and look over Shary’s shoulder. Queen Arabella is furiously negotiating trade agreements and sending threats of force to the other cat kingdoms that have become her neighbors.

Because all of the realms in this game are called “Greater Felinia” by default, Shary needed to come up with a new name for Arabella’s country. She’s renamed it “Graceland.” I stare at the name, then at Shary, who shows no sign of being aware of my presence.

“I will defend the territorial integrity of Graceland to the last cat,” Shary writes.

Judy is a young graphic designer from Toronto, with a long black braid and an eager, narrow face. She’s sitting alone in the “friends and loved ones” room, until I ask if I can sit at her little table. Turns out Judy is here with her boyfriend of two years, Stefan, who got infected with Rat Catcher’s Yellows when they’d only been together a year. Stefan is a superstar in the Divine Right community.

“I have this theory that it’s all one compound organism,” says Judy. “The leptospirosis X, the people, the digital cats. Or at least, it’s one system. Sort of like real-life cats that infect their owners with Toxoplasma gondii , which turns the owners into bigger cat lovers.”

“Huh.” I stare out through the gap in the ballroom wall, at the rows of people in cat masks all tapping away on their separate devices, like a soft rain. All genders, all ages, all sizes, wearing tracksuits or business-casual white-collar outfits. The masks bob up and down, almost in unison. Unblinking and wide-eyed, governing machines.

At first, Judy and I just bond over our stories of taking care of someone who barely recognizes us but keeps obsessively nation building at all hours. But we turn out to have a lot else in common, including an interest in Pre-Raphaelite art, and a lot of the same books.

The third day rolls around, and our flight back up to New Hampshire is that afternoon. I watch Shary hunched over her cat head, with Judy’s boyfriend sitting a few seats away, and my heart begins to sink. I imagine bundling Shary out of here, getting her to the airport and onto the plane, and then unpacking her stuff back at the house while she goes right back to her game. Days and days of cat-faced blankness ahead, forever. This trip has been some kind of turning point for Shary and the others, but for me nothing will have changed.

I’m starting to feel sorry for myself with a whole new intensity when Judy pokes me. “Hey.” I look up. “We need to stay in touch, you know,” Judy says.

I make a big show of adding her number to my phone, and then without even thinking, say: “Do you want to come stay with us? We have a whole spare bedroom with its own bathroom and stuff.”

Judy doesn’t say anything for a few moments. She stares at her boyfriend, who’s sitting a few seats away from Shary. She’s taking slow, controlled breaths through closed teeth. Then she slumps a little, in an abortive shrug. “Yes. Yes, please. That would be great. Thank you.”

I sit with Judy and watch dozens of people in cat masks, sitting shoulder to shoulder without looking at each other. I have a pang of wishing I could just go live in Graceland, a place of which I am already a vassal in every way that matters. But also I feel weirdly proud, and terrified out of my mind. I have no choice but to believe this game matters, the cat politics is important, keeping Lord Hairballington in his place is a vital concern to everyone—or else I will just go straight-up insane.

For a moment, I think Shary looks up from the cat head in her hands and gives me a wicked smile of recognition behind her opaque plastic gaze. I feel so much love in that moment, it’s almost unbearable.

There is a perfect valley, nestled near the foot of the Sherbet Mountains and bordered by the River of Middling Ideas. It’s just a two-day ride away from the Lazy Geyser, which grants good luck to anyone who throws a coin in its path at the very moment when it finally gets around to erupting. There, in that valley, in the shelter of the fedora trees, is the most splendid place in the whole world to make your home.

Once, that valley was home to a small cottage, in which there lived a mouse, a bird, and a sausage. They were the best of friends, with the perfect partnership.

Every day, the bird would fly into the forest and collect wood. The mouse would carry in water from the well, make a fire, and set the table. And then the sausage would cook their dinner, slithering around in the fry pan to coat it with grease for their vegetables or grains.

The sausage had fled the Republic of Breakfast Meats, during one of High Commodore Gammon’s occasional campaigns to purge the realm of improper “meatizens.” (It usually started out with the Canadian bacon, which wasn’t even proper bacon at all, and then spread to those accursed chicken-fried steaks, and then turned into just a general massacre.) The sausage heard the sounds of trucks and loudspeakers, and barely managed to pack up her few precious belongings (such as an MP3 player that contained all of her beloved EDM tunes, which she loved to listen to and dream of becoming a DJ someday).

The sausage had barely made it through the border from the Republic of Breakfast Meats to the Federation of Circus Animals, thanks to some help from a kindly blood pudding who forged some traveling papers for the sausage. Once in the land of Circus Animals, the sausage had found shelter in a trailer with a friendly balloon elephant, who was best friends with an actual elephant. (“People can never tell us apart,” the balloon elephant had said, making a squeaky-squocky noise with his laughter. The flesh-and-blood elephant had just snorted through her trunk.) From there, the sausage had traveled south, skirting the edge of the Monster Truck Preserve.