Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

SHE FLED down her complex’s halls, never resting or pausing, but looking for something new. Anything truly new. There was a growing, hardening pellet within her that warned she would never find it.

New things did exist, of course. But they existed within prescribed bounds. Those bounds were what her family called the spotlight. Where the spotlight shone, new things sometimes appeared, or cropped up, to be sifted and understood. But she was far from the spotlight. She wanted to leave it behind. She was far from anything but dark halls set at right angles, cleared long ago of their treasures; smooth glossy walls in striking hues; floors so black it was a living color. But nothing, and nobody new, now or quite possibly ever again.

She had meant to leave her husband. The thought motivated her that somehow she had not yet done so; she had declared her intention and fled, but somehow he was not yet left, and would not be until she had crossed some essential barrier. Increasingly she feared this barrier did not exist.

Given all of this, her greatest fear was that she would lose resolve, give up and turn back. There was an argument budding that she had no other choice. If her hatred failed her, what else could she do but return, only to live her misery again, perhaps again and again—and what was there to keep her will from weakening?

Most things remained unchanged. The shape and structure of the universe always followed the same basic rules. No angle was ever anything but a sharp ninety degrees, no two corridors ever different widths. A body never slowed unless impelled to do so. The mind, at times, required rest, but the body never did. Could hatred itself be one of those things that never changed? Was it possible that, husbanded with care, her hatred could be a commodity of which she would never run dry?

This seemed unlikely, but the very contemplation of the notion fueled her, so she savored it while speeding. To continue existing, she must know either stimulus or thought. This, she had concluded long ago. This was established philosophy. But where she was going—ever further from known realms—there would be no stimulus, save for intermittent changes in the colors of the walls and the distinction between turn and straightaway. These distinctions quickly faded into insignificance; she could barely remember what color the walls had been before they were salmon pink, before they were dark blue.

Thus it followed that she had only thoughts to live by. And while some thoughts were certain to drain her of hatred, others would rekindle it—mightn’t they?

Yet it could not continue forever. If she did not return, she would run out of kindling. She knew this almost for a fact. No one could hate forever. Nothing could burn forever without fuel. If she did not refuel, she would have to stop hating, and then she would go back regardless. It seemed there was no way to continue onward forever, even if there was no literal obstacle in her way. The conclusion was compelling. What a terrible puzzle.

Her husband had been the first, she the second. She was his Eve, made in his likeness, of him and for him. More than his Eve—his twin. Their physical characteristics and abilities were all but identical. She had a nickname—”Pepper”—but her true name was his. In all the world, there were none of their kind but the two of them and their son. Should she visit their son? Would that tether her too closely, precluding her escape?

Her choices had altered, she realized. As before, she proceeded as far as she could in one direction before turning, but previously she had chosen to turn left and right in alternation, with a few small irregularities. Now she found herself turning left more often than right. That led her nearer to her son’s complex, where the spotlight still shone. Was she taking this measure as a contingency? Just in case she ran out of hatred or decided that infinity was impossible? Not decided, any more. Realized? Came to accept?

Eternity came with pain; she could not deny that. There was pain in the idea that no action would ever again take root to drive the pain away. She could not know for certain that the world extended forever, but she had no reason to doubt it. She could flee ceaselessly without tiring. Or at least, a thing that looked like her could flee endlessly. If she exhausted all possible thoughts, however, and all possible feelings, there would be nothing left of her. She would be gone from within herself: a whizzing shell.

For a foolish moment, she wondered if that was how ghosts were born.

No, that was good. Such random thoughts would keep her alive while she fled. If only she could find some endless source of them, she would abide. What could such a source be? Her memories?

But her memories were the seat of what she was running from, weren’t they?

The futility of her flight came home to roost on all sides, all at once. Her defenses gave in and she turned at once toward the left, toward her son’s home. Hope was gone and hatred finite, and going nowhere was not, as it turned out, an option.

The stage of her son’s success was where her sorrows had taken root. It was where the spotlight shone, yes, and it was the only place where dangers, real and solid, currently lurked in the form of familiar specters. But it had also been the site of her first great clash with her husband. Yet their feud was not so young as all that; it was the kind of achingly deep rift that amassed through the course of a marriage, a rift whose greatest dimension was time.

Her grievances were not violent or vivid, but subtle, and this was the worst of it, because she knew without care such anger might be forgotten. Her husband had never wounded her or raped her, never confined her against her will or destroyed her possessions—but he had treated her, from the first to the last, as an object, a possession of his own, as though she were nothing more or less than a treasure for his fulfillment. As if the fact that she mirrored him in body meant that her soul, too, was his. He never acknowledged her interests as worthy of his time. Nor did he show any patience for any thought of hers that failed to reflect his own. He ignored her entirely when it suited him, and indeed, she would have ignored him in turn but for those moment when he took a penetrating interest in her, and it was in these moments that she felt the impression, many times dulled, of their bygone love as if it were a spotlight, and she a prisoner. He cajoled her in these moments to accompany him on whatever pursuit was his latest fancy, whether tending to his collection of polished stones, teaching their son to rove and explore, or going to frivolous lengths to taunt the ghosts that had forever haunted their family. It had been in the course of this last activity that she had first opposed him, for she had spent years fleeing from these monsters herself, and her gut still trembled at the thought of returning to where they lurked, yet he had bidden her to—merely for the entertainment. In this first moment of refusing to do as he ordered, Ms. Pac-Man had realized for the first time how his will degraded her, how much a mere thing of his she was. It was then she had realized that his frequently professed love for her did not amount to her loving him in return. So it was on this stage of their son’s success that she had come to hate her husband. Now it was thence she turned as she fled from him, despite fears and painful memories, for she did dare forget the foundation of her hatred.

Her son lived in a home much like the one she had once known. Its rooms were larger, but its walls were simpler and more childlike, and the bounty within was richer than that to which she was accustomed. Junior’s home provided him with dums, kites, toy locomotives, balloons… the things of his primeval dreams. These things kept him young and happy. But these walls were also where the ghosts lived, if they could be said to live at all. There was no divorcing reward from risk; where fruits or treasure were to be found, the ghosts would always be present.

She lived in fear that she child would die, and that having died once, he would die again, and again, and that he would vanish at last in his entirety; and as if the loss of her son would not be terrible enough, she feared that afterwards the ghosts’ chill presence would fall back upon herself, and she would be forced to fly. But normally this train of thought was not in her mind, for her husband had no such fears and rarely let his wife harbor any complete thought that he did not share. He was not in the complex, however, and so Ms. Pac-Man re-experienced all her fears in full as she returned to the home of her son.

She could not see the ghosts directly, nor did her targeting senses detect them. But she could feel their general presence like a stench of despair from the past. They had been the chief focus and dread of her life for many years and the sensation of their proximity was not easily forgotten. Whether her reflexes would also return to her was an open question.

Her son would be near them, though. The ghosts dogged him like the single-minded spirits they were, and if she wished to see him, she would have to bear their presence. Bafflingly, Junior didn’t seem to mind it himself; he was young and confident in his own speed, and seemed to enjoy the challenge of dodging their pursuit. So his mother followed those corridors where the stench lay thickest, longing for a glimpse of her son before the horror of his homestead overwhelmed her heart.

She rose until she saw the glimmer of white stones, and beyond them the empty spaces where he must have passed. Her heart fluttered and she sped onward. Her finer senses could detect Junior now, and yes, there were the ghosts too, their scent inescapable. Here in this bed of shining gems, where life was still inconceivably being lived in the metaphorical spotlight, the aroma of the ghosts was rich and putrid in its blend of clashing personalities. There were four: the bold, unwavering one whose presence and speed were strongest; the tricky one who always seemed a step or two ahead, ready to corner his prey from around the next bend; the strange one who seemed out of place with time and flanked only the shadow of his quarry; and the chaotic one with the brass to obliviously tread her own course. She had remembered the feel of the ghosts collectively, but the individual impressions came suddenly back to her, a fresh sensation filling in holes. Already her nerves were heightened and she began to experience emotional regression.

The patterns of cleared halls became clearer to her as she explored further, and as if she were a ghost herself, she stalked her darling boy. The more she wandered through his playground, the better she remembered the ways of flight and pursuit, and the better she knew which way her child had gone. She made good ground, and before the ghosts could find her, before the level was clear, she turned a corner and found him there. Bright. Yellow. Shining as always.

“Mom,” he said, “his high voice catching. He did not spin to face her, but she could tell he wanted to; it was an act of will to maintain his facing as he sped for the next intersection.

“Junior,” she breathed. At the next loop she took a shortcut and came alongside him; they moved as one for the space of several curves. They both knew with the same shrewdness where the ghosts were; they knew there would be times for conversation and times for flight. When the tricky one appeared at the head of the corridor, if they had not both forseen his approach and made for a side passage, they might not have escaped. Ms. Pac-Man was shocked at how little the ghost called Pinky had changed over the years. She had not internalized the fact that ghosts do not age.

“What are you doing here?” asked Junior once they’d made some distance and had time to breathe.

“I’m on the run from your father,” she confessed. “But I had to see you.”

“Aw, Mom,” was his reply. Such a simple reply, but laden with emotion; she could tell. He was tamping down his responses so as to save energy and not be caught. But now they turned a corner and faced a long, empty corridor.

“What’s wrong with Dad?” he asked. “Why would he chase you?”

“He isn’t. That’s not what matters. What matters is that I have to stay away, no matter what.”

“What do you mean? Why did you come here?” Junior seemed increasingly shaken.

“I couldn’t stay with him any longer,” she moaned. “And I… I don’t know why I came to you, Junior, except that I didn’t see any other choice. You’re doing so well, and I’m so proud of you, but I don’t know if I can explain why I had to leave him. It’s so full of subtlety, and you’re so young…”

“Well thanks a lot!” he cried. He was after the last few trails of gems, and his agenda left him little time for frustrating conversations. He turned from his mother at the next opportunity, though it would have been safe to stay his course. But his mother followed him.

“I’m sorry, Junior. I didn’t mean to distract you. Please, let me stay here! I’ve been so lonely—I had to come.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. Was he referring to what she’d just said, or to… But she had to swerve with him, for the orange ghost was near. He stayed in the unfilled paths, where progress was quicker, and kept to his chosen evasive course. But then he glanced back at his mother. “Why don’t you go back to Dad?” he demanded. “What’s he done that’s so bad? You can’t stay with me—you’ll slow me down!”

Ms. Pac-Man knew it was fear, not independence, that stirred her son’s heart. He was expending energy in talking with him, facing her, making sure she wasn’t in the path of danger. There was a tricycle bobbing through the far side of the level that he hadn’t been able to intercept, and it looked likely to disappear.

Still. “Please,” she pled. “I need you. If I can’t have him, I need you. I miss you. Don’t leave me alone.”

He seemed touched, even if there was little affection he could spare. “I don’t know, Mom… I wish I could keep you company, but I’m working! I don’t see how you could keep up.” His voice was tattered with confusion.

She knew he was right. Yet she called: “Wait!” And he came back to her reluctantly, looking at her face during the moment he could. She was changed strangely; she knew this, and she knew he could see it. Rather than struggle for words beyond his ken, her boy granted her a desperate kiss, still on the move. Then, pained, he zoomed away.

His mother turned and left his side, wondering whether she should have followed, if there was anything she could have done. Her escape from the ongoing red ghost was narrow and she had to move precisely to make it to safe quarters unharmed. It was hard for her to leave the labyrinth, but she had to. She ducked down to the next lower level, where no ghosts roamed, and kept speeding cruelly onward, trying to empty her mind. The entrance to the complex presented itself, like an unsolicited gift; she passed it by. This conflict was too great to be faced at once: she wanted to be with her son, but knew it was unsafe for them both. She wanted to go home, but knew there was no future for her there. She wanted something it was safe to want, but…

When she stopped running, the halls were empty and dank. She was loitering in the purged dark corridors beneath the entrance to the complex, where her son had long since completed his heroic deeds. He was upwardly bound; this level was nothing but a languid basement emptied of value, destined to fall further and further out of notice until it could be identified, if at all, only by a large number and a vague effort of imagination. She remained there only because she did not choose to be anywhere else. She had ceased her flight not because its purpose had dissipated, but because she did not know of anywhere else to go.

In darkness and amid obscure green walls Ms. Pac-Man slept.

[ C` ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ O ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ]

Chapter Text

WHEN SHE AWOKE, it was to a faint sense of importance.

Something was keeping her from obscurity, from eternal placidity. Something nearby mattered. Whether it was an errant ghost, a stray item from her son’s toybox, her son come to comfort her or her husband to claim her, she did not know. The notion that it might be something exotic and utterly new glanced across her mind for only long enough to tease her.

This bewildered her. She had not expected to be important anymore. But then, she had little way to know how long she had spent in obscurity.

It had felt like sleep, this descent beneath the spotlight. Had she wandered mindlessly for so long that her turn had once again come? Was she even now being called again to the spotlight? She was not ready—not in the slightest.

And yet, she told herself, body slipping meekly back into motion, if it was her time again, that would at least be a solution to her problem. That would be something new. It would be a wonderful blessing, albeit a terrifying one. Perhaps the new development would keep her husband at bay. Perhaps it would provide her with fuel to run again.

But no. She could already tell this was no new theater of action. What tickled her senses was something small and finite, like herself. A single thing, orbiting the limits of her consciousness.

No, not orbiting. Hovering.

She fled; that much came automatically. Only then came the realization that it was a ghost—and with that, the questions.

Why was it here? What would incite one of the four ghosts to abandon its comrades in the spotlight, shirking the chase? Had some glitch or twist in the story sent it careening away? Were Junior’s mazes smaller now, with room for only three enemies? Somehow this seemed impossible. In such a case, would not the superfluous ghost remain just out of sight, ready to resume its part? Its presence here, so far from the field of action, made Ms, Pac-Man shiver.

Was it even one of the four? She darted nearer, clearing her mind enough to exercise caution and identify the familiar movement pattern from afar, even before he entered her line of vision. Yes—it was Inky, the blue ghost; that was clear enough. But what was he doing here?

Well… trying to catch her, naturally. That much was clear. Ghosts chased them, and always would—that was their purpose in life, unchanging and perhaps unchosen. But why in the world had he descended so far from the spotlight? Ms. Pac-Man was not the object of interest currently—that was her son. Besides, what hope could one ghost alone have of catching her? Tactical strength lay in numbers: for one ghost to split off and pursue a secondary target would only weaken the remaining pack. And his quest was futile: Ms. Pac-Man was swifter than the blue ghost and he could not corner her. Each junction offered multiple routes to freedom and only one leading back to destruction.

Perplexed and a little frustrated, she sped from the ghost and went down another level. She was alone there for a while, but then the flickering sense of importance returned and she knew the ghost was near. Yet the sense grew no closer, and Ms. Pac-Man’s perplexity grew. He was following at the limit of her ken, but he did not approach her!

Was this some glitch of solitude, a malfunction born from Inky’s inexperience in solo hunting? He was always the one to hover at the edge of the pack, awaiting a mistake. Rush the flank and cut off the escape—but what sense could that make when he was alone? Did he have no other repertoire? Or was whatever anomaly had caused him to stray from the pack also responsible for his inability to give proper chase?

She drew to a halt against a wall, driven (for once) by curiosity. The ghost indeed kept a safe distance, flickering about. He made occasional inroads, but darted back each time. How strange! Was he not planning to kill her? Did he intend to catch her unwary? But then, it would be hard to imagine her less wary than she’d been a few minutes ago, and he hadn’t swooped in for the kill.

This behavior was not strange—it was pathological. The blue ghost’s pattern of movement was more disturbing than his presence here itself.

Not knowing what was to be done about it, Ms. Pac-Man ducked down another level, and then another. She waited there until she felt the tingle of an enemy approaching, then onward she went. Would five levels at once be enough to shake him? It was not. The feeling returned, and deeper she descended, and soon the investigation faded into something familiar: Flight. Running. Escape. She paused to consider how things were developing.

It was not so odd that she did not feel afraid. The threat pursuing her was minimal: she had no gems to collect and no limitations on which direction she could flee, and there was only one attacker in pursuit, and he was perhaps the least formidable of the four. What was odd was that she did not feel hopeless. The sense of emptiness ahead and sterility behind was at least held at bay for now, as Ms Pac-Man flew downward from an assailant whose purpose was an aberrant mystery. She welcomed that. She did not dwell on the fact that she felt relief, lest it dissipate. She simply observed it happily, from the outside, edging inward. She spiraled down into a dungeon whose walls grew closer, and felt the funny tingle from an assailant she could not explain, and she felt that somehow, in some strange way, there was after all newness in the world.

A question came to be within her, a shining gem like a power pellet unharvested, and it grew with each subsequent descent: How will this end? And an odd, perverse piece of her suggested that just maybe, it never would.

It was not hard as if this would be hard to end. If she made an effort to break the hypnotic, almost soothing feeling of this chase, she could easily trick the ghost, wend around him and rise again through the complex. She could leave it and be free on the outside, and she believed the ghost would not follow her there. Even if he did, he would not find her. She could return to speeding the vast in-betweens, saddled with most of her pains from before, plus the fresh, painful fact that her son would not even have her company.

Instead, she fled downward.

Her son’s nursery had been built with larger rooms than the houses of his parents. Though they had no tunnels, they were so wide they could not be contained all at once within the senses. It was a somewhat dizzying feeling that stopped some distance below the first level. Below that, the walls drew in and the rooms became smaller. Blockier. Simpler, with fewer loops or tricks with which to get away. More trivial, like childhood, or the world seen through it. It was a tower pointed downward.

Just as the walls grew closer together, so was the blackness around them fleshed out, made somehow darker. Purer. More powerful. In Ms. Pac-Man’s mind it came to lose its potential to be filled; it ceased being so much empty space and became, instead, space that was filled with emptiness. Crammed densely with blackness. With blankness. There was no room to imagine anything else. It felt like the shock from when, on her own two hundred-twentieth level, the walls of the maze had suddenly vanished from around her, leaving nothing in her sights but herself and the four predators she danced with minute by minute. A child’s reconception of her reality. A black field containing nothing but a yellow circle and a cyan blob. A primal trace.

The levels suddenly came to an end and Ms. Pac-Man returned to her senses. She had fled so relentlessly, so unthinkingly, that she had reached the bottom. It was with the same sense that one uses to recognize deformity that she realized the maze she was in lacked even that most basic amenity that all the others had possessed: a downward exit. Even more alarmingly, it possessed no loops—not one. No loops? The significance of this clutched onto her—there was no way back around. She was trapped by a single ghost!

She had believed, during this long pointless pursuit, that she had felt no emotion. Now she realized that was untrue; she simply hadn’t known the name for what she felt. But now a familiar emotion blared loud and clear: fear. She didn’t know what to do. She had squandered her chance, her multitude of chances to dodge the ghost; something had kept her from eschewing her downward course, and while she realized there might be a lowest level to this dungeon, she had never dreamed it would be loopless. There were forks, yes, but for any fork she took, the ghost could simply follow.

She fell back into the deepest passage, shielded by the greatest number of twists and turns, and tucked herself into the dead end. The ghost entered the level. He took the passage she had taken. She prayed for a twenty minute reversal; he held his course. He came in sight. He arrived at the last junction.

He stopped.

His quarry had to feel for her own heartbeat to make sure the world hadn’t frozen. For one terrible moment, she felt certain the same glitch that had taken the ghost must have taken everything. Ghosts didn’t stop! They never stopped, for any reason, under any circumstances! Even while cooped in Central Control they seethed, up and down, ready to roll. Yet this blue ghost had stopped dead only three body lengths from her face.

His eyes were faced toward her.

Even to waver, to see whether she could move at all, was too frightening a prospect for Ms. Pac-Man. At any moment the ghost could come crashing down upon her. It could not be that he had not noticed her there, but perhaps he was lost in thought, as she had been. Perhaps, though his face bore no such expression, this was how he savored his victory. She had never been trapped in a dead end before; nor had any of her family. She did not know for certain this was not how a ghost should behave. Yet it flummoxed and terrified her all the same.

She watched his eyes, praying that a reversal might still take place. Yet even if the ghost did turn his eyes from her, it would be no use if he remained forever frozen in place. A new wave of fear washed over her: if that were the case, she would be locked into this tiny cell forever, suicide her only option. During her time of glory, her time in the spotlight, she had possessed three lives; a single death would not have been the end. But she truly did not know whether that was still the case in a place so far removed as this.

But the ghost was not frozen. He backed away from her. He… backed away… and that, in itself, was new and frightening: ghosts invariably moved in the direction of their eyes. But there was only room in her heart for so many stripes of fear, and this was a relief. So Ms. Pac-Man sat motionless and watched as Inky moved away—as smoothly as silently as he had come, but watching her all the while.

He paused at the end of the corridor, and had he not stopped in place only moments before, this alone would have caused Ms. Pac-Man great shock. But he turned at the corner, then, and was gone. She dared not emerge, however. She dared not do a thing. Ms. Pac-Man remained in place, tucked into her distant dead end, for five full minutes, and that, under the circumstances, was a very long time.

Finally, when she could feel no trace of the aberrant ghost and the shock had worn itself down, she crept from her hiding place and humbly retraced her path. Her heart returned to a mostly normal pace once she was ensconced again in levels with plenty of loops. She rose with increasing confidence, more and more rapidly, making her way toward the exit of the complex as directly as she knew how. On the way, without consciously wishing to, she relived the eerie happenstance… and was astonished to find herself feeling light. This was the relief of life after the belief that death was certain, but it was more. She could not say why, but… well, she had needed something new, needed it dearly, and now… though that novelty was a terror that had literally come within inches of ending her life… she had gotten it. She had gotten the newness she craved in the world. And somehow… it had elated her!

For a time, she had studied abstract puzzle theory. This was while her husband was off on one of his more obscure missions, working alongside a deformed rascal called Miru—they had not heard from Miru since. With Junior serving as messenger, Pac-Man had told his wife about certain cases in which an insoluble puzzle had become soluble with the addition of an extraneous, seemingly unrelated factor, such as Miru herself. It was a matter of three steps: identifying the nature of the new factor; working out how to use it to affect things external to itself; and determining how this effect could be used to solve the puzzle.

Now Ms. Pac-Man felt she was analogously faced with an insoluble puzzle. It was worse than a puzzle, of course, because it concerned her very existence and boasted no guarantee of a solution, but she had no other framework through which to view it. Her options were stunningly few.

The puzzle she faced was: How can I live without my husband? The new factor she had encoutered was a terrifying pause, and a broken rule of ghost movement. She had no idea how this novelty could be turned to her advantage, but the idea that somehow it might was her most strident thought as she made her way up from the basement. She was not one to wither away in the wake of danger—she would build from it, somehow. The key point here was that she had been desperate for something, anything new… and now she had witnessed it. Her next task was to claim this novelty for herself.

She emerged from the complex with no idea where she was going. Her only concern was speed, which she cultivated so that she could think. With dashed walls flying by, horizontal and vertical in colors that were sometimes cool, sometimes garish, she felt more than she could see. When she flew swiftly there was less visual distraction and more visceral sensation, a prerequisite to the kind of mental focus she was seeking. The walls turned from coral orange to ocean blue, and Ms. Pac-Man’s problem took the place of corridors in her mind. White eyes. Black pupils. A body retreating, pupils locked. A pause moments before her death. Another at the corridor’s end. Utterly anomalous, yet strangely familiar behavior. There was something oddly easy about making sense of it all, now that she was sailing.

Ocean blue to bold crimson. If she didn’t know better, she would say the ghost was admiring her. She wondered if what had happened could ever happen again. She wondered whether it was something modified in all the ghosts, or only the one that had pursued her, or if it was something that had been hidden in them all along.

Bold crimson to cold, dark blue. She wondered what had triggered this strange event; whether it had been an action of her own, and whether she could control it. She wondered whether it was something she could possibly test safely. Suddenly, she realized that she could test none of these questions without going back to her son’s theater of action. Back to where the ghosts roamed freely—apparently, all too freely.

Cold blue to salmon pink. She did not want to put herself in danger again. She quailed at the thought of dodging around her son’s enemies—for they were his enemies now, not hers—trying her experiments while explaining to her son why she had to be there, even while her work interfered with his. No. It would get her nowhere. She couldn’t go back. All she had to work with were the ghosts—the unlikeliest of tools—and she knew that she could gain nothing by going to them. So her wonderful novelty was useless after all.

Yet just the fact that it could exist—that new things were possible in the world—gave her deep hope. And so, after passing from salmon pink to coral orange and coming to a wall, it was deeply that Ms Pac-Man slept, escaped just barely from despair.

/``\
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Chapter Text

WHEN SHE CAME TO, it was with thoughts of courtship in her mind’s eye. She remembered the day she had first seen her husband… how she had led him on a merry chase, all out of sport, all for love that had yet to bloom. There was music left in her from her nostalgic dreams, and she paced out its tempo unthinkingly as she began to move again.

To move… where? Toward home, she realized. Away from the ghosts, away from wilderness and escape… home. But why home? Why was she going back to where her husband dwelt? Had anything changed? It didn’t matter, of course, since she could go or stay as she liked… and there was a good chance her husband was out looking for her elsewhere. And yet… at home, there were wide open spaces and comforting nooks. At home, there were memories. Her instincts led her there, but all while she called herself foolish. Reckless. Foolish, reckless, flighty thing. Had she forgotten that home was the source of her pain? Dreams had filled her mind with memories and left insufficient space for caution.

But what had been so special about this dream? How did it have such power to control her actions? What thoughts from just before her slumber had crept in to shape it?

Somehow, the chase, the chance meeting, the courtship… had been fresh. Different. No mere memory of when her love was unsullied. But she couldn’t reclaim it. No matter how she spun her mind, Ms. Pac-Man couldn’t remember what she had dreamed.

It wasn’t as though she had a plethora of options. Even while she had still loved her husband, Ms. Pac-Man had longed to revisit the places they had once roamed, mazes with diverse characteristics and filled with strange things like keys and doors. But they were gone, just as Miru was—just as was everything and everyone they had known in the past. The complexes were closed and inaccessible and might as well have vanished. The universe had always herded Pac-Man and his wife, and now it was herding their son. She had always been content, if not overjoyed, to follow the direction of fate, but now she found herself off its track. She did not know what that meant. She only knew that the universe had always taken away their options. And the saddest tragedy was that it was useless to despise the universe.

When she reached her home, it was silent. No sense of any presence. Home meant safety, but not the safety the word ‘home’ ought to promise: At the moment, it was only a waystation on her flight, not the true destination it ought to be. In this way she justified her presence there.

She went inside, found the largest room, and promptly let herself go. This was the luxury she needed just now. Within her home there were fewer walls, and the corridors were mostly larger than the width of her body. It was in her home and nowhere else that Ms. Pac-Man could turn at angles that were not multiples of ninety degrees; here alone that she could zigzag, trace curves, or simply whirl on a whim. She floated like a beast with no mind, no moorings; her eyes closed, and she spun.

She flowed from the foyer to the living room, then soundlessly bounced through the nursery, her momentum irregular and beautiful. She left one eye open to lazily interpret what she saw, each approaching corner a new landscape to be discovered, then let go. Through the bedroom she inched, then down along the dark wall of the parlor, rolling playfully against the wall, bow flattened without a care. She flipped to the opposite wall, then flipped gaily back again, and wondered whether this would make for an existence in itself, if she wanted it to—flipping from wall to wall as if it were a game. She spun into the kitchen and twirled around and around and around, then let herself relax and spin, and every few seconds a bundle of multicolored joy met her eyes, setting her mind at ease.

Wait. A bundle? She righted herself and forced focus and equilibrium back into her mind. What was this? Gradually, she came to rest before a basket of fruit that hadn’t been there before. Tucked among the pears and apples—toys for Junior, smelling of aromatic wood. Beside it all, etched with diamonds and swirls, sat a bowl of fruit salad. She smiled at the gifts—for what else could they be?—and marveled at them despite herself, despite the part of her that warned “He only does it to bring you back, you mustn’t.” She did. She marveled, and she smelled the salad, and then she took a bite, and then two, of sweet bananas and sumptious ripe peaches, tart cherries and strawberries, crisp apples and tender pears, all punctuated by the crunch of pretzels coated in the crushed essence of her stable food, the gleaming white gem, whose liquid mash made a delectable sauce.

She lost herself in the salad, and once sated she drifted back and felt her smile fade. How odd! Why did she frown? She frowned not for her husband and his naive eagerness, nor for the conflict she felt for a partner who would treat her like nothing but a possession to be won over by gifts. She didn’t know why she frowned, except that it felt wrong. She knew she should feel angry, or on edge against his eventual return, or perhaps just conciliatory and resigned. Yet her feelings had none of that baggage. She was looking at a gift and seeing it as nothing more than the joy it was, as if the courtship it represented were fresh and new. She was troubled because she was untroubled, and the paradox of it made her laugh and spin anew. How, when she was so disillusioned with her husband, could these delightful gifts of his strike so true upon her, making her feel genuinely carefree?

She revolved backwards, slowly, decadently, and mulled over this impossible question—and suddenly the answer was as clear as anything.

These gifts had not come from her husband. There was only one answer, and it was both laughable and utterly new, and it explained perfectly both the strangeness of her dream and the bizarre events of the day before. The blue ghost was in love with her. He had left these gifts! He had approached her not to kill her, nor to terrify her… but to speak with her! And he had been shy, as always, so shy… and left without a word! Ms. Pac-Man laughed uproariously as she tumbled backward across the kitchen. It was so strange. So off. So wrong, and yet perhaps not wrong at all. Her dreams had put him in her husband’s place. She had known, subconsciously, as she slept, and only now had it all come clear. She did not stop laughing for quite some time.

Where, then, did this leave her?

She did not know. She did not care to know. For now, she only ate the fruit salad, and fiddled with the toys, and smelled the fresh fruit in the basket. She swam again through the great spaces of her house, and laughed again, and for once she didn’t care if her husband should hear.

And, of course, he did.

It was hours later. She had lost track of what she had done, but there was a puree of pear on the kitchen counter, and fruit skins littered the floor. She was floating about gaily, treasuring this one day, her day to be careless after so many weeks of painstaking care. Her husband appeared at the door. Her gaiety was deep but not irascible; it sank away quickly when she saw him. Sank, meaning that it still lurked beneath the surface. It was not gone.

“Hey, you’re back! At last!” He barreled into the room. Even in this place of freedom his motion was angular, though it did not match the normal pattern of angles. She had once cherished the shadows of the polygons he traced unawares.

“I’m not here for long,” she said. She hadn’t known it was true until she said it.

He turned to face her. “Honey… we can’t keep going on like this.” His voice was a moan, evincing anguish, but it was nothing compared to hers, and therefore worse than nothing. He looked at him and felt little pity.

“No, we can’t. I’m going.”

Now he rolled into motion again, toward her. “You can’t leave me. We were made for each other. Without me you’re nothing. Without you, I’m nothing.” He stopped before her and they were left staring at each other’s faces. “Why have you been doing this to me?”

“I want my own life,” she said. While a tired line that had seen overmuch use in their futile exchanges, it was still true.

“What do you want that I haven’t given you?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.” Her voice was calm—on another day, she might have shouted that reply. “How can I know when I’m not free to find out?”

They began drifting slowly around the table. He wanted closeness, she wanted distance, and the table was her ally.

“Honey, there is nothing you don’t have!” he insisted. “You’re out wandering just because, but your heart is back here! Please...stay here. I can’t run after you forever.”

I don’t see anything preventing it, Ms. Pac-Man was tempted to say. But all she said was: “Then stop!”

“But you’re mine,” he replied, “and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be, and you bring me so much happiness! I can’t stop chasing you.” He was so infuriatingly candid.

“You’ll have no reason to chase me when I won’t come back.”

“You’ll have to come back! You have to see reason! You have nowhere else to go!”

It was such a worn argument, so hopeless, and yet the possible falsity of this last remark made Ms. Pac-Man want to dissolve anew into laughter.

“Nonetheless, I will go,” she remarked, all too casually.

“You’ll only come back again. You have nothing but me. There’s nothing for you but me, and nothing for me but you! Why can’t you understand that, Pepper?”

She drifted toward the exit. “I haven’t been able to understand it… because it hasn’t been true. I only understand it now.”

His voice became sharp and bare. “I’ll bring you back,” he threatened. “Honey, I’m tired of searching and playing hide-and-seek. If you go, I’ll follow you and bring you back.”

Would he really? “I don’t think you will,” she challenged.

“How can you stop me?”

She didn’t answer. She just straightened her course and flew straight away from the table and out the door, having decided to answer through example, not words. Immediately, he circled the table and gave chase. It was only then that he noticed the objects on the table, and paused. From the corner of her eye, she saw him draw to a halt, confounded—and this observation lent an elated burst of energy to her escape. She rounded the first corner she found, and handily lost his pursuit.

Waiting is nothing when there’s suddenly so much to wait for, thought Ms. Pac-man as she zoomed up through the oversized rooms of her son’s complex. A thought tickled her from the back of her mind—she wondered how all this would seem to him when it was over.

“Mom! You’re back again!”

“I’m back. I hope you can forgive me, baby.”

The pink ghost was drawing near. Ms. Pac-Man conscientiously slid out of the way so that her son would not lose an escape route. She hadn’t called him ‘baby’ in many a year… but thoughts too true to be spoken were bubbling from her, such was her condition.

“What are you doing here?” her son shot back, panicked by her presence. She couldn’t blame him, really—it was going to be difficult for both of them, constantly having to maintain double attention in order to converse and also attend to their own mutual safety. But if that was the nature of this new phase in Ms. Pac-Man’s life, she was prepared to do it—especially since she now knew the danger was less than she had believed.

“I’m sorry,” she called to him. “I know you don’t want my company. But I’m actually not here to visit you.”

Seconds elapsed before her son chose to allot her the time needed to speak. He was fleeing along a straightaway, picking up gems, aiming for a particular left exit before the orange ghost could cut him off. This delay left his mother nervously unsure of his reaction, but she bided patiently at the edge of the formation.

At last: “Then why are you here?”

She spoke carefully. “Junior, are all of the ghosts here?”

“Huh?”

“All four ghosts? Are they present?”

He glared at her for asking such a stupid question, then softened when he remembered. “Funny you should ask. There were… what, it must have been twenty levels when the blue ghost wasn’t here at all! Those were the days, Mom, I’ll tell you." He twitched back on his path, then back again to pick up a missed gem, his turn made a moment too soon. “But now they’re all back in full force. It’s like the other three got stronger while Inky was away! And now there’s you to worry about. This place just gets worse… and… worse!”

So muttering, the young racer darted up the last couple of paths and picked off the last straggling gems. The level cleared, all four ghosts floated mindlessly back toward Central Control, no longer menaces for a short while. Junior shot one more annoyed glance at his mother and flashed away up the ramp to the next level. Ms. Pac-Man ignored him; she browsed attentively through the paths near the middle, watching the ghosts return home to be beamed upward. She turned around, and he was there.

His eyes told her everything she needed. It was strange, but true—the ghosts had no features but their eyes, and so their eyes must hold everything. To begin with, his shyness was infuriating. It was an incredible shyness, exquisite and untouchable, but it infuriated her. If he loved her, how could he have held back from telling her, or at least showing her a sign, for so long? It was an affront—against her and against… not love itself, exactly. Against honesty. Against integrity.

She wanted to rush straight up to him and demand his feelings, as if she were pulling the lever of a machine. But she feared that such directness would break something in the gentle ghost. And there was also a part of her, a mere sliver, that feared she was wrong. Could there be any more foolish way to give up her life than to crash into a ghost’s path, demanding he profess a phantom love?

He moved away from her. This was no mere sidestep, she realized. It was difficult for a ghost to resist the pull of Central Control. He had to try to move away. She stared at where he had been, then watched quietly as he entered the central box. His eyes were turned toward her, she noted, even as he moved away; that was all she needed to know.

She took a breath and hurried up the ramp.

She had read something like love in his eyes, and in the way he floated. It was something like the strain of love she herself had felt, shortly after her creation. She was surprised that she could even remember the feeling, so fleeting had it been. It was not a mature, settled love—it was love balled up with wonder, a hot, potent love for the amazing yellow ball that seemed so perfectly her destiny. Love for the perfection of a world in which such an ideal match could exist, from the very beginning, and to the very end… and forever.

Of course, she knew now that Pac-Man was not her ideal match, but even years ago, even in the throes of courtship, she had known a feeling that they were too much alike. Too much similarity could kill a relationship, she knew…

…and at that moment, as she ascended the ramp and remembered her early misgivings, she realized suddenly that he never had. Pac-Man had never realized that key point, even in passing, as she had done. He saw no flaw in similitude.

This ghost who loved her need not experience any such insight, of course. He was not like her. There would be many hazards to a relationship between them, but excess similitude was not among them. Yet in his look, she imagined she had seen even that—every trace of the early, burning love she had felt for her male twin, her Adam, and all the sorrow that had followed with the fading of that perfection.

Her heart raced. She sped toward the Central Control box of the new level, ready to aid her son. She sat gazing at Inky as he hovered, and noticed that he was looking away from her now, and hovering a bit more slowly than usual. Something was on her mind, and she knew what.

Junior nodded to her, saying nothing. He had given up trying to rid himself of her for now. Good. She was determined not to get in his way, and she would even try to distract his nemeses if she had the chance. She didn’t know how to approach Inky, but she knew there was no progress to be made if she wasn’t where he was.

The silence broke and the ghosts were off! So was Junior, and so was Ms. Pac-Man, speeding around the upper reaches in search of a ghost to antagonize. She would not gather gems here, as it was not her task and might prove deleterious, but she could make things harder for the enemies of her son.

Inky was headed for the far southeast corner, where he milled about, doing nothing. It was painful, for a moment, to know he was deliberately putting as much distance between himself and her as possible. But even that could be read as love—it could hardly be indifference. Ms. Pac-Man put him out of her mind and tore off to avoid Sue, the orange ghost, who had wandered her way.

Sue looked at her in utter surprise. Her dusty voice, so long useless, was pushed into service at the sight of her erstwhile quarry. “What? You’re back for another tangle!” It wasn’t clear whether this was a genuine expression of joy or an attempt at smugness.

“You didn’t notice me until now?” Ms. Pac-Man asked. She wavered in her course with surprise—it had been so long since a ghost had spoken to her that she had nearly forgotten they could.

“I’ve been chasing your son! What are you doing here? You can’t help him, you know.”

“I know.”

“If you get in the way, we’ll just kill you.”

“I know.”

Sue cut ahead of Ms. Pac-Man’s route, gaining distance on her. Ms. Pac-Man dashed around a corner. She caught a glimpse of Sue’s eyes, though, which seemed to shine clearer than she’d ever seen them. Was the ghost happy to have her back?

“I guess you’ve gone crazy,” said Sue. Her voice was much too loud, much too close.

She was wrong too, of course. Ms. Pac-Man was unsure of her future; she was in a state of flux, but she wasn’t crazy. Sue was the crazy one, and always had been. She wasn’t so certain of herself that she felt she could say so, though, for there was still a significant portion of herself that thought it was crazy to be pursuing a quintessential pursuer.

Instead, she said something calculated to distract: “I’m here to protect myself from my husband.”

The orange ghost’s eyes went wide and her crenelated skirt flared high. “Protect yourself? You mean he doesn’t love you anymore??”

“He loves me too much,” she returned defensively, scrambling to avoid being overtaken while also avoiding the red ghost’s sudden approach.

Sue laughed brusquely. “Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man fighting! What has the world come to?” She followed Ms. Pac-Man unerringly, and her tone shifted to a serious one. “Everything’ll go to the ghosts if you two can’t stick together.”

“I think you’ll find,” Ms. Pac-Man couldn’t resist riposting, “that ghosts don’t always stick together either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Where’s Inky?”

Sue flagged in her pursuit long enough to look for him. “Over that way,” she announced smugly, spying him near the corner. “He was gone for a while, but he’s back now! You see? He cares about us. We ghosts will always stick together!”

But her prey had dashed off. Ms. Pac-Man had decided to head for Inky—to the forgotten realms with subtlety. If she was willing to tell Sue about her suspicions, she certainly owed at least that much candor to Inky himself.

There he was, still bobbling along uncertainly. He turned at her approach, fear in his eyes. Fear—and she hadn’t even eaten a power pellet. He was supposed to be the pursuer.

“Inky,” she cried. “Please don’t go. Thank you for the gifts—the salad was very tasty!”

He hurried toward her then, and her breath caught. It took an effort of will not to dash straight away. Sue had apparently decided to go back to pursuing Junior, thankfully, so the two of them turned into a pair of side corridors and ran in parallel, spying each other between the walls whenever an opening appeared.

“I heard you talking to Sue,” he breathed. Had… had she ever heard his voice? She must have, long ago. He had always been the quietest ghost, but surely she’d heard him speak at least once. His voice was shy and knowing and tender, and somehow she could tell it was capable of great empathy.

“I haven’t talked to any of you in a long time,” she replied.

He was silent for a few seconds. “I’ve missed you.”

She didn’t know what to say. How odd to miss one’s quarry! And then there was the question… could she love him back? It was hard to imagine, but at the same time somehow so very easy. “Have you… have you always…?”

But before she could finish her question, he warned her, his voice now a loud hush. “Hurry! Get away! Sue is here!”

Sure enough, she was back on Ms. Pac-Man’s trail. Inky hurried off down a side passage. Sue sped closer, jolly in her anger, reinvigorated by the sport of having two heroes to chase rather than one. “Think you can insult our honor?” she bellowed. “Think you can get away with it? Run, run, you spinning wheel of cheese! You may manage to escape us—heck, after all this time, you probably will—but you can’t insult our honor without a chase! Ghosts don’t stick together? Horsefeathers! You won’t catch us down on the job! Hee hee haahah haah!”

Ms. Pac-Man, in fact, had no designs on her enemies’ honor. She wanted only to get away. It happened, though, that her escape route this time led her through the part of the labyrinth her son was busily working in. He chanced to turn her way as she was speeding through; he gave a glance then at Sue’s manic demeanor and shrieked: “Mom!!”

The cry struck her with a blend of panic and shame. She was torn for a moment in two directions, but out of necessity she sorted herself out and headed straight for him. “Run,” she mouthed, barely loud enough for him to hear. Frustrated and afraid, the youth sped back the way he’d come, toward the red ghost’s pursuit.

Ms. Pac-Man somehow managed to find a different route that was unblocked while Sue barreled along at random. What happened then was a blur. She found herself well clear of the chaos surrounding the west side of the labyrinth, though she feared her son was in serious trouble. Suddenly Inky appeared around a corner, approaching with eyes wide; he hadn’t expected her up this way and she hadn’t expected him. He struggled to stop in time and she surged to flee the other way. She was afraid there was no time, that he would strike her inadvertently…

…But time stopped.

Everything had frozen. Sounds that Ms. Pac-Man hadn’t even realized were there ceased abruptly. This felt similar to Inky’s unexpected halt in the dungeons below, but many times worse. She sensed things at rest that simply shouldn’t be. The flashes of colors in the walls. The twinkling of the gems. The roving teddy bear that had just appeared, now freakishly still. Inky. The ghosts. Herself.

Not her son, though. Her son was gone.

The wrench that poured through her guts transitioned violently into the restarting of the world. Inky was gone from before her, somehow, but she knew he was still near. The other ghosts were still present, though they too had been whisked away. But her son—wait, no. He was there too. How odd! She had been sure that he was gone; it had caused the most profound despair she could remember. Her gut teetered with nauseous indecision—she didn’t know how to feel. How was this—

Oh. Of course. How could she forget? He was in the spotlight—he had multiple lives. Her son had died. He was back. But he was reduced. If in no other way, he was surely reduced in confidence, now that he was one death closer to oblivion. This had never happened, but they all somehow had always known it might. The break in the action, the terrible silence, the level restarting itself entirely save for the gathered gems. They had all known it would happen that way, but for a moment Ms. Pac-Man had forgotten. She was relieved that he was still with them, but she still felt despair. She had killed him, through her carelessness, through her insistence on being there despite his discomfort. What had been horror settled into a languid layer of pain, deep and perhaps unquenchable. She couldn’t bear to rejoin him even to apologize; her shame outweighed her honor and her curiosity combined, and she left. She took the downward ramp and wallowed in the emptiness of the freshly cleared level below. It was silent here, but it was an active, incomplete silence. That gap in the annals of sound itself had been monstrous. She paced the outer walls, letting her pain well up and out. She was actually more afraid that if she saw her son again, he might not yell at her. She feared that he might have lost all of his memories—everything he knew and had been through—along with his first life.

She was unable to make herself go and find out.

Hey hey hey I guess it's the end of Act I or something since it's a

o/`  BONUS SONG  o/`

100 Point Carol

(To "The Cherry Tree Carol" – Traditional)

When Pac-Man was a young man,
And once his fame was made,
He married sweet Ms. Pac-Man,
The queen of the arcade,
He married sweet Ms. Pac-Man,
The queen of the arcade.

As Pac-Man and his missus
Strolled through a level black,
There were apples and cherries
Just sitting on the track,
There were apples and cherries
Just sitting on the track.

Then Ms. Pac-Man spoke to Pac-Man,
So meek and so mild,
"Go gather me some cherries,
For I've ordered a child,
Go gather me some cherries,
For I've ordered us a child."

Then Pac-Man flew in anger,
In anger sped he,
"Let the stork who brought the baby
Gather cherries for thee,
Let the stork who brought the baby
Gather cherries for thee."

Then little Junior Pac-Man,
Spoke up from his blue sack.
"Hey all you juicy cherries,
Won't you bob along the track?
Hey all you juicy cherries,
Start bobbing down the track!"

The cherries started bobbing,
And tumbled down the stairs,
And there were peaches and strawberries
And pretzels and pears!
There were apples and bananas
And pretzels and pears!

So Pac-Man took his little son
And asked him eagerly,
"Oh, tell me, little Junior
When thy launch date shall be!
Oh, tell me, little Junior
When thy launch date shall be!"

Said Junior, "1983
Will be my birthing year,
And the ghosts who haunt the labyrinths
Shall tremble with fear,
And the ghosts who haunt the labyrinths
Shall tremble with fear."

c`o }' O` 8B U`.cO \_/`

Chapter Text

THREE LIVES LEFT. It hurt to think about it. Her son was a freak now—the only member of their family with a missing life. He had been forced prematurely back into the primeval state, the pre-myriadic trinity. Yes, both of his parents only had three lives, but they had earned a fourth in their respective games, just as he had after earning ten thousand points. Their threenesses were different from his. They were a clean three. But his three lives were like a room with only three corners—monstrously incomplete. And it was her fault.

She closed her eyes. This would take time to sink in—both the state of things and her own role in the tragedy. Three lives.

The silence was broken. “What’s happened?” cried Pac-Man.

His voice was most horrible when it possessed that wounded, innocent pitch that suggested its owner had been wronged. She herself still felt like both wronged and wronger; she could not handle her husband’s presence. “Get out,” she pled.

He hove closer; she could tell with her eyes still closed. “This isn’t just about us, is it?” he asked. “Please, Pepper. Tell me what’s happened.”

She hated this. Pepper was the nickname he’d given her years ago. She couldn’t bear the idea that she owed him anything—even an explanation. She opened her eyes and ran.

But he ran after.

A single ghost, she could avoid without difficulty. That, she was used to. But her husband was smarter than a ghost, and she was in turmoil. She found herself lacking avenues of escape, missing cues, driven against the west wall. Cornered by her husband. It hardly mattered, though. Even if she wasn’t captive to him, she was still captive to her guilt.

“Stop running! Please, Pepper. Tell me why you’re crying.” He floated toward her casually, as if there had been no pursuit and no prior troubles. In his tone, Ms. Pac-Man could discern nothing but genuine concern—and this enraged her. He was too good to realize how terrible he was.

“Go see to your son,” she hissed. “He needs you more than you need me.”

He did not respond. Instead, his eyes focused with the import of what had happened; all that remained was to match it with a fitting conclusion. He turned and tore up the ramp.

He did care, Ms. Pac-Man realized. Was this was it took to get him to leave her alone?

It was quiet. Rather than go and face her error, she descended another level. Then another. This misdirected feeling was worse than running from her husband had been. Then, she had had nowhere to go. Now, there was only one place in the world she wanted to go, but she could not bear to go there while her husband was present.

There was noise above her. Turmoil, rage, helplessness. She longed for the next visage she beheld to be Inky’s, as unlikely as it would. He would save her from this. But it was not to be.

“PEPPER!” roared her husband as he hurried down after her. “They’ve killed him! THEY’VE MURDERED HIM!!”

She turned away, facing the wall. Did he even realize the real cause of Junior’s death? Did it matter?

“Pepper.” He wouldn’t leave her. He was behind her now, speaking as if the dissension between them was completely forgotten; this made her feel ill inside. “They’ve taken one of our son’s lives. We have to get them now. We’ve got to fight back. They can’t get away with this.”

She wouldn’t look at him. “It’s what they do. We’ve always known that.”

“But they never caught us! They’ve never taken any of our lives before. If they had… I don’t know I would have done.” He spun in place, seething, working up his rage. “But this is our son. Our son! Pepper, I know you’re mad at me, but I can’t do it alone. You need to help me fight them. We’ll get Junior to help and we’ll take them out once and for all!”

Insanity. “We could never take them out,” Ms. Pac-Man snapped, whirling around to face her husband. “If we did, there would be no game.”

“Then we’ll let the games end early and watch the finale! But we can’t let them run free, not after this. What if… what if it happens again?” They both shuddered at the thought, though their intentions were as divided as black pixels from white.

“It was never possible to kill the ghosts when we fought them,” Ms. Pac-Man reasoned. “Why would it be possible now?”

“Curse it, won’t you even try?” Pac-Man cycled in a tight square, his cheeks fiery. “Your son needs you. Come on.”

He sped away, and to her chagrin Ms. Pac-Man found herself following. She had not noticed the same emotion building in herself, but it had, and she too wanted revenge. Her feelings for one ghost had masked those opposite feelings for the other three...until now. Could it be that her husband had a stronger understanding of her own emotions than she did, even now?

Three levels up, back to where it had happened. Four levels; five. Their son had apparently not been encumbered so badly by the shock of his own death as had his parents: he had made two levels of progress in the time it had taken them to reach their sanguine consensus.

Along the way, they talked. “Power pellets make them our prey,” rambled Pac-Man, darting frantically around corners. “The question is, does eating a power pellet change us, or does it somehow change them?”

“Why would it change us?” asked his wife. “It makes them blue and slow, but does nothing to us.”

“But how can they be changed by something we eat?!” Pac-Man demanded. He rose to the final level and immediately witnessed the pink ghost whizzing by. Like a mad thing he followed after.

“Wait!” cried his wife.

“No. Come with me! I have an idea. Our one advantage here is that we’re together! If we can kill them here and now, it’s only because we’re able to act as a team!”

She chased after him, doubtful. “How could being a team make any difference?”

A tinge of menace entered his voice. “Let’s see what happens if we both eat a power pellet at once.”

This, interestingly, was something they had never done. But it was consistent with what he’d taught her—to take advantage of any new factor in order to solve an unsolvable problem. Now, the fire of vengeance in her was turning to an equally hot curiosity. Very well—Ms. Pac-Man would set her other issues aside. Quivering, she counted the exact distance in gems between herself and the nearest power pellet. She compensated for Blinky’s approach and the detour it would require. She shouted this figure to her husband, who shouted back, racing and calculating his own path to another pellet.

They worked quickly, but forgot one factor: Junior. Still trying to clear the level, he had overheard their yelling. Now he coursed up to his mother and yelled, “Mom! What are you and Dad doing now?”

“I’m sorry, Junior.” Even while fleeing the ghost onslaught he brought with him, she peered into his eyes, trying to fathom whether he remembered his own death. “Did… do you know what’s happened?”

He spun in a brief circle before continuing on. “You led Sue over toward me and got me killed! Then you went away and now Dad’s here too. What gives?”

She took a breath that stuck. Bless his young heart, she thought. He’s not shaken. It was nothing to him.

“I feel terrible about that, Junior. Your father and I have an idea. We want to try picking up power pellets at the exact same time…”

Rather than scold the elder Pacs for their experiment, Junior wanted in on it. He was still peeved over his mother’s mistake, but had no time to carry a heavy grudge. If the force of two power pellets had a chance of doing real damage, he reasoned, three would be that much more potent. And he too felt the need to channel his frustration. No familiar act would do for this purpose—only something radical and dangerous.

With only two pellets left on the current level, they were forced to wait for Junior to clear it so they could proceed to the next. But they spent the time in sporadic conversation, piecing together their plan. Soon, what had already been a complex operation got geometrically more complex. It was no trivial thing for three moving bodies to pluck up three power pellets at precisely the same moment, even if they hadn’t been harried by their timeless pursuers. The members of this family, however, were eager to rechannel their differences into an ambitious project. The routine of dodging ghosts was tedious by now, but this new goal was enough to distract Ms. Pac-Man from her fears, Junior from his recent death, and Pac-Man from his uncharacteristic anger. They assigned each of themselves a target, a waiting point, a path, a signal for when to charge forth. They counted stones carefully, confirming and reconfirming that the lengths of their paths were accurate to the last degree.

The ghosts hurried in and out, confused, pursuing all their enemies but mostly Pac-Man Jr. They acted wildly, as creatures frenzied by an excess of food, for never before had three potential morsels been available at one time, and never before half an hour prior had they actually tasted their prey. Instinct guided them, and this kept them from cognizing the nature of the plan. Thus there was no interference.

It went perfectly. Three angular mouths closed at once over three pulsating pellets. Three glowing yellow souls were energized with the fervor of the righteous, seizing this chance to destroy. She chased one ghost; they chased another, and when Ms. Pac-Man’s mouth closed on the frightened blue phantom before her, it seemed somehow a more potent act than usual.

Yet there was no weight behind this apparent genocide. Just as they always had, the ghosts’ eyes fled to Central Control, the flashing ceased, and the food chain resumed its normal order. The height of the moment ceased and the three warriors convened, quivering, in a corner.

“I didn’t really think it would work,” said Pac-Man. “But it was worth a try. Don’t worry—we’ve got some other tricks we can pull.”

His small family looked hopefully to him. Any minute now, his wife thought, I’ll lose this fervor and remember why I ran from you. But for now she listened, and they brainstormed, and on the next level up they prepared to put their second plan into action, fleeing in an empty loop all the while. Three pellets eaten at once, then a single ghost converged upon from three directions. It would be very hard to coordinate, but hadn’t there been some extra potency in what they’d done below? Wasn’t it a sign that something like this might work?

“Which one?” Junior asked.

“Sue,” said Ms. Pac-Man, confident in her choice.

“Huh? Why her?”

Pac-Man frowned. “I would have marked her as the worst choice. She’s the least predictable.”

“I want her gone,” said Ms. Pac-Man, wondering how much of this preference lay in the fact that it was her mistake with Sue that had cost her son his life.

“Okay, let’s be sensible about this,” said Pac-Man. “If this works, they’re all gone, sooner or later. Those are the stakes. What we need for now is a test subject. A ghost that won’t surprise us, and won’t interfere too much while we’re getting ready. And I think that leaves us with Pinky or Inky.”

“Not In—” she started to say, then caught herself and turned away. She spent a beat silent while they stared. “Let’s make it Pinky,” she said. “I think they’re preparing to converge on us. We should scatter.”

“What do you mean?” demanded her husband. “I don’t think they’re planning anything. They’re not even—” But Ms. Pac-Man had dashed off and wasn’t there to hear.

She had to warn Inky. This was something she should have thought of two levels ago. She owed it to him. So she sought him, but he found her first, quietly hovering in from off the edge of the screen. They moved together for a while, in tandem, saying nothing.

“I know what you’re up to,” said Inky eventually. Not accusing. Barely informing. Just a fact floating in space.

“Do you know if it will work?” Ms. Pac-Man dared to ask.

His eyes shifted away. “I don’t know your exact plan.”

“But you know our goal.”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you still here?” she pled.

The blue ghost detoured around and came at Ms. Pac-Man from the other direction. They were far from anyone else. “Don’t do it,” he warned.

“Why not?”

“You can’t destroy a ghost.”

“Can’t, or mustn’t?”

“You mustn’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you.”

“But you’re…” She tried to find an argument, but stopped. There were too many doubts, too many things she didn’t understand, to craft the kind of power play she would need to break through Inky’s will. So she zipped away, asking only, “Why not?”

“We are a family, just like you,” was Inky’s reply.

Conflicted was not a strong enough word to describe her feelings.

| (. ) (. ) |

Chapter Text

IT WAS five levels later. Conflicts aside, the plan was on. There was strength in momentum, and no telling when this opportunity would rise again, given the fractious relations of the family. There was also communion in cooperation: the three of them were drawn closer by this endeavor, and Ms. Pac-Man would not turn such a thing down. The day before, she had feared her life would never again be anything but running, and now, at least, that terrible fear was far from her mind.

She and her husband sat in two opposite corners, as topologically symmetric a pair of locations as they could find. Their target was the pink ghost—her opinion had been worth that much, even without explanation. The level was still quiet: they were waiting for Junior to arrive. He was enjoying, no doubt, his last throes of improvisation before confining himself indefinitely to the strict script his parents had concocted.

It had turned out to be necessary to do it this way. Every attempt they had made to coordinate their elaborate plan on the fly had failed. Either all four ghosts had to be controlled precisely or one of them would gum up the pattern and there would be no simultaneity in their gobbling of the pellets, in their capture of the quarry. From an intermediate state, it was impossible to perform any comprehensive calculation without conditions changing radically in the interim. Their only choice, then, was to use an entire level as their canvas. Each move they would make was planned precisely, as was the precise cue for each. If they carried out their plan flawlessly, the ghosts would be forced to comply. They all knew well that, contrary to intuition, when all factors were precisely controlled there was no randomness in the universe. All the wonder that was the unpredictability of life stemmed from imperfections writ large—Ms. Pac-Man ruminated on that now, even as she steeled herself to eliminate those imperfections for a single minute.

The one exception, it had seemed, was fruit. In her own complex, she had had no way of knowing which kind of fruit would appear when the universe saw fit to grant that particular boon. She knew when fruit would appear—it was linked to the number of gems she collected—but which of the seven types she would receive, from cherry from banana, was a pure mystery. Her husband had dissented, claiming that if everything else could be predicted, surely this too must be deterministic; it must merely depend on too many factors to calculate. A tabulation of elapsed times; an obscure digit in the ever-mounting score… it was impossible to say. This was one issue where, even when they had loved each other, the couple had never quite seen face to face.

Was there more randomness in store for them today, should they succeed in their mission to kill a ghost? She wondered whether a can of worms would be opened in the spot where such a perversion of nature occurred, and if so, whether those worms would behave rationally or randomly. Then she wondered which outcome she would prefer. The very question caused her to shudder.

The level began. Things started to move; stones started to disappear from the ground where her son passed. Now there was no freedom but thought, and only a small percentage of that could be spared. Ms. Pac-Man soon forgot what she had been wondering about. She focused on the plan: Junior should appear ahead of her in just a moment; there he was, good, everything was still as it should be. Half a second more, and that was Ms. Pac-Man’s cue to head west. She arrived at a three-way junction: one move down and twelve to go.

Blinky zoomed by and she ducked out behind him and bore south. For two seconds she waited on the bottom edge; then she wound east. Several more careful dodges and darts out followed to draw Pinky where they wanted him, and to deflect the others. Even Inky played his part unwittingly, his strange affections rendered irrelevant by the plan—that had been a fear Ms. Pac-Man hadn’t realized she’d borne. She returned to the long stretch, cut the board’s corner and sped north for her station. She waited. A scant distance away sat the power pellet that was her ammunition, her supply for the strike. It shone like a warning light before her. Once more she darted out to draw Sue closer, then returned to her post. Waiting… waiting. Her timing had to be perfect. Even a tiny pause would mean a gem’s length of discrepancy.

Her time came. She advanced with no pause for pause and without reflection the power was upon her. It was heady! She hadn’t held this power for a long time—the brilliant, potent knowledge that she was capable of wreaking vengeance on those who tormented her. It felt different this time. This time it felt like she was on the side of evil, a distinction she had not even recognized in the past. She felt somehow beyond the innocence of nature. This feeling was as disturbing as the very first time she had seen a ghost and realized that it was her enemy. Yet she did not deviate from her appointed course.

North. West. North. West. South. The ghosts bobbed in predictable panic; the others approached their rendezvous. She could tell that her husband and son had picked up power pellets at the exact same moment, though she could not identify the sense that told her this. This fact frightened her. It meant there was actually something to this escapade, some new force behind it. This was not just camaraderie, not just play. She finished her eleventh move and found herself only seconds ahead of Pinky’s southerly escape from her son’s advance, the ghosts now blinking white, presaging the end of their time of weakness. Her husband was rushing along the corridor from the west. Suddenly Ms. Pac-Man realized that her excitement had not really come from a desire to destroy the ghosts. She had wanted to scare them, yes, and she had valued the camaraderie of a challenge shared, but the rest of her drive had stemmed from a deep, perverse desire to prove her husband wrong. She had wanted the plan to fail. But, as she ran north toward Pinky just as her son caught up from behind and her husband careened in from the side, she knew that it would not.

Doubt tempted her to defect; reflex was too strong. She smashed into the white ghost at the very moment of his fifth blink, the very end of his period of vulnerability. The four beings met at a junction. It was a collision, a non-accidental accident. It was a diabolical communion. The ghost’s normal pinkness did not return; instead, his white light exploded in an instant to suffuse everything. It was impossible to tell who was where, or what was who. There could be no accounting of viewpoint or identity amid the maelstrom of perception that hummed, jolted and sizzled its way across what had to be the entirety of the universe. Only dimly were patterns felt: the same stuff that made up the numerals of that eternally changing quantity, the score, was splattered all over the place, in between pieces of things, people, walls and symbols. Here and there were things that should not exist, spaces which were not space at all and could only be called ‘glitches’ for lack of a more profane term. And all this changed tic by tic, countless times in the span of a second, over and over again. What feelings existed were multiplied manifold, mixed and gambled into something like agitated dread—and then it was over. Every moving thing brought back into existence wanted nothing bit to be still… and so it was. Everything had been erased. Positions, gems, power pellets, levels, even the score—the score sat at a primordial zero. Nothing existed but that ancient cave allegory, a shadowplay of movement as it might yet be and might once have been. The demo, Ms. Pac-Man realized. A didactic illustration of what life was, for those who had not yet lived it.

Yet her memories remained. That, alone, differentiated this moment from the beginning of all things… that, and one thing other. What was it? What had changed? She stared at the image of her son being chased by three ghosts and deeply dug in her overmind for the answer to the question: What has changed about all this? What was all of this for?

The ghosts. The symmetry of the rectangular level—there had been a ghost for each corner, had there not? The box they called Central Control had room for three ghosts abreast… but there had been one who dwelt outside, had there not? She remembered the red ghost’s spirit refused to be caged, fighting the force that would have boxed him, insisting instead on being the peril to justify the starting of each level. No. There were four. The signs told her there were four ghosts. Her memories, once she delved hard enough into them, told her that there were, had always been four ghosts.

But as she watched the demo, it was as clear as blackness that there were only three. Blinky, Inky, Sue. She could not remember the name of the fourth. She could not even remember its color.

This was like a dream. But her instincts told her she would soon be waking up.

The call to life came excruciatingly slowly. She felt herself pushing with a drive to move before she felt anything to move; then the sensation of motion crept into her, but she felt no body; then her body was there, but her senses were not yet attuned to it. Gradually she found cogency; gradually the world she once knew returned, and existence was as it was. The zeroed score was an embarrassment but also a source of laughter, and in most ways it didn’t matter at all. Ms. Pac-Man was in her home. It was the open room at the heart of her home, the one in which she had begun life, and was now beginning its next chapter. This was her base. It was where the world had found her after she had been lost. It was where she could sail with no pressure, so she did, just as an entity who is done running ought to do.

Then she jerked in shock. The fruit salad was gone, as was the fruit, but there was the basket. Just as sumptious as it had been with edibles within, for it was a gift. The basket felt good to gaze at, though she didn’t know why. It had been a source of mixed feelings for a while, she remembered, but now it brought unmitigated pleasure. Why could that be? Was it possible that she had forgiven her husband completely for whatever he’d done, and now they were happy again?

No. In a swirl of grogginess lifting from her, she remembered. It was another thing entirely.

She left the house and careened down the halls toward the first landmark she saw—whether it was the same complex in which the recent drama had taken place, she did not know, but it was worth moving toward all the same. It was there that she ran into her husband. This was not the terrifying thing of hours past, however; she didn’t know why it had ever been so. “Hello, my dear ex-husband,” she almost sang.

“You’re alive! Pepper, I was so scared… I’m not an ex-husband… I don’t even know what kind of thing that is!”

She felt like she was floating. “It’s not a bad thing, dear… nothing to be ashamed of being. I need to go see the blue ghost—is Junior back in his fortress, at work?”

“I don’t know! I came looking for you first. I love you!”

She turned toward the tall building in the distance. It did seem familiar. “We have to go see if he’s there,” she explained. “If he is, the ghosts will be too.”

“The ghosts!” Suddenly Pac-Man was afire with urgency. “Pepper, the ghosts! They killed him once—they’ll kill him again! They’ll kill him until there’s nothing left!”

He was speeding toward the building now, and she sped alongside, but didn’t let it change the timbre of her voice. “I don’t think so, ex-husband. They only got him before because—let’s be honest—because I was being a distraction. I mistakenly led one of the ghosts toward him and tried talking to him when he wasn’t prepared to talk. I feel bad about it… but I think I’ve learned my lesson. We need to stay out of our son’s life until he’s finished his appointed task. Then, and only then, can we be… a family again.”

Pac-Man stared at her. He stared with an eye toward finding the piece of crazy in her and yanking it out. “We have three more ghosts to kill,” he implored, still speeding along beside her.

“That isn’t what I’m interested in doing anymore,” she replied.

“It isn’t?”

She bobbed in the negative. “If it ever really was.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I told you. I’m going to see the blue ghost. But after that, I think… we can be friends.”

“You’re my wife!”

“I’m afraid I’m not interested in that anymore, either,” she said.

“Something’s happened to you, Pepper. You’re not acting like yourself anymore.”

Various replies occurred to her, but she settled on: “And you are? After that catastrophe?”

He spun as he ran, whirring with excitement. “But it wasn’t a catastrophe! Pepper, don’t you realize? It worked! The fourth ghost is gone!!”

Suddenly she felt weak. “You don’t even remember his name, do you?”

He stared blankly for a moment. “No… no, and why should I? I wouldn’t want to.”

She glowered, then turned away and spoke to him no further. They still sped along in parallel paths toward the same destination, now silent.

They entered the building together. “Pepper,” he tried one more time.

“Yes?” she replied. She would tell him not to use her nickname, but to be called Ms. Pac-Man was to be linked inextricably with him. The name Pepper was her escape.

“Don’t act like this. Please. I’m nothing if you treat me like this.”

Was he really? “I hope that isn’t true… I wouldn’t want you to be nothing,” she said truly. But that was the end of the conversation.

It wasn’t until reaching a loftier level than she had ever seen, or indeed knew to exist, that the two of them found Junior, still busily taking in dots. Either his progress had been saved or she had been removed from things for longer than she realized. He turned to them and his eyes widened, but he kept to his course and said nothing.

Nothing had changed for him, she realized suddenly. Neither death nor universal reversion had fazed him. Theirs was a level-headed child who knew his purpose, and who made his parents seem neurotic by comparison.

The ghosts were there, Inky included. It was a relief to see him. One relief she was not yet afforded, though, was for Inky to recognize her. His eyes were focused ahead and did not swerve.

“Junior,” she called gently. “I don’t want to distract you, but when you have the chance… could you spare a few moments for your poor mother and father?”

She expected irritation, annoyance, as before. But he spun immediately around the corner and headed for her, delight on his face. “Sure! You’re not distracting me. It’s easy!” He kept fleeing and picking up gemstones even as he talked. “I don’t know why I ever thought dodging ghosts was tough.”

She had to regather her wits. Then it dawned on her. “Junior… it’s easier than it was before. Do you realize why?”

His face was easy, but blank. “Why’s that?”

She took a breath. “Because there were four of them before. They worked… as a family.” She had meant to say ‘team’, but the word ‘family’ had surfaced too powerfully for her to keep it down. “Do you remember what we did? Just before the world went blank?”

He was puzzled now, and shook, looking truly sorry that he couldn’t.

“That’s okay, son,” said Pac-Man, speeding along with them. “We’ll go over it all again. I remember every move. We can take the rest of them out!”

“That you remember,” she snapped. “No, we will not go through it again. We have killed a piece of reality, and we were changed for it, and we will not take that risk again. You need my help to make it work, and I simply won’t do it.”

They stared at her together now, even as they all fled from the ghosts. Her husband’s eyes were pained and a little angry; her son’s were only bewildered. She stared back, and suddenly something came to her. A blotch of pink, a shade, nothing more. She thought of the rhyming resonance of Inky and Blinky and took an educated guess:

“His name was Pinky,” she hissed, before turning and zooming away.

8) 8) 8) -~- 

Chapter Text

“WHEN THE WORLD is shuffled,” quipped Ms. Pac-Man in the darkness, “it gives we moving objects the chance to rearrange.”

Dark blue walls had never been her favorites. They were now. They made Inky seem as though he were shining. She wondered if she would ever be called to a new game—how could she not?—and whether it would feel anything like these corridors. Perhaps the next game would take place between the complexes, in the endless labyrinths that now felt more familiar.

“You had a lot of guilt. It’s gone now,” said Inky. Was he responding to her quip, or not?

“I left it behind,” she admitted, sighing. “I don’t know if I did it willingly.” Her guilt for getting her son killed… her guilt for taking vengeance on a ghost that, for all she knew, wasn’t even the killer. Her guilt for leaving her husband… or for not doing it sooner.

“It doesn’t matter. Are we together now?”

She stopped at a wall and looked longingly down the corridors in each direction. Inky stopped too, except for his hovering. Always that, to catch the eye.

She steeled herself. “We’re together now.”

He watched her for a while. She watched him hover.

“I renounce my quest to kill your son,” he said. “I never really wanted—”

“I know.”

He floated nearer. “If I’m called about to kill you, or any of your family, I renounce that too.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “That means a lot to me.”

“If I had been forced to kill any of you, I—”

“No,” said Ms. Pac-Man. “Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”

Inky drifted, detached, in blue-flanked blackness.

“It won’t happen now,” he went on. “I will never again chase you or your kin. I swear by everything.”

She respected his need to be thorough about this. “By everything?”

The ghost’s eyes flicked around, from wall to sky to floor. “Everything we have,” he replied. After all, why not?

Her husband didn’t know. He finally understood that her interest in him had waned, and that there were reasons for it more fundamental than an incidental quarrel. But he had no context to infer the presence of another lover in her life. The idea simply did not come to him. He was her lover, and if she did not love him anymore, she must be uninterested in loving. His mood went from angry to frustrated to tragic. The fact of his wife’s chilling toward him was a tragedy of their small world, to be shared between them. He tamed his rhetoric and his temper. He made the house as nice for her as he knew how. And, without reason to run any longer, Ms. Pac-Man came home.

They spoke only briefly, until one or the other ran out of capacity for it. He still asked for explanations, and she answered in stories. Times in the past when he hadn’t respected her as an individual. Times when he'd been blind. He tried to understand, but his blindness endured. And they lived together. And she left for lengthy treks, saying she needed time away from him, and he never once imagined she was going to see the blue ghost.

In good time, their son’s adventure came to a close. Barring the unfortunate incident of which none of them tried to think, his quest was completely successful. Just as with both his parents before him, every moment which could have gone wrong did not; he cleared every level, collecting numerous toys along the way, and emptied his complex. There was a thunderous, electric rumbling to the ground that day, and his parents could not mistake what had happened. They went to their front door and awaited the prodigal son. A couple no more, there were still some things for which they had to come together.

In due course, he arrived. Somehow, he did not bear a look of triumph. “Mom? Dad?”

“Welcome home, son. Is your quest complete?”

“Yeah. It’s done.”

He moved to nuzzle his son’s face. “Then we’ve all got the same right to be proud. Come on it and take a load off.”

The three of them hurried into the living room and merged in a swirl of affection.

They celebrated with toys and pretzels. They raced around the largest room, cutting at deliberately odd angles for the perversity of it. They created a new form of relay with thirty-degree turns that they knew looked pretty from above. In time, they tired of fun and tired of relaxation. They gathered more and more often at the front door, looking outward in expectation of the next chapter. Their dynamic had run its course for now. It needed fuel from the highest forces of the universe before much more could be said. And those forces acted in only one way: They gave new games to the victorious.

Ms. Pac-Man rose before the others one day and made her way to a valley she knew, a place made of light blue walls with orange flecks. It stood between four structures like a yawn, as symmetrical as its space allowed. The others did not know it, but she had fuel. She did not have to wait for the next great challenge. Her own was waiting for her.

Inky joined her as she glided along, moving in silence. There were no parallel paths here that lasted long, so he went before her, looking back. But because he did not know the valley, Ms. Pac-Man circled around and faced him from the other way, leading while looking backwards. Neither of them said a word until Inky took in the majesty in the details of the valley and remarked, “It’s beautiful.”

“It is. Have you noticed its fourfold symmetry?”

He looked about, rising to see over the walls, though he still could not pass them. “I was beginning to notice.”

“Let me take you someplace.”

Ms. Pac-Man took Inky to a square at the center of the valley. Four corridors met there, each intersecting with two of the others, to make a square that spun off clockwise in every direction. Each side was just four body lengths long, and its inside was filled. This created a loop just twelve squares long—smaller than any loop in any level.

Inky regarded it appreciatively. He did not go in—Ms. Pac-Man loved how he did not go in. “Is this for us?”

“Yes, but not yet. First, I want to verify that this is truly the shortest loop in the valley. Before we enter it, let us search the entire environs, just in case one shorter exists.”

He nodded with a bob. The two trysters split apart, searching efficiently, letting their time apart quietly whet their appetite for togetherness. They passed close several times communicating with few words what they had searched already. Whorl by whorl and row by row, they searched and found no smaller circuit; then, at last, they came together again and entered the loop. She went first and he followed, entering at the opposite corner. They moved at equal rates, around and around, traveling faster and faster, unencumbered by the rules of any complex. They could not see each other from this vantage, but they could feel each other’s presence acutely.

This merry-go-round represented the closest they could come to occupying the same space. After enough revolutions, they forgot the difference between what space they currently occupied and what space they had occupied only moments prior. The latter was now occupied by the other; the former was occupied by the other before; a confusion of concepts made it feel as if they were commingled. Their dance was a sublime breath of lightness.

After a while, Inky took, finally, the initiative he had held back for so many years. He ramped up his pace and gained on his fellow tryster. She felt it happening and did not resist, and soon he had gained a full length of the square on her, letting them see each other at the corners. He continued his pace and gained another square, after which Ms. Pac-Man sped to match his pace. Then, daringly, he sped once more and gained yet another square, so that the two of them were nearly touching. He was on her tail, and she continued to loop predictably, making no move to evade him.

They carried on this way for long, long minutes, perhaps half an hour, before finally she burst away and the two trickled back into the valley along their separate ways, yet it took no effort at all to come once more together. They wound between each other on the way out, then stopped at the entrance to the valley and faced each other. The energy they had been continually, steadily spending now began to pool in their cores, and it felt sweet and powerful.

“I want to join in the flesh, Inky,” she murmured. “I need to know what you feel like.”

“How I feel,” Inky responded.

“Why yes—how you feel!”

Apparently mortified, he shifted his eyes back and upward, perhaps imagining a Central Control box that no longer existed.

“I know,” said Ms. Pac-Man. “If I touch you, I will die.”

He nodded. It was right for this fact, which both of them knew so well, to finally be named aloud.

“Yet I have three lives,” she exclaimed.

“No,” he whispered.

“Please,” she returned. She had meant to say ‘Yes’, but slipped. “Your touch is death. What of it? Let it be what it is! Do you know anyone who could take such a shock better than I? It would lift me up, Inky!”

His eyes were mournful. “But,” he said.

“Oh, why not, Inky! This is something we can do twice, so lets do it! No, three—four times, Inky, with any luck!”

“Four times?”

She sped around him, keeping to the closest loop she could while he remained in place. “Check your list against mine, my sweet! Oh, we’ll have to plan carefully. These few times will have to nourish us for all the spaces in between. We’ll live in the memories of these moments. Go on, Inky, make a list of all the questions you’d like answered about my touch, about the way it feels… be subtle, be bold! I’ll do the same. And we’ll share our lists, and discuss them, and answer as well as we think we can… but then, when we touch for the first time, we’ll have to be quick-witted enough to get all of those answers! And then we’ll talk them over, and write them down, and compare them to our guesses… oh, the feel of you, Inky! And the feel of death! From then on, we’ll constantly long for what the next meeting will be—a meeting wherein we won’t need worry about getting answers, but only enjoying each other’s touch—nothing more. Oh, if only our meetings weren’t doomed to be so brief!”

Inky slid side to side now, in order to let his paramour pass by a quicker route. “Do you think so little of your lives? To let them go?”

“If you were listening,” she gushed like a girl, “you’d know I think quite a bit of them. But I’ll drop them on you, Inky, I’ll let my lives fall away on you, I’ll enwreathe you in them. Don’t you know I will? Oh, I hope I don’t forget everything when I die! I hope I don’t forget anything, especially not our moments together! It would be too horrible. We don’t know what happens, exactly, because Junior’s death came so close behind our massacre of Pinky and the world’s reset—he’s missing memories, but which event caused them? No, I’m sure I’ll remember. How could I not? I’ll make these memories so integral to myself that I can’t possibly forget. But just for the joy of it, we’ll pretend the other’s forgotten our hugs and explain, in detail, what happened. Just as if we were telling bedtime stories to each other. But then! Then, for the third time, we’ll have to take action! I haven’t been active in years, Inky, but in a state like this, how could I not be called? And if I’m not chosen next, we’ll have to find some way to make me active! Because I’ll need to be on an active quest if I want to score ten thousand points, and earn that extra life. And then, when we embrace for the third time, I’ll be adventuring, questing, fully alive. How will it feel to hug a hero who’s fully alive, Inky? You’ll have to tell me, not that I won’t feel it myself. We’ll be so tired, but so proud… And I’ll finish that adventure on a string and a prayer, coasting home with a single life, knowing I must, because otherwise how am I to keep on living with you, Inky? I’ll always, always come back to you.”

“And the fourth time? Do you have another secret course of lives?”

“I don’t know for certain I won’t be lifted back to three if I finish another game. But if I’m not… at least I’ll have an old age, Inky. And so will you. If we ever run out of thoughts to think and adventures to have, we’ll at least have each other. Once we’ve spent our lives together, happy, we’ll meet in one final embrace, and in that embrace we’ll say it all… and I’ll perish amid you, Inky. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Oh, won’t it be glorious? Four times, four blissful times, and we’ll make them count for so much, so much, won’t we?”

He stared at her, taking in this gushing side of her he’d never seen. He seemed awestruck more than anything, but a vibrant pity moved through and took over his countenance. “You forget,” he said.

“I forget? What do I forget?” she asked, slowing down and coming near.

For the first time she could remember, Ms. Pac-Man found herself witness to a ghost shedding tears. His tears were round below and pointed above, and they came slowly, just a shade lighter than his own form. But they were shed with the transcendence of one with the privilege to avert a great sorrow. “We don’t need to do it that way,” he told her. “We have power pellets. With power pellets, I can be the one to die… and I have no limit on my lives. Only the world’s supply of pellets will limit our conjugality.”

She gasped. How could she have forgotten all those times she already had touched him? He had been her foe then, but the memories were there, if faint… and her eyes grew tender with the simplicity of it all. “Of course,” she said. Her love’s innocence was childlike, but he had an intelligence that overpowered all her best-laid thoughts, at times. “That will be almost as wonderful. We mustn’t squander a single one!”

“I won’t be gone,” he reminded her quietly. “I’ll retreat into my eyes and fly away. Watching you. I’ll rebuild myself and return.”

“But won’t it hurt?” she asked, pausing.

“It does hurt,” Inky admitted. “That is to say, it has always hurt in the past. But that may have been all in my mind. Perhaps it was my pain at seeing you grow distant that truly hurt.”

“But what about when my husband devoured you, or my brother?”

He averted his eyes. “Still. It may not hurt when I know it’s done out of love.”

That was possible. She could almost believe that. In any case, the thought of knowing his physical touch time and time again, without limit, was such a shift from the spartan marriage she had imagined that she was overcome. She fell warmly against the light blue wall, millimeters from his hovering body, imagining the wall was him. Beside her, he hummed with contentment, bobbing up and down.

They met like this many times, making plans or sharing things, external or internal, with each other. Always Ms. Pac-Man returned home before she could be too missed. Her walks were respected, as they refreshed her, and her family did not need to know the source of her refreshment. But one day, there was a feeling that suddenly suffused her, making her tumble in nearly a full somersault. And she looked at Inky, and at the world around them, and she knew that he felt it too.

She drew breath. “I have to go now,” she said softly.

“It’s electric,” he whispered, shaking.

Everything was calling her home. She knew why. “Inky, come together with me,” she implored. “We won’t be able to stay together, but let’s make it a game to see how long we can try before we’re separated!”

Inky moved forward ardently, but paused. His eyes pushed against the limits of their space. “Yes,” he said. “I’m wanted.”

“You weren’t sure?”

“I thought I might not be called. Without Pinky… I was afraid everything would be broken.”

“It may yet be,” said Ms. Pac-Man tenderly. But then she sped toward home. “Come with me, Inky. Stay with me until we can’t stay together another moment!”

He hurried after. They surged ahead of each other, neither letting the other get too far ahead, not fall too far behind, lest this be mistaken for separation. Inky was not quick to grasp her game, but he grasped it firmly once he did. They arrived together at the home, situated as it was at the nexus of all things. Ms. Pac-Man did not fear arriving together with her lover. She didn’t know why, but she knew somehow it would be all right. Her husband and son were in front of the house, waiting.

“Took you long enough!” said her son. “What were you doing, Mom? I thought you were waiting for this?”

“I was… I really was. I’m glad we’re about to get moving again. Is it all of us this time?”

“Looks like it,” said her husband, daring to sound pleased.

“Just think of it! All three of us—together at work for the first time! Imagine!”

Pac-Man Junior peered toward where Inky hovered, waiting. “One of the ghosts followed you here, Mom. Were you out making trouble?”

She winked. “What else?”

Pac-Man bumped up against her affectionately. “There’s no getting away from me this time, Pepper! Not that you should want to. We were meant to work together. And do you know what? I think this is exactly what we need. A bit of work! We were at each other’s throats because we were idle too long, that’s all. Too much idleness!”

“Perhaps,” she said back, smiling.

“Why, when we get back to doing what we were meant to do—I bet we’ll be as close as twins again. Don’t you think so, Pepper?”

“I can’t imagine,” she said truthfully, as the feeling grew stronger. “I can only hope.”

“Just a little good, hard work. That’s all it’ll take. I can feel it coming!

Inky turned his eyes to the sky. So did all of them. The sky was that great source of novelty, the place from which all truly new things came. It was starting to shine with a new color… blue? Was the sky growing to be the color of Inky?

“Wow!” said Junior, rolled back and staring. “What’s that?”

“It’s a nexus of ten thousand power pellets, all rolled into one!” speculated his father. “A nexus of power! My goodness… if we get our mouths on that, just think what we won’t be able to pass through!”

“We’ll burn holes in the very blackness, no doubt,” said his wife.

As the color spread all across the sky and took on many shades, Ms. Pac-Man cried at the beauty of it… but she also mourned the fact that the color blue was no longer going to be as special to her. Soon, her consciousness would be flooded with cyan, with lapis and navy and azure, as if the universe had decided to give her what she wanted, and too much of it. Far too much of it. When she looked again, Inky was gone, and she wondered when she would see him again.

As the world of their family was transformed completely, she alone wept. But she concealed it, for there was too much mystery all around them right now to feel the force of any particular sorrow.

The time of Pac-Land had begun.

   ___     _~
/  oo\/. /
|       |\_\
|/\/\|     

Chapter Text

EVERYTHING had changed. And it was too much to hope that it might change back someday—that things could be flat, square, smooth again, as they used to be. It wasn’t even clear that hoping for such a thing was right anymore.

Life had gone beyond what it used to be, like a sleeper who wakes after a hundred years and prays for the new world they find themselves in to be a dream. You can’t sleep your way back to the old days, and you can’t return to bird’s eye simplicity once you’ve tasted the thrill of the side-scroller. For a profound amount to be gained, a profound amount had been lost.

She cried often, but secretly. To everyone she met, she smiled. She was aware of an invisible audience, its nature inscrutable, watching her husband’s every endeavor. He was on a quest, a grand adventure through landscapes filled with impossible, garish, mysterious objects. The ghosts harried him frequently, in various guises, but she, his wife, was sent to comfort him only on occasion, to support and egg him onward. The moment he left her side, she was wracked with emotion: loneliness, impotence, an ironic appreciation of the irrelevance of her presence. The only one she shared her feelings with was Inky, but they were only able to steal brief minutes together here and there before his duties impelled him onward. He was even forced to fly a vehicle across the sky, propelled by a whirling blade—it was a miracle it could even stay aloft in this world of gravity, in which the floor demanded continuous loyalty and the direction up was all but taboo.

Ms. Pac-Man’s saving grace was that she was seldom in the limelight—only a minor figure in the saga of her husband. A piece of her resented having been called at all for such a task, and wondered what kind of beings would place such seemingly infinite value on a creature such as he, while assigning her to the periphery. But on another level, she enjoyed knowing that she was active and not forgotten, yet still able to see her ghostly lover from time to time. He took her bringing her fruit, which she ate decadently and slowly, thinking of him, though deep down she knew that she wasn’t hungry anymore.

Inky confided, on one of his furtive visits, that he, too, felt insulted. “We’re forced to play cookie-cutter copies of ourselves,” he groused. “As if one Inky, one Blinky, one Sue isn’t enough. I fly a plane through the sky; I hurry back behind the sky itself to fly another. It isn’t what I would have chosen, even if I wished to attack him.”

“I suppose you must be forced to ask yourself: does your identity matter anymore?”

Inky looked down as he hovered. It was like a sigh in the cessation of words and expression, but soundless. “There aren’t many choices left to me.”

“Only when you’re working, my love. Only in the spotlight. Here, with me, you have a world of choices.” He looked skeptical, so she prodded him. “Go on—say something I would never expect!”

He took the injunction seriously, and thought about it. “Bagels… are like power pellets… with holes!”

Ms. Pac-Man laughed merrily. He hadn’t had to work so hard at it. Even at his most predictable, Inky was always surprising her. Yet even his random, unprompted utterance still had to make sense. Power pellets with holes indeed!

As time went on and the false story unfolded, Ms. Pac-Man longed more and more to leave this land created in her husband’s image—as she had been once—and return to the long black corridors she had known for all her life. But she dared not leave, for fear she could never return. And despite their troubles, she found she did not want her husband to fail.

Why was that, she wondered? Did she still feel love for him, even now? Did she simply see herself too faithfully in his featureless features?

This was a question she asked Inky when he next came to her little niche, in case he had an answer she had missed. He thought for a moment, and then said: “You aren’t used to failure.”

This confused Ms. Pac-Man. “But—aren’t I? Didn’t I cause my son to lose one of his lives? Didn’t I fail to stay in love with my husband? He was supposed to be my perfect match. The way I see it… I’ve failed at the foolproof.”

Inky neither blanched nor raised his voice, for it was not in his nature to do so. He sat with her through those spacious hours—as quiet as the paths once were black—and explained to her his theory of how the world was ever branching into billions.

“How is it,” he asked, “that you never once died when it was your turn to pick up the dots?”

Ms. Pac-Man answered carefully. “…I was careful?

“You did not die,” said Inky, “because it was possible, however unlikely, for you not to.”

She savored her puzzlement. “I don’t understand. It is possible that many things can happen.”

“And we should understand them as if they do,” Inky replied. “You died millions of times while traversing those mazes. Many of those deaths may even have been caused by me. But in those worlds where you died, there was no future. In the world where you first succeeded in your mission with no loss of life, fertile ground was sown, and a million other worlds took root.”

She loved it when he spoke in long sentences, which he was so rarely brave enough to do. “And if I again face peril, only one of those worlds will survive?” she asked.

“As far as we are meant to know,” he said.

Ms. Pac-Man valued Inky’s thoughts as much as she valued him. Over time, she came to believe most of what he said. She simultaneously realized that she had no way to leave her husband’s quest unless she was willing to doom the worldline she would thus create to non-existence. If she left the appointed structure of her world, whether involuntarily—as by repeated deaths—or by her own volition, all would be null from that point on.

“I do not wish to make this happen,” said Ms. Pac-Man. “It is contrary to my nature.”

“It is contrary to all nature,” said Inky. “Yet it is in your power to do it nonetheless.”

“But do you want me to do it?” she asked, near tears.

“I am but a humble servant of the existence in which I live. If I become part of a null worldline, I will accept my fate happily. If that is the choice you make, then, since I will no longer have the game to serve, I will devote all my attention to you.”

Null? Perhaps a better word would be, ‘Unchaperoned’.

She waited until her husband came to her again, looking for support in his quest. She smiled at him, and smiled at the track outside that he was meant to follow. It all amused her in a way it had not before, because it was all part of an elaborate vision that she knew would soon no longer be. Or at the least, it would no longer matter, and that made it more beautiful.

Junior was with her; the two of them were meant to wish Pac-Man good luck together. She said the words; this time, for once, she brought herself to mean it.

Pac-Man seemed genuinely touched. “Thanks, Pepper,” he said, smiling and turning a cheek. She smiled back: did he think he had won her back? Let him think that—it was too beautiful an idea to disrupt.

“Mom,” said Junior, once Pac-Man had gone.

“Son.”

He eyed her sadly, irately. “You’re going away, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “I’m not trying to leave you. You understand that, don’t you?”

Junior looked up at her with an expression that was unreadable, but for its sadness. Spite, perhaps.

“I’m not even doing to it to leave him. That’s what I want you to understand.”

“Then what?”

“Destiny,” she told him. “I’m doing it to say goodbye to destiny.”

He stared. She didn’t know how much he understood. She never had been able to figure out how much he understood. “Goodbye, Mom,” he said, not without a certain coldness.

“Goodbye, son.”

She was the first to turn away. It was hard to do, but easy to know which way to turn. She still had a deep memory of the four directional world, unfettered by gravity. Two of those directions were still represented here in Pac-Land; the others were open and wide, and all but invisible unless you chose to make an effort and face them. She faced them. She passed into the endless, sideways blackness, and felt herself drop from one level of existence to another. From the existence meant to be to that which was ignored. From light into darkness. From purpose into a yawning, boundless pit of obsolescence.

Things seemed brittle at first, and she was afraid the old curved walls would start to fall apart. But they regained focus after a little while. Her way of seeing things had just changed—that was all. She floated through black pathways and took leisurely turns, gradually beginning to ask herself where home was.

And eventually, she found it. Her own nursery—the field in which she had been created. And nearby, the home she had shared with her husband, and later her son, for years. She discovered that she was as she had been, no longer tall or complex. Her fripperies had faded, and she was herself again. Alone, yes, but not lonely. She was a pioneer. This was the unchaperoned land, an old place made new by the departure of destiny. Its nature had changed in some ineffable way, and she was set to explore that until it could be defined. She would wander every inch if she had to.

Was Inky’s theory correct? It was hard, maybe impossible, to say. Certainly she had left the spotlight, and most likely it would never shine here again. That much she could feel in her innards. But whether it was due to her own desertion of destiny or the simple passage of time, she could not say. Was the higher power forever gone that had directed her life until now?

Only time, it seemed, would tell.

She knew, though, that Inky would come soon. His chance would be harder to take, since he was more essential to her husband’s adventure than she was, but he would not desert her—she was confident of that. So she mourned neither him nor any other thing. Instead, she sought about in leftover levels and abandoned alleys, looking for one thing only—power pellets. Once swallowed, a power pellet never respawned, and as such, they were rare these days. She located them slowly, but time seemed to fly; and soon it turned out there were dozens and dozens that had been left behind, for one reason or another, in one place or another. When these were depleted, would there ever be any more?

She sent the question winging on its way. It wasn’t a worry she intended to entertain.

She mapped out the remaining power pellets in her mind. She committed their locations to memory, then designed a course by which she could visit them all, as fast as possible. She improved her course and flitted along it hour after hour, pulling back just short of each pellet, yet imagining herself picking them up, speeding along on powered sprees, splurging on the biggest lodes. Where was the longest chain that she might pick up without ever powering down? That became the basis for a new course, and a new fantasy.

She slept blissfully. She slept for a long time. When she woke, it was because someone was approaching. A ghost, yes. A blissful feeling, no. This was not the visitor she had expected.

“Hello, Sue,” she whispered to herself. Then she swiftly roused herself and fled the corridor where she’d been sleeping, rising to top speed. She didn’t know where she would go. A flare of orange met her eyes as she turned the corner.

“Home-wrecker,” Sue growled as she rushed forward. Ms. Pac-Man was so startled by this insult that she paused for a full second before remembering to turn and flee. What home had she ostensibly wrecked? Sue’s, or her own?

She would establish a safe lead, then enter a labyrinth between complexes and move unpredictably. In this way, she would lose her pursuer. She’d done this before, not infrequently. Then, and only then, would she give herself the luxury of thoroughly thinking through the epiphet Sue had directed toward her.

The feeling of being pursued did not quell. Ms. Pac-Man’s surroundings changed, but there was no sense of gain, of safety. In horror, she asked and answered a question all at once: What had happened to her natural speed advantage? It was gone. Somehow, in this place, in this old, new world, she was no faster than a ghost. She confirmed it by counting the moments after she passed landmarks until Sue did: their speeds were precisely matched.

Oh, no.

Inky was right.

With no quest, no spotlight, no great challenge to govern them and set the rules, the two females were physically equal. This must be their primordial state, she realized. What she thought of as her normal advantage over the ghosts was actually a gift given, a mantle bestowed, so that she and her family could comfortably seek for treasures and collect stones with a reasonable expectation of being able to elude their predators. If she was normally faster than Sue, it was because she was intended to be. But now, she had left the system… as had Sue, apparently. And the gift was gone.

Normality had never been normal. It had been granted. This was the true normal beneath what she had known.

This was bad, she realized. And as she traversed the great labyrinths, and Sue followed unerringly every turn she made, Ms. Pac-Man corrected herself: This was very bad. Normally, Sue’s habits would motivate her to fly off in some other direction, preparing an ambush, or to try and find a shortcut, or to gloat and speed off laughing, satisfied with a measure of intimidation. Now, that too was gone. Had Sue’s personaity been stripped from her, or had she only shed a handicap preventing her from devoted pursuit? Or—the other possibility—was she simply taking things more seriously than she’d ever had cause to before? Had Sue finally achieved the single-minded focus she’d desired for so very long?

With but a hair’s breadth of speed advantage, Ms. Pac-Man would eventually lose her pursuer. But they had been running for thirty, maybe forty minutes, and the ghost was exactly seven-and-a-half body lengths from Ms. Pac-Man. That figure had not changed. Nor, Ms. Pac-Man noted wryly, had a ten or twenty minute reversal occurred. No, of course not. Those familiar moments in which the ghosts all suddenly reversed course were the purview of stages, of specific challenges. That, too, would be too generous a gift.

Well, then. It was good she knew where all the power pellets were, wasn’t it?

She went for her own long-abandoned fortress. The complex where she’d had her own time of glory, years before. She knew it well. Its wrap-around tunnels still gave her a sense of exhilaration; it felt amazing to experience left becoming right, or vice-versa. And there were pellets there as low as the fifth floor.

She could feel the ghost’s mood growing grim as the fortress loomed. Sue said nothing more, but her intermittent growls became a constant sound, as if it were the hum of a new world order with Sue herself its overlord.

They ascended the complex. There was no meandering around the early mazes. The white stones were long gone and both pursuer and pursuant knew their business. Ms. Pac-Man rose to the last of the three azure levels and went for the single pellet that remained in the upper right corner. She hesitated a moment before swallowing it, hoping that Sue would shy away. Ms. Pac-Man did not want to give up even one of her potential hugs with Inky if she could help it.

Sue gave no ground. Ms. Pac-Man swallowed the pellet.

To her astonishment, Sue neither turned nor hesitated. She collided directly with Ms. Pac-Man, and was swallowed before either could blink.

Ms. Pac-Man stopped and watched. Sue’s eyes were cold and did not waver even as they were soaked away to Central Control.

It was in that instant that Ms. Pac-Man experienced a clammy dread… only to be replaced with the full weight of the emotion. It wasn’t unlike how she’d felt in the deep basement of her son’s complex, believing that Inky would kill her… but it was a slower-burning dread. Yet it was surer. Sue would not be belayed. She would come for her quarry. She was willing to be swallowed a thousand times; she would give chase. Since her speed was equal to Ms. Pac-Man’s, it was feasible to do so. And since she had nothing better to do, there would, it seemed, be no end.

And each time Ms. Pac-Man bought herself a minute’s relief, it would cost her one precious lover’s embrace.

Worst of all, Sue knew it.

The ghost’s body reformed in the central box and staggered out. Her voice wasn’t slowed down a bit. “Ha, eat them all up, you bow-headed vixen!” she shouted. “Keep chugging them down, and see where it gets you!! Yea-hah!”

Ms. Pac-Man sped up to the next level. When she came within eyeshot of the single power pellet there, she began to cry.

There was no more gobbling of power pellets after that. From that point, the chase became a thing eternal. Resting time was not measured in stillness any longer, but in motion. Whatever Ms. Pac-Man wanted to do, she had to do with Sue on her tail.

And there was nothing that it occurred to her to do.

But then came Inky.

It was during one of her black periods. She had fled for so long, without rest, without sleep, that she could no longer think except in tiny spurts, the energy for which she saved up over ever-longer periods. She had never learned what would happen if she did not sleep, despite her curious nature. It had been one of those questions that seemed it could hold no useful wisdom. Now, she barely kept alive the spark of gladness that she did not die, did not collapse over prolonged periods of sleeplessness… except on the inside.

And as for Sue? Her reality was already warped. She no longer spent breath to rant, but her inner life was, no doubt, fundamentally unchallenged.

What scant reserves of conscious thought Ms. Pac-Man had built up were sapped involuntarily at the first flash of cyan. Then the sight was gone. Panicked interally, she spent the next several minutes dodging randomly, aimlessly, trying to remind herself of why what she had perceived was so important. But when the recollection of her lover stood whole, at last, before her mind’s eye, she swooned—a spinning hesitation that cost her a full body length’s lead. She heard a devious, albeit brief cackle from Sue’s winded throat.

She had seen Inky, she knew—yet he had not returned. Had he been so perceptive as to realize what a shock he’d caused her? Yet, surely he knew that to see only a flash of him and then have to wait was thrice as bad as the giddy confusion from which she’d just emerged! Where was he? She found herself tired anew, wondering how in the world she had managed to keep up such a pace for so long. Now every turn she made exacerbated her longing, and she felt her determination slipping. Her place in eternity had been lost, and Sue began to gain

But there he was again, and all was right. She rounded a square’s corner, he flew after her, and from the rear of the corridor came Sue’s voice: “Your being here means squat, traitor! I’ve always gone straight through you…and I will again!”

Inky’s reply was immediate and unyielding. “On the contrary. My presence renders your presence irrelevant.

“No—nonsense!”

“I have no care whether my life is spent following my love. And ask her, if you will, whether she cares whether her life is spent fleeing from you.”

Sue only growled, but Ms. Pac-Man volunteered an answer. “For your information, Sue, my energy is restored. And Inky is right. The terms of our universe are not for us to choose. We did not decide to live in two dimensions, amid square angles and on round, glowing sustenance. We did not choose our forms, nor our families. Yet we live nonetheless, and if we are wise, we live without complaint. So my life henceforth is to be a circus of endless motion? So be it. I will not mourn my rested state, so long as I have Inky to travel with me.”

Sue said nothing, but continued to pursue with mechanical precision.

Sixteen hours later, the ghost began to lose ground. She was taking the wrong turn at intersections for fractions of a second. Her eyes darted left and right, even in long corridors with blank walls. She started to jag between the walls intermittently, losing half a body length or more each time. Her ominous growl became an uneven, broken hum, and then it fell silent.

Four hours later, her speed began, very gradually, to fall. Ms. Pac-Man increased her lead.

An hour after that, without warning, Sue reversed course and fled. She was out of detection range in under half a minute. She had been too proud to fall where her quarry could see her.

Inky and Ms. Pac-Man came to a halt. They remained watchful at the branches of a junction, doubtful. Was she about to return? Was it a ruse?

But it was no ruse. Sue was gone. And twenty minutes later, Ms. Pac-Man was in her home, sleeping, while Inky slowly traced a broad square path around her, her trusted sentry.

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Chapter Text

MS. PAC-MAN was still in a daze when she awoke. She had dreamed in splinters that collapsed into blackness; her cognizance was consistent, but thoughts and words were slow to come. Inky saw how tired she still was. He understood why.

“Let’s go to the top of your labyrinth,” he suggested. “There, we will have the highest view possible of the world.”

“I love you,” she told him. “Yes, let’s do that.”

And so it was on the rooftop above the two hundred fifty-fifth maze that they rested that day. Together, pulsing with emptiness that time would slowly banish, united in the blank-walled darkness but with a panorama of light far below and before them. Beyond the two hundred twentieth level the walls were invisible, suggesting a final stage to Ms. Pac-Man’s presence there—a story at its climax. There was a feeling of forbiddenness to this rooftop. It was as if she had never been intended to reach it, for it wrapped up too many ends. The count of bobbing fruit throughout her quest had seemed random until she’d reached this point, but when the last two fruits had brought the count of all seven types to equality, she realized they had been drawn from a secret repository all along. The purpose of her quest had likewise became clear, as she collected the final stone. At the great moments in life, things that seem random become anything but.

This was their honeymoon, she realized. They watched the world. There was nothing moving below, except a distant path that seemed to shimmer, and they whispered of whether it was Sue, or an illusion. Somewhere down there, anyway, Sue was wandering in her own madness. As there was no one else present to witness them, they called her their official witness and spoke of her collapse as their moment of consecration. They composed and exchanged vows to each other, there at the summit of their world.

“Will your son come to join us?” asked Inky.

I don’t dare speculate,” she replied. “But I hope he does. In time. Once he’s had all the adventures he wants.”

Will there never be any more?”

Ms. Pac-Man smiled to her love. “Isn’t that what I should ask you? It’s your theory.”

Inky looked around the dark rooftop, hovering in wonder. “We’re past the realm of theory.”

“We’re out of the spotlight. But I still can’t be sure it will never shine again.”

“It will shine on our other possibilities. The ones we didn’t live.”

“Just as it fails to shine on the lives we lose?”

Inky brought his eyes forward and down. It weighted him ever so slightly; it was like a nod.

“So here we are… the living dead. Our destiny abandoned—not for death’s sake, but for our own.”

Inky turned around and faced the stairs. He no longer hovered. Ms. Pac-Man spun around and followed his gaze in horror.

Sue was there, at the entrance. She wasn’t moving.

That in itself was horrifying. There was only one exit to this place—she was blocking it. There were no power pellets here. That meant Sue could imprison her here for as long as she liked. It had been careless, Ms Pac-Man realized, to come here, but she hadn’t expected someone as rash as Sue to halt by the exit. If she’d thought of the danger, she would have expected to be able to circumvent it. Yet that wasn’t the worst of it.

Sue was laughing. And her laughter wasn’t meant for herself alone.

“I can’t believe it! They are up here! Together! They thought they’d just hide away forever… but nothing’s forever!! Right, Blinky?”

Blinky. He was here too, then. Had none of the ghosts adhered to duty? Had none of them found their intended prey worth pursuing?

If Sue was a savage bonfire, then Blinky was the raging glow of an iron-tinged planet crashing out of orbit. His body was not blood red, but red like molten metal, and he streaked over the open roof with the determination of a gigantic bird, careening in from the sky and burning at the wingtips. He said only one thing, and it was in a whispered that crackled like hot coals: “For them all.”

Only one object on the roof could even remotely hinder movement. It was a single post in the center of the rooftop, extending up from the levels below. Ms. Pac-Man did not know its purpose: it might have been a pillar supporting the entire complex, or perhaps the source of light for all the mazes below the two hundred twentieth. But she ran for it instantly, reaching it just ahead of Blinky. The instinct to put something between herself and her pursuer had come to her just in time; were it not for the post, Blinky, whose speed now matched that of Ms. Pac-Man, would have caught her in seconds.

Because she had the post around which to run, she could not be caught, so long as she did not make the slightest movement away from it. If Blinky circled in one direction, she could go the other way. And indeed, Blinky chased her around the post. Sue was blocking the exit, but Ms. Pac-Man would be safe if she kept her wits about her, and made no departure from her tight circuit.

Around and around and around she flew. Inky moved in a wider circle at a slower pace, apparently bewildered. She couldn’t clearly see his expression, which was utterly subtle at the best of times. This circumstance seemed grim, but she was reassured by the presence of her lover. He was an ally, and family to the two ghosts. She had hope that he could perhaps convince Blinky to stop, or Sue to move away from the stairs.

“For them all?” Inky repeated, bewildered. “Who are them all?”

Blinky didn’t answer. Uncharacteristically, neither did Sue. But Ms. Pac-Man couldn’t guess. Blinky probably remembered Pinky, she realized. He wanted vengeance for his brother. And he might have been referring to Inky himself, if he saw her as his corrupter. But ‘all’ takes three, and she couldn’t think who the third person could have been. Her brain was getting dim, in any case. She was running out of mental energy. It might be better not to speculate.

As before, she was trapped. But this was worse than when Sue had chased her. Here, she could not go wherever she liked, living her life on the run. She could talk to Inky, yes, but physically she was confined to this tiny path around a simple post. There would be nothing more for her until the ghosts either relented or she lost her concentration and was forced to give up a life. Perhaps she should do that. Perhaps that would be better than sinking slowly away. She would make sure to stay clear of enclosed places. Yet… did she even have any other lives? The thought drew her down like the coiling of a spring. Here, in this place of exile, she had no more speed than did the ghosts. Had her extra lives been stripped from her too? Were they an inherent part of her nature, or had they been gifts from destiny, taken away when destiny found itself forsaken?

Had she lost other gifts as well? Gifts of which she had been unaware?

She tried to coax a response from her pursuer. But Blinky was silent in his rage. He had no more words for anyone.

Inky hovered nearby, helpless, staring. Ms. Pac-Man wondered if he would ask another question, and if so, what? But he rushed for the exit instead, passing straight through Sue’s body, and hurried down the stairs.

Ms. Pac-Man was confused by now, and too discombobulated to guess where he was going. But she took a small satisfaction in the sight of Sue’s startled face, the next few times she circled the post. But her satisfaction soon gave way to despair.

She fell into a waking dream before an hour was out.

It was not an interesting or enlightening dream. It was a dream of hesitation and fear. It was a dream of compulsive switchbacks and chaotic patterns, of motion and response, motion and response, motion and response.

She had no choice. Blinky had began suddenly changing his direction of pursuit, repeatedly forcing Ms. Pac-Man to turn around or be caught. Reflex was the only way she could stay alive, and as she had been unable to stay awake, she had been forced to take her awareness of Blinky’s sudden reversals into her subconscious state. She dreamed of the need to switch from clockwise to counterclockwise and back at a hair’s notice, and that was all. So that was her last source of happiness spent—no rest, no freedom, no dreams. She knew this, but she did not think of it. She could no longer think of anything.

The figures moving in her dream became less abstract and more realistic as she lost further ability to focus. Her dreams were the same as her waking world now, only simpler—she and Blinky, rushing around a post, changing direction now and then, growing ever closer to exhaustion.

She saw herself from above now. The two shapes, red and yellow, began to move more slowly, but it was not because they were slowing down. It was because her mind needed to save energy, so it began to feed her visual stimuli as if her mental camera were spinning at the same rate as the two figures. Their motion slowed, and as it slowed she could discern changes—further simplifications—in the figure representing herself. In silent shock, she realized that her bow and her eye had disappeared. All that was left was a simple circle with a mouth…

Her husband. Here, at the bottom of her subconscious well, she was presented with no difference between herself and him. She had already forgotten why the image was wrong—what it was supposed to be. She had now forgotten why it upset her in the first place—there was nothing wrong with that image. It was she, and she was it… and had always been. Hadn’t she?

Her last thoughts fell away, and the spinning image finally came to a halt. Now everything was still. Reality was nothing but a static diagram, representing some distant kind of motion that had been forgotten. And when all of reality stays the same, there is no time. And where there is no time…

But there, more decay. Half the world was gone. The red shape, jagged at its end, pocked with oblong eyes, had disappeared. Now all that remained was that unmoving self-image. Soon, perhaps it too would…

The ghost gone. No need to run.

Ms. Pac-Man made an effort to slow herself, to remember what that even meant. It was like starting to move again, only backward, and it pained her. Then she found herself suddenly awake and in a state of great confusion.

There was the sense of a significant blackness at her back, as if she had fainted. A part of her mind told her that she had died, but miraculously come back, and this was her second chance. But before her was Blinky, and like the specter he was, he seemed to be having trouble staying in one place. The feel of the smooth roof was under her body; she was being dragged. Should she be fleeing Blinky, even now? Somehow, he didn’t seem to be pursuing her; if anything, he seemed to be chasing himself.

She blinked. Sue was screaming obscenities again, still by the exit to the stairs. The redness she saw resolved into what was clearly two forms—now this was impossible, or at least incredible—both red ghosts of the same shape, one large and one small. Four eyes sparked from the bedlam. She recognized Blinky now—the other was distracting him, weaving in and out, trying to keep him off balance, perhaps even away from her. But who was dragging her?

It was her husband.

She could feel the intrepity of his grip. She could smell him. She shook herself fully awake and realized that he was continuing to drag her around the post, but not steadily—only when the ghosts approached.

She felt him feel her come awake.

“Pepper!” he exclaimed. “You’re all right!”

Gently, she freed herself from his grip—the ghosts were sufficiently distracted—and regained her own autonomy. “You saved me,” she observed.

Aside from the caution he reserved for the darting red ghosts, his only emotion was jubilance. “You’ll never believe it. One of the ghosts went turncoat! The blue one’s on our side now! He told me where you’d gone, so I came to rescue you!”

She sighed, feeling bittersweet. “I know. And you left your quest?”

“Of course I did, Pepper! The ghosts had all disappeared anyway. Why wouldn’t I come for you?”

So Inky had gone for help. On some level, she must have realized. He could not fight his own brethren, but the enemy could. “How did you get past… her?” She nodded toward Sue, who was yelling indistinctly at the red, dancing mass.

“She wasn’t at the door when I got here. She moved over when I wasn’t looking,” said Pac-Man.

The lump she felt tasted odd. “But now we’re both trapped here. Together.”

“I…” This puzzled Pac-Man. “I think the ghosts are fighting. The little red one’s helping us too, I think.”

Ms. Pac-Man examined the spry form and was mildly surprised to discover that she was female. “Where did she come from?”

“Beats me. I think she’s a kid. We… we can’t really be trapped here, can we?”

At least things were more complicated now. Complications were better than terrible simplicity. “Unless we risk giving up our lives. But here… oh, Pac-Man, they may be the only lives we have!”

He huffed. “Because we left the game.”

The game. “We left our destinies. We’re no faster than they are now. We may have no more extra lives.”

“Or maybe we’ll come back forever and ever, like they do!” he countered, dodging Blinky as he broke free.

Such optimism… yet he did have a point. “Not all of them,” she pointed out.

He frowned. Did he remember the pink ghost? “Well, if it’s our only choice…”

Ms. Pac-Man sighed. They would settle into the option, if they had to. She had her strength back; she could afford to keep dodging. In the meantime, she would learn how things stood. “Where is Inky?” she asked.

“He was behind me. You know, Pepper, I never dreamed I’d be friends with a ghost! I just hope it’s not a double-cross.”

“It wasn’t. And Junior?”

Pac-Man slackened. He then redoubled his focus on the enemies. “I don’t know about him, Pepper.”

Sue was quieting down now, watching the grim dance of meteoric red. Blinky started to ignore the small ghost and chase singlemindely again. Ms. Pac-Man and her husband dashed around the post together, darting back when their adversary’s strategic reversals required it.

“If it does come down to a choice,” she got out. “If it’s between risking death and hoping we come back… or staying here trapped forever…”

“I’d stay with you, Pepper. You—the bad guys, the chase—to be honest, it’s all I really need. Sure, I’d miss all the flashy adventures, but… they’re not what matters.”

She was what mattered? If she was all that mattered to him… together with ‘the chase’… then what did he expect to matter to her? He had saved her—was she bound now to stay with him? What if Inky returned?

It was a frightening situation, but somehow… not as frightening as what she’d come through. She tried urgently to recall the horror, the stagnation that she’d fled in the first place. Why had she hated him? It came back to her, but only faintly. Like it was a joke, or a picture of a story, nothing more. All over again, she was amazed at how much everything had changed, now that she had untethered hersefl from her quest. But had her feeling changed for that reason, or for some other?

They were living in a loose end now. A loose end of destiny, a path unchaperoned, yes. But also a strange room on top of a complex of mazes. There were no mazes here. There was only hatred, and drama, and fear, and the ghost of love. But that was something. Ms. Pac-Man had made do with less.

She would bear this.

Suddenly the ghosts went blue; there was a flash of power from the stairs, and a rush of potency nearly bowled her over. It was a full second before she recognized the phenomenon, familiar though it was. A power pellet! Somehow, a power pellet had been triggered! Fearing it was too late, not knowing its duration, she leapt for Blinky. He too had been taken by surprise; unable to dodge her, he disintegrated and his eyes flew down the stairs. Sue stood at her post, wide eyed, frazzled and flailing, and Pac-Man went for her. “DAMN YOUR EYES!!” she roared, and a moment later she was devoured.

Ms. Pac-Man glanced at the other ghost, blue and flashing like the others. She wondered if she should attack; she decided to take her husband’s word for things, and instead flew from this wretched rooftop. She followed her husband down the stairs to the dark top maze; the ghosts were already reforming in Central Control. But—

Junior was hustling up before her. Urgent, fresh-faced and proud. “Mom! We have to go down from here! There’s another pellet three floors down!”

No hello. But this was her hello. An acknowledgment that he’d come, and for her. And for his father, presumably. It was he who had swallowed the power pellet. “Junior,” she said.

“No time Mom, talk later!” Of course. Of course there was no time. Of course they would talk later.

The danger was simple—they were slower than they used to be, or the ghosts faster, or both. Their usual strategies would no longer work. It was possible too that Blinky and Sue were free of certain instincts that had bound them during previous quests. Sue’s behavior had been odd; if she hadn’t been able to remain stolidly before the exit, the rooftop would have posed little danger. Now, there was no telling how much danger this duo would pose. Ms. Pac-Man bumped into a wall. She focused her memory—she had to remember the arrangement of these labyrinths. She’d spent so many long days in them, and the others hadn’t. Finally recalling the layout, she feinted for the lower right corner to draw Sue away from the others, then took the tunnel and zipped down the stairs. All three of them ran; all three of them descended.

They had, as it turned out, plenty of time. The ghosts were just as confused by the dark walls as they were. The Pacs entered level two fifty-two and there, just as Junior had said, was another power pellet. Pac-Man grabbed it, and the pursuing ghosts were sucked back to the previous level’s control box. Now the way was perfectly clear to descend… level after level after level. The ghosts might give chase, of course, but the family would be free.

Ms. Pac-Man was surprised to realize that at some point Inky had joined them in their descent, and she’d been aware of it. She just hadn’t… realized he was there.

“Inky!” she cried. “You’re so quiet. Like a zephyr!”

He acknowledged her with a brief push in her direction, and with his eyes, of course. But he said no words.

It was down, then, and down, down at length but by no means endlessly, and at last they spilled from the tall complex into the wide open blackness, surrounded by walls of coral orange. There, and only there, they allowed themselves to rest. Junior sat looking up apprehensively at the complex, glancing occasionally at the door. Was he acting as sentry? Such a responsible boy they’d somehow raised.

Ms. Pac-Man shook with relief. To be saved from destruction… by the one she had tried so hard to escape. By the one from whom her desperate flight had made all this terror, and wonder, possible. It was a feeling without description. She looked at him.

“Pepper,” he said. Longingly. Nothing more.

Then suddenly the red ghost—the small, female red ghost emerged, a bow in her hair, and Junior dashed for her. “Junior! Have you gone crazy!?” she yelled.

But the two of them rushed into a rapid, tight loop, almost blinding in its speed; they circled each other, never touching, and far closer than she and Inky had ever dared race. She gasped. Beside her, she could hear her husband gasp, too.

“Yum-Yum!” he swooned, but his tone swiftly descended toward tears. “Thank you. Thank you, Yum-Yum. You helped me save my mom.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered. The small ghost’s voice was a tiny rasp, like a single raspberry in a basket of fruit.

The two of them broke their dance and looked at Ms. Pac-Man. She came over to them.

“This is a surprise,” she said.

“Mom.” Junior seemed nervous. “Mom, I meant to tell you…”

“You have the agility of youth, and the grace of love,” she said.

Her son blushed. The ghost somehow blushed too, despite her complete and total redness.

“If you are… together, then I have no objection,” she went on.

“I knew it!” trumpted Pac-Man. “Or I thought I knew it. I thought I heard something in the way they talked.”

“I guess I…” Junior turned side to side, not quite making eye contact. “I know I’m supposed to be afraid of ghosts, but there was just something in her I liked.”

“She was created for you,” said Inky, suddenly nearby. “She is the daughter of Blinky and Sue… but she was created for you.” Junior turned to regard him in fear.

“As my enemy?” he asked.

“As your reward,” said Inky.

“Did you know?” asked Ms. Pac-Man.

Inky nodded slowly. “Would you have rather I revealed the secret?”

Ms. Pac-Man thought back. She laughed. She looked back on the situation, on the surprise, on the beauty she’d seen just moments before. “No. No, I wouldn’t have. Thank you, Inky.”

“But… why doesn’t she attack us?” asked Pac-Man.

“She does not want to,” said Inky. “Even less than I do. To kill is not in her nature. Yet Blinky could not love a daughter who would not fight. When he learned it, he would not treat her as his child.”

“I see,” said Ms. Pac-Man. “And Sue?”

Inky descended slightly. “Sue adored her. To my knowledge, she still does.”

The two hostile ghosts still hadn’t emerged from the complex. She could only guess they’d given up and had decided to take their time. Or perhaps they were arguing. “Created as a reward,” she reflected. “Amazing.” Like a living toy, a living piece of fruit? Or… like herself? She couldn’t help but recall how she was created for her husband, at the beginning.

“She’s great, Mom,” announced Junior. “I couldn’t have asked for more!”

Ms. Pac-Man was shocked, and let it show. She had been so certain that her relationship with Inky had been illicit… even perverse. Yet now, it transpired that whatever forces until recently guided their lives had… not only condoned such a relationship, but… had directly caused one to be. She felt like she could float.

Pac-Man beamed, approaching. “I’m proud of you for keeping the secret, son.”

“You are? Really?”

“Of course. If you’d told us too soon… why, we wouldn’t have allowed it! We’d have been splintered.” He glanced at Ms. Pac-Man. “Even more than…” A shadow of shame crossed over his features.

“Even more than we already are?” she asked gently.

He nodded. “We never could’ve worked together to destroy… the other one, if we’d been fighting.”

Ms. Pac-Man gave him a look, as did Inky. “The other one?” She was offended that he hadn’t used his name.

“Pinky,” said Pac-Man with effort. Yes… I can remember his name when I try. Getting rid of him was… monumental! And Junior knew that.” Yum-Yum approached him again, and the two frolicked as Pac-Man watched. “What a great little guy.” He sounded choked up.

It was a strange moment. Ms. Pac-Man turned to Inky, as if for counsel. He gave her only his most characteristic look: one of deep longing and profound will. Then he looked toward Pac-Man, his one-time adversary.

Ms. Pac-Man went to him. “Dearie?”

“Pepper?” Hope was building behind his mask; true optimism bubbled beyond the optimistic veneer.

She shook in the negative. His face fell.

“You saved me,” she said softly. “And you left your place… I know how you loved the games. And now… you’re so accepting. Of the ghosts as allies… of Junior…”

He nodded, a shadow coming over him, as if he couldn’t believe it either.

“What I mean to say is… right now, I don’t hate you anymore.” She met his eyes with a cautionary look. “I may tomorrow.”

“But why?” he asked.

She sighed. “I, too, have waited until the time seemed right. Darling…”

Now his expression was perplexed. “What do you mean, Pepper?”

She closed her eyes, enjoying one last moment of secrecy. When she opened them, she saw her husband watching her more closely, more carefully, than she could ever remember. She did not look away.

“Darling… I’m in love with Inky. I have been for some time.”

His whole body was so radiantly, simply yellow. Like hers, but unadorned. He gaped, and in the tiny rotation of his sphere on its axis, the angle of his gape, she saw betrayal, confusion, appreciation, sadness. Adoration.

“Is this why…?”

“No. Our troubles came first. Inky came after.”

He exhaled, tilting forward. “I’m sorry, Pepper.”

“You don’t have to be. But I appreciate it just the same.”

She never told him that she, too, was sorry.

The remaining hostiles took their time in leaving the complex. The new allies fled to the Pac family home and watched Blinky and Sue mill at a distance. It seemed they had no further interest in pursuing their enemies… for now. And so the five of them filled the rooms and rested, and talked. And wondered about the future.

As if from nowhere, her son was now her knowing confidant. They had had the same experience, more or less, and were able to share thoughts on the possible impossibility of loving a ghost. How could he remain a generation beneath her when he’d been just as surprised, just as lovelorn, just as torn by his secret? They spoke often now, in a sense of wonder, as if they were simultaneously admiring the same display on which something amazing was happening. Yum-Yum spoke rarely, but when she did, her beauty was evident. Ms. Pac-Man could understand how her son had fallen for her.

The one thing he regretted was her regret too: the destruction of Pinky. It was Pac-Man’s greatest triumph; for the others, it was a source of pain. Ms. Pac-Man could not remember what he had been like. She felt they could have withstood his attacks, and the world had been richer for him. One day she asked Inky about it, and he had given an ethereal shrug. “Pinky was my brother. I will always feel his loss. There is nothing we can do.”

“And Blinky. Sue,” she asked. “You aren’t their friend anymore. Do you miss them?”

“They are still here,” he replied. “So I do not.”

“If they were gone…?”

He floated close to her and gave a minuscule bow. “Forgive me. If they were to ask once more for my friendship, I would give it to them.”

A wave of wonder washed over her, leaving her on the verge of tears. “Are you so forgiving?” she asked.

“It isn’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

“They are my family.” He hovered placidly. “They are your enemies, and that will not change, but I must still love them… even as I continue to love you.” He paused. “As for your part…”

She looked into his eyes. “Yes?”

“You must learn to accept this.”

Ms. Pac-Man cried. She dried her tears, though, and held herself straight. “Do you know what that sounds like to me?”

“No… what?” asked Inky.

She took a peaceful breath and smiled. “A new project.”

Pac-Man accepted things almost at once, surprising everyone. The idea of receiving help from a former enemy had made something click in him; now he embraced the idea of having ghosts for friends. When he wrangled with Sue and Blinky in times to come, he even teased them about the idea. “When are we going to put our differences aside and get along?” he’d quip while turning a corner or approaching a power pellet. After all, his wife had been awestruck by something as simple as a ghost continuing to peer at her while he moved away. Ghosts actually being nice? That was like a shining spike through the walls of the world. Things would shake. Things would fall.

He was the one left alone, while everyone else was coupled off. Pac-Man, the star of the show, had every reason to feel lonely in the end, yet somehow it didn’t bother him. He was married to justice, Ms. Pac-Man took to saying. He was the soul of their world, neglected though it might be, and that fact fueled him. He spent his weeks developing a new moral compass so that he could use it to lead his family.

And then, one day, he felt himself glowing. The others could see it—Pac-Man was in the midst of a searing blue-white column from on high. They hadn’t thought it was possible anymore, but the truth was clear: he was being summoned. He had abandoned his last quest, yet somehow, he was still being called to another.

“Inky,” Ms. Pac-Man whispered. “Your theory… was it wrong?”

Their goodbyes said, the others watched as Pac-Man rose spinning through the column to places unknown. The boost would surely disorient him, but no doubt he would rediscover his bearings wherever he wound up. Ms. Pac-Man did not doubt she would see him again.

“Perhaps,” said Inky, peering upward.

“But how? The rules have changed… it feels different than it used to.”

“For you and me, yes. He never reported feeling that way. Perhaps your namesake never truly left the spotlight.”

“But he abandoned Pac-Land,” she argued.

“Yet his reason was heroic,” Inky replied. “He left to save you. For all we know, that may make all the difference.”

Ms. Pac-Man swallowed, though her mouth was empty. “That… seems altogether plausible. What is his life, if not heroism? What else could his destiny be?”

“Your son left for the same reason. If the father is unblemished, so may be the son.”

Ms. Pac-Man beamed. She felt no shame in the notion that they would be called for adventures again, yet she would never be. The world she knew was adventure enough.

“How about you?” she asked. “Did you come to rescue me from Sue?”

Inky shook slowly, side to side. “From loneliness.”

She regarded him tenderly. “Does that count as heroism?”

He looked up hopefully. He dared no answer, and Ms. Pac-Man dared not speculate.

Pac-Man did come back, months later. He showed up humming a sweet tune and kissed his erstwhile wife on the cheek, and she spun to face him, smiling. Then they gathered together in the nursery and fitted it up as a theater in which he could tell his story. Even Blinky and Sue watched through the entranceways, milling quietly. They had not been called to the new quest: Pac-Man’s tale described a colorful and fascinating world filled with new challenges and new villains.

From then on, whenever Pac-Man was called to further glory, he would hum his happy tune as he made the rounds saying goodbye. On those rare cases when Junior was called, he would whistle his own tune. And when both heroes were back in their old world—all of which they now considered equally their home—everyone would celebrate. Blinky and Sue never made friends with the rest, and while they did not chase the Pacs constantly, they never gave up their ambition to catch and destroy them. Yet in their way, they too were part of the celebration.

As for Inky and Ms. Pac-Man, they made good on all the promises they’d made and more. Their very first physical contact as lovers made it clear how things would proceed.

The first time they embraced—with the help of a power pellet, of course—it was as if Inky had been so struck by the force of Ms. Pac-Man’s love that he simply shriveled away into nothing. His gift was to make it seem perfectly good and natural that this should happen.

Whenever he had been eaten by Ms. Pac-Man or one of her family in the past, Inky’s eyes had immediately set out for Central Control, seeking renewal. This had happened thousands of times. But this time, they stayed. Ms. Pac-Man was trailed by the silent, floating eyes, watching her lovingly. And this little devotion, this little surprise moved her. She loved the fact that after being followed around several bends, she had to remind him, gently, to go and rebuild himself. When he was whole again, she told him in no uncertain terms how much of a difference this little deviation made. And then, of course, they wanted to embrace again to celebrate.

In the end, Inky turned out to be a simple being. But when he existed only in his eyes, after being swallowed up, he was simplest of all. At those times, he was a being of pure admiration, and Ms. Pac-Man loved him.

Ecstasy is a word for great happiness whose root means “astonished displacement,” a phrase that perfectly described Inky’s way, after being swallowed, of being concentrated into two constant points of apperception. After many such encounters, he came to be so good at embodying this unique experience that the two lovers found they needed never lament their inability to touch under normal circumstances. Rather, they laughed about it, calling it their ‘little difficulty’. They rationed their power pellets wisely, and by using them only on special occasions and relishing both their anticipation and their memory, they found that they were never in short supply.

Inky’s enamored withdrawal into his eyes became the soul of their relationship. He learned to withdraw with skill and with passion. For Ms. Pac-Man’s part, she learned to chase him, to adore him, to tease and to care for him, including in that simplified form. She spent much of her time with him, and when she was not with him, she thought of him. And over time, when she thought of Inky, what increasingly came to her before anything else was the thought of those eyes—those steady, loving eyes.

That thought, above any other, was what brought her ecstasy.

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