but starved, inconsequential (Frag. 13)

In a way, selling someone pizza was a sacred trust. People dropped little snippets of their lives like trails of breadcrumbs hidden behind chatter on the weather and the Yankees, and all you needed to piece their lives together was an open ear and a smile. They'd come back, and talk, and come back again, until at some point months down the road, they'd forget the weather and the Yankees and come to talk about their hopes and their families, and walk away with a pizza as well. He wouldn't invite them home for dinner, but Art Smiley liked to think he knew some of his patrons pretty well. That's why it surprised him when it was only now, years after meeting him, standing in the elevator, that he realized Tony Timbal was a complete asshole.

The elevator was fancy but tasteful, with real wooden siding and an ironwork dial over the door to count the floors. It stopped every few floors to let people off, and as the dial glided up, the number of passengers dwindled. Twelve at floor five. Eight at floor eight. Six at floor eleven. By floor fifteen, it was only him and an elderly lady with a walker.

"You have a good day now, young man," she said with a ghost of a Yiddish accent.

"Thanks, ma'am. You too." With a smile, Art left into the hallway outside and headed for apartment 1504. He knew every bump and scrape on the dark wooden door, but without a hot pizza in his hands, the place seemed almost alien. Art reached out his hand. He gave a knock.

"Coming! Just a-" There was a distant crash and a grunt. "Just a minute!" called Tony. After a short wait, he opened the door. He had tan skin, a tidy black beard, and thin oval glasses, and wore a white sport jacket over a green sweater vest. "Art!"

"Tony."

Tony glanced down at Art's hands, as if to confirm there wasn't any pizza. "So…you're taking that break?" He had a slight accent that Tony still couldn't place. Mexican, maybe?

"Yeah. It's called lunch."

Tony leaned on the doorframe. "Uh…I'm sorry, what are you-"

"Let me tell you about my day," said Art.

"But why are-"

"One of my regulars comes in, chats a bit, gets four pies. Pretty standard," Art continued. "Then, right over the counter where every single god damn customer and employee can see, he hands me two grand."

"Uh…why don't you come in and sit down? I can get you-"

"Some pizza? Believe it or not, I get enough of that."

"I was thinking coffee."

"It's 5:30."

"So?"

"…fine. Lunch is an hour, anyway." He followed Tony through the foyer into an impeccably-decorated living room, with hardwood floors and an impressive clay vase on the basketweave coffee table. Windows overlooking the street far below stretched from wall to wall, and over the leather couch opposite them hung an impressionistic painting of the Sagrada Familia, all in colors that blazed like a hot sunset.

"Go on, sit down," said Tony.

"Tony, I-"

"I'll go prepare the coffee."
"I'm not here for coffee!"

"…oh." He glanced down, then back up toward Art, hands tight against to his sides. "You're wondering why I gave you-"

"Yeah. Why don't you tell me?"

"Well. Uh." Tony wrung his hands. "Look, it's one of Elaine's things."

"What kind of things?"

He scratched the back of his neck. "I don't think I'd really be the best person to-"

"You handed me a bundle of cash. People don't do that without knowing why."

Tony turned away from him "Something bad is gonna happen."

"Something bad?"

"I like you, Art, and I just wanted you to get the chance to, y'know, relax." As he spoke, Tony paced back and forth. "Have some fun, take Mara out for-"

"Mara and I got divorced."

Tony gaped. "I'm sorry! I wish you'd told me, or I'd-"

"I did tell you, when it happened, three months ago." Tony's mistake wasn't quite as idiotic as it sounded. They weren't together anymore, but he and Mara were still friendly. Heck, they'd taken the kids to the park just the other weekend, together. Maybe Tony had seen them together and assumed…no. Tony wouldn't remember something like that.

Tony shrunk, and kept shrinking until he had shrunk all the way back onto the couch. His head bumping the painting on the wall.

Art stepped around the room and leaned against the windowsill, tossing Tony's wallet on the coffee table between them."Okay. Something bad's going to happen. What? And how do you know?"

"Uh. So there's this game Elaine's company's been working on. You're supposed to play it with people all around the world. You get four groups together, and-"

"That doesn't sound like a bad thing," said Art.

Tony hunched over in his seat. "Then it blows up the world."

Art crossed his arms. "…is that so."

"Uh. Yeah."

"So, why don't you explain to me how the world ends?"

"You're sure you want me to-"

"Yeah, I do."

Tony frowned. "Well. Okay. So you've got four groups, all over the world. You link them up and start playing. Each group helps another group, and they all enter the game. Which is in real life, by the way."

"What-"

"But they all have to hurry, because if they're too slow, meteors come, and-"

"Perhaps I should explain this."

Two heads turned as a short woman with olive skin strode in from the hall. Her feet were bare, her elegant pink dress rumpled, the perfect waves of her dark hair thrown in a frizz. Art gaped. Elaine Timbal had always seemed a walking statue, almost seemed human.

Tony stared up at her. "Are you sure you want to bring him in on-"

"It seems you already did." She paused, then forced herself to continue. "That's alright, I guess."

–

"No, unfortunately," continued Alok. "The meteors will come whether or not we play the game. Playing…um…" He yawned. "Playing lets us escape."

"I feared as much, but thank you. Any other questions?" The low buzz of fluorescent lights filled the tiny cube of an office. Nalani Misra's three grandchildren had managed to pack themselves in around her, and she could hardly turn around without hitting one of them with her knitting bag. Alok sat at the computer, curly long hair, thin frame, and a fresh cup of coffee before him. Chiran, wearing a mediocre suit, leaned against the corner, barely managing to stay awake. And then there was Shafti in her chair taking up most of the room, fat, crippled Shafti who had just draped her skirt over her legs rather than bothering to put it on, as if Nalani wouldn't notice. The girl was still disheveled from that little moment when she'd burst into tears and come wheeling down the hall, wailing about something or other. The fluoresecent buzz seemed to grow louder, filling up the silence in the room. The grandchildren were nervous, and rightly so. Nalani was too, but somebody had to crack the whip. "I have a question. The game is played in groups of four, yes?"

"No," said Alok, "it's four groups of-"

"That's what I meant. Thank you." She tapped her cane on the floor, tap tap tap. "Now. Who exactly are the other three groups?"

Shafti sat useless in her chair, of course.

Chiran dozed, head against the wall.

Alok turned in his chair to her. "They're…uh."

The room was silent for a moment. "Do we actually have any other people to play with?"

"Not…precisely."

"Then what precisely do we have?"

Alok spun his chair around to face the computer screen. "We have, uh…"

"W-we have…we have a matchmaking service," stammered Shafti.

Nalani looked to Shafti, who shrank. "What's that?" she asked Alok?

"It's…part of the program," he said, his voice slurring. He blinked, took a swill of his coffee, then blinked again. "I'm sorry. The matchmaker helps players find other players, and it gets to…excuse me. They get to-"

"It connects players with each other," Shafti said, barely loud enough to hear.

"Shafti," said Nalani. "Alok knows about this. You don't."

Shafti stared at the flimsy little table attached to her chair. "I…I…didn't mean to-"

"What didn't you mean?" said Nalani, tapping her cane on the ground.

Leaning close to the screen, Alok mumbled something.

"Speak up."

"I just think you should…" He trailed off, rubbing his eyes.

"What should we do?"

Still leaning against the wall, Chiran let out a soft snore.

"No. You. Not we," said Alok. "Listen. Chiran and I have been awake since this time yesterday morning. I've been monitoring shipments, and he's been dealing with Americans. All week. We've slept, uh…not much. I don't think I can…"

"Speak clearly, Alok."

He closed his eyes, then opened them. In a slow, ponderous motion, he turned his chair around and sat up straight, facing her. "Grandmother." His words were slow and careful, but at least they were clear. "I don't know how well Shafti understands this game, but…" He yawned. "I think she could surprise either of us."

Alok had a point. He was falling asleep, and Chiran was already there. It would hardly be fair to expect much of either of them. She cast a glance down at Shafti. The girl's face was stuck in a puckered frown, and that skirt she'd draped over her legs was slipping. "Surprise me, then."

"I…I think I understand the-"

"The what?"

"The game. The matchmaking service. I've been doing a lot of research on SkaiaNet, and-"

"Three years in your room on that computer." Nalani paced back and forth in the few square feet of space in the room, and Shafti wheeled backward to make room. "At least you learned something."

"Thank you," she mumbled, bumping into the wall behind her.

"Well?" said Nalani. "What did you learn?"

"Uh, right." Shafti tapped her fingers on her little table. "The matchmaker. It's-"

"Stop that. It's annoying."

"You told me to talk. Can I please-"

"Talk. Don't tap."

Shafti's jaw tensed. Very slowly, she moved her hands from the little table to her lap. Nalani could tell just by looking that she was still tapping her fingers, but at least it was quiet. "Alok, you should probably-"

"I should probably-"
"Move," they both said. Shafti looked at Alok, then giggled like a little girl. Alok let out a chuckle and moved aside. Shafti grabbed her chair's wheels and inched away from the wall, across the carpet, halting in the room's center. She glanced down at the floor. The tip of Nalani's cane happened to fall right in front of her chair. It seemed Shafti wouldn't just push the cane aside, so Nalani pulled it away herself. It caught on the fringe of Shafti's skirt, tugging it a few inches off her lap before the girl's hand snapped down to hold it in place.

"You'll put that on properly once we have a moment."

Shafti's hands scrambled with the skirt, setting it back in place to cover her legs, smoothing it, patting it. "Y-yes, Grandmother." She continued to the computer, tucked away the little table, and situated herself before the desk. She clicked on a green house-shaped emblem, broken up into chunks. "I haven't actually dealt with the Sburb matchmaker. Or Sburb, really, at all, but I've done a lot of research, and…"

Fiddling with the needles in her knitting bag, Nalani glanced around the room. Chiran was still sleeping on his feet in the corner, and Alok had sat down on the floor and nodded off as well. Shafti was still talking. It was so hard getting her to talk when you actually wanted to, and when she did speak, she would always take so long to get to the point.

"…and…and I…well, I know a lot of matchmaking programs, from other-"

A frenetic xylophone rhythm came from the computer. Onscreen, a green spirograph logo appeared, the emblem of SkaiaNet, spinning and shifting in time with the beat. Beneath it was a progress bar.

"My point is, I've done a lot of research on Sburb, and everything I've read says its matchmaker is no different from any other."

The music swelled, bells and violins joining the xylophone. Abe the progress bar, small white letters flickered. Nalani crept closer. She eyed the words, squinting. She knew those letters. They were English letters, which made sense. "So you can use it?"

"I think so." She straightened her back. "But I can't do much until it-"

"What do those words say?"

"Hold on, they're moving too fast to read." She tapped a key, and the image on the screen froze. "I…I have no idea what this-"

"And can you turn that music off?"

Shafti pressed a key, and the music stopped. "I can't translate this."

"Try."

"I've just never seen anything quite like…" She shook her head. "Concrete…no. Conceptualizing…push…terminals? That makes no sense."

"Alternately, you're wrong," said Nalani. "Try again."

"Hold on." Shafti returned to the game screen and froze it again. "Consolidating fuse calipers?"

Nalani leaned forward on her cane. "Again."

"Evaluating mortar."

"Again!"

"Realigning car...Cartesian mandrels. Grandmother, these are nonsense."

Nalani took a deep breath. Dealing with Shafti took patience. "Try. Again."

"Fine." She froze it once more. "Licensing chocks."

This was going nowhere. She whirled around and rapped Alok on the shoulder with her cane. "This text on the screen. Tell me what it says."

Alok dragged himself up from the floor and shuffled over, leaning forward to read. "Licensing chocks? What does that mean?"

"Nothing!" shouted Nalani and Shafti at the same time.

In the corner, Chiran sputtered awake. "Wh-what?"

"Go back to sleep, Chiran," said Shafti, and Nalani found she agreed.

Chiran sat down and closed his eyes, and Alok soon followed. When Shafti returned to the game, the progress bar was gone, replaced by a single word in bold English letters. "Title screen," said Shafti. She pressed a button and it vanished. "I should be able to find the matchmaker in just a…"

The screen went black.

Nalani tapped her cane on the floor. "Is this supposed to-"

"Can you stop tapping?"

"Don't be rude, Shafti."

Shafti's eyes narrowed.

"Is there something you want to say?"

Shafti held her gaze a moment, then hunched over and turned back to the screen. It flickered. Across the top and left sides stretched a tan bar holding a series of icons reminiscent of the green house. The bar was similar to Nalani's set of weaving shuttles. Clearly, each of these icons represented a tool of some sort; what was the question. A moment later, a green oblong box, rounded at the corners, appeared in the center.

"No co-player found," translated Shafti. "Searching." A smile crept across her face, and she looked up at Nalani. "It's working! All we have to do now is wait."

"Good," said Nalani, smiling too. "That gives you time to put on your skirt correctly, doesn't it?"

Shafti shriveled, tugging at the edges of the skirt to pull it over her legs. It didn't help.

14:48 Seattle, 17:48 New York, 22:48 Oxford, 4:18 Bangalore