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
BONUS SONG
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."
A/N: It's weird to think about the in-universe story of video games in which you can die. You may play a hundred times and lose hundreds of lives… but unless the story builds in some way to bring back the dead, it's the one time you play and -don't- die that the characters remember. Multiverse theory, anyone?
I've made and enjoyed Ms. Pac-Man Salad a few times, though not for many a year. Sliced strawberries, peaches (or mandarin oranges, if that's what you think they are), bananas, pears, and (possibly marinated) apples; maraschino cherries and yogurt-covered pretzels. Mix in some Kix before eating to represent the dots.
c`o }' O` 8B U`.cO \_/`