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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.

A/N: The melodramatic style of this story is influenced by the late Ayn Rand, whose prose style I adore, even if I'm not a fan of her philosophy. One of the reasons I wrote this ridiculous tale back in 2005 was to have a sandbox in which I could play around with this kind of emotionally charged over-the-top drama. So if you're wondering why there are so many semicolons... blame Atlas Shrugged.

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