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"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.

A/N: The initial ennui or distaste Ms. Pac-Man feels, motivating her need to leave her husband, may have been inspired in some small part by Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House, which I never saw but which I read in college.

Sorry this chapter is up late. I went to a virtual reality parlor earlier today and it made me forget my real world responsibilities. (Like updating video game fan fiction.) I'll be skipping next week because I'm going to a science fiction convention, where I'll be producing the newsletter.

[I made a beautiful ASCII picture of a Pac kissing a ghost, but this site is horrible with punctuation and butchered it. So just imagine it.]