The End of the Tunnel

The room was full of people and heavy with noise. The austere plaster walls vibrated as they talked, argued, and laughed. They huddled around the long tables, poring over small printed cards in binders, trying to ignore the people trying to gain an advantage by reading over their shoulder. The heat was building rapidly, and the air would soon be thick with the tang of salt and sweat and nerves.

I ignored everyone. You can do that when you’re the best.

Undoubtedly, a lot of them were nervous because they recognized me. After all, I was one of the best Space: the Convergence players in the world. It’s not arrogance if it’s true, and I hadn’t lost a tournament in over five years. A lot of people didn’t realize the sort of dedication it takes to be the best, even at a “silly card game” like Space. I’d had so many people over the years tell me they could have won too, if only they’d had the best cards like I did, or if they could grind as much as I did. That’s the kind of thing scrubs tell themselves so they feel better about being scrubs. They just didn’t have my dedication – or my willingness to sacrifice. Oh yes, there had been sacrifice, but if you’re not willing to give something up for fame and money, you don’t really deserve it.

I wandered in the general direction of the organizer’s desk, brushing past more hopefuls, more cannon fodder. Some of them were talking about strategy as they passed, and I stifled a laugh. If they were a good indicator of what this crowd was like, I would be making serious bank today.

That’s when I saw him.

He didn’t exactly stand out, but once I noticed him I found I couldn’t tear my eyes away. And not just because I hadn’t seen him in almost six years. He was standing next to a man in a dirty sweatshirt at the end of one of the long tables, and leaning over to gesture enthusiastically at something in an open binder. He was dressed casually, but much more neatly than anyone else in the room, and despite the great press of people, there wasn’t a wrinkle or rumple anywhere on him.

The milling crowd seemed to slow, and people parted as I moved straight over to the table. The man in the sweatshirt flipped to the next page in the binder. The other man, the one I still hadn’t taken my eyes off, glanced at me as though he’d known I was there the whole time.

“Who designed these new cards?” he said. The din rose, with people calling to each other across the room, yet I heard every word clearly. “Destroys all your opponent’s ships, and leaves all of yours, and it only costs five resources? And they call me evil.”

He shook his head and turned away, examining the cards on the new page. Someone at the far side of the table made a bad joke, and laughter echoed down to our end. Moments passed and he was silent. “Why are you here?” I asked at last.

He still didn’t look at me as he replied, “It’s been six years since we last spoke.” He picked up a loose card from the table and examined it closely. “I thought I would come and see how you were doing.”

“You must know how I’m doing,” I snapped. “You of all people must know.”

“Oh, yes. You’re all over the internet. That last tournament report you wrote for STCTopDeck.org got 5,000 hits.” Another group of people passed behind me on their way out from the organizer’s table. I heard one of them mention my name as they went away. None of them looked at the man I was talking to. “But that’s not exactly what I meant.”

I turned in place, fidgeting with my sleeves. The room was even more packed than before. By now it was standing room only at some of the tables, and I was starting to sweat. I noticed the smell, which I thought was odd. I’d long since learned to tune it out, focus only on the cards, on my game. But now the odor of the crush of humanity seemed almost a physical thing, wrapped around me like a constrictor snake. I came back to face him, and my jaw dropped when I realized he still hadn’t looked up from the binder.

“What are you talking about?”

The man in the dirty sweatshirt closed the binder and stood up, and in a moment was lost in the bustle. He remained, fixing me with a gaze that made me hold my breath. There was a weight in that gaze, a distant echo of thoughts that had no earthly name but that shook me to the core. “What’s Tina up to these days?”

“Why do you want to know?” I answered, much too fast. The fact was, I hadn’t seen Tina in more than two years. Two weeks before a Pro Tour Qualifier, she'd wanted to go to a concert, I'd needed to practice, she’d said things, I’d ignored them and gone to practice . . .

“That Ron Stratford is an incredible artist.” He suddenly had a card in his hand, and was rolling it over and around his fingers like an old-time street magician. “Did you know he makes all his pieces by hand, with real brushes and paint? Look at the swirl of color right across the middle of this one.” He extended his hand, holding the card between his index and middle fingers, the side with the art and game text towards me. “You know, Degas said that art isn’t what you see – it’s what you make others see.”

I stared at the card. It was one I’d used probably a hundred times in my last tournament. It had won me more matches at the time than anything else – it had earned me $10,000. The painting depicted a black hole devouring a red dwarf star in a burst of swirling gas and light. I almost felt that if I leaned too far forward it might draw me in and I would be lost for ever in that endless expanse. And until right then, I had had no idea what the card looked like.

The noise of the assembled people around us seemed to fade, and I glanced left and right, then left and right again. The milling crowd seemed to be moving in slow motion as I turned back to him. His expression had not changed as he brandished the supernova painting at me, and when I looked back into the starscape I saw things I hadn’t thought of in such a long time. I saw the face of a fourteen-year-old boy I’d once played in the opening round of a tournament, where I’d crushed him and then left without shaking his hand. I saw the time I convinced someone to trade me a new, rare card for a much more common one, taking advantage of the fact that he liked the art I’d long stopped paying attention to. I saw the time I’d plied an opponent with loaded questions, convincing him to end his turn without making a play that could have won him the game. And I saw every night I’d lain next to Tina while she slept, poring over new cards on my netbook.

With a flick of his wrist, the supernova card vanished, and his eyes were dark as deep space and hot as brimstone. And in that moment, I understood that for every day of the past six years, I had been paying his price. And I understood that I would never stop paying.