Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love.

“Promise me, we won’t ever do this again,” Sadie said. “Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.” These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.

Herein, the difficulty. Sam and Sadie both knew what they liked in a game, and they could easily tell a good game from a bad game. For Sadie, that knowledge was not necessarily helpful. Her time with Dov and her years studying games in general had made her critical of everything. She could tell you exactly what was wrong with any game, but she didn’t necessarily know how to make a great game herself. There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

What was amazing to Sam—and what became a theme of the games he would go on to make with Sadie—was how quickly the world could shift. How your sense of self could change depending on your location. As Sadie would put it in an interview with Wired, “The game character, like the self, is contextual.” In Koreatown, no one ever thought Sam was Korean. In Manhattan, no one had ever thought he was white. In Los Angeles, he was the “white cousin.” In New York, he was that “little Chinese kid.” And yet, in K-town, he felt more Korean than he ever had before. Or to put a finer point on it, he felt more aware of the fact that he was a Korean and that that was not necessarily a negative or even a neutral fact about him. The awareness gave him pause: perhaps a funny-looking mixed-race kid could exist at the center of the world, not just on its periphery.

While Keanu sat in the chair, Audrey lay in the bed next to Tiny Tim, their fingertips casually touching, in the way of people who were entirely comfortable around each other. She almost seemed to be an extension of him, and he, of her. There is love here, she thought. In the end, she decided, with some amount of disappointment, that none of them were involved romantically.

“I think they’re in love.” Sam sniffed, as if the idea of it, love, was ridiculous. “You disapprove, I take it?” “Marx is always in love. He’s an emotional harlot. What does love even mean when you can find it with so many people and things?”

He’d once tried to explain the falling-out to Marx, and Marx had not even understood it. No, Sam had said, you don’t understand. It’s the principle. She was pretending to be my friend, but she was just doing it for community service. Marx had looked at Sam blankly, and then he said, No one spends hundreds of hours doing anything out of charity, Sam. Thinking of this and looking at the little paperweight, Sam’s heart swelled with love for Sadie. Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him? He knew he loved her. People who felt far less for each other said “love” all the time, and it didn’t mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.

Sadie had often reflected that sex and video games had a great deal in common. There were certain objectives that needed to be met. There were certain rules that shouldn’t be broken. There was a correct combination of movements—button mashes, joystick pivots, keystrokes, commands—that made the whole thing work or not work. There was a pleasure to knowing you had played the game correctly and a release that came when you reached the next level. To be good at sex was to be good at the game of sex.

Sadie and Marx’s whole future was revealed to him. Sadie would probably marry Marx, and the wedding would be in Northern California, Carmel-by-the-Sea or Monterey. And at the wedding, Sadie’s grandmother would shoot sympathetic looks at Sam, because she had always been nice to him, and she would know he was brokenhearted. Freda would grab his hand with her soft, old hand, and pat it gently, and say, “Life is long” or some other unhelpful, old-lady wisdom. Sadie and Marx would buy a house together, somewhere in Laurel Canyon or maybe Palisades. And they’d get a dog—a big, rangy, mixed-breed thing, or if not that, a Borzoi called Zelda or Rosella. They’d throw big dinner parties. The house would be the kind of place where everyone wanted to congregate because Sadie and Marx had great taste. They were both great. And at some point, there would be children, and Sam would become sad bachelor uncle Sam, expected to give presents for birthdays and holidays. And every day, he’d have to see Marx and Sadie at work. He would watch them arrive together, and leave together, and he could imagine the drive, and the jokes, and the references that you only had with the person you shared your life with. And eventually, Sadie would be a stranger. And this would be a disaster for Sam. A tragedy. He would know that if he hadn’t been the person he was, terrified and cowardly and petty and insecure and sexually panicked and broken, Sadie might have been his. It wouldn’t have even been a question...

Sadie studied Sam. The sun had changed angles in the time they’d been standing there, and she could see him again. He was twenty-seven and he had a mustache, but whenever she allowed herself to think of him as the kid from the hospital, her heart could not help but soften for him. It was easy to dislike the man; it was harder to dislike the little boy who existed just below the surface of the man.

senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health.

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

“Ms. Marks, I wish to make you a proposal.” “Go on.” “If it helps you, I would like to be a partner to you,” Daedalus said. “I know I am an imperfect substitute for whoever you have lost. But we are both alone, and I think we could help each other. Sorrows can be shared, as easily as games of Go.” She reached for Emily’s hand, and she got down on one knee. “I would like to propose to you. Leave Foglands. Come to Verdant Valley.” “Do you mean marriage?” “It doesn’t have to have a name,” Daedalus said. “It can have a name if you want it to have a name.” “What would it mean, then?” “It means a very long game of Go, played without stops.”

She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones. The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person. Upon the person’s death, your brain still believes the virtual person exists, because, in a sense, the person still does. After a while, though, the memory fades, and each year, you are left with an increasingly diminished version of the AI you had made when the person was alive.