Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Chapter 8 is the only chapter in the novel that is narrated in a character’s voice. The fact that Marx’s character is given a voice here shows his centrality to the narrative, stressing the importance of this so-called non-playable character. The narrative also mimics video-game conventions, as it is narrated in the present tense and like an immersive, live-action sequence. Marx is one of the founders of Unfair Games, and without his support, Sadie and Sam would have found it very difficult to develop Ichigo. The narrative stresses Marx’s generosity from the very onset. Yet, as often happens in any partnership, the seemingly non-creative partner does not win accolades. This tends to happen to Marx as well. Sam himself is guilty of pigeonholing Marx as boring, an NPC, and a tamer of horses, after Hector in the Iliad—the man who stands for the every-person. By giving Marx a voice, the narrative upends all these assumptions. The choice of second person is striking here, creating a distance between Marx’s comatose body and his wandering mind. It lends Marx’s voice objectivity and also underlines the fact that Marx is dying and dissociating from his body. This lends the second-person narration poignancy and emotional heft.

Marx’s death is an example of the unfairness of reality, contrasted against game worlds. He is murdered because he happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, because he assumes he can handle a situation that he cannot, because the bullets hit him at a particular angle, and because the pancreas where one of the bullets is lodged “is heartbreakingly single” (290). Reality has too many variables beyond the control of an individual, which is what makes video games more reliable and comforting for all the main characters of the novel. The randomness and unexpectedness of Marx’s death, and even the ordinariness of his killers, shows that death in real life often creeps up unexpectedly. Murderers are people like everyone else: Marx notes the two gunmen are no older than him and mentally refers to them as kids. He underestimates the young men, his composure at odds with their rage: “You aren’t afraid of them, though you are afraid of their guns” (291). What makes Marx unafraid is the fact that the two young men look as ordinary as anyone else.

The theme that violence is an ever-present current in American life that explodes into prominence with the slightest trigger is revisited in this section. The gunmen—red bandana and black bandana—are enraged enough to want to kill people because of the existence of a game that allows marriages between members of the same sex. Worse, they have access to guns. They are irritated by the sight of Marx because of his Asian appearance. They assume Ant is Sam because Ant is not white and as Marx notes, “to the boy with the gun it doesn’t matter what particular ‘other’ he is looking at” (296). Thus, racism, anti-gay bias, misguided rage, and ennui, coupled with the easy availability of firearms, come together in an explosive mix, making the boys shoot Marx and Ant. That such violence occurs in the heart of LA, in a gleaming building, contains real-life echoes of fatal shootings in schools, festivals, and streets, and raises important questions about gun availability and ownership.

Marx’s stream-of-consciousness narration cuts across the events of the day he was shot, his time in the hospital, and significant events in his life. He visualizes himself as a bird over a strawberry patch because of “The Strawberry Thief,” the print his mother showed him and Sadie in Tokyo. This re-emergence of previous plot points is a strong feature of the novel’s writing, making it a densely plotted work. Another recurring motif is how often the text simulates a video game. When Marx dies, “a prompt comes up on the screen: start game from the beginning?” (304). Suddenly, he is restored to his fluffy bird self again and takes flight to begin a new game. He flies, getting a new life, which is a metaphor for the soul’s life away from the body.

Chapter 8 delves into the immediate aftermath of Marx’s death, particularly its effects on Sam, Sadie, and their company. To emphasize the themes of loss and trauma, the narrative slows down in this section, lingering on details such as the shrine in front of the Unfair Games entrance and the vandalism in Sam’s office. Sam’s phantom limb pain, “a mortifyingly psychosomatic weathervane” (313), returns, symbolizing the extent of his grief over Marx’s death. Marx’s absence forces Sam to grow up because he no longer has Marx to look after practical affairs. In the past, he and Sadie could be their zany, odd selves because “Marx was Marx…but Marx, of course, was no longer there” (313). Sadie has always reacted to grief by shutting down, as in the case of her depression after her first breakup with Dov. Since the scale of her loss now is colossal, Sadie withdraws from the world. Yet, as always, she manages to reach out to Sam through games, signs, and cryptic messages. In this case, it is the Easter egg she plants for Sam: the doppelganger of Marx behind a door in the expanded Master of Revels. To Sam, Sadie designing the Easter egg shows that her voice as a game maker, as a human, is still strong and intact. “What touched him the most was the sound of Sadie’s voice, untouched and Clarion, speaking to him through a game, across time and space” (337). Sam interprets this as a cry for help and decides to extend help in the same medium: a game.