Deign to Know Me #2
Thus the player beheld the Chamber of the Green Man, home to one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in gaming history.
Some devotees declared it was just decoration and served no purpose.
Most, including Kyle Greenman, insisted if eyes blinked, noses wriggled, blossoms swayed, dogs and ducks slumbered and fires burned, then the space was waiting for you.
The chamber was suffused with anticipation.
The game wasn’t over. More was here. Someone just had to find a way to get the hares in the ceiling spinning.
Small cracks had been made in the code. Quickly it was discovered you could click on two of the hares—the one hiding in the flowers and the one at the base of the altar, hold them by the ears and move them up to the ceiling motif, where they each melded into the carving.
The third hare, the one being held by the Green Man, wasn’t having it.
You could click on him, move him, but when you tried to drop him into the ceiling motif, he bounded out of the cursor’s trap and back to the safety of the Green Man’s lap.
Clicking on the dog did nothing interesting. He just yawned, shifted positions or scratched, and went back to sleep. Likewise the duck wasn’t interested in playing.
Clicking on the windows did nothing. Clicking on the wisteria blossoms did nothing, or so everyone thought until one intrepid fan discovered if you clicked on one particular blossom enough, it grew older.
The purple petals withered and died with each click, leaving the user with three seeds that went into their cache.
But what to do with them? People tried feeding them to the dog, throwing them into the fire.
They looked around for dirt to plant them in.
They took the seeds back through the entire game looking for where they could be sown. So far, no dice.
Fans tore the place apart, researching the Green Man, the Three Hares, the significance of wisteria, the breed of dog and duck.
Some fixated on the full moon in one of the windows, arguing you could determine latitude by its position.
But none were so crazed as the anagram fanatics, who spent hours, days, months rearranging the letters of the Green Man’s throne:
And ye then deign to know me
O wisteria hares turning
Liko closed his eyes, remembering Kyle’s shoulders hunched over the dining room table, where he and his friend Mark had composed the words with Scrabble tiles, bickering and brainstorming as they moved letters around and tried to find the message within.
Tears squeezed through the tiny space between upper and lower lids, warmed with a burning pride because the night he died, Kyle had discovered something about the Green Man Chamber no one else had. He woke Liko up, which he rarely did, insisting he had to show Liko something, which he never did.
“I have to show you because you don’t care about the game and you won’t tell anyone else. You have no one to tell. Get up. Come here. Dad, please, you have to see this.”
Stumbling and yawning, Liko followed the boy into his bedroom and leaned over the back of his chair.
Kyle had already moved the two willing hares into their positions in the ceiling motif. He demonstrated again how the third hare could be picked up and moved toward the ceiling, but no farther.
“It doesn’t go in,” Kyle said. “Right?”
“Right.”
“As soon as you hover over the motif, the hare jumps out of your hands and goes back to the Green Man. Okay?”
“I’m with you.”
“But if you move it toward the ceiling, don’t let go, and then move it back to the Green Man’s lap yourself… There, see how the flames of the fire pit shoot up just a little as you pass it. Right? And the hare kind of draws up its back feet and you see some sparks?”
“I see it.”
Kyle swiveled in his chair, looking up at his father with an almost fevered expression. “It says, deign to know me. What does deign mean?”
“To base yourself. To do something beneath your dignity.”
Kyle’s eyes widened and he pointed a finger. “Exactly.”
He swiveled back to the screen, clicked the cursor on the hare in the Green Man’s lap, picked it up and moved it over the fire. Sparks belched and the creature drew its feet up.
“Check it out.” Kyle released his finger from the mouse and the hare dropped into the flames.
“Dude,” Liko said, appalled and impressed.
Kyle sat back, arms crossed and teeth closed on the tip of his tongue, watching as the fire leaped up tall and angry, consuming the hare.
Out of the conflagration emerged a cloud of rabbit-shaped smoke that moved toward the ceiling, its four strong legs extending and crossing as it ran through the air to join its mates in the carved motif.
Once in place, the three hares surged with a blinding white light, then calmed into gold.
And they began to run.
The bowl of the ceiling turned, powered by the running hares. Round and round they went, the triangle made by their three shared ears rotating.
It was the rule of the game: If the hares were running, you were on to something.
“Holy shit,” Liko said, dropping a hand on his son’s head. “You just figured this out now? Tonight?”
Kyle crowed a “Yeah” with undisguised relish and glee.
“Does anyone else know?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re literally the first and only person to figure this out?”
“Yep. And you’re the only other person who knows.”
“Dude, we’re famous.”
“I know.”
“You going to announce this?”
“Not yet.” He glanced up and over his shoulder and in that moment, he looked more man than boy. “You always say I should put twenty-four hours between my impulses and my actions.”
Liko took his hand off Kyle’s head, raised both palms and took an incredulous stop back. “What, you’re actually taking my advice? Hold on, let me look outside and see if the world is ending.”
He made a show of flinging open the bedroom window and peering around. “My son is listening to me,” he called to the streets.
“Dude, I got a secret,” Kyle said, and right then, Liko could’ve taken his son’s joy, loaded it into a syringe and plunged it into his veins.
He could make a career out of the expression on Kyle’s face.
He wanted to paint it, sculpt it, cast it in bronze, make a masterpiece of this night.
He shut the window and came back to the desk to offer an exuberant high five.
“My man, you’re incredible.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
Liko knuckled his son’s mop of dark blond hair and kissed the knobby skull that enclosed that bright, beautiful mind. He moved to the door and Kyle called after him, “Hey, don’t tell anyone about this, all right?”
“Who would I even tell? My dentist?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Not a word, I promise. Now shut down and get some sleep. You got a big day ahead.”
Kyle grinned. “Tomorrow’s gonna be lit.”
But tomorrow never came.
Liko had kissed that head, not knowing a time bomb was ticking within, and gone back to his bed. Kyle went to shower and brush his teeth, had a massive brain aneurysm, collapsed and died.
Fate deigned to reach into Liko Greenman’s lap, pluck the beautiful tawny hare that was his only child, and sacrifice him.
Ensconced in his tiny Airbnb, Liko threw the game’s third hare into the fire, watched the smoke cloud ascend and bound toward the ceiling. He watched the three hares begin to turn and turn and turn.
The secret had died with Kyle. Liko never told a soul. He combed the gaming forums not only to validate his son’s existence and confirm its continued memorialization, but to see if anyone else had figured out how to deign to know the Green Man a little better.
So far, nobody.
Liko hoarded the knowledge with a vicious, vindictive greed. He made his famous post on Reddit with that secret sitting in his lap. He’d never give it up. Ever. He’d kill anyone and anything that tried to click and carry it away.
Come and get it, fuckers. Just try.
Give me back my son and I’ll reveal what I know.
Maybe.
Maybe I’ll just let you all die without ever knowing. I’ll never deign to share my secrets.
He reached to slam the laptop shut, then stopped.
He stared. His mouth fell open and cool air filled the back of his throat as he inhaled. And remembered.
His heart pounded as he clicked the cursor and moved closer to the inscription on the Green Man’s throne.
And ye then deign to know me.
“Deign to know me,” he whispered. “It’s a…”
His mind fumbled for the term describing two words that sounded the same but had different meanings. A homonym? No, a homophone.
The verb deign was a homophone of the name Dane.
Dane and deign.
“Holy shit.” Liko grabbed his phone, laughing aloud. He had to tell Kyle. He had to—
His teeth clicked shut.
He swallowed hard.
Then, with a roar of frustrated grief, he lobbed the phone across the room.
Now he did slam the laptop shut and shove it away.
He attacked the bed like an enraged gorilla.
His fists punched the mattress, his feet kicked at the sheets and blankets.
He rolled and screamed his rage into the pillows, elbows and knees digging desperate furrows as he opened his throat and wailed, wishing he could bury himself alive.
It wouldn’t stop. It just never stopped.
Kyle’s death ought to have felled him with a stroke.
Instead, it kept coming back to kill him, over and over again.
A thousand deadly cuts to bleed dry the spontaneous impulses.
Not giving him twenty-four seconds, let alone hours, between desire and action but no, stabbing him in the heart right in the middle of a natural thought.
Wow, I need to show this to Kyle he w—
Ugh, I should think about what Kyle wants for din—
Hm, should I give away this blazer or save it for Ky—
I need to tell Kyle th—
Did that little shit take my—
Oh my God, Kyle would love th—
Kyle woul—
Kyle—
Ky—…