She came to with thoughts of her courtship in her mind’s eye. There was still music in her, left over from nostalgic dreams, and she paced out its tempo unthinkingly as she began to move again. Away from the places she had been, toward--toward home. Why was she going home? It didn’t matter, of course, since she could go or stay, at his pleasure, and chances were her husband would not find her, since, after all, he was most likely out looking for her elsewhere. Home--where there were wide open spaces and comforting nooks, and memories--she had been away too long--and if by chance she was spotted by her husband, she could always run again--.

Foolish thing, she told herself. Foolish, reckless--foolish, reckless, flighty thing, she repeated, harshly in the back of her mind. That was the troublesome place in which she felt pain, while the rest of her felt relief. She had filled her mind with memories, and had insufficient room left for caution. The music of finding her one and only, her Pac-Man, echoed in her, and the words she thought to herself came to flow into the music. Foolish, irresponsible, flighty thing! And she moved in time.

But what had been strange about the dream? What had been different? What thoughts from just before her slumber had crept in to be resolved?

It had been different somehow, and fresh. As usual, the only new things in existence were to be found in dreams. If they brought her back home, that was her destiny. She had lost, but at least she would stave off drudgery for a few more days, and then? And then--if she was lucky she would have the chance to run again.

And again, and again, and again, ad infinitum.

It all had faded several minutes later. All her music, all her memories. All that remained was a warm feeling that covered her doubts and justified her return home. Even had she wished to remain on the run, she had very few options. She longed to revisit places that she and her husband had once roamed, mazes of diverse characteristics and sparsely occupied even yet with left-over objects and doors. But they were gone, just as Pal was, just as everyone and everything they had known in the past. The complexes were closed down and inaccessible, and they might as well have vanished. Perhaps they had. The universe had always herded Ms. Pac-Man and her husband, and now it was herding their son. The universe had always taken away their options. The saddest tragedy was that it was useless to despise the universe.

She reached her home and it was silent. There was no sense of any presence. Home was safety, but not the safety the word ‘home’ ought to promise: it was a waypoint on her flight, nothing more permanent. She went inside and let herself go, for within her home there were few walls or corridors, and those there were were much larger than the thickness of her body. It was there alone that Ms. Pac-Man could turn at angles which were not multiples of ninety degrees, here alone that she could zigzag, trace curves, or simply float on a whim. She floated like a beast with no mind, no moorings, and her eyes closed, and she spun.

Flowing from the foyer to the living room, soundlessly bouncing through the nursery, her momentum irregular and beautiful, she left open an eye to lazily interpret each approaching corner as a new landscape to be discovered and let go, for later, as soon as she bounced off it. Through the bedroom, down again along the dark wall of the parlor, where strange things too amazing to be frightening might have lurked, she inched, rolling sideways along the wall, bow flattened without a care, feeling practically three-dimensional, now flipping gaily to the other wall with the thought that she might well have flipped forever, spinning into the kitchen and around and around and around, where every few seconds a bundle of multicolored joy met her eyes and set her mind at ease.

It was several minutes before she suddenly wondered what it was. Her equilibrium swung back to her. She slowly came to rest staring at a bundle that hadn’t been there before. A basket of fruit, every sort of fruit she knew, all piled generously into a basket of pine, the aromatic wood of Junior’s toys. And beside it, etched with diamonds and swirls, a bowl of fruit salad. She went to the gifts--for what else could they be--and smiled, even against the judgment of that part of her that said, "He only does it to bring you back, you mustn’t," and marveled at them, bobbing slightly and unfettered beside the kitchen table, before she even thought of eating them. And then she did take a bite, and then two, of sumptuous ripe peaches, cherries, pears and strawberries, crisp apples and soft bananas, punctuated by the crunch of pretzels coated in the crushed essence of her staple food, the sweet round dot, whose liquid mash made a delectable sauce.

She lost herself in the salad, and then once she was sated she drifted back and began to frown. She frowned not for her husband, nor even quite for the conflict she felt over a male who would treat her like nothing but a possession to give gifts to, but who gave her such gifts--in fact she frowned for a deeper reason she couldn’t fathom. She frowned because it was wrong. Because she knew she should be angry, or on edge against his return, or perhaps, just perhaps, conciliatory or resigned...but her feelings held none of that baggage. She was looking at a gift as if it were simply a joy, and the courtship it represented fresh. The basket, the salad, seemed like nothing more than they appeared, though she knew they had to be, or nothing would make sense.

But things did make perfect sense. She realized then exactly why they did: these gifts were not from her husband.

There was only one answer, then, and it was laughable and utterly new, and explained perfectly the strangeness of her dream. So she began to laugh, musically and without reserve, and for once feared not that her husband might hear.

Which of course, he did.

It was hours later. It was not the same laugh, of course, though it might as well have been. Ms. Pac-Man did not remember the pauses. She might have left the room, she might have gone swimming in space again, for she knew she would not have remembered it. It was her day to be careless, after weeks of painstaking care. She didn’t know, therefore, how many bouts of laughter had been her pleasure when her husband appeared at the door. It was deep gaiety but not irascible, so it sank away quickly when she saw him. She was still joyful beneath the surface, but there could be no doubt this would not be pretty.

"Hey, you’re back! At last!" He barreled into the room. Even in this place of freedom his motion was angular, although it did not match the normal pattern of angles. She had once loved the shadows of the polygons he traced without knowing it.

"I’m not here for long." She didn’t know it to be true until she had said it.

"Honey...we can’t keep going on like this," he moaned. At once he slowed nearly to a stop and became serious. He evinced anguish, but it was nothing compared to hers, nothing at all, and was therefore worse than nothing. She looked at him and felt little pity.

"No, we can’t. I’m going."

"You can’t leave me. We were made for each other. Without me you’re nothing. Without you I’m nothing." She got the feeling this last part was added out of fairness. "Why have you been doing this to me?"

"I want my own life," she said, a tired line that had seen much use in their futile exchanges, but was still true.

"What do you want that I haven’t given you?"

"I don’t know. How can I know when I’m not free to find out?"

They began to drift slowly around the table. He wanted closeness, she wanted distance, and the table was her ally.

"You’re talking about something that isn’t there," he said. "Honey, there is nothing you don’t have! You’re out wandering just because, when your heart is back here! Please...stay here. I can’t run after you forever."

I don’t see anything preventing it¸ thought Ms. Pac-Man, but she only said, "Then stop!"

He was so infuriatingly candid. "But you’re mine, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be, and you bring me so much happiness! I can’t stop chasing you."

"You’ll have no reason to chase me when I won’t come back."

"You have to come back! You have to see reason! You have nowhere else to go!"

"I do, though! And I shall!"

"You’ll only come back again. You have nothing but me. There’s no one for you but me. Why can’t you understand that??"

She was approaching the exit. "I haven’t been able to understand it...because it hasn’t been true. I only understand it now."

His voice, when he next spoke, was sharp and bare. "I’ll bring you back. Honey, I’m tired of searching and playing hide-and-seek with you, and I won’t anymore. If you go, I’ll just bring you back."

"I don’t think you will."

"How can you stop me?"

She didn’t answer. She straightened her course and flew away from the table, and out the door, determined to give her answer by example and not words. He circled the table and went after her. It was only then that he paused, noticing the objects on the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him draw to a halt beside them, confounded--and this observation lent an elated burst of energy to her flight. Soon she was away.

Waiting is nothing when there’s suddenly so much to wait for, thought Ms. Pac-Man to herself as she zoomed through the oversized rooms of her son’s complex. She wondered how all this would seem to him when it was over.

"Mom! You’re back again!"

"I’m back. I hope you can forgive me, baby."

Pinky was drawing near. Ms. Pac-Man conscientiously got out of the way so that her son would not lose an escape route. She realized as she did it that it was the beginning of a new phase of her life, in which she would constantly have to maintain double attention--attention to her own safety and to her son’s liberty. She was prepared to do it, though, especially since she now knew the danger was less than she had thought.

"What are you doing here?" shot Pac-Man Jr. off to his side as he himself shot by. He clearly viewed his mother as a distraction he could do well without.

"I’m sorry," she called feebly. "I’m not here to visit you." She was a touch embarrassed for the moment, but knew deep down it would pass.

Several seconds elapsed before her son allotted her the time he needed to speak. "Then why are you here?" he asked, exasperated.

"Junior, are all the ghosts here?"

"Huh?"

"All four, including the blue one?"

He hummed by, eyebrows bunched. On his way back to collect the straggling dots he answered, "Funny you should ask that. There were, what, it must have been twenty levels when the blue ghost wasn’t here at all! Those were the days, Mom, I’ll tell you." Twitch and back, a turn made one dot too soon. "But now they’re all in full force. It’s like the other three got stronger while Inky was away. And now there’s you to worry about. This place just...gets...worse...and...worse!"

So muttering, the junior Pac-Man darted up and down the last few corridors and cleared the level. The ghosts floated mindlessly back toward Central Control, no longer menaces for a short time. Junior glared with annoyance at his mother and flashed away up the stairs to the next level. Ms. Pac-Man ignored him; she browsed attentively through the paths near the center, watching the pale ghosts return home to be sent up to the next level. She glanced this way and that, and when she turned around he was there.

His eyes told her what she needed. His shyness was incredible, but was twice as exquisitely untouchable as it was infuriating. She was actually afraid to rush up to Inky and force him to break through his shyness, because she feared too much else would be broken with it. She was frozen with awe, with wonder--with, she realized as he turned the corner and vanished, love. It was a strain of love that she was amazed she could remember, because it had been so fleeting after her creation. Love for the amazing yellow ball that seemed so perfectly her destiny. Love for the perfection of a world in which such an ideal match could exist, from the very beginning, and to the very end, and forever.

Except it had not lasted more than a few hours, not in that form. She knew now that Pac-Man was not her ideal match, but even then, even in the throes of courtship, she had known the feeling that they were too much alike. Too much similarity could kill a relationship, she knew, and she knew at that moment that he never had. He had never realized that key fact, even in passing, even subconsciously, as she had done. There in Inky’s echo she realized it in such plain terms for the first time--she recognized her oldest feelings, and those that had come soon after, and knew them for what they were. And as she realized this fact, she was overcome by love for Inky, for if a brief sighting could awaken that much lost insight in her she dared not stay away from him any longer.

She hurried up the stairs.

Tense in place, body quivering in anticipation of the silent starting gun, ready to move in either direction and from there, anywhere, she watched the Central Control box from the opposite side of the level to her son. She was determined not to get in his way, and she would even distract one of his nemeses if she had the chance. She would make things easier for him and everyone.

They were off. She was still waiting. Activity fluttered in her proximity sense, but she would not leave until he had come her way. She sat still and concentrated on his location, far away in the southwest corner. It caused her pain to know he was deliberately putting himself so far from her.

She tore off at a run to avoid Sue, who had wandered her way. Sue looked at her in surprise. Her dusty voice, so long useless, was pushed to the surface at the sight of Ms. Pac-Man, and she said, "You’re back for another tangle!" It couldn’t be known whether Sue was genuinely overjoyed or smugly mocking.

"You didn’t notice me until now?" asked Ms. Pac-Man, dawdling in her course and surprising herself. It had been so long since a ghost had spoken to her that she had nearly forgotten they could.

"I’ve been chasing your son! What are you doing here? You can’t help him, you know."

"I know."

"If you get in the way we’ll just kill you."

"I know."

Sue drew up close, and Ms. Pac-Man dashed around a corner. She waited for Sue, though, who appeared, her eyes clearer than she ever remembered seeing them, and who said, "I guess you’ve gone crazy."

That wasn’t right, Ms. Pac-Man knew. Sue was the crazy one, and always had been. She wasn’t so certain of herself that she could say so, though, for there was a large portion of her that still thought it crazy to be pursuing a quintessential pursuer.

She said, therefore, "I’m here to protect myself from my husband."

Sue’s eyes went wide and she laughed. "Protect yourself? You mean he doesn’t love you anymore??"

"He loves me too much," said Ms. Pac-Man defensively, scrambling to avoid being overtaken by Sue while avoiding a trap set by one of the other ghosts.

"Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man quarreling! Fighting! What has the world come to?" laughed Sue, who was now clearly gloating. "Everything will go to the ghosts then, if you two can’t stick together!"

"I think you’ll find," murmured Ms. Pac-Man, "that ghosts don’t always stick together either."

"What do you mean?"

"Where’s Inky?"

Sue’s body swerved and her eyes flashed. "Over that way," she announced smugly, as if his presence could only mean Ms. Pac-Man’s speedier demise. "He was gone for a while, but he’s back now! You see? He cares about us. We ghosts will always stick together!"

Ms. Pac-Man was gone, though, and only one turn after leaving Sue she found him. He was paler than usual, and he seemed to quail at the sight of her.

"Inky!" she called, trying to hurriedly put him at ease. "Thank you so much for the gifts! The salad was very tasty!"

"I heard you talking to Sue," he breathed. His voice was quiet and knowing and tender, and she was astonished to realize that it didn’t sound any different than it had years ago. It only felt different. She somehow hadn’t realized that it was capable of empathy, great empathy...just as she somehow never realized that Inky....

"You’ve always...admired me...even when...you were chasing..." she whispered.

"Hurry. Get away! Sue is here!"

Inky ran off along a side passage. Sue roared her way toward Ms. Pac-Man, who sped directly away. Sue cursed her, almost playfully, under her breath as they ran: "Think you can insult our honor? Think you can get away with it!? Run, run, you spinning wheel of cheese! You may avoid us all again--heck, you probably will--but you’ll never insult our honor without a chase! You’ll never catch us down on the job! Hee hee heh heh!!"

Ms. Pac-Man had no such desire in her mind; she wanted only to get away. She wasn’t able to, however, without passing through the part of the labyrinth her son was busily working in. He chanced to turn her way just as she was coming through; he gave a glance at Sue’s manic form and shrieked, "Mom!!"

She was stricken with a combination of panic and shame. It tore her for a moment in two directions, but of necessity she sorted herself out quickly and headed straight for him. "Run," she mouthed, hardly loud enough for him to hear, as if he needed to. Angry and nearly as frustrated as his mother, the younger Pac-Man sped back away. Ms. Pac-Man somehow managed to find a different route that wasn’t blocked, and Sue barreled along at random. What happened then was a blur. Ms. Pac-Man found herself well away from the chaos near the heart of the labyrinth, skirting dots with her focus elsewhere before she crashed gently but humiliatingly into a corner. She saw Inky approaching, eyes wide; he hadn’t expected her coming this way and struggled to stop in time. She was afraid he wasn’t going to, that he would strike her inadvertently...

...but time stopped...

Everything was frozen. Sounds that Ms. Pac-Man hadn’t even realized were there ceased abruptly. This was similar to Inky’s unexpected halt, but many times worse. She sensed all things at rest that shouldn’t be. The flash of colors in the walls. The twinkle of the dots. The roving teddy bear just appearing, now still. Inky. The ghosts. Herself.

Not her son, though. Her son was gone.

The wrench that shook her guts transited violently into the restarting of the world so that she couldn’t discern between them. Inky was gone--that is, he wasn’t before her anymore. But he was still...present, close, she could feel him. The other ghosts were still present, although they too had been whisked away. But her son was--no, he was there too...how odd, she thought. She had been sure that he was gone; it had caused her the most profound despair she could remember...yet there he was, sitting just next to Central Control....

She understood then. What had been despair settled into a languid layer of pain, deep and unquenchable. Her son had died. She had killed her son. It was new because it had never happened to anyone in the family, but they all had known how it would happen if it ever did. The break in action, the terrible silence, the level restarting itself entirely save for the gathered dots. She couldn’t bear to confirm it against what she had known; her shame overshadowed her curiosity, and she left. She knew where the stairs downward were; she took them silently without encountering anything, and wallowed in the emptiness of the freshly cleared level below. Her inner welling was loud enough to make any encounter with her reborn son unnecessary. She was actually afraid that if she saw her son again, he might not yell at her. She feared that he might have lost everything, all his memories, along with his first life. She was unable to go and find out.

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