They had time for half a day’s comfort, no more. Ms. Pac-Man was still in a daze. She had dreamed in splinters that had collapsed into blackness when she awoke. Her cognizance was consistent, but her thoughts and words were slow to come. Inky saw how tired she still was. "Let’s go to the top level of your labyrinth," he suggested. "There, we will only sit. We will have the highest view possible of the world."

"I love you, Inky. Yes, let’s do that."

And so it was atop the two hundred fifty-fifth maze that they rested that day, together in the blank-walled darkness, but with a panorama of light far before and below them. They spoke seldom, but their words were strong. They knew that in a sense, this was their honeymoon. There would never be anyone to witness them in a favorable light, so they called Sue their witness and her collapse their moment of consecration. They composed and exchanged their vows that day, in the darkness, at the summit of their world.

And it was during their later silence that Sue found them. Her mark in their proximity sense woke them like the uproar of a fire. They panicked, circling each other, and then ran for the exit. But Sue was blocking the way, and what’s more, her laughs were not meant for her own benefit alone. "I can’t believe it, she is up here! He’s with her! They thought they’d just hide away forever, but nothing’s forever! Right, Blinky?"

If Sue had been a savage bonfire, then Blinky was the raging glow of an iron-tinged planet crashing out of orbit. His body was not blood red, but red like molten metal, and he streaked across the open roof with the determination of a gigantic bird, soaring in from the sky and burning at the wingtips. He spoke only one sentence, and it was whispered in a voice that crackled like coals: "For them all."

There was only one object on the rooftop that could even remotely hinder movement. It was a single post, in the center of the roof, whose purpose she did not know. It might have been the pinnacle of a pillar keeping the entire complex together; it might have been a machine providing light for all the levels below. Ms. Pac-Man ran for it and reached it just ahead of Blinky. She was groggy, but the instinct to put something between herself and her pursuer came to her just in time. Were it not for the post, Blinky, whose speed matched that of Ms. Pac-Man, would have caught her within seconds. Because she had it around which to run, she could not be caught, so long as she did not make the slightest departure from her tight circuit. She felt her brain growing dim once more. Sue remained in the exit, blocking it completely. She was trapped. And this time, she could not go wherever she liked, and life her life on the run. She knew that her life had been reduced to a tiny circular path around a simple post, and there would be nothing more for her until she inevitably lost her concentration and was forced to give a life up to the unrelenting red ghost. But then, she had two, or possibly three, more lives after that, didn’t she? Or--had those been stripped from her just as had her extra speed? In giving up her calling in Pac-Land, had she given up, too, all her extraneous lives, to say nothing of any other gifts of which she had previously been unaware? She had no way of telling--short of giving in.

"All of them?" Inky repeated, bewildered. He flew in a larger circle around the two runners, trying to get a good look into his lover’s eyes. "Who are all of them?"

Blinky had no words for anyone. As for Ms. Pac-Man, she met his gaze, but could tell him nothing--her mind was that far gone already. She felt a hazy sadness inside at the fact that she had heard his words, but did not know what he had asked.

Inky rushed straight through Sue’s body, startling her, and hurried down the passage.

She fell into a waking dream before an hour was out.

It was not an interesting or enlightening dream. It was a dream of hesitation and fear. It was a dream of compulsive switchbacks, of chaotic patterns, of motion and response, motion and response, motion and response.

She had had no choice. Blinky had began suddenly changing his direction of pursuit, forcing Ms. Pac-Man to turn about herself or be caught. Her reflexes were the only way she could stay alive, and as she could not maintain her waking state, she had been able only to concentrate on the need to switch from clockwise to counterclockwise and back at a hair’s notice, in response to Blinky, until she took the knowledge with her into her subconscious realm. That was her last source of happiness spent--no rest, no freedom, no dreams. She knew it, but she did not think of it. She could no longer think of anything.

The figures moving in her dream became less abstract and more realistic as she lost further energy and the ability to project a lesson onto unfamiliar shapes. Her dreams were the same as her waking world now, only simpler--she and Blinky, rushing around a post, changing direction now and then, growing ever closer to exhaustion.

She saw herself from above now. The two shapes, red and yellow, began to move more slowly, but it was not because they were slowing down. It was because her mind needed to save energy, so it began to give her visual stimuli as if her mental camera were spinning at the same rate as the two figures. The motion slowed, and slowed, and as it showed, she could discern changes, further simplifications, in the figure representing herself. With a silent shock, she realized that her bow, her eye--they had disappeared. All that was left was a simple circle with a mouth--her husband. Here, at the bottom of her subconscious well, she was left with no difference between herself and him. She had already forgotten why the image was wrong--what it was supposed to be. She had now forgotten why it upset her in the first place--there was nothing wrong with that image. It was she, and she was it--and had always been. Had she not?

Her last thoughts fell away from her, and the spinning image finally came to a halt. Now everything was still. Reality was nothing but a static diagram, representing some distant kind of motion that had been forgotten. And when all of reality stays the same, there is no time. And where there is no time--

And there, more decay. Half the world was gone. The red shape, jagged at its end, pocked with oblong eyes, had disappeared. Now all that remained was that unmoving self-image. Soon, no doubt, it too--.

The ghost gone. No need to run.

Ms. Pac-Man found herself awake, though in a state of great confusion. She had the feeling of a significant blackness at her back, and knew that she had been unconscious for some time. She could not make out what had happened, but a part of her told her that she had died, and come back, and that this was her second chance.

But then her vision cleared, and she felt and saw how things were: she was being dragged, and the red ghost was having trouble--staying in one spot--how was that possible?

Four sparks of intelligence flashed in her eyes at once--four eyes amid the redness. Two ghosts. One large and one small. Weaving in and out, the one not letting the other pass, providing a distraction. The orange ghost yelling obscenities from the only exit.

Who was carrying her?

It was her husband.

She forced herself awake. The rest, frightening as it was, had been sufficient. She saw that she was still going around that infernal post--no, not infernal, the post that had saved her life. She was being pulled, by the nape, by her husband, whose pace was as fast as her own, though she could tell it caused him discomfort to have her in his mouth. She saw the mysterious small red ghost that she had never seen before, and moreover, she perceived that it was female. And she saw Inky.

He was waiting just at the edge of the circuit that Pac-Man traced. He lit up in joy, an effect subtle enough that only she could sense it, but sense it she did. She gently freed herself from her husband’s grip and started to run alongside him. He exclaimed in surprise: "Pepper! You’re all right!"

Ms. Pac-Man had been about to address her love when he spoke. She spun around for an instant, to acknowledge him. "You saved me," she said. "How did you get here?"

He did not break stride or express any emotion but sheer jubilance. "It turns out one of the ghosts went turncoat! He’s on our side now! He told me where you were, so I came and rescued you!"

A beat passed. "You know about--Inky?"

"I never dreamed I’d be friends with a ghost. I hope it’s not a double-cross."

"You--you finished your quest in Pac-Land?"

Her husband was silent.

"You left it," she said. "For me."

Inky flared and drew close. "He loves you dearly," he whispered as she swung by. And again, the next time around: "His life is now nullified as well."

What did this mean? Would she be bound to--stay with him?

She tried to remember the horror, the stagnation that she had fled so violently in the first place. It came to her, but it was faint, like a joke. Everything, she told herself, must certainly have changed, now that they had all abandoned their quest. They were all living in a loose end now. There would be no more protection. But there were no more rules.

Inky was gone again. But before she could express her dismay or ask why, there was a flash of power from the exit. Blinky and the other red ghost, skirmishing on the opposite side of the post, suddenly turned blue. So did Sue. Ms. Pac-Man froze in fear, so unexpected was this, and it was not for a moment that he recognized this once all-too-familiar phenomenon. With a pounce, fearing it would be too late, she leapt for Blinky. He was unable to dodge her--eaten, his eyes flew away down the hole. She was about to pursue the smaller ghost, now blinking, when her husband cried out to her.

"No! She’s on our side too! Leave her!"

Baffled, she returned to the post and prepared herself to ask a question. Sue, without warning, leapt from the door toward them, but her efforts were too late: she was promptly devoured, and Ms. Pac-Man was left with nothing to do or say, and her son standing proudly before her.

"Hurry!" cried Inky from out of sight on the level below. "Get out of there before they get back, or you’ll be trapped again!!"

The yellow family sprinted for the exit. They had, as it turned out, plenty of time. They fumbled their way through the invisible walls down to the next level, and there, a power pellet sat glowing in the dark. Pac-Man went for it. Sue and Blinky were just reforming in the Central Control of that level, but, rendered vulnerable again, they floated away, and the family was able to escape. From there, they had no trouble darting down, and down, and down, and endlessly down, until at last they came to the first level, and zipped out. There, they allowed themselves to rest. Ms. Pac-Man looked at her husband and at her son, and shook with relief, and sadness. To be saved from destruction--to be saved by the one she had tried so hard to escape, from whom her desperate flight had made all of this terror possible.

She did not ask any questions, and they did not give her any answers. They just wanted to be with her. That was all they wanted.

Inky emerged from the complex some time later. Behind him was the small red ghost from the rooftop. Junior went for her, and Ms. Pac-Man feared that he had lost his sanity and was about to throw his life away, but instead, she beheld them circling each other, more tightly than she and Inky had ever circled, more tightly that she and Blinky had encircled the post in their deadly dance. Yet the two never touched. They had the agility of youth, and also the grace of love.

"Yum-Yum," he swooned. "Thank you. Thank you, Yum-Yum. You came. You came."

"I don’t understand," the happy mother said, blinking and turning to Inky. "Who is that ghost?"

"Yum-Yum is the daughter of Blinky and Sue," he explained. "She, too, is family."

Did he mean his own family, or--? "Why have I never seen her before?"

"Her existence was kept a secret for your son to discover. She was not meant as his enemy, or yours. She was created--as his reward."

"But--!"

"Blinky could never love a daughter who would not fight. He was bound by the conditions of the world, and of the quest on which your son was called--but he would not love her, or treat her like a child. And Sue did. Sue adored her--to my knowledge, she still does."

Ms. Pac-Man’s eyes flitted to the complex, in which the two hostile ghosts presumably were biding their time. "Created--as a reward. Incredible."

"She’s great, Mom," Junior announced. "I couldn’t have asked for more!"

"But this is--I can’t believe it," Ms. Pac-Man murmured. She had been so certain that her relationship with Inky had been illicit--perverse. It was a huge shock to learn that the makers--whatever forces put things in place for them, or used to--had not only condoned the idea of the two different kinds being together, but--had directly caused such a relationship--

"I could hardly believe it, myself," said Pac-Man.

"What?"

"Junior and the new one. Yum-Yum. Who knew such a thing was possible? And he never told us--he kept the secret admirably. And I’m proud of him for that. He had to, you know."

Ms. Pac-Man turned cautiously to her husband and allowed herself, faintly, to ask the necessary question. "Why--?"

"Why--if he’d told us about Yum-Yum before we knew about Inky--we’d have been splintered." He blinked. "I wouldn’t have trusted her. Or him. Neither would you." Pac-Man moved toward his wife, who quailed. "And taking that together with our--our own troubles--" Pac-Man actually looked a trifle ashamed, if evasive. "--we’d never have been able to unify and destroy--the other one."

"The other one?" Ms. Pac-Man and Inky asked together: she offended, he calm.

"Pinky," Pac-Man recalled. "Yes, yes, I can remember his name when I try. Getting rid of him was a monumental feat. And Junior was mature enough to know how we’d react to his--sweetie." The three turned to admire the young couple, now darting to and fro as Pac-Man and his wife had done in the bloom of their own love. "He didn’t tell us until the time was right. What a great little guy."

It was a strange moment. Ms. Pac-Man looked from one face to another, and settled on Inky. She longed for his counsel. He only gave her his most characteristic look: that of deep longing, a powerful will. He turned solemnly to his yellow one-time adversary.

"Dearie," Ms. Pac-Man said to her husband. She moved closer and avoided his eyes for just a moment, and then forced herself not to.

"Pepper?" Hope was now building behind that mask. True optimism bubbled behind the optimistic veneer from encounters past.

She shook in the negative. His eyes fell.

"You came back for me, and saved me, and you ran, even though I know how tired you must have felt. And then--you were so good, so--open. About the ghosts, our allies--about Junior."

He nodded, a shadow hovering over his face. "Yes?"

"What I mean to say is--right now, I don’t hate you anymore." She met his eyes with a cautioning look. "I may tomorrow."

"Pepper?"

"Darling--darling--I, too, have waited until the timing is right."

Perplexity stole over the simple yellow face. "I don’t--how do you mean?"

She closed her eyes for one last moment of secrecy. And when she opened them, she saw her husband watching her more closely than she could ever remember. And she did not look away.

"Darling--I’m in love with Inky."

And just as suddenly as that, her son was her knowing, experienced confidant. How could he remain a generation beneath her when he’d been just as surprised, just as lovelorn, just as torn by his secret? He was her equal now, and they spoke often. He reassured her that everything she had done was for the best. The one exception was the one thing he also regretted--the day they had come together and destroyed Pinky. Ms. Pac-Man was not yet sure whether she agreed with her son’s guilt on this matter, but she understood his feelings deeply. One day she had asked Inky about it, and he had told her, with an ethereal shrug, "Pinky was my brother. I will always feel his loss. There is nothing we can do."

"But the others. Blinky. Sue. You aren’t their friend any more. Would you miss them?"

He had floated one space away and given her a nearly imperceptible bow. "Forgive me. Although they no longer accept me as a friend, if they were to ask once more for my friendship, I would give it to them."

A wave of unexpected wonder hit her, and she found herself on the verge of tears. "Are you so forgiving?" she asked.

"It isn't that."

"Then what is it?" she asked, but she turned away because she already knew.

"They are my family." He floated nearer. "They are your enemies and that will not change, but I must still love them--and I must continue to love you. As for your part--"

"Yes?"

"You must learn to accept this."

Ms. Pac-Man dried her tears and held herself straight. "Do you know what that sounds like to me?" she managed to say.

"No--what?"

She took a deep breath and smiled. "A new project."

Pac-Man accepted things almost at once, surprising everyone.

He had been changed by an idea as simple as that of receiving help from a former enemy. After all, his wife had been awestruck by nothing more than the first time Inky stilled himself in that deep sub-basement, and the idea of a ghost’s nature being so different from what it appeared to be was several times more strange. But Pac-Man not only grew to accept this strangeness; he loved it.

He was the one left with no lover, while his wife and son, and even the menacing ghosts who remained, were all coupled off. Pac-Man, the star of the show, had every reason to be lonely in the end--and yet, he was not. For a remarkable thing happened. One day, some weeks after the true state of affairs had been revealed, he found himself called into action. He swore to the feeling, as he had felt it thrice before. Despite the fact that he had not finished his last quest, a new game was beginning for him.

"Then--then, Inky, your theory is wrong!"

"Yet it may still be true, for us. Each of us leads his own life, I suppose. Pac-Man is the hero of our world, and when he left the land named in his honor--it was for a heroic reason."

"By the dots, Inky, you’re right! You came to save me--and I can fully imagine--Oh! Darling, you’re not disgraced! And you’re not nullified! You’re just as alive as if you’d never left Pac-Land!"

"But if Inky’s philosophy is at all correct--how can that be?" he inquired cheerfully.

"I know just that can be. We’re in a cutscene," she whispered. "All of this. For us, it’s a new life outside the box. For you, I’ll wager it’s been nothing more than a grand diversion, just like when the stork brought us our son. You can go back to Pac-Land, or wherever it is you’re called next, and I’ll bet you’ll still have the same score you did when you left."

At this, Pac-Man laughed, and kissed his wife on the cheek, and went off humming a sweet tune, and he was not seen again for months. When he returned, and every time he returned thereafter, he had stories of the newest game in which he’d featured, each one more amazing than the last. He would be gone for as little as a week, or as much as a year, and everyone would celebrate when he was back in his old neighborhood, resting between missions. They were happy to be married to each other, and he was every bit as happy, because he was married to the game.

As for Inky and Ms. Pac-Man, they made good on all the promises they had made, and more. The very first contact between them made it clear how things would be.

The first time the two lovers embraced--with the help of a power pellet, of course--it was as if Inky had been so struck by the force of her love that he simply shriveled away into nothing. His gift was to make it seem like it was perfectly natural and wonderful for this to happen.

On every one of the thousands of times that, in the course of normal events, Inky had previously been devoured, his eyes had immediately set off for Central Control, seeking renewal. This time, they stayed with Ms. Pac-Man, watching her lovingly. She was moved by this devotion, this little surprise, and she told him in no uncertain terms how much of a difference it made. She loved the fact that after he had followed her around several bends, she had to remind him, gently, to go and rebuild himself. Inky, in the end, turned out to be a simple being, but when he lived only in his eyes, after being swallowed up, he was simplest of all. He was, at those times, an entity of pure admiration, and Ms. Pac-Man loved him.

Ecstasy is a word for great happiness whose root means "astonished displacement," a phrase which perfectly described Inky’s way, after being swallowed, of being concentrated into two constant points of apperception. After many such encounters, he came to be so good at appreciating this unique experience that the two lovers never lamented their inability to remain in physical contact for more than a second at a time. Rather, they laughed at it, calling it their little difficulty. They rationed their power pellets wisely, and, by using them only on special occasions, found that they were never in short supply.

Inky’s enamored withdrawal into his eyes became the soul of their relationship. He learned to withdraw with skill and with passion. For her part, she learned to chase him, to adore him, to tease him and care for him in that simplified form. She was with him often, and when she was not with him, she could not help but think of him. And when she thought of him, for those first months and for the rest of her life, what came to her before anything else was the sight of those eyes--those steady, loving eyes.

That thought, above any other, was what brought her ecstasy.

Now that you've read Blue Lover, why not have a nice Ms. Pac-Man Salad?

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