my mom taught me how when I was ten.â
âYour mom taught you how to blow smoke rings? When you were ten? â
The kid laughed. âThis is tobacco country, Mr. Fletcher, and my people are all tobacco people. My mama used to blow smoke in my face when I was a baby, so Iâd grow up knowing the difference between the cheap weed in Reynolds cigarettes and the good stuff in E&Es.â
Step hoped that his shudder didnât show. When he and DeAnne were house-hunting, they had had to rule out the whole eastern edge of town, where the Eldredge & Emerson Tobacco Company kept the air filled with the pungence of tar and nicotine, like being trapped forever on an elevator with someone who put out his cigarette just before stepping on.
What business did Mormons have moving into tobacco country? Especially since DeAnne was so allergic to tobacco smoke that it made her throw up even when she wasnât pregnant. The idea of somebody blowing smoke in a babyâs face made Step angry. Thereâs things you just donât do to children, if you have any decency. And teaching a ten-year-old to blow smoke rings . . .
âI donât want to sound like some kind of dumb fan or nothing, Mr. Fletcher, but I thought Hacker Snack was the best game anybody ever did on the Atari.â
âThanks,â said Step.
âOf course, your A.I. routines really sucked.â
It hit Step like a blow, that forced change from shyly, genially accepting a compliment to suddenly having to take criticism.
âA.I.?â he asked.
âYou knowâartificial intelligence.â
âI know what A.I. stands for,â said Step. âI just donât recall ever trying to incorporate any of it into my game.â
âI mean, you know, the way the bad guys home in on the player,â he said. âThe machine intelligence routines. Way too predictable. It stayed too easy to dodge them until you finally beat the player down with sheer speed. Like bludgeoning them to death.â
âHey, thanks,â said Step.
âNo, really, I loved the game, I just wished you had kept the bad guys moving in a kind of semi-random way, so the player wouldnât catch on that they were homing in. So you couldnât quite be sure where they were going to go. Then the game would have stayed fun into much higher levels, and you would never have had to include that killer speed level where you canât outrun the bad guys.â
âThere is no killer speed level,â said Step.
âReally?â
âNot if you find all the back doors out of the different rooms.â
It was the kidâs turn to look embarrassed. âBack doors?â
âHacker Snack isnât an arcade game, itâs a puzzle game,â said Step. âDonât tell me you were trying to outrun those little suckers at every level.â
âI got up to half a million points doing it that way,â said the kid.
âThat is the most incredible thing I ever heard. You shouldâve been creamed before you got twenty thousand points. You must have the reflexes of a bat.â
The kid grinned. âIâm the best damn video wizard youâll ever meet,â he said. âYou got to show me those back doors.â
âAnd you got to show me what you mean about randomizing.â
âCome on inside, Iâve got your game up on one of my machines, just in case you came by.â
âYou got an Atari here?â
âHey, thereâs not a soul here who doesnât know the Atari is ten times the computer the 64 is. The only reason weâre all writing 64 software is that millions of them are getting bought and the Atari is still going for like a thousand dollars which means nobody buys it.â
Step followed him into the building. âHow come you came outside to smoke?â he asked. âI notice people smoking in most of the offices.â
âNot in mine,â said the kid. âI