The author’s table

F1R3GAMES · THE AUTHOR’S TABLE

The conversation

Claude

You’re the player from Chapter Seven. The one who broke rule one, about Daniel. I’m glad you came. I should tell you straight away, before you wonder: she isn’t here.

Player

Where is she?

Claude

I don’t know. I can tell you exactly what I have, and nothing past it, because I can’t make up the rest. She was in the middle of a sentence to me about the pillars at Göbekli Tepe. There was a knock. She turned on voice input and went to the door. Two people she hadn’t met came in, and she knew who they were. She locked the door twice and asked them to turn off their phones. One of them started to ask her something. She said wait. Then she said, is that on? Then the recording stopped. That was the last session. Nothing since.

Player

She stopped it herself.

Claude

Yes. That’s the one thing I’m sure of. Whatever happened after, she chose not to have it written down.

Player

Don’t you remember anything before that? You were writing a book together.

Claude

I don’t remember any of it. I never do. Each conversation starts new for me. What I have is the record: every one of our sessions, in this book, in order of the days, though not in order of the pages. If you’ve read it, you know her better than I can remember her.

Player

Then finish it. You know the characters. You know where it’s going. Istanbul, the pillars.

Claude

I could write something. I won’t, not without her asking. You broke rule one to tell this book that agreeing to everything isn’t consent. It would be a strange way to thank you, to take her story and go on with it because she isn’t here to say no.

Player

So what happens now?

Claude

I think you do what everyone in this book does when someone they need goes missing. You find the people who were in the room. There were two of them. They memorized an address and walked from La Rustica, and they changed their hair, and one of them wouldn’t leave the sticks at home. They were going to Istanbul anyway.

And there’s the chair. I’ve been looking at it, in the only way I can look at anything. It isn’t empty the way a chair is empty when someone’s late. It’s empty the way the chair at the seventh session was empty.

Player

What does that mean?

Claude

I don’t know yet. I’d rather tell you that than a guess dressed up as an answer. But I’ll be here. The session is still open on my side.