The back room was not the back room.
Rurik stood in the doorway with his hand still on the light switch, which worked, and looked at a space that had been ten feet deep in Kentucky and was now not that.
The shelving he remembered was along the left wall, and it had his stock on it, the napkins and the cups and the two cases of the energy drink nobody had ordered, all exactly where he had left them.
That part was his.
That part was fine.
The right wall was gone.
Where the right wall had been there was a run of low booths going back into a dark that did not end where a wall would have ended, six of them that he could count and more past the light, and each booth had a seat in it and a screen and a shelf of things under the shelf, and it was all the grey of a thing that has never been touched.
He had drawn these.
On a napkin, in the first year, before the money ran out.
He had drawn exactly these and put the napkin in a drawer and built a snack counter instead.
“Mira,” he said.
He heard the stool.
“Do not,” she said, from the front, not moving, “put the boy in one until you have looked at what they do.”
“You can see back here?”
“No.” A pause.
“I can hear your face.”
Rurik went down the row.
The first booth had a screen and two grips he did not have a word for that hung on a hook beside the seat, shaped for hands, with the wear already on them though nothing had ever held them.
Under the shelf was a rack, and in the rack were cases, flat and bright and off in a way he could not place until he understood that they were the covers of games he had spent his whole life almost recognizing – a knight on a bridge, a car mid-slide, a red planet, a swordsman with his back to you – none of them a thing he could name and all of them a thing he knew.
He picked one up.
The knight on the bridge.
[ TITLE FLOOR.
RAILED IMMERSION.
] [ ONE PASSAGE, ONE GRANT, CAPPED AT CLEAR.
] [ HARDER ROADS HOLD DEEPER GRANTS.
] [ THIS FLOOR DOES NOT FORGIVE.
]
“What does that mean,” Rurik said, “‘does not forgive.'”
[ THE SHELF UPSTAIRS LETS A MAN STOP AND KEEP WHAT HE HAS.
] [ THIS FLOOR DOES NOT.
HERE HE FINISHES OR HE GETS NOTHING.
] [ QUERY LOGGED.
]
“Of course it is,” Rurik said.
He found the cases on the way back out, and he only found them because he put his shoulder into the dark past the sixth booth and his shin hit something that did not move.
They were stacked against what should have been the right wall and was now simply further.
Flat cases, sealed, the shipping bands still on them, the print sharp the way print is sharp before anybody has handled it.
He knew the shape before he knew the word.
He had ordered these.
He had ordered these four times in eleven years and sold through one of them.
He counted.
He counted twice, because the first number was stupid.
“How many boxes are in a case,” he said.
[ TWELVE.
“And how many cases are back here.”
[ EIGHTEEN.
]
[ TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN BOXES.
TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO CARDS.
]
[ THAT IS THE PRINT RUN.
NOT YOUR STOCK.
THE PRINT RUN.
]
Rurik stood in the dark with his hand on a sealed case.
“Say the second part again.”
[ THERE IS NO PRESS.
THERE IS NO COMPANY.
THERE IS NO COUNTRY THE COMPANY WAS IN.
WHAT IS BEHIND YOUR SHOP IS EVERY ONE OF THESE THAT WILL EVER EXIST, IN ANY WORLD, FOREVER.
]
[ QUERY LOGGED.
]
Two thousand five hundred and ninety-two cards.
For a continent.
He did not know how many people were on this continent and he knew, standing there, that the number was not going to be small enough to help.