As much as he hated Taylor Hollister, Chet couldn't help feeling a pang of remorse as he made his report to Ron Marston. They were brothers, after all (kind of), and had taken an oath (if you want to call it that), and this was the worst kind of betrayal, real ninth-circle-of-Hell shit.

I did not die, and yet I lost life's breath:

imagine for yourself what I became,

deprived at once of both my life and death.

Of course, even Dante wasn't above getting his shots in at all the dickheads in Florence who'd done him wrong.

Does that make Holly your Beatrice? Have you fashioned an epic out of your brief dalliance with her, only because you have nothing else to compare it to? Would you climb the long hard way out of Hell to reach her light again? Are you even aware that that's from Milton, not Dante? Or do you just think it's from Seven?

"Chet, look at me." Marston snapped his fingers in Chet's face. "You haven't told me anything I don't know."

"I told you what Taylor's up to."

"He's scamming on coeds and throwing his money around. Not exactly headline news."

"He and Owen Bean had a thing."

"A thing?"

"A scuffle. Taylor said some, like, sorta-racist shit. O.B. had to pull rank."

"There's tension among the Dead Men?"

"I don't know, man. There's always tension. You got six dudes who all think they're hot shit because they're in a super-secret club. Everybody's constantly dropping their pants and grabbing rulers."

"You think you're hot shit?"

No, but yeah, kind of? That was when things fizzled out with Holly, when you met Dave and Avery and learned about the Dead Men. She made you feel lucky. They made you feel like you didn't need luck.

"No," said Chet.

"Do you think you can big-time me, because you're in the Nine Dead Men?"

"I don't even know what that means."

Marston leaned back in his chair and clasped both hands atop his high-and-tight. The space on the wall above him was empty.

"What happened to Stanley?" said Chet.

"That's 'Mr. Wintertree' to you."

"Fine. What happened to Mr. Wintertree?"

"The renovations to my office are nearly complete. Stanley has been returned to his rightful place, and so soon shall I." Marston rocked forward, placed both hands on the desk, and rose to his feet. "You have one more chance, Chet. Bring me something about Hollister that I might find useful, or at least interesting, or you can go ahead and start packing up for the Tower." Marston jerked his head toward the door. "Now go."

Fucking Ron Marston. He'd blackmailed Chet into informing on the Dead Men, and now he had the nerve to say that information wasn't good enough? Fuck you. Not even taking down Taylor Hollister was worth this shit.

Chet didn't have any classes till noon, but he didn't want to go back to Wintertree. The vibe in 79 had turned sour; Dick was acting squirrelier than ever, and Chet couldn't shake the feeling that neither of the two freshmen belonged there. He suspected this was Marston's doing. He had made Wintertree a source of shame, instead of pride.

He exited the glass-encased Student Activities Office and climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Union. The entrance to the movie theatre greeted him at the top, a hand-made poster announcing a "Double Bill (& Ted)" Saturday at midnight: back-to-back screenings of Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey. He'd have been all over that a year ago.

The movie theatre at the Student Union shows important foreign films on weekends, classics on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the best of the current independent cinema the rest of the week. But you're not interested in any of that. What you want is the midnight show every Friday and Saturday: the epic dreams of your childhood recovered from your memory and splashed on a screen for all to view. Find out how much nostalgia lies to you. Will Krull still be as terrifying today as it was when you were six? Will the glimpse of Danae's breasts in Clash of the Titans still give you the same illicit thrill? Will you ever learn the name Bastian gives the Childlike Empress?

Or maybe you'll finally see the generational memories you missed the first time around. Don't you hate the way people look at you when you say you've never seen The Goonies? Now you can find out what the fuss is all about. The Goonies is what you have instead of an actual history or culture. If you can't talk about it, then what good are you?

Revel in this nostalgia for a past you never had. Spend your weekend nights in this theatre, remembering a time when your decisions were made for you and you still had the capacity to experience basic joy and terror. Try to recapture these feelings, drunk on smuggled PBR, squeezed between Reese and Holly, forced by his bulk to lean closer to her. Her hair smells like smoke, but not from cigarettes. It smells like burning leaves, grilling meat, bonfires after football games. It smells like fall.

An empty bottle rolls under the seats all the way to the screen. This means something.

Chet walked past the theatre, drawn by the bloops and pings and flashing lights of the arcade. He'd had a recurring dream the last few nights, of playing GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 in 79A, even though he had no N64 and was pretty sure Tim and Neal didn't either. The game had only come out last week, and he hadn't had a chance to play it at all. But in the dream the game was so real, so detailed, it seemed to Chet impossible that his unconscious brain could have conjured it. He must have cobbled the details together from reviews and commercials and overheard conversations at Weston.

In the dream he was playing 007, competing against an opponent controlling Oddjob. He couldn't shoot Oddjob, even when he had him dead to rights. The bullets just flew over his bowler-hatted head. He played round after round, losing every one to his opponent, whose face he could not see, even though he was sitting right next to him.

This went on for days. He took in no sustenance. His tongue grew dry and thick. His skin cracked and bled. Still he played, and still he lost. He died, only to be reborn again and again. His faceless opponent laughed, and acrid smoke issued from the place where his mouth should have been.

Chet saw his world in the crude, featureless 3D point of view of the game. Walls made of light. Only illusions. A conglomeration of angles and shapes, an approximation of a human, rounded a corner. Oddjob. He aimed his gun at Chet's chest. But when he pulled the trigger, he froze. A glitch. Chet's square field of view filled with a warm, liquid light. Chet looked up and saw a glowing golden figure hovering above him. He was the Golden Eye, the one who watches. He reached down, and Chet found in his hand the Golden Gun. "Your aim is wrong," said the Golden Eye. He disappeared.

Chet could feel the warm weight of the Golden Gun in his hand even now. In the absence of GoldenEye, he could settle for the next best thing. He veered into the arcade, headed for the far right-hand wall, where they kept Area 51.

Someone was already playing the game. A towering black girl in a purple t-shirt and velour track pants had both hands wrapped around the grip of the red first-player gun, and she was killing aliens faster than anyone Chet had ever seen.

Chet reached for the second-player gun. "Mind if I...?"

The girl glanced at him. She kept firing. "Free country."

Chet pumped two quarters into the machine, hit the second-player start button, and drew the plastic 9mm. An alien leapt up on his side of the screen, but before he could aim, the girl blasted it and grabbed the power-up. Chet was impressed.

It happened again, and Chet was annoyed.

It happened a third time, and Chet was in love.

******

(Inferno lines from the John Ciardi translation, Canto XXXIV)