Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

In the book’s final section, loose ends are tied up, and the narrative approaches something like a happy conclusion. The denouement marks the novel as a comedy, though of course it is informed by tragedies and losses. The fact that Sadie and Sam can keep making games together, as hinted in the last scene of the novel, shows that the only hope lies in persisting despite losses. It is a lesson Sam learned early in life after losing his mother and that Sadie now learns, too. It can be argued that loss was the biggest differentiator between Sam and Sadie; Marx’s death bridges that gap.

Chapter 9 immerses the reader in a video game world, the one Sam designs specifically for Sadie. Pioneers is a nod to the real-life game series, The Oregon Trail, which were educational computer games designed in the 1970s to teach schoolchildren about 19th-century settler life. In the single-player game, the player assumes the role of the wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri to Oregon’s Willamette Valley in 1848. On the way, they encounter obstacles, hunt wild buffalo, and have to make stops for supplies. Someone in the player party always dies of dysentery or cholera, and the phrase “You have died of dysentery” pops up on the screen. “You have died of dysentery” has been a running joke between Sam and Sadie since they were kids. Sam’s design for Pioneers is bound to attract Sadie, showing that Sam knows Sadie very well after all. The game is another immersive reality, which Sadie likes, yet it is littered with emotional cues that remind Sadie of her life with Sam and the things she best likes. Pioneers brings many plot devices together, as if connecting the dots, and functions like a map of Sadie’s and Sam’s friendship and their shared love of games. Sadie’s character, Emily, gets a horse, which is a poignant reminder of Marx, the tamer of horses. Sadie’s adopted name is Mrs. Emily B. Marks, again a reference to Marx, as well as her and Marx’s shared love of literature, with Emily being a nod to the poet Emily Dickinson.

Sam’s alter-ego is Dr. Daedalus, a reference to a Greek myth. Daedalus was a master builder, the architect who designed his son Icarus’s wings to fly. In the myth, the wings are made of wax and Icarus flies close enough to the sun that the wings melt, and he falls to his death. This foreshadows Sam and Sadie’s falling out when she discovers he has been secretly playing with her; Sam flew too close to the sun and temporarily lost his friend as a result. Dr. Daedalus makes glass sculptures as a hobby, a reference to the Glass Flowers gallery where Sam first asked Sadie to design a game together, as well as the crystal paperweight Sadie gave Sam as a good-luck charm. Further, Daedalus loses her hand in a snowstorm, like Sam lost his foot. When Daedalus plaintively wonders if Emily would still love her after her amputation, it is Sam expressing his deepest insecurity to Sadie.

Daedalus names their child Ludo Quintus or fifth game, a reference to the current game they are playing. Sadie and Sam have built four games together—Ichigo, Both Sides, Mapleworld, and Master of Revels—Pioneers would be their fifth. Though Sadie does not realize any of these clues, she acknowledges to Dov that “I did and I didn’t” (370). She is so engrossed in playing the game, she may be willfully ignoring the truth. Pioneers provides the kind of comfort and distraction she needs; more importantly, the text suggests, it reawakens Sadie to the potential and joys of game-making. The joy Sadie derives from her creative work is a shaping force in her personality. Though she never answers Destiny’s question about what made her transition from Solution to Ichigo, the text already answered the question for her. In Chapter 2, the narrative notes that “there is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway” (68). In short, what drove Sadie to greatness was simply practice.

Several years elapse between Marx’s death and Sadie and Sam’s reunion. As is the pattern in their friendship, they go many years without speaking to each other but reconnect with grand gestures. This time, Sadie shows up at the memorial for Dong Hyun. These grand gestures assert the theme that Sadie and Sam’s friendship is a romance, without being romantic. In the last section, they finally share the fears and insecurities they’ve kept from each other, indicating they have both matured. The narrative also reveals why Sadie and Sam never became a couple, even though Sam in particular has harbored a longing for Sadie. For Sadie, their friendship is rare and special. A sexual relationship, which is more common, would have interfered with the type of friendship she shares with Sam.

As Sam and Sadie talk, Sam has an epiphany that makes the real world make more sense to him. From the beginning, Sam found the world of video games easier to navigate than reality. In Chapter 1, he notes that human beings are programmed to say one thing and mean another, unlike “characters in novels, movies, games [… are] meant to be taken at face value—the totality of what they did or what they said” (4). But now, Sam understands that the two worlds of people and games are inextricably linked. The same instinct to play that makes people invent stories for games or books makes people flirt with each other, take chances, and pursue adventure in real life, like his mother getting deliberately lost in LA all those decades ago. The instinct to play keeps people childlike and gives them the hope needed to exist in a world filled with tragedy. Sam puts his epiphany into words:

But then, what makes a person drive down an unmarked road in the middle of the night? Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept them from despair (387).

The book ends with Sam and Sadie preparing to design a game together: another opportunity to play. When they create games together, they fall into the “freights and grooves” of love. The novel’s last section takes its title from the poem “That love is all there is…” by Emily Dickinson: “It is enough, the freight should be proportioned to the groove." This famous line indicates that the weight being carried should be right for the road or track. Love is all about finding the right proportion between freight and groove, and when Sam and Sadie play a game together, they are each other’s freight and groove.