Jason was going to have to kill the blonde man: it couldn’t be avoided.

The retired cop, Frank Mulroney, had told him as much when they pitched the RAPE thug over the railing. If you don’t kill a man, he’ll always come back. Furthermore, Jason couldn’t allow the pastor, the women, or the men of the rescue mission to get hurt by this madman. If Jason went down for a murder rap, then so be it, but the crazed man on the steps in front of him was a dangerous loose end that needed to be tied up. And Jason needed to get moving before the pastor or anyone else decided to look downstairs to see what was going on.

Jason thought of cuffing the crazed man with his own revolver, but the butt might cause him to bleed, and bleeding left a trail of evidence. Transferring the revolver to his left hand, Jason used it to knock the man’s upraised right hand aside, then whapped him with the sap across the head. Following the sound of a melon being thumped by a lead pipe, the sweaty tow-headed man slumped unconscious. Jason dropped both the sap and the revolver into his side jacket pocket, and picked up the man sprawled over the stairs, or tried to. Like the unconscious RAPE goon the other day, an unconscious man is dead weight, and a struggle to try to move. With a groan, Jason heaved the man upright, and walked with him out the front door, with the blonde man’s arm over his shoulder, as though he were helping a friend who’s had a little too much to drink get to a cab.

Where was he going? Jason didn’t know where he was going, or exactly how he was going to kill this guy, but he decided he’d head in the direction of the water. Jason staggered to the street, trying to hold the guy up, but he was as limp as a boiled noodle. After a few steps, Jason was forced to heave the wild man up into a fireman’s carry, so that the sleeping man lay draped over his shoulders. To Jason’s surprise, the man was light, and Jason was much stronger in the game. He found that he was easily able to jog down the sidewalk and across the street with the man lying across his shoulders. Jason popped up onto the other side of the street and moved briskly down the sidewalk toward an alleyway, thinking it would be best to stay off of the main streets as much as possible.

The man stirred, and began to kick his legs furiously. The blonde man only had the use of his right arm, but he began hitting Jason and clawing at him. The guy was flopping and twisting like a bass with a hook in its jaw. The combined wild motions of the crazed man’s legs and arm unbalanced Jason, who struggled to stay upright and move down the sidewalk. The man slapped at Jason with his right arm, but then stopped, which took a moment to register with Jason. What was the guy doing?

Jason panicked when he realized the man had his hand in Jason’s side pocket, and was pulling out the revolver. Jason immediately seized the gun with both hands, causing the man to roll off of his shoulders. Pulling in on the gun, Jason reeled the man in toward him, then shoved him away by checking him with his shoulder, like a hockey player would do, while twisting the revolver out of the man’s grasp. Jason brought up the gun, which the man countered by rushing forward and reaching with his good hand. The wild-eyed man was practically on top of Jason, who didn’t have the time or the space to point the gun in a firing position, so he dodged to the side, ducking to his right in the direction of the man’s limp left arm. The man shot past Jason, and stepped heavily off of the curb onto the street, as though he hadn’t expected the drop, then tottered into traffic.

An oncoming car clipped the man above the knee, knocking him upward and making him do a cartwheel in the air. The blond man landed heavily on his side in the next lane, and was pushing himself up with his right hand, raising his head just high enough so that it was struck by the grill of an oncoming car. The driver braked, but the man he’d just hit was already under and past the front wheels. The skidding vehicle’s locked rear wheels dragged the man’s body twenty feet before it slid to a screeching halt. Both drivers stopped and got out of their cars wearing face masks.

Jason spun around and strode through the closest alley, making a long loop before returning to the rescue mission and climbing the stairs.

“What happened?” Pastor Roy asked Jason when he reached the landing. “We heard gunshots.”

A huddle of concerned men and the two sisters surrounded the pastor.

“I followed him, but he ran into traffic.” Jason shook his head sadly. “I don’t think the guy was all there.”

* * *

“Can I tell them, Gramps?” Jason asked while cutting his turkey.

“Sure, go ahead,” his grandfather replied, and spooned a bit of cranberry onto his plate.

“I’ve been playing a video game that Grandpa helped design, called The Midas Game,” Jason announced to his family. His father, his mother and her new husband Gary, his sister Elaine and her husband Daryl, sat at the table. His nephew and niece ate a separate table while the Detroit Lions played on TV. “It’s designed to help you become financially independent.”

“How’s it do that?” his father asked, and Jason could see the skepticism in his face.

“Well, you play as you dream, and the app monitors your fitness and bank account,” Jason explained. “As you become wealthier and healthier in real life, you become much stronger and richer in the game—it’s a huge motivator.”

“So how are you supposed to get wealthier in real life?” his mom asked, and shot a glance at her husband.

His grandfather chipped in. “You get out of debt, cut your expenses, and invest in a low-fee index fund.”

“You mean stocks?” his mom asked, and the rising tone of her question signaled that she was worried.

“Stocks are incredibly risky.” Jason’s father looked at Gramps with an expression of disbelief.

“Tell that to Warren Buffet,” Gramps shot back.

“Who’s Warren Buffet?” Daryl asked. “Was he the guy who sang Wasting Away in Margaritaville?”

Grandpa pursed his lips. “That was Jimmy Buffet.”

After Thanksgiving dinner, which was more of a late lunch, Jason and his grandfather walked to the nearby park, Wilson Pond, which was stocked with rainbow trout by the Department of Fish and Game. Jason and his grandfather took a brisk walk on the paved walkway that followed the contours of the various ponds. Birds sat atop swaying cattails, or landed in the bare trees, and the two watched ducks swoop down to the pond and splash down.

“I have to apologize, Gramps,” Jason began. “I saw the looks everyone in the family gave you when I mentioned the game, and honestly, when you first showed up at my door with the game, I thought you had gone senile.”

“No problem; I understand.” His grandfather wrapped his scarf a little more tightly around his neck as they strode along the track. “New ideas always seem crazy. I remember at work when they started taking out all the typewriters. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. “We’re getting rid of the typewriters.’ ‘Why would you get rid of perfectly good typewriters?’ Turns out, they were replacing the typewriters with computers, but it seemed like a crazy idea at the time.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be rich, but I know I’m in better shape financially, and I get your point—save money to give yourself a fallback. I also think I’m starting to understand women better, or what it takes to be successful with women, thanks to the game.”

The two of them passed a woman pushing a baby in an enclosed wagon.

“But here’s the part I didn’t expect.” Jason hesitated, and looked at his grandfather before continuing. “It’s a moral issue. Last night I was planning to kill a man. I made the decision, and was figuring out exactly how I was going to kill him, but the guy ran into traffic and accidentally killed himself. Was it wrong for me to plan to kill a guy, even if it’s just a game?”

“Take Grand Theft Auto.” The old man smiled. “Yeah, I didn’t know anything about video games, but I did my research. The players rob, vandalize, and murder. But because it’s a game, does that make it morally right?”

“It’s just a game,” Jason argued. “It’s not like anybody gets hurt.”

“Except the player,” his grandfather countered. “My point is clearer if you consider a game in which you rape women, kill children, and torture animals. Is that just a game?”

Jason thought for a moment, and watched a black bird resembling a cormorant, with a long, narrow beak perched in a leafless tree. “I see your point now. You couldn’t play that game without compromising yourself.”

“Compromising your soul.” His grandfather swung his arms to warm up, and slapped his gloved hands together. “Is it ever okay to kill a man? There was the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a devout Christian in Nazi Germany. He was involved in a plot to kill Hitler, and was executed for it. Is it okay to kill Hitler? What about Charles Manson?”

“Didn’t one of his followers try to kill a president?” Jason asked.

“Yes. Squeaky Fromm, Gerald Ford.” Gramps’ expression turned grim. “But Manson also persuaded members of his cult, his ‘family,’ to hack several people to death, including the actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant at the time.”

Jason nodded in agreement. “Clearly Manson was evil. There were plenty of other evil men like him in history—Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Caligula…anybody who killed them would have prevented a whole lot of human suffering.”

“The only catch is that if you decide to kill a man, like Hamlet, you have to make sure that what you’re doing is right; that it’s not the devil trying to lure you to hell.” Gramps paused. “If you decide to kill a man, you have to be morally certain, because killing someone is always ugly.”

The two continued their walk, rounding the pond where they had fished several weeks ago. Jason thought carefully about what his grandfather said.

“I suppose on the good side, the opposite is also true,” Jason said. “In the game I work with men in the rescue mission, help to feed them, get them medical care, and protect them from bullies. I feel good about that, but does it count if it’s just a video game?”

“I think whether you’re doing good or bad in the dream, in a game, you’re training yourself how to act the rest of the day. I think good deeds in the game make you a better person.”

“I hope so.” Jason shrugged. “The weird thing is, the game feels so real to me. The people seem real.”

Gramps nodded to a couple as they passed them on the track, headed in the opposite direction. “There’s the story about the Zen disciple who tells the master, ‘I had an amazing dream last night that I was a butterfly.’ The Zen master replied, ‘How do you know that you’re not a butterfly dreaming you’re a man?’”

Jason switched gears. “Well, on a more mundane subject, I seem to be stuck in the game. It’s like sexually, I’ve hit a plateau, and things never advance beyond a certain point.”

“Yeah,” his grandfather nodded. “That’s the challenge. It’s a balancing act. In a normal video game, you have all the motivation you need—the excitement of first-person shooter games, blowing things up, flying a jet, earning points and prizes, trying to top scores, competing against other players, often in real time. But in The Midas Game, you can’t just veg out on the couch with a bag of Cheetos. You have to get up and do pushups, sit ups, lunges, run or skip rope, exercise when you don’t feel like it. You also have to save money, not buy things you want to buy, and cut up your credit card. You have to make changes in your life, and that’s not easy. So if the women in the game aren’t rewarding enough, there’s no incentive to play the game, but if the women are too rewarding, there’s no incentive to advance in the game, which, of course, means advancing in real life. Stick with it, it gets better.”

* * *

Jason studied the slash on his chest that he got from the deranged man’s straight razor. Although his coat had been cut, as well as his shirt, and there were blood stains on his chest, trickling down to his stomach, the cut didn’t seem to be very deep. Now that he looked at the spot where he’d been cut, Jason couldn’t see any sign of injury. In the space of a few hours, he had healed completely.

There was a knock at Jason’s door, but he wasn’t expecting anyone. A quick look at his watch revealed that there was no gold ribbon, which meant that there was nobody with a prize for him on the other side. Was it the cops, asking about the death of the blonde man?

Jason undid the bolt, and cautiously opened the door. Sisters Jamie and Belinda stood outside the door with their arms folded over their chests, although Sister Belinda had to tuck her arms under her massive breasts. Both women glowered at him.

“Sister Belinda and I have been comparing notes,” Sister Jamie said tersely.

The big woman gave him a contemptuous look. “You’ve got some explaining to do, buster.”