Game Testing

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

When Jen DeAngelo picked up and moved for the umpteenth time, she didn't know where she would end up, as per usual. But when she finds herself in a place with family history—her family history—she decides to stay and investigate her roots.

But she might just find more than she bargained for in this unusual town full of strange gamers, weird rumors and maybe even the hope of home.

A captivating story for gamers and non-gamers alike, Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Game Testing" adds a fantastic element to the idea of starting over.

"Rusch's short fiction is golden."

—The Kansas City Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393095293

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

Book preview

Game Testing

Game Testing

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Game Testing

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

Game Testing

HER CAR BROKE DOWN north of Cairo, but Jen DeAngelo couldn’t stay in Illinois. She lived by only a few rules:

1. Stay until life became unbearable.

2. Get close to no one.

3. Stop wherever the car did.

4. Never live in the same state more than once.

When the car broke down, she had to choose between rule 3 and rule 4. She decided to violate rule 3—not liking the precedent—but liking it better than violating rule 4.

Besides, she’d lived in Illinois once before. And that experience was one of the things that led to rule 4. She’d be damned if she’d live in Illinois again.

She traded in the car for an old van, and paid cash for the difference from the last of her savings from her previous job. She had enough money left for two tanks of gas, one night in a hotel or two weeks’ worth of meals.

She opted for one tank of gas and one week’s meals, figuring by the time the gas ran out, she’d be out of Illinois. She made it to Southern Wisconsin before the indicator light came on, and to the tourist town of Lake Geneva before she had to put the van in neutral and coast down what had to be the highest hill in the entire state.

She eased the van into a parking lot beside the library, a 1950s Frank Lloyd Wright classic that overlooked the lake.

On this spring afternoon filled with the kind of sunlight that only came after a deep, dark winter, the large lake that gave the town its name looked like a mountain lake, sparkling sapphire blue that extended as far as the eye could see, only a hint of pale pink clouds on the horizon.

She’d heard about Lake Geneva all of her life, but had never visited. Her great-grandfather used to summer here in the 1920s. Her mother, in the last rebellious years of her youth, had worked as a bunny in the Playboy Club, where she met Jen’s father.

They claimed they liked the town, but after they married, they never came back, not even to close up her great-grandfather’s house. He had died the year Jen was born; no one had been inside the house since.

She wondered if she had the right to go in. She wondered if she would want to. Deciding would require a look, and a look would require a long distance phone call to her mother. A look would also require a full tank of gas.

Jen didn’t have money for the tank or the phone call.

So before she could make any decisions at all, she had to get a job. And judging by the emptiness of Lake Geneva’s streets, that might be hard.

The restaurants down on the waterfront looked old and well established. As she peered in the windows, she realized the wait staff was old and well established too. She doubted that anyone here hired extra help for summers—or if they did, they hired college students from Milwaukee or Madison or some local college she hadn’t heard of. Guaranteed labor who wanted a bit of the summer action. Guaranteed labor that was guaranteed to go home at the end of the season.

She was too old to be guaranteed. Once she’d been a young-looking twenty. Now she was a hardened thirty—still petite, but no longer cute, and certainly not innocent.

She hadn’t been innocent in a long, long time.

She stopped at Starbucks which was, oddly, the only chain she saw in the downtown. Before she went to the counter, she stood by the gas fireplace (it felt warm and welcoming, something