They go into the mall, Amy still wondering aloud why they are here, but game. Randy is a little bit turned around, but eventually homes in on a dimly heard electronic cacophony—digitized voices prophesying war—and emerges into the mall’s food court. Navigating now partly by sound and partly by smell, he comes to the corner where a lot of males, ranging from perhaps ten to forty years old, are seated in small clusters, some extracting quivering chopstick-loads of Szechuan from little white boxes but most fixated on what, from a distance, looks like some kind of paperwork. As backdrop, the ultraviolet maw of a vast game arcade spews digitized and sound-lab-sweetened detonations, whooshes, sonic booms and Gatling farts. But the arcade seems nothing more than a defunct landmark around which has gathered this intense cult of paperwork-hobbyists. A wiry teenager in tight black jeans and a black t-shirt prowls among the tables with the provocative confidence of a pool hustler, a long skinny cardboard box slung over his shoulder like a rifle. "These are my ethnic group," Randy explains in response to the look on Amy’s face. "Fantasy role-playing gamers. This is Avi and me ten years ago."