Game Over?

 

“Wow, great job! You made it look easy!” You wave your hand as you speak, mechanically moving back and forth, back and forth. A smile holds in place, unwavering, stretched across your face. It doesn’t reach your eyes, staring blankly at the bright wall ahead of you. Your cheeks still ache as you smile, even with years of experience. Years? Decades? Who knows. It’s impossible to track time here.

You keep waving. And waving. The smile is automatic now. It hurts, but what else is there to do? You can’t stop it even if you want.

You try to fall into the rhythm of the wave, back and forth, feeling your hand swaying like seaweed under a steady wave near the shore, in and out, back and forth. You can almost feel the currents in the water, imagine the smell of the salt and fish along a shore, hear the rush of the waves as they crash, when again you blurt out, “Wow, great job! You made it look easy!” And just like that, the fantasy is gone again.

            You grit your teeth, the smile still spread across your face. Damn it, you were almost someplace else! Okay, again, just keep waving, keep smiling, unfocus your eyes and, yes, yes you can feel it again, the calmness yes, but also that sense of something just out of sight, something just down the road to your side. An end, a destination, someplace to go—

            “Wow!” damn it, not again, “great job! You made it look easy!” You seethe. Your smile stays the same, unmoving, yet the same expression becomes a grimace, a snarl half formed and only waiting to complete once your motions are your own again for a short time.

“Fucking idiots left the screen on again,” you mumble through gritted teeth. But it doesn’t come out as a speech bubble like the other words did, only a whisper of noise that disappears into the empty space around you. Any sense of calm from the rhythmic motion is gone now, you know you won’t be able to get it back. But you can still feel the pull, someplace off to the side. This has to end sometime, right? You’ve been here so long, you’ve watched them play so many times, always just slightly different yet the same monotony over and over.

Finally, your cheeks sore and one muscle twitching, someone must have hit the button to move on. Your arm is your own again, yet you keep waving a few more times without thinking. Your face relaxes, the anger of a few moments ago replaced by exhaustion. This can’t keep going, can it?

But it does. You watch them play another round, and another, popping up occasionally from where you’re sitting to lean in front of the bright wall and say something, “Good match!” or “Wow!” before you’re allowed to back out again and stand on the side. You used to sit, but standing feels better. At least when they’re playing, as you watch the blocks move, it feels like something is happening. The blocks move in the large arena in front of you, sliding on their own, then disappear into smoke when they’re matched correctly.

After many more levels cleared, you realize they’re making actual progress. The pull is getting stronger today, each level behind you making it just a bit stronger, like a string tied about your waist tugging you forward. You feel a genuine burst of excitement as a large chain of blue boxes matches, the entire cluster disappearing and ending the level. The smile feels less forced this time, and you move on quickly. They don’t leave you hanging on the level end screen this time. Your yell of joy at the next firework surprises you, not needing to fake it as you yell “Awesome job!” before returning to your spot at the edge of the field. You smile even when they can’t see you now, the ring of the splintering wood and crackle of the firework still in your ears.

You take a deep breath of air that smells like nothing. It feels good to hear something other than your own voice. The player turned off the music months ago. You can’t tell if that’s a blessing or a curse. Explosions go off as bombs clear half the field, the bar on the side nearly touching the top to end the level. The pull of the next level is almost euphoric. You’ve seen the road to the next levels. It resembles the beginning of the game, a simple green forest, an empty road stretching ahead, but now there’s a hill in the way blocking the view of the next level. There’s something over the hill, you can feel it. There’d be something satisfying about the game starting and ending in the same biome, like returning home.

            Not that the writers of this game were all that creative. You’ve traveled through spooky forests, candy mountains, dark swamps, but it’s always the same levels. Every thousand of so levels they bring a new gimmick, but it’s all the same. But it feels different. It has to end eventually. And this level’s almost done, you can move on to the next and then—

The wall turns from it’s bright white to blackness all of a sudden, and you’re standing in the grey light, like the last bit of twilight before the sun fully sets. You blink, stunned from the sudden change.

“In the middle of the game?” You say aloud, the sound falling flat. “Damn it, we were doing so well, we made so much progress today!” You kick a yellow box, which doesn’t move, only giving off the dull thud it makes when it can’t find a match. “Oh shut up.” Stuffing your hands in your pocket, you walk back towards the Path of Levels.

The road stretches forward, over the top of a hill that you can’t see the other side of. It’s so close, you can still feel the pull forward. But you can’t progress, you know that. Still, you put your hand up and touch the smooth, clear barrier between you and whatever is forward. There’s no temperature to it, no zap like a forcefield. Just something you can’t pass through until the player moves on.

And the player has decided they have better things to do today than to keep playing this stupid matching game on their phone.

You lay down in the dirt, which doesn’t feel like dirt, doesn’t puff up around you as you sit or stick to your pants and have to be brushed off. But it’s the best you’ve got.

The section of the wall and ceiling that becomes the phone screen is gone now, the simple world existing around you without an audience. It could be just minutes before they turn the game back on, days, weeks, years… never.

When they come back, you always try to make them feel like they want to stay. Thankfully the desperation can’t be heard in your voice as you welcome them, give them presents to help them progress through levels faster, try to keep them here and spend their time bringing you closer to freedom, to keep them playing. But it never works. Stupid anti-phone propaganda, you think. Get on your damn phone and play this meaningless game, get me out!

They don’t stay long anymore. The time between is getting longer and longer.

So you lie in the not-dirt and try to become as nothing and empty as the game around you. But of course, the developers made sure you would keep your mind, keep the sensation of a body while you were in here. That was part of the punishment. That was the whole point. So instead of becoming an inert piece of the setting, as the rest of the game could around you, you think. And you wait. And you fall into the despair that has become so common it’s almost boring now.

It wasn’t like you meant to hurt that guy, and certainly not kill him. It was an accident, wasn’t it? You can’t remember anymore. Do trees really look like this outside, or is this just lazy programing? You try to think of a forest, a real one, the scent of pine and wet wood just after it rains, the sound of the trees, but it’s hard. You forget more and more of it every day.

You think about standing up and walking. As long as a level has been unlocked, you can go back as far as the beginning if you want. But you’ve walked it thousands of times. It’s all the same, all lazy reskins of the same environment. Instead, you focus on the pull. You can still feel it, coming from just beyond the barrier, from the levels unplayed. Towards an eventual escape.

So much of the time just before being placed here was a blur, hard to remember. You can’t remember much of the court scene, only knowing you were guilty. You remember the numbness as you were convicted, the confusion as the punishment was announced. “En-gamed, effective immediately.” Stupid name, you still think so. Led straight from the courtroom into a special room, strapped to a chair that was reminiscent of an electric chair, but they placed diodes on your head instead of the metal cap you remember from the movies. You were panicking. Effective immediately, like right now? No family, no friends, no goodbyes. It was moving so fast. They were talking to you as they strapped you in, but you forgot so much. So many technical words, so many pieces you just couldn’t focus on.

But you do remember one thing clearly. A man in a faded blue t-shirt saying in an almost bored voice, “When you reach the end of the game, you’ll have done your time.”

Done your time. You think about that, remembering the feeling of the straps holding you to the chair, desperately trying to ask more questions but being told that was all you needed to know. You felt the faint trickle of electricity into your skin, not being fried to death, but death being taken from you. You remember that feeling as your consciousness was stretched from your body like salt water taffy, like you were about to pass out. You saw your body even as you stretched away from it.

Then you woke up, speaking words of welcome to someone you couldn’t see as they opened the game. Explaining the rules to them, offering words of encouragement for breaking boxes of different colors as you sat and watched, confused and scared and angry.

Until the end of the game. Not an RPG, not a game with a plot or other characters or beautiful scenery. A matching game on a phone, your consciousness sitting unknowingly in someone’s pocket while they played, a faceless person who held your entire future, your consciousness, possibly your soul literally in the palm of their hand. And it was just a game to them.

The screen stays off for a long time. You wish for music, sound, something. At least the same track over and over during the levels had been something. Now it’s just quiet. No wind, no traffic, no animal sounds. You gave up on singing to yourself ages ago when the sound ended flat, as if your voice was dampened in a soundproof room. It was too unsettling to be comforting. Only the sound effects from the game had any real weight. And sometimes your player muted even those, leaving it empty, your own voice nothing more than a speech bubble.  

They come back. You have no idea how long it has been, but you’re offering quite a large welcome back package, so you know it has been a long time. They play, you move through levels. The pull is so strong now. You don’t know how long it has been.

A box breaks, a level ends, and, and it’s done. You’re standing on top of the hill now after congratulating the player on beating this area. You get to see what’s on the other side of the empty green hill. And there, on the path at the bottom, is a massive metal door. It stands alone, no building to accompany it, just a door 20 times taller than you are. No levels between you and it. Just a road.

You fly down the path, laughing as you run, the manic sound falling hollow around you but you don’t care. You reach the door. You didn’t know you could still cry, but you’re crying now. The end. You’ve done it. You don’t care what’s on the other side, returning to your body, death, oblivion, even hell would be better than this. It must be.

You wipe your face, the feeling of the wet tears vanishing even before they hit your clothes. Physical things don’t stay in here long, nothing’s really real here, just the endless empty levels. But that’s over now. You can go through the door. You can end it. You’ve finally been given what you were promised, an end to this purgatory. You think of the man in the blue shirt and for the first time, thank him. The end he promised is finally yours.  

The door rattles a bit as you push it, the sound similar to when the chains rattle along the boxes, immoveable until something crashes through it like the fireworks or the bombs. You push it again. The same rattle. You glance at the hinges as you push again. It’s definitely a push door, though the developers could just not care about that detail. But there are no handles to pull, so it must be. You push again, screaming all the while, your manic joy turning to desperate panic, your feet sliding against the poorly animated gravel road. “Please, please, I made it, you have to let me out!” You’re crying again, the tears evaporating after only seconds on your face, only one lasting long enough to fall from your cheek only to disappear before it hits the dirt. The rattling noise of a lock echoes over and over as the door fails to open.

“I did it!” You screech, raising your hands to what passes for a sky here, the same cloud passing by every 20 seconds in the basic blue. The white wall is behind you, the player seeing the same door that you’re at. A distant part of your brain wonders if they can see you standing there, pushing on the door, wondering what they were doing. “I did it, I reached the end! You said when I reached the end I could go!”

Something catches your eye as you look up. Something flashing at the middle of the massive door, a white blur around sharp black lines. You recognize it as text, but too large and at the wrong angle to read from down here. Instructions on how to open the door perhaps? You rush backwards, stumbling as you run back down the road towards past levels even as your head stays fixed looking back at the door.

You get to the base of the hill, and you can make it out now you think. You stop running, your neck craned up to the door towering into the sky, the last arch you need to break through to finally be free. You read it. You read it again. You don’t comprehend it even as you fall to your knees, the despair hitting before you can really understand the words.

“New levels released every Wednesday!”

            No one hears your guttural yell because the game closes, the wall behind you that is the screen of some unknown person turning dark as they see no more levels to play. But they’ll be back. Because there will be more. There will always be more. They’ll come back to play with you eventually.