Draw Distance

Illustrations by Matt Chinworth / Words by Luke Chinworth

[drawdistance]

Unknown Mountain: On Justin Smith’s Desert Golfing

Desert Golfing is a touch screen video game. Stereotypically, it is mechanically and aesthetically minimalistic. Its two-dimensional game world is nothing more than an angular edge across the screen, the transition between the tan dust-filled sky and the slightly-darker-tan dunes. There is no golfer, or even a club, only a white ball. The hole is about two golf balls wide and marked with a yellow flag that has the hole number on it. The flags keep getting longer and longer. You see, there is only one course in Desert Golfing. You immediately start playing it when you launch the app, and it never ends; or, as far as anyone knows it never does. There are no menus allowing backouts or restarts. There is hardly even a user interface. Desert Golfing is sand, sky, ball, and hole—only and perfectly. There are times I wanted it to be more. But I was just being a big, dumb jerk to Desert Golfing.

In Desert Golfing, the cup becomes the tee of the next hole. When your ball comes to rest at the bottom of the cup, the screen pans right along the sandy slants and flats to reveal the next cup and your ball rises up even with the ground. You’re then ready to tee off again.

This truly is a desert. When the view pans over to the next hole, it does not slide up or down. Right—through the sometimes jagged but ultimately flat sand—is the only way. There is no going back. The next hole is always waiting there. It is not disembodied. It is a continuation. You could zoom out and look at the entire wretched desert as one continuous stretch, all the way back to where you started. It would be a beautiful sight. But you can’t in Desert Golfing. No, this desert is consumed one hole per screen at a time.

With no menus, there are no restarts or mulligans. Every stroke is permanently recorded to the ever-increasing total that is continually displayed at the top of the screen in small white numbers. It seems like a nightmare—being constantly reminded of your failings. But it is only a nightmare before the zen has kicked in. But that takes a while.

You hit the ball by touching the screen, sliding in the opposite direction you want to hit, and releasing. The further you pull back, the larger the shot-indicating arrow will grow, and the farther your ball will fly. Over time (Say, 100 holes of play.) you start to get a feel for how the ball will fly based on this shot arrow. Around this same time, you realize you don’t have to start your shot-touch on the ball which, on the tee, is close to the edge of the screen which limits the distance you can pull back and thus the distance you can hit, but that, in fact, you can start your stroke anywhere on the screen no matter where your ball is, greatly increasing the distance of your tee shots and thus decreasing the distance required of second shots, and that you could have saved at least 100 strokes with this knowledge had it been known from the beginning! (At least, that’s what happened to me.)

After you finish hole 100 you will begin to feel trapped. And it’s because you are given hope of an end. The first inkling of progress appears on hole 101 when you are given the option to tweet your 100-hole score with the automatically added message, “How much farther does this desert go?” 200 holes? 500 holes?? 1000 holes??? Surely no more than 1000, you think.

Around hole 200 you will start to notice the friction of the sand. You will learn the proper speeds and arcs to glance your ball off dunes with just enough speed to roll it right into the cup. You’ll learn that a ball rolling uphill will stop and not roll back down, no matter how steep the incline. If your ball has any bounce at all though, it will roll back down. These are the rules of Desert Golfing. They can only be learned on its dunes. As such, Desert Golfing captures the essence of real amateur golfing: The sand always seems too slow when your putt is short and too fast when your ball is rolling off the screen. In other words, Desert Golfing is “Go, go, go!” and “Stop, stop, stop!”

Then, all of a sudden, a cactus slides on the screen. It doesn’t do anything but it is so interesting. There is also a rock and a cloud later.

As you approach each 100-hole milestone, your anticipation of something spectacular happening mounts, but it will often be unfulfilled. The random surprises of the cactus, rock, and cloud (And also two gaps!) make it better. They really do.

The hope for surprises and some kind of an Event were enough to keep me playing. And thankfully, the play never plateaued. Random dune geometry always challenged everything previous holes had taught me, so I continued to try my best. The friction of Desert Golfing was too darn satisfying. And once I crossed 800, the sprint to 1,000 felt like finishing a good, long book. I was sure something was going to happen at the big 1,000.

It takes about 15 seconds to complete a hole with one stroke—aiming, powering, and hitting, and then watching the ball fly, bounce, and drop in the cup and the pan to the next hole. Each additional stroke adds roughly 10 seconds. Over the first 1,000 holes, I averaged 2.289 strokes per hole which means it took me, on average, 27.89 seconds to play each hole—you see where I’m going with this.

I played Desert Golfing on my phone for approximately seven and three-quarter hours. I played it in my bed and in my sister’s armchair. I played it at my dinner table and at work. I played it on the toilet. I played it at stoplights, for crying out loud. Amazing the intrigue one cactus, one rock, and one cloud can spawn and sustain.

After 2,289 strokes, I was ranked twentieth of the 687 people that had made it to hole 1,001. I know because Desert Golfing ranks you on its untitled leaderboard in Apple’s Game Center after 1000 holes. But that’s all it does. The screen slides over to hole 1,001 just like every single hole before it, and it asks you to tee off.

I wanted more. Not more holes. I wanted something more.

I craved finality, but Desert Golfing unknowingly resisted. It persisted, and I had to reach finality in my own way. I latched onto my 1000-hole score, but the itch didn’t go away.

I wish Desert Golfing would have ended at hole 1000. I wish we had finally arrived at a clubhouse at the foot of some unnamed mountains and shaken the sadistic course designer’s hand. A handshake and a nice pine tree on the runout of those mountains would have been the perfect closure for my relationship with this small game. I would have felt accomplished and changed for seeing those evergreen colors. Instead, the tans remained, and I felt aimless and lost. Will it ever end? Is there a final hole? I thought. A quick Google search tells me no one has found it (yet, maybe), and some have played almost 6,000 holes.

There should have been some big gorgeous ending-of-Fez-style cinematic. The quest felt that significant. Its ending could have been that grand. I would have been happy to allow Desert Golfing to indulge in its own monstrous art. It would have been so beautiful and cathartic. Instead, I played to hole 1,013, and then, I just…stopped.

I want to play Desert Golfing until the hole number on the flag runs off the screen, forever and ever amen. I can’t obviously, and I won’t. Instead, I will go back, pre hole 1000, and picture a sand dune sloping up off the screen. It is scattered with rocks tumbled from that unknown mountain. 

Check out more of Matt's illustrations at Swamp365.

[drawdistance]

Handshakes and Hugs: On B.J. Novak’s One More Thing

After I finished my new book One More Thing, I was dying to know what Draw Distance thought about it. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Luke from Draw Distance for a short interview. We mostly talked about the book, but the discussion kind of wandered off in the second half. 

BJN: Did you think the book was funny? Why or why not?

LC: I did. I thought the funniest story was ‘Dark Matter.’ I thought the funniest line from that story was the part about the cutesy, creepy pinching. But the funny thing is, I also thought ‘Dark Matter’ was the most sentimental. The narrator and the scientist play off each other so well. Obviously the scientist is a pushover, but he is also a kind-hearted genius. Aren’t we all in our own ways? And obviously the narrator is a jerk, but he only seems like a jerk because he holds to a ruthless love. A truly ruthless love can appear jerkish, it can even turn you into an actual jerk, a huge jerk if you let it. But that’s not the goal, and that’s not the narrator’s goal. He is a ruthless lover. At some point, you kinda have to be a jerk to demonstrate real, ruthless love. And it’s totally worth appearing like a jerk for.

Stories are always funnier when they are relatable and I related to the narrator and the scientist. I can relate to the scientist’s jumpy, yet amiable personality. I can also relate to the narrator’s sincerity, his fickleness, and his desire for ease. So basically I laughed my head off. I loved those two guys so much.

BJN: Did you flip through the book and read the shortest stories first? The author does that too.

LC: No. I read every story in the order you presented them in.

Though when I see the end of a story just hanging out there in the middle of the page, my eyes are drawn to it. And if it is a separate line, set apart, I basically can’t focus on what I am reading until I look over and read that last sentence. So, in a way, I guess I did skip ahead to the shortest stories—those short one-sentence stories at the end of some of the stories. I really wish I could stay focused but my eyes literally track to the last line. That’s why I love when a story/chapter/book ends on the first line of a flipped page. It’s like a movie: you have a pretty good idea that it is going to end but you don’t know exactly when until you flip the page. Kinda like quantum nonlocality.  

BJN: What is quantum nonlocality? Be concise

LC: Quantum nonlocality is the phenomenon of quantum matter not having a defined location until its location is determined by measurement.

When you used this phenomenon as a metaphor in your story ‘Quantum Nonlocality and the Death of Elvis Presley,’ it felt alien, floaty, and misty. As an explanation for Elvis Presley’s apparent return from death, second life, and actual death, using ‘quantum nonlocality’ in the title informs the story’s interpretation. This story creeped me out! It is the exact kind of story that would be found in the stupid tabloids you mention in the story, creating a circle of realism that breaks the fourth wall, potentially into the real world. Kinda like the discussion questions you place at the end of some of your stories. They are not part of the story, but they participate in the story’s tone-setting. Your list of discussion questions at the end of the book fill this self-fueling and self-consuming role for the entire book itself.

Sorry that carried on past the short answer to your question!

BJN: Do you think discussion questions can be fairly leading sometimes? Why?

LC: Discussion questions by definition lead you into discussion. It is their purpose, and they perform admirably. If we are having a discussion right now then discussion questions are doing their job!

If by ‘leading’ you mean leads you to a conclusion, then I would say it kinda depends. It depends on your use of ‘fairly.’ If by ‘fairly’ you mean slightly, then I would say yes. If by ‘fairly’ you mean without bias, then I would say no. But they are merely doing their job; you can’t really blame discussion questions for taking advantage of the position they have been entrusted with. So even though they may be unfair, I would say draw your own darn conclusions. (Apparantly, I would say a lot of things, but I guess am busy saying these things right now!) But drawing your own conclusions paradoxically requires discussion with others. Other people—

BJN: Who are we supposed to be discussing these questions with?

LC: Preferably people you love and know, and that know and love you. But sometimes strangers can rock your world if the opportunity arises!

BJN: Do you normally have discussions in response to a question that was posed by a person not participating in the discussion? Why or why not?

LC: I don’t normally, unless it’s from a book or something, in which the author has already participated in the discussion with not only the content preceding the questions, but also the questions themselves—if we are going by our previously deduced proof that discussion questions are leading. For example: I do this devotional with a group every week where we read a chapter of a book called Devotional Classics and then discuss the chapter with the guidance of some discussion questions. These questions are, as you put it, “fairly leading,” just as all discussion questions are. It is impossible for the question-poser to not participate in the discussion. By merely posing a question, they have irretrievably loosed part of themselves.

Sorry these answers are becoming more and more sterile! I don’t mean for them to be so scientific. But I guess when it comes down to why or why not I have discussions in response to a question that was posed by a person not participating in the discussion, the answer is: I can’t. It’s not possible.

BJN: Do you think “why not?” is ultimately a better question than “why?”

LC: Man, this is the question of the century! Of the millennium! Of humanity! It is terrifying to think about and terrifying to answer honestly. Obviously, I want “why not?” to be the top dog. But when I look at myself, it is obvious I have lived according to “why?” Wanting answers before action. Obviously, this is not sustainable.

BJN: Why or why not?

LC: Because you get nothing done! And you meet very few people. When do you know how a story is going to end before you begin writing it? When do you know a person before you introduce yourself? It is the time of our lives! and I am sitting here asking “why?” At least you are asking both! That’s progress!

 //

Note: B. J. Novak did not interview me for this piece, obviously. The last story of One More Thing is called ‘Discussion Questions.’ The questions Novak ‘asked me’ in this piece were taken verbatim from this story. Their order was not changed and they were not edited in any way.

Note 2: Because Novak’s questions didn’t lead to many thoughts about the book, and because I didn’t want to force my thoughts about the book into the answers of these questions, I want to use this final space to say a few things:

Novak’s writing is impeccable. It is a masterclass. He is able to control the tone of his stories and keep it consistent, possibly the greatest difficulty of being a writer. Writing is a craft, and this work shows how hard Novak has worked on his craft.

Often the words of One More Thing seem like the plainest language imaginable, and all at once, you realize that’s what makes them so impeccable. Why say things more convoluted than they need to be?

One More Thing is refinement. It is the refinement of a writer who makes his words count. It gets right to the sincerity, embarrassment, unrest, and peace. It doesn’t just make you laugh and cry, it is laughing and crying itself. It’s hard to put down because it’s hard to pick up—it’s bouncing with chuckles and soggy with tears. (Sorry about that one.)

One More Thing is like a handshake from the president of the United States and a hug from an old friend that you never used to hug at the same time. But the president is wearing one of those handshake buzzers and your friend gained thirty pounds. Just imagine that!

Check out more of Matt's illustrations at Swamp 365.

[drawdistance]

Quick Fuzzies: On Leigh Alexander’s Clipping Through: One Mad Week in Video Games

Like most industries, video games are also graced with conferences and conventions held throughout the year all over the world. I use ‘graced’ somewhat jokingly because the purpose and usefulness of these meet-ups is constantly in question, even by the video-game crusaders that continue to attend them. Very few people will argue for the validity of promotional conventions like the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as anything more than an excuse to knowingly get over-psyched for upcoming releases sporting massive budgets and advertising campaigns. Some worry that smaller conferences are beginning to follow this path laid by E3; some have already given up hope long ago.

In her short book, Clipping Through, Leigh Alexander relates her week-long experience of the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco through conversations, inner-thoughts, interviews, and vignettes from her past. If it wasn’t clear before, this journalistic work makes it astoundingly clear: Leigh Alexander cares about video games so much; not because her livelihood partially depends on them, but because they have changed her life and the lives of the people she loves.

Alexander is a prolific video-game journalist. Her work lies somewhere between the buttoned-up seriousness and intensity of academic game studies and the off-the-cuff, spontaneous news reporting of advertising video-game blogs. Basically, she is a legend to the video-game-journalist job title. She has been called Super Saiyan by a fellow journalist, and after you see the volume and quality of her work, there aren’t many other adjectives that adequately capture the planet-consuming gravity of her lovely words. No for-video-games-writing qualifier needed.

Yet, her usual freelance work is quickly becoming unsustainable. Clipping Through is partially an experiment with a different, hopefully sustainable avenue of writing.

Clipping Through is an intimate look at video games and the culture surrounding them. Alexander’s life is wrapped up in these circles: the games, people, events, and worldview of The Video Game Mind. Her words in Clipping Through construct the platform that gives view to this collective consciousness. She is part of it, but Alexander’s journalistic writing allows the reader to experience her part with perspective of the whole. At the end of the day, what else can any of us do but convey our experiences with words through our own worldview?

Alexander has immersed herself in video games. She perceives the world at least partially through this video game lens. She has worked hard to develop her writing so that conveying her video game perception through words is natural and meaningful. Even though I know Alexander worked extremely hard to produce Clipping Through, it comes across as effortless, as if she wrote it on her smartphone while walking between GDC sessions and interviews. I’m sure she relied on her phone more often than not to take down notes, but certainly it wasn’t that easy.

Throughout the week she details the constant balance of remembrance and staying in the moment. Don’t we all seem to be in some other place when we have a particularly engrossing project back with ourselves or a few others, away from the here and now? Alexander resists this tug in Clipping Through because she knows embracing the people around her will make her project better, whether she remembers every last detail or not.

As she rushes from meeting to meeting, she hugs old friends. She asks one to translate for a Japanese legend for an interview. She interviews a developer within distance of the (possibly) burning gaze of Ken Levine, the Bioshock auteur, who Alexander had criticized only weeks earlier for an apparent abandonment of his studio. Even under this pressure—the stress of dealing with the consequences of journalistic integrity—Alexander’s tone remains unchanged: pure, small, hopeful. She just can’t forget: “Every one of us, every person in my whole frame of vision, wants to build worlds. I’m sorry, but that’s amazing.” It’s inspiring to see video games through this perspective, and you can’t help but get caught up in the beauty and sincerity that Alexander finds at GDC 2014.

I read Clipping Through on my iPhone, a first for me. It is a minor detail, but something about the experience shed light on Alexander’s. As she rushes around San Francisco, her phone is always at the ready. She tweets and reads and takes notes on it. She sucks every last second of battery out of the device and I’m reading all about it on my own same device. It’s so trivial but it seemed like the right way to read it.

Her phone finally dies just as she settles into her plane seat, giving her the perfect opportunity to sleep off the restless week on her flight home. The career that has been her joy and pleasure and need for sleep, has become no longer sustainable. It is a career that she has excelled at exceedingly well. She excelled because she never became complacent, or, as the video-game academic Ian Bogost told her, she “hustled.” She always pushed the boundaries of her jobs. This digital book I read on my phone—a book chronicling this journalistic boundary-pushing—is the next evolution of her process. It is a wonderful circle of reflection and reinvention.

Leigh Alexander’s Clipping Through is a human experience. When video games are reduced to the wall of discouragingly spiteful and accusatory tweets, whether spiteful or not, or earned or not, it just makes me sad. Most of it does need to be said, but I just can’t handle the volume and concentration sometimes. We just weren’t made for it—a couple words from so many individuals in their own little corners of the world. It’s impossible to absorb. It isn't a human experience. 

We were made to absorb stories like Alexander’s. Stories of people coming together in the real world. Stories of one woman’s experience of these gatherings. Stories of fear and insecurity and, yes, some spite; but ultimately, stories of love, work, and thankfulness.

After being graciously introduced to a friend’s students, Alexander is caught up in his selflessness: “He is always, always thinking of someone else.” With resolution, she finally concludes: “There are good, good people in games. Always remember this: There are heroes.”

 You can purchase Clipping Through here.

[drawdistance]

TPHD POEMS III: Third Verse

Open drawers

and open doors just waiting to

be closed.

Just asking for

it.

/

A misguided irrigator

tangled among

the weeds and stalks sought out

a path to

victory.

It was a circle, the path, formed from

the beautiful accident of

pivoting geometry.

Except this last day is just derivative creativity.

Wet hair

and wet toes.

What do you think of them?

  They are shiny and pure and like the sun.

  Oh, I thought they were frozen, edible little nuggets and strings.

  /

  Get out of bed

and get it down: I should have.

  Now this is all I have to

say, see.

  /

  The box

covers your skin,

blocks the moisture and blocks the radiation.

Drink those in

and you will will live and you will die.

  The box sustains you. Is that what you want?

  /

  Soggy almonds

in

the sink.

Soggy dreams in

the wink.

  /

  The pile

terrified. It deterred.

You wouldn't believe its excavated cliff,

so jagged and tall it could swallow all your sons just like that if it crumbled.

They would live under

the pile, under

the hulking, steaming black; in

that cavernous city they would raise their children, and generations to

come would live out

their entire lives in

that monstrous place until

the tombs would fill it entirely and the babies coming out

would basically have no where to

go but straight into

the tombs themselves.

  But that's not the end because

the baby strength would overcome the ragged, dwindling shade.

So they would get out

and live as babies.

  Forever.

  /

  I applied

for a job on

the moon but I think only moon people are eligible.

  /

  Walk away

and never come back.

Walk away and please come back.

Walk away and never come back but look back at me every once in a while.

Walk away and never come back and never look back.

Walk away but also stay here.

Stay right here.

  Idk, do what you wanna do.

  /

  Ancient grains

are the best grains to

eat because Socrates ate that kind and he was brilliant.

  Dud.

  Blood clouds are the best clouds to

breathe because breathing in

that kind helps you replace all the blood you lose during the day.

  Dud too even though

I thought it would be better.

  /

  Shigeru Miyamoto

in

an enchanted grove plotting the next Zelda under

a pile of ocarinas, soaking up their ancient hollow wisdom.

  He is so happy.

  But I feel sad for

some reason.

  /

  Accidentally stayed the same

from my youth to

my adulthood.

  /

  Just gimme

all yer onions and stick ‘em right here.

That's right. Peel em back one layer at

a time and play me a beautiful song at

the same time.

  Yes, more spinach than you could possibly imagine. Just keep loadin’ it right in

here.

  /

  What ever happened

to Jack Johnson?

  /

  I have a donut on my shirt.

But it is also in

my heart. And on

my mind. And in

my stomach.

It is many places but it is only a picture.

A drawing so rudimentary its omnipresence might shock you, change your mind, change your heart.

  It is a ring so it goes on forever and never dies. It lives forever. The donut is alive.

  /

  Tension is good,

tension is good.

  /

  Jagged fingernails

as ragged and random as an oceanic coast.

Forgotten and remembered and lost and stony.

Like your dreams and fears.

Take them apart and see what's inside.

Keep going after

you think there's nothing else.

You'll find it there at

the bottom.

  But you'll also never reach the bottom.

  /

  Aren't you afraid

to

preheat the oven.

Don't you wanna ease the pizza into

it.

  You should be afraid.

  /

  Everything is a poem.

Everything comes from

your soul so it's that way.

  /

  Had the idea

that jet streams were the sound of

a distant chorus of

a thousand dog barks and now it's all I can hear

and I can't fall asleep.

  /

  Tabs open for a month.

Calling my name to

return to

work.

Too scared to

close them because

they might not get opened again.

Want to

keep hope and hold onto

it.

Want to

work but get distracted by

the buzzing and flares and hands and gags.

  Don't you dare close them. Just keep the faith.

  This too is basically going nowhere.

  /

  The rationalization

is coming back. I can feel it.

  Hold it off. Sustain the stasis.

Swap minds with

a platypus for

now and later.

It's fun to

let it all out. Every once in

a while. While

you think. While

you sleep. While

you smoke. While

you drink.

  Pretty straight forward. Not very metaphorical. Pretty embarrassing.

  /

  Stayed up

talking until

five with

Mark and Luke.

Used to stay up even later. Playing old video games. Listening to their covers.

  /

  The transition

from

your lips to

your face skin is chic, sleek, shear, and creepy.

  It's like a body snatcher basically.

  /

  If you cross your eyes

it makes it look like the 126 notification badge on

your mail app is on

your messages app.

  Like you actually get messages from

people instead of

just promotions from

Papa John's.

  /

  You can look at Pitchfork every morning

and then literally listen to

five cool albums on

the internet for

free while

you sit at your computer desk job.

  So what's wrong with that?

  /

  Expecting people

to

wash their hands with

barred soap in

your home lavatory is kinda like, well, kinda like something grimy and presumptuous. And kinda like a sticky bar covered in

pubes. Well, actually, it is exactly that. There is no simile to

behold or latch on to.

You float there aimless and floaty not knowing what to

think of

the oblique white lump. So you think what I told you and think it better you don't touch the sticky haired pile at all. And why should you?

Look at it.

Look at

it.

So you just look at

it.

  /

  Thought Let Down was on Kid A.

Feel embarrassed and tell know one. Not one soul near or far.

  /

  A big bulbous beast

taking forever to

put on

its socks and tie its shoes when

it is in

a massive hurry to

get somewhere.

  It's me.

  /

  Black light

brighter than black night.

It's hard to

tell the difference when

you can only find them both on

the moon.

  /

  I just assaulted

my teeth with sno cone, frosted flakes, and ramen.

  Without brushing after.

Time and space made me do it.

  /

  Telegrams

and televisions.

  Japanese and havanese.

  Miyazaki and teriyaki.

  Miyazaki and Mononoke.

  /

  Yes

I do. I do.

  I do this and that but most of all I DANCE.

  /

  When my home button works

I clap two times on

the inside.

/

See More of Matt's Illustrations at SWAMP365.

[drawdistance]

Lakeside Creation: On Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky Route Zero

I like to play Kentucky Route Zero at night. I close the blinds, stuff sheets under the door, and turn out all the lights. I shove those little headphones into my ears and hunch over my laptop with my face eight inches from the screen so even the dim light of the game’s pure black title screens causes my face to glow. I stay there until I forget that I am savagely hunched so. That is to say, I stay there until I am enraptured, absorbed—evaporated. Until I don’t exist anymore. Or, at least, until there is no way of knowing that I do.

It’s great when you don’t exist anymore because you can be anything. You could become one of KRZs characters—a possession it promotes through intensely personal (and hardly anything else) dialogue choices—but I like to simply become the air of that world on the northern edge of The South. Just to surround those people and places, and fill in all the gaps and the staggering depth of that world contained inside the thin screen tilted up into my face. When you snap out of it, you might even tilt your screen down towards you to search behind it, and, I swear, the absence of the world you won’t find can hardly be believed.

Conway can’t find the location of his current delivery address so he stops off at a service station to ask for directions. He has a dog at his side and you can click the icon hovering above the dozing pet to talk to it. The text box comes up and fills part of the screen and you read the words. They seem just right. You can click anywhere in the little scene and then watch Conway set out for it. He walks with a relaxed gait, and he holds himself with an easygoing attitude when he stands still.

The service station is iconic and sets the scene. Conway’s chugging delivery truck is to the right and there is nothing to the left. The pumps are up front, center…stage. Like stage sets, the items are the representation of things rather than the things themselves. They are no less meaningful for being imitation though. They may be even more so. With your lights out, it’s very easy for these small glowing characters and sets centered in the black frame to become your entire world. From dusk at that service station I entered that night eighteen months ago and still haven’t come out. You see, after the attendant passes off another delivery to Conway, he informs him that the only way to get where he’s headed is to take the Zero, Kentucky Route Zero. This is how all the shenanigans starts.

Kentucky Route Zero is being made by a computer. The computer, according its operators, Jake Elliot and Tamas Kamenczy, is apparently made of cardboard. Technically, I think what they mean when they say ‘cardboard’ is ‘magic cardboard,’ but I was unable to confirm this speculation. How a Cardboard Computer can eat electricity and output beautiful video games is beyond me, but the operators don’t seem frightened by the spooky machine.

Tamas and Jake tend to the Cardboard Computer’s calculations on warm, overcast evenings at a great, oak desk half submerged in the lapping tide of Lake Michigan. After the sun goes down, they say the Cardboard Computer hums a mechanical tune to match the rhythm of the small waves. They know it has stopped working on the game for the night, but they don’t push it. They let it take its time.

 Of course, this tale of the Cardboard Computer is only partially true. Cardboard Computer is a Chicago-based development studio composed of the two operators in my magical cardboard fiction. Elliot and Kamenczy have been working on Kentucky Route Zero since the beginning of 2011 after a successfully (meagerly!) funded Kickstarter campaign. What was originally pitched as a puzzle-based, sidescrolling platformer (to be released in Fall 2011, no less!) grew into something so much grander: “A game in five acts.” They literally use it like a subtitle like that: Kentucky Route Zero, A game in five acts By Cardboard Computer. Just say it out loud, taste the cadence, and fall in love with that title.

The project grew from a one-piece story into this five-act game as a result of a distinct shift in tone. The transition took longer than expected—longer than the Kickstarter backers expected and longer than Elliot and Kamenscy expected. But they refused to settle for the work they had already finished just because it was done. They weren’t afraid to scrap work chasing after what the game was becoming. And it was becoming something so much more special than even the original Kickstarter trailer conveyed.

The overall story didn’t really change though. Most of the characters in the game were there in the original pitch, only they used to be so much more utilitarian. The main playable character, Conway—a strapping brute with a floaty jump in the original platformer—would meet these characters and have them join him, but they were merely tools to access places inaccessible to Conway; Julian the eagle allowed gaps to be cleared, Junebug allowed electronic locks to be hacked. As Conway, you used the characters, and to Elliot, it just felt wrong. “We're not interested in getting the players to be strategists. We kind of want them to have this more human experience, more empathetic experience. Or also more kind of mysterious experience where they don't feel like they're in control. It's not a power-trip fantasy.”

Elliot’s statement basically sums up what KRZ turned into over the next twenty months. The trailer they released in October 2012 showed a much different design than the original. (It is a beautiful trailer, please go watch it on their beautiful website.) You could see how that original game could turn into this one, but the imagery, tone, aesthetics, design, and scenography—so basically everything—is different. The imagery is more iconic rather than realistic, the tone is more Appalachian rather than industrial-Appalachian (Sorry about that one.), the aesthetics are more flat rather than intricate, the design is more adventure rather than platformer, and the scenes are more theatrical with depth rather than Super Mario Bros. In this trailer the modern aesthetics and iconography make the game look flat at first, but then a lady walks into the open mouth of a cave and the camera arcs around to view the mouth more straight-on and Conway—this one a thinner more aged icon of a character—comes into view beside her. Suddenly this world seemed so deep and true, like it had just been waiting to be made known. Then the trailer ends with “December 2012” in big Kentucky-route-zero font. (Maybe it’s…Rockwell?)

Act I released in January 2013. Act II released several months later in May, and Act III released several months ago in May. (Yes, that is one year from act to act.) Act IV and V “will be released over the next year or so,” but that’s what they said about all five acts at the beginning so I don’t know how much faith you can put in their scheduling. It’s not like it matters though, because you can put faith in their ability to deliver profound surprises every scene of every act of KRZ.

The acts of Kentucky Route Zero are not titled but the scenes are. When you’re done exploring a scene you travel to the next area by an abstract map interface. Along the way you may stop off on the side of the road to investigate a burning tree or a barn or a dam. You never see these secondary points of interest though. Your view stays above the map as you read a description of them or what Conway says to his friends about them. After the descriptions and thoughts are exhausted, you click on any of the spider-webbed roads and watch the representation of Conway’s truck, a wheel, spin its way to the next mystery. The screen blackens, the scene titles appear and disappear, and the scene in all its detail and audio snaps into existence, like it had always been there. 

This exploration eventually leads you down a rabbit hole involving hallucinations, family debts, bureaucratic runarounds, non-Euclidian geometry, bears, cathedrals, eagles, station wagons, prosthetics, rockstars, mold, strangers, new jobs, and human beings. You may know this collection by its other name: ‘ART.’ That's kind of a gag, but I'm completely serious too. 

If you want to understand the plot of Kentucky Route Zero…there is always Wikipedia. It’s not that it’s impossible to follow. You just get so wrapped up in each moment and scene that you forget where you came from and where you are headed. And, in the case of an act transition, where you came from could be where the last act left you months previously. Trying to get a grasp on exactly what's going on can be disorienting, particularly in these act transitions. But, as Elliot said, KRZ is not about control. So it’s fine.

But even that sounds too negative—‘fine.’ KRZ is fine. Beauty is fine. Jesus is fine. See where that leads?

The receding of KRZs plot into the background is better than fine; it’s brilliant! It’s intentional.

When you select a response from the available options during conversation, it’s not in hopes of convincing the character you are talking to of doing something, or getting something out of them. Well, sometimes it is—like at the beginning when you are trying to get them to tell you what the Zero is and how to get on it—but your response options are usually not even phrased in a way that makes it clear how they will respond anyway. And how they do respond is often even more illogical. It’s not that the responses don’t make sense—though non sequiturs are not completely absent—they just seem…off. Yet, off in just the right way.

Eventually you stop hunting for the selection that you think will get you what you want and you just pick the one that speaks to you. You let the characters’ response wash over you. You pick another and you’ve just composed a poem. My brother, Matt, thought of this poetry-composition-through-dialog-selection idea, and I think it’s exactly right.

This poetry mixes with the beautiful scenes and makes them come alive. Sometimes scenes literally shift and transform after revealing conversations take place. Eyes are opened, minds are opened.

There is music in Kentucky Route Zero. To match the game’s visual aesthetics, it is often minimalistic, electronic, and modern. It is very good, obviously. Do you think these guys with such good eyes for design could possibly have lazy ears? Ben Babbitt is the final third of Cardboard Computer, though sometimes he is left off the development team list and simply called the ‘composer.’ His music accompanies those transformative scenes and makes them explode. His music is also there in the stillness, in the moseying, and in the poetry. It is there, waiting in the background for you to take notice. It is also not there, for longer periods of time than you would probably imagine. Babbitt's music comes at just the right times and fills the void visuals can't.

It wouldn’t be Kentucky without some good old-fashioned bluegrass though. And the Bed Quilt Ramblers have created some darn fitting bluegrass. Often the music is the production of in-game characters. These tangible musical moments, in conjunction with their evolving scenery, are simply stunning.

I like the episodic structure of KRZ because it gives me a chance to come back to its world and fall in love with it all over again. (It’s also a great marketing strategy because it has put the game on my mind for the last two years, and will for at least another! Though, it takes a work of staggering gravity to keep people around during such waiting periods, and I think the following KRZ has sustained is a testament to its specialness.) It’s like coming back to one of those games you have grown to love and make sure to play annually. (For me, Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and Ico.) Its aesthetics, mechanics, and design remain consistent so it feels like coming home, but it’s even better than those treasured games because its environments and story are always new. It’s the best of both. Familiarity and mystery. Expectation and surprise.

So my lakeside story about the magical cardboard computer creating in the mist of the most loved Great Lake is not true—but it might as well be; the Kentucky they have created is so saturated with surreality it’s a wonder Elliot and Kamenczy created it anywhere else. Rather than ‘surreal’ though, they probably prefer the descriptor “magic realist,” and the distinction is important. They used this phrase in the subtitle of their original Kickstarter—Kentucky Route Zero, a magic realist adventure game—and they’ve held onto it like a lifeline throughout the game’s development. The magic realism of Kentucky Route Zero is often somber, quiet, and still. But it is also bizarre, abstract, and self-aware. It contains the surreality completely and implies so much more: warmth, feeling, humidity, closeness, mundanity; but also intense opposites of those. At least to me it does.

Who knows what it actually means.

It has carried them through since the inception of Kentucky Route Zero. It’s bound to keep the Cardboard Computer going. And it’s bound to keep you guessing and loving. 

See more of Matt's illustrations at Swamp365.

[drawdistance]

Light Head

Singing like the sun. Singing like the moon and a thousand lights and stars and fire stars. Tried to keep them silent but I couldn’t keep the shouts and praise in. They just kept coming like the distant night - there’s no stopping it and you enjoy it and it’s forever your friend, the singing. It rolls over you like a big roller and flattens your mind and skull inside your head like a watermelon that reforms after the roller passes. The little singing stars put the pieces back together - the watermelon pieces, which are your head. No surprises here. Your head becomes a medium star like a large-scale onion. No suprises here. It starts singing too. It might grow up to be fierce like the old stars but it will mostly stay mild and glow like a dim light in an old mine shaft, an incandescent. It would kinda be a thin bright line like that. But little stars are best at stringing together little light string bits after they’ve fallen apart from the rolling sing-wave. They were made for it, by the big stars. They birthed them out straight to the stitching field to patch up your stringy light-head. No suprises here. Let them come over you. It kinda hurts but it’s mostly for the better, the reforming.

[drawdistance]

3 COOL PIECES! LOVE THE ILLUSTRATIONS TOO

Thanks tphd! I think Matt's illos put my writing to shame.

I connect with your writing very deeply, at least as deep as that pit over there. Keep it up and thanks for the shout out!

[drawdistance]

MORE TPHD POEMS

I’m making coffee

and you can suck it.

I am going to fly planes

and you can suck it.

  I am going to be imaginary.

  I don’t really want to fly planes now.

/

  Lean over

the bed and fold the shirt.

Lie down.

Your lower back will melt into

the floor and into

itself.

Watch it, or feel it at least: the melting.

It heals all wounds.

  /

  Bub

is a creepy big guy wearing overalls and nothing else.

  /

  Check out

my new laser.

It is a powerful laser and it is a handsome laser.

It is a handsome color. It is deadly.

  /

  Sightly clams

are nipping at my toes.

On their insides is nothing, but also a small ghost.

The ghost is brilliant and smart and knows the answers to

all the questions.

All the right questions.

Then the clams with nothing and ghosts on

their insides scuttled around on

the sand and spelled out the most beautiful answer to

the question I had whispered under

my breath.

  /

  Three beans

were exactly the same length.

They went end to end and wrapped around

the world.

So they solved world hunger.  

  /

  How many times

have you watched the world fall apart.

  Twice.

  Once when Jesus went to heaven from earth and

once when Nintendo released the Wii U.

  /

  The music

is a little too loud.

You can't hear my farts.

/

See more of Matt's illustrations at Swamp365.

Poetry inspired by Theron Jacobs. His Tumblr is the greatest thing to happen to the internet since the digital release of Radiohead's In Rainbows.

[drawdistance]

MAYBE TPHD POEMS

Susan Arendt

emailed me a job offer in my dream.

She is the managing editor of Joystiq.com.

That would be fun.

/

  Close the model

but keep all changes.

Or SolidWorks will crash.

  That's just how it works.

  /

  Talk to people

when you feel superior.

Realize it and feel like a chump.

Basically compare yourself to others before

you talk to them.

That's the worst thing you can do.

  /

  Hope

for engineers.

Hope for people.

In words. And in Jesus.

  /

  Boogers

from my nose are all over my office floor.

I picked them out and put them there.

I don't think very highly of my office so I do that.

  /

Plain rides

are fun.

If you have a gameboy.

  /

  Twin Peaks

is a show about crazy people.

They call home videos pictures.

They say funny things and act funny.

They wear eyepatches inside gas stations

and say "gone fishin'" to their wives after

they rub their ear lobes with their fingers after

they kiss their own hands.

They say the first name of

the person they are talking to before

everything they say to them.

Clear plastic body bag, sawmill, quarterback, ear plugs, eyepatch, cherry pie, FBI, Indian headress, drapes, confusion, night crimes, stop light, wheelchair and fireplace, weeping photographer, straight talk, blue blue jeans, baby-voiced receptionist, bar fights, admonitions and recalled apologies, donut stacks, and senior pics.

It is also way more confusing when

you are texting your girlfriend about the nclex the whole time.

Five outa five stars. Have you seen it?

  /

  Dead bodies

don't look like the people they were.

Their faces are theatrical and set up.

I guess it's because

part of 'em is no longer there.

But I don't really know how that works.

  /

  Chigger bites

will itch until kingdom come.

There's nothing you can do about it.

Just scratch your arms and legs off.

You will thank me later.

Actually they will stop itching eventually.

/

See more of Matt's illustrations at Swamp365.

Poetry inspired by Theron Jacobs. His Tumblr is the greatest thing to happen to the internet since the digital release of Radiohead's In Rainbows.

[drawdistance]

The Image of Valentine Filipov

I think about alarms most of the time. I think they are very annoying.

In my experience there are three different ways a person can wake up to an alarm. Usually you wake up before your alarm, your body anticipating the wake up time you set not only on your clock, but also in your mind. You lay there in that state of limbo, dreaming and waking persistently, awaiting the sound of the alarm but wishing it to never come. When your alarm goes off, you are fully conscious of what is happening and promptly get out of bed and  turn it off and start your day.

Other times your body is so tired that no matter how hard your mind tries to convince you  it is about time to get up, your alarm goes off before you regain consciousness. The alarm manifests itself in your dream as your mind wrestles with the exterior auditory input. Slowly your mind puts the pieces together as it meanders towards consciousness eventually convincing itself that the noise is in fact the alarm that you set the previous night and not the cry of your childhood friend falling down an endless well, which you were pretty sure was actually happening moments before. You are not fully conscious of reality until several moments after you have turned your alarm off.

Sometimes your mind lies somewhere between these two which allows it to snap from unconsciousness to consciousness in an instant. The unconsciousness is complete; there is nothing on your mind. Nothing. You are asleep and don’t even know it. Your mind has left behind all concerns, functions, dreams, and synapses.

You don’t even exist. Or at least you have no way of knowing that you do. 

Then your mind cracks as your alarm shatters the nonexistence, and you bolt upright in bed, the consciousness also complete. It is rather shocking and quite unpleasant and disturbingly memorable if you’ve ever had the misfortune of experiencing unconsciousness and consciousness only a moment apart.

Your brain will feel it: the full trek between the most distant parts of your mind in an instant.

I have made that trek more times than I care to count; they said I was just a deep sleeper.

Then there are the people who don’t use alarms at all: those that want a brief holiday from the machinations of society every once in a while, and those that never use them either because their mind is geared so accurately they wake at the exact moment they desire, or they have no reason to wake, and thus sleep their life away. While everyone has had days in the shoes of each of these sleepers, and have found them to be rather comfortable for a season, most people utilize alarms.

  The startling awakenings used to shock me, but I have realized that my life goes on. I go about my day, its monotonous cycle erasing thoughts and memories from my mind.

Setting.

Sleeping.

Waking.

Walking.

I don’t know about you, but I felt most alive when I was sleeping. There was more sense in my dreams than in the real world. Yet my dreams didn’t make complete sense. They seemed like a memory, except altered in some way. They all converged upon a single image, each night a different memory morphing to arrive at the same moment. Whether or not the memory had come to pass yet seemed impossible to perceive, but the volume of the moment overloaded my senses, the magnitude of its importance evident. But the ending was always cut short by an alarm, the image frozen in my mind.

It was frustrating losing that ending every night. Downright annoying.

Imagine my surprise, and joy, when I fell asleep one day and never woke up.

*          *          *

Sofiya Filipov stepped out of her car and closed the door. The dry voice on the radio had mentioned something about rain, and Sofiya had chose—or rather the flat tire on her car had chose for her—the exact moment to leave cover and be christened with the first rain drop from the gray cloud overhead. She was not stranded on the side of the road, but rather had been able to coast the car just off the main road into the parking lot of the hospital which was her intended destination. The evening wind had blown the rain clouds in from the East to where they now hung, demanding the attention and fear of all below, and darkening the landscape a shade.

The humidity and moisture did little to disrupt her naturally course brown hair which flowed wildly and beautifully when she was in the wind. She had the face of her father, a full blood Soviet, or so they used to be called, and the petite womanly features of her mother, an American five years her father’s senior. As she made the long walk from the back of the lot to the hospital across the steaming pavement, her face grew more and more into a grimace as it was assaulted by the rain. Her grimace did not make her ugly, as grimacing has a tendency to do to some people when they see a person they particularly detest, or when they decide to take a mouthful of lemon juice, or when it is obvious that something very unimportant, like losing a sock, has caused them to become annoyed, but instead, made her more attractive, as a grimace of determination can do if it is on the right person. With her lips pursed and her brow furrowed, Sofiya’s most striking features became even more prominent.  Her gold, thin-framed glasses added to her intellectual look without overriding her inherited features. Her chin was small and her jawline distinct; at the age of thirty-two, she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

The doors slipped open as Sofiya approached, and the receptionist at the counter asked her before looking up, “How can I help direct y-,” but exclaimed, “My goodness, you’re soaked,” after taking her eyes from her work.

Sofiya seemed to only hear the former; “I’m here to visit a patient.” The phone rang and the seated woman answered it as she handed Sofiya a visitor’s form on a clipboard. On the line labeled ‘relation to patient’, she slowly wrote, ‘sister.’

  As she walked down the hallway, now dimmed for the night, she saw the bright parallelogram projected onto the speckled tile through the open doorway. She was expected and she was late and she reached the door and stopped short of the light and hid behind the dark edge; Sofiya was not eager to face what was in the room.

She stood there dripping quite a long time, unable to decide if she truly believed her brother waited within that lit room, comatose and unable to respond. What “good news,” as her mother had said, could await her in that room? She pressed her back up against the wall of the hallway, forcing her shoulder blades into the jagged wooden numerals of the room label, willing the pain to give her an answer.

Eventually, after a good while, she slid down the wall and sat facing away from the room, focusing on the numbers across the hall. When this distraction failed, tears came to Sofiya’s eyes.

A shadow appeared in the bright outline of the door as her breathing became audible, and Sofiya saw its hand reach down and rest on her shoulder. Sofiya’s hands went to the place and grasped it, her sobs beginning to pass.

When her breathing came under her control, Sofiya turned her head up in that childish way that is only possible from below, and looked into the face of her mother with eyes wide open. Her mother’s face, though rough from age, was so soft and kind it brought comfort just looking at it. Many times when Sofiya was younger she had found that peace from distress came exclusively from that shape. Her voice was just as sweet and welcome as her face.

Sofiya rose to her feet into the brilliance of the light to view her father leaning against the wall, legs crossed. As she tilted her head to see around the door frame, her brother came into view, his eyes open, wandering the room.

Sofiya burst into tears as she hurdled toward his bed

She was above him saying, “Liev? It’s Sofiya, Liev. I’m here. Liev? Liev?” The tears choked her voice, causing intermittent explosions in volume and horrible gulps as she gasped for air. But Liev made no response; he was looking through Sofiya, his eyes mistakenly focused somewhere between her and the distant wall, unconscious of his sister above. 

Sofiya’s head dropped in frustration. It bobbed as she silently sobbed, the tears dripping from her nose onto her brother’s chest. Her shoulder blades came together as she inhaled deeply, the mirror image of the room number still visibly impressed into her back. After a good many tears had rolled off her face, Sofiya looked up. Liev was looking intensely into her face. Sofiya thought about it a while before starting.

She whispered as her voice shook, “Will you cry with me, brother?” Liev made no response. “Will you weep with me?"

Slowly, his face began to contort. His eyes were fixed on his Sofiya’s; his face became unsettling. His mouth was open in agony.

He started crying, loudly.

*          *          *

My joy passed quickly, at least relatively speaking. How long I’ve been like this, wherever I am or whatever I am, I cannot say. All I know is that the feeling of joy was fleeting and has since been replaced by a feeling of familiarity, a familiarity of my previous waking life.

I cannot say how I know that I am more aware of my subconscious life than my waking life. For what else have I to compare my waking life with other than my subconscious reality. With a basis of only the two, there is no way to distinguish one from the other except by the level of awareness I experience in each. With that reasoning, I would accept whatever reality I experienced most lucidly as my waking reality. And I did.

Most people do.

But something happened that day that I went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Like I said, I had always felt more alive when I was sleeping. But when I went to sleep that day, I had a sensation that was reminiscent of waking. I couldn’t quite pin it down then, but I’m sure of it now. I am experiencing my subconscious reality in my sleep.

That familiarity I felt was my past life. How do I know I am experiencing my subconscious in my eternal sleep and did not simply wake up into my subconscious as usual? Because it persists. In my past life, the waking and sleeping brought my subconscious and living realities, respectively, in cycles. But now there are no cycles; I retain a constant reality. And because it is not possible for me to be awake incessantly, I believe I am sleeping, probably in a coma of some sort.

I submit that any number of things may have happened to me of which I have no knowledge or understanding. But I know the feeling of experiencing my subconscious. The environments and features are unmistakable. And I have been in those same environments since that fateful day.

The day that they changed me.

The day they changed my mind.

Somehow, they swapped my subconscious and waking realities, and I don’t know whether I should thank them or kill them, not that I am able to do either at the moment.

*          *          *

Sofiya stood across from the doctor, glancing at Liev every so often. “What does this mean, Doctor?”

The doctor responded coolly, “It means your brother has a chance of waking up.”

The family attacked him with questions; the three of them antsy for an explanation.

  She had hugged and hugged and laughed and cried at Liev’s response. With her neck twisted back, she beamed at her parents as she held her brother’s shoulders, and looked back into his weeping face, embracing him again and again. The tears mixed with the laughter, and the tension in the room soon melted away. Anna and Valentine, Sofiya’s parents, had exchanged glances of relief at their daughter’s response to Liev’s new development.

“When did this start?” Sofiya asked excitedly.

“Thursday,” Anna answered. “That’s when we got the call.” She continued enthusiastically, “The doctor said he’s waking and resting in normal sleep cycles now!”

Valentine added reluctantly, “Though,” pausing, “they’re hardly any different. The amount he’s stimulated doesn’t seem to correspond to his response. Sometimes he cries like he just did with you, but sometimes it’s for no reason at all.”

Sofiya knelt against the side of Liev’s bed, her head turned right, towards her parents. She stood and walked towards her father at the wall as she said softly, “But at least he’s finally getting better. I mean, we didn’t know if he would ever come back.” Valentine closed his arms around her as she placed her hands on his chest.

He set his dimpled chin on her head as he said, “It really is great honey. His responsive mood seems to come randomly, so whether his tears are from a memory, you, or simply a mistake in his brain is impossible to tell right now.”

“I know dad.” Her voice was sweet.

“Okay.”

  Liev had been in a coma for the past six months, and he nearly scared the liver out of the Miss Pansy when he awoke while she was in his room making her sheet-changing rounds. She had paused after glancing his open eyes, looking up again for a double take. When the realization hit her, she had gone screaming and hollering right out the door and down the hallway to the receptionist. She had paced up and down those halls for a while after, unsure of what to make of the awakening, eventually phoning the doctor, who added Liev to his list of visitations that evening. When the doctor concurred concerning the magnitude of the increase of Liev’s consciousness, the parents were called, and the parents called Sofiya.

  “Minimally conscious?” Sofiya inquired incredulously.

“Yes. I realize that it’s not exactly the most poetic term. He is not in a coma but he is not fully conscious either.” The doctor waited to continue. “He is in between, how far from one or the other is impossible to tell right now; his awareness level comes in waves.”

The doctor knew his stuff, and he certainly was nice enough. He answered each of their questions with the utmost respect and the family grew comfortable talking with him. He was not like those doctors who inhabit the same space as doors: you may get some interaction out of them but they will most certainly remain wooden. He was personable, likable, and sure of himself and his knowledge concerning comas. But Sofiya found herself unsatisfied with his answers. She wanted to ask Liev about Liev, not this strange man she had only just met. But Liev was asleep and she could not wake him.

The questions continued.

  They had grilled him pretty thoroughly, and they all were becoming rather tired. “The main thing to remember is that your son now has a chance to come back.”

The doctor quickly added, “Not that your son is absent,”

Anna smiled. “Yeah. It’s okay. You don’t have to sweeten you words just for our sake.”

Valentine stood up out of his chair, placing his hand on the small of his wife’s back and saying, “We know he’s not all there. We accept where he is and where we are. We aren’t the kind of people to fuss about the things that we can’t change.” Sofiya looked intently into his face and watched his mouth move. “What we can change for the better, we do together and as often as we can. But whatever happens, happens; though I’m glad to hear you have hope of a recovery.”

The doctor pondered Val’s word’s, eventually deciding, “It’s healthy, your response.” He smiled, glanced at his clipboard, looked back at the family of four, and said smiling, “Well, good night.”

“Good night doctor,” Valentine answered for the four of them, and the doctor turned for the door. He lifted Liev’s clipboard up to the holder on the door, pausing in mid air.

Now under the doorway, he slowly set the board into its place as he turned back to the family, saying, “I usually don’t tell people this. Probably because I’m not supposed to. After all, I’m an MD, not a psychologist.” Pausing again, he finally continued. “How you choose to handle this has more effect on your son, and brother,” glancing at Sofiya, “than you may think.”

The Filipovs were unsure of how to respond to such a statement so none of them did.

The doctor glanced at his watch. It was eight o’clock.

“Come to my office at ten fifteen. There is someone I want you to meet. She is a sort of neurologist but don’t tell her I said that. She has something to show you that I think you’ll be very interested in.”

The Filipov’s were stunned by the bizarrely ambiguous request. Sofiya was the first to respond.

“Two hours. Where is your office?” Sofiya asked.

“The receptionist can tell you; I forget half the time myself.”

“But why the wait,” asked Sofiya.

“The psychologist has a ways to come. I would just have her show you now but she’s away at the moment.”

Anna inhaled, “Don’t make her come all the way here just for us. Certainly not at this time of day. She’ll have to drive home in the middle of the night!”

“I assure you it won’t trouble her in the least. This is what she does. She needs to come here tonight.”

Sofiya proposed, “Can’t we just call her on the screen?”

“I’m afraid not. What she has to show you can only be...” he searched for the words, “experienced in person. Ask the receptionist for my office number. Ten fifteen.”

Valentine voiced, “I assume you do not tell this to every family you talk to. So my question for you is: why us? Is it something about Liev? Something about us?”

“You are correct Mr. Filipov. And my answer is that it will make more sense when she talks to you. I’m sure of it.” The reassuring look on the doctor’s face seemed to satisfy the family’s inner thoughts.

Just as the doctor was leaving, Valentine spoke: “All this time you have been so formal with our rising temperament and endless questions, soothing our fears and reassuring our hope. You called me Mr. Filipov, and I embarrassingly realized that I have not got your name.”

The doctor’s face showed his genuine appreciation of the cordial man. “My name is hard to pronounce. Most people call me Dr. Z.”

“Nice to know you Dr. Z,” Val said smoothly nodding his head with his arms crossed.

Sofiya asked snobbishly, “What are we to do while we wait.”

“Take a nap; that’s what I’m going to do. You’re going to need the rest. Just don’t forget to set an alarm.”

Dr. Z disappeared into the hallway, stopped at the front desk, and made a call.

*          *          *

I think it happened the day I went to SciMag. That day is kind of fuzzy because I wasn’t supposed to remember it. But I wasn’t supposed to end up wherever I am now either. I guess nothing really went as planned that day. I don’t remember all of it yet the memory is surprisingly vibrant.

As usual, the air was dry and my lips were cracked.

I stepped through an opening in the bushes to view a row of buildings before me. They were bricked together into one amorphous mass like those big city homes built in the early twentieth century; their verticals, perfectly aligned, but their tops, a set of random parallel lines and peaked roofs. I remember recognizing the beauty in its unshaped, yet structured grandeur. It was the sort of thing I always found beautiful. But beauty no longer speaks to me, and possibly may never again.

Scimag had converted the home into its offices a couple years earlier, installing the equipment over the course of several days.

I had watched them from across the bushed-in parking lot from the window of my apartment and didn’t think anything of it. Little did I know I would be crossing that parking lot several years later, kicking my feet through the dried and faded yellow and red leaves, downed after the October winds robbed the trees of their coverings. It too was a beautiful thing. The topography was ever changing; the frail piles formed and unformed at the force of the wind, never to be the same again.

I also, was never to be the same again.

The four steps up to the door were brick, and as I gripped the door handle, beginning to shift my weight to pull it out, I paused to read the words etched into the glass embedded in the door frame.

I was distracted reading the text and the door burst open and crashed through my nose, my chapped lips leaving a red imprint on the glass like a St. Valentine’s day image. The dots above it from my bloodied nostrils gave the image a toad like quality, quite similar to the stumpy man before me at first glance.

He said something about being really sorry, and I could tell he meant it by the tone of his voice. His arms were so full of boxes they covered his face.

He set the boxes on the flat concrete cap of the brick stair guard and rushed me inside. The interior went by in a blur as the tears in my eyes clouded my vision. Shapes were indistinct; I saw only colors. The egg shell of the ceiling was tinted just a hint orange from the setting sunlight coming through the west windows and reflecting off the walls. I felt the carpet through my flat sole shoes as I tilted my head back to keep my blood inside my nostrils; that ferrous taste came to the back of my tongue.

The man led me to a sink after flipping a light switch and guided me through my own clean up. He pulled the towel down, soaked it, and pushed it to my nose.

After my eyes were cleared, and my nose stuffed with tissue, I viewed the man for the first time. He was old, maybe five feet tall. His glasses were the larger kind, not square but rounded, and thick! White tufts stuck out from under his baseball cap blocking his ears from view. He was a plain and simple man in every good way. He reminded me of my chemistry teacher in college; he looked like he could tell you everything about anything if you just were brave enough to ask him.

He asked me if I would be all right, apologized once more, and said something about keeping the pressure on it before abruptly leaving. He may have said more, in fact I’m sure he did, but it is not coming to mind at the moment. The images I remember clearly, but almost everything else is guesswork, especially the words.

  I remember coming to myself in that room, as if the pressure I had been applying to my nose had blocked all cognition. I pulled the towelette from my nose and stared at the blood stain. I applied a different clean spot to my nose and pulled it away. The towel remained white.

I assume I had been lost in the mystery of why I had come to Scimag in the first place.

As I looked around the room, I noticed it was more or less the same as any dentist room. That was when I realized there was a doctor in the room.

Apparently I didn’t think anything of it. I felt very comfortable with the woman.

When I asked the doctor what Scimag specialized in she said something about the science of memory. Then she started tilting me back.

She leaned over me, flipping a switch on the console to my left and adjusted my headband. An image of my father immediately appeared in my mind. I don’t how to explain it, but I saw my father inside my head, or rather, who at first looked like my father but turned out to be Donatas Banionis. I recognized the image from my high school English class. It was the 1970’s film adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s scifi classic Solaris.

The doctor said something about focusing and Mr. Kelvin.

It would have made sense if she had said, “Try to focus on Mr. Kelvin,” because I was. The character of Kris Kelvin was all I could see.

However, of everything said that day, I am most certain of what the doctor actually said: “Try to focus, Mr. Kelvin.”

Who Mr. Kelvin was I did not know, but I was pretty sure he was missing his appointment at Scimag, driving away with his back seat full of boxes wearing a Chicago Cubs cap, stretching his neck to barely see over the dash.

*          *          *

As Sofiya, Anna, and Valentine napped, they each dreamed a different dream. With Liev weighing heavily on each of their minds, they naturally dreamed of him. 

  Anna dreamed she was on the lakes of Canada. In a two person kayak, she and her little son traveled through the dark, frigid waters. They came to a rock face. Trees were hanging over the edge, their roots twisting every which way in search of dirt and ultimately moisture. As they went to explore a break in the face of the rock, the roots that dangled down kept poking Liev in the eyes.

The passage narrowed until their lengthy two-man kayak became lodged in a curve. Anna panicked as the roots grew around Liev locking him in place, eventually completely entombing the small boy.  The roots wrapped around his body like a spider’s catch with only his face visible. The littlest ends of the roots wriggled their way though Liev’s ears.

The screams were horrendous.

Anna wanted to stop the pain but she didn’t know what to do. She pulled at the grimy roots, blackening her hands. She could hardly look at her boy’s face, the shape deformed and stretched by its own muscles and tendons underneath.

Anna weeped at her inability to help her little boy. She cried and cried.

Eventually, Liev’s screams turned to intermittent yelps and a silent, stone sob inside the tomb of roots. He told his mother, “Mom, it’s okay. It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. I just don’t like them inside my head is all. When things get in your head, that’s when you get messed up. Don’t let them put things in your head. You can’t let them put things in your head. It will change your mind. It will mess you up. You won’t be yourself. You’ll be everybody else.”

Anna cradled the boy’s face in her hands leaving black handprints on his cheeks. She looked into his eyes and knew he meant what he said. She sat there on the lodged kayak in front of Liev for hours swatting away little roots trying to weasel their way into her son’s skull.

  Valentine dreamed of a Red Wings game.

The stands were embarrassingly vacant, and Valentine could guess why. The Chicago coach was deranged.

Laughing maniacally at the players on the ice, he slapped some of their helmets grinning excitedly.

“Haha, only one period left boys. You’ve got twenty minutes to show me you’re not a complete waste of money.” The coach crossed his arms and threw his head back as he arched his back to let out a terrible guffaw.

He was childlike, acting more like a chimpanzee than a hockey coach. He taunted the other teams players, threw objects at them, and jumped up on the barrier, crouching precariously on his toes, laughing and pointing at his own injured goalie on the ice. He walked along the barrier as if on a tight rope trying to impress his players. The officials repeatedly warned his ridiculous behavior, but he was never ejected because Valentine didn’t want him to be; he was too interested in the strangely demented man.

“Aw, you’re gonna have to come out?” he mocked in an exaggerated voice.

But the second string goalie was missing. The coach laughed at the notion and improvised, pointing at Liev, who Valentine just noticed was sitting next to him.

“You! I want you to be goalie. Surely you can do better than this sod,” he said as he kicked the bleeding goalie, now in the box. The little Liev ran down before Val could stop him. But he looked so excited as the coach, grunting like a tough guy, gave him a behind the back high five, and he saw his face when he suited up in the huge uniform, so Val decided to let him be.

The coach playfully shoved Liev onto the ice who seemed to be apprehensive about his previous excitement, as Val was also. “Don’t forget your helmet,” the coach said with a giggle as he tossed the mask to Liev.

The game was underway and the coach was as giddy as ever, eager to see the performance of his new shining star. But the uniform was way to big for Liev. He could hardly hold his stick with the massive gloves, and the shin pads came up to his chest. Little Liev let in every puck that came at him, the coach’s laugh growing more grotesque with each passing goal until the end of regulation. 

For the first time in the game, the coach was still. He simply stood with a very satisfied closed-mouth smile on his face; he was obviously very pleased with his selection, though Val was not sure why.  Liev headed doggedly ashamed back to the player’s box with his head hung low. The transit seemed to never end.

  Sofiya dreamed of a white van.

It had pulled up in front of her childhood home, crashing through the plastic trashcan, spilling its contents into the yard. From where Sofiya sat inside their home, the massive oak in their front yard blocked her view through the window to the driver of the van as she looked up from her book. She had heard the roar of the engine before the van came into view, and she knew its purpose from the moment she heard it; she had to find Liev, quickly.

She heard pounding above. She ran out the front door, the men in white painter’s suits already running towards her. Their grizzled beards and long shaggy hair chilled Sofiya to the bone. Even more frightening were their uncovered faces which shifted in and out of shadow, indistinct of all human facial features.

Sofiya came out from under the front roof overhang and was blinded by the intensity of the sun as she craned her neck up  to the left while spinning around to get a view of the second story roof, from which Liev was now throwing rocks. He had brought the collection of stones to the roof in a small bucket, and was now trying to land them in a second bucket he had left in the backyard, but he missed consistently.

Sofiya tried to tell him to stay on the roof but it was no use. He had run out of rocks and was already making his descent down the ladder to the first roof, humming a tune gently and contently.

She knew it was inevitable: Liev being taken. She couldn’t make Liev hear her voice no matter how loud she screamed.

As Liev was thrown into the open doorway, her fear became so intense she was nearly paralyzed. She did not want to get any nearer to the van because its aura consumed all life; however, she hesitantly made her way across the lawn towards the rumbling beast.

Just as she began timidly tapping on the closed sliding door of the white van, her breathing chopped and intermittent, the engine engaged the driveshaft and the van rocketed away. Sofiya turned her head to the left, watching the back of van grow smaller and smaller down the very straight road.

She went and sat under the oak tree and thought about how they had taken him.

She had missed it; he was up on the roof and was all of a sudden being thrown into the back of the van. She could not figure out what she had been doing to have missed the whole thing.

  Liev dreamed he was laying in a hospital bed.

There were two people sleeping in maroon, padded chairs across the room. There was a third sleeping in a chair of the same kind near to him.

Liev found the three people very beautiful, and he thought sharing the room with them was very peaceful.

Then a thin figure entered the door to Liev’s right. It wore black tights and a tight-fitting black cotton shirt that wrinkled as he stealthily moved around the room. His stealth was not practical but theatrical, enhanced by his Shakespearian comedy mask.

The smile only frightened Liev.

 Liev could tell it was a man by the way he tip-toed around the room with exaggerated steps, mocking the sleeping three as if he was a child trying to remain silent. He immediately knew the figure meant no good, with the smiling mask intended purely for irony, but could not will any part of his body to move in order to warn his three new friends. The figure was not trying to hide from Liev, in fact, he was practically performing, using the room as his stage. Liev would not have been surprised if he took a bow before exiting. But he remained, and was silent.

His silence sucked the ambient sounds from the room. The fan overhead, the whirring of the instruments beside his bed, the creak of the floor from the figure’s shifting weight; nothing escaped the immense gravity of the black figure. Liev always imagined outer space would be something like this.

The figure taunted Liev, miming throat-slitting motions on his three friends.

Apparently the man was performing for himself, because he stiffed up suddenly as if he had just noticed Liev was in the room. He tilted his head forward and said angrily in a simple, strong voice, “What are you doing here?”

When the man broke the silence, he broke the tension with it. More comfortable now after the eerie silence, Liev wanted to ask the man the same question but could not respond.

The man drew closer.

“How am I supposed to perform with an audience?” Liev again could not respond, this time grateful, at a loss for how to respond to such a paradoxical question.

The figure drew closer still.

“They tell me, ‘Hit center stage with a bang!’” He flourished the word with a wave of his hands. Then his hands dropped disappointedly limp to his sides as he said, “So, where do they expect me to go?” Each of his questions seemed to make less sense to Liev than the one that came before it.

“They don’t like me. That’s why. They never have. They never appreciated me or my clothes or my mask. And now you’ve got nothing good to say about me either!” Liev was afraid of the stalking creature upon his entrance, but how he was just annoyed by the self-administered depression of the sad masked man. At least these statements did not expect a response that Liev was unable to give.

The man turned from the bed, untying the bow that secured his mask, and slowly shuffled his feet across the room. The clang of the metallic smile on the tile floor disguised the crash of the window slamming shut as the depressed trouper plummeted ten stories.

  The clatter startled the napping Filipovs and awoke them abruptly.

“I’m so sorry,” Miss Pansy ended with teeth clenched behind open lips. She looked dreadfully embarrassed to have awoken them and promptly bent down behind the bed to retrieve the metallic bed pan.

Anna was as sweet as ever after the feeling of shock as passed, saying for the three of them, “Oh, don’t worry about it. We’ve been sleeping long enough anyways.” And after looking at her watch, she said, “Oh shoot, we should have woken up five minutes ago. Thank you Miss Pansy.” Anna ushered with her hands as she said to Valentine and Sofiya, now standing, “Come on, it’s ten fifteen. We still need to get the number from the desk too.” Valentine grabbed his khaki coat and pushed his arms through the holes as Sofiya looped the strap of her purse off the back of her chair and over her shoulder.

Miss Pansy said, “Drive safe. It’s Saturday night.”

Being the last in the room, Sofiya said, “We’re actually not going home. We have a meeting with Dr. Z.”

“Oh. For what?” But Miss Pansy quickly stopped herself, “Oh my Lord, there I go again. Always trying to get in people’s business. Don’t let me interrogate you like that honey. Now you go have a good night and talk to Dr. Z about whatever you want to talk about.”

Sofiya smiled as she left Liev’s room.

*          *          *

I am pretty sure the world is gone now. The last thing I saw was my father. I guess life could be worse.

Because what I went through in that room, the procedure or therapy or whatever you want to call it, was intended for Mr. Kelvin, not the character but the man who placed me in his spot, and not intended for me, I suspect that my mind reacted differently than his mind and what the lady in the room was expecting.

I remember being awake in that chair and then being where I am now, though the feeling from the chair continued into this place. I suspect I stayed in my subconscious while traveling into my current location because the shock of the error, or whatever happened, put me to sleep without allowing my subconscious to subside.

It didn’t hurt, I mean, there wasn’t a painful explosion in head. All I know is that I was in that room with the doctor, watching Solaris inside my head, and then I wasn’t. It took me a while to realize it, but I know for sure I am not there anymore.

While I know that, I can only wonder practically everything else. I wonder where I am and how long I’ve been here.

I wonder if I am alive or dead.

I’ve never thought of this until now, but I wonder what my family is doing.

My mother and father.

My sister.

*          *          *

The Filipovs had got the office number from the desk lady, taken the elevator to floor ten,  two lefts turns, and one right, and were now standing before room ten ninety-eight. It was ten twenty-one when Valentine knocked on the wood door; they heard voices inside the office.

Dr. Z beckoned them to let themselves in, and as Valentine turned the lever handle and cracked the door, he saw a brunette twist her neck to the right from a seated position to see the entering family.

The office was a decent size for five people. The matching chairs opposite and facing each other in which Dr. Z and the woman sat were complemented by the perpendicular couch between them, which also displayed its exposed, ornately-carved, wooden legs, all of which sat on a lavishly detailed rug atop the tile floor. Completing the square was Dr. Z’s handcrafted mahogany desk.

The woman and Dr. Z stood to greet the Filipovs.

The woman extended her hand to Valentine, looking him straight in the eye, saying, “It’s wonderful to finally meet you Mr. Filipov. My name is Elena Chakwas.”

Dr. Z imposed, “Dr. Elena Chakwas,” emphasizing the doctor. Valentine gracefully took the woman’s hand in his own. As if he was trying to make up for his embarrassing introduction to Dr. Z, Valentine was sure to make this introduction formal, maybe even grandiose.

He let Elena’s hand down with his own right hand while stepping to the side, placing his extended left hand on his wife’s back, and introducing her saying, “This is my beautiful wife Anna.” She rolled her eyes at her husband’s excessive embellishment, acting annoyed but actually relishing the compliment, and accepted the hand of Dr. Chakwas, who smiled sweetly with her mouth small. Valentine slid his left hand over his wife’s back and around her left shoulder, pulling her closer to reveal Sofiya.

Valentine gestured with his free right hand as he said, “And this is my lovely daughter Sofiya,” who accepted the compliment exactly like her mother.

“It’s wonderful to meet all of you,” Elena said graciously, shaking Sofiya’s hand.

“My son Liev could not be here, but I suspect you know his condition,” Valentine said.

“Yes. I am very sorry about the whole thing,” Elena said looking down at the end.

Dr. Z rolled the chair around from behind his desk, saying, “Please sit,” gesturing Sofiya into his previous seat, and Valentine and Anna onto the small couch, as he took his desk chair. With the five circled together in Dr. Z’s office, the conversation began.

Elena started. “You’re all probably wondering what I have to do with this whole thing, and why Dr. Z called me here to talk to you.” The Filipovs shifted their weight in their seats, uneasy about what was to follow, but never more eager in their lives.

Elena continued, “I’m sorry for the delay. I only just landed back in Chicago this morning. I’ve been out of the country for six months.”

Anna said, “Liev’s accident was six months ago, to the day.”

“I know. I left the day your son went into a coma. I am the head researcher at a Alzheimer’s clinic specializing in visually impaired patients. My research often does take me out of the country, but the extreme length of this last trip was caused by an extenuating circumstance. An accident. A foolish misunderstanding that I am ashamed to say put your son into his coma.” The family was still, each of their pair of eyes were locked on Dr. Chakwas. Dr. Z glanced at each of their ghostlike faces one at a time, studying their features while predicting their reaction to the new detail.

“What do you mean accident?” Sofiya blurted.

At the same time, Anna asked, “What is the name of your clinic?”

Valentine waited quietly.

Elena folded her hands on her lap, feeling the smooth texture of her silk dress, as she said, “I work for the Scimag research group at Fourth and Trenton.” Dr. Chakwas focused on her words.

Anna said, “That’s where Liev lives!” Her tone was full of guess and suspicion.

“Yes. Like I said, Scimag specializes in Alzheimer’s research specifically for visually impaired patients. Your son was accidentally put through a testing session for patients.”

Pulling her upper back from the support of the couch backing, Sofiya leaned toward Dr. Chakwas as she supported her chin with her elbows on her knees and said with scorn, “What happens in a testing session?”

“Well...” Dr. Chakwas started immediately, but at a loss for words, paused to straighten herself in her chair, starting again, “Using an MRI, we capture the data from the visual centers of the brain of healthy control subjects as they watch movies. We then transmit this data into the visual centers of the the brain of visually impaired Alzheimer’s patients. Your son’s brain was on the receiving end of Solaris.”

“What’s Solaris?” asked Anna, mystified.

“It’s a science fiction film from the 1970’s. We collect suggestions for specific movies from the family members of the patients, in this case specifically, Kathleen Kelvin, the husband of Ben Kelvin, the man I just spent the last six months trying to get released from a southeastern Balkan prison. Mr. Kelvin suffers from dementia as a result of his Alzheimer’s disease and got himself into trouble after leaving Scimag that day. Somehow he placed your son in his place for the transmission and escaped.” Dr. Chakwas pushed the strand of hair off her cheek and behind her right ear as she said added quickly and ashamedly, “I’m very sorry to tell you that I have no idea why your son came to our offices, whether forced or of his own will, how he ended up in a transmission seat, or how Mr. Kelvin escaped with the patient records from the last three years.” The room was quiet other than the creak of Dr. Z’s swiveling wooden chair, the Filpovs pondering Elena’s words.

Elena continued with apprehension in her voice, “I’m sorry I have nothing to tell you about how your son came to be in that chair.” She waited, looking into the faces of the three Filipovs.

“But, I was there when it happened.” She lowered her head and continued staring at her writhing hands and wrists, “I was distracted, thinking about where our records could have gone. It was late in the afternoon and I got lazy. I skipped the checks. Checks that were instituted to prevent the very thing that happened to your son.” She looked up with tears in her eyes, the first already fallen, caught in between her cheek and nose.

Anna said stuttering, choking on her own tears, “How did it happen?”

Elena quietly snorted the way crying people do before saying, “That’s the thing. I don’t know. I know what happened, but I don’t know why he went into a coma. When I realized your son, not Mr. Kelvin, was in the chair, he was already unconscious. The situation didn’t seem too serious at first, so I left to find Mr. Kelvin, leaving a technician with your son. All I can guess is that the stimulation from his own eyes mixed with the external stimulation of Solaris and overloaded is mind. We normally place sleeping masks over the eyes of the patients to prevent this, though their eyes provide little stimulation to their visual centers anyway. The stimulation is rather intense; it is intended to prevent neural degradation, but we never knew the overstimulation could cause this type of damage.” She inhaled after finishing abruptly, now out of breath.

Valentine said calmly, “How did our son end up in this hospital with no trace of where he had come from or what had happened to him?”

“I don’t know Mr. Filipov. I left your son with a technician after foolishly not assuming the worst. He had come to tell me that they had found a witness outside who saw Mr. Kelvin walk out with boxes, and came to my assistance when he saw your son. The situation seemed to be under control, and after discovering that the street camera got the license plate number of Mr. Kelvin’s vehicle, I left instructions with the technician to handle your son and left immediately. It was stupid. Looking back I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Sofiya asked, “Didn’t the camera get a view of Liev?”

Elena answered, “Yes, but only of him coming through the break in the ivy fence and crossing the street.”

Sofiya posed more questions: “What did your technician do? Why did he not tell the hospital anything? How could Liev have arrived here without source or cause?” Each of her questions grew increasingly disgusted.

“I myself have wondered the answers to those questions as intensely as you just have. But the endless wondering has given me none of their answers.” The Filipovs looked away from Dr. Chakwas, focusing on nothing in particular.

Elena looked down, then at Dr. Z who returned her gaze. And after glancing at floor, she looked up and said finally, “That technician committed suicide the night of your son’s arrival at this hospital.”

Valentine, Anna, and Sofiya continued their gaze into each of their respective indiscrete locations.

“I’m sorry that I know hardly anything that you hoped to discover tonight,” Elena apologized adding, “But I think I have a way to coax Liev from sleep.”

The three Flipovs, who were studying the detailed rug, focusing on Elena words, all looked into the face of Dr. Elena Chakwas at these words.

*          *          *

My sister is beside me.

I am laying in bed and she is seated to my right in a gray plastic chair, holding my hand with both of hers. I see only the top of her head, her nose glued to her thumbs at my hand.

She is crying and talking and crying, but I can’t understand her words.

  But then I heard them in between the sobs.

They are the words of prayer.

It is a prayer for my life, for my very soul.

*          *          *

Dr. Chakwas positioned the headband on Anna, saying, “You’re not going to feel anything. Just focus on your husband.” Anna and Valentine sat facing each other in gray plastic chairs along the length of Liev’s bed. Curly wires hung from Anna’s headband terminating at the headband around Liev’s skull. There was a sleeping mask over Liev’s eyes.

Dr. Z and Sofiya stood against the wall opposite Liev.

  Elena flipped the switch on the console to her right as she gazed into Liev’s face, trying to gage his acceptance of the transmission. He grimaced immediately; a good sign, Elena thought.

As Valentine said, “What is supposed to happen?” Liev reached up and pulled the sleeping mask from his eyes. Fearing a second coma, Valentine jumped from his seat and pulled the mask down over his son’s eyes. But Elena had already ceased transmission of Anna’s view of  Valentine Filipov.

“It’s okay,” Elena said with a blank expression, “You can take it off.”

Dr. Z and Sofiya were now standing close.

With his face hovering over his son’s, Valentine slowly slid the mask up.

*          *          *

I have a memory of my mother crying. I don’t remember what happened between the hallway and seeing my mother, but I remember the lighting. The room was dark, lit only by the light pouring in through an open doorway. She was sitting on the toilet I think; there were tears and the noise.

I wanted to help, to make the pain stop hurting, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help my mother because she wasn’t hurt.

My father came to me and explained that sometimes people cry not because they are hurt but because they are sad. I asked my father why people cry when they are sad, and he said that people cry when they are sad because they cannot change what they are sad about.

Unchangeable? What cannot be changed? I was skeptical.

My father was telling me that people go stiff and cannot come back, and sometimes people go stiff sooner than people think is fair. I asked where the stiff people go, and my father said that no one in the whole world truly knows, but most people trust that where they go is a good place. He told me that he hoped I was in a good place, and hoped I would come back.

My father paused.

When I thought on my father’s last words, I always wondered what he meant by that, but the confusion never amounted to anything nearly as inscrutable as that pause.

I always thought that memory queer because my father paused for such a long time, unsure of how to continue. Its duration so long, I cannot remember what he said next; I have a suspicion I have never heard it in the first place.

Is it a memory at all, or the persistent dream of my waking reality? Was my father’s image paused each morning by my alarm?

What I do know is that the image of Valentine Filipov pondering his next words remains with me to this day. However, I honestly cannot say whether it is the image of my father from my childhood memory, the image of Banionis from Solaris, or a still from the prophetic vision of my waking reality, paused on my father’s face each morning at the sounding of my alarm. The three have melded into a single reality inside my mind.

Nevertheless, it is an image that has persisted: the face and mouth of my father searching for the perfect words.

I saw my fathers mouth taste the words, approving some and dismissing others.

In that pause my father aged, and his image became clear to me. My broken mind came together, the two pieces made into one by some angel of clarity. Then I felt that age old sensation between dream and waking. It was a feeling I have not felt in a very long time.

I saw my father speak and heard his words. His language was no longer a memory.

For the first time, waking up felt like I was coming alive.

      Author’s Note and Errata

The main inspiration of the story came from a November 2011, TIME article entitled ‘A Flicker of Consciousness’ that I found in an online database. I took the family directly from the article, only Valentine is the vegetative patient in real life, and I created Liev and swapped Anna and Sofiya’s roles. The part where Sofiya coaxes Liev to cry actually happened, only between Valentine and his wife Sofiya.

The visual image capturing using an fMRI came from a March 2012 Mechanical Engineering article about neurologists capturing the data from the visual center of people’s brain while they watch movies and form images from the data that nearly match the original film images. I completely fabricated the notion of stimulating visually impaired, Alzheimers patient’s minds with the visual data in order to help them retain their memory. This treatment is not based on any scientific facts.

The film reference was originally The Great Gatsby, but I changed it to Solaris so that the actor Banionis could be confused with Valentine. Redford’s red hair couldn’t really fit with a russian named Filipov.

Beyond the direct inspiration, I was also inspired by the idea that certain dreams can be so vivid that they become difficult to distinguish from actual memories. Over time, it becomes impossible to determine whether the event actually happened or was merely a dream.

When my brother Mark was young, he thought my dad had pushed him off of our roof, and he became somewhat afraid of him. My father of course would never do this, but my brother was convinced of it. After my brother talked with my mother about it, he realized it must have been a dream that had him convinced. I tried to express this fusion and confusion of dreams and memories in this story, hoping to possibly allow readers to experience the effect if they have never experienced it in real life.

While some of things in the story are purely fiction, many of the events, locations, and memories found in the story are based on real events, dreams, memories, and random things from my own life. However, I took many liberties in adding or removing whatever came to mind at the time of their writing.

The “I know / Okay” dialogue between the Val and Sofi I stole directly from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

‘Scimag’ is a shortened version of ‘Science and the Imagination,” the science fiction class for which I wrote this story in the first place.

The Lakes of Canada in Anna’s dream is a song by The Innocence Mission that I find beautiful. I also phrased a line in that dream after a lyric in the song Cattail Down by mewithoutYou.

The depressed trouper in Liev’s dream was inspired by V from V for Vendetta.

The name Chakwas is the name of a doctor from the video game Mass Effect 2, though the characters are similar in name only.

I would also like to thank my brother Matt for creating the sweet cover art.

[drawdistance]

Dimly Seen, Faintly Heard: On Terry Cavanagh’s Naya’s Quest

It is difficult to talk about Naya’s Quest without talking about its creator. Terry Cavanagh is a thirty-year-old Irishman who started developing Naya in his London flat in 2011. Browsing the history of his public development blog—which most developers keep these days—you can see the game take a back seat to other projects through the rest of that year, and 2012 as well. But it never goes away. It pops up a dozen times through the years, always with a caption of “Trying to figure out what this thing is,” or something like that. Cavanagh was not ignoring Naya, he was wrestling with it. With what he thought it should become; with what it was becoming on its own. He had developer friends making music and writing a script for the game, but he eventually took it all back upon himself. He couldn’t let it go - that idea rooted somewhere deep in his mind below even his own conscious withdrawal. No one else would do. This would be his game and his alone.

So he wrote the script. He composed the music. He got a new idea every time he came back to it. It grew. It became his own. It became the idea.

Then he posted it to his blog in late 2013, freely playable to anyone willing to click a link that said “[Play Here]." I moved the titular Naya orthogonally from space to space like a chess piece on a set of exploded boards without lines on an adventure to the outskirts of reality. I played it again, immediately, and my mind came crumbling down at the idea one person was able to express so perfectly. Much later I realized that it had to be one person, and that one person had to be Terry Cavanagh.

In Naya’s Quest, Cavanagh challenges you to navigate Naya through its puzzling world. It is an adventure game, but it is also a puzzle game. It is puzzling because Naya’s world is three-dimensional but it is rendered in two dimensions from a static, isometric angle. (Isometric being a perspective equidistant from all three axes of standard three-dimensional geometry. Iso – equal; metric – distance.) From this perspective, platforms hide behind each other and discerning their location in three-dimensional space becomes guesswork.

At first, you don’t notice this perspective restriction because Cavanagh designed Naya’s opening areas to be exactly as they appear. Instead, you’d probably just say something like, “This game looks it was made twenty years ago!”, and you’d mostly be right, and you’d mostly have the idea right there too. But after you looked at a twenty-year-old game for like five seconds you’d realize that Naya actually looks like it is thirty-years old! Yet, it is easy on the eyes. Its chunky pixels are colored something like hot pastels, which seems impossible and hard on the eyes, but my eyes are color deficient and it looks tasty to me.

Color aside, this lack of resolution is both a reaction and an action. Obviously, as a lone, independent developer, Cavanagh cannot produce photorealistic graphics. But he uses this resource limitation as an asset. He chooses to make games that convey their ideas better through pixels than polygons. He works in the area that suits him well and it becomes his style. He turns the reactionary simplification driven by inadequate resources into intentional abstraction. Through abstraction he is able to communicate ideas more directly than the convoluted monstrosities commercial development often produces.

Inspecting Naya more closely, you can see the abstraction everywhere: Space is reduced to a blocky, three-dimensional grid; the world built in this space is reduced to a collection of small, separate areas; each area is reduced to a form of blocks. But Cavanagh doesn’t stop there; after all, graphical and geometric abstractions would be meaningless without the follow through. His abstractions become mechanics and ultimately—with the foundation of the surface abstractions—form the true idea of Naya’s Quest.

Chasing simplicity, he goes all the way: Naya’s plot is reduced to poetry; Naya’s locomotion is reduced to orthogonal movement and a jump; perspective into the world is reduced to a single, static vantage point. As I said before, you don’t really notice this perspective restriction at first, but it is the basis of the experience.

Naya soon finds a device that, when activated, hides all platforms not orthogonal to her location. In the early village areas though, this ‘cross-section viewer’ seems novel at best, and unnecessary at worst. But then you move Naya from the real to the surreal and there is a shift. The surreal is not as it seems. From your static perspective, platforms appear to be located where they are not located. The device becomes your crutch, and suddenly, between you and Naya, there is a disconnect: Naya is inside the world and can see its true shape; you are outside the world and cannot see its true shape. So the question is: Why are you the one moving Naya on her quest to, in her words, “The Edge”? After all, you have less knowledge than Naya. Why doesn't she move herself? But asking this question makes you realize something: You are apart from Naya. You are not Naya; you are you. Naya’s quest is not your quest, but you are still very much a part of Naya’s Quest. 

Often games allow you to become your avatar and leave your body back in our real world. Not so with Naya. You are apart from her world, given limited access to it by the magician Cavanagh. This is why I have been very careful with verbiage concerning Naya and Naya’s Quest’s player, so as not to ascribe an action to the incorrect party and throw my logic down the toilet with incoherent language. It is uncommon in games for the player to be separate from the avatar and still be an entity within the game, and even less common for the avatar to be more knowledgeable than the player. (Who knows, maybe the hidden blocks in Mario existed in the plane perpendicular to the screen and ground, and Mario could actually see them even though you couldn’t.) Naya can see the world’s true form; you can’t without the device. But you move Naya. In this way, Naya’s Quest is a beautiful relationship. (And what makes it horrifying and haunting when you accidentally send Naya plummeting to her death with a wrong move, against her will, when she obviously saw what you were doing wrong.)

But really, why did Cavanagh make Naya respond to your every beck and call when it seems that she would be the better judge of her surroundings? Maybe she isn’t the better judge. Maybe she’s less in-the-know than you are. Her person even seems to be a lower resolution than the rest of her world, maybe suggesting the representation of a two-dimensional being requiring the guidance of a hyper-dimensional being (you) through a three-dimensional world. Your guess is as good as mine. 

Terry Cavanagh is the only person that could have fully made Naya’s Quest. A developer with more resources would have complicated it, explicated it, polygonalized it, lored it, stitched it, and killed it. Instead it is simple, poetic, pixelated, mysterious, exposed, and alive.

At its core, Naya’s Quest is a puzzling adventure video game, yes; but, god, it is so much more! It is a diary entry. It is fine art. It is chess, a novel, abstraction. It is an existential crisis. It is a relationship of trust balanced on "The Edge."

It was the idea inside Cavanagh’s head.

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True Devotion: On Naughty Dog's The Last of Us

The Last of Us is a graphically-stunning, narratively-focused, linear action-adventure set in a sprawling, decimated world twenty years after the onset of an infectious disease. The fungal infection, called cordyceps, takes root in the host’s brain and, given time to sprout, overpowers its central nervous system to varying degrees of hunger for flesh of its own kind. The minority of remaining humans have grouped together in walled metropolises tightly secured from the hordes by a controlling regime. But very little of The Last of Us is about these safe zones or the stories of the people that control or stay inside the walls. The Last of Us is a year-long, cross-country trip outside the walls. It is one long escort mission. It is warding off the infected. It is hiding and sneaking past. At times it puts your stomach in knots. It makes you laugh and cry. It sets you at ease. It makes you cringe—purposefully. It is fun to play and a pleasure to experience. It’s all that. So I guess you could just say: The Last of Us is a powerfully-affecting zombie-shooter told across a disastrous yet beautiful game-world.

Joel was around when the infection changed the world; Ellie was born into the forever-altered world. As Joel, you find yourself in the position of escorting Ellie. In a swap deal gone wrong, the two are bound together by friends’ commitments, past relationships, chance, and fate. Joel’s creators envisioned him as a man with few moral lines left to cross—an aged scoundrel and smuggler willing to murder, who has murdered. But to me, he seemed more empathetic. My perspective of him is probably skewed though, taking in his person mainly with the context of Ellie. Plus I’m desensitized to the amount of murder you perform as a human character in video games, (It is usually an amount far greater—and in a style far more robust and versatile, and therefore disturbing—than enough to judge someone sadistically ill.) which aligns Joel more closely with his creators’ vision almost through the accident of mass-market, video-game violence. This design goes almost unnoticed due to such conventions.

Ellie is a teenage girl, so she pulls the best and worst out of Joel. She is immune to the infection so Joel is trying to get her to a research facility out west hoping she might be used to find a cure. (I am not keeping Ellie’s profile curt because I have nothing to say about her. I have much. I just don’t want to place any preconceived notions about who she is into your head so that you might fit her into a box. It will only sadden and confuse you when she shatters all of your boxed conventions.)

When you set out to make a video game like The Last of Us you have a lot going against you. Creatively, the challenge is being distinct. How do you justify the existence of a post-disaster, zombie-filled setting when so many games are using that as a crutch nowadays? Narratively, the challenge again is being distinct. How is the story of a father figure and a younger child trekking across the country in search of a mystical Holy Grail any different from The Road? Technically, the task is enormous. The time it takes to construct and texture all of the surfaces of this game is immense. And the time it takes to design the world and the aesthetic of all of its textures far greater. In the words of Sean Vanaman, designer of The Walking Dead video game, “games hate to be made. They really would rather not be made and once they catch wind that they might be in the process of being made they break, stall, and use all of their static inertia to produce something that’s really not fun to work on, let alone play.” Which is why it is unimaginably unlikely that The Last of Us—with all of its many bits and pieces and beauty and grandiosity and tragedy and voice acting and staging and pacing and transitioning and music—oh God!, the music—would be as cohesive as it is. But Naughty Dog managed to pull it off. As the storied Sony developers of the Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter, and Uncharted series, they had proven themselves capable and excellent developers of fun and ridiculous adventures centered on witty and likable characters. The Last of Us is a departure for Naughty Dog. In tone, they started to search for the pause rather than the wit. The ponder rather than the answer. The truth.

Each the other’s constant companion, Joel and Ellie are forced to get to know one another for better or worse. Their relationship evolves over the course of their year together from condescension to devotion. Naughty Dog focuses on this evolution as it wanders in between the better or worse. They show you the condescension and they show you true devotion, and they leave it at that. They let you decide the better or worse. Not with an in-game choice, so that both sides might be explored in multiple playthroughs. But with an out-of-game choice—a real-life choice. I’ve heard it called ballsy. I’ve heard it called stupid. I would call it bold.

The Last of Us is a video game about getting hurt and being hurt. That is, once hurt, always hurt. I mean emotionally; but people get shot, stabbed, infected, bruised, and impaled the whole time so I guess there is a good deal of physical hurt as well. It makes you think it is justified; then fun; then deserved. Then it makes you feel sick.

But it is also about getting healed and not being healed. That is, once hurt, always hurt, never healed, but always getting healed. The Last of Us is this process. It is cycles and seasons.  

It is one man and one girl. It is a wonder.

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Las Vegas Diaries: Epilogue

LVH. Wynn, Encore. Venetian. R-I-V-I-E-R-A the lights slowly spell. Trump. On another wall, Riviera flashes all together, rapidly. It hangs solidly in space on still another. White letters too small to decipher. Smaller still too small to recognize, and smaller still too small to see. That’s all these eyes can read.

There is a car, or at least its red lights. Now another, turning behind it.

Now that street is still, and its cross the same. It had been raging before.

The sliding lights are back, in pairs, and then gone.

White lights light the ad. It is glued and pasted and stuck to the board.

The eyes go from right to left, and back.

The Ferris wheel blasts blue. It hides from these eyes in front of the dark silhouette. It goes yellow. Then white. It makes itself known just like that.

That god damn flashing Riviera.

The lines of light that go away to the edge are nice. Blips sparkle the gaps in between. Here, they are white and yellow and green and red. There, they are all orange, or something like it, as they approach the blackened edge.

Perspective angles the dotted, parallel lines, each one more than the last.

Some of them blink, but most of them don’t. They are windows and streetlights and leds.

The low building has a curved roof. Plainish lights wrap around its edge. It is a cylinder lopped at an angle. The lights make an ellipse. Not technically, but close enough.

The Ferris wheel imitates fireworks, red and blue.

The pair of yellowed and tanned buildings, under their own light, look like through a fish-eye lense.

Those faraway lights near the edge do blink. It’s just very fast.

Behind the curved buildings, a lighter, more lit one chunks right where it is.

Sets of white lights, shiny, go down on blocks and chunks.

One light blinks, and another hovers next to it. Above the edge, they move together in unison, all the way from left to right.

Some of the lights spin, but who really cares what.

Too many lights. Too many nights. From the twenty-sixth floor, of the Las Vegas Hotel.

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Las Vegas Diaries: Day 7

See McElroy. Putzmeister. Rexcon. Fast Fusion. Isco. Mack. Vermeer. G&Z. Say Hi. See Ditch Witch. CAS. Dodge. Eaton. Kenworth. Say Hi. See Grede. Viewpoint. Autodesk. Toro. Multiquip. Say Hi. See Peterbilt.

See Trelleborg. Yokohama. Takeuchi. Road Widener. Berco. Gomaco. Wirtgen. LB Performance. Leeboy. Kennametal. How are you? Atlas Copco. Astec. Kawasaki. Kubota. Baldor. Chicago Pneumatic. Good. Gator. Hello. Ramco. Sandvik. Telogis. Topcon. Black Cat.

Mobydick. Spydercrane. Wacker Neuson. Enerpac. Fecon. Kobelco. Hi. Landoll. Sany. Zoomlion.

Case. Bridgestone. Caterpillar. Skf. Goodyear. Hi. John Deere. Gehl. Mustang. Leica. Hitachi. Trimble. Liugong. Volvo. Manitou. Michilin. Komatsu. Hyundai. Yanmar.

Pay a bunch for lunch and water and sustenance to heal the achy legs.

Allied. JCB. JLG. Indexator. Terex. Altec. Skyjack. Bobcat. Doosan.

Bosch Rexroth. Danfoss. Hallite. Hello. Hawe. Stauff. Poclain. Ramco. Specsys. Flodraulic. Walvoil. Ebsco. Donaldson. Hi. Cummins. Deutz. Rexnord. Oilgear. Noshok. How are you? Parker Hannifin. Sunsource. Bonfiglioli. Webco. Volkswagen Power.

Feel alone with one-hundred and forty thousand people.

Talk to Tim in the container. Talk to Brandon in the booth.

Ride in a limo to the cosmopolitan.

Pay probably one-hundred dollars for an hors d'oeuvre meal of fifteen courses and two desserts and two beers. Talk with some old and new faces and discover their human side. Have a very nice time.

Walk by the Bellagio fountains. See the water two-hundred feet in the air. Wish it was clare de lune. Wish it was poetic. Nostalgic. Cathartic. Hear all that ja-e-yazz instead.

Stand on the monorail back to the hotel.

Write all the companies in as close to the order as seen.

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Las Vegas Diaries: Day 6

Stand at the booth and put on a smile.

Meet the guys for real over the course of several hours. Find them all super nice, of course.

Walk part of the show with Jason. Hear him talk about hydraulics, pin-locking, piston pumps, the talon, science fiction, design ideas. Take the design magazines he says to take. Don’t really want to read any of them. Except at work maybe. Feel kinda bad.

Pay twelve dollars for some curry, dal, rice, and naan. Think it is not too bad for convention food.

Continue walking around in idle conversation. Don’t know how he did it or got to this point.

Return to booth. See all the new faces. Meet the Aquatherm guy. Meet the Isco guy. Meet the A.H. guy. Meet the Sandale guy. Meet no chicks.

Shake Chip’s hand—the president’s hand.

Stand around the booth until it’s time to leave.

Walk back to the room. Change work polo to ‘nice’ evening shirt. Meet the guys at the bar downstairs.

Wait at the slot machine with Jason and watch him lose nine dollars with a closed-mouth smile on his face. Pre-game with a stella or something.

Ride the tram to the Italian restaurant. Eat the appetizer. Eat the lasagna. Drink the drink and do the dew. Tell them the short version. Pay six-hundred and forty bucks for nine dudes.

Take a cab with Corey and Jason back to the hotel.

Read something. Write something. Read something. Write something.

Listen to Youth Lagoon and just sit there.

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Las Vegas Diaries: Day 5

Pay ten dollars for a blueberry bagel and a coffee.

Walk to the technical conference and take a pee.

Walk to the wrong side of the mile long building.

Walk all the way back to the bathroom to find the classroom. See bagels and coffee and OJ laid out for free in the back.

Struggle to understand the mic’d voice of the instructor resonate off the solid and temporary walls. Start to understand him more clearly without even noticing. Hear him talk about fluid, flow, pumps, cylinders, and motors for four hours. Pee every hour, on the hour, during each session break; refill the OJ and grab a muffin too.

See the man in next chair over. Think he looks like Sonny, that oru history professor. Hear him cuss at someone on the phone during one of the breaks.

Clap for the teacher. Check on the booth. Make some adjustments. See it all coming together nicely.

Pay seventeen dollars for two slices of pizza, a miniature salad, and a mountain dew. Eat it alone.

Go to the next class.

Hear him talk about a bunch of fluid power stuff and not really follow him. Think his powerpoint is not very good. Think he is not a very good teacher. Hear the class question his claims. See him pause, squirm, and sweat under the pressure. See him hold his left arm up, fingers on his top front scalp, as he hemmed and hawed through each response. Feel kinda bad. Look down and not at his worrisome face.

Make a note of that technical reference manual he mentioned to learn what was supposedly taught in this class later.

See the text about the seafood buffet for dinner. Suggest fast food instead. Drive to in-n-out burger with one of the sane ones.

Pay seven dollars for a burger, fries, dr. pepper, and a chocolate shake.

Hear about his rad life before McElroy. About his self-started music magazine. About some crazy magazine publisher in Sapulpa. Ask questions. Be inspired.

Hear about cool new music.

Write the previous day’s entry. Shiver.

Write the first day’s entry. Try to remember the details.

Start reading Jesper Juul’s The Art of Failure before bed.

Think this will probably be very boring to read. But hey, you, just look at the cool drawing.

Cut the word count from three hundred and eighty-four down to one hundred and four.

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Las Vegas Diaries: Day 4

Go to the hot tub at seven-thirty in the morning but see that it doesn’t open ‘til nine.

Pay eight dollars for a blueberry bagel and a ‘zen’ tea bag and some hot water.

Eat the bagel and drink the tea while writing the previous day’s account.

Hit the hot tub. Leave after fifteen minutes because of overheating, that awkward couple on the side, and that weird guy sitting on the edge, half-in-half-out, taking pictures of his toes and stuff with his iPhone.

Shower off the chlorine. Read some more Catcher.

Pay six dollars and ten cents for a Chipotle chicken burrito—twenty-five cents less than in Tulsa. God this city is backwards.

Read Catcher until dinner.

Pay sixty-something dollars for hibachi and a sushi appetizer and a ‘japanese’ beer.

Say “hi” to some guy in his fifties standing in the hallway of the twenty-sixth floor.

Hang up the shirt. Hear the knock on the door. Freeze. Look through the peep hole. See that same guy.

Open the door.

Hear him ask to pay for a shower for his date tonight. Immediately hesitate—obviously—then allow. Tell him not to worry about the money.

Sit down to continue reading Catcher.

Hear nothing for about eight minutes—no running water. Feel weird. Read the same sentence about a million times.

Hear him ask to take a bath instead.

Say “Sure…”

Feel super weird. Hide wallet.

Hear the water begin running. Finally.

Hear the water stop and then the dripping, drooping sound of his arms or something going in and out of the water. Writhe with weird vibes. Read the next sentence a million times.

Give up reading. Turn on the tv to break the god damn silence. Find Anchorman on tbs.

Think about what the heck is going on. Fidget. Worry. Regret.

Hear the water begin draining, and thank God almighty.

Hear him start asking questions. Too many questions. Hear the long gaps in between. Start to feel scared.

Ask him questions back to try and keep it light.

Wonder what the hell could possibly be taking so long and pray that he would get the hell out sooner rather than later.

Hear him say that he should have said so up front but it’s taking so long because he is a cross-dresser.

Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty.

Hear him ask more weird questions. Respond to sound a-ok. Ask him where he is going tonight to imply away from here. Keep voice from trembling.

See him emerge from the entranceway for the first time in an hour. See him wearing the same clothes he was wearing before. See the stockings at his feet under his pants as he walks closer to sit on the ottoman to put on his socks and shoes. Rock the hell out of that desk chair.

Watch him take about ten minutes to put on his socks and shoes as he keeps talking about God knows what until finally he ties the second knot.

Say something like “Ok.” Stand up and walk towards the door as calmly as possible and try not to shake like a bastard. Shake his hand and say “Goodbye.”

Close the door. Lie on the bed and take deep, shaky breaths.

Finish The Catcher in the Rye.