Constellation Games (15 page)

GAME REVIEWS OF INSERT DESCRIPTION HERE 2.0 PRESENTS
A Tower of Sand
A game by Af be Hui
Reviewed by Ariel Blum

Publisher:
The Perea Corporation
Release date:
Contact event plus 49 years
Platforms:
Simulates Hi-Def False Daylight, Dare To Greatness, Your Return
ESRB rating:
T for thematic elements, whatever that means

"We need to find a game that makes the Constellation look good," I said.

The urgency in my voice did not penetrate Tetsuo's sound-sensitive membranes. "Why would someone make a game about that?"

"I'd make one myself," I said, "if I found out that people were spreading panic by creating Constellation assassination fantasies. And if we don't find something to cancel out
Ev luie Aka's Ultimate DIY Lift-Off
, I'll
have
have to make one myself, because you'll have right-wing militias blockading your consulate buildings."

"Let them come!" said Tetsuo. "With their primitive maces and carving knives!"

"No, they'll have guns."

"Oh, that's a little worse," said Tetsuo. "I'm thinking." He rolled back and forth on his beanbag chair, hugging it beneath him like a body pillow.

"Ideally it would be another game with 'Ultimate' in the title," I said. "Fowler was very impressed by that."

Tetsuo reached out a long, long forearm and waved a hand in front of my face. "You smell funny," he said.

"Back atcha, pal."

"Different from before. Hah, it's pheremones! You're covered in human pheremones! You're away from the females of Earth only one day, and you go into heat!"

"You're smelling alcohol, genius. I had a drink. Is everything about sex with you?"

"Only sexy things."

"We need empathy," I said. "A tear-jerker. Sympathetic characters. Are there any Ip Shkoy games where you play an extraterrestrial?"

"There are many," said Tetsuo. "In
Grow
you control an entire ring of Wazungu. It's very stylized; what used to be called an eat-and-shit game."

"People don't like Wazungu; they look like rotten food."

"I like them."

"
Humans
don't like them, and you know it. That's why you made Charlene Siph the Constellation ambassador, instead of Bob the Mzungu."

"Please do not call her that!" Tetsuo said. "We're all ambassadors. Charlene Siph is the fixer."

"Can you find a game with a Farang player character? People think they're cute."

"Certainly," said Tetsuo, staring into space. "Although I doubt such a game will change anyone's mind. Here's one with good reviews:
A Tower of Sand
."

Now I waved
my
hand in front of Tetsuo's face. "Where are you getting these?"

"The database, like as you," said Tetsuo. "Let's hit the store."

"No! Spare me the store!" We went to the store.

"Why did you recreate the whole damn store?" I asked Tetsuo. "All the software is behind your little bubble." Behind me in the rear of the store I heard constant splashes, as food packages were repeatedly drawn up a conveyor belt and dropped a good ten feet into a big tank of refrigerated water.

"Buy something or get out!" Tetsuo yelled from the other side of the Plexiglass shield.

Two could play at this game. "I want to do a trade-in," I said. From my pocket I pulled the
Gewnoy Multislam
box I'd found in the replica Ip Shkoy apartment. I waved it at Tetsuo.

"Trade in?"

"
Gewnoy Multislam
for credit against
Tower of Sand
."

"Presumptious fool! You can only trade a newer game for an older game!
A Tower of Sand
was published a full solar year after
Gewnoy Multislam
."

"You're making that up."

"It is the policy of the store!"

"
Gewnoy Multislam
doesn't even work."

"Not my fault," said Tetsuo. "You should've bought two."

"I'll tell everyone you sell faulty software. I have powerful friends, clerk dude!"

Tetsuo changed his tune immediately. "You pay retail," he said, "and I'll enlarge your order to encompass one of these fine desperation items." He reached behind him with his tail and slapped a metal cage full of cheap squishy plastic against his side of the Plexiglass bubble.

"Aah!" I said. The cage swung back and forth in front of my face. "All right, give me that horrible-looking mouth foam."

"Hundred sixty, plus tip."

"Is that what they said?" I asked Tetsuo once we left the role-play of the You Buy Now. "'You should have bought two' when you complained about something?"

"Yes," said Tetsuo, "or else your expectations were too high. For happenstance, suppose you eat an Earth cake, and then you tell me 'Tetsuo! I wish I still had that cake!'"

"Oh, actually in English we have a saying—"

"I
know
that!"

Back in the apartment, I unfolded the poster that came with the game, but as far as my eyes could tell, it was totally blank.

"It is a game for two players," said Tetsuo, screwing a second abacus-organ controller into the top of the
Tower of Sand
data cylinder. "We portray a Farang named Koht. An expert in architecture."

The poor False Daylight system looked like it would explode from having all this stuff attached to it, but I bravely took the second controller. "We're
both
Koht?"

"I'm Koht when female," said Tetsuo, "and you are her crossself, the male. We trade off over the course of the day."

Tetsuo started the game. An oval in the center of the projection showed a top-down view of Koht, while a split-screen behind the oval showed what I eventually realized were side views. Tetsuo started laying a line of triangular blocks on the ground.

"You're building something," I said. "Perhaps a Tower of Sand?"

"Yes, I build," said Tetsuo. "The story is that we create a sister-city to the space station. Farang will come down here to live, and meantimes Aliens populate the space station, as you do here on Ring City. It's a cultural exchange."

"Did
this
actually happen?" I didn't want to get burned by another
Ultimate Lift-Off
fantasy.

"Yes, it began when the creator of this game was young."

"People were okay with it? Extraterrestrials coming and living on your home planet?"

"Well, no one wants to live on a beach, with cliffs, am I right? It's not prime real estate."

"I wouldn't mind having a beach house," I said.

"But a human is you. Imagine living somewhere nobody wants to live."

"The desert."

"Yeah, the beach just is a wet desert. But Farang love beaches, so it's cool."

A bolt of lightning shivered the screen and the background sounds became higher-pitched. Tetsuo worked his controller ineffectively.

"It's your turn," said Tetsuo. "If we had some friends who also played this game, we could enchain our data cylinders and compete to attract the most visitors."

"I'm going to knock down all your buildings," I cackled. I rammed Koht into one of the structures and knocked a few tiles loose.

"No, undo, do not!" said Tetsuo. "It's unrealistic!"

"I'm not the one who made Koht kiss a wall."

"But that was funny," said Tetsuo. He put his forehands like antennacles in front of his wide mouth, and wiggled them around. "Blbblblt."

I found another Farang walking around the beach and body-checked him/her. "No, that's someone who wants to live in my buildings! Bweeee! Leave him alone!"

The projector went white and Pey Shkoy script appeared on the screen, then trickled downwards as if the characters had been carved out of sand. "You have lost us the game!" said Tetsou.

"Why?"

"You made Koht act crazy," said Tetsuo. "Ambivalent, dissociated in personality. His friends became concerned. It's on the poster."

"I can't even see the ink on the poster," I said. "This sucks. I want to be player one."

"Then be," said Tetsuo. We crawled around each other rather than messing with the controllers. I restarted the game and toddled along the beach, digging blocks out of the sand and stacking them precariously on each other.

"Are there any Aliens in this game?" I asked.

"Not at the start," said Tetsuo. "You'd have to build a harbor or a fun-fair to get Aliens to attend a beach."

"How about other species?"

"The poster expresses several Goyim," said Tetsuo, tracing its ultraviolet ink with a finger. "In the ocean." On the projector, lightning struck again. "Ah, my turn!" Tetsuo picked up his controller and twitched away.

I'd left the game board full of piles of bricks, and deep holes in the sand. Tetsuo immediately resumed his old habits, piling up hollow pyramids and underground tunnels, juggling the camera viewpoints like a pro.

The screen turned white again and displayed some kind of tabular information. "Bweeh, we failed!" said Tetsuo.

"Why? You didn't kill anybody."

"Our building styles were too divergent," said Tetsuo. "You and I, Ariel, we are not very good at forming a single Farang."

The two players in
A Tower of Sand
chase each other creatively, each trying to put their stamp on the built environment while maintaining a single artistic style for Koht. It's not a cooperative game, exactly, but it's not one you can play with an uncooperative or unfriendly person. Try just once to really pull one over on your opponent, and the game's over.

We got into the mechanics and after a couple of hours, we were able to complete a modest building that simulated people wanted to visit. Instead of digging more sand to add extensions and possibly screw the whole thing up, we spent a few turns walking around and greeting the sunbathing Farang, who gave off happy little Pey Shkoy emoticons.

"All right," I said, "this is a decent game and I'll write it up, but here's what I'm concerned about. If you were a human, and I told you about this friendly little game, where Farang come down to the Alien homeworld to build houses in the desert and fun-fairs and shit, would you be more or less apprehensive about
Ev luie Aka's Ultimate DIY Lift-Off
?"

"I'm not a human," said Tetsuo, "so if you want accuracy, you must answer that question yourself."

But I can't.

"Okay! Yes! This is good, Ari. Now we move to stage three. Grab hold of the shipping container."

"I can't reach. It's like ten feet away now."

"What the hell! Where'd all this delta-vee come from?"

"Maybe it's 'cause I took off my shoes back in stage one."

"Well, you're never gonna see those shoes again, dude. Okay, hold on to me, yeah, and I'll use the kicker. Yeah, wow, just like that."

"Ow! Shit!"

"Sorry. Disengage! Abort! I'm holding on to your foot."

"Man! Those suggestive docking sequences in sci-fi movies make it look so easy. Don't they teach you how to do this in astronaut training?"

"No, they just tell you not to do it."

"That's what they told us, in high school, but nobody listened."

"Sorry we had to scrub the mission. Do you want to set up again? I need to be feeding planaria in the central cylinder in an hour. But we've got that hour."

"I think we should go to my place and shower, and maybe pick up later."

"Showering isn't sexy here, Ari, it's annoying. And you still look ready to me."

"I mean an actual shower, with soap. When you get sweaty it kinda... reactivates all your accumulated sweat."

"G-d, don't be such a civilian! Freefall showers are the worst. The water goes on like lotion."

"Tammy, have you
been
to Human Ring?"

"Why would I? There's nothing there."

"Nothing but
showers
. Gravity showers, like on Earth."

"... So first the booze and now hot water? You're just bringing all my recreational liquids back into my life? It is hot water, right?"

"I guess? It's hot enough."

"I'll need help, Ari. I've been free-falling for fifty days. Once I hit the ground, I'll need someone to hold me up. Do you really want to help a feeble old lady take a shower?"

"Not really, but I want to help
you
take a shower."

"That is a good answer."

I knocked a couple times on the wooden doorframe and let myself into Tetsuo and Ashley's house, two levels up the tree from the replica Ip Shkoy apartment and much better lit. Still got the storage trapdoors in the floor, though. A nice retro touch, like a Victorian fireplace in a Houston McMansion.

In the front room, Ashley Somn was lying on her back in a yoga pose, hindhands stroking glowing symbols in the air like a sleepy cat with a dangled string.

"Hey, Ash, whatcha playin'?"

"This is not a game," said Ashley. "I'm parameterizing Earth organisms as part of the History of Life overlay." She twitched a finger on one hindarm, and one amoeba-looking hologram was replaced with another, nearly identical amoeba-looking hologram.

"Okay, hey, can you put on some... clothes?" I turned my head away.

"I'm wearing clothes," said Ashley.

"Yeah, sort of, but your, uh, is showing."

Ashley looked up at her belly. "My ovipositor?" she said, as though I were a foot fetishist. "Eggs come
out
of there. Nothing goes
in
. It's completely safe for work."

"Just humor me, please?"

Ashley peeled out of her
asana
and crawled into her spacesuit. Her transparent spacesuit.

"I asked you here to find out if you can do something about Tetsuo's English," she said. "Apparently it's quite bad."

"That's funny," I said, "because I was talking to
Tetsuo
earlier today, while we were playing
Recapture That Remarkable Taste
, and he asked me if I could teach
you
English."

"I don't need to learn English," said Ashley through her chopped-up resampled vocalizer. "The translator is a benefit embraced by the median person and shunned only by snobs who want to show off their own erudition and enlightened attitudes."

"Wow, I guess you feel pretty strongly about it?"

"That translation went on a lot longer than it should have," said Ashley. "That was four words in Purchtrin. I don't know what happened."

"Maybe you should learn English and figure it out? But you're safe from me; I can't teach you. You need an ESL course."

"But you speak English," said Ashley.

"I can't teach it to someone who speaks a language from another planet."

"Thank you for taking my side, Ariel," said Ashley, who clearly didn't believe me. She circled the room on all fours, pulling scraps of wispy cloth out of trapdoors and draping them over her spacesuit. "Please tell me when I'm wearing enough clothes that you feel comfortable."

"That's fine," I said.

"What about Tetsuo?" Ashley turned dramatically and glared at me with combined eyes and eyespots. "Can you teach
him
?"

"I can talk good English and hope he picks it up," I said. "If you want him to learn about grammar or something, he'll need to talk to my parents."

"What in heck is occurring here?" said Tetsuo, who'd just crawled in. "Is today the day when we wear our clothes on the outside of our spacesuits?"

"Ariel was distracted by my beautiful ovipositor," said Ashley, crawling back into her hindarms-up position.

I flinched. "That's the worst possible translation of whatever you just said. Tets, you gotta get your woman some English lessons."

"I am attempting," said Tetsuo. "Ariel, welcome to our home. My fruit is your picnic." He lay down on top of Ashley's tail.

"I think I understood that," I said. "Thanks."

"And I thank you for extending your stay in Alien Ring," said Tetsuo. "I know you would like to go back to the central cylinder."

"You do, huh?"

"You smell like a human who's going to fuck somebody," said Tetsuo.

"It's quite strong," said Ashley.

I took a sharp breath and said nothing. Tetsuo either didn't notice or immediately gave up. "I have made a discovery!" he said. "About the software games of the Ip Shkoy-era Aliens."

"I hope it's a better discovery than
A Tower of Sand
," I said, "because that game didn't do shit for the Constellation's reputation. Agent Fowler's still on the warpath."

"Do human software games have directors?" said Tetsuo. "Like movies?"

"Yeah," I said, "if they're real pretentious, like
Weapon Eternal
."

"Af be Hui was the director of
A Tower of Sand
," said Tetsuo. "She became well-known. High-status. She made seven other games and her games changed history a little bit. I think we should play more of her work."

"To what purpose? Did she finally get the Ip Shkoy to calm down about the Constellation?"

Ashley wriggled violently and Tetsuo crawled off of her tail. "Purpose?" said Tetsuo. "What is purpose? History is not a trash compactor where you lost something important. You have to spend some time there."

"I don't
have
the time. I have to go back to Earth in a few days."

"Your visit is an opportunity to understand the Ip Shkoy a little better than a tourist," said Tetsuo. "If you want, then you can apply the historical knowledge to your own situation."

"If I
want
?"