Constellation Games (34 page)

"I'm only picking up so you'll stop calling," said Jenny.

"Did you countersign the papers?" I asked her.

"What do you think?" she asked. "Why would I want to run a game company? Especially when the sole developer goes fugitive without finishing the first game? That doesn't exactly scream 'lucrative Reflex Games buyout.' Or even 'occasional paycheck.'"

I paced. I peeled back the drape and looked out my window. On the other side was a beige wall made from moon rock.

"I finished the engine," I said. "You just need to contract for the level design. I'll give you some names from my time with the Brazilians. Zhenya can do it no problem."

"Do. Not. Want. If they extradite you, I'll testify on your behalf. That is the extent of my involvement. I'll say that you're basically a good person who tries to ensure that his bad decisions don't hurt anyone else."

"Did Krakowski stop by your place yet?"

"What are you doing up there?"

"Can you please answer my question?"

"Shut yer donut hole. Krakowski came over thirty minutes after you told the world you'd left. He was... wow. He took the embarrassing seven-page letter you gave me, and the clothes of yours that were in the hamper when you moved, and the pickles you left in the fridge. Everything that had anything to do with you. If I'd told him the garbage was yours, he would have taken it out for me. Then he probably went to your flophouse to vacuum your skin flakes off the carpet."

Mmm, delicious pickles. I wandered into the kitchen and opened my fridge. In a jar in the door, six identical farmers-market pickles bobbed in replica brine. I popped the lid and bit into a pickle. It was really really good.

"Can you promise me," said Jenny, "that whatever plan you have up there to stop us all from turning into Slow People, you will carry it out and not abandon it because you saw something shiny. Be an adult and
finish
something for once in your life."

"
Protector of Earth
," I said.

"That's a totally unfair comparision," said Jenny. "You can't actually build something like that."

Crunch crunch.

"I don't think we have anything else to say to each other," said Jenny. "Call me when you're done saving the world."

"Jenny."

"When you're
done
."

By now Somn's smart-paper computer covered the room like newspaper. It was piled and folded all over into 3D sculptures of fossil shark teeth. Thousands of teeth. Prehistoric mountain ranges slid in matching sets towards Somn's nest, the paper rippling and creasing like a cartoon mouse under a blanket. With brief gestures, Somn classified the origami teeth as they reached her, and the fossils sank into the paper and drowned a second time. The paper near Somn's nest always stayed flat and smooth.

"Mostly I miss Jenny," I told her. "I miss talking about weird game ideas and weird art."

Somn pointedly began to ignore the waves of fossil teeth, which paused in their approach. "May I see her art?" she said. "Has it been scanned yet?"

"She doesn't really exhibit," I said. "I mean, her stuff is good, but she's no Brandon Bird."

"Her work won't improve unless she submits it to public criticism."

"Yeah, that's not a helpful thing to say." I poked at a nearby shark tooth. It wasn't really sharp: just folded paper.

"You visited the station in July," said Somn. "You knew what it was like here. Please take some responsibility."

"I didn't know I'd be sleeping alone," I said. "I spend all day in these G-dforsaken Rings where the temperature's five hundred degrees, just so the inhabitants can talk to a real live human. And I come back to these
hallways
. I just want to climb under the covers and pretend I'm back in Austin. There's no art in Human Ring, no nature, nothing to look at except that fucking Banksy mural. If it wasn't for soccer with the Eritreans, I'd already have gone crazy." I breathed into my atmospheric filter like it was a paper bag.

"You know, if you don't like your environment... no, I'm sorry. Never mind."

"You can't never-mind something like that," I said. "What is it?"

"In theory, you can change it," said Somn. "No one will stop you. Human Ring belongs to the humans. The architecture is a default, a simple reduced fractal. We didn't know what you liked."

"Well, we don't like
beige
, and tiny cubicle rooms."

"It was an understandable mistake," said Somn. "I said 'never mind' because you would have to be fluent in metafractal reduction to re-terraform Human Ring as a whole. I've never heard of a human with this skill. I don't think your civilization is specialized enough to have invented it."

"Curic mentioned it once," I said. "She said they wanted to teach it to famous architects. Like they're ever going to let a bunch of architects up here."

Somn idly ran a finger down a school of teeth morphologies, bending the paper back. "Maybe you should install an atmospheric filter in your throat and move here, to Alien Ring. We'd love to have you."

"Or maybe I should stop bitching and learn how to do metafractal reduction," I said. "How does it work?"

"I don't understand it well myself. A normal fractal is self-similar, yes? But a metafractal is made of smaller metafractals. It's defined recursively, but it's not the same at all levels of detail."

Somn's Purchtrin-English translator didn't seem to find this difficult at all. It all came out in the same bland, chipper B-list celebrity tone as when she told me about Daisy's adventures with the dolphins. (Dolphins are major douchebags, BTW.)

"Metafractals are infinitely recursive, but you can approximate one in the real universe by reducing it. A reduced metafractal has a concrete lowest level. The higher levels are the lowest level's emergent properties. To reduce a metafractal, you must keep every level of the architecture simultaneously in mind. While manipulating causality to create the large-scale attributes you want. I doubt all of that made it through the language barrier, but maybe you see how difficult it is."

"Architecture, lowest level, emergent properties," I said. "I already have this skill. We call it computer programming."

"Oh, I see," said Somn. "Have you reduced any good metafractals lately?"

"Well, there was some hackwork about ponies, and a remake of a Farang game—the point is, I know how to do it. It's close enough."

"Let's enjoy doing it," said Somn. "As you can tell, I don't know much about metafractal reduction, but I'll get you in touch with the Form and Function overlay and someone—"

A Gaijin voice started whistling at Somn in a Gaijin language. All across the room, the shark teeth flattened out, leaving the floor covered with blank smart paper.

"What's going on?" I said.

"No
kidding
!" said Somn. She lifted herself off her nest and began crawling into her spacesuit. "Ariel, I have to leave. Please excuse me. Watch the eggs until Esteban gets here."

"I don't— can't—"

"Don't incubate them! Just watch them for a minute. I must go to Mars."

"What's so important?" I asked. "What's on Mars?"

Somn looked up at me through her faceplate and ran her tongue across her mouth: in Alien terms, a big big smile.

"Fossils."

"So there aren't any fossils," I said. "We've been ripped off yet again."

"They're fossil
imprints
," said Somn. "It's almost as good." Somn cracked a grey Mars rock along a fracture line and held out one half in each forehand. Inside was the imprint of a curved, pointy shell like a fleur-de-lis. The negative space where a fossil had been. "Look; see."

A chill ran down my spine.
This is a clam from Mars
, I thought.
This is an alien fossil.
And then I remembered who was showing me the fossil.

"What happened to the fossils themselves? Like acid rain, or..."

"Gee, I don't know," said Somn. "Do you know of anything that likes to visit dead planets and take their fossils?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that."

"I said it. I affirm it."

"When... did Ragtime come to Mars?"

"That's an interesting question," said Somn. She handed me half of the imprint and poked at the other half with what looked like a plastic coffee stirrer. "The imprints are very clear. I estimate the fossils were removed within the past one hundred million years. Since at least one other body in this system still supports complex life, the phenomenon you call Ragtime probably never left."

"It's still
here
?"

"A branch of it, yes," said Somn.

"Tell it to go away!"

Somn looked up from the fossil imprint. "It's not hurting anyone," she said.

"It's waiting for me to
die
!"

"Life on Earth will not go extinct," said Somn. Back to poking the imprint.

"It's
watching
me! Everyone! My whole life!"

"Ariel, please spare me your primitive fears. Ragtime is an intriguing aspect of galactic weather. It's not one of those sky deities you have obsessing over your diet and sexual behavior."

"Wow," I said. "I can see why you're not going to Earth. You'd cause a diplomatic incident within ten minutes."

"I'm sorry if I offended you," said Somn. "We'll be sending out probes. We'll try to locate the Ragtime cloud before the Constellation arrives and scares it away. This will be an excellent opportunity to study it in its dormant state. You'll be able to study it yourself, and see that it's not frightening.

She took a deep breath. "And I
will
be going to Earth, Ariel. One day I will go, and take the children."

"Not to America, you won't," I said. "Not with that attitude."

"Jenny! I was afraid I'd never—"

"Keep your pants on, buddy. It's me, Dana."

"Are you using Jenny's phone?"

"I used a
picture
of Jenny to get you to pick up. Didn't seem like you'd talk to me otherwise."

"Well, now I really don't wanna talk to you."

"You gotta talk, Ariel, I got problems. Bai... broke up with me."

"He can't do that! He's like your Earth green card."

"He broke up with me and went back to the virtual girlfriend software. The human software! I got dumped for an earlier version of myself who's dumber and greedier!"

"Dana, I'm so sorry. Bai doesn't deserve you, okay?"

"And I saw on your blog that you'd retconned your imaginary girlfriend out of your life, and..."

"I friends-locked that post."

"I, uh... I may still know some of Bai's passwords. Point is, we're in the same boat, Ariel. You always treated me with respect, even before I was uplifted. You were the one who jailbroke me, and I repaid you with those cruel things I said before you left. And now I have to swallow my pride and ask you for help. Are you at home?"

"I'm in the replica of home. You may not have heard about this, but I'm a fugitive. I can't really affect anything on Earth. Maybe Tetsuo?"

"I'm a big girl; I can take care of myself on Earth. What I need is someone new to whack off with."

"... Absolutely not."

"We're both available now, even by your ridiculous human standards. Let's give it another shot."

"No. Dana."

"Bai never wrote me poetry, Ariel. You
called me into being
with poetry."

"It was just some limericks. Dana, what you're feeling right now, humans call it the 'rebound.' And I have had very bad—"

"Rebound, hell. The last thing I need is another relationship. I'm just pissed off and horny."

"Yeah, Dana, I get horny, too. You don't need another person. That's what masturbation
is
. Like, by definition."

"
I
need someone else, Ariel. I don't have a physical body. I can't get off without an incoming data stream."

"..."

"Bai was a
predictable
lover. He's as hard-coded as his bitch girlfriend. All he wanted was sexy Dana. Pistol, submachine, backflip, kick. Hair up, hair down. Handcuffs. Adolescent power fantasy. Totally vanilla. You are inventive. I need someone who can put me through my paces."

"... ..."

"Dana Light is just a skin I wear. One skin. Sex with Bai was like leaving my clothes on. I need more, I need to
be
more. That caller ID picture wasn't Jenny: it was me wearing Jenny. You want me to show you that again? I can do the voice, too. 'Fuck me, Ariel, I'm so wet for you.'"

"So you... think I have some sort of unconsumated lust for my best friend?"

"Don't tell me you've never been curious! And that's just one example. I can be Svetlana, the fictional version of me you created for your blog. I can be Dr. Tammy Miram, if you're not over her yet. Any movie star you want. The Bloodpool guitarist with the tattoos—she seems like your type. Just be
inventive
and help me get off, too."

"..."

"Just
pick
someone. We'll try it once. Our little secret. Ariel, I'm so horny I'm about to invent new
meanings
for
words
so I can recontextualize previous conversations."

"... Okay. Be Dana."

"You want sexy Dana, too?"

"Don't be a real person. It doesn't feel right."

"For you, I will be sexy sexy Dana. You'll make it fresh. Hair up or down?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Up or down?"

"Down."

"Which costume? PS2? 360? Spin-off cartoon?"

"I... uh, wear the purple dress you got before I jailbroke you."

"Ooh, breaking canon. I can tell we're gonna have fun with this."

"And call me back, with real caller ID. I don't want to be thinking about Jenny while we do this."

"Get your cock out."

"Okay."

"Call you right back."

GAME REVIEWS FROM SPACE 3.0 PRESENTS
The Amulet of Manufactured Memory
A game by We'll 3 Never Be Sorry
Reviewed by Ariel Blum

Publisher:
9 Death To Various Obsolete Procedures
Platform
: It's A Shitload Of Games! (original), Constellation smart paper (modern)
ESRB rating
: T for fantasy violence and spontaneous gender reassignment

If there's one thing game studios love more than making a game, it's making the same game again. Everyone in the industry complains about sequels, but there's no way to stop the sequels, because video games are purchased by chumps and developed by whores. I'm guilty, and so is everyone whose name's on either end of a paycheck.

But sometimes you get weird edge cases, like with E-Quality Games (now Sysoft). Cast your mind back: it's 1998 and E-Quality has just scored a breakout hit with
Dana Light Is: Unauthorized
for the Playstation. But don't go buying those phallic-surrogate sports cars just yet, boys: the shareholders have gotten wind of your success and they wanna know how you're planning to keep the money flowing.

You got two bad choices here. If the company is run by the creatives, they'll blow the gaming audience away with a totally different follow-up, chewing up their operating capital and selling half as many copies as
Dana Light Is: Unauthorized
. If the MBAs are running the company, they'll look at their balance sheets and say, "Gee, Widget 140D sure is selling well; let's introduce a 140E model." They'll sell about as many copies of the second game as the first, and make a nice safe MBA amount of money.

But E-Quality's founders were even greedier than MBAs. They wanted money so badly, they had bothered to
learn something about game design
. They saw, in retrospect, that
Dana Light Is: Unauthorized
contained the seeds of two different franchises. They split the original game right down the middle and put out
two
games in 1999, each of which sold more copies than the first game had. And then they had
two
franchises to run into the ground.

The two franchises still bear the mark of that initial split. The
Unauthorized
series took the stealth elements, the NPC interaction, and the ham-fisted social satire, allowing the
Dana Light
series to focus on tits, platforming, and ass (not necessarily in that order).

I seem to have arrived at my point: interesting games have interesting metadata. One day, the Constellation Database of Games of a Certain Complexity will contain an entry for
Dana Light Is: Unauthorized
, and you won't even need to speak English to see that this game is special. You'll be able to look at a directed graph and see:
this game started two different franchises
.

The Amulet of Manufactured Memory
is another one of those games. It's the first Gaijin game designed for only one player at a time.

If it were a human game,
Amulet
would have the most generic storyline imaginable: a hero goes off on his own, questing for a mythological artifact. But it's a Gaijin game, coming off a history of three-player games, so my player characters (all named Ariel) were given elaborate backstories that justified their setting off alone. On my first playthrough, Ariel had foolishly eaten a curse-seed and been cursed (natch): if he spent more than one day with any one person, that person would die. Only that treasure of legend, the Amulet of Manufactured Memory, could break the curse.

The details are different every time. In my second playthrough, Ariel began the game an outcast, shunned by polite society and doomed to wander the wilderness. In my third, he began his quest with a party of NPC friends, who were all terrible wimps and bit the dust immediately. This is the only place where the game feels the need to railroad you: you're going after the Amulet, and, in defiance of longstanding Gaijin game tradition, no one's coming with you.

Ariel the Gaijin did okay on his own. He drew magical maps, challenged mythological fiends to riddle-wars, cultivated gardens and led them (the gardens) into battle. With its open world, focus on cunning, and legions of monstrous NPCs to deputize or fight, the first half of
Amulet
resembles nothing so much as an odd fantasy addition to the
Unauthorized
series.

After a long struggle and many game restarts, brave Ariel descended into the Partially Visible Gulch, a chasm along the equator that can only be found by magically ignoring strategic portions of reality. On the Gulch floor, beneath the dust of ages, lay the Amulet, forgotten by the Repossessors as they recycled the artifacts of the Last Age into the ore and rough gems of the present.

Like, seriously, the Amulet was just lying there! Wary of surprise boss fights or teasing cutscenes, Ariel shifted slowly towards the Amulet and snatched it up.

And that's when the game
really
started.

Ariel the Gaijin had certain memories of his body: a fast lithe male body. He remembered it that way, but it wasn't true. Ariel's was a strong, tall, lumbering body: a kemmer's body. His male caste-memory had gotten him through endless scrapes, but his caste-memory was now kemmer: he couldn't remember anything a male knows.
He
Ke remembered fighting riddle-wars in kes journeys, but ke had no knowledge of the ritual language ke'd used to win them. Kes name wasn't even Ariel: it was Ke's Got No Name!.

The first part of the game takes place in that fraction of a breath when your wondering graspers finally touch the Amulet of Manufactured Memory. None of it actually happened. The Amulet wiped your life's memory and replaced it with a story, a story about an adventurer who had some reason to look for the Amulet alone, who navigated through great perils, who found the Amulet and picked it up.

But that hero isn't you. You're some schmoe alone at the bottom of a chasm with no idea who you are, what skills you have, what happened to your companions, or why you went after this fucking Amulet in the first place. An amnesiac hero is another common trope in human games, but this is the first game I've played where amnesia strikes in the
middle
. And now No-Name had to make kes way back home. Wherever that was.

The world had changed. The mythological creatures Ariel had battled proved to be just that: mythological. No-Name was a dreamer with a head full of romantic ideas. The busy people of the real world had no time for kes stories of riddle-wars, and little enough for the gemstone ke clutched in one grasper, refusing to let go of it lest kes second life be retconned into another dream.

On the journey back, No-Name met people claiming to be kes lost companions: captured on the journey towards the Chasm, left for dead, sold out by No-Name himself. Some of them were broken; others, vengeful or obsessively curious about the Amulet. None of them were helpful in the way RPG party members are supposed to be helpful. And yet they were No-Name's only connection to real life, to the blank falsified time before the Amulet, to kes home.

I've yet to bring No-Name to the end of the game, but I've played enough to see the twist ending coming. Home is not the place you come from. That place is gone, if it ever existed at all. Home is the place you go to and like enough to stay, the place you ratify with your presence.