Chapter 18: 7:00. Symbolic Life And Fanatic Deathmatch Among The Computer Bums (pt. 2)

By general consensus, we started off with a first-person shooter, of the rocket-launchers-'n-bloody-giblets school, deathmatch-style. They'd loaded it up with a pile of custom player models in varying degrees of quality, and we spent the first couple minutes getting our avatars all sorted out. Or rather, everyone else did, and I spent that time staring blankly at the screen as I clicked through the options, feeling a new awkwardness about the concept of something else representing me.

Shooters being what they were, many of the male models tended toward ridiculous machismo, and the females toward sexed-up objectification. I felt like going with the former would come across as posturing and overcompensation, and the latter would get me awkward looks and feel like giving in. That left mostly the joke models - Charlie Brown, a cow, the Office paperclip, and so on - and a handful of not-really-jokey but non-gendered ones, mostly vintage sci-fi robots and a handful of more modern mecha.

"Yo, Josh, you playing as your waifu again?" Jonathan heckled. "C'mon, man!"

"Hey, you're just jealous your ass doesn't look this good in a miniskirt."

I glanced at the player roster. The model in question was some kind of Sailor Moon knockoff; whether from a real show or just some nerd's fantasies, I wasn't sure. The others had already decided - Gil was Spider-Man, Esther was Frankenstein's monster - and here I was, having yet another bout of existential angst over something that was just a joke to everyone else...

"Hey, newbie, get in here already!"

"Ah, uh, r-right!" I stammered, rapid-clicking back through the list. Screw it; I made a snap decision on one of the robots, an embarassingly shoddy cardboard-boxes-'n-tin-foil number that was listed simply as "Torg" - awkward, ungainly, and comically artificial, which was basically how I felt about myself right now anyway.

It felt so strange to me; everyone else was so casual about wearing a body that wasn't theirs, presenting it as their "face," some even of the opposite sex...was any of it deliberate? Did they feel this conveyed something about them to the rest of the group? Or was it all just on a whim, because why not? I thought back to the essay, to the author concluding that the person in the mirror was her-

BOOM! "Torg" the robot exploded into a pile of inexplicably bloody chunks. Right, the game...!

"Whatcha standing around for?" Jonathan laughed. "Need us to wind you up?"

I cringed and felt something grinding in the back of my head as my tempo surged; he kept laughing right up to the point where his chainsaw ogre was shotgunned into a lava pool by a creeptastic Raggedy Ann pastiche that sprang down from a nearby ledge while he wasn't looking.

"And what do you know about that!?" Anne jeered, invoking a "taunt" animation that had the rag-doll twirl her shotgun cowboy-style and sling it over her shoulder.

"Hey, this isn't team deathmatch!" he spluttered.

"No rule against killing anyone you like, then!" she shot back. Anne in gaming mode was a surprise; she sounded confident, self-assured, a million years from her normal persona. I wondered if this was also something she deliberately chose to present to the group; or was it a side of herself that she didn't feel brave enough to show to the rest of the world...?

BOOM! And there I went again. "Hey, Freeman, get with it!" Gil chuckled, scampering off to go lob grenades at some other prime targets. I felt a bit flustered at being taunted by my roommate - former roommate - but at least he wasn't making fun of my bizarre new form. (Murdering people with high explosives was all in good sport.)

Okay, fine; time to get serious about this nonsense. I sprinted away from the spawn point in search of armor and/or weapons; round a corner, over a bridge, and...score! Double-barreled shotgun and at least some crappy armor, obviously placed there for the newbies. Well, I'd take it; thus armed, I set off in search of kills.

It didn't go well. Something about this form didn't lend itself to quick reflexes, despite the literally clockwork precision of my movements. I managed to do some damage to the bystanders as I swung around trying to follow Benjamin's golem around the map's central chamber, but every time he lurched off in another direction and evaded most of my fire. I found myself getting worked up; if I couldn't even cope with something like this in this f-

ZZT! And again, damn it. Frankenstein's monster shambled in with a lightning gun and fried me while I wasn't looking; Esther cackled gleefully. This stupid body...! I could feel my brain struggling to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of the game; things swinging into place only to immediately jerk back a split-second too late, spring-fire mechanisms going off half-cocked, a rotary cam always ending up at the position just after the correct one. I couldn't do this...!

...but I couldn't give up, either; not with Jonathan laughing like that. I growled to myself, a kind of rattling, scraping noise in the back of my throat. How was I supposed to make this work? I wasn't fast enough when I was precise, and I wasn't precise enough when I was fast. It was like trying to walk a straight line while...drunk...

...Maybe that was it? I'd seen people do some impressive things under the influence, mostly at parties I couldn't excuse myself from in high school. Near as I could figure, the trick wasn't to overcome the chemicals, but to roll with them, to get into a headspace where it was all this big easy dance and your body just went with the flow, while the part of your brain that worked focused on thinking just far enough ahead to send the body the right signals at the right moments. It was a game of prediction: see where things were going, and meet them there before they could be somewhere else...

It wasn't like I had any better ideas, anyway. I left the spawn point, trying to get a feel for the player movements, trying to regulate my internal tempo to keep pace with the motions of my avatar. We'd been in the map long enough for me to have a feel for the geography; let the subconscious handle that, go with the flow, focus on keeping an eye out...

Gil leapt at me, this time swinging a chainsaw; I got nicked pretty good, but managed to dodge to the side quickly enough to avoid getting caught full-on with it, and Gil failed to correct and side-stepped off a ledge into a bottomless pit. "Okay, got me there!" he laughed. Was...was it working?

A rocket, courtesy of the magical girl, just missed me and hit a nearby wall; the explosion sent me careening into the pit, but I had enough time before I went over the edge to turn it into a rocket-assisted running jump, and the vagaries of the physics engine sent me sailing over to the other side. The splash damage was nothing to sneeze at, but I was intact. I sprinted off in search of a medkit.

I couldn't find one nearly quick enough for comfort; most of the spawn points for them were still on cooldown. I did stumble across a flechette cannon, which I snagged without a second thought. A moment later, I heard the telltale sound of a powerup respawning from the direction of the central chamber...

Only problem was, I arrived there to find Esther, Jonathan, and Benjamin all converging on the mega-heal that had just popped in. I needed it, they wanted it, and whoever got it would be all too happy to relieve me of my remaining 23% health. Well, if it was do or die, I might as well go all-out; I opened fire with the flechette cannon, circling around as I kept a steady stream of needly death focused on the center of the room.

It worked better than I'd hoped. Ben was already hurting and collapsed back into the earth, his shem crumbling; Esther pulled back from the center of the room, missed her step, and backed straight into one of the Tesla coils in the corners, getting a lethal jolt of lightning herself. That left Jonathan, who circled with me, trying to lead me enough to have a rocket waiting while staying back enough to not be done in by his own splash damage.

Amazingly enough, my strategy was working. He was doing exactly what I had, trying to precisely target me for maximum damage - but the rockets were relatively slow, and he was too focused on where I was now to gauge where I would be when they got there. Meanwhile, all I had to do was keep swinging around him in sloppy, unpredictable circles and keep my fire pouring in his direction, the two of us Spirographing around the room until-

A satisfying choral Aahh filled my ears as I danced right into the mega-heal - just as I ran out of ammo for the flechette cannon. And I hadn't picked up anything else besides the default machete, and Jonathan was still standing...

I didn't plan it; I didn't even really consciously think it. I was just going with the flow, letting myself slide down the path of least resistance. I stopped backing off from him, and before he could realize and get clear or release the fire button and stop launching rockets at predictable intervals, I stopped twirling out of his line of fire. He unwittingly circled in close, aimed directly at me, and hit me full in the face...

...but he was no more than three feet away, and I was over 100% health. Apparently all four of us had been in need of healing; Jonathan exploded in a spray of blood and gibs from his own rocket. The announcement said that he'd "died a stupid death." Okay, it took me back down to 41% - but it was immensely satisfying. I raised my metal claws in triumph, and-

BOOM! erupted into another pile of oddly bloody chunks myself.

I shook my head, some coiled spring flying free in the back of it. My avatar raised its arms when I pressed the taunt button; it gibbed when Joshua's magical girl fried me from behind with the lightning gun. How long had I been thinking of this as if it was real? How long had I been identifying as my avatar...?

By the time I broke from this spell, the round had ended; Anne scored the match point, elsewhere in the map, and I - my avatar - was still scattered in bits on the floor. I shook my head again, trying to be sure of who I even was, and turned to the group, who were laughing and bickering over the game. Gil ranked second, a few points behind Anne. I'd started far too late to come in any place but last, but I didn't care; the satisfaction of that last encounter was enough. In spite of the discombobulation I'd felt just now, I grinned.

---

"Hey, newb-uh, Stuart," Benjamin said, waving me in the general direction of the food, "pizza? Beer?"

"I, uh, I don't eat," I said. "At least, I don't think I do. And alcohol'd probably do nothing." It might do worse than nothing, if Emma was right about my voice using a steam-jet from the water I drank, but I doubted that even a strong beer would spontaneously combust at boiling temperature. Still, better safe than sorry.

He shrugged and took the last couple slices. "Suit yourself."

We'd played another couple rounds of deathmatch, and then a few rounds of capture-the-flag. Anne insisted on being on the same team as me, and definitely not for my skills. Which wasn't to say I hadn't done better; the free-and-easy style suited the capabilities of my clockwork brain better, and player movement in this game was fast and loose enough to make it work.

I hadn't had any more weird moments of dissociation, either; but I kept thinking about it. Which was the right way to look at it? Was the image I saw in the monitor - or the mirror - truly me? Or was it just a skin that my incorporeal self inhabited, one that could be changed out at the touch of a button without binding me to an identity, regardless of any functional "gameplay" differences? Did I pass the "mirror test...?"

But I was starting to feel a bit worn from all the excitement, to say nothing of pushing the boundaries of my new brain constantly. Gil noticed it as we were laughing it up between rounds. "Hey, you okay?" he said. "You seem kinda, er, run down."

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I bit my lip, but nodded. "Yeah, a bit. This's been the busiest night I've had since this happened."

He gave me a curious look. "Do you, uh, need help with that...?"

The thought bounced around my mind for a moment, triggering a confusion of different half-reactions, but while I was trying to sort out a coherent answer, Anne stepped in. "I've got this," she said with surprising firmness, almost as if gaming-mode Anne was peeking out from behind the shy, stammering personality that had reasserted itself as soon as she was AFK.

I was a little confused, as was Gil, but I didn't see any reason to refuse. Anne came around behind me and started winding me back up; she was noticeably more confident than she'd been the first time, but still treated me delicately. The others looked on in curiosity; I felt a bit embarrassed, but by this point I'd had to get used to this happening in public.

"So that really is how you get energy," Joshua mused. "No wonder you don't need to eat."

"I still want to know-" Jonathan began, but Benjamin cut him off.

"Yeah, yeah, we get it already! What plainly exists can't be possible, because you're the expert mechanical engineer around here, Mr. Database Administration Major!"

Jonathan glowered, his beard bristling. "Do you know how many cells are in a human body? Do you know how small they are, individually?"

Benjamin scoffed. "Do you know how many of them it takes to count to ten, let alone eighty-six thousand and four hundred? Cite me a brain that can do it that's smaller than the guts of a pocket watch."

"Cite me a pocket watch that can explain what that number means!"

"Gahhh!" Esther hissed. "Again!? God, let's get Spacewar! loaded up. I need to kick both your asses some more."

I stared back at the screen on the ancient computer while she and Joshua got busy mounting a reel of magnetic tape on a transport at the top of the thing and flicking away on the lights-'n-switches panel below the display. The pattern froze and faded away when they hit a final couple of switches and the tape started running, but I could still see it in my mind's eye. What was "life?" The "cells" didn't reason or follow the rules of their own volition, yet they became structures that behaved in almost organic ways. Maybe more "plant" than "animal," but still.

And the "gears and springs and things" making up my insides couldn't have any more will than these imaginary cells, let alone real ones; yet I was apparently as much of a thinking being as I'd ever been. What did that mean? Was I "real," a genuine living thing made from lifeless matter? Conversely, were any of us "real?" If patterns like that could spring from such a bare-bones deterministic ruleset, maybe all life was only a pre-programmed pattern of unimaginable complexity, a puppet show being put on by God. Maybe "reality" was just a simulation being executed by some great hissing, clacking mechanical monstrosity in some dark chamber of-

"Yo!" Gil said. "Earth to Freeman! We're ready here."

I started, turning my attention back to the screen, but it was blank. I noticed Joshua seated at a nearby PC that was hooked into the thing, where a command prompt was asking questions; Gil noticed my noticing. "The teletype is a whole other restoration project," he said. "We're just using this in the meantime."

"Okay," Jonathan said, "we've got an odd number of players this time. Esther's reigning champion, so the rest of us will do three matches for the first round, and the winners will advance to the second round to determine who makes it to the grand finale."

We wrote our names on slips of paper and folded them up; these were tossed into one of the empty pizza boxes and given a good shake, and the first-round matchups were drawn and announced. I was set to square off against Jonathan; they decided that we could go last so that I could watch how the game was played, since I'd never even heard of it before Gil mentioned it all those weeks ago.

It was as dead-simple as the name implied: two spaceships orbiting a central star, blasting the hell out of each other. The tricky bit was that the designers had gone for realism (well, "realism,") so the ships could only turn and thrust forward, and their missiles were affected by the star's gravity, so lining up a shot could be non-trivial. But as I watched, I began to get a feel for the flow of the thing; the ships wheeling around the star as they tried to get off shots at each other reminded me a lot of circling the chamber earlier.

Joshua wasn't great at aiming his fire, but he was a nimble pilot and deftly dodged most of Benjamin's shots; they traded off kills for a bit, but he came out on top with three points to Ben's two when their five rounds were up. Gil freely admitted that he wasn't very good, and tried a goofy strategy of just ramming on the accelerator and racing across the field as fast as the game allowed. It worked better than expected, in that he actually scored a kill on Anne and only two of his four deaths were at her hands; the other two were from ramming into the star.

Finally, it was our turn. Jonathan turned to me. "Mark my words," he said, "you're going down." I really didn't know what to make of his attitude, but there was just a hint of a twinkle in his eye. Maybe he was less of a jackass than he seemed...? Well, I wasn't eager to get into a debate with him any time soon, but still. "Shall we dance?" I asked, with a mock-curtsy. I heard Anne squeal behind me and immediately wished I hadn't; in fact, I wasn't even sure why I had.

We got down to it. Despite watching, it took a round for me to get a feel for the controls, and Jonathan took the opportunity to score his first point. I got enough of a handle on it to plug him in round two, but I was still trying to sync myself to the flow of the game. Round three went better; I was getting the hang of moving with gravity, and it helped make up for the fact that I couldn't circle-strafe like earlier. But he caught me off-guard when he abruptly vanished from in front of my missile, reappearing behind me and whirling around to shoot me in the back.

"You can teleport!?" I yelped. I hadn't seen anybody do that until now. He was fair enough to explain how, but there was that annoying laugh again...

Round four saw me still thrown by the surprise; things weren't flowing for me anymore, and I could feel my tempo jumping all over the place. I tried to get the hang of the teleport feature, but I lost myself on the screen, and by the time I found where I'd reappeared, Jonathan had a missile en route. I dodged it, but barely; fortunately, I managed to catch him with a lucky drive-by shot while I got clear.

Okay, focus, breathe...well, breathe or don't. Take it easy... I tried to calm myself, get back in sync, let the flow of events carry me while I looked for opportunities to steer it. Two for two now...this next point would decide it.

He opened with a salvo of all three shots you were allowed to have onscreen in a sweep, trying to catch me no matter which way I dodged. I turned around and ran away until they were far enough apart that I could actually slip in between; then I started to pinwheel around the star, as close as I comfortably could, the gravity-assist helping me change directions much faster than I could with the ship's thrusters.

Jonathan gave an exasperated growl. "Stop that, already! Gah!"

Anne giggled. "No bellyaching, mister!"

He tried to catch me on the long sweeps before I dove back in toward the star, but I came out of each pass moving too fast for him to follow. Finally, on one pass, I came near enough to him and saw my opportunity. He did, too, but he was too slow to turn when he realized what I was doing, and before he could get off a shot I caught him full in the face with the deciding blast.

That was it for the first round. We got up and he nodded to me in grudging recognition, then stalked off to the mini-fridge for another beer. "Marked and corrected!" I called after him.

This time, Esther threw her name into the box, and we drew again. It ended up with her and Joshua facing off, while Anne and I formed the other half of the bracket. "Aww," Anne said, "I...I w-wanted us to be the, um, grand finale. Uh, p-promise me we'll, uh, still be friends, okay...?"

I wondered when she'd decided that we were friends, but let it drop. "...No hard feelings, sure," I said. She smiled, and I could almost see her eyes light up through her hair.

It didn't take long to play out, though. Anne was definitely better at this than I was, and no slouch at dancing around the field herself. I only got in a single kill before she eliminated me. Esther turned out to be quite a handful; she made liberal use of the teleport, but never seemed to lose track of herself. She cleaned out Joshua 5-0, much to his dismay.

At the end of it, Esther's crown remained in place; Anne did manage to land a hit on her once, but couldn't keep up with her jumping all over the field. We decided to call it an evening after that, and I said my goodbyes.

I really did feel better, walking back through the tunnels. Not that this whole situation wasn't crazy, not that the limitations this form imposed on me weren't aggravating, but...for now, at least...maybe not everything had to be bad and uncomfortable just because I was stuck in circumstances I didn't want? Maybe, until I had a chance to get back to normal, I could at least function like this. I wasn't what I ought to be, but I was still alive, right? At least as much as any of us were...

And maybe the thing with Anne, whatever was going on there, was a little weird and uncomfortable, but she seemed sincere, at least. And-

I paused, thought for a moment, and felt a little relieved, almost smiling to myself.

-And, I realized, nobody - not even the beardy twit who made fun of my new form - had given me any crap about my gender.

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