God of the Game

It all happens with an epileptic fit. A seizure on a train and the emergency button is pressed. Onlookers too stunned for motion, a few panicking, and two good Samaritans dragged a convulsing old lady out to the platform of the next station where the locomotive grinds to a creaking halt.

Dilidos is clapping his hands like a bludgeoning chimpanzee, his legs stamping, as if doing the tap-dance steps of a mechanical primate. The antiquated machine with the carbon-cloud chugging fossil fuel powered steam engine was coming right out of the HD3DTV and into our living room, and before we realized, an ER drama was unfolding before our very eyes.

Charles, whose family name, Schmuck, is Yiddish for penis, or in some cases, discarded foreskin, a person of no use, a prick, jerk, bastard, is just standing put, munching a turkey sandwich, watching the golden citizen die. He’s got two sides to his character, one, a pushover, a doormat, but turn him over, and he could hurt you in cold blood.

But Charles is generally well mannered. Speaks softly, sits cross-legged, and takes small bites; unlike Dilidos, who is more of an in your face, puts his nose where it does not belong, kind of a person. If there is a hole, literally and figuratively, he’ll be loitering nearby.

The Grinlock, on the other hand, does not speak. He suffers from locked jaw, fixing his expression into a perpetual grin. He is one of those helping, but with an insensitive face like that, the paramedics think he’s mocking them, and command him to go stand at a corner.

I was just waiting for the bell, for recess to end. I can’t wait to go back to class. But looks like fun time is being extended; JC’s allowing it. The common hall of our sanatorium, this madhouse, has just been redecorated into a colonial railway station. Whose main arse is programming this play, I wonder? Probably Charles Schmuck, I reckon, by the way he’s sitting in silent stare, savouring each morsel of that poor lady turning bluer with each bite of his fowl-filled honey-toasted bun.

The rescue mission was torn asunder. No one wants the paramedics to succeed anymore. We would rather the old woman bite her own tongue off in spasms and suffocate. “Let her die! Let her die!” came the schoolboy chants. The med guys are intimidated. On the one hand, they want her to survive. On the other, they just want to give up, succumb to peer-group pressure. In the end, they cave in and join the party.

Music starts to the rhythm of her death-contracting motions. When life exits the stage, and her limbs stop to groove, Dilidos secures a rope and we are to take turns controlling the puppet body. But children, as fathers are aware, cannot share, so some wise ass decides to turn her into an automated zombie instead. The corpse is dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller; even better than the King of Pop ever.

She boogies to her déjà vu loop of a dream - a trance astral sentence which epileptics suffer during the battle of seizures - but not yet hitting the second chorus, the boys are bored and so they discard that old ragdoll flesh to be crushed under the iron wheels of the coal-charring choo-choo. Grinding cadaver as it rolls out to its next destination – Hogwarts of Harry Porter fame - I hear someone scream.

A fat, ruddy-countenanced boy standing next to me tells me to ignore. He then said in between Kit Kats that the rail traverses legends. “Here,” he swigs out an iPad and shows the entire route of bestseller and blockbuster worlds it links.

“You see the dotted lines here?”

I nodded.

“Those are the stations to be operational next week based on the sales forecasts of new releases. Old superheroes given a badass facelift, novels shot to the silver screen, as well as fresh stories and characters morphed in original universes.”

“By whose forecast?” I asked.

“Who else?!” He pointed at the tinted window of the control room monitoring our every move. “He gets it right most times.”

“And so, why does the train stop here?” I enquired, puzzled.

“Oh, don’t you know?” flew the response, “We’re already in print. We’re under publication. And a tie-in movie and game will be coming out soon.”

“But we’re not done. We’re still incarcerated in this funhouse going through tests...”

“Yah, but you don’t see the other side of the story,” Chubby butted in, “JC’s already sucked the plot out of you. He is many steps ahead...and yah, even if the story is not completed, so what? It’s all about sequels and prequels and trilogies and more these days. You don’t need to know the end. Fact, you can make up the end as you go along...depending on crowd response. What’s the point of ending...of closure, or continuing for that matter, if people don’t like your show, if people don’t show up.

And what on earth ends anyway? Life? As far as you know, being a god of the game, it has not. And the horizon of a completion is nowhere near in sight. Chill, bro. Have a break, have a Kit Kat!” He offers me the chocolate wafer.

I declined.

Everyone seems to have an answer except for me. But I guess that can be expected in a game. Much of the fun is in the discovery. Writers and producers may be accustomed and familiar with the plot, but not the players. The players find out. And players can reset and restart if their characters are killed; that’s the luxury of being divine.

“Thanks for the enlightenment,” I offered.

“No probs,” fatso replied, “I’m Soy, by the way.”

“And I am...”

“Oh, I know who you are. The question is whether you know who you are. Bye. Gotta go. JC’s paging.”

“Wait,” I stepped in, stunned by what he’d just said, “yer not one of us?” I gestured to the motley crew, now scaring the paramedics who were peer-influenced into not doing a dutiful job in resuscitating the elderly and infirmed lady.

“Nah, I work for him. And he sends me down whenever one of the subjects is confused.”

Soy was already on his way, almost at the top of a stairs. He stopped, turned, and added, “You can say I’m some kind of a Messenger. You know, the ones either holy or mad people see in visions; the ones written about in religious manuscripts.”