game

Old Draft, why not post it

Running full speed, looking back at Nick, waiting for him to throw the ball, I slip on the autemn dew of the Sunday grass and fall backwards. Suddenly my arm feels really weird. Later my friends said they heard the snap. I stand up and my arm looks even weirder than it feels, the middle of my forearm is bent inward like an elbow at a 45 degree angle. I wasn’t going to get the ball. I hurry over to Chris, who is on the other team, and ask, “Chris, does this look normal? Its just a muscle cramp, right?” it wasn’t a muscle cramp. “After the play, man.” he replies. “No, Chris, look at this!” He whips his head in the direction of my arm, “Holy shit!” The game is halted to get the wound (me) off the field and into a car to take me home. The car wasn’t driven by one of my friends because we were all 14, rather it was driven by a one of the juniors that had come to inflict pain on our smaller, less developed frames by way of football. I thinks, after seeing the mangled skin, muscle, and bone stemming from my arm, those plans changed.

I knew the guy that drove me home, his name was Jacob. He was the assistant swim coach at our local pool. He was a fairly nice guy over the summer, when his friends weren’t around. During the the school months, however, he was kind of a jerk, trying to keep up his bad-ass reputation I guess. He wasn’t a bad-ass on the drive to my house, he was scared out of hs mind. The drive from the park to my house takes maybe three minutes, it took us, what felt like ten. He was driving slower than three year olds’ on their big wheels. When we got to my house, he pulled into my  drive way, which made my dad stop his yard work, opened my door and said to my father “Mr. Parker, I think your son broke his arm.” Wow, ya think, dumb ass? I arm is bent in a ridiculously unnatural angle and there is a knot of flesh the side of a grapefruit at the bent. I really wanted to say that, but, hey, the guy just did me a favor. My dad’s response to Jacob’s statement still rings in my ears as clear as it was that day “Oh, god damn it, Alex!” Alex is what he calls me because we have the same name. Ah, yes, my loving father. I don’t think he was really mad at me, in fact I know he wasn’t, he was just really freaked out because this was the first time either of his children got really hurt. After my dad’s eloquint and hospitalable greeting Jacob exits stage right and my father, my younger sister and I get in the car and head to the hospital.

We get to the hospital and check in; the hospital is a little more dilibrate than I had hoped in having someone see me, but I am seen by a nurse before a few patients partly because of their curtousy and partly because they were really grossed out my my arm. I am given pain killers just after the adrenalin wears off, so I only feel the full magnitude of my injury for a few moments. The doctor I get is sort of a jokester, but when I bring up the question of “You’ve seen worse breaks, right?” he responses ”This one’s pretty bad.” which is doctor code for “Hell no, kid! Your, shit is fuck up!” And I was I was thinking same thing, I just hoped he wasn’t. Don’t ever ask a doctor how bad your injury is because I think they are obligated to tell you the truth and if you have to ask that, chances are, you won’t like what they have to say. Instead, ask your doctor “Will I be okay?” or “Can you fix this?” those questions tented to receive a happier, less devistating answer.

In any case, I have to have surgery and the doctor tells me that he is going to try to set the bones without metal plates but if it’s not stable enough he will have to put them in. He would tell me after the surgery what he did. When I woke up in my room six hours after going under and two hours after surgery I knew. The pain in my arm was unexplainable. It was sharp, throbbing, shooting, and stinging all at the same time. I knew that I had plates in my arm.

Today I am fully recovered but I have two three and a half inch scars on each side of my arm and metal plates around both the radius and the ulna which are secured by metal screws. My dad says that the doctor could have done a better job in making the scars less visible but I like them the way they are. They are a reminder of the that day, of who I was that day, of what my family and friends were like that day, and how all of those things have changed in the eight years since then. So this is the condensed version (yes, there’s more) of what caused those scars on my arm. I find it simply fasinating how parts of a person’s body can tell a story. Move over, I think it is fantastic how those stories can show you something deep and unseen about that person.

I used to like interactive fiction in the beginning of the 90’s, when a lack of good graphics allowed me to explore games that were founded purely on texts, and when I was naïve enough to think that in these games I was deciding the fate of the protagonist – when you are not even brushing your first decade in life that can happen.

Reading Photopia brought back interesting memories from my youth, like when I read underground interactive fiction about people and institutions that I knew – I’m quiet sure that there is a few out there about GMU too – or when I almost threw out my PC because I was frustrated with a riddle. Sadly, it also brought back memories as to why I don’t read them anymore.

Interactive fiction is fun as long as you can delude yourself into believing that you are deciding the outcome of the story. Photopia is especially fun in that regard, because of its engaging story and its elusive theme about free will – a theme that was perhaps raised by Adam Cadre in order to convey a message about the limits of interactive fiction. However, at the end of the day the fact that Photopia has a predetermined ending, regardless of what I do, and has no gaming aspect whatsoever will not bring me back intro the brethren of interactive fiction.

When I say that the ending is predetermined regardless of what I do, I literally mean that it’s predetermined. If you don’t believe me, then try to develop your character based on your decisions. You are going to fail in the first page. I know, because I had tried to “pull” Rob away from the wheel, “punch” him, and finally “kill” him before he kills somebody, but I failed. I always arrived at the same red light and red planet, and had to salvage the same seed the same way – I initially thought that the red planet will provide me with some gaming experience, and help me forget about “determinism,” but I as I later found out I was wrong.

While Photopia may have reinforced my belief as to why I don’t read interactive fiction, it also helped me to see how interactive fiction evolved from text to graphic based games. It helped me to appreciate games like Shenmue I-II, KOTOR I-II, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect even more. I may not be an interactive fiction fan anymore, but Adam Cadre’s Varicella – you can find this game on his website along with other interesting ones (http://adamcadre.ac/if.html) – did consume a few of my hours with its puzzles. I couldn’t help myself. Damn you Adam Cadre!