To Be or Not To Be

by Ryan North

  This should be fun!

  » Accept that you died of a heart attack «

  » Listen in on people’s conversations and see if any of them talk about how they totally killed you «

  * * *

  * * *

  You hang around Norway for a bit, trying to listen in on what people are saying, but they’re all speaking Norwegian! You only speak Danish, so understanding Norwegian is a little difficult. It all sounds like Swedish to you!

  Which actually makes a lot of sense, since Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are all related North Germanic languages, descended from early linguistic differentiation between regular Germanic speakers and North Germanic speakers around 200 AD.

  You nod your head, agreeing that all of this is both accurate and extremely interesting.

  While these three languages are GENERALLY supposed to be mutually intelligible, you find you can understand Norwegian speakers only if you’re concentrating (which you are) and if they’re speaking slowly and clearly (which they’re not, as everyone is running around upset about war and all these kings getting killed). Ironically, Norwegian speakers can understand Danish easier than Danish speakers understand Norwegian, but that doesn’t help you much! That would only be useful if you were playing as the Norwegian king whose ghost has stowed away on YOUR army’s boat headed back to Denmark, but I haven’t given you that option even though it would be extremely awesome. If you’re wondering what happens to this Vengeful Ghost King, I can tell you only this: THE ANSWER EXISTS IN YOUR IMAGINATION??

  But here’s the good news, it turns out WRITTEN Danish and WRITTEN Norwegian are actually pretty similar! So you spend the next several nights haunting people, quietly reading their diaries while they sleep peacefully in their beds. And you don’t know this, but ghosts do this all the time. Ghosts just love sneaking a peek at the secrets of the living!

  It takes a while, but you finally find the diary of someone who wrote on the day you died that she was wandering by a garden, minding her own business, when she saw some Danish guy pour something in some other Danish guy’s ear!

  Hey! That sounds like what could’ve happened to you (but remember you don’t know that’s exactly what happened to you because of that new irony we invented)!

  » Wake up this person and ask her about it «

  » Wake up this person and hold up a piece of paper where you’ve written down a question asking her about it «

  * * *

  * * *

  You grab a piece of paper and write down the words “HEY I’M NOT HERE TO KILL YOU, I JUST WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT MURDER YOU MAYBE WITNESSED?” but in Danish of course, hah hah. You gently shake the woman awake while holding the piece of paper up in front of her.

  She’s freaked out initially (she was just woken up by a g-g-g-g-ghostly apparition from beyond the grave) but once she reads your note, she looks at you suspiciously and says, “For real?”

  You flip over the paper and write “YEAH I’M THE GUY THAT GOT KILLED MAYBE, AND I GUESS I WANT TO REVENGE MY DEATH OR WHATEVER? BUT PLEASE SPEAK SLOWLY AS NORWEGIAN IS NOT MY NATIVE LANGUAGE; I’M FROM DENMARK.”

  “Oh,” the woman says in Danish, “I speak Danish too.”

  “Kick ass,” you reply.

  She tells you what she saw and gives you a physical description of the guy. Unfortunately, the man answering to her description could only be one person: your brother, Claudius!!

  Congratulations, my king! You now know what you know so that whole Second Person Pronoun-Paradoxical Auto-Dramatic Irony thing has been slain! You have been awarded 500 experience points, plus you’ve unlocked a new quest: Revenge Yourself on Claudius.

  You’re feeling pretty chuffed about this whole situation!

  Okay! Let’s revenge your death! Your murderer is getting away with it in Denmark.

  » Swim back to Denmark «

  » Wait for the next boat back to Denmark «

  * * *

  * * *

  It’s, like, 200 kilometres between the two nations. You know that, right?

  APPARENTLY NOT??

  So you start to swim back to Denmark, but it’s a lot of work to keep your body corporeal so that you can swim, so eventually you get tired and stop. For a while you float above the water, but that gets boring, so for most of the journey you float down to the ocean floor and travel along it.

  Hey, there’s a sunken pirate ship here. Hey, there might be treasure in it!

  » Examine pirate ship «

  » Ignore it, just arrive in Denmark «

  * * *

  * * *

  You make it back to Denmark! The first thing you want to do is track down your brother to take revenge. TURNS OUT that’s really easy because he’s in the first place you check: the royal court! He’s there with your widow, Gertrude!

  Weird, they’re acting all close and stuff. Oh well. He’s probably just trying to comfort her after your untimely death, hah hah; brothers are really great.

  Though...maybe not?

  » Listen in on what they’re saying «

  » Ignore what they’re saying, I’m CERTAIN there’s nothing untoward going on «

  * * *

  * * *

  Using spooky ghost powers, you completely ignore what Gertrude and Claudius say to each other!

  That evening, you try to revenge yourself on Claudius by spooking him. The problem is, he never looks in any of the mirrors you’re haunting, he assumes wind is knocking over his pots, and he thinks the ghostly wailing from beyond the grave is probably just a sick dog outside who’s having a pretty rough go of it lately.

  This spooking him isn’t going well, man. I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll have to get your revenge some other way! Maybe by...killing him?

  Reflecting on the fact that he did kill you, you decide the only suitable revenge is to kill him as well because why not, you could totally take him, especially since you’ve already died once and lived to talk about it. But who is best suited to do the killing? You could do it, but you DID have a son partly so you wouldn’t have to do every single thing around here!

  » Kill Claudius yourself «

  » Get your son to kill Claudius instead «

  * * *

  * * *

  Okay. Um, why?

  » Because then he’ll have sullied his hands with murder, and better for someone new to be forced to commit the murder act than for me to do it myself for some reason? «

  » Oh yeah, wait, this is dumb, I’m already dead and invisible and I can fly; I guess I’ll just do it myself «

  * * *

  * * *

  Okay, well, I did promise that you’d get to make your own choices here, so that’s what you do! You decide you’re going to get Hamlet to do a murder for you. Even though that’s awful. That’s awful, dude.

  Listen, hypothetical question: let’s say you do that and Hamlet is eventually successful and you are revenged. What would you do then?

  What would you do with your (after)life if revenge was no longer its driving force?

  » Accountant «

  » Actor «

  » Amusement park employee «

  » Animal husbandry «

  » Animator «

  » Architect «

  » Athlete «

  » Bakery owner «

  » Bouncer «

  » Brewmaster «

  » Cake decorator «

  » Chef «

  » Comic book artist «

  » Counsellor «

  » Cowboy «

  » Engineer «

  » Explorer «

  » Firefighter «

  » Food critic «

  » Game tester «

  » Geologist «

  » Librarian «

  » Linguist «

  » Long-haul trucker «

  » Makeup artist «

  » Marine biologist «

  » Mechanic «

  » Musician «

  » Painter «

  �
� Personal trainer «

  » Photographer «

  » Physician «

  » Pilot «

  » Policy analyst «

  » Professional gambler «

  » Professional golfer «

  » Programmer «

  » Researcher «

  » Restaurateur «

  » Roller derby player «

  » Sex worker «

  » Skateboarder «

  » Spy «

  » Tamer of ghost dinosaurs «

  » Travel writer «

  » Watchmaker «

  » Waterslide builder «

  » Waterslide tester «

  » Welder «

  » Window cleaner «

  » Writer «

  » I’m not here to consider life-affirming hypotheticals, I am here to see my son murder a man «

  * * *

  * * *

  Okay, right, but here’s the thing: I’m not super cool with having to go through this whole adventure with you in which you induce your only son to commit a murderous act of revenge on your behalf when you’re already dead anyway. It’s — kinda awful? So if you want to tell Hamlet to go kill his stepfather, you can. In fact, look, you just did. But now you are going to have to live with the consequences, AS THE MAN WHO YOU JUST INDUCED TO MURDER.

  You are now your son, Hamlet!

  How’s that taste, bucko?! Now you have to go do a murder!

  » Be Hamlet, and promise the ghost of your dead father to kill Claudius «

  » But I don’t want to be my son! I want to be a ghost!! «

  * * *

  * * *

  You let Claudius pass you by without comment.

  “What the hell is wrong with us?” you say. “We lost our nerve. Maybe we’re not up to drowning someone.”

  “Or maybe we are, but we need to try again tomorrow night, under exactly the same circumstances as tonight,” Hamlet replies.

  » Try again tomorrow night under exactly the same circumstances «

  » Look at the list again, maybe there’s a better way to kill him «

  * * *

  * * *

  Your plan is the one you decide to go with! It’s too late to try anything today, so you wait a day and go to Claudius’s favourite drinking hole that evening.

  Soon, Claudius walks in the door! “I’ll have some booze,” he says, “in celebration of my new wife and kinghood.” Claudius then gets SUPER WASTED SUPER QUICKLY, which is really convenient for you.

  “Okay, now’s our chance,” Hamlet whispers to you. “Announce loudly that we’re going home to make out, so nobody suspects us. Then we can wait for him on the path back to the castle.”

  “Why are you publicly reminding me of the plan we’ve already discussed?” you hiss, but it was at least convenient because it brought us all up to speed on your plan for avoiding accountability for the murder you’re about to facilitate! You do as Hamlet asks, and you both leave. You walk for a few minutes down the path to a dark spot, not too far from the water, and wait. There are no forks in the road up to this point, so you know you’ll catch him.

  Hamlet wants to make out a bit while you wait, but you point out how it’s chilly down by the water and damp too and how this doesn’t really get your makeout organs pumping, so he gives up on that little fantasy.

  Eventually, Claudius shows up!

  » Confront him «

  » Let him pass «

  * * *

  * * *

  You stop Claudius with a firm hand on his shoulder as Hamlet steps in front of him.

  “Hey Claudius, it’s me, Hamlet! You wanna go down to the river? Maybe see if there’s any frogs?”

  “I like frogs,” Claudius says drunkenly, “as you can get poison from them and use it to kill people who are in the way of your professional and romantic ambitions.”

  “Holy smokes!” Hamlet whispers to you.

  You bring Claudius down to the river’s edge. You and Hamlet bend down on your knees and say things like “Wow, look at that!” and “That frog is CRAZY looking!” and “Whoah, is this one’s neck normal?” and before you know it Claudius is pushing you aside, slurring, “I wanna see.” Then, completely of his own accord, he trips and falls into the water.

  You calmly hold his head down, but then Hamlet stays your hand. “I want to say something to him.”

  You pull Claudius’s head up by the hair.

  “We’re killing you, Claudius, because you killed my father and turned him into a ghost. Prepare to die.”

  “Ghosts?! Those exist?” Claudius gurgles, shocked. You push his head back under water.

  “Wait, I’ve got something else I want to say,” Hamlet says.

  You pull Claudius up again.

  “When you turn into a ghost, tell my dad I said hi, and also, make amends with him, okay?”

  Claudius coughs and struggles weakly. He whispers something that you can’t hear, so Hamlet moves closer to him. Claudius repeats himself, and Hamlet angrily grabs him by the hair and shoves his head underwater, holding it there until he stops struggling. When it’s over, you ask Hamlet what he said.

  Hamlet looks at you. “He said...”

  “Yes?” you say.

  “He said, ‘If ghosts exist, I’m going to become one. And hell herself won’t be able to stop me,’” Hamlet says.

  You stare at him for a long moment. “We’d better get back to the drinking hall to establish our alibis,” you finally say.

  You do that, loudly saying things like “Wow, those were good makeouts! Now I’m back for more drinking!” and eventually go to bed. Claudius is discovered drowned and nobody suspects you.

  That night, no ghosts visit you.

  No ghosts visit you the next night either. Days and days go by without any ghostly apparitions and you’re just about feeling like whatever insanity you may have been witness to over the past several days is finally over. You and Hamlet go to bed, finally relaxing, just a little.

  That night, Hamlet is murdered in his sleep by Osric.

  Surprise!

  » Whoah, what? Save Hamlet! «

  * * *

  * * *

  “THE END,” you say, and Fortinbras looks at you with one raised eyebrow.

  “Um, I mean, I’ll just show myself out,” you say.

  After you leave, Fortinbras takes over Denmark and installs himself as the new head of state. That’s kind of baloney, so you move to England because everyone you liked in Denmark is already dead anyway so WHATEVER. While in England, you meet some sexy tourists on vacation!

  I’d tell you all about these shenanigans, but you made me swear I’d keep it a secret!

  THE END

  P.S. It’s super hot though, good work there my friend.

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  “Incorrect!” Horatio says. Fortinbras slaps in with his answer. “Denmark’s earliest archaeological findings date back to the Eemian interglacial period. That’s from 130,000 to 110,000 BC.”

  Darn it, it’s like he read your friggin’ mind.

  “Correct!” shouts Horatio. “Fortinbras, if you get this next question right, you will be my new king. Ophelia, if that’s who YOU want to be, you’ve got to get this next one right just to stay in the game.”