‘Ouch,’ she says, stopping at one step.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I think I hurt my foot,’ she says, laughing.
‘Wait, I’ll try and turn the lights on.’
Tomás tries to squeeze past her and she grabs him from the shoulder so he doesn’t trip and instead of stepping down he turns to her and ‘Abril’ hasn’t ended yet, although it’s on the last verse and he feels her breath We’ve never seen April on his neck and he can’t see her eyes The weak hand wasn’t drawing and he kisses her You never, never and she stands still and kisses him back barely opening her mouth at the guitar solo Search later, search later, search never and their tongues don’t touch, their hands don’t touch, and the stairs aren’t there and the painted walls disappear and he wishes he were absent too, fucking gone, silenced like the rain, just so that he didn’t have to know once it was over, that he’s really kissing someone else because nothing in the world can just change the outcome of such a simple fucking mechanic.
‘Sorry,’ he tells her but she doesn’t answer. The song is over.
When they leave the staircase and head back into the crowd, will they talk about it? He fucking hopes not, if he’s to ever get to Eva. Just like the names on the wall, the kiss will be lived over, forgotten, and he’s not really sorry for kissing her, but he is for the fact that he’s already started to forget her, and that it’s easier to do so in the dark.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says with one hand on his cheek. ‘I do have a boyfriend though.’
‘Don’t worry, I have someone too.’
‘Let’s go. They’re going to play “Other”,’ she says, taking her hand away.
He takes his phone out and lights the staircase as the sad acoustic strum starts, but the light lasts only a few seconds and the strobes make the graffiti look as if they’re moving.
They open the door and the crowd is all lights and noise and Lucas and Jesús see them and cheer things they can’t hear. I believe in other worlds. Matilde stands in front of Tomás shouting the lyrics to the chorus. The one I hear when I feel you. Yiyo is crouching with his guitar next to the amp, making it feedback and some people cover their ears but they’re still smiling because electric noise behind a clean sad chord makes the lyrics even sadder. You can make feel alright the singer keeps repeating, and although everyone there feels alright, no one’s felt it like that, just like that, and Tomás wishes he could do that in his games too, We can meet somewhere, will you remember where? to make people see that what they know could always be different, sadder, much sadder despite all the noise. You can solve my life with yours.
Lucas looks at him and mouths ‘so?’ and Tomás smiles back at him and nods, and he wishes the song never ended so he didn’t have to speak to him, but it does end and everyone claps at the wall of feedback and the singer announces that their last song is coming and that it’s called ‘A Great Ending’ and that it’s a new song. Tomás sighs because he wrote the bass line for it and had complained about not liking it. But when others are playing it, it always sounds so good. I can inveeeent, a great ending when you’re hiding. I can imaaaagine a great ending.
They finish their set and the electro starts again and Lucas and Jesús walk up to Tomás.
‘Awesome set, huh?’ Jesús says.
‘Yeah, amazing,’ Matilde says.
‘It was amazing,’ Lucas says.
‘You said you didn’t like them,’ Jesús tells Lucas, laughing.
‘Come on, I said the bass was a little off. And I had only listened to their latest stuff. I prefer their first EP,’ Lucas says, also laughing.
‘Hey man, I have to ask you for a favour,’ Jesús tells Tomás.
‘What is it?’
‘We’re meant to have six people talking onstage tonight about The End Of The World. One of them is a writer, just like you.’
‘OK.’
‘And he didn’t turn up.’
‘OK.’
‘So I signed you up to talk instead.’
‘No way.’
‘It’s just for fun.’
‘No.’
‘You’re a writer, make something up!’ Lucas says.
‘It would be hilarious,’ Matilde says, laughing.
Yiyo turns up to meet them sweating like hell but somehow still looking cool and Matilde still staring at him.
‘That went well,’ Yiyo says with a big smile.
‘Totally,’ Matilde says.
‘Yeah,’ Tomás says.
‘So, what you up to next?’ Yiyo asks Matilde.
‘We’re trying to convince Tomás to go onstage and talk about The End Of The World but he doesn’t want to,’ she says, and Yiyo laughs and pats Tomás’s shoulder.
‘Come on, man, when was the last time you were on a stage?’
They all look at Tomás but he has no idea what he’d say or why a story would matter if The End Of The World will indeed happen any time soon. And so he thinks about his games filled with computer bugs, with mistakes that don’t allow anyone to finish them, and how fucking ironic it is that he has spent so much time trying to write a story for something that can’t end, and now he has to improvise a story for the end of everything. And just as he’s laughing and shaking his head to leave (because he really should get back to work), a goth chick in red platforms walks onstage and taps the microphone and the music goes quiet.
‘The end is coming,’ she says and people cheer. ‘But before it does, I’d like to invite a few people up onto the stage who will tell us what we can expect to see.’ She takes out a paper from her pocket. ‘First up, Tomás.’
People cheer even louder as she steps away from the mic and Tomás just shakes his head and Yiyo lifts Tomás’s arm and everyone claps and a goth starts pulling him towards the stage and then more people pull him and cheer for him until he’s onstage and then it’s all silence again. He squints his eyes trying to look for Yiyo, but with the stage lights on him everyone turns into silhouettes.
The host goth adjusts the mic up to his height and he has still no idea what to tell them because endings just spoil everything. And no matter how much you may want it to be a beginning of something else you can’t, because from then on you can’t be new again, and you can’t just choose what to forget or how to remember and… And so Tomás comes closer to the microphone and he shuts his eyes and he figures that what they want to hear is not an ending but a story told backwards, all life coming to a halt and then, then all the explosions, all the causes and then at the end, or beginning, Tomás meeting Eva and smoking out the window.
‘Come on!’ someone shouts in the crowd and people laugh.
‘The world will end,’ Tomás says and people cheer.
‘How?!’ another silhouette shouts.
‘With an explosion.’
‘Of what?!’
‘We won’t know, we won’t find out, because it will end us completely.’
‘Is that all?!’
‘No.’
‘What else, where is Satan?!’
‘I don’t know, but if I had to guess, then he’s smoking out the window right now, your window, and he wants to go to the Antarctic.’ He knows he can tell them anything so long as he keeps the promise of an ending.
‘The Antarctic?!’
‘Come on, man!’
‘This what we paid for?!’
‘Where are the explosions?!’
The host goth takes the microphone and Tomás is behind her and looks at the blue and red dragonfly tattoo behind her neck and she says someone else’s name and then…
‘Guys, remember to buy some merch at our table. We got a ton of sponsors endorsing us for The End Of The World.’
People cheer and Tomás walks off the stage and back to Yiyo and the others but he just wants to go home to work.
‘That was hilarious,’ Yiyo says and Matilde laughs.
‘Hardly,’ Jesús says. ‘I expected more… Well, it’s why we’re
fundraising I guess.’
‘I’m getting out of here,’ Tomás says.
‘Wait,’ Lucas says, pulling him to one side from his sleeve.
‘What did she say?’
‘About what?’
‘Maty, about me,’ he whispers.
‘She said,’ Tomás starts, but who is he to end someone else’s story? He’s tired of doing it. It’s enough. And, at the same time, who is Lucas to stop him from living his own, from getting the things he needs and going to Eva?
‘She said she likes you. She likes you most of the time,’ Tomás says.
‘What does that even mean?’ Lucas asks.
‘Women are strange, man. I have no idea.’ Tomás feels a little sick in his mouth.
‘They are strange,’ he laughs. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn’t think she liked me. I would have put things to one side for you at the shop either way.’
‘Thanks.’
Tomás waves bye and leaves the silhouettes to the next speaker who’s setting up a PowerPoint presentation with a picture of a comet with an upside down cross stamped on its surface.
He walks past the cloakroom at the entrance and someone pulls his jacket from behind and it’s Matilde.
‘About the kiss,’ she starts.
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Yeah, it’s just—’
‘Is your boyfriend here?’
‘No.’
‘Then don’t tell him. If he doesn’t know, nothing will happen.’
‘The thing is you might know him. He works at university and he makes games too. I met him at that writing workshop. He actually, like, told…’
‘What his name?’ he asks her.
‘Jaime.’
‘Small world.’
‘I know. But come on, just don’t tell him.’
‘He won’t know.’
‘Thanks.’
They smile at each other and he leaves the club and outside it’s still raining and still full of people and noise. He puts his headphones on, heads to the park and looks down the bridge at the Mapocho River with its waves swirling in foam in all directions, but he knows that it will always only flow in one of those directions, with the current it cannot ever go against.
Tomás decides to walk home and tonight, thinking about the end of the everything, the names on the wall and the river waves against the concrete tunnels of a city that is his and Eva’s, always Eva… Thinking about all of this, he realises he has an idea, a real idea, and he’ll finish a story that others will want to play despite all its broken mechanics.
13
The Box
He sits under his desk against the wall. It’s 2am and he’s ready to start working. He has to sit on his coat because the rug’s still wet and a piece of his ceiling is still on his desk, and even though it drips from time to time, he has decided that none of these things matter when there’s an idea and who knows (he thinks he does)… This might be ‘the’ idea, the one story he’s been waiting to come up with all this time.
So he opens his IDEAS book, has a sip of cold coffee and turns to a blank page. He starts with a list:
What makes a good game? What makes a shit game?
– Realism: real consequences to every action – Realism and real consequences.
– A recognisable story structure. Tropes like Damsels in Distress (fuck my own lessons), being the victim and overcoming injustices, going from imprisonment to freedom, from poverty to wealth. – A story that relies only on tropes and therefore becomes predictable.
– One main clear objective. – Too many side-quests and minor plots.
– A dog, a child or any made-up creature that the protagonist has to care for so as to give the illusion that his/her choices have an impact on those he/she loves. Make a reward system so as to encourage the player to always think that he’s not alone or free. – A system that rewards care for others too much, because it would mean the player would feel like they are playing someone else’s game. Excessive responsibility is the OPPOSITE of fun.
– To make it so that everything the protagonist does seems to draw him closer to the end but there will always be an obstacle… – Obstacles that are predictable, because since the desired end is revealed from the start, the middle will just become unnecessary clutter, like cleaning plates before a dinner party only to have to then clean them again.
– A game that takes into account Jaime’s lack of talent and then justifies it. – Jaime, everything about him.
– What if the game has no ending? What if it randomly generates content and there’s nothing at the end? What if you make a game about an empty promise? – The lack of an ending would make people stop playing the middle because nothing in this world is more motivating than being able to get what you believe you’re entitled to. That’s what a story must do, entitle you to desire, to accept an ending.
– There always needs to be something to lose. This can be the pet mentioned above, your life, anything… – There’s always something to lose. Your life…
But is it enough to simply make a list about it all? Sure, all these elements would make a good game but without a story they’re just independent pieces that trace back to nothing, drive towards nothing. Plus, if he can give examples about every point he makes, doesn’t it mean that these perfect parts already exist, that they’re everywhere and never his own? And so he decides to tear off the list from his IDEAS book because really, they’re not his ideas. And so, how should he start a story? Since he can’t figure it out he decides to start with the ending.
The protagonist’s pet dies whilst looking for his lost love and when he finds her he’s still carrying the pet’s body around in his camping bag (or in his arms, to increase drama), and she understands his devotion to dead things and helps him bury it under the ice, or they send it off to sea on a wooden rowing boat before they can finally go back to her campsite, where she’d been living all this time with a grumpy walrus that told her she would never leave. And then he checks if his items are frozen (and they aren’t because they had kept warm with the pet’s body) before he starts to undress her and then…
Tomás’s flickering lights die out and it’s all darkness and silence and he can hear himself swallow.
• • •
IDEAS BOOK P. 56:
Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva Eva
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ucking over.
• • •
He stays under his desk and finishes his coffee. It will have to do for now. He’ll improvise a beginning and a middle tomorrow morning before his class and take it to Jaime to check. He should prepare his lesson too, but it’s definitely not his fault that he’s always under such tight deadlines. After all, he does tell his students that real stories sometimes take years to complete, even when the idea might come all at once.
The class is about justifying gameplay mechanics with story elements. He will ask his students basic questions, like ‘what if your game only involves a physics engine and animated particles? What kind of game could you make then?’ Or ‘if the only thing you can program is an 8-bit sprite, one simple character, no backgrounds or added scenery, and they can only move right and left, what could you make?’ Most students come up with, frankly, the most outlandish things, like there’s a competition to see who’s the sickest mentalist in the world. Most years he hears the same ideas too, as if there was an ancient jackass passing down the same shitty ideas. The 8-bit man is a rapist. He is a burglar who eats children. No, he kills the children, then burns their pets in the oven to make a perfume bottle he then sells to the dead children’s families. He’s a dentist gone mad with power and he’s performing non-consensual surgeries. And Tomás has to pretend that these ideas have some value, something worth talking about. And always, ALWAYS, every single time, everyone dies at the end. No matter how many times Tomás explains what a story arc looks like in most games, either they always find a way to make it
We Are the End Page 20