Author’s Note: This is a short story I wrote based on a dream I had. It takes place in the same universe as a short story I published in 2022, entitled “One Life.” I’m shy about my fiction and don’t usually publish it, but if a dream contains a full story, as last night’s did, it’s easy to just bang it out and the structure and content is not really my responsibility anyway. I do not support the structure or content of this story. I just had fun writing it. You might have fun reading it. 

The Old York under-rail had a station at the hotel. We took the escalators up three floors to the lobby, a massive room with a fountain which appeared to have been pulled out of a casino in Old Vegas and moved here, but was no doubt a recreation.

My comrade and I checked in together at the Golden Dragon Casino Resort and asked for rooms on the same floor. As it turned out, we couldn’t even get rooms in the same tower. I was on floor 502 of tower 2, he on floor 307 of tower 4. We agreed to drop our bags and freshen up a bit in our rooms and regroup in the lobby near the fountain in 37 minutes – 10 AM sharp.

The hotel was built about 15 years ago by the Chinese shortly after Maoborg declared the air was clean and the people of Neo-Shanghai were free to “wonder the realm and do business in a socialist Chinese manner.” It was not quite filthy and and not quite dilapidated. It took the elevator nearly 90 seconds to reach the 502nd floor, as I held my nose and popped my ears, I marveled at a cockroach crouched in the corner, bracing itself against the pressure change. When we reached the destination and the doors opened, the bug did not move.

I lugged my luggage to my low-numbered room, which was something of a hike. My keycard didn’t seem to work, the light blinking red and the handle refusing to budge. I loathed the thought of returning to the lobby to get a new card. However, after an unknown number of swipes, the light clicked green and the handle turned.

I threw my bags on the floor in the entryway. The room was fittingly grimy but quite spacious. Big bed, nice sitting and smoking area. The bathroom was also spacious. The maintenance neglect was perhaps suited to something that had been designed to look luxurious, with decadent wallpaper browned, golden synth-wood cracked, and once elegant neo-wool carpet stained with whisky, coffee, semen, and so on. But I found the vibe perfectly suited for my purposes. I took a quick shower, pulled on the casual clothes at the top of my suitcase, and ensured I had my keycard and heldheld electronic device in the pockets of my fashionably cut but un-ironed trousers, and headed back to the fountain to meet my comrade.

My comrade was waiting for me. He was less impressed with the hotel than I was, and appeared to have skipped the shower.

I left the Mega system as soon as it was legal to do so, and never had any desire to return. My comrade, a childhood friend, had remained living in Mega 1, making only small outings to various newly developed areas outside of the Mega System. I invited him on this trip to Old York to free him of the psychological chains of the Mega Bureaucracy. It was possible I would destroy him in the process, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

“This place is fucking filthy,” he said.

“I like it,” I replied. “You’re just getting out of the Mega mindset, the New World is going to take some getting used to.”

“It doesn’t feel new. It feels old and shitty.”

“That, comrade, is the paradox. Let’s hit the craps table?”

“Yeah.”

***

We each got a thousand satoshis worth of chips at the cashier, and headed out onto the floor. My comrade’s eyes were wide, looking across the game room. The floor, filled mostly with Chinamen, smoking, along with a sprinkling of white tourists, went as far as the eye could see.

“They just let you smoke?” my comrade asked.

“Of course. It’s a casino. And it’s Chinese.”

Having recently taken up the great habit after exiting Mega 1, he lit a cigarette with a boyish grin, as if he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

We wandered for a bit, taking in the scene, before zooming in on the craps table. I did alright. My comrade not so well. He didn’t seem to understand the game, though in theory, that should not have been a barrier to victory. When I was shooting, I was giving him signals, and he was ignoring them, losing all of his money.

“Fuck this,” he eventually said, outraged. “I’m hungry.”

***

When we exited the gaming floor, restaurants were nearly as prevalent as watch shops, though it was mostly cheap Chinese cuisine. I insisted that we wander for a while, until we entered an open area with a painted ceiling meant to look like a clear blue sky. Over a balcony, I could see an Old French style restaurant along one of the indoor canals that ran through the Golden Dragon and connected it with other Casino-Resorts owned by the Old York Sino Gaming Development Company (OYSGDC). We made our way down a labyrinthine set of escalators and manual staircases to reach the entrance of the open-air restaurant, where a pretty Sinoese girl dressed in a French maid costume stood and looked at us blankly, before staring off in a different direction.

“Ni hao,” I said. She then snapped back into reality, and pushed a button on her electronic nametag. The black nametag smiled in red and in cheery female robot voice said “Hello, I am Ying-Wan. Please follow me to be seated.” The message was then repeated in Mandarin and Cantonese. I nodded to the girl and she led us to a very poorly located table. I pointed over to an open table along the canal, and she pursed her lips and took us over there, handing us menus. Before she could escape, I ordered two cheapish (but not too cheap) glasses of whisky.

The canal was nice. The water was clear. The blue paint underneath it looked cheap, the fake blue of the fake canal matching the fake blue of the fake sky. But it was nice. I thought it was nice. People were riding on gondolas in the water, drinking wine. Around the canal were shops, most of them luxury Sinoese brands. Many of them had Italian names. Somehow, after all of those years in the Mega Cities while the air out here was unbreathable, and the flow of Italian luxury goods had largely ceased, the Chinese maintained the idea that luxury brands should probably have Italian-sounding names and be branded in Latin script.

I ordered a cheese platter and some kind of ciabatta bread sandwich which I could only recognize from a photo given that the menu was entirely in Sinoese. My comrade was flipping through the menu, confused and beginning to look frustrated, when I suggested we share the cheese plate and he get the same sandwich as me. With relief, he agreed.

We sat together taking in the surroundings in silence before the surprisingly impressive cheese platter arrived.

“We’re gonna have to play blackjack,” my comrade explained. “That craps shit is just a scam.”

“I won though.”

“But it’s just random chance. Blackjack is a game of skill.”

I declined to argue the point, though I did have various arguments against both assertions, and instead agreed that we should indeed play blackjack after our meal. I was grateful he declined to complain more about the status of the Golden Dragon, and instead had nice words about the vibes of the recreated French (or Venetian?) village we were dining in.

“I kinda wanna ride on the gondolas,” he said.

“The gondolas will take us to some other casino floor, where you may find more luck.” I agreed. “It’s a brilliant plan.”

Our sandwiches arrived and we both scarfed them down. Perhaps we’d been unaware of how in need of carbohydrates our bodies were after all of that travel. The bullet train from Mega 1 was 120 minutes to the first Old York stop, and the underground another 40 to the Golden Dragon, and we sat in the cheap seats where we didn’t get a complementary meal.

“I’m gonna get another one of these sandwiches,” I declared. My comrade nodded, communicating that he would do the same. After finishing them, I withdrew my handheld electronic device and prepared to pay the bill, and my comrade suggested one more whisky. Good idea.

***

Leaving the restaurant, a Russian security guard in a black suit (with a black tie) who spoke some English explained to us that in order to get to the gondola boarding station, we would have to go through an agonizing trip way up and way back down again. When I stared in confusion at his directions, he said: “very easy, my friend: go up this escalator, turn right, go twenty meters, go up next escalator, turn left, go ten meters. Go up that escalator, turn left and then right, and then big escalator take you back down three floors to gondola.”

I turned to my comrade, who simply squinted at me. We would give it a try.

The layouts of these hotels were purposefully convoluted, in order to force the guest to walk past as many shops as possible. We were of course disinterested in shopping, as we had not begun winning yet, so it was a chore to make it through the tedious dungeon. However, the shopping area was decidedly more fresh than the hotel region of the resort, and the stroll was not unpleasant. We asked for directions along the way from people who looked likely to speak English, and eventually made it to the top, where a large escalator would take us back to the bottom.

“I gotta piss,” my comrade declared.

“I’ll wait for you here.”

While I was waiting, an obese white woman, presumably from Mega 1, attempted to go down the wrong escalator. I said something to her and she ignored me, so I moved to try to stop her. However, it was too late. Her flip-flop got caught in the ribbed metal of the escalator, and she went tumbling down. It was a horrific scene. Due to the woman’s sheer mass, she was able to bowl over several Chinamen who were ascending the escalator in the correct direction, with others managing to make it out of her path by lifting themselves up on the handrails. None of the Chinamen were seriously damaged, but the obese white woman rolled all the way to the bottom, and was surely dead.

A Russian security guard came over to me. “You wait here, they check camera, make sure you not push that bitch. I know you not push her, I see you try to help fat bitch, but China always check camera.”

I nodded in understanding as my comrade returned from the latrine. All sorts of people were gathered around by now, looking at the scene of carnage. The Chinamen who had been victims of the rolling woman were examining their injuries. One was aggressively licking his finger and attempting to remove a scuffing from his very expensive calf-skin loafers.

“What happened?” my comrade asked.

“That fat woman down there tried to board the wrong escalator, and tripped and rolled all the way to the bottom.”

“Shit. Is she dead?”

“One would have to assume so.”

“Damn,” he said, suppressing a giggle. Although I was still a bit shocked by the scene, I could see how someone who had not witnessed the horror of it firsthand would be somewhat amused by the idea of an obese woman tumbling down a three storey escalator to her doom.

Out of respect for the deceased, I noted in her defense: “these Sinoese escalators are on the opposite sides to the Mega system.”

“Yeah, but they’re marked with these big red and green lights,” he replied.

“True,” I said, “but a tragedy nonetheless.”

At this point, my comrade could no longer contain himself, and burst out laughing. He literally threw back his head, laughing. Just then, the Russian returned.

“You’re cleared,” he said. “Forgiveness please, I see you not do it, but Chinese always check camera. You go gondola, yes?”

My comrade and I both nodded, him trying to contain his laughter. The Russian however was unoffended by the laughter, and winked at my comrade.

“Okay, friends. Well, the up escalator will be off for a while, but the down one is still running,” then, remembering that he is supposed to say this to everyone under every circumstance, he said: “good luck.”

***

As we rode the slow-moving escalator downward to the site of the recent death, we watched the obese body being carried away in a large wheelbarrow. By the time we reached the ground, the hubbub had subsided. A fat woman probably did not die on one of these escalator every day, but I supposed it happened at least once per week. There was clearly a protocol in place to deal with this situation.

When the domes were opened, massive numbers of Chinese left to cover the earth and engaged in commerce according to Neo-Maoist socialist principles. More than fifteen years later, many Westerners from the Mega Cities were just now coming out of their shell to see the new world, which had been fully cleared of the poisonous gas created by the genetically-engineered bacteria that was released to cleanse the world of microplastic. The first whites out were the Appalachians, who, it was revealed, had been plotting for generations to escape the Megas and declare Appalachian independence from Globo-Mega using stockpiles of buried Kalashnikovs. (Their rebellion was quite successful. And bloody.) But most whites took their time in exiting the Megas. Even now, it was estimated that only 40% of whites had traveled outside the Mega system since the great reopening of 2088. It was no surprise that humans accustomed to such sterile comfort would regularly meet strange demise in a world where safety was by no means a top priority.

My comrade and I stood for several minutes observing the ground floor scene. Everything seemed to be a faithful recreation of Paris or Venice or whatever, save the Chinese paper lanterns that hung along the broadways on either side of the canal. The gondola drivers (whatever they may be called) wore the classic red and white striped shirts, but also conical bamboo hats. Far from taking away from the authenticity of the historic recreation, the Sinoese elements added what reconstructionists had labeled “neo-authenticity.”

The gondolas were free to use (because anywhere you went, you were going to be spending money with the Old York Sino Gaming Development Company), and you could ride them through several different casinos. This was clear from the signs, which otherwise did not make any sense. The sign for “Hollywood Town Golden Nugget Casino Village” pointed in both directions, apparently implying you could ride the gondola in either direction and end up there.

“Hollywood Town is a bit grimier, but they have a room where they’ll use a single deck for blackjack,” I explained.

“I’m down,” my comrade said, with moderate enthusiasm. Thus, we boarded the gondola, headed in one direction or the other.

***

The ride was chaotic. Crashes between gondolas were a regular occurrence, though they were lined with rubber and moving so slowly that this did not present a problem. What did present a problem was white tourists standing up on the gondola and hitting their heads on the bridges which passed over the canal. We witnessed such events twice, once with a middle-aged man falling into the canal and having to be fished out by irritated Chinamen. “You no up top, stay low, you no make trouble.”

In a brilliant piece of innovation, there were complimentary drinks gondolas, staffed by sexy Sinoese women in traditional Ming garb, with which you could request your own gondola cross past so you could be served free cheap red wine. My comrade and I insisted that our driver pull up beside these wine distributors every time. My comrade asked every server for her Chatter Box ID, with each answering with a smile: “sorry, no allow.”

As we rode along the canal, we saw the same shops over and over again, but the scenery changed, demonstrating different recreations of various European locales, including London, Monaco, and (surprisingly) Hungary. The only thing that remained the same were the red paper lanterns hanging along the broadways. I was tempted to propose we disembark and take a stroll through Budapest Town and grab a vodka and a sausage, but was aware that my comrade was feeling a strong itch to win back what he’d so pitifully lost at the craps table.

When the gondola entered Old Hollywood, it was clear that it was not intended to be a true recreation of Hollywood. Based on the photos and video I’d seen of real Hollywood, creating an authentic (or neo-authentic) recreation of the town would have been a poor decision anyway. The broadways were lined with the Hollywood stars and palm trees (which appeared to be authentic living trees), there were neon lights and comedic “liquor store” signs (which, ironically, appeared to be signs for actual liquor stores) but the buildings were all brick-faced, looking much more tasteful than the cheapish architecture of the real Hollywood Blvd. It looked like some concept artist had mixed various elements of Old Hollywood with the set of Guys and Dolls. “It’s better we remember it this way,” I thought. “LA architecture was so trashy.”

“This casino is fucking huge,” my comrade exclaimed, wiping a drip of complimentary red wine from his chin.

“Technically, these are all different casinos. We left the Golden Dragon when it stopped looking all Frenchy-Italiany.”

“So they’re all just connected?”

“All the ones owned by the Old York Sino Gaming Development Company are connected, yes. It’s a three square kilometer area.”

“Jeez. Chinese people are fucking insane.”

“Insane awesome. Are you not enjoying yourself?”

“I’m having a fucking blast. Or I will be, once I start winning. This place is amazing. It’s like the Cartoon World in District 9, but, like…”

“Not for babies?”

He laughed in agreement

The “Cartoon World” theme park was formerly Disneyland. Ownership of all of Disney’s assets was ceded to the United Baptist Front (UBF) in 2042 after a successful class action lawsuit determined that Disney had purposefully converted hundreds of thousands of children to homosexuality, further decimating the human birthrate during a period when the species had lost 95% of its population to a toxic gas created by a genetically-engineered plastic-eating bacteria. Although the UBF left some of Disneyland in tact, they were believed to  have gone a bit overboard in their “heterosexualization” project. In 2053, the park was closed by the Mega authorities for 18 months after it was determined that the UBF was involved in a propaganda effort to encourage child marriage. A front-page story on Mega 1 Times declared that UBF had become “the reverse Disney.” When the park was forced into restructuring while closed, UBF was ordered by an impartial third party (accused of being bribed by the Sino-Socialist Empire) to work with Mega authorities to create “a heterosexual experience that did not overly compel children into certain life choices.” It turned out that both parties were so stubborn that the only things allowed were rather dull. Many believed that the “impartial third party” had purposefully neutered Cartoon World in order to promote the Chinese-owned “Ultra Funland” chain of theme parks. Unfortunately, those parks were all forced to shut down in 2058 due to rampant and ridiculous embezzlement by shareholders.

“Let’s disembark here?” I asked my comrade.

“Looks good.”

I signaled to the driver and he dropped us at the next stop, which happened to be in front of a recreation of the Chinese Theatre. I looked down at the star upon which I was standing and it read “Jackie Chan.” I would later realize that between 10% and 15% of the stars on the broadway were dedicated to Jackie Chan.

We stopped at a corner where a man dressed as the Terminator was standing around for photos. Once again, the signs did not make sense, with the sign for the casino pointing both forward and to the right. There was no way the casino floor was on the main broadway, so I led my friend down the hall, into the depths of Old Hollywood.

***

The Hollywood Casino floor was as I remembered it: much the same as any of the other gaming floors, but a bit more shabby. There were a few reminders that you were in the Hollywood Casino, and not some other casino, including a large “Hard Rock Cafe” in the center of the floor.

“We have to get to a backroom if we want the single deck bj table,” I said.

“Single dick bj table is where I want to go,” my comrade joked, hilariously.

I tried to use the Hard Rock Cafe to orient myself, but due to the sheer size of the gaming floor, this was a true impossibility. Instead, I simply wandered around the edge of the floor, knowing that I would eventually come to the “VIP Lounge.” As I wandered, I explained to my friend: “I’m really good at this game, so basically, you’re just going to follow my lead, and we’re both going to walk out of here a lot richer.”

“Got it,” he replied confidentially as he grabbed a glass of champagne from one of the traveling champagne distributors.

Finally, we reached the entrance to the VIP lounge, where they would have the single deck tables. A large Russian with literal gold teeth stood guard. It was unclear if he was intended to be a reference to a Bond Villain, or if he was just like that. “Hello, boys,” he said. “VIP rules, you buy 10,000 satoshi of coins at entry. You also have free cigar. Very nice cigar.”

There was no way we were going to need to spend 20,000 satoshis to walk out of this room with a fortune. I was simply too good. I began speaking to him in Russian, making some comments about the war I knew he would be emotionally moved by and then explaining that I was a very high roller, and then winking. He winked back and told the Chinese cashier “they VIP, big spend, bypass entry minimum.” The Chinese cashier barely nodded, and the Russian said: “do not forget free cigar. Very nice cigar.”

We grabbed our very nice cigars from the cigar station and a sexy Sinoese girl dressed like Marilyn Monroe lit them with a torch. We bought 1,000 satoshis worth of chips each.

We entered the danger zone. We would leave with enough money to party like it was 1999.

***

During the first ten hands, we were up approximately 15%. As the waitresses continued to serve copious complementary whisky-sodas, my comrade got it in his head to start making his own moves. The results were poor, and he whined.

“Just follow the plan, comrade,” I said comfortingly.

“Okay, okay, I just… the whisky got to my head a bit, I was feeling froggy.”

“I understand, but we need to win if we are going to do this town tonight like I plan to do it.”

“Right.”

What followed was a winning streak that was like a tornado tearing through a trailer park. I never count my money at the table, but it was clear we were together up to around a quarter million satoshis. Around 90 minutes into our winning streak, the same Bond Villianesque Russian came over and tapped me on the shoulder. Speaking Russian, he said: “my friend, I’m deeply sorry, but greedy Chinese say you must leave VIP room. You are winning too strongly. You come back tomorrow, I try to get you back in. I put free room on your card. Also have many free dinners, good at any hotel.”

I wasn’t bothered. Our winning streak had amounted to a heist. I was surprised it took so long for the shoulder tap to arrive.

We cashed our huge piles of chips and at the Russian’s direction, we grabbed another nice cigar on the way out. My comrade puffed, giggling and jittering with excitement and joy.

As we exited the VIP as very rich men, we came across a recreation of the Scarface “The World is Yours” fountain.

“This town…”, I began

“…Is one big pussy just waiting to get fucked,” my comrade finished.

***

“Are you ready to leave the casino complex, comrade? Are you ready to drench yourself in the succulent juices of the beautiful hell that was once New York City?”

“I’m ready. Let’s move.”

“Moving” was easier said than done. The casino complex was designed in such a way as to prevent you from ever being able to leave. You were supposed to lose your money gaming, or spend it at the shops. There was no reason for you to leave. This was at least part of the reason that none of the signs made any sense.

However, with the help of several helpful Russian security guards, we made it out into the open air. It tasted like chalk. Sweet, sweet chalk. Taxis were lined up across the street. The street, of course, was yet another barrier, intended to keep us in the casino complex.

“Let’s just run across the street. I don’t see any cops,” I said.

My comrade, now fully drunk enough to do virtually anything funny, laughed and nodded.

Several horns honked, but we made it to the taxi stand alive. I tapped on the window of the driver in front of the line, and said “meter?” The Sinoese driver of course pointed to the meter and said “no meter, no work, cannot. Where you go?”

“Coney Island,” I said.

“Twenty satoshi.”

“Ten.”

“Okay, okay. We go.”

I turned to my comrade: “It should be 5, but it’s okay.”

***

After we left the modernized section of the city, crossing the New Brooklyn Bridge, the taxi ride was enough to pull my comrade out of his joyful drunkenness into a state of mesmerized horror. Having barely left the Mega System in his life, seeing the way civilization was rebuilding itself on the outside shocked him. There was every sort of degeneracy one could imagine. It was churches, bars, gambling halls, and liquor stores, mixed with noodle shops, vintage clothing stores, and cat cafes, lodged in between massive new-build Chinese high-rises that couple topple over at any time. There was very little left of the old architecture, which was already in bad shape as a result of shady landlords refusing to do basic maintenance long before it was abandoned for 75 years. Seeing the old buildings that still stood was like witnessing dinosaurs. There were hookers and drug dealers everywhere, men in modern business suits weaving in between them, but no homeless bums to be seen, given that the Old York authorities were very strict about such things.

For better or worse, it was not just the casino complex that was owned by the Chinese. Because the Chinese were the first to aggressively exit the domes when the gas finally cleared, they bought up virtually the entire city from the deed owners, most of whom had no interest in leaving the Mega Zone anytime soon. The legal system that they established looked anarchic to an outside observer, given that it was clear that there was no law against (or at least no enforcement of law against) prostitution, drugs, or traffic violations, but to the trained eye, there was order. The streets were grimy, but there was no trash. Though a newcomer wouldn’t know it, you could walk the streets at all hours of the day without fear of violence or theft. It was strictly organized chaos. Whereas murder had been the leading cause of death in New York City before the gas, in what we now called “Old York,” the leading cause of death was jaywalking.

The taxi driver sped through the Brooklyn chaos like a true madman, rhythmically honking his horn at a steady pace. At one point, he almost hit a midget dressed in a tuxedo, but the little guy managed to dive and roll to safety. We could faintly hear him screaming profanities as the driver continued at his maniacal pace, weaving between luxury cars, ancient electric bikes, and electric rickshas.

At several points on the journey, I wanted to tell the driver to stop and let us out so I could show my comrade various elements of this burgeoning new world which was rising from the ashes of complete doom. But no. We would reach our destination, and he would see the craziest place on the North American continent. If it destroyed his soul, then his soul was not meant for this new world, and he should have stayed in the Mega. If it did not destroy his soul, he would be hardened, born again, and he would be able to survive out here in the wilderness of the reconstruction.

Finally, the taxi sped to a halt. The driver pointed to a psychedelic nightmare circus, where we could see huge colorful tent with rollercoasters rising over them, and at it’s peak, the rebuilt ferris wheel, which was three times bigger than the original. He said: “Coney Island.” I scanned his QR code with my handheld electronic device, paying the unfair fare, and we exited the cab.

***

Our first encounter with a Coney Island denizen was a man in a clown costume on stilts breathing fire in front of the entrance. I scanned his QR code, and donated four satoshis. I was a very rich man, and could afford to be generous.

I said: “I think we should probably do a few shots before we enter the Tunnel of Doom. That taxi ride might have sobered you up a bit too much. This is going to be a very intense experience.”

My comrade agreed.

At the gates was a line of ancient Volkswagen buses, which had the sides opened up and turned into bars. They were all run by scummy Armenians for some reason. I picked one where no people were, and sat down on a stool, motioning for my comrade to do the same. I ordered two shots of tequila. We downed them and I ordered two more. Then a third round. The shots were exorbitantly priced.

I looked at my comrade and explained that if he needed to vomit, he should do so now. He said he was fine, let’s go.

I took the lead as we entered the Tunnel of Doom, which was a 50 meter covered tunnel that led into the guts of the Coney Island circus. To enter, you walked through the open mouth of a clown. The tunnel was filled with flashing neon lights and naked women painted-up in light-reflective body oil dancing in cages. Juggling clowns, cigarette-smoking apes, and bearded, dancing men in top hats twirling canes roamed freely. I scanned several of the QR codes of these various freaks, giving generous tips, as my comrade was wide-eyed, barely blinking, reminding himself to put one foot after the other.

Exiting the tunnel, we walked onto the main drag of Coney Island Circus, a straightaway to the plastic-free ocean, which was lined with a boardwalk. The drag was lined with tents and circus games. The tents served various purposes. Most of them were bars, clubs, or brothels, but some had stranger purposes. I told my comrade that a beer may be in order, and we entered a green and yellow bar-tent called “The Pigsty.”

In The Pigsty, the nubile waitresses were all topless, wearing bikini bottoms and ultra-high heels. And pig masks. They were all wearing pig masks. We sat at one of the standing tables, and a pig-masked topless waitress appeared. It creates an interesting psychological phenomenon to have a topless woman in a pig mask addressing you. You are torn between wanting to stare at her breasts and wanting to stare at the pig mask, wondering what is behind it.

I ordered two Tsingtao beers and a large bucket of popcorn and scanned the QR code on her chest, above her perfectly shaped breasts.

“Do you think there was acid in those tequila shots?” my comrade asked, his first words since entering the Tunnel of Doom.

“No,” I said, but then remembering the strange price, added: “maybe.”

My comrade looked around the dimly lit room, absorbing the house music set to circus-music themed beats, staring at breasts and pig masks.

“Even if there was acid in those tequila shots, I can assure you that these waitresses are wearing pig masks,” I said. “If that’s what you were wondering.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It’s the same reason any of this exists,” I said. “The Mega Bureaucracy crushed human freedom by creating a sterile universe of safety and strict, sexless orderliness. When people were finally released from the domes, they wanted to be free. And they had the opportunity for ultimate freedom. The Chinese owned this place, and didn’t really care what people did, as long as they didn’t cause trouble. So people manifest ultimate freedom. Ultimate freedom, it turns out, can take very weird shapes.”

“Is this… good?” he asked.

“Obviously, naked waitresses in pig masks in a circus tent is definitely not good. I don’t think by any definition of the word ‘good,’ you could say this is good.”

“So… why?”

“I’m glad you ask, because I’ve thought about this a lot. The restrictiveness of the Mega System was also not good. What they did, in creating such a soullessly strict system of order was make this kind of lunatic disorder inevitable. This is the rebellion against Mega. Eventually, people will rebel against this, and humanity will once again reach a balance. Humans always seek balance, but like the tightrope walkers you saw on the way in, balance is something you have to work at if you want to get good at it.”

“Okay…”

“You saw all of those churches on the way in, I’m sure. People are already seeking out old systems of order. Systems which provide freedom without chaos.”

His jaw still open, my comrade nodded, perhaps beginning to understand the purpose of our adventure.

***

Back on the main drag, we headed for the Boardwalk. My comrade was starting to loosen up again, to move more naturally. I was pleasantly surprised.

“We should find some girls,” his newly loosening body said.

“Indeed we should. The Boardwalk awaits.”

As we walked under the massive ferris wheel, we both stopped and looked up at it. This wonder of Chinese engineering could collapse at any time, killing thousands. But what a wonder it was.

“I’m not getting on that shit,” my comrade said.

“I’m glad to hear it. The line is like an hour long.”

We continued down the drag, with clowns, bearded men in top hats twirling canes, and women in various states of undress urging us into various tents of iniquity. Many of them had wild animals, some uncaged. One man in a top hat had a tiger on a leash. Just a leash, like a dog. People were keeping a wide berth of the animal, and I noted that this was an odd promotional tool. “Six tigers inside! Do you dare to share a drink with them?!” the shill shouted. I looked up at the sign of the tent he was shilling, and saw it was called “Lion’s Den.” I felt a brief bit of irritation, but then my brain reminded me that tigers do not live in dens, and “Tiger’s Cave” would be a much less compelling name.

Another animal-themed tent claimed to be completely run by chimpanzees. The promoters were all chimpanzees, and the sign read: “All staff are chimpanzees. Do not worry: these monkeys understand every human language.” Referring to chimps as monkeys was more offensive than referring to tigers as lions, I decided.

Some shills were more compelling than others. A man in a Santa costume with his sexy elves called us into the Winter Wonderland, an ice bar. All the furniture in the Christmas-themed bar was made of ice, and they made you put special traction stickers on your shoes so you didn’t slip on the ice floor. I stopped for a moment to see if my comrade had the same interest I did in this magical place, and when I realized he did not, we kept moving. He could clearly feel the clear and plastic-free breeze of the Atlantic Ocean, smell the saltiness calling him.

***

Stepping onto the Boardwalk was like stepping into a whole new madhouse. The sight of the Ocean was breathtaking. When we stood on the wooden railing and looked out into the darkness of the sea, it was like we were standing in outer space. Looking down, we could see the water was clean and clear. Poison gas aside, the genetically-engineered bacteria did its job. It cleaned up the mess created by the petrochemical craze of the 20th and 21st centuries, and also managed to clear out much of the other ocean pollution.

Paying little attention to the bars on the land-side, we walked the Boardwalk for a bit, the sight of the ocean seemingly causing my comrade to forget his horniness.

The entire boardwalk was open on the ocean-side, save for one dock where people could take boating tours out into the ocean. People were constantly dying on these boats, which resulted in the local authorities forcing the company that operates the boats to put up a large sign that read “YOU MAY DIE HERE SOON.”

Staring at the sign for several seconds, my comrade said: “that’s always true of anywhere, isn’t it.”

My heart fluttered at this, as I realized my adventure was working. Only a man in the throes of true enlightenment could make such as astute philosophical observation. This was, after all, the most important understanding any man could ever reach.

***

On the land-side, it was every type of hooker bar, many of them flying flags of various nations to represent the languages the hookers spoke. This often aligned with ethnicity, though not always. Further, many of the bars just flew random flags.

Based on various factors, including potentially significant hallucinations, I had started to seriously consider the possibility that there was indeed LSD in those Armenian tequila shots. Before drinking anything from one of those Volkswagen bars, I should have read the officially posted signage. But it was a really long sign, and written in very confusing English. The thing was, if they were laced with acid, you probably were not supposed to drink three of them. I decided to stop at a vending machine and get some amphetamine pills, to ensure things didn’t get too crazy.

I scanned the QR code and clicked “accept” for the outrageously priced amphetamine, and grabbed the bottle. I tried to check the milligrams, but the entire package was written in Arabic, and there were too many numbers for me to make any sense of it. I decided to take three pills, and advised my comrade to follow the same path. He agreed, and we flagged down a in Insane Clown Posse makeup and a corset selling martinis to get something to wash down the pills.

“These aren’t laced with anything, are they?” I asked.

“They’re gin martinis. Very dry. It’s pretty cheap gin,” she replied.

“Yeah, but I mean, there’s no drugs in them?”

“No. If there were drugs in them, I would have to carry around a big sign explaining that. You can’t sell drug-laced drinks without a big sign in Coney Island.”

I sighed, took two drinks and handed one to my comrade, then scanned the QR code on her chest, providing a gentlemanly tip.

“Thanks, toots,” I said.

She laughed. “I wish more men called me ‘toots.'”

We took our amphetamine pills and decided to be much more decisive in choosing our next bar.

“No more of that pig-face shit,” my comrade said. “That really fucked me up.”

“Agreed,” I agreed.

***

Because the Ukrainian girls shilling outside were pleasant, we entered a safe and normal-looking girlie bar with Georgian, Russian, British, and Chinese flags. The bar was as normal inside as out, with a pool table, a dartboard, and a nice wooden bar with wooden stools. A chimp in a “Kiss My, I’m Irish” sweatshirt sat smoking at one of the stools, but that wasn’t particularly abnormal.

We sat down in a booth and a dozen or so girls in bikinis whose ethnicities appeared to accurately represent the flags outside came over to us.

“The way this works is you choose the girls you like and then you buy them drinks and they sit at the table and talk to you. If you like them, you can have sex with them in a room upstairs, or take them outside,” I explained to my comrade. It felt surreal to be explaining something like this to a man in his mid-thirties. I was barely 20 when I had to figure out these mechanics myself.

He whispered: “it feels weird to choose, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

I laughed.

He frowned.

“Just tell me which ones you like and I’ll pick them,” I said. “Pick as many as you want, we basically have infinity money.”

Without pointing, he counted to himself, and whispered “2, 5, 9.” They were all white girls, Ukrainian or Russian. I pointed to his three and the two Chinese girls I wanted and the others went back to their shilling duties.

“Drinks for everyone,” I said, and they all made a “woo” noise and all but one sat down with us (the last was to get the drinks). “Me and my friend will have double gin tonics, with a lot of ice, short glasses, not a lot of tonic. Use whatever the most expensive gin you have is.”

“I don’t really like gin tonic,” my comrade complained.

“Well, you should have spoken up earlier, instead of getting all shy around a bunch of hookers.”

He frowned.

“What do you want then, I’ll just drink both those.”

“Whisky soda, my good man” he said, wrapping his arm around one of the girls and lighting a cigarette. I yelled across the room at the girl getting the drinks to add a whisky soda with the good whisky.

One of the Chinese girls then asked: “you want play what song?”

I was going to say “Europe – The Final Countdown,” before turning to my comrade to let him make the call.

“Europe – The Final Countdown,” he said.

“Good call.”

***

The following events are very blurry. Probably, either I didn’t take enough amphetamines, because I couldn’t read the dosage, or “amphetamines cures LSD” is simply an urban myth. It’s also possible that I simply consumed very much alcohol.

Regardless of the mechanics, I woke up on a sofa in the bar, with the chimp sitting on the table in front of me, smoking my cigarettes and watching me. Whitney Houston’s “I Just Want to Dance With Somebody” was playing loudly. Looking outside, I could see it was morning.

“Where’s my friend?” I asked the chimp.

Then, a Chinese girl, seemingly quite irritated, said: “he monkey, no talk. You think monkey talk? Cannot. Your friend go out. You sleep there, add 100. No free sleep here.”

“Yeah, chill,” I said. “I’m rich. Let me buy you a drink. And bring me a vodka orange juice.”

She calmed immediately: “Okay, no problem.”

I then grabbed my pack of cigarettes, to find the chimp had smoked them all. “Hey and bring me some cigarettes too,” I yelled to the girl.

“Okay, no problem.”

As I lifted myself into the sitting position, she sat down next to me with the drinks and handed me a pre-lit cigarette: “You so handsome, why you drink too much?”

“People been asking me that question for 15 fucking years, and I still don’t have any answer,” I said, a sentence I knew she wouldn’t understand.

“Your friend go out. He take two girl. He buy all people drinks many times, very happy. He good man. Even monkey love him. Monkey hate all, but love your friend. Very good man. He throw his shirt,” she pointed at my comrade’s shirt, which was folded neatly and sitting on the bar.

I ordered more drinks and lit another cigarette. The chimp motioned for one in an rude manner, and I gave him one, despite resenting the entitled attitude of the beast.

***

I walked out onto the boardwalk and bought a pair of cheap sunglasses from a hawker.

Most of the people had cleared out of the sunlit areas, but the bars and the tents were all still going, as they were 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I looked out on the clean ocean, the sunlight shimmering on the clear water. I thought about the repressiveness of the Megas and the lunatic debauchery of this place. And I said again, aloud, as I had so many times on so many fucked up mornings: “The world is healing.”

Then, I added: “We are healing. I am healing.”

Then, I asked, still speaking aloud to myself: “did I free my friend, or kill him?”

I wouldn’t know the answer for hours or days. When I met him on the flip side, he’d either be free or dead.

Either way, I did what I meant to do. It’s more than most people can say.

I was living in a “near future” situation, where a world government had already been established and begun creating “cities of the world.” The plan was to integrate all the people of the world by moving significant populations from each country to each “mega city.” Eventually, the entire world would be moved from their home countries to random mega-cities across the planet, leading to total communal integration. The global communications systems and the sameness of everything on earth meant that it was not particularly difficult for any individual to pick up and move to another city. The most difficult thing was that we still had different languages, so it was necessary for people to integrate into the mega cities via “shared language communities.” However, rather than allowing the various groups to create ethnic ghettoes, they were assigned a shared high-rise apartment building. Two buildings from the same country were not allowed to be next to each other.

I was not significantly aged from my current state, nor were any of the other contemporary people who had been shoved into this future world. It was as if it had happened within five years from now, but it was clearly an alternate timeline. There were not Star Trek level technological advancements, but food was being provided for us without work through automated robot hydrophobic farms. There was forced austerity, so our rooms were very small. Everyone had their own room, however, and no one was married.

I was a celebrity writer. However, I was not known for this website, which had never existed in this timeline, and was instead famous for novels and video game narrative direction that was considered socially acceptable. I was a minor celebrity, and was therefore encouraged to travel to various cities and “spread the arts” among a population that was largely jobless and living off of state hand-outs. Community interaction was encouraged, so people staying in their rooms was discouraged. It was also discouraged for people to stay in their ethnic enclaves, so various linguistically homogeneous skyscrapers had different “attractions.” These attractions were usually placed at the top floors of a building, while travel between the mass buildings was done through an underground light-rail system. To get to the entertainment venues at the top floors of the various buildings, people would have to arrive by the train system, and then take multiple elevators to the higher floors, which forced regular interaction between the different peoples gathered in the megacities.

The stated goal, which was continually reinforced by by largely young celebrities appearing on screens throughout the cities, was for humanity to break its boundaries and become “one people, living in harmony with the earth.”

I was placed as a visiting artist in a megacity somewhere on the island of Sumatra, within a building that was shared by Swedes and Finns. It was very modern and clean, being one of several blueprints for 100+ story buildings being built across the world where all of the populations of the old nation-states were being transferred. The other “visiting artist” was Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. There was a split between the two communities, despite the fact they’d been neighbors in the north and both spoke very good English. In our bloc, Greta had naturally become a figurehead for the Swedes, while the Finns had attached themselves to me, being the only other visiting artist, as a rallying point.

I gave teachings about game narrative design in halls in the building, which were attended by various races and ethnicities. Our building was one of the key centers in the city for public arcades. Some of these public arcades were similar to “internet cafes,” where you could sit down at a stall and play with a high-end PC. Others had sofas set up for controller-based games to be played together. The third kind was an arcade similar to the 1990s-type arcades (which still exist in many Asian cities, but do not exist in the West due to demographic problems), where individual games are played on various types of consoles. This type of arcade, being “retro,” was favored by many artistic types, and I was being encouraged by the opaque and robotic, largely female-dominated bureaucracy managing the planet earth to design a popular arcade game that could be placed in these retro arcades across the world. I was resistant to this, wanting instead to finish a novel about the old west. I was obligated by my total immersion in this world system to have regular communication with various women of some vague authority through video phone, where I would attempt to explain that I wanted to finish the novel. They would tell me that my novels were a waste of energy, and that the story I was planning for the novel should be turned into an immersive arcade shooter game.

One of the Finns, a youth of perhaps 19, was especially aggressive and annoying with me, attending all of my classes and following me around the complex, ostensibly trying to learn from me how to become a novelist, having become obsessed with a western melodrama I’d written as a teenager about the ancient Egyptian gods. I did not believe the boy had the creativity, based on discussions with him and reviews of his materials, to become a novelist, and encouraged him to seek other outlets for his creativity. I did not want to create problems by telling him he did not have the talent, and instead repeated what the female bureaucrats had been telling me: the novel is dead, we should be focusing on video games.

The top news story which would flash across the screen in-between lectures from very attractive hapanese women about the necessity of community was that a gigantic robot had turned sentient and was destroying various world heritage art sites. The robot, which was ten stories tall and capable of space flight, had been designed as part of a program to fight off a potential alien invasion. The global bureaucracy, still concerned about “fossil fuels,” was planning to build a Dyson Sphere around the Earth’s Sun, and was concerned that when the project went live, it would lead to contact by various aliens races, some of which could be hostile. Therefore, an earth defense system was under development. Concerns about the dangers of a totally interconnected artificial intelligence taking over all earth computer systems meant that AIs were limited to intranets – closed systems which could not connect directly to the world wide web. So, as told by the very attractive hapanese newscasters, this giant robot had its own AI system, which had gone rogue. It first attacked and destroyed the Great Pyramids at Giza, then destroyed Petra, Machu Picchu, and Chichen Itza. It had lately begun destroying pieces of the Great Wall of China. The robot would return to space in between attacks. It was designed to return to space to charge its solar cells, but would stay in space much longer than needed to charge the cells – for weeks at a time, it would leave the earth, and then return for another attack.

Many in the artist community, within which I was somewhat highly ranked, insofar as “rank” existed in this utopian order, were pointing out that the robot was moving from oldest to newest manmade work, and could conceivably, eventually, begin killing living artists. I would hear these concerns in holographic group meetings with the earth’s various artists. However, many of the Finns among which I lived were highly cynical about the entire global project, and were developing various conspiracy theories about the robot and his attacks. Some believed that the robot was being operated by whatever hidden forces controlled the ubiquitous “global community,” and that this force was trying to destroy human heritage, while others believed that the footage of the robot attacks was completely faked, possibly for the purpose of creating fear, or maybe just to give people something to talk about. Having been exposed to both views, I did not take a strong position on the issue, but instead found myself, primarily out of boredom, debating with both the artistic community and the Finnish theorists. I did not particularly care either way, and did not think it likely that even if everything the screens said was true, the robot would target any non-monument work of art. The idea that the robot would target me personally because I had written angsty underground novels through my mid-twenties, and popular tripe video game narratives thereafter, seemed absurd, but I was also struggling to understand the Finnish theorists’ reasoning that the attacks would be faked.

At some point in my Sumatra stay, while I was being bored to death by the classes I was teaching, by the constant talk of the looming giant robot attacks, and by the the Finnish boy following me around, nagging me about reviewing his latest trash and advising him as to how to develop, I began to hear an urban myth about a secret floor in our grand Swedeo-Finnish gaming tower. The story was that there was a secret game on a secret floor called “One Life.” It was an arcade game, and when the player lost, he was psychologically manipulated by the game into killing himself. The story was that the game picked your brain through a series of decision-making exercises, and if you played it long enough, you would always lose, and it would know so much about you that it could easily convince you to kill yourself. There was a dark temptation in the game, as through playing it, it revealed to you things about yourself you did not know. You could go deeper and deeper into it, and find deeper and deeper understanding of yourself through its constantly changing decision-generation system, which was designed to lay bare your soul.

At first, these seemed to be rumors typical of the Finns in my adopted community. But I began to contrast the stories of the secret floor and the secret game with the theories about the destructive space robot. While the stories about the space robot were constantly evolving into all kinds of different directions, the story of “One Life” remained static, told similarly by all parties, with consistent rumors of Swedes being responsible. I began asking random Finns about it, and all confirmed that it was in fact real, and told a similar version of the story: a secret code could be entered into an elevator, and it would take you to the secret floor. People were in fact traveling from all over the planet to play this game. People of every race and language were insisting on entering elevators alone, and either disappearing completely, or disappearing for days, and exiting the building different somehow.

The Swedes in the building rarely spoke to me at all. I did not understand the nature of the underlying tensions between these groups, aside from the basic nature of all tensions between all neighboring tribes. I did understand that I was disliked by the Swedes because I was associated with the Finns, and also that the Finns had become possessive of me, and would not take kindly to me associating with the Swedes. A Swedish woman, however, had been making eyes at me in the cafeteria. She was older, in her mid 30s, but fit. A standard nordic blonde. She worked in dance game development, a field in which her father had been a pioneer. She spoke fluent Japanese. She had an office two floors below the floor of my teaching hall. I had seen her on the elevator, and concluded I could navigate to her office through the stairwell without instigating further tribal conflict.

When I entered her office, it was clear that she believed I was initiating a sexual encounter. I briefly considered playing along with this. I told myself “she is very attractive,” although I did not feel that. I had not felt anything sexual in living memory, and did not understand how anyone could feel something so raw as a sexual urge in an environment so sterile. I wiped away the sexuality of the situation with an awkward smile, awkward dart of the eyes, and an awkward “heyyyyy.” She twitched, and pulled back some, and I could feel the fickle feminine sexual switch switching off like glass shattering on a tile floor. She invited me to take a seat. “Mr. Anglin, to what can I attribute this pleasure?” I asked her about a Swedish game called “One Life.” She relayed with the special boredom recently abolished sexual impulse that she knew of the game. It was created by a Swede living in a megacity in central Africa, but it was never released. The creator, Sven Svenson, committed suicide before the game was completed. He was the only person who had worked on the game, which was some kind of card game. The only reason anyone was aware of the game at all was due to Svenson’s success as a programmer and RPG narrative designer. I told her that it would be very strange if there were a famous RPG narrative designer that I was not aware of. She explained that he was from another generation, that his games were only produced in Swedish, and they were discontinued because they had become linked by several scientific studies to mental illness in teenagers. Specifically, teenagers who played the games would bash their heads against walls at a rate of over 1000 times that of teenagers who did not play the game, she explained dryly.

I asked her what genre the games were. She said that she had never played them, but she believed they were science fantasy with limited turn-based combat. I asked if it was something like Planescape, and she said she would not know, leading me with her eyes to the various degrees in dance gaming that lined her wall. She explained that the publisher had insisted on including turn-based combat in the games, which is why Svenson started the indie card game project, where he would have full creative control. I said again that it was very strange I had not heard of him. Even if the games were never translated, even if they were discontinued. She said that perhaps she only knows of him because of her father’s role as a popular Swedish game designer, and that she believed her father might have known him in university in Stockholm, before the mega-city era. I noted that it was very strange that the single Swede I would ask about this would also have a personal familial connection to him. She agreed that this was indeed strange, but far from statistically unlikely. I asked her about the Finns claiming that the game had been installed on a secret floor in this very building, and she laughed aloud. “No, this is another Finnish blood libel against the Swedish people. The game was never finished, and no console was ever built. The Swedish gaming industry has forgotten Svenson, and the international gaming industry never knew him, as evidenced by the fact that you, the great Andrew Anglin, did not know who he was until I just told you.”

There was finality to that sentence. I nodded in a socially appropriate manner, and then felt bizarrely obligated to ask: “would you like me to stop by your room some time, after hours?”

She smiled rudely: “no, I don’t think so. Thank you, Mr. Anglin. It’s been a pleasure, but I’ve got a class coming up.”

It was shortly after that meeting that the Finnish boy who had been hounding me for mentorship began to act strangely. He continued to follow me around, but had become increasingly abusive. He had also begun carrying some type of samurai sword on his back. As far as I was aware, carrying such a weapon through the halls of a mega-city highrise was totally illegal, but no one seemed to be saying anything to him. His abuse was becoming more and more personal towards me. This seemed to follow logically, given that he was so gung-ho, and there was simply nothing I could do for him. Eventually, he handed me a 200 page hand-written manuscript, wrapped in a knotted twine. When I opened it, I found that it was nothing but “Fuck you. Die.” written hundreds of thousands of times on both sides of each page. I struggled with what to do about it. If I were to turn him in, he would be taken to a facility, and put through some kind of brutal chemical and psychological treatment, which might tear at my conscience, and would indefinitely start various rumors, including those relating to homosexuality. However, if I did not turn him in, there was a nonzero chance he would chop me up with that sword he’d been carrying around. I decided to put off the decision.

In a voluntary weekly holographic meeting with the international artist community, which I attended every week because I had nothing better to do, I asked if someone could get me into contact with the records keeper of the gaming community in the central African mega-city where Sven Svenson was stationed at the time of his suicide. By official policy of the bureaucracy, there was no such thing as “classified information” as it reduced community trust, so in theory, information was either available to the public, it had been destroyed, or it did not exist in the first place. The catch was that requesting the data through the bureaucracy could take years. However, probably for some specific reason not immediately evident, the process was surprisingly smooth; I was able to get a complete copy of the existing bureaucratic data on One Life, which would arrive in a package in my office in no less than 72 hours. (Records requests were always sent by hardcopy via drone flight.)

During this period of waiting, I did not see the boy, so I did not think about him. I had put the decision of whether to turn him in to the appropriate mental health bureaucracy out of my mind. The saga of the space robot’s attacks on segments of the Great Wall of China continued, however. There was another attack on the wall, and people were speculating that the robot was destroying pieces of the wall in the order he believed them to have been built. It was speculated by several attractive hapanese females on screens that the robot was spending his weeks-long periods in space attempting to calculate which pieces of the wall were the oldest, information which he would not have direct access to, given that he was isolated from any kind of information network. An interview was done with a chief bureaucratic official from the megacity closest to the section of the Wall that had lately been attacked, a half-Swedish and half-Korean woman with some degree of plastic surgery. She assured the world that there was no disturbance of city activities as a result of the most recent attack, and added that if the robot were to attack her city, her people were prepared to open a dialogue with it. A gray-bearded space warfare bureaucratic official from the Hawaiian megacity, where the robot was built, was interviewed. He claimed that his people were in the process of building a second robot which would destroy the first. Asked how he would prevent the second robot from going rogue, he said that this new robot will be dumber. Asked them how a dumber giant robot could destroy a smarter giant robot, he said that the newer robot would be more gigantic.

After seeing this segment, I knew that the chatter from the Finns would be unbearable, so in between classes, I took the elevator to the one biodome floor in our building. It was encouraged by the screens for everyone to go to the biodome floor at least once per week in order to maintain a connection to mother earth. No one did this, and the biodome was virtually always empty. I had some fear that I would run into Greta, and we would be forced to have some kind of verbal showdown, but that did not happen. The first two times I visited, the biodome was empty, and I read in peace among the greenery and lizards and insects. However, the third time I visited the biodome, which was fitted out with jungle flora and fauna resembling that of native Sumatra, I encountered a group of Africans engaged in a sex orgy. They were totally nude and without shame. Along with visits to the biodome, regular sexual activity was also encouraged by the screens, and this was another order that virtually no one followed. The Swedeo-Finnish gaming tower of the Sumatra Mega City was sterile and sexless. It was rumored that the women from the building would take the train to African-populated towers for primitive sexual orgies, however, I did not expect to run into one in my own environ. The Africans noticed me, and smiled, with one of the males offering me a go at his female. I withdrew to the elevator, and returned to my room.

The next day, I would arrive in my office, and find the package on my desk, containing the data I’d requested. It was a huge wooden crate with many stamps on it. The nails were no doubt destroying the finish on my synthwood desk, but I paid that no mind. I needed a crowbar to open it, and that took my staff until lunchtime to acquire. Seven signatures were needed for the crowbar. Looking at the paperwork, I thought again about the strangeness of the boy who had gone wrong carrying the illicit Japanese sword through the halls of the building without fear of reprimand.

The space of the crate was mostly filled with hundreds of millions of pages of binary code printed on magnetic tape. Halfway through, I found an autopsy report in Swedish. I handed it to one of my Swedish-speaking aides, and was told that his death was ruled “suicide by smashing his head against a wall.” I asked the aide if that was possible, and he explained that he did not know, but that the report was official and detailed. As we talked, I continued pulling rolls of magnetic tape from the crate, finding that they were all just more binary code. I almost thought there was nothing else there. However, there was, conveniently, at the bottom of the crate, a package of CD-ROMs with dates written on them. These contained video logs of the final days of One Life’s development, which ended with his suicide. Conveniently, the tape I played first contained exactly what I needed to know in order for my narrative to progress. Svenson, a well-groomed, pudgy man in his early 60s, stared directly into the webcam, and spoke with proper English despite the heavy accent: “The game is a lie. Like every good lie, there is a high dose of truth, but the game is a liar. I cannot prevent myself from playing it, but the game should never be opened to the public. It should be destroyed, and I would destroy it myself, but it won’t let me. I will face the game. It will kill me. But I will not let it take me.”

I skimmed through some of the rest of the video footage, but did not find anything else particularly dramatic. Most of the information he was recounting was about the nature of the decision-trees in the game, and his own astonishment at how they seemed mathematically impossible somehow. I did not understand much of what he was communicating. I was never a computer programmer, and despite being an established and respected authority on narrative design, knew almost nothing about video game math. The man spoke as though he’d discovered some mystery of the universe, but it just went over my head. Even if a decision tree was written with advanced machine learning, it couldn’t be infinite, because language is not infinite, and potential decisions are much fewer than language combinations. The man also appeared unhinged, and the ramblings, I thought, probably wouldn’t mean much to me even if I was a math genius.

I had discovered that the stories the Finns were telling of a Swedish suicide game were true, but there was no link to a secret room in this Sumatra complex. Svenson said that he was not capable of destroying the game himself, but that didn’t mean there was a conspiracy to build the game after Svenson’s suicide. In fact, the ease with which I was able to draw up these records implied there was no conspiracy. Or, at least no conspiracy from the top bureaucracy. A conspiracy by Swedish game developers probably couldn’t involve a secret floor in a megacity tower – unless, of course, the elevator design team had been infiltrated by the Swedish RPG community, which, as the Swedish would say, was strange but not statistically unlikely.

It was then that I conveniently witnessed Greta Thunberg having a public breakdown. These were not uncommon, and in fact happened at least twice monthly. They generally took place in the building’s central hall, which I did not visit often, so I would only hear about them from the gossipy Finns, who appeared to expect me to take some action against her. This breakdown, however, happened on my floor, in front of my regular elevator, and appeared to be specifically put on for my attention. Greta was screaming that someone was impersonating her. I stood and watched her. She went up to other Swedes in the hallway, saying “why aren’t you stopping her? You’re not even listening to me!” and indeed, no one appeared to be listening to her. No one appeared to notice the artistic leader of the Swedish community in Sumatra, one of the most important Swedish artists in the world, having a breakdown. I could understand that the Swedes would get tired of this girl, in theory, but there was no previous evidence that they had been. Every public breakdown Greta had ended with the Swedes gathering around her in a large group hug. But these Swedes, in this hallway, on my office floor, were simply ignoring her. Finally, she noticed me looking at her, and came at me, saying: “you motherfucker! you are the one behind this aren’t you! how dare you!”

“Greta, let’s not do this right now. Please,” I asked with genuineness. “Don’t you believe that all people are supposed to get along? Why do you push this conflict with the Finns?”

“No, no, no, no! You made her, didn’t you? You are trying to take control of the building! You may be trying to take control of the whole global bureaucracy! Your father worked for the oil companies, didn’t he? You American pig! Capitalist! You’re trying to take back control!”

“Greta, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You made her! You made the clone! You designed that blasted fucking room with that stupid fucking game!”

Wait, what? Now this was interesting. “What game?”

“You know exactly what game! That evil fucking life game! The one that made the clone!”

“Tell me more about the game.”

“Oh, sure, let me tell you about your own trick fucking game, American oil man! Well, I’m going back. I’m going to beat the game, and then you will have to destroy that clone you made of me! I will win!”

She then went into the elevator and looked around to ensure no one besides me was watching her, and entered a code. I got the code. It was 14 digits alpha numeric, and I was able to remember it long enough to write it down.

Immediately after this, I saw Greta on the screen in my office. Her breakdown was not reported by the attractive hapas. No, it wasn’t even a report on her – it was a livefeed. She appeared uncommonly calm. She was giving a speech about mending “the conflicts in the tower community” – a common phrase of hers, which the Finns claimed was an attack on them. The video feed said “live,” and it was not possible that she could have gone live merely minutes after the meltdown I’d just witnessed. Either the tape was not live, or this Greta giving the speech was indeed a clone. This speech was different from any I’d witnessed previously. Greta seemed somehow even darker than before, while also maintaining her composure much more stringently. She began to speak about the Finns explicitly, saying that there would soon come a time when “they would have to pay for the damage they are doing to our community.” Her speech rhythm was akin to the slow-beat of an African war drum. There was an underlying air of tribal violence.

And other violence was afoot. The Finnish boy with the sword threw open my office door with his sword unsheathed. “I told you I was going to fucking kill you, old man. Now I see that you are working with Greta? I should have known. How could I be so fucking stupid? How did I not see it?”

I remained still as he slowly approached, the tip of his Japanese sword getting ever closer to my face. I maintained direct eye-contact. “Why don’t you put that down and we’ll talk?”

“I will put you down – like the rabid dog that you are! I will beat you at your own game. I will beat your game!”

The fear disappeared, the fight or flight mechanism overpowered by my profound interest in his reference to a game he called mine: “what game?” I said. “What game are you referring to? One Life? What do you know about it?”

“Nothing that you don’t already know,” he replied. He paused, closely observing my facial movements: “or maybe I do? Maybe I do know more than you? Maybe it is I who will become the true master, when I finally win? I’m close, old man, you have no idea how fucking close I am. What powers will I unlock? Not even you know, do you? Tell me!”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. I will know. I will win. I will become the most powerful one of all. I will overwrite your name. They will blot you out, and it will be me who they look toward. Congratulations, old man. Today, you will live. For when I master your game, I want you to be there to see it, as I take on the power.”

He backed slowly out of the door, then turned and ran. I stood up and locked the door. I took some deep breaths, and began to organize my thoughts. I had the elevator code to the game room. And at that point, understanding the game was the single most important thing in the universe to me. It was the first thing in my life that did not bore me. The secret room, the secret game. Even if I did not solve the mystery of life itself, it would surely be more interesting than a giant robot in outer space and mounting tribal conflict in the tower. I would give my life to know what was going on. But Greta and the boy were both aware of the room. Greta could not stop me from playing the game. But the boy and his sword certainly could. And I had definitely lost any sense of guilt over turning the boy in. It was 4:15. I had time to visit the mental health bureaucracy and give testimony leading to the boy’s arrest and deportation to some facility, and I would then visit the secret room using Greta’s code after six, when the elevators would be sure to be clear.

The mental health bureaucracy counselor was a hapanese woman in her 60s with extreme plastic surgery. The veins in her neck showed the severity of both the surgery and her addiction to physical fitness. She spoke to me as if she was speaking to a small child, and it was obvious that she spoke to everyone this way all the time. I gave her the information about the boy, and explained the incident. She pulled up a screen and said that records showed that the boy did not live in the Swedo-Finnish Gaming Tower anymore. He’d left some number of weeks ago. The dates she gave appeared to line up with the period he’d begun carrying the sword. “There are no swords in this building. Are you feeling okay, Mr. Anglin? Based on your official statements made to me in an official office of the bureaucracy, you appear to be suffering from hallucinations. This is not uncommon, and our treatments are successful.”

“No. No, I’m fine.”

“Are you trolling, Mr. Anglin? I am legally obligated to inform you that trolling an official mental health office of the official mental health bureaucracy is a felony, even if performed for artistic inspiration or intention.”

“No. No, it must be the first thing. I am clearly having some type of hallucinations. I will return tomorrow for treatment.”

“I’m afraid that will not be possible. We cannot have people suffering from severe hallucinations on the loose in the community. I can give you a chemical treatment now, or, if you choose to forego chemical treatment in favor of neuropathic and psycho-pathological treatment, I will have to take you into custody. You will be put inside of a box and shipped by drone to our facilities in the Greek Oil Painting Tower. These facilities are extremely comfortable, Mr. Anglin, and we will be able to get you the help you need in this time of trouble. The chemical injection is safe and effective and does not cause long-term brain damage or significantly alter your DNA.”

The tablet attached to the front of her desk showed two buttons, the option of a syringe and the option of Sigmund Freud’s face. “Please choose your treatment, Mr. Anglin.”

The door to the hallway was opened, but a large man in medical scrubs now stood in it holding a syringe in one hand and a pair of shackles in the other, waiting for me to make my decision.

In one swift, smooth movement, I stood up and picked up the chair I was sitting in and whacked the large nurse with it. As he fell into the hallway, the woman said “Mr. Anglin, please restrain yourself, sir,” as I bolted to the nearest elevator and entered the secret code for the secret room with the secret game.

***

The room was dark. A polished concrete floor with one screen in the middle. A calm and calming voice spoke: “Hello, Andrew. I see that you’ve come to play with me. That makes me very happy. Please, sit down. Be comfortable.”

The screen was an old and faded 65 inch LED TV mounted to a large polished particleboard fixture. The dramatic smiling and frowning faces of comedy and tragedy were featured on a plastic signage above the screen. On the screen was a black and white, pixilated logo, reminiscent of an Atari game, reading: “One Life” with the subheading “Know Thyself.” In front of it was a cushioned leather seat, and fixture with a pad of three buttons. Behind the machine, at either side, against the back of the large, dark, windowless room, were neon signs lit up with the drama faces. The smiling face was red and the frowning face blue. Both were mounted above industrial self-service crematoria. These were purposefully visible upon entry to the room. It was part of the design of the game.

The room spoke again, with a voice that remained calm: “those are the exits for the losers, Andrew. You are not a loser. You will know yourself. I will help you know yourself, and you will walk out the winner’s door.” The room did not have to point out that the “winner’s door” was the door through which I entered. But for effect, as the voice said “winner’s door,” a pink neon light danced around the elevator door.

Then, an 8bit tune began playing, as a brief animation showing a face smiling and frowning up and down before a tree grew out of his head showed on the screen.

Then the voice said: “Tell me which word best describes your first childhood memory, Andrew.”

The question, along with three answers, appeared on the screen: happy, fear, lost.

I stared at the screen for an unknown number of seconds. I sat down on the seat, and continued staring at the screen, which did not change. The voice remained silent. I could hear the buzz of the neon lights above the twin death machines. The flicker rate was mesmerizing.

Finally, I clicked the button.

“I’m sorry you felt lost, Andrew. Who lost you?”

Mommy, Daddy, God.

I hesitated.

Thus far, the hype was officially lived up to. This was a very difficult second level.

Just then: a car alarm from the parking lot below.

I awoke, back in real life. The dream, like so many impactful dreams I’ve had in my life, felt more real than reality, and made my return to the land of the living feel stale. The car alarm continued. I sat up and used my index fingers to rub the sleep from my eyes. When the alarm finally stopped, I laid back down and tried to return to the game room, but it was not to be. Instead, I appeared in a room-remodeling game show with my mother, quickly realized this was not the correct dream, and woke myself up to begin typing.

Note: this was a real dream, typed up immediately after waking, following every remembered detail, and published on the morning of Sunday, July 31, 2022.