CW: war, alienation, rising fascism
“Examples of stereotyped behaviors include pacing, rocking, swimming in circles, excessive sleeping, self-mutilation (including feather picking and excessive grooming), and mouthing cage bars. … Stereotypies are well known in stabled horses, usually developing as a result of being confined, particularly with insufficient exercise. They are colloquially called stable vices. They present a management issue, not only leading to facility damage from chewing, kicking, and repetitive motion, but also lead to health consequences for the animal if not addressed…”
“Stereotyped behaviors are thought to be caused ultimately by artificial environments that do not allow animals to satisfy their normal behavioral needs. Rather than refer to the behavior as abnormal, it has been suggested that it be described as "behavior indicative of an abnormal environment.”…
—Wikipedia, on stereotyped behaviors in animals
The first game we are working on in the esports startup I’m contracting for is Counterstrike. I’ve never played it before; first-person shooters hold little appeal for me.
I download it for the first time to look at its settings. My default character spawns faceless under a gas mask. His fatigues are almost completely obscured with holsters, body armor, other “tactical” gear.
The game opens a page of dozens of guns, and my eyes glaze over. Counterstrike has two teams: terrorists and counter-terrorists. It has settings in urban areas, in places coded as Arabic.
My avatar spawns into the wall of a tower and gets stuck. The walls are rendered invisible by the angle. My avatar flails helplessly at them as I try to jump out. I look for identifying details, so I can write this up as a bug report. There’s one: there is a giant fucking ankh on the wall, severed from context.
My colleagues want to drill down into what would make this game experience more “fun.” I want the measurement of exactly how many thousands of miles away from what is happening on Earth right now a sentient being would have to be in order to find a gift basket of guns and a storyline about fighting terrorists in an urban setting “fun.”
I close Counterstrike and put on my VR headset, to review the settings in VRChat. Around me, space goes foggily spherical, pale green, empty, with vaguely soothing music playing as the world loads.
In some other universe, a phone is suddenly ringing, audibly, for me, though which device it is poses a new challenge: phone, or laptop? I unbury myself from the headset, digging through cables, controllers, keyboards, and small unattached devices to find my headphones. Miss the call. Voicemail flashes an indicator, and I lunge for it. It isn’t done transcribing, so when it plays back to me it’s at half speed. I listen to it while reading the typos the artificially “intelligent” system transcribed. The female receptionist calling from my doctor’s office sounds male, and drugged:
“IIIIIII jjjjjjuuuuuussssstttt mmmmeeesssssaaaaaggggeeeeesssss fffooooorrrrr JJJJJJJJJiiiiiillllllliiiiaaaaaannnn Aaaaaaannnnnddddrrreeeeeeewwwwwsssssssssss, ttthhhhhhhiiiiisssssss iiiiiiissssssss—”
I smack the pause icon in irritation. I’ll have to get back to it when it’s done transcribing. Back to VR.
My body refuses the headset. I want to toss my head like an animal refusing a halter. My eyes are tired. My ass walks me outside to the garden, drawn by sun.
There isn’t much to do in a desert garden. Fewer pollinators to watch. The plants either take care of themselves, or they’ve been carefully watered in the cool hours. Mom’s yard has been barren this spring, raw dirt and pebbles. The first or second year she moved here, she says, the meadow of native grasses was glorious and gold. The past few it has been bare; she doesn’t know why.
In the four years before I moved here, my mother had sometimes found a glass bead or two in her yard. Under the fruitless grapevine I had subdued in the fall, I spot more.
I develop a habit of losing myself for hours in the middle of the workday, looking for beads. I scratch at the dirt in the yard under the blistering sun. I find most around the edges of the yard, under the grapevine, by the planter, in the rocks under the juniper. Some days I come away with a pocketful of them.
White cubes with blue flowers. Red cylinders with green ones. One yellow teardrop—would I find another? Here was another. And another. Clear cubes, or opaque, with bands around their edges. Tiny hearts—many pale rose or green, but look—this one is dark red, almost black.