Prologue

We are never fully happy.

This is a fact of life. Joyous situations may arise during the years but as mirthful as they are, like everything, they are short-lived. Nobody is fully happy. Sure, you may have gotten that girl, aced your exams, witnessed the birth of your first child, bought that new Ferrari, but again, joy, stemmed from intangible or tangible sources, is temporal. New problems arise, and we will not be happy.

We could have all our problems at the current moment solved, everything that we ever wanted, and we'd still never be fully happy. I will never be fully happy. People are never, fully happy.

I know this, because this is the reason why I am sitting here at this moment. This is the reason why I am being carressed by the soft warm glow from the computer CRT monitor, my fingers moving like they have a mind of their own.

Tap tap tap. Word after word. We are never fully happy, and I'm here to tell you why. We seek solutions to our problems. The quicker the better, time is precious after all isn't it? It sure is, when you have only hours to live. Adding insult to injury, I know the clock is ticking.

I am not feeling happy, but unlike everyone else, I cannot find a back gate to escape this shit. Unlike everyone, I will not be able to find a solution, and breed new inevitable problems later. Maybe that is a blessing. Maybe death is the final peace.

Tap tap tap. Hours before my end.

It is here that I am waiting, in my own room. There is no way to change this. This is it, everyone knows. But they are not here, Lance and Abe. They are kilometres away, also in their rooms. Unlike me though, there is no countdown for them.

Especially for Abe. After all, he was the one that sealed my fate. He was the one that started it all, though he would say otherwise. You would wouldn't you, Abraham Lee?

We were never fully happy. We had to have more. And more. And that is why I am typing out whatever I can right now in my room. Hours before I become a small column at tomorrow's obituary. I wonder what kind of picture they would put there and I silently hope it will not be the one on my identity card.

Tap tap tap.

So this is my story. This is how I know that humanity can never get the chance to solve their problems all at once, to have everything they want. People are never happy. There is no solution to that. I used to think there was, so did Abe and Lance. We were all so naive. How could we not be? Three 18 year olds suddenly inherit the solution to life.

The cheat code. The back door.

Cheater.

That's what you are Abe. A cheater. You caused all of this, I want you to remember to that. When I die, this will be found. You're reading this aren't you, you found it, whoever you are. I want Abe to know that I will remember this.

Abe you stupid ass.

You knew Hazel was mine. Too bad you couldn't get her in real life. You knew. And you took her away.

It was all her wasn't it?

Tap tap tap. Make yourself comfortable; I know I can't. I've dragged out for as long as I could. I have to write this. Someone has to know, and I hope by the time you finish you will destroy it if Lance and Abe already haven't.

I hope you will destroy what I thought was our deus ex machina. The solution to life. The solver of our problems.


Chapter 1

The easiest way to talk to your friends while you're in class is to walk out of it.

Hiding your mobile under the table while your eyes dart back and forth from the lecturer to the little glowing screen is not only plain stupid, it is idiotic. You obviously are not listening to class, and if whatever it is that you are discussing is so important that it cannot wait you might as well carry on outside.

Save me the irritating clicks of your keypad and incoming vibration alert. God help me if you don't even have the decency to switch to silent mode.

I tell all that to Lance, in a much shorter version which went something like "Stop fucking with your phone."

He gives me a look after slightly turning to face me, which involves both of his eyebrows arching in different directions so that one eye is smaller and the other is bigger. This is commonly known as The People's Eyebrow, an expression made infamous by a wrestler called The. His surname is Rock.

Lance could probably pass off as a clone of said wrestler, if it weren't for that fact that Lance is borderline underweight, pale as printing paper and has a face that looks nothing like The Rock. Mister Rock doesn't wear thick rectangular emo glasses now does he?

"Shut up dude and listen to your lecture." Lance says, and continues tapping away, his fingers a blur.

I can't if you don't stop that, I tell him with the most faux-polite face I can manage. Then a slight smile while holding that face.

"Okay whatever," He says. "I don't need this."

He moves down two seats to his left and returns his attention to his mobile, like the majority of the diversely dressed crowd in the lecture theatre. I see the poor speaker below desperately trying to cajole the attention of the mass who couldn't care less. Better off catching eels with oiled hands. This guy here is an obvious newbie, a beginner. Heck he isn't even interesting to begin with. The topic on cables and such and what types are used to connect what electronic pheripherials is difficult, I give him that.

Enough was enough, I will probably pass this. I call Lance and we both walk out.

The warm stuffy afternoon air greets us by farting a load of hot breeze our way. Lance, still preoccupied with his phone, lets out a sigh of disgust.

Today's weather is bright and sunny with a slight noon pour of annoyance to excessive mobile use.

Way to go Lance, long thick sleeves on a tropical island, I say. Can you get any smarter?

"Lay off the sarcasm alright?" He says without turning.

What the hell is it that is so important, I ask, waving towards his mobile.

"Girl."

Ha. Ha. Very funny.

"Hey what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Lance's last girlfriend, if you could call it that, was six months ago. The idiot got dumped the next after being vampired for a day. He borrowed money for a week. Way to go Lance. I remind him of that. He grimaces. "If I weren't in a good mood I'd have killed you."

Whatever, I say. Who were you talking to?

"Abe, who the hell else?" Irritation.

Of course.

"Dude you remember that game he said he downloaded yesterday?"

I nod. Abe was from another class, Lance and I met him on the first day of school and if there was a personification of a geek it would be Abe - knowledge and fashion sense to boot.

You wanna know about the latest hot PC games? Abe.

Problems with your computer? Abe.

Don't know where to get games for free? Abe are you there come on.

Need to reformat that overstuffed and virus-comfy hard drive? Abe answer the goddamn phone.

"...so he says it's the best thing ever." Lance is wildly gesticulating as he rambles on about the features.

Uber realistic graphics that runs at light speed.

Do any possible thing you can imagine.

Probably the most technically advanced game out there.

"...a totally free world! You do ANYTHING you want and the world responds accordingly! And guess what? You can play yourself. Sweet isn't it?"

I catch less than half of that while waiting for Abe to pick up his mobile. Geek doesn't have the habit of answering. Why get a phone when you don't intend to make use of it?

"He tells me that voice chat is possible...with NPCs. They'll hold conversations with you, shit, you have no idea how exciting that sounds."

NPCs is short for Non-Player Characters, which means the Artificial Intelligent (AI), or computer-controlled avatars in a game. Voice chatting with NPCs is impossible as far as I know, not with them holding actual conversations with the player. Impossible.

"Yeah that's what I thought. Abe says otherwise, says we HAVE to try it out. Now."

I am not really a big fan of computer games but that really did sound very intriguing. Abe's the one to always announce some new obscure game he found while surfing online and it'd turn up on posters everywhere days after. If there's a trend forecaster in the Geek World it would be our friend Abe.

He is probably out of class already and busy with his so called "game" he is making that consists of ripped graphics and sounds on his laptop somewhere at the school cafe. His phone is probably hidden somewhere in his bag and he cannot hear it ring.

Click and we connect with Abe.

"Sorry was busy with my game and my phone was hidden somewhere in my bag and I couldn't hear it ring."

I'd just like to say that I find digitised voices that spill out from mobiles really weird. Unnatural. Technology unnerves me sometimes; a wonder why I'm studying Information Technology at all.

Abe was at the cafe. As usual. It was there we went. And it was there where we laid eyes on the game for the first time. It was there that our problems stopped. And more began. It was there we first met our deus ex machina. Our sudden savior.

Not exactly happy today as I walk towards in the general direction of Abes location, Lance a few steps behind me. I wasted my time on a lecture, it is hot and I hate people who answer after two thousand rings. I can see Lance isn't happy either, probably thinking about that girl.

It isn't in my brain now, but later on retrospect, today is a beautiful day. I walked out of a boring lecture, it is not raining and Abe answered my call in the end anyway.

But then again, people are never happy.


*************************************************************

Abe is short for Abraham Lee something something. I never bother to remember Mandarin names; it isn't like I'm going to use it anyway. Abe here dislikes his name, something that him and I have in common from the start.

"Abraham sounds like something two decades back, and I keep having Lincoln's picture pop into my head everytime someone calls me that," He had said the first time I questioned him.

If I ever have children, I will remind myself never to pick names out of baby books. And definitely not pick the first name I see on the first page I opened, which was exactly what Abe's folks did. Nice people. So everyone calls him Abe now. Abraham is a sure fire way to make him give you the Abe Look. The one where he slouches slightly but visibly, narrows his eyes, furrowing his brows and puckering his lips. He thinks it's cute.

It's not. Really.

According to him, computer games are a shitload of work. They are the combined efforts of many many people over an extended period of time. Not too long though, since there are always deadlines. Life is a 24 hour 7 day train station of deadlines. It's in and out. One after another.

For game developers, according to Abe, trains arrive daily because there are so many things to do. There is modelling of characters, objects and other miscellaneous stuff to be done, the creation of environments (usually called maps), the actual programming of the game itself done by people who magically can sit on a chair for hours chewing cold pizza and warm soda while staring at lines after lines of text that would mean nothing to the normal human being.

Abe is not normal.

I mention that to him.

"Yeah, that is why I can manage making a game myself. Heh." Wide smile.

Also according to Abe, creation of the three dimensional engine (which the game "runs on", like as if the engine was a building foundation and the game was the structure) can take years. It depends on how good you want the engine to be. So most developers just buy an engine. Till now, I still have no idea what the fuck an engine is. Except that it's like a building foundation.

So I guess you can't afford an engine huh, I say.

"No," He laughs. His beady eyes thin until it looks like he can't even see through them. His cheeks jiggle a little. "I can't even do 3D yet. See, it's on 2D. No z-axis. It's flat."

I nod. I know the difference between 2D and 3D.

Abe goes on.

Programming organic game rules are insane. Computer games are basically a collection of media elements stuck together cohesively by code. Code runs on logic, broken down they are a series of 1s and 0s, of Yes and No. This or That.

To simulate simple emotion, complex algorithms - lines of code that are used repeatedly to perform a certain task - are required and that's just the basics, according to Abe.

So to actually create the game like he had described to Lance was not possible. Nada. None at all. Not by today's standards. Abe himself is surprised that this isn't already the biggest hit planetwide. As if to mock his better judgement it was total silence where he expected noise. It was as if this game never existed.

"Come ON, stop talking so much and show it to us already!"

Yeah, it's Lance as tries to squeeze his head in between mine and Abe's to get a look at the screen.

Lance I do not want to eat your overwaxed hair, I say and shove him back. Some of the brown spikes brushes past my face and Lance hastily tries to put them back in place.

I turn my attention back to Abe's laptop as he double-clicks an icon on his overflooded comptuer desktop. I catch some of the names of the icons on a Linux Rules wallpaper before the game screen appear.

mIRC. MSN Messenger. Warcraft III Frozen Throne. Ground Control 2. Shogun Total War. Gunbound. Starcraft Broodwar. Adaware. Photoshop.

I don't have to read the rest. It's probably Flash, Illustrator and some installers he couldn't be bothered to remove. More than half, if not all, of the programs were illegal.

Warez, Abe called them.

So this game is downloaded yeah? I ask.

He gave a quick Abe Look. "Duh."

"Give me some space dudes!" I feel the spikes again.

The game screen fades into view as the background menu music plays a low bass note. It stretches and starts to fade off as short electronic beeps play in a funky weird rhythm. Fucking techno.

"Fucking techno," Lance breathes.

The menu page was a metallic dark navy blue gradient, lightening to a soft tone vertically, top-down. There was a text box in the middle of a screen. The label was in a thin, smooth, futuristic font. "Enter your identity number:"

"That's it?" Lance says, mouth agape.

Abe turns to us. "Yeah, funny, it has no title."

"What a bummer."

I share Lance's disappointment. After all that hoohaa from Abe my anticipations were punched in the gut, then kicked and abused by a shoddy menu screen. No introduction movie. No dramatic voiceover. Just a text box, and fucking techno.

Where did you say you download this from again? I ask.

"I can't remember. I copied down the URL, checked it word for word. Look this is the one," He points to a piece of paper that suspiciously looks like a 7-11 receipt. "But after I finished the download and tried to enter it again it doesn't work. I don't know why."

"Server down?" Lance says.

"I don't know. Probably. Hell, I don't even know who made the game. Nothing. It was just some cool looking screenshots and some flavour text and a download link. Man I swear the screenies look like it was taken with a vid--"

Interrupting here Abe, I say, but where did you get the link in the first place?

"From a pop-up while I was surfing--"

Lance cuts in. "Porn."

Abe Look again. "I don't surf porn. It just appeared. And stop cutting into my senten--"

Let's get on with it already, I say.

Abe shut up and typed in his NRIC number. Yes, he assures, it's our identity card number and yes, you have to include the S prefix. He also mentions that it took him a few tries to figure out what identity number to enter, since there wasn't any place to sign up. He reached an "Ah fuck it" point and decided on using the number he was keying in now.

Tap. Blip.

No one expected it, except Abe of course; he had already tried the game before. The screen fades into the most realistic environment I have ever seen in my short, you-could-call-it-gaming life. It is hard to put it into words, suffice to say that I could swear that it was footage taken using the best ever video recorder.

It doesn't cross my mind that it was way unnatural that Abe's laptop could support a game like this, and run at this speed - which is really really smooth. I don't have time to worry about trivial matters; most of it is already taken up me gawking. Abe always upgrades his machine regularly anyway, I would remember. He never fails to tell us all about it.

"Woah." Lance I feel you. "Just. Woah."

Abe just sits that and watches our expressions with an Abe Smirk on that chubby face, a kid proudly showing off his new invention. Only that this new creation was the cure for cancer. It is a goddamn full minute before Lance manages a choking sound of disbelief.

"Yeah, I was exactly like that last night. Here I'll show you guys around."

And this is how it all began.


Chapter 2

If I ever needed to record down what happened this afternoon, I think, it would be hell trying to remember.

Journals usually aren't my thing, I either lose motivation to update day-to-day repetitive cycles monotonous events that are occasionally broken and then fall into a cycle again, or I just forget about it. Well I am glad I don't keep one; If I did though, today's entry will probably go something like:

"Dear Kain,

This is to remind you that today is probably the craziest and most fucked up day of your life. Abe showed you this game that was too damn real. You were feeling a mix of emotions then, but mostly it was fear. Lance naturally went apeshit. Lucky for you there wasn't any other soul in the cafe. Unluckily for you, Hazel was working part-time there and today was her shift.

You felt that you must have struck some weird chord when she saw 3 of you crowded behind a laptop, eyes about to pop, Lance making funny noises, you slowly shaking your head, and Abe looking like a smug-ass. She smiled. Yeah, shit you love that smile. You love that face. She was hot, as always. But GODDAMN she smiled at....who? Fuck. Really. You don't know, you fool. Just your general direction. You smiled back, weakly. You probably looked like crap. Today was a bad hair day.

Funny you forgot all about it when Abe started to play the game. It was phenomenal. Abe controlled Abe. He looked at you and Lance, in the game.

In the fucking game. Us. Models. Characters. In the game.

You remember Lance making an odd squeaking sound taking in all this. You also remember Abe was wandering in the game in SCHOOL. You remember him picking up a chair and smashing the big glass door in front of the admin reception...."Just to test." Abe said.

Glass behaved like glass. Insane. Lance just stared silent. You remember Abe pulling you back before packing up and leaving, whispering something about watching out for Lance. "He seems a little, worked up." Understatement of the year Abe.

This is also to remind you that you really wanted to write more but your head hurts now and you want to go to bed.

Also, today was fucking insane."

Insane as in type size 72, bolded, italicized and underlined.

...I hate journals. I don't know about you but I really don't want to uncover all my prepubescent to teenage thoughts after a decade and realise how stupid and meaningless my life was and still is. Nostalgia is overrated.

I think a little more about my mental journal entry and decide whether or not to add about that burned CD copy of the game lying on my desk.

The game. Funny, it has no title. And we have been calling it The Game. Who the hell makes a game without a title?

Maybe it isn't a game?

I mentally scribble all of that away. Sorry but you are thinking too much, just install that shit and clear your head. You'll be okay and back to normal in an hour or so. I hope.

*****************************************************************

Whatever being okay is, I am far from it.

You know, watching someone play a computer game and actually having your ass on the seat itself is a totally different thing. From behind Abe and tasting Lance's greasy hair, it felt like a game. When I am actually controlling me, as myself, it's life.

It is total immersion. I'm talking so real I think I feel my senses being seduced into experiencing what is happening on screen.

Hours later having tried the speech feature and becoming so intrigued with it I realise I still have found out nothing. Usually in games of today, the immersion lasts under a certain limit. There is a clear line between virtuality and reality. With The Game, the line isn't just blurred.

It doesn't exist.

It could have been real people replying back to me, after nonsensical sentences of "Bing bing bing bing big fat yellow submarines fly ham sauages eat polka dots." I get the disgusted looks from people around me. In fact, I was so into the NPC talking that I only had time to walk around and try hitting some stranger I knew for no reason before my eyelids gave way.

Whoever that guy was- tall blonde mohawk perched on an angular pale Hey-guys-I'm-gothic face and expression to match - too bad for him. I slapped him outside the school compound. The NPC reacted, just as anyone would.

Shock. Anger. Retaliation.

I laughed and took off, glancing at my in-game watch. Yeah, the time is the same inside too. Then I just turned the thing off. I had classes tomorrow.

Which is today. Here. Now. I am sitting in the bus, looking at the still wet streets through a window screen tainted with evaporating droplets. A car rushes past with a sizzling wet sound tires make when rolling at high speed across damp asphalt.

Today's weather is post-rainy and full of head still hurting from lack of sleep.

A shitload of people are boarding the already crowded bus and I am late for classes. Typical. I continue to stare at the window, dodging glances thrown my way. The air conditioning disturbs my bare arms. T-shirt on a wet day.

Congratulations, you're as smart as Lance.

I shift uncomfortably as an overweight female desposits her lard heavy  of a behind on the seat beside me. Of all places Miss TakeUpTwoSeats, of all places. I move a little again to make space as she adjusts herself. Then I notice the paper on my lap. The one I bought before I boarded and forgot all about.

I should spend less time with Lance. Didn't know you could catch stupid.

I hope fat doesn't work under the same rules, I think as I slow unfold the paper to reveal a the striking bold headlines:

LARGELY UNINTERESTING NEWS HERE

Okay, it doesn't exactly say that, but it might as well have. Papers have nothing good to say. Thank you for all your reports on some random flood halfway round the world and that really important dispute between 2 neighbours that must have been very very interesting for you to publish it so that an entire nation can read all about it. I don't believe people still buy this shit.

Leafing through the pages can be at best described as a mental iron maiden. What makes people think that a new mobile phone model is good news? Do people actually buy to read? I catch another column about some school vandalism from the corner of my eyes. I rolled them.

My eyes, not the column.

Like school vandalims was a big deal. Well apparently it is, to Lance, when I see him in school.

"Dude my fucking god you read it already?!" He says.

I love you as not gay I can manage, I reply, but for fuck sake's stop tongueing my ear while abusing my eardrums.

"Being an asshole is 24/7 for you right?"

I'll work overtime for free.

"Look you're missing the point here. I'm talking about the article man."

I mention that I glanced at it. Lance immediately drives the point right back to home. Kain you have to read it. Then he uses my real name, which is really just Mandarin stuff I only use on my exam papers. You have to read it.

Fuck off, I say.

"Alright, fine, Kain. No shit here. Not funny, you have to see this."

I do.

And I do not believe this shit.




"It's not me, I swear." Abe looks more annoyed than angry.

He turns away with his Look and stares off towards to counter. The counter, where the angel resides. Uh hi Hazel.

"Hi Kain," Weak between the legs. Fingers trembling. "What'd you like to have?"

Mocha. It sounded more like merkrr but she understood. Okay Kain, keep calm and be yourself. That's the trick. Be yourself. Be your funny funny yourself here. Here's what you do, poke fun at her, make her laugh. Yeah.

"Sooo, it's uh kinda empty here yeah?"

What the hell? I tuned Lance out after returning with my mocha and white flag. Yeah well hey, I actually tried loser. This is before Abe enters. And this is before we question him about the news article.

"I didn't do it. No, really. Jesus Christ guys what the hell can I say?"

Lance tries the optimistic approach to things. "Dude maybe it's just a coincidence?"

They both look at me like I have all the answers. I wish I do, and this wish will be at the top of my list for a long time to come. Answers are like good friends, never there when you need them.  

We debate for fifteen minutes before all turning up late for classes. It has to be a concidence, we conclude. Someone just broke the exact same glass window Abe did in the game. Just a coincidence, nothing more. Lance tries very hard to believe this. So do me and Abe.

"I mean, it's not like the game can affect the world right guys?"




Lance I am sorry you are wrong, I say.

It is 3 days after the vandalism news and we are all finding Lance's optimistic approach a little too utopian. A little meaning we don't fucking believe this shit at all. Trying to think logically only makes my head throb a lot.

We try an experiment on that day.

We break another glass window and we turn off the game, then all 3 of us sleep over at Abe's. Imagine Lance's face when he sees the headlines tomorrow. Abe sits there and just manages a thin-lipped smile, then slowly shakes his head.

SCHOOL VANDAL STRIKES AGAIN

The answer hangs in the air, right in front of our fucking eyes and I have run out of metaphors. We do our best not to acknowledge it because saying it out will sound a lot crazier than just thinking it, and yet, someone has to do it, I think. "The game does change the world."

Abe and Lance stay silent. All of us try not to meet each others' gaze.

This is big. The rapid chest pounding inside confirms this. The adrenaline floodgate opens. Today's weather is a fucking rush of blood. The game controls the world, and we control the game.