Logjammed

  EASY MODE

  Turn Six-Twenty-One. The nuclear bombings begin. My own warheads against my own cities because I’m bored. I target Scandrinar first, hovering my cursor over a stack of digital towers and farms and neighborhoods, a unit in my nation-building game. A pixelated Mina Loy soars overhead and drops a payload. A satisfying mushroom cloud, followed by moans from fictional citizens, perishing within the inferno. The metropolis shrinks in populace by half. Maybe those that remain will blame one of the countries still controlled by AI, like Player Four, currently at war with my country. Of course, such presumption would be baseless since that country’s still languishing in the Dark Ages. Only my empire controls the power of the atom.

  Outside my hostel room, London. Unknown to my American experience, begging to be explored.

  I send a bomber at Norvusil next. In my mind, a child clumps together a snowman in the middle of a narrow street in the city’s outskirts. He can hear oil drills creaking a few miles away, a constant for him, a beat he hums to as he packs more polluted ice into his new best friend. Not a sociable boy, after all, listens too much to school lectures for his peer’s liking. Yesterday, his teacher taught about Norvusil’s founding, how it was established solely to claim a patch of polar petrol, nurtured a factory before an open market, on and on, to the point where even I don’t care, and I’m the Goddess-Tyrant, but the boy, he cares. He used to hate the black snow, but knowing that the sticky, inky stuff keeps his town alive fills him with warmth. The cake of soot on him connects him to the most advanced civilization in the world. He salutes his creation. “Hail Susanistan!” His elocution slops with infantile lisping, but he’s ahead of his class, not just in elementary learning, but in a sense of citizenship. Part of the Big Something. The Big Importance.

  Then the Big Importance vaporizes his playmate and petrifies him into a Pompeii fossil cast. Hail Susanistan.

  The next target sits on the coast. The megalopolis of Susani-Kaema. A woman bicycles down its streets towards an open market close to the Western Ocean. Seagull droppings splash against guarding canopies hot with steam but never enough to catch fire. Calamari coated with cinnamon sizzle on grills before grizzled cooks fling them into a sauce thick with ginger, curry, and something called yellow weed. A Player Seven delicacy, though I’ve long since absorbed that country. Kaema once hosted their central government and still has a statue of Monarch Seven in its plaza, though I chiseled off its face. Goddess-Tyrant, after all.

  The woman always skips Susani fare for the Sevenese dishes. Her blood runs ethnically Sevenese, even if my occupation has muddied it over several generations, turning her into one of my citizens. She speaks Susani in public, sings my National Anthem at all the sporting events her husband drags her to, has an entirely Susani name, yadda yadda. But at home, she insists her infant calls her, “Mey-Mey,” the Sevenese colloquialism for mother. She’ll teach the boy proper Sevenese when he’s older, and yes, instruct him to marry a Sevenese girl, please, no one from the east, none of the conquerors. A sliver of her soul hopes for Player Seven independence someday. (A futile wish. This game doesn’t allow secessions.)

  But she suppresses any external rebelliousness, that is, until lunch. She dramatically averts her gaze from the Susani kiosks that churn out only lentils, granting herself a morsel of agency. Not much of one, only a microbial revolution, but with enough time, a pebble rolling down a cliff can turn into a landslide.

  She points at a boiling pot, her mouth already watering. “Yellow weed curry. Two servings, okay?”

  The vendor scowls. “What?” His Susani accent rings strong. “I don’t understand you.”

  Horror grips the deepest, reddest piece of her heart. Her nation’s cuisine, coopted by occupiers. Whatever anger that could’ve arisen in her had long since been grinded out, but enough pride remains to give out scorn. “I’m speaking fine. Yellow weed curry. Two servings.”

  A thought strikes her, that she could start her own shack, serve yellow weed curry the proper way, and so what if she gave up her job at a law office, so what if she halved her family’s income right as they cared for a baby, so what if….

  The desire dies. But she can teach her son the correct cooking times, the correct amounts of spices and the correct ways to sprinkle them. Susanistan could control her streets, but never her home. And as substandard as her meal is, she grimly smiles as she munches.

  Then the bomb drops. She dies. The grumpy cook dies. Her husband dies. Her son dies. He will never marry an ethnic Sevense girl.

  After that, Tormeilios receives a gift nuking, but no stories reside there because I couldn’t care less about that town.

  Time for a break. After saving my game, I crack open a window and let the frigid London air whistle into my dorm room. Back home in Illinois, the summer sun probably burns up everything, from the cornfields to the campus quad to my parents’ side lawn. Here, the calendar might as well flip to autumn. I shiver, but don’t dare fit into one of the two sweaters I packed. Colder nights could come in the next two months, and I fear foreign laundry rooms.

  The car lights stream below like a river filled with lamps. Reversed lanes, I note for the hundredth time, and goodness help me if I have to drive here. The nightscape is like a Dali painting – realistic, but off. Before coming, I’d hoped for a Van Gogh, a mystery of blurs and swirls belying a dream world. Or had I? What had I really wanted? Over the course of the week, I’d forgotten.

  I had told the other exchange students that my tongue couldn’t cradle spice and thus I couldn’t join them for Indian food, but maybe I can call Fiona and ask for a takeout dessert. As I massage the phone buttons without pressing, I take a sip of my McDonald’s coke. It tastes like nothing. Like runoff from a gutter. Besides, I think while returning to my computer without any dialing, my stomach feels full from three hours ago.

  A check of my inbox shows another e-mail that I’ll have to delete from the psychiatrist. As nice as he is, I tell myself, he just wants my money. That’s why he didn’t want me studying abroad, because that meant less of my budget in his pocket. Or rather, my parents’ budget. A lot of my parents’ budget, to the tune of-

  Turn Six-Twenty-Two.

  Scandrinar. A father of two bashes a piece of rubble against a shop window. He expects an instant shatter, but he doesn’t leave even a dent. Is he that weak? Starving, yes, dehydrated, nauseous from possible radiation poisoning, but weak? He’s a father. An only parent now. He can’t be weak. The second thwack breaks through.

  He doesn’t know why this is the only store in all of the uptown that didn’t get looted. Maybe the owners smiled at every customer, gave kids free lollipops, calmly talked down any robbers. Maybe an instilled loyalty used to occupy here. But the father never visited here before today. He never got those smiles. And his youngest’s skin has looked very pale the past two days.

  The shelves run low as is. Food shortages had slammed Scandrinar even before the bombs did. Still, a cornucopia of supplies as far as he’s concerned, too much to carry all at once. No shopping carts, so he can’t caravan a line back to his spot under the bypass. Just flimsy plastic bags, sure to break under the overflow he wants to carry. He looks back outside. Will his hole pave way for others to loot? If he returns in an hour, will it be a cleaned-out store?

  He shoves chips out of a mobile shelving unit and loads on food cans. He can’t leave his children alone forever, so he can’t pull off a nonstop marathon of trips. His only hope rests in other survivors maintaining disinterest in his stash. A likely mistake, he knows, that could kill off his family, just as the smallest misstep inevitably will. Better to just keep acting, he thinks, and beat back this overcoming dread.

  Before he drags the rack out, he looks at the register one last time. A sign on its top chirps, Thank You, Come Again. He leaves five rumpled dollars on the counter. No thief, after all.

  As he grunts his way down the street, his mind wanders towards his wife, despite his best efforts. Maybe somewhere in the
strike zone downtown, she remains alive, cared for by a widower who came looking for his spouse and found her instead. And if so, they both probably wonder together why he didn’t run like so many others did to find his loved one amidst the rubble. He reminds himself that he journeyed halfway there, he did, an effort was made. If they reversed roles, if she saw the people with melting skin, would she have gone further, knowing he might be in even worse shape? Could she bear it? Would she have abandoned her children just to find the glowing clump left of his body? A father has to care for his own. A father has responsibilities.

  He passes some other vacant souls on his way, but they pay him as little mind as he does them. When he gets to his hideaway, throaty coughs greet him. His children can’t run up and hug him in their weakness. His home caught fire amidst the chaos, closer to the blast than his workplace. Somehow, the children escaped, but that does them little good now.

  “I’m going to heat up some chicken soup,” he promises them. “It’ll be delicious.”

  As he struggles lighting some wood debris into a fire, his oldest asks, “Papa, why did Player Four do this?”

  Not the first time he’d asked that question, and the father worries that his child’s fever has led to splotches of amnesia. Or maybe it’s just shock, because really, how could this all have happened?

  “They hate our greatness,” he responds automatically. Then, in a mumble, “So much that they learned how to make missiles.” Obviously, Player Four did this, since Player Six was half a world away and really only huffed about Susanistan’s wars at Nation Council. But no country on the planet knew how to get a plane off the ground. The only way Player Four could pull this off would be intercepting and stealing a missile launcher. (Except that can’t happen either. Countries can gift each other research, but not technologies, and they certainly can’t capture weapons.)

  Their plight could only hinge on Susanistan incompetence, and their plight could only continue because of such incompetence as well. Where were the rescue helicopters? The outside construction contractors to fix the bombed-out roads? The airdropped medics? Was Scandrinar not Susanistan? They were no Susanopolis, no Second City either, but they were the fifth biggest city in the empire. What, a few protests about the famine pushed them out of favor? They could just die now? He and his family could just die?

  But his children don’t need to hear that. “Don’t worry,” he continues. “We’ll hit them back. Worse than they hit us. And we’ll get rescued. Go live on Kadofango Coast.” (He doesn’t know that they’ve been bombed as well.) The lies flow out of him. “And the Goddess-Tyrant will personally visit us and give you both a lifetime supply of chocolate, and Mama will be there. I know that I said she was ‘gone,’ but no, she’ll be there and won’t even be mad about the chocolate, you can eat it breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I promise, I absolutely promise.”

  But neither child answers, they don’t even smile, they just take shallow breaths, hands on their stomachs, their skin a faint green. He fights back his tears and keeps working on the fire. A father has to care for his own. A father has responsibilities.

  The second bomb drops.

  Are you sure you want to bomb Rakayea? Yes, game, I do.

  Are you sure you want to bomb Susani-Humarea?

  Are you sure you want to bomb Qalaginaktis?

  Save game.

  The sound of steps pass my door. I should say hello. Bad enough that I have a room to myself, bad enough that I skipped the first two days of classes, but to hide away from everyone? Crossing into hermit territory. A shiver reminds me that I had never shut the window. As it slams down, I cringe, expecting a knock on my door and a, “What was that noise, Susan?” Do they know my name? I only know three of theirs.

  How soon until I get sick of McDonald’s?

  I look up my online assignment due in thirty minutes. “Talk about your cultural experiences in London. Prompt: Saint Peter’s.” I’d skipped that tour though. Well, prompts are optional, presumably. Maybe not. Maybe they went over that in class. I can ask one of the others about it, steer away from questions about my absence. “Jet lag,” very bad jetlag. But the flight landed a week ago? Ha ha ha, well….

  The text box stares back at me. This is the part where I paste in the essay I finished three days ago. But I don’t even have line one. At least, I tell myself, put down a first sentence.

  Saint Paul’s sure is a church! No.

  I could’ve gone to Trafalgar Square and climbed the lion statues, but I leveled up my elf rogue instead. No.

  Just kidding. I didn’t level her up. I endlessly toyed with her inventory and wardrobe instead. She has sixteen signet rings. Sixteen!

  A woman yelled at me that I was blocking everyone’s path in the Tube my first day here.

  General studies is a major for jocks, not a high school salutatorian.

  Delete.

  London has funny cars, like boxes with wheels. In conclusion- Delete.

  I’d say I missed home, but I don’t like it there either. What am I supposed to be? When people think “Susan,” what do they think of? Of hummingbirds? Why would they think of that? Delete.

  Are you sure you want to bomb London? Click yes or no.

  A good way to get visited by Scotland Yard. Delete.

  Saint Paul’s Cathedral is very old. It still has services. The London Museum has mummies. Isn’t that interesting? Tune in next week when I branch out from McDonald’s to KFC!

  Tempting. A good five hundred words below the assigned minimum, but tempting.

  After I play another round, I’ll double down and pound out… something. Sure. Absolutely.

  Turn Six-Twenty-Three.

  A turn ago, the air in Second City heaved and wretched with pepper spray and tear gas, but now, police line up expressionlessly as the crowds scream around them, their presence merely stage setting. Molotov cocktails flame out on sidewalks, windows crash under mob weight, but the police remain rooted and disinterested. The Mayor-Governor plans a televised speech in a few moments, but the central square’s big screen crackles with static, so no one will see it here.

  The journalist’s fingers ache with snapping his camera. Too much. Too much history in this moment, too many masked faces and bashed-up cars and burning flags and elbows in his side. If pictures tell a thousand words, then he’s captured a library, and yet, not enough. Not enough digital memory, not enough angles, not enough time in these eruptions of activity cycling around him. He can’t teleport to the height of action, but there’s too much action not to capture, not to keep shooting.

  How?

  How did he get here?

  Which led to why.

  Why would a country nuke its own citizens?

  Would someone assassinate the Goddess-Tyrant?

  (No. A player can’t lose control over their own country. That would be stupid.)

  Is all this a Player Four conspiracy? Or, a depressing thought, one from Player Six? (No. Only I have figured out Espionage.)

  Is this all a dramatic way to root out dissent? (More loyalty lies in the nuked cities than most. Many of the latter annexed towns carry too few people to bomb satisfactorily.)

  Is the Goddess-Tyrant insane? (The psychiatrist says I have depression, but not much else.)

  Is this a dream? (No. Computers don’t dream.)

  “How can you stand there?” shrieks a particularly red-faced protestor at one of the policemen. “How can you stand behind that child-killing psychopath? She killed our people! Our people!”

  Inwardly, the policeman screams back, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? WHAT? AM I? SUPPOSED TO DO? (Nothing. He’s a stat hanging over a city graphic, and nothing more.)

  None of them think their city will get nuked though. Not Susanistan’s second city. Not one so close to Susanopolis. Wrong.

  Susanopolis.

  The news of self-nuking already hit the streets, but it’s met only with shrugs. That’s non-Susanopolitan problems. Here? Everyone gets anywhere by high-speed trains.
An allotment of delicious food arrives at every household each day, the choicest of Susani cuisine with the freshest ingredients. Work? A joke, an excuse not to be bored. The rest of the empire props them up. Every house has its own park with its own personal gaggle of geese and botanical garden and monolithic fountain and army of grumbling Fourese gardeners. In contrast, the pool boys are all ethnically Player Three, a cheery sort, probably too nice to be enslaved, but warmongering countries will warmonger, after all. Besides, all these minorities’ homelands now have working sewage systems, thanks to Susani occupation, so they can’t complain, really.

  But some-one has to whine in paradise.

  “I don’t want to go to Player Six.” Young Suze paces through the lawn, and her mother jogs to keep up. Suze nears tears. “I just want to stay home.”

  “But all you do is watch the news and mope.”

  “At least I won’t be in another country, knowing no one, not understanding how anyone talks, afraid to try the food, probably sick with some intestinal-“

  The mother grabs her daughter by the shoulder. “You know what?” A sigh. “You’re right. Stay home. Get your bearings. Figure life out.”

  No, not how it goes.

  In a father’s office, an eighteen-year old Su-seyne wrinkles her nose. “Player Six?”

  The father grins. His office overlooks a magnificent train concourse brimming with blah blah blah, all very cool, but anyway, he says, “A summer-long English (whoops) Susani language class. An easy credit. Just see some local Shakespearean, er, Chaquespearean plays-“

  “Why does Player Six have Chaquespearean plays?”

  “Because they’re out allies, remember?”

  She throws up quote marks. “’Allies.’”

  “Anyway, not much culture shock-“

  Sus-seyne brightens up. “But enough to have a rich experience in (check map) Telestaire, one of the biggest cities in the world.” (Actually, only twenty-sixth biggest, thanks to my medical advances.)

  “Right. A once in the lifetime experience.”

  “Wow. Once in a lifetime.” She gives out a laugh. “And I’m going to make the most of it.” Cue heroic fanfare. Are you sure you want to bomb Susanopolis?

  Not quite yet.

  A teen sits on a rolling hill in the capital’s central park. He resembles the boy who made snowmen in Norvusil, but older. Less enthused, too. He looks at the fireflies buzzing about, out early.

  “Why am I here?” he asks them.

  (Because the game generated you.)

  He won’t listen to me, though, engrossed with lightning bugs instead. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  (I’m going to vaporize you.)

  “Where am I supposed to be?”

  (Ground Zero.)

  “The big questions.” He chuckles. “Asking myself the big questions here. So I’ll go smaller. When will I stop being so bored?”

  (Maybe you should go to Player Six. I hear they have great Chaquespearean plays.)

  The sunset glows neon orange from all of Second City’s irradiation. Nuclear winter should’ve choked this world by now, but the game hasn’t programmed in that feature.

  “If I fall,” he says, voice flat, “if I spiral down, I’ll never come back up. I’ll slide off the face of the Earth.”

  (Not really a question.)

  “And,” a hollow laugh, “there’s nothing I can do.”

  Are you sure you want to bomb Susanopolis?

  Turn Six-Twenty-Four.

  Player Four finally crosses into Susani territory, taking Susani-Bimgul, a fairly easy victory since the city’s train of supplies got bombed to Gehenna last turn. Thus goes the Fourese Counteroffensive, taking hold of the entire Player Three annex. Their Columbus-era ships will take a turn to land on proper Susani shores, but my navy drifts powerless in the sea, bereft of fuel and incapable of defense.

  Turn Six-Twenty-Five. With a military that would struggle to win the Battle of Hastings, Player Four strides into a bombed-out Susanopolis, the city’s only protection deriving from the poisoned soil and toxic air. Alas, somehow not enough. The invaders rain a storm of arrows on the Imperial Palace, and the last remaining Susani infantryman cackles at their effort. The entire right side of his body runs black with crisped skin. He pulls a Fourese arrow out of the crumbled wall and plunges it between his eyes. Game Over.

  The game awards no achievements for losing on Easy Mode.

  The thought crosses my mind that Hamlet would fit perfectly in this scenario, prattling about Player Four’s election lights or whatnot, prompting a huge laugh. I probably wake up half the dorm, but at least I have an essay idea. Prince Hamlet in Susanistan’s Court. Perfect.

  I log into my college portal.

  Assignment now closed. Red text. I check the clock. Forty minutes late. Ten percent of my final grade… turned to ash. Combined with the truancy dent on my participation grade, that left me, at best, a “B.” Never in my life had I earned a “B.” I only lost out the valedictorian to a NASA engineer’s son. And I’d get a “B” in English. My best subject.

  And I hadn’t even climbed atop the lions in Trafalgar Square.

  Tomorrow’s class starts at eight in the morning. The clock approaches one at night. An average game lasts close to seven hours. And then I can play with my elf rogue’s armoire for a couple hours, followed by another game where I can run a pacifist campaign. Unless a Player attacks me. Then I’ll go all Genghis Khan on them again, or the female equivalent, Genghisette or whatever.

  Maybe this time, I’ll bump the difficulty up to Regular, but that sounds tiresome, and I’m tired an awful lot lately, if not exactly sleeping much. Instead, I reload Turn Six-Twenty-One.

  A placid, productive society lies before me.

  Are you sure you want to bomb Scandrinar?

  Of course. Bombs away.