A Dwarf Stood At The Door

jar from the cupboard.

  Dogor dipped his fingers into it, excavated a dollop and put it into his mouth. He wasn't used to the stickiness. "Very salty."

  Grand Theft Auto 4 was in the PS3. I switched it on and navigated to one of my save files. "Tell me what you see now," Dogor said, awkwardly chewing another dollop of peanut butter.

  "In this simulated reality," I said, "we play the role of a man named Niko Bellic, who's arrived in a foreign city and has to complete many quests for people in the city."

  "It is like real life," Dogor said.

  "That's part of the appeal. The city is called Liberty City but it's modelled on a real city called New York City."

  "Have you ever been there?"

  "Never."

  Dogor thought for a moment. "Niko Bellic, is he a Mennonite?"

  I laughed. "No, he's a Serb. He comes from a part of the world that used to be called Yugoslavia. Anyway, it's complicated."

  "John Grousewater, can I try the game console?"

  Dogor put down the jar of peanut butter and I handed him my controller. "The way the game works is that although you are Niko Bellic, you always see him from behind," I said.

  "I don't understand."

  I wasn't sure how to explain it properly. "Imagine that you can fly and that you're following me down a street, looking down from the air. Except you're both looking at me and you are me. So you decide what I do, where I go." I showed Dogor the controller's analog sticks. "That's how you make Niko Bellic move. Try it."

  Dogor pressed the analog stick and Niko Bellic sprinted forward. "You've moved Niko Bellic toward the door of his apartment. That's his save point, like The Yawning Mask. Keep going in that direction and you can move into the hallway."

  It took some trial and error but eventually with my descriptions, Dogor managed to get down the stairs of the apartment building and outside, into Liberty City proper. "Now you're standing on the sidewalk," I said. "There are people walking in front of you. There's a hot dog vendor close by. Hot dogs are a type of food, little tubes of meat stuffed between two symmetrical pieces of bread called buns. There are also cars driving by. You can steal one to make it easier to go to the places where you get the quests you need to complete."

  "Can't I walk to the destination?"

  "You can. It just takes longer. And most people think it's fun to steal cars."

  Dogor moved Niko Bellic into the middle of the street. A car stopped in front of him, honking. "The driver's making that sound because she's angry that you're in her way," I said. I pointed at a button on the controller. "Now press that and you can take the car for yourself."

  Dogor pressed the button and Niko Bellic pulled the car door open, and pulled the driver onto the street, then got behind the wheel. Music started playing. "Now you're in the car, so the view has changed. Instead of seeing Niko from above and the back, you're seeing the car from the same perspective. The controls are the same except you're controlling Niko controlling the car."

  "What happened to the person who was in the car?" Dogor asked.

  "She ran away."

  "Why?"

  "Because she was scared, I guess."

  "How will I know where to return her car once I am finished with it?"

  "You don't have to return it. In fact, I don't think you can. Once you're done with it you just get out and the leave the car wherever it happens to be."

  Dogor hit the gas, and the car accelerated down the street—before crashing into a building. "You hit a restaurant," I said. "Try reversing the car." The car sped backwards, into traffic and hit another car. "Now you've hit some other car. The driver got out. You should get out too."

  "The game console is very difficult," Dogor said.

  "It takes some getting used to, but causing chaos and just smashing into things is part of the fun."

  The other driver started punching Niko Bellic. "It seems you've gotten into a fight. The guy whose car you hit is pretty pissed off and he's hitting you. Fight back." I showed Dogor which buttons to press to lock on and punch.

  "It was my fault I hit his car with mine," he said. "I should not punch him. I should apologize. Which button is the apology button?"

  "There is no apology button."

  "Why not?"

  "Because to most people apologizing isn't fun. It's not something they fantasize about, and game consoles are all about living out your fantasies. Don't you ever have fantasies?"

  Niko Bellic had knocked the other guy out and was now stomping on his chest. "I fantasize about a Xynk where the ruler rules justly and there is no more Hooded Rat Brotherhood," Dogor said.

  He pressed a button, Niko Bellic took out his gun. Dogor spun the analog stick and Niko Bellic spun. Dogor hit L1 and Niko Bellic fired—the sound made Dogor jump—hitting a pedestrian. "What happened? What did I do?"

  "You took out a gun. Think of it as a small but deadly crossbow. And you shot someone with it."

  Dogor dropped the controller. "I'm sorry, John Grousewater!"

  "Don't be sorry. Driving around, crashing into stuff and shooting people is like the meat of the game console. It's how you complete quests and what you do for fun between quests." I picked up the controller and handed it back. I felt more comfortable when Dogor was holding it, because it meant he wasn't holding any real weapons.

  "The person I shot, this was a bad person? An enemy of Liberty City?" he asked.

  "Just a person."

  "An innocent person?"

  "In some sense, they were innocent. It doesn't matter. They only exist in Liberty City for you to interact with them, and most interactions are violent. You can shoot them with different kinds of guns, blow them up with explosives, beat them up, you can run them over with cars and trucks and motorcycles. Do you know how when water boils it turns to steam?" I asked. Dogor nodded without uttering a word. He was holding the controller as if it disgusted him. "We have a saying that when someone relaxes, lets out some of the tension that's built up inside him, he's letting off steam. That's what the game console is, a way to let off steam without actually hurting anyone. It's just pretend."

  "Pretend hurting to let out the boiling water?"

  "Yeah. But more than that it's just fun, because it's so realistic. The people look real, the cars are modelled after real cars. If it wasn't realistic, it wouldn't be so much fun. It's like having a bunch of toys and you can do anything you want with them. Liberty City, for example, the term for this type of game console is a 'sand box' because you can do anything you want. You don't even have to clean up after you're finished playing. Other game consoles have quests that are a little more strict."

  "I want to apologize and return the car I stole to the person I stole it from. You said I cannot."

  "That's true."

  "I think I prefer peanut butter to the game console," Dogor said.

  "Do you want to try another kind of game console?" I scanned my list of titles: Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed 3.

  "No, thank you," Dogor said.

  He stood up and walked over to a lamp that was standing on an end table beside the sofa. He ran his fingers over the mass-produced design "carved" onto its base. My wife had bought it at Wal-Mart. "I enjoy your lamps," he said. "Does this lamp run on electricity, like your machines?"

  "Yeah, it does."

  "Your world has many more textures and details than Xynk," he said. I showed him how to turn the lamp on and off. He seemed delighted. "There is no fire." I said that although there wasn't any fire, the light bulb becomes too hot to touch if the lamp stays on for long. Watching him play with the lamp's switch, I wondered if that's all that Dogor himself was, a core of ones and zeroes, ons and offs? "Sometimes I fantasize about living in your world," he said.

  "I wouldn't mind living in Xynk sometimes."

  He gently stroked the bulb with his finger. It was still cool. "When we capture Wayne Dubcek," he said, "I would like to press a hot lamp against his eyeball until his eyeball m
elts and drips out of his head. Then I'd fill the raw, bleeding hole with peanut butter. The pain would be unbearable. Wayne Dubcek would tell us everything he knows about the Hooded Rat Brotherhood."

  If only life had a lock-on button and an L1 trigger, I would have shot Dogor on the spot and stomped him to death on my living room carpet until he bled and any money he'd been carrying showed up as a collectable beside his dead, dwarven body. But real life wasn't so simple. There was no third-person view. "Perhaps this afternoon after we are finished with the Hooded Rat Brotherhood," Dogor said with the look of child-like wonder still on his face, "we will let off steam with the game console and I will understand better what it means."

  "We should go," I said.

  "But it is still early in the day, John Grousewater."

  It was just past noon. I pushed him toward the door, then down the steps to the cement garage floor.

  I took my car keys out of my pocket.

  I saw the curved blade of the knife Dogor had given me lying on my work bench.

  "It's best if we get there early, become familiar with surroundings and form a battle plan," I said.

  Dogor tapped his head. "The mind of a true adventurer." He shouldered his battle axe.

  I used my keyless remote entry to unlock the car doors.

  I popped open the trunk.

  Dogor stepped forward and lifted himself up on his arms to look inside. The shovel, bear spray, sledge hammer and other weapons were as I'd left them. "You can put your axe in there, too," I said.

  I took the knife from the work bench.

  "More practical than a horse and more room than in a carriage," Dogor said. He