Kathe Koja
The little park is filled with trees, grass, a pink sun casting deep magenta shadows. He dips a huge black paw into the creek, and smiling goldfish divert around it, they really should not be smiling with human teeth, those kids he commissioned should have known that, the one with the eye patch, the koala, she was lead on this build. Whatever, the fish swim, the grass is green, and he is as far from Fear of God as he can get, in this world that looks almost exactly like “Bobble’s Big Garden,” the koala and her team did not seem to catch the irony there. Whatever.
He hauls himself off the bank and toward the friendly blue darkness of the cave, his home in exile, mourning his ousting, and plotting, some believe, his eventual reinsertion, that was the shit he had to look at just this morning on Gamer Garfman’s stream, Garfman is an ass-kissing turncoat, Garfman used to say, to write, that Fear of God is the greatest reimagining of the religious impulse that gaming has ever seen. But whatever, whatever, he has got to stop reading Garfman’s shit, all the shit, extricate himself from the red lure of negativity, achieve a new perspective—and he will never, ever “reinsert” himself into Fear of God, that world is definitively over.
Though the fuck of it is—beyond the money and the lawyers and the indelible gall of everybody at Daedalus, especially that two-faced Fatima—the absolute fuck of it all is that he only wanted, tried, to enlighten people! Through violence and blood, whatever, whatever gets their attention, even if narrow-minded turds were freaked out by depictions of human sacrifice, and those stupid Christian terrorists co-opted his game, still he tried. And this is the reward he gets! He rubs his big round eyes with his big black paws: the koala had no idea who Tezcat is, she thought he was meant to be a variant of Kitty Bitty, which in a mash-up way he was. But Tezcat, Tezcatlipoca, could tell those skull-wearing priests what was up, this cat was there when the blood and hearts were flying for real—
—as a bluebird perches on the tree just outside the cave, chirping a solo piano version of the “Bobble” theme: someone is requesting entrance.
WHOS THERE
HELLO MATHIAS ITS MISSI FROM EXCURSIONALS
HELLO MISSI—Missi the highly recommended personal experience booker, who enters as a somewhat clumsy butterfly; he had told Missi he wanted to go someplace he would never ordinarily go. WHAT HAVE U GOT FOR ME MISSI
PENDING YOUR APPROVAL IVE BOOKED YOU AN OVERNIGHT AT ALTFEST 9000
WHATS ALTFEST 9000
ITS IN MALMö ITS A VERY COOL VERY WELL-CURATED MUSIC FESTIVAL though he does not actually care where or what it is, he only cares to go someplace those Daedalus fucks would never expect him to go, a long step totally outside their hermetic and judgmental gaming world, so an outdoor site full of noise and sweaty meat and overpriced lager sounds just about right. While Missi lists the accommodations, amenities, and performers’ lineup, he stares at the trees, until she pauses, wobbling her wings, and asks WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING
SURE
GREAT THATS GREAT!! ILL SEND ON YOUR ATTENDEE PACKET ASAP THANK YOU MATHIAS!!!
THANK YOU MISSI
As the butterfly exits, the sentinel bird flies silently away, and a black and white deer appears, velvety and quick, drinks from the creek then is gone, a deer? was there a deer in “Bobble”? He should remember, playing “Bobble” was once the highlight of his life, five years old and he already knew exactly what he wanted to do, to be, until those heartless fucks at Daedalus fucked him over . . . Sinking with a sigh onto the spongy green grass, he forces himself to lie quietly, to think about going to Sweden, to concentrate on finding new perspective, to not give in to negativity. Again.
