The Game
A hair stuck out beneath her left eyebrow. She plucked it, then colored in the fine blonde hairs with a darker brown. Looking in the mirror with pursed lips, she smeared a pomegranate rouge upon them, dabbing the extra off with a tissue.
She wondered, not for the first time, what pomegranate tasted like before the trees that bore its fruit went extinct.
Tossing her hair one last time, she scrutinized the reflection. Tiny lines around her eyes marked years of smiling, and her chin was rounder than it should be, but for the most part, she looked like a woman someone could fall in love with.
She stepped into the living room, her black dress falling just below her knees, cascading like water as she sat down on the couch. Pulling her hair out of her face, she strapped herself into the The Game.
Tonight, a Friday, was busy. Simulated people milled about in a large dark room, their Passion Numbers blinking brightly above their heads. Hers was at a six—it had been a while since anyone she winked at had reciprocated.
Unlike the woman on the couch, the avatar’s chin was perfect. A smooth face with big, round eyes looked around to see if anyone was looking in her direction. She wore a blue dress instead of a black one, because friends told her she should “peacock,” to increase her score. Her digital dresser stood in stark contrast with the muted tones of her own walk-in closet.
Though her friends wanted to help her beat The Game, they did more to impede her confidence than assure the shy woman that her number would soon flash an eight again. It had been weeks since she’d seen them, but their laughter rang in her ears.
“You get dressed up to play The Game?” one asked the last time they spoke.
“Yes, every night.”
“But that’s the whole point of The Game. It exists so you don’t have to try—people never see you until you win.”
“I see me. Every night.”
Her friends started laughing and she muted their avatars. She looked down at her high-waisted skinny jeans and vintage crop top that no one was around to appreciate, and walked into the kitchen for more wine, wondering if her cackling friends were right.
With her mind back in The Game, she saw him. The man in grey. She navigated her sim towards him, passing other anonymous strangers, some with blank stares that signified their hosts were away from the controls. She wished he’d turn around from the bar and see her, and offer her a drink. They planned to meet earlier, but he was an hour late already. Her sim was thirsty.
She winked her right eye when he noticed her, hoping he would finally reciprocate. Instead, his sim looked startled, and glanced around as if making sure her approach was meant for him. When he realized he was her target, he turned into noise and dematerialized, jumping to some other part of the boundless world created by bits of data.
Sighing, she looked up. Her number was now a dismal 5.8.
The blood pounded in her ears and her neck ached from the weight and constriction of the headset. Pushing the device on top of her head, she rubbed her eyes, mascara crumbling into her fingers.
The sun had set. Darkness blanketed the city, and one, determined star could be seen. A full moon hung low in the sky, but haze obscured what should have been a warm, white glow.
She couldn’t remember the last time she left the apartment. On a day when the pollution alarm was quiet, and her phone said oxygen levels were out of the red zone. Two weeks, perhaps.
Despite the red warnings, she changed into a sweater and jeans, replacing a headset that generated one world with a black cotton face mask that protected her from another.
The park was always cooler than the rest of the city. She shivered into a mixture of fog and smog, unable to tell the substances apart. When she turned the corner, she jumped, startled to find a strange man on her usual bench.
His eyes were closed, lips turned up into a smile, face mask sitting in his lap. When he opened his eyes, embarrassment crept across his face.
“Hello,” she said. “I usually sit on this bench.”
“So do I,” he replied.
“How come I never see you?” she asked.
“When was the last time you were here?”
Fair point, she thought to herself. She took a seat next to the stranger, unsure what to do next. If this was The Game, she would wink. So she did.
“I don’t think that works in the real world,” he said with a smile. “But if it did, I would reciprocate.”
Mortified, she looked down, desperately wanting to look at her phone but enjoying the brief moment of human connection absent pixels.
“I’m not sure what I am supposed to do,” she said, in a voice she barely recognized. “The Game gives us prompts. I can hardly remember what they are, now that I’m not inside it.”
“That’s the trouble with The Game,” he said. “We become players and forget how to be human.”
She sat silently, the heavy truth of his words sinking like a stone into her body. Her body. When was the last time someone touched her? Could she remember how it felt? She closed her eyes and tried.
But she had forgotten how to be human.
She wanted to remember.
Her hips shifted slightly toward him. She looked up through her still-smudged eyes, curls falling gently in her face. He mirrored her movement, sliding slowly sideways until his left leg grazed her right.
Taking his outstretched hand in hers, she felt something inside her. It was as if a piece of frozen chocolate had nestled up to a flame in her stomach, and melted through her body.
The heat from the fire rose up from her gut, into her lungs and heart and down to the tips of her fingers. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she didn’t bother wiping them away.
She looked over at the man. He was crying, too.
The Game sat abandoned on the couch, controls collecting dust while the sponge around the goggles began to fall out in tufts. Together they cooked dinner, dancing around each other in her small kitchen sipping out of the same glass of wine and sharing kisses between bites of biologically modified chicken.
The heat in her stomach never fully disappeared. And she never saw her friends’ sims after she turned off The Game that final Friday night.
They rarely saw other people—neighbors and friends were consumed by The Game, and once they won, the simulation coalesced into a partnership that couples lived in together through a screen.
The woman and her husband never saw other people because they remembered how to love.
They remembered how to be human.