Free Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams

his foot squarely on top of the MSII. The desert was replaced by a series of wavy lines, then the screen went black. Sam got his footing and realized he’d turned the console off.
    He fought the urge to yell. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done, the time he’d wasted. But when the rage subsided, Sam was surprised to find he was also relieved: he could start the game afresh and wouldn’t accidentally play all night without a stock of supplies. He thought of the note that had come with the game—
Don’t forget to eat!
—and smiled. He was starving. He could grab a cup of tea now too.
    He went to tell Jamie about his exploits but when he stepped out of his room, he found the whole house was pitch-black. He turned on the landing light and went downstairs. Jamie wasn’t in the lounge and when Sam turned on the television to bring up the menu, he realized why. It was half past four in the morning.
    —
    “The game was meant to be a satire,” the woman opposite Sam said. She took a sip of her coffee and pushed a loose strand of gray hair away from her eyes.
    Sam typed
satire
into a document entitled “Lorna Fry Interview” on his laptop. He nodded, took a sip of his own coffee, then shook his head after understanding what it was she was saying. “Really?”
    “Oh yeah. I wanted to bring down the industry from inside. Very idealistic stuff. Seems a long time ago now.” Her eyes flicked down to the nurse’s uniform she was wearing. “So I sold a game called
Duck Shot
, which I made enough money from to start my own little company. And when I say little, I mean it was just me and one other bloke. Because of
Duck Shot
, we were never short of offers for the games we made. Nintendo put out
Means of Production
, a Mario-style game where you had to overthrow your capitalist overlords.”
    “Yeah, I loved that one.”
    “You’ve played it? Interesting and impressive. What about
Freedom
?”
    “Oh, I loved that.”
    “You know, the only thing they didn’t let us do with that one was call it
The Nazi Killer
.”
    Sam laughed and typed
The Nazi Killer
. “No way. They were fine with the other stuff, the violence, et cetera?”
    “Oh yeah, just not the literal description of the main character’s job.” Lorna took another sip and looked at her watch. “With
Desert Walk
we wanted to be subtle. We wanted to satirize game playing itself. My worry was that we were seeing kids spending more and more time playing games as a hobby. Great for the industry, but what about the kids?”
    “Never harmed me,” Sam said, offering a confident grin that definitely did not say “I’ve just spent every night since Saturday wandering around your satirical desert.”
    “Don’t get me wrong: I’m not anti-gaming or anything. I think these people taking their shoot-’em-ups into the real world more than likely had a screw loose in the first place. But I reasoned if Moore’s Law continued to hold through the nineties, soon consoles would be able to simulate real life, and I wanted to raise philosophical questions about that. So we designed a game where nothing happened. Literally nothing. And worse, it happened in the middle of nowhere.”
    Not knowing what else to say, feeling suddenly very self-conscious, Sam said: “So
Desert Walk
is, sort of, a practical joke?”
    “Not
sort of
. It was.”
    It felt like a cork had just been pulled from him, and weeks, months, and years of enthusiasm were gushing out. He forced a laugh that sounded more bitter than he’d intended.
    “So all those people on forums, all their theories, the legends…There are going be some pissed-off geeks out there.”
    Oblivious, Lorna carried on: “Looking at all the games around now, especially the ones with clocks telling you how much time you’ve spent playing…Wow, I mean, we’re a step away from plugging ourselves into
The Matrix
, really.”
    “So can
Desert Walk
be completed?”
    “Oh, now, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you,”