The shop continued
May. 13th, 2008 06:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerIt had been the biggest bait-and-switch game ever.
The corporations, and the governments which by then they owned outright, had got everyone so pumped up about global warming, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, that that was all most of us were thinking of. When, after a truly incredible degree of prevarication, obfuscation and litigation, they finally agreed that no, everyone turning off their lights and computers and buying bicycles wasn't making quite as much difference as we needed, and that yes, all right, since it was a case of global survival, they might perhaps consent to be regulated just a teensy eensy bit...the public reaction was all they could have hoped for. They could do no wrong.
By the time one of the still-unbought scientists piped up and mentioned all the other stuff...the sulphides, the dioxins, the mercury, the organophosphates, and oh yes, all those GM crop seeds that just accidentally got out and killed off all the competition, and turned out not only to taste like crap but not to be self-seeding, and let's not even start on what happened to the bees...by the time anyone mentioned all that, the corporations were ideally positioned to play the aggrieved martyrs. After all that they had already given us, how could we possibly ask them for still more? And back to the prevarication, obfuscation and litigation, but it was just for form's sake. They had already won. Organic farming had become all but impossible, you could take your temperature using any given fish in the sea if you could stand to put it in your mouth, and artificial honey made from corn syrup was steadily taking over from the real thing.
What could you do. People had to eat.
We were just one small shop in a minor city in England. There were others. I got the impression of maybe half a dozen throughout the country, a small, under-the-radar operation. Let's face it, if some wonk from DEFRA had shown up and demanded to know the country of origin of the stuff we were selling, we'd have been done for. I was surprised it hadn't happened already.
Such was my train of depression--you could hardly call it thought--as I biked into town and headed for the mall. At least it stopped me thinking about the other stuff.
Steve the security man told me it was a nice day for it, which I suppose was true for given values of "it." Liliana wasn't waiting for me this time, so I was a lot less showy about raising the steel shutter, and even allowed myself a small ouch. When I turned round, she was coming up the escalator, smiling and giving me a little wave.
"You're early today," she said, rummaging for her keys.
"Apparently it's a nice day for it," I said.
I was actually quite keen to see the next mission. I do enjoy playing this kind of game. I launched the software, skipped past the opening video, and there it was on the map. I clicked on it, waited for it to load, and listened to the briefing.
My task was to get fifteen lots of woollen clothes delivered to a remote outpost across the map from where I was. As always, of course, I had to start from scratch, building up a prosperous city from a ramshackle collection of huts, adrift in a grey fog of terra incognita. Somewhere in that fog, since last night, were sheep.
In addition, my little people had now acquired a taste for eggs, and if they didn't get them in sufficient quantity (I knew this from previous missions) would down tools and foregather in the square making horrible faces at me. I would have to find a village that was selling chickens and start a poultry farm. The upside was, I knew there would be one. The game, unlike real life, was designed that way.
Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula shambled in while I was setting up my first stone quarry, leaned over my shoulder and nodded approvingly. It wasn't till his office door was already closing that I thought to snatch a look at his feet, and then I missed them. I wasn't sure I wanted to think about why I did that.
We learn, somewhere in childhood, that if you question a good thing it may go away. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," we're told, and we imagine the dread "or else." This was my job, my visible means of support. It had given me the opportunity to eat the first really good food I'd tasted in ten years. And besides, there was something about the idea that tickled me at the same time as it creeped me out, if that makes any sense. I definitely, very definitely, didn't want it to go away. But I had questions, oh yes. And I knew that, sooner or later, I would be unable to stop myself looking for answers.
Later. Much later. I had sheep to find. If there were no woolly jumpers on the shelves by tomorrow morning, there would be no approving nod from Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula. I created an explorer, sent him out with his little pack on his back, and gratefully immersed myself in the game.
The corporations, and the governments which by then they owned outright, had got everyone so pumped up about global warming, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, that that was all most of us were thinking of. When, after a truly incredible degree of prevarication, obfuscation and litigation, they finally agreed that no, everyone turning off their lights and computers and buying bicycles wasn't making quite as much difference as we needed, and that yes, all right, since it was a case of global survival, they might perhaps consent to be regulated just a teensy eensy bit...the public reaction was all they could have hoped for. They could do no wrong.
By the time one of the still-unbought scientists piped up and mentioned all the other stuff...the sulphides, the dioxins, the mercury, the organophosphates, and oh yes, all those GM crop seeds that just accidentally got out and killed off all the competition, and turned out not only to taste like crap but not to be self-seeding, and let's not even start on what happened to the bees...by the time anyone mentioned all that, the corporations were ideally positioned to play the aggrieved martyrs. After all that they had already given us, how could we possibly ask them for still more? And back to the prevarication, obfuscation and litigation, but it was just for form's sake. They had already won. Organic farming had become all but impossible, you could take your temperature using any given fish in the sea if you could stand to put it in your mouth, and artificial honey made from corn syrup was steadily taking over from the real thing.
What could you do. People had to eat.
We were just one small shop in a minor city in England. There were others. I got the impression of maybe half a dozen throughout the country, a small, under-the-radar operation. Let's face it, if some wonk from DEFRA had shown up and demanded to know the country of origin of the stuff we were selling, we'd have been done for. I was surprised it hadn't happened already.
Such was my train of depression--you could hardly call it thought--as I biked into town and headed for the mall. At least it stopped me thinking about the other stuff.
Steve the security man told me it was a nice day for it, which I suppose was true for given values of "it." Liliana wasn't waiting for me this time, so I was a lot less showy about raising the steel shutter, and even allowed myself a small ouch. When I turned round, she was coming up the escalator, smiling and giving me a little wave.
"You're early today," she said, rummaging for her keys.
"Apparently it's a nice day for it," I said.
I was actually quite keen to see the next mission. I do enjoy playing this kind of game. I launched the software, skipped past the opening video, and there it was on the map. I clicked on it, waited for it to load, and listened to the briefing.
My task was to get fifteen lots of woollen clothes delivered to a remote outpost across the map from where I was. As always, of course, I had to start from scratch, building up a prosperous city from a ramshackle collection of huts, adrift in a grey fog of terra incognita. Somewhere in that fog, since last night, were sheep.
In addition, my little people had now acquired a taste for eggs, and if they didn't get them in sufficient quantity (I knew this from previous missions) would down tools and foregather in the square making horrible faces at me. I would have to find a village that was selling chickens and start a poultry farm. The upside was, I knew there would be one. The game, unlike real life, was designed that way.
Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula shambled in while I was setting up my first stone quarry, leaned over my shoulder and nodded approvingly. It wasn't till his office door was already closing that I thought to snatch a look at his feet, and then I missed them. I wasn't sure I wanted to think about why I did that.
We learn, somewhere in childhood, that if you question a good thing it may go away. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," we're told, and we imagine the dread "or else." This was my job, my visible means of support. It had given me the opportunity to eat the first really good food I'd tasted in ten years. And besides, there was something about the idea that tickled me at the same time as it creeped me out, if that makes any sense. I definitely, very definitely, didn't want it to go away. But I had questions, oh yes. And I knew that, sooner or later, I would be unable to stop myself looking for answers.
Later. Much later. I had sheep to find. If there were no woolly jumpers on the shelves by tomorrow morning, there would be no approving nod from Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula. I created an explorer, sent him out with his little pack on his back, and gratefully immersed myself in the game.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 08:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 09:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 11:40 am (UTC)The story itself -- I think your narrator said it best. It "tickled me at the same time as it creeped me out, if that makes any sense". I'm fascinated...
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 02:58 pm (UTC)So if I'm understanding this correctly, the store the character is working from gets its good from the game. However, it isn't a continuous game really if you have to make a village from scratch before every "mission" you go on.
But my question is: how do the goods leave the game and get into the store? Will that be explained? Or am I thinking too much?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 05:09 pm (UTC)That's very true. The trick in playing the game this way is to keep it as continuous as possible: if there is a surplus of goods at the end of the day (over and above the game people's needs), they will be delivered overnight to the shop. Small deliveries first, then larger as the village becomes town and then city.
As for how they do it, I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to explain that, or leave it as an it-just-happens. I guess that'll depend on which plot I go for...