The boy called for the girl to follow him, and he took her hand. He would protect her; they would make their way through this oppressive castle, fighting off the creatures made of smoke and doubt, escaping to a life of freedom.Since Tim's perceptions were re-calibrated at the end of World 1, things work a bit differently. For starters, there are now not only green books (which no longer display text), but also red books (which display two sets of text each). The green books, in fact, now actively reduce knowledge, as they close any open red books.
The boy wanted to protect the girl. He held her hand, or put his arm around her shoulders in a walking embrace, to help her feel supported and close to him amid the impersonal throngs of Manhattan. They turned and made their way toward the Canal St. subway station, and he picked a path through the jostling crowd."
His arm weighed upon her shoulders, felt constrictive around her neck. "You're burdening me with your ridiculous need," she said. Or, she said: "You're going the wrong way and you're pulling me with you." In another time, another place, she said: "Stop yanking on my arm; you're hurting me!"
He worked his ruler and his compass. He inferred. He deduced. He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a thread. He was searching for the Princess, and he would not stop until he found her, for he was hungry. He cut rats into pieces to examine their brains, implanted tungsten posts into the skulls of water-starved monkeys.
Ghostly, she stood in front of him and looked into his eyes. "I am here," she said. "I am here. I want to touch you." She pleaded: "Look at me!" But he would not see her; he only knew how to look at the outside of things.
He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a thread. Through these clues he would find the Princess, see her face. After an especially fervent night of tinkering, he kneeled behind a bunker in the desert; he held a piece of welder's glass up to his eyes and waited.
On that moment hung eternity. Time stood still. Space contracted to a pinpoint. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies split. One felt as though he had been privileged to witness the Birth of the World...[1]
Someone near him said: "It worked."
Someone else said: "Now we are all sons of bitches."
She stood tall and majestic. She radiated fury. She shouted: "Who has disturbed me?" But then, anger expelled, she felt the sadness beneath; she let her breath fall softly, like a sigh, like ashes floating gently on the wind.
She couldn't understand why he chose to flirt so closely with the death of the world.
The candy store. Everything he wanted was on the opposite side of that pane of glass. The store was decorated in bright colors, and the scents wafting out drove him crazy. He tried to rush for the door, or just get closer to the glass, but he couldn't. She held him back with great strength. Why would she hold him back? How might he break free of her grasp? He considered violence.
They had been here before on their daily walks. She didn't mind his screams and his shrieks, to the way he yanked painfully on her braid to make her stop. He was too little to know better.
She picked him up and hugged him: "No, baby," she said. He was shaking. She followed his gaze toward treats sitting on pillows behind the glass: the chocolate bar and the magnetic monopole, the It-From-Bit and the Ethical Calculus; and so many other things, deeper inside. "Maybe when you're older, baby," she whispered, setting him back on his feet and leading him home, "Maybe when you're older."
Every day thereafter, as before, she always walked him on a route that passed in front of the candy store.
He cannot say he understood all of this. Possibly he's more confused now than ever. But all these moments he's contemplated--something has occurred. The moments feel substantial in his mind, like stones. Kneeling, reaching down toward the closest one, running his hand across it, he finds it smooth, and slightly cold.
He tests the stone's weight; he finds he can lift it, and the others too. He can fit them together to create a foundation, and embankment, a castle.
To build a castle of appropriate size, he will need a great many stones. But what he's got, now, feels like an acceptable start.
Red books do double-duty. If the player "hides" Tim behind a screen element (such as a rock), a female vocal tone is played and the text changes. The revealed text is written in italics above. After all this about self-refection (which continues in the texts), it's interesting that players get to see more information when Tim is (quite literally) out of the picture.
That's really all there is to the gameplay of this section. The stars provide more gameplay, so I'll spend some time on those as well.
Throughout the game are scattered the dim outlines of eight star shapes. The player can choose to collect these in order to change the ending in world 1-4. Frankly, I'm not a completionist gamer. Such dedication to a victory beyond beating the game tends to trouble me. I have, however, looked into walk-through text and video explaining how each star can be obtained.
Bluntly, a two-hour process almost entirely comprised of waiting seems more than simply unappealing. It seems a clear indication of irrational pursuit of a goal on the part of the player. I'd dismiss this as personal opinion if the rest of the story weren't so focused on obsession and regret. One star (World 3) isn't attainable if the player has already assembled the puzzle pieces, which seems to turn my feelings around on themselves and cast those who don't get distracted by stars as the true zealots. I'll leave it for the reader to decide who's less emotionally healthy, but the same issues of obsession/focus and reflection/regret are at play in either case.
There is a star-collecting dynamic beyond changing the ending. The collected stars form the constellation Andromeda. I've been down the rabbit hole of trying to interpret that, but I'm not sure I came up with anything beyond the obvious "damsel in distress" stuff, and that falls outside the purview of this series anyway.
1I transcribed this as best I could, but there may be some typos. It was struggle enough not to change the punctuation and capitalization to fit AP style. :)
Unrelated notes and errata:
The block colors correspond to worlds (a decent key to them can be found in the ladder.) Is there meaning in the arrangement of the blocks (as levels)?Does the location of the stars have meaning?
In January, I struggled to choose a source text. I don't have a "favorite" text to begin with, but that was not my main concern. My main concern was that I didn't feel I could adequately transpose the multiple interpretations and potential meanings of any of the texts that came to my mind. I felt that, rather than translate the plot of a story, or a particular dynamic from within a narrative, the notion of imagining a text written originally as a game rather than a novel, play, poem, or the like was a notion that properly centered around the larger meanings, metaphors, and conceits of the work.
Posts
