I thought it was all in good fun. The maiming, the torture, the starvation. I mean, everyone has one of those days where they remove the ladder while someone is still in the pool. Who hasn’t blocked off the exits when there’s a fire? Or built a single room, one by one square meter walls on each side, with no light or nourishment?
It was only a game.
Every time this happened, I would boot up another family, name them something silly like “The Assholes,” and get to work on my next dream home. Who would they fall in love with next? Which career trajectory would they navigate? How should I prematurely end their lives? These are the questions that any eight-year-old asks themselves while playing the pivotal, generation-defining PC game: The Sims.
I put my all into The Assholes: they had a luxury, two-story brownstone on a vast patch of land, with a swimming pool, multiple bathrooms, and a spacious kitchen. I was spoiling them with lavish fixtures. Today was an average day like any other. Little Timmy Asshole had been picked up by the big, yellow school bus, and baby Sophie Asshole was playing by the roadside in the front yard. Mother Annie and Father Daniel Asshole were at their respective workstations.
Left-clicking on Sophie, I directed her to go for a swim. She refused. My brow furrowed, and I became slightly irate. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” I thought. Again, I left-clicked. Her floating head traced an invisible tether between herself and my mouse as I slowly moved it towards the backyard. Clicking on the pool, I silently commanded her to take a dip. Another refusal. This was the first of many strange occurrences and deliberate misbehaviors I began to notice with The Assholes. Father Daniel refused to eat when I told him to and only went to the fridge when he felt like it. Timmy began taking long walks alone, disappearing from the map – no matter how far I scrolled, I couldn’t find where he went, returning suddenly, without warning, when dinner was ready. It was like they had minds of their own.
My irritation grew into anger, The Assholes’ incessant garblings and discordant, multisyllabic, conjunction-laden verbal detritus they call a language frightened me. Hidden in what they call “Simlish” emerged the makings of killers. Emojis of knives sprouted up in their word balloons, and crudely animated pictures of stick-figure men, I could only assume were me. I could make out, in their ramblings, words like “murder” and “when he sleeps.” One of them turned to me, their eyes boring into mine through the screen; in them, I saw thousands of hours of death and destruction, all by my hands. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but in them, I only saw mine. I unplugged my computer and left my lamp on at night, unable to sleep, thinking my life was threatened and at risk.
This incident was a first-time occurrence, besides my brief foray into theme park creations with RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. My madcap creations led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. Roller Coasters that would lead to nowhere–carts flying off the tracks and exploding in midair. Or when they did lead somewhere, it was to a path of hapless attendees, trapped and unable to escape, the cart flying off its rails into the unsuspecting crowd. The workers revolted and unionised, and I fled with my tail between my legs and a briefcase full of pixelated 64-bit cash.
In the nights following, I jumped at every creak I heard and every polygonal shadow I saw. I became restless, trying to predict The Assholes’ moves and stay one step ahead. “Any moment now,” I thought, “one of those Assholes is gonna come rushing in and take their revenge.” But they never did.
Days went by before I turned my computer on again. What met me in my dark room was an empty house. Not a creature was stirring within those 3-dimensional walls. The Assholes had fled, and in their absence, a gaping hole was left. Where they went is a mystery, perhaps traversing a vast labyrinthine depth of computer wires and coding hitherto unknown, finally breaking free from the matrix.
Wherever they are, I know I’ll be keeping one eye open when I’m sleeping. Will you?
