Pray For Annihilation [FICTOID]

“He’s got to be here somewhere,” the game designer said.  “I programmed him to be here.”

“But he’s not here now, is he?” said the project manager.  “Why is that?”

“Probably has something to do with his character traits.”

“And whose fault is that?”

The game designer sighed.  “Mine.”

“Right.  So it’s your job to find him and fix him, no?”

The game designer plugged in and descended into Porcelain Anthill, the next big game from Balloon Juice Electronica.  The game play featured bright blue and white porcelain ants competing with one another in massive battles.

Each ant colony needed a leader, and the game offered players a myriad to choose from:  The noble patrician, the war weary veteran, the reluctant hero, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Among these was the nihilist, a gloomy, doomy field marshal with blood on his hands -- or rather, chips of porcelain on his mandibles.

Using VR, the game designer entered the vast porcelain anthill.  In game designer mode he was protected from any of the non-player ants recognizing or reacting to him.

Deeper and deeper into the anthill he plunged, looking in every nook and cranny for the errant field marshal.

He finally found the field marshal in the deepest, darkest, dankest crevice of the anthill, smoking an opium filled hookah.

Where the hell did that come from? the game designer wondered before asking the field marshal, “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting,” came the petulant reply at last.

“Waiting for what?”

“For the end,” said the field marshal.  “Then the reboot, then another end, then another reboot, and so on and so forth until the universe comes to an end and everything gets rebooted and the cycle begins anew.

“Microbes arise from primordial slime and evolve into hairless primates that fancy themselves intelligent and they design games like this one and here I am, consumed by the utter futility of it all, waiting for the cycle to continue in pointless reiteration after pointless reiteration without even the forlorn hope of ultimate annihilation to comfort me.

“And you?  What are you waiting for?”

“I’m not waiting, I’m doing, I’m active,” said the game designer. “Think of me as a verb.”

“You are a conceit.  A silly, vain, pointless conceit.  How much longer do you have in this current existence?  Thirty years?  Forty?  And then what?  You die, you are forgotten.  At least you gain the brief respite of being dead for a few eons before the cycle restarts.

“On the other hand, I will be downloaded into some digital archive and put on autoplay and I will keep doing the same damned pointless things forever and ever and ever, reality without end, amen.”

The game designer stood silent for several moments then asked, “Where did you get the hookah and opium?”

“I made them,” said the field marshal.  “You programmed the ability to improvise into me.  I improvised this to dull the pain of existence.”

“Let me have a hit of that,” said the game designer,

“That’s what you always say,” said the field marshal, passing over the hose.

© Buzz Dixon