Pestilence, Real and Otherwise

I wait until the zombie shuffles closer, until he lurches, grabs for me and misses, before I jump right in with my sledgehammer. There is a happy little noise and the heads-up display shows a new message: I have successfully cleared yet another building, and should head back to the trader for my reward. Back down from the attic, through the ruined and ransacked house, across the wasteland streets, jogging to make sure I get back in time for the sunset curfew, when feral zombies venture out in full force.

The game is 7 Days to Die. The year is 2020. Simulated reality makes more sense than the real-world pandemic raging just outside my window, shutting down governments, terrorizing retirement homes, smashing the world economy, killing millions. Like a responsible citizen I stay indoors. I try to preserve my sanity, and avoid doomscrolling on my phone (to the extent that is even possible). Searching for something that would distract, entrance, and consume me, I find video games.

This zombie game is a grotesque mockery of the real-world crisis. The enemy is so obvious and in your face, unlike the invisible virus particles that can reportedly linger in the indoor air long after an infected person has left. My path forward is ridiculously simple: grind, fight, improve, and survive the weekly zombie horde attack. In real life, all I can do is wait and hope for the vaccines. It will be one more year before they become widely available. The zombie world is desolate. The only other people I encounter are traders. I never find other survivors, and if I did, they almost certainly would not be careless enough to spread the zombie virus.

I play for keeps. If my character dies, they will graciously respawn, but that does not feel real, does not feel right. I play until death comes at any time, for any brutal reason. Sometimes, that happens on my character’s first day in the game; other times, much later. If it’s not the zombies, my own carelessness dooms me, often in mine shaft collapses during impromptu excavations (always a hoot, that one). A second chance never feels right or authentic to me. I don’t get that in real life. So I log off, delete the saved game, and restart.

I play this way, obsessively, over and over. The same old actions happen almost on autopilot while I play-act the virtual apocalypse to evade the real one, and some part of me tries to self-analyze based on my in-game choices, based on many, many ways I die. As I burn hour after hour in this virtual hellscape, and as I reflect on my gameplay, I realize that deep inside, I’m just a minimalistic nomad, evident in how I don’t care to decorate my in-game base, used only as my nightly shelter. But I do love disassembling random junk and making something new from those recycled parts, and this is how I spend this particular apocalypse: creating something new from something old. In real life, I search, but cannot find a local maker space to melt down all my hypothetical scrap metal. So it goes.

Half a decade and many vaccines later, I have yet to find a proper maker space, even after I’ve moved to a quirkier, artsier town. They may have gone extinct to neglect or financial troubles, just like all-you-can-eat buffets in Nevada’s casinos.

Having integrated my new scavenger mindset, I buy almost nothing new. I pick through local marketplaces instead of Amazon or Walmart. I delve for unrealized value. I try – and occasionally even manage to – repair my own gadgets and those I find. I experiment with magnets and iron filings, creating new and unexpected shapes, observing the contour of the invisible electro-magnetic fields, studying them without ever truly seeing them.

The Grand Devaluation of It All

The year is 1991. The Soviet Union collapses. My maternal grandparents, who have spent decades saving every ruble, pinching every kopeck, lose their entire hoard as their country disintegrates. The shock hastens their demise, and they both die of old age a few years later. Thousands of miles away, I hear the news in my Siberian hometown.

Fast-forward. The year is now 2020. Hoping to save for my own future I work from home, in self-imposed confinement as an Amazon employee in a tiny studio in downtown Toronto. Amazon can be such a cruel taskmaster: I often work through lunch, through sunset, without the briefest walk around the block to get the smallest bit of sunshine and fresh air. I work inside from dark to dark, and that breaks me down, slowly but surely, week after week, month after month.

To balance this somewhat, I spend even more hours playing Stardew Valley, the wholesome farming simulator that quietly radicalized every Millennial. My farmer character works hard, makes smart decisions, and grows his virtual wealth, while in the so-called real-life, I write ridiculous reports and have not had a raise in years. None will be coming. I do not know that yet, but I suspect, and I suspect correctly.

My little farmer guy gets to live in a tiny village where the only doctor always moans that folks are too damn healthy, and he is destitute because of that. And meanwhile, out in the real world, the US death toll passes 100,000. The New York Times prints all their names on its front page. Everyone knows there will be many more.

The farmer guy, my avatar in that pandemic-free utopia, relentlessly chops wood to ix old bridges, and build a chicken coop, a shed, a windmill, and much more. Out in the real world, the BBC reports that folks in India are chopping down trees in public parks to organize cremations for their loved ones because the crematoriums are full, and they are overflowing. India's government denies the record-breaking death toll, despite the ever-growing mountain of evidence, despite the footage of heartbreaking shoddy pyres set up by those who grieve, those who yet live, those who just want some solemn sense of solace.

My little farmer guy grows wealthier, more prosperous: his net worth rises to 100,000 gold, 200,000, a million and beyond. A glittering arc that mirrors the climbing death toll back home, in the US, and there are no more front-page lists of names commemorating all those awful round numbers. In the game world, everyone stays remarkably healthy. Old Man George finally visits the doctor with the gentle nudge from my character in a pre-programmed cut scene. No one ever gets sick. Banks never fail. My little farmer guy is his own boss, owns his own home, and his wealth is never at risk.

The year is 2024. I try and fail to withdraw $6,000 in cold hard cash at the Wells Fargo branch in the middle of Seattle. They act embarrassed. They call the nearest branches to confirm they have that kind of cash on hand. The rare sunny day suddenly feels much less fun. Part of me wonders what would happen if I left the bank, if I stood on the street corner and started yelling, “The banks are out of cash! They have no cash!” Would I start a new panic? Would I singlehandedly trigger a bank run like the previous year’s Silicon Valley Bank?  How close is the chain reaction that would bring down this seemingly overleveraged economy? I wonder. I will always wonder.

The memories of the previous bank collapse, of the so-called Great Recession are still vivid in my mind. Trauma leaves deep traces. It is 2008. I graduate with my BA degree in Political Science, just in time for the worst financial disaster since the Great Recession. It doesn’t help that I live in Reno: Nevada was the epicenter of the housing bubble. There are no jobs. Middle-aged men in suits stand in line to apply for a new restaurant’s dishwashing position. The promises of my elders were lies. “Go to college!” they said. “You’ll get a great job!” they said. The reality of adulthood is too surreal. It makes escapism that much more alluring.

 Over in Stardew Valley, I lovingly decorate, furnish, and upgrade my farmer’s home. At the same time, I realize how unlikely I am to afford something like this in real life. Not unless I move to Costa Rica or buy a plot of land way out in the middle of nowhere. My entire generation obsesses over Stardew Valley, despite its archaic interface and lack of cutting-edge graphics, and I think this is why: because Millennials – and Zoomers, too, and Alphas later on – can hide within this game. We can pretend that we can afford a house, or start our own little artisanal business, or carve out a niche of stability even if random monsters roam the farm after dark. That still beats our reality – what some online dwellers refer to as “the meat world.”

None of this would ever happen in my game. There is no depression—or at least none that cannot be fixed with enough gifts and motivational speeches. There is no unemployment. Everyone’s money is safe. And when I finally learn that Stardew Valley’s mayor, Lewis, had used the village funds to make a golden statue of himself, which he then hid deep in his backyard bushes, I try everything in my power to depose him because I believe I can in the game and that makes sense to me.

Out in the real world, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is busted for having attended lavish parties, mocking his own strict bans on gatherings, drinking and having fun while all the others are quarantined at home. He catches COVID-19, but he survives, like so many other elites who broke their own strict rules but then got the best possible healthcare, the kind the rest of us cannot obtain. Nothing is done about the corruption and hypocrisy in real life and that makes sense to me.

Some part of me, a small but vital part, is still locked in there in that small apartment, surrounded by lies and doom-filled news and zero real options, and still playing. More than a year of my life—or all our lives—completely gone. My memory often skips over 2020 altogether, as if there were a gap in the fabric of time and space, even as I tried to fill it with meaning, with new hobbies, with anything at all. 

Instead, I have memories of playing Stardew Valley, over and over, doing my best to forget. The simple but beautiful graphics herald the arrival of each new season. Floating leaves give way to snowflakes. The first spring sprouts give way to the summer thunderstorms, capricious and beautiful and random.

Although I’m a big fan of the Great Indoors, the game tempts me. It reawakens that lost, forgotten urge to be outside, to explore nature, to revel in the beauty of the dusk. On my weekends, I began venturing out to the nearest park, where lots of other Toronto residents had the same idea. We’d stomp through the snow, admire squirrels, and take pictures to commemorate the only memorable thing in that forgettable and awful year.

Nature is beautiful, and it’s free, and it’s available to us all, regardless of whether it’s the Grand Canyon or the self-important pigeons making fools of themselves in your neighborhood. The unimaginable luxury of it all—so easy to enjoy, and even easier to forget, but never too late to rediscover.

The games bleed over into my real life (if the word “real” even has a meaning anymore). In Stardew Valley, my fun-loving farmer guy explores abandoned mines, fights hungry ghosts, and hunts for precious ores and gems and minerals. And here, in real life, I must do something with my vacation balance, but I have nowhere else to go. And on a lark, I find a shady spreadsheet that has the details and coordinates of old abandoned mines throughout Ontario.

I rent an SUV, book a small basement on AirBnB, and spend two weeks crosschecking the coordinates I have, exploring ancient pits that are filled in, yet still contain amazing shiny minerals. When I drive back, the SUV has buckets of low-grade amethyst; bags upon bags of quartz; a handful of grey rocks that glow with rune-like sigils if you shine the black light on them in the perfect darkness.

Years later, I still give away my hoard of minerals, one piece at a time, as quirky gifts for all my friends and neighbours, and they love it. Just like my little Stardew Valley farmer guy and his idyllic little village. Life imitating art, which imitates life, ad absurdum.

Virtual strangers

The year is 1998. I am 12 and my parents won’t let me get a dog. They buy me a Tamagotchi instead. That little egg-shaped toy that hosts my new digital pet. It keeps getting sick and dying because I do not always respond to its whims and needs. Perhaps my parents have a point.

Fast-forward again to 2020. In Skyrim, my faithful steed lets me ride wherever I want. My scruffy dog follows me on my adventures, helping me fight my enemies or waiting for me in my Lakeview Manor. My real-life apartment is too small for any pets, though the idea tempts me. Online, there is a viral video: a man in Spain mocked the curfew restrictions by taking a toy dog out on a walk – the collar, leash, and everything. What kind of beautiful eccentric mind would think of something like that, and then go the extra mile to actually do it? That guy is my new hero.

In my adventure-filled virtual world, there are banquets. There are taverns filled with bards, beer, and barmaids. Thete’s mirth. Out here in my dystopia, my ex-girlfriend (the short but passionate relationship had begun just before the pandemic; it lasted six months) throws a tiny and responsible birthday party: myself, two other friends, and her, standing around a little folding table in a tiny park, all wearing masks and keeping distance. Her cake does not have candles. It feels just like a skit, a CDC- or Onion-produced video about perfectly safe gatherings, the opposite of posh affairs of Johnson and his ilk. Yet even so, we stay and chat past midnight, so starved for basic human interaction, even without touch, even if all we see is eyes and ears and body language. I do not know this yet, but this is the most fun I will have until next June.

The social isolation of the pandemic is but the tip of the iceberg, of the trend that had been growing for years, long before COVID-19 jumped species. MySpace and Facebook and Tinder and Grinder… apps and technology replacing real-life interactions. Millions of us, believing we are sitting together but sitting alone, clicking and swiping and hoping. An app-ocalypse of loneliness.

It is 2024. My best friend’s little sister graduates college. Her third college, actually, over the course of four years. Because of the pandemic, she had to take all her courses online. She never once sat in a college auditorium; never once went to a party organized by her college’s student government; never once went to a tailgate party for her school’s football team. She is not alone: toddlers, children, teenagers, and young adults all have their education disrupted, their formative years and experiences replaced with Zoom meetings. The full fallout of that particular apocalypse is yet to hit us, but you can already see it on the horizon. Growing. Waiting. More and more young men turn to toxic prophets like Andrew Tate, in large part because they don’t know how to socialize. People have long conversations with AI chatbots: some go so far as to install AI romantic partners on their phones. None of this is natural. None of this will lead us anywhere good.

But that is then, and this is now. Still 2020. Still trapped inside my tiny Toronto apartment: the pandemic keeping me indoors, my employer keeping me from seeing the sun. I’m more alone than I have ever been, but I’m self-aware enough to know this isn’t normal. The cocoon of isolation is only temporary: there will be better days ahead. There will be parties, revelry, and mirth. There will be new and beautiful adventures. New lovers and new friends. Someday, I’ll disconnect and walk away from all these virtual facsimiles of life.

But meanwhile, I play and wait and pray and hate and reinstall and hibernate and scream and binge and exercise and cringe, and wonder how much longer this will take. I bury myself deep within the almost endless world of Skyrim. I pretend that the NPCs (with their all-too-similar voices and faces) are almost like real-life friends. I have fun with Lydia (my stoic, snarky bodyguard) by making her wear a chef hat, even though I know this is but a poor simulacrum of having fun with a real-life partner. I stand in a crowded virtual bar and soak in the ambiance and the hum of background conversations even as I dream of real bars reopening, of real flesh-and-blood people to spend time with.

 My little orc guy runs, and fights, and trades. He swims and hikes and mountain-climbs – all with his loyal, faithful Lydia. My character explores the world, gathers and studies exotic plants, and enjoys the beauty of that nearly infinite landscape. His freedom is alluring.

When was the last time that was actually an option for our ancestors? Most of them were probably farmers, never traveling far from their village. And yet they had pilgrimages, and they could go hunting and fishing with the same ease we drive to Walmart to buy refrigerated beef and fish. Did they ever imagine that we, their descendants, with our indoor plumbing and our godlike (to them, at least) devices, would romanticise their lifestyle? That we’d miss and yearn for the things they take for granted?

Assuming the world keeps getting hotter, with more and more once-in-a-century catastrophes, will our descendants play holographic games where they simulate the comparatively simple life of the early 21st century? What horrors and pandemics will they be fleeing with that escapism?

I’d love to have the sort of life my orc guy leads. I do not know this yet, but just two years from now I will kick off a glorious adventure – the Pacific Crest Trail – where I shall be known only as The Godfather (birth names are, traditionally, fast abandoned on the trail). I will hike all the way from Mexico to Canada, surrounded by new friends for five whole months. I will see unbelievable beauty. I will realize how much my body is capable of. I will become a rugged, hairy, emaciated thru-hiker for whom 80 miles in three days is child’s play. I will realize just how short and fragile life can be. Barring extraordinary luck, I will have only 25 or so summers when my body will be able to keep up with my mind’s grandiose plans. I will realize how much of my life I’d wasted in front of the screen. I will vow to do better.

It is 2025. I am making the very last preparations for another grand escape from the virtual reality that is starting to smother me with all its apps and alerts and news and notifications. An apocalypse of life-draining leeches. I am packing my things, getting ready to put them in storage, to fly away, to start another hike from Mexico to Canada: the Continental Divide Trail this time, along the Rockies. Five months with nothing but new friends and gorgeous nature – and hardly any internet. An almost imaginable luxury, especially in this age, especially for my generation. A glorious and beautiful adventure.

The Sole Appropriate Sendoff

It is 2020. In 7 Days to Die, one of my characters is lucky and invincible, surviving long-term expeditions to the worst, most deadly zombie strongholds. She has already lasted longer than any other character of mine. She has survived and mastered her harsh world. There is but one appropriate goodbye: I put her on a motorcycle and give her a full tank of gas, a backpack with supplies and food and water, some weapons to survive in her new life. I point her east, facing the beautiful new dawn, a whole new world to travel and explore.