“Hello, my name is Farmer Brown. Welcome to my farm! Here you can do anything…”
I waved my hand to skip the tutorial. A screen popped out of Farmer Brown’s eyeballs and displayed a list of modes. I selected cattle roping, a personal favorite, and found myself in the cattle enclosure. A heavy coil of rope, already tied into whatever tricky knot a lasso uses, appeared nearby. Cattle wireframes spawned and textured themselves.
I swung the rope up. The loop hovered quietly, obeying my movements. I suspected, just a little more easily than a real lasso might have. I managed to hook a steer on my first throw. It dragged me the usual ten or fifteen feet before it went belly up and a digital scorecard ticked from zero to one. Another steer came up behind me, but I tumbled out of the way and managed to wrap the rope around its legs. That was how it went in Steer Rope Challenge, they just kept coming at you. That was what made it a challenge.
Although, they couldn’t hurt you. If one happened to catch you off guard, tried to gore you like they were programed to, it would just pass through. But, if you didn’t think about that, didn’t think about the unreality of everything, it was great. I couldn’t have said how long I played Steer Rope, or how many steers I managed to rack up. For me, the whole point was not to think.
~
“Hello?”
“Hello Mama, it’s me, your son.”
“My son?”
“Yes Mama, it’s so good to hear your voice again. Listen, I need you to do something for me.”
“Jason, is it really you?”
“Yes Mama, I’m fine. Please, don’t worry about me. I’m safe. Everyone is safe, you don’t have to worry.”
“But it’s been so long.”
“I know, there was nothing I could do about it. But it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I know you need to hear that. Maybe we both do. But that’s not why I called. I need you to do something for me. Can you do something for me?”
“Yes Jason, of course I can. Please, anything. Just tell me.”
“I need you to buy Johnson’s WaterSeal.”
“What?”
“I need you to buy Johnson’s WaterSeal. It’s the only paint plus primer that completely protects exposed outdoor wood.”
“Jason, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Johnson’s WaterSeal, Mom. It pays for itself in three to five years, with proper instillation. It might cost a little more than the bargain brand, but it’s a quality product. Think of all our exposed wood. Think about the savings in the long term.”
“Jason, please come home. I don’t understand this. I don’t understand what you’re saying to me.”
“I can’t Mama, I just can’t right now. Listen, I have to go. I don’t know when I’ll be able to call again. Just remember what I said, Mama. Remember what we talked about. What you promised.”
“Jason. Please.”
“I have to go, Mama.”
~
“Is there anything else I can get for you?”
The waitress came up to me, and I realized I must have been staring into my coffee for the last forty-five minutes.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Could I just get the check when you have a chance?”
“Whenever you’re ready, sweetie.” She looked at me, maybe a little sadly, as she pointed to the slip of paper that had probably been sitting on the table for at least the last half hour. To me, it had only felt like a few seconds.
I got up and paid the check. The waitress smiled at me again, maybe a little less sad this time, or maybe just relieved that I was finally leaving.
Somehow, I managed to slide into my desk at work before I got a demerit. My calls started rolling right away. Information flashed at me from the screen, and I attached my voice modulator.
“Hello, Mama?”
~
When I got off work, I knew I needed to head to the holomat right away. I felt awful if I didn’t do something after work. I got to feeling sticky. If I didn’t do something the feeling just kept getting stronger, making me feel more and more trapped inside my own head. Wheat Simulator made me feel like I was doing something. I was getting my hands in the soil, growing things, even if the soil wasn’t real and the things that grew were just light objects.
As soon as I walked into the holomat, Dave, the manager, gave me a look. It was the kind of look that meant “give me money.” I was used to that sort of treatment from my landlord, my boss, even strangers on the street, but I had always tried to be on good terms with Dave.
Dave decided who could use the simulators and when. He was supposed to follow corporate guidelines, but as the lessee and owner of the franchise, use of his simulators was ultimately at his discretion. That is, unless you were willing to drive three hours to Wally’s Sim World in Fredericksburg, which I was not.
“Your bill’s overdue.” Dave said when I approached the counter.
“What? Didn’t I just pay?”
“You paid last month’s bill. This is for this month, and it’s overdue.”
It was hard to read Dave’s true expression because of the corporate overlay. But, Dave was one of the few people I felt like I had a real relationship with. Now we were being placed into an adversarial situation. I looked at the carefully generated scowl on Dave’s face and tried to remember how many days it had been since I paid my bill. It was like trying to remember how many breaths you had taken in the last hour. I avoided counting on my fingers while Dave was still watching me and just asked him how much I owed.
He slid the bill across the counter, as if he was not willing to endure the hardship of speaking with me. The bill was two-hundred dollars and some change. That was more than half of what I had left in my checking, but I decided just to pay it, mostly so Dave would stop scowling. I really did hate to see him angry, especially at me. I assumed he wouldn’t take a check, so I typed my routing number into the keypad for an instant transfer.
Dave smiled as soon as the computer pinged to let us know the transfer had completed successfully. “Mr. Partridge, so sorry about that unpleasantness. Corporate gets very upset if we let clients with unpaid balances use the simulators. You understand, otherwise some people would never leave. But it is most unfortunate, allow me to comp you one hour of simulator time.” Dave made a few keystrokes and the value marked “unpaid use” changed from zero to negative one. That was what I liked about Dave. He didn’t have to do that, even if it was suggested by the corporate guidelines.
“Thank you.” I said. Although, thinking about it, I really didn’t have much reason for gratitude. My rent was due in less than two weeks, and I had just given him half of my savings. Plus, the value of the comp was only $7.50, and it didn’t cost Dave anything since he already leased the simulators. But something about Dave’s smile made me feel like he really was sorry. He wasn’t an insincere person. But being a franchise owner means having to put up with some give-and-take.
Once I was alone in the simulator bay, things started to feel a little easier. Dave’s was usually not all that busy, but there was always the Friday night rush, or the occasional private party. Today, there was only one other simulator in use.
I chose the simulator farthest away and sealed the door behind me. I let out a sigh. It wasn’t even a sigh, more like a gasp. As if I had been holding my breath all this time and had just stepped into the only room in the world with oxygen. It felt good to be able to take a deep breath and not catch on something: some just remembered hardship, something I would have to do soon, the world pressing in around me.
I never told anyone exactly how much time I spent in the simulators, which, I feel, is understandable. Like if you ran out at two in the morning to buy a pack of cigarettes, even though you had just been there this morning, and you kept telling people, like your coworkers and your family that you were serious about cutting back to less than a pack a day and maybe quitting altogether, that wouldn’t exactly be something you would advertise. Same with me, that if I went a little overboard and spent six, or eight, or ten hours of sim time harvesting virtual wheat, then that wouldn’t exactly be my proudest moment. But Wheat Simulator is a lot healthier than smoking a pack or more of cigarettes, which is how I sometimes justified it to myself. Although, the cigarettes were cheaper.
Another reason I didn’t like talking about Wheat Simulator was because people who have logged the kind of sim-time I have usually have some sort of erotic fixation. Ironically, one of the biggest problems with simulation technology was that you couldn’t use it to have sex with the characters. Three or four different companies spent quite a bit to try and modify the basic simulator design and make it into some kind of sex chamber. But even with the particle density cranked out way past the theoretical safe level, the light objects never attained the cohesion to withstand the pressure of physical touch. The only way to interact with them was through the gloves. Of course, there was always the infamous codpiece. But that remained too gauche for the average consumer, too much of a reminder of reality.
Wheat Simulator was predominantly marketed as an exercise program. The idea being to get the benefits of living in the country without having to actually live there. Its popularity was mostly due to nostalgia for a time when farms weren’t totally mechanized. It wasn’t just about harvesting wheat either. There were over three-hundred and fifty different tasks the user could select from.
Someone at the Tamashii Simulator Concern had evidently been fascinated by American farms of the 1950s. Wheat Simulator wasn’t just simple wireframes with stock textures either. You got the sense that this was a real place, someplace that had really existed and mattered to someone once.
The titular attraction of Wheat Simulator, the one that always made it into the demos for the program, was the harvesting of wheat from an infinite procedurally generated field. One of the little anachronisms in the program was that, while it was supposedly set in the 1950s, all the work still had to be done manually. You couldn’t use a tractor or a combine. If you wanted to harvest wheat, you had to use a six-foot scythe.
I happened to attend the sim expo when Wheat Simulator was first released. Some guys were waiting in line to demo it. One thing that really struck me about that group was how quiet they were. A group of guys like that you would have expected to be super macho and blustery, but these guys were just standing there, not really talking, not really even looking at each other, just all waiting their turn to go into a small room and swing a virtual farm implement.
Watching the men stand patiently in line, I got to feeling sort of funny. I couldn’t tell if it was because I wanted to look like them, or wanted them to look like me, or just wanted something to happen. There was one guy in particular, he wasn’t as massive as some of the others. He was strong, sure, but you could tell that his goal wasn’t just pure bulk. He looked like he might have been some kind of athlete, like maybe a forward in basketball or a fullback in soccer. He looked like the kind of guy you could strap the plow to and just run him, but he would never get tired. That was the kind of thing he would do for fun. Or, at least, that was what things looked like to me at the time. I started to get a little hard thinking about that then. Which is why I ended up leaving the expo. If I would have stayed there, getting hard just from looking at these guys and imagining them not even doing anything sexual, but still clearly turning me on, in a pretty obvious way, then I might have started to look like a creep.
~
“Hello?”
“Hello, Dad? It’s Richard.”
“Richard?”
“Dad, look there’s something important I need to tell you.”
“I’ll fucking kill you. If I ever find you, I will.”
“Dad, stop. That’s not what’s important right now. I think you know that.”
“You son of a bitch. How dare you.”
“Dad, I’m sorry for what happened, you know that I am. But I need to tell you something. Gentleman’s Warehouse is having a Memorial Day blowout, fifty percent off men’s slacks and BOGO suitcoats.”
“Why are you doing this to me? How can you do this to people?”
“I’m trying to tell you something important. I love you, Dad. I have to go. Think about the blowout. Think of the savings.”
“Wait. Please. Just say something. I need to know. I need to know why all this has happened.”
“Goodbye, Dad.”
~
Tabitha was just about the only other person I ever saw in the holomat. I really didn’t like interacting with her. She always made me feel bad because she was the only person who used the simulators as much as I did.
“Hello Jord, what kind of trouble have you gotten into lately?”
“Shut the fuck up, Tabitha.”
The words kind of flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. It wasn’t that I didn’t mean them, because I definitely did. It was just that I normally avoided Tabitha by refusing to acknowledge her existence. Any kind of acknowledgment only served to encourage her.
“Ha ha, you’re so funny Jord. I always laugh when I see you.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“Did you hear that Dave’s raising his rates?”
“What?”
“He told me this morning.”
“Starting when?”
“Today, I guess.”
“I just talked to him. He didn’t say anything to me.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he was busy?”
At the check-in desk, Dave’s overlay was still smiling his same toothy grin.
“Hello again.”
“When were you planning on telling me about this rate hike?”
“I see you spoke to Tabitha.”
“Damn right. What’s the idea, telling her and not me? I shouldn’t have to learn these sorts of things from her.”
“Based on your past reactions, I anticipated that you might feel upset. Therefore, I elected not to inform you until after your complementary hour of simulator time.”
“So that’s how it is? You take us in then jack up the prices? Get everyone hooked and then make them pay through the nose.”
“I’m sorry, Jord. The increased rates came from corporate and reflect a trend in the decreased purchasing power of the US Dollar. If you no longer wish to patronize our simulators I would be happy to provide you with directions to the next closest holomat: Wally’s Sim House in Fredericksburg. Would that be satisfactory?”
I stood looking at him for a while. I tried to see through the overlay, but couldn’t. Eventually, I gave up.
~
Milking a virtual cow was pretty interesting. For all the problems the technology had with simulating tactile sensations, the gloves really conveyed the feel of an udder. As soon as I selected the milking program, I was sent to a large warehouse full of cattle. The cows stood in a line, waiting to be milked. I had to use a kind of rolling, squeezing motion. The hot milk shot into the pale and once it was full the cow would wander off, and another would walk up and moo softly. The line of cows was infinite. The program didn’t make it clear if it was the same cows over and over or if the farm had an infinite amount of different cows. Since they were fairly indistinguishable it didn’t really make a difference. I really liked the cow milking program, filling the pale over and over again with warm milk. It was soothing.
~
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mom?”
“Sam?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, God. They told me this would happen.”
“I have something important to tell you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Come on, Mom. Don’t be that way. Just listen, okay.”
“You’re not her. I know you’re not. They told me this would happen. They told me just to hang up.”
“Come on, Mom. Don’t hang up. Don’t you want to talk? Just let me tell you what I have to say. Are you there?”
“Okay.”
“Have you ever thought about refinancing the house? Goldman Lenders guarantees they can match our current rate, or they’ll pay you $500.”
“Sam, or whoever you are, can you tell me, can you just tell me why?”
“Goldman Lenders is dedicated to making sure families can afford their homes.”
“No, not that. I don’t give a shit about Goldman’s or the house. I want to know why would you, why would Sam, do it?”
“That’s not important now. I’m trying to tell you about…”
“I know. And I know it’s your job. But I’ll never speak to my daughter again, except like this. And I know you have all that information about her, about us. Tell me why she did it, or tell me it wasn’t my fault, or that it was. Just say something. Please.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Please, just say something. Tell me something.”
~
Later, I was farming wheat in the simulator. Sometimes you just can’t beat the classics. The blade really did feel heavy. I liked the sound the scythe made as it cut through the wheat. It was a satisfying swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.
Alexander Metz is currently an MFA student at the University of Missouri in St. Louis whose work has been published in Half-Light Press. As an undergraduate, he attended Oberlin College. In addition to short fiction, he is working on a novel about the life of Nikolai Gogol.
Photo by Igor Karimov