LEARNING SHOULD BE FUN
The owl sat on the table. Its eyes were kind. Its little screen told Sam she was wrong.
In her mind, W could be M. E looked like 3. Context helped, but there was no context in a spelling test.
“Thuh,” the teacher said.
She wrote T-H-A.
A was for apple. Also about, allow, again. She listened for the sound and got it wrong.
T-H-E.
Later there was thee. Nobody had explained where the other e had been.
Her parents bought flash cards and workbooks. Her grades came home. Then came the shouting.
The owl was put in a drawer. It waited for another answer. Its batteries swelled and leaked.
CONTINUE?
In her dreams she was the ghost in Pac-Man. Sometimes she could pass through walls in a flowing gown. Then something changed and she was running.
At school she needed the bathroom. Wocca wocca wocca. She needed help. Wocca wocca wocca. She needed to breathe before someone called on her.
CHOMP.
She kept her hand down. Don’t call on me.
“Sam!”
She finished Zelda quickly. She was happy and sad. She had found her way through every room. Starting again was not the same.
At school the corridors stayed where they were. People changed patterns.
Deb was her friend. Then Deb hated her, along with two girls she didn’t know.
Grades scraped by. Stupid.
Grades were sharp. Nerd.
She felt dizzy.
Summer school opened when the other school closed.
FINISH HIM
Her nephew hit every button. He was pure dominance and aggression. His fighter kept hitting hers.
She tried to learn the combinations.
At last she sent a fireball across the screen. His fighter fell. She smiled. He cried.
She was told off by his mom and her mom and him.
Later he kicked her in her stomach and broke a doll’s head.
She put down the controller. She would not play him again.
KNOW YOUR POSITION
One girl ran like a tank. Another had long legs and looked beautiful running. They played right wing and left wing.
Sam played goalie. She was the largest and had learned to yell back at her dad.
She bent over the ball. Someone hit her. Afterward it hurt to move, to sit, to lie down.
She wanted to stay in the tub.
“Quit using all the hot water.”
Nobody took her to the doctor.
“Stop slouching,” her mother said. “Someone is going to think there is something wrong with you.”
At home she shut her bedroom door and changed.
“You dress like a boy,” her father said.
She changed again.
“You dress like a hooker.”
She stood beside the bed with the clothes in her hands.
PLAYER TWO DISCONNECTED
The modem shrieked. She heard technology screaming.
You’ve got male.
Her boyfriend had been kind. Timid. Gentle. She had learned to feel safe with him.
Now he played while she sat nearby.
Gunfire. Engines. A woman on the pavement.
She began telling him something. He leaned forward and pressed the buttons.
She waited until the shooting stopped.
It started again.
You’ve got male.
So what.
When he was out she tried his games. Coins. Badges. More killing. She stopped wanting whatever came next.
A warrior waited on the screen. He winked.
Let’s rock!
She left him waiting.
CLASS UNAVAILABLE
She wanted art. She wanted writing.
She knew a little about Monet and Van Gogh. A little about Fitzgerald and Plath. Enough to want to learn more.
“You’re a mimic,” an instructor said. “Good mimicry.”
She carried that home.
In art class, disruptions got attention. She was still trying to learn how to make things.
Someone suggested teaching. Her dad said that was the only way he would pay for college.
She pictured a classroom door opening every morning for the rest of her working life.
Her stomach turned.
SYSTEM UPDATE
She dropped out. She worked fast food and retail.
The register changed. New buttons. Her hands went to the old places.
The customers complained.
She was early. She was late. The manager complained. She gave the wrong change. She answered the telephone while someone needed her elsewhere. The manager wrote her off the schedule.
She learned.
At home her husband played games while she talked.
Sometimes she pictured the ghost after Pac-Man caught it. Only the eyes remained. They could float through the corridors without feeling anything.
She wanted that part.
AUTOMATION COMPLETE
They called it the paperless future.
She could type, answer a telephone, dress for an office. She became a temp. Then she found a job herself.
The agency wanted a fee. The employer refused. Already she was in trouble.
Men stopped at her office. Her manager noticed.
Soon she was sent to a warehouse near the docks.
She wore a miner’s headlamp between rows of boxes. The files had been scanned. The originals had been packed away. The boxes were wrong. So were some of the scans.
A lid gave way. Papers slid around her shoes.
She knelt and began sorting.
Eventually she found the proof that a bill had already been paid.
Upstairs, someone could stop demanding payment.
She put the papers in order.
LEVEL COMPLETE
Tetris made sense.
Turn the piece. Put it down. Clear the line.
For a while, her shoulders lowered.
Then she stopped. There was a book beside her chair.
Her eyes skipped. She read the paragraph again.
Outside, it was still light enough to walk.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
She left her first marriage, a job, and a set of friends that felt less and less like friends.
She returned to college.
Surely better jobs would come because of it.
Better people.
Better relationships.
She underlined her books. Wrote questions in the margins. Took notes until her hand hurt.
“You can’t resell those now.”
She did well.
“If some people get high grades, he won’t curve.”
She looked down at the page she had worked so hard to understand.
PUBLIC PROFILE REQUIRED
She wanted to learn to interview people. Check facts. Research a story. Write it well.
She imagined her copy printed, read by people on a quiet weekend.
Instead they gave her cameras, slideshows, databases, editing software.
WordPress. Twitter. Another password.
Her desk filled with equipment. She made the accounts.
She did not understand how far the windows opened.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
A friend in Norway had wanted her on Facebook.
Sam joined. Left. Joined again when school and work brought her back.
Friend now meant someone who knew how to reach her.
She kept trying things. If she did this, what happened?
Her Twitter account was compromised. She made another.
A man she barely knew mentioned music she had posted months before. She tried to remember speaking to him.
At home she checked the old account. She couldn’t sign in. She couldn’t delete it. The school email was gone.
The window stayed open.
She felt like the ghost again. Just the eyes after the son of a bitch had gobbled up her gown.
SECURITY UPDATE
She married again. Had children.
Achievement achieved.
Barricades appeared at the school entrance, painted to look like cartoon characters.
The children practiced hiding.
Men wore guns to school events. To Walmart. To lunch.
A newspaper man argued with her online about his right to carry one.
Police wanted military equipment. She wanted to know why they needed it.
She packed her child’s bag for morning.
PROTECT YOUR DEPENDENTS
A neighbor woman ran into the street after her husband beat her.
Both had been drunk.
Another day a house burned.
A man had fallen asleep smoking.
She heard the trapped dog.
She covered her child’s ears and moved her to the other side of the house.
The dog stopped.
“Look. Shelby’s sons are helping put out the fire.”
She made her voice bright.
Her child looked where she pointed eyes wide.
TEAM PLAYER REQUIRED
The rooms kept changing. She learned the programs.
With college degrees and technical skills, she found part time jobs with no benefits.
She fixed the records. Cleared the backlog. Showed someone how to find what they needed.
Older workers thought she wanted their jobs.
Younger workers said she was making them look bad.
She was showing off. Rubbing it in.
She stayed late to make the next day easier.
She was told she was not a team player. Go home.
Gladly.
In the car she sat with her hands on the wheel until her heart slowed.
Her hands gripping the steering wheel hurt just like when she held the hand console.
She relaxed her muscles one by one.
She had to get home to disappoint more, provoke more insecurities, to rise or fall to new challenges.
You’ve got male.
THE FUTURE IS HERE
Nokia. BlackBerry. iPhone.
The television becoming flatter and flatter praised the old days. Work required the latest monitors.
Flatter and flatter. Wider and wider. So much progress!
Progress. Advancement. There was international races to the future now!
AI arrived while she was making dinner.
“I refuse to use it,” someone said on her phone.
The phone buzzed. The laptop chimed.
She would learn. There were bills.
Gas over budget. Groceries over budget. Health insurance doubling.
“You should save more.”
The car needed work.
She knew how little stood between her household and an empty account. A lost job. An illness. Someone deciding she was difficult.
She turned down the sound and checked the food.
SINGLE PLAYER SELECTION
For years she carried the failures forward.
She thought she had failed to become a writer.
There were stories on her desk and website.
She thought she had failed to become an artist.
A painting dried by the window. She’d made a studio in her garage.
She had failed her families.
Her children were in the next rooms and regularly reached out to her with love and for comfort.
She was their safe space. She was their shelter.
A neighbor had asked her to walk. There would be complaints about husbands, grandchildren, the college.
She declined.
The neighbor would have something to call her. Sam had heard most of it before.
She had a mountain bike. A kayak. Shallow water and decades of walking in woods.
She remembered the games she had finished alone. The hours of trying. The pleasure of finding her way.
She could choose her company. She could go alone.
She saved her work.
Outside, the evening was cool. Crisp.
She went.
Single player mode selected.
