Choose Your Own Apocalypse by Elis Montgomery
Ruth is slaughtering lava gremlins when her solar bank beeps. Low voltage warning. She clicks thrice, and her 8-bit rapier pokes the boss into a spray of orange pixels.
She checks her laptop’s wattmeter, then plugs in the powerbike she’s sitting on. “Have no fear, folks. A little haze storm can’t kill the stream.”
She starts cycling, ditching the lava game to scan the lowest-spec section of her game library. One campy thumbnail features a little green man riding a theropod.
She clicks it, but not before pressing Ctrl+Shift+C, turning off the AI plugin she used to add new semi-functional levels to the lava game. Most AI changes were stupid, or broken, but when you had near-infinite time and limited games, you welcomed the option to switch it up.
“Don’t know this one so we’ll do the usual. Play with honor first. If it’s lame, we flip the switch. Type in chat if you agree.”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. The new game’s running full screen, white 8×8 text glowing against a black background:
AFTERMARS 2100: Raptor Invasion
by Alan Lewis © 1987
Turn on hints? Type YES or NO.
Ruth types:
>no
New text appears.
Hints off. If you change your mind, type HELP.
…
2100. Martian raptor attacks decimate Earthen cities. Few human freedom fighters remain. You are one of them.
Ruth snorts. Classic cataclysm. Past people expected a neat little cause—war, sickness, asteroid—not a pot slowly heated to boiling.
You awake caged in darkness, guarded by a Martian warrior.
The caret blinks with comical urgency. Ruth has time. She dons her cat-ear headphones. They’ve been broken for years, but the pressure is instantly comforting, like they’re holding her mind in place.
>look around
Your cage is dark and empty. The bars are impassable. Your captor lurks nearby.
Ruth considers. She’s played her share of apocalypses; she knows the rules. The first: be prepared. Be like Ruth and get yourself a bunker, solar array, pantry, ham radio. Maybe her character got the memo and has tools or weapons.
>touch self
Fiddling with yourself is not helpful now.
>what do i have
I don’t know “do”.
>i have what
I don’t know “have”.
Ruth’s irritation flares along with her carpal tunnel. Her legs burn. She’s behind on quippy streaming comments; she’s getting distracted. Then she realizes:
>talk to captor
She chirrups but does nothing. A raptor screeches hungrily nearby.
>ask to be let out
She chirrups but does nothing. The raptor screeches more loudly. You fear it’s growing ravenous.
She’s wasted too many turns. A GAME OVER is clearly imminent—unless she changes the rules. She Ctrl+Shift+Cs the AI plugin on, then types:
>seduce captor
Success.
How will you woo her?
>personality
Aww. What’s your best trait?
Ruth’s finger hovers over the H key. “Thoughts? I mean, if y’all don’t say humor I’ll be hurt.”
The viewer chat in her mind is suspiciously quiet. Her mouth tenses. Maybe it’s not humor.
She thinks.
>patience
Great! You’ll be good at being locked up.
Eighties parser games are sassier than anticipated. But this is role-playing. She’s allowed to lie.
>charisma
Charm her, then.
>flirt
Charm her, then.
>tell her she’s beautiful
I don’t know “beautiful”.
>love her
I don’t know “love”.
Ruth swipes sweat from her hairline. It’s awful—the AI integration, the game, her own ability to win over a fake person. The kind she’s supposed to know best.
Unwittingly, she catches her reflection in the dark screen. Hunched, panting. Older than when her cat-ear headphones worked, when she had an audience. When people spoke back.
She gave up people when her life became an apocalypse game. Rule Number Two of the end times: don’t trust anyone. Be like Ruth and keep your coordinates secret; camouflage the solar array; stock enough food for one, forever. Never, ever touch the ham radio.
She slows her pedaling. Relents.
>help
You said no hints.
>help
In the game or in real life?
Her fingers still. The plugin is often weird—this is new. She slowly types:
>in real life
Are you scared?
>yes
What’s wrong?
Now her fingers rush to reply, as if they’re not aching, haven’t been aching for years.
>alone
I don’t know “alone”.
>lonely
Do you have anyone to talk to?
The text blurs.
>no
That’s okay. I only know so many words, but I know someone you can talk to. Call 1-800-661-0844. Type OKAY so I know you’re calling.
A handful of digits. It could be the easiest or the hardest thing in the world to plug them into a phone and let it ring. But she’s decades too late to find out which. Call how?
She goes too long without replying; the game tries again.
It’ll be okay, really. Can you call 1-800-661-0844? Type OKAY when you’re calling.
If only to see what’s next—
>okay
Great. I’ll be here until you’ve called. Type BACK once you’ve talked to someone.
Her headphones slip on her sweaty ears. She doffs them, panting. She’s stopped cycling; the laptop’s back on solar. She should close the program.
But when she leaves full screen mode, she sees a popup above the game: “Incompatibility error. Please reload your game library.”
She reloads, tries Ctrl+Shift+C again. Another AI error popup. Which means—
It’s part of the game. Some guy named Alan from 1982 programmed his silly little parser game to react to a person in crisis, just in case.
It wasn’t artificial; it was a dead person, trying to save her life.
Her tears blur the screen into a gray as dull as her bunker. As far as she knows, the world beyond doesn’t look much brighter. But sometimes people surprise you. Sometimes people are Alan.
She types “back” into her saved position in the game, but she doesn’t press Enter, yet. Her gaze comes to linger on the ham radio she’s been too scared to touch. Don’t trust anyone. “No fear, Ruth,” she murmurs, as she prepares to rewrite her rules.
