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Doctor's report: #124332
Patient: Nick Darwell.
Nick had come to the hospital after suffering what seemed like a nervous breakdown. He had attempted to cut off both of his hands and he needed full restraint before drugs were administered. After treatment from Dr Giffen, one of our top psychologists here, he seemed to calm down a little, but also began to speak in some form of codes rather than English. We were concerned over his recent pressures at work and after speaking at length to his boss, the diagnosis is that stress and alcohol consumption were the main catalyst for his breakdown and current mental state.
Newspaper cuttings were found at his apartment, but form no basis for concern. Although recent events suggest otherwise, the medical opinion is that Nick's breakdown was not, in whole or in part, linked to his hobby of gaming.
For the record I include a letter found at the scene of the patient's breakdown, though it has no value for medical diagnosis.
--------------
I didn't mean to do it. That's what they'll read when they find the blood splattered letter on my body tomorrow. That’s what they'll believe, perhaps, when I have said my final word.
It started back in June. The voices weren't loud enough for me to notice back then, just simple noises in my head. I’d played games like this plenty of times with no noticeable side effects, other than the odd cramp in my legs or the feeling of pins and needles down my arm. This one was different though, somehow I could feel it from the moment I inserted the disc into the black machine and watched it disappear into the heart of the box.
Let me tell you a little about this machine. I'd owned all the consoles, from the early 8-bits to the 256-bit monstrosities that the big corporations threw at everyone like meat to a hungry bear. These new machines were the next step, they weren't just boxes of cables, but contained an almost brain-like map of optical nerves. The things damn near thought for themselves. This new one, the U-Beam 3000 was one of the latest of these so called thought consoles and it was by far the most powerful, I should know I’m in the software business myself.
The games hid this well at first. Sure, I know all the games companies release pretty dire launch titles, but this really was retro gaming. Everyone complained that they hadn't got their money's worth, but somehow they knew better things were around the corner and they waited all the same. Then it happened. The new 'breed' of games started arriving. Using experience learnt from the many launch titles, they knew exactly how the player thought. This was not only used for the enemy AI but also for the way other non-playing character treated you. It was a revelation.
They never linked the growing number of teenage suicides to the games. The stress of new exams brought in by a panicked government was blamed for the high rate of teenage death, what else could it have been? 'There are too many pressures put on the youth' ran one newspaper, what better than to relax with a piece of entertainment then. The government's answer was simple, give each teenager vouchers for a console of their choice, as if there was any doubt which one they would flock too. That the ministers had a financial interest in the console company behind the U-Beam was irrelevant to all but the most cynical of papers. This was the real start of having a console in every home.
I had stuck to the more seminal games until that day. I liked the puzzles and the slow plotlines of survival horror titles. These fast paced first person shooters weren't my style. When they finally realised that they could create a much deeper game from mixing more than one genre, the result impressed me beyond anything I'd seen before. Before me lay the resulting commercial success that was Death Alley. It had broken all previous games sales and had been banned in 6 countries. It was also in my hands.
The plot was simple enough; you play the part of a detective hunting a serial killer in London's back streets, only your wits and clues you find along the way to help. What was different about it, what I 'thought' was different about it, was that the plot twisted and turned so much that the main character could well have been the murderer by the end of it all. It was a strange game, but none-the-less it intrigued people, dragged them in and kept them playing. There were none of the usual maps or hints in the magazines either, someone, or something, kept them from printing any. Maybe it was because the game had twisted to the mind of each player, making it a new and different experience for each, but I believe it was something greater.
Then came the stories about the voices, real urban myth stuff that the newspapers love to run in the small 'weird world' columns. People complained that the game was giving out subliminal messages but nothing was ever proved. There was even brief media frenzy, including a consumer programme on the television, which hunted down the games company and accused them of warping young minds. These things pass though and the media moved on to something else, they had plenty to choose from with petrol strikes and two wars in developing countries, which it seemed would ultimately affect the rest of Europe. The games stayed on the shop shelves and virtually rose overnight to the top of the charts, media attention tends to do that to games sales.
It was pretty soon after this that I noticed a pattern forming. I kept cuttings from the newspapers on incidents regarding teenage deaths. The interesting thing was that they all followed a similar pattern; the kids had cut themselves open from their navel to their neck and then just lay their bleeding to death. The media didn't seem to catch on at first. Incidents like these were mostly city kids in poor areas, nothing much newsworthy about that. It was only when the kids in less deprived areas started turning up with the same fatal injuries that they started taking notice. I became even more interested as the weeks went by, something drew me to the events behind these stories. That was when my voices became clear again.
I remember much clearer now that there were voices before. I'd thought this was a new thing, but my mind seems to be playing tricks on me, like it has many times before. I remember the night I woke in a cold sweat and the voices surrounded me, breathed through me. It’s not surprising, I'd been drinking a lot back then and I'd had plenty of blackouts. I lived alone so no-one bothered me and at times I must have been lying on the couch for days. I thought about seeing a doctor, but what would they do? They'd probably just say it was stress, I'd been working too hard, and they'd have been right about that.
My company had ordered me to finish this piece of software by the following month, something that normally would have taken me another two months at least, but I somehow managed to pull it off. I worked from home, so there was no problem hiding my alcohol fuelled breath from my boss. When I'd finished the task the voices had left, so it looked like just another case of man gets too stressed and starts breaking up, it happens. I took it upon myself to have a break from the company after that otherwise I might have lost it completely.
The deaths continued, as did the rise in the sales of Death Alley. The press continued to hound the government about the issues of stress on the young and it just continued like that until the day it hit a bit closer to home. The Prime Minister had left a cabinet meeting early; he’d had some bad news. He must have arrived home pretty soon after that and found what his neighbour later described to the press as 'the most shocking thing I had ever seen, worse than anything I saw during the war'. It emerged later that as he walked into his kitchen he had found his wife and only son both lying on the floor, surrounded by blood. The son's stomach had been cut open, but not by him. A knife still lay in the wife's hand.
The only link the police had was that the boy and his mother had both been playing a game moments before the incident. As if a veil had lifted, the detectives in Scotland Yard suddenly realised that this same game had still been on in one of the other households they had visited. A few investigations later and they had turned up a shocking set of co-incidences. Death Alley had somehow affected the kids' minds.
So there it was, the game that literally every kid had been told to buy by the government was also the catalyst for his or her untimely death. It was removed from sale pretty soon after the discovery, but not before more deaths had been reported. The voices by now had become clearer again; this time I remembered what they had told me. It wasn't until now that I realised that they weren’t in English at all. They were talking to me in a programming language. Now I realised what they wanted, what their ultimate plan had been. They wanted me to start my programming again; they wanted to create another game.
The knife is still in my hand, the other hand clutching my console and I try to drown out the voices, but they keep coming. I know you may not believe me, but I didn't want this to happen. I wished I'd had nothing to do with that damn game, I didn't mean to kill anyone and there is only one way I can stop it from happening again.
----------
Doctor's Report: : #124334
Patient: Nick Darwell.
After 5 months of treatment and diamorphine injections, the patient has shown considerable restraint, although voice patterns have altered (note: probably due to affect of drugs). Monitoring shows that language and behaviour has returned to normal, although some note is made that during sleep the patient still talks in code. Experts in the field believe that he is speaking some form of programming language, although they cannot make any guesses as to whether it is random or a product of his stress from work.
With this in mind, and as the patient's hands have now healed, he is deemed to be fully recovered and released in to society. His company have kindly agreed to keep him on, allowing him to complete one more project in order for him to return to as normal a life as he can.
The End
Patient: Nick Darwell.
Nick had come to the hospital after suffering what seemed like a nervous breakdown. He had attempted to cut off both of his hands and he needed full restraint before drugs were administered. After treatment from Dr Giffen, one of our top psychologists here, he seemed to calm down a little, but also began to speak in some form of codes rather than English. We were concerned over his recent pressures at work and after speaking at length to his boss, the diagnosis is that stress and alcohol consumption were the main catalyst for his breakdown and current mental state.
Newspaper cuttings were found at his apartment, but form no basis for concern. Although recent events suggest otherwise, the medical opinion is that Nick's breakdown was not, in whole or in part, linked to his hobby of gaming.
For the record I include a letter found at the scene of the patient's breakdown, though it has no value for medical diagnosis.
--------------
I didn't mean to do it. That's what they'll read when they find the blood splattered letter on my body tomorrow. That’s what they'll believe, perhaps, when I have said my final word.
It started back in June. The voices weren't loud enough for me to notice back then, just simple noises in my head. I’d played games like this plenty of times with no noticeable side effects, other than the odd cramp in my legs or the feeling of pins and needles down my arm. This one was different though, somehow I could feel it from the moment I inserted the disc into the black machine and watched it disappear into the heart of the box.
Let me tell you a little about this machine. I'd owned all the consoles, from the early 8-bits to the 256-bit monstrosities that the big corporations threw at everyone like meat to a hungry bear. These new machines were the next step, they weren't just boxes of cables, but contained an almost brain-like map of optical nerves. The things damn near thought for themselves. This new one, the U-Beam 3000 was one of the latest of these so called thought consoles and it was by far the most powerful, I should know I’m in the software business myself.
The games hid this well at first. Sure, I know all the games companies release pretty dire launch titles, but this really was retro gaming. Everyone complained that they hadn't got their money's worth, but somehow they knew better things were around the corner and they waited all the same. Then it happened. The new 'breed' of games started arriving. Using experience learnt from the many launch titles, they knew exactly how the player thought. This was not only used for the enemy AI but also for the way other non-playing character treated you. It was a revelation.
They never linked the growing number of teenage suicides to the games. The stress of new exams brought in by a panicked government was blamed for the high rate of teenage death, what else could it have been? 'There are too many pressures put on the youth' ran one newspaper, what better than to relax with a piece of entertainment then. The government's answer was simple, give each teenager vouchers for a console of their choice, as if there was any doubt which one they would flock too. That the ministers had a financial interest in the console company behind the U-Beam was irrelevant to all but the most cynical of papers. This was the real start of having a console in every home.
I had stuck to the more seminal games until that day. I liked the puzzles and the slow plotlines of survival horror titles. These fast paced first person shooters weren't my style. When they finally realised that they could create a much deeper game from mixing more than one genre, the result impressed me beyond anything I'd seen before. Before me lay the resulting commercial success that was Death Alley. It had broken all previous games sales and had been banned in 6 countries. It was also in my hands.
The plot was simple enough; you play the part of a detective hunting a serial killer in London's back streets, only your wits and clues you find along the way to help. What was different about it, what I 'thought' was different about it, was that the plot twisted and turned so much that the main character could well have been the murderer by the end of it all. It was a strange game, but none-the-less it intrigued people, dragged them in and kept them playing. There were none of the usual maps or hints in the magazines either, someone, or something, kept them from printing any. Maybe it was because the game had twisted to the mind of each player, making it a new and different experience for each, but I believe it was something greater.
Then came the stories about the voices, real urban myth stuff that the newspapers love to run in the small 'weird world' columns. People complained that the game was giving out subliminal messages but nothing was ever proved. There was even brief media frenzy, including a consumer programme on the television, which hunted down the games company and accused them of warping young minds. These things pass though and the media moved on to something else, they had plenty to choose from with petrol strikes and two wars in developing countries, which it seemed would ultimately affect the rest of Europe. The games stayed on the shop shelves and virtually rose overnight to the top of the charts, media attention tends to do that to games sales.
It was pretty soon after this that I noticed a pattern forming. I kept cuttings from the newspapers on incidents regarding teenage deaths. The interesting thing was that they all followed a similar pattern; the kids had cut themselves open from their navel to their neck and then just lay their bleeding to death. The media didn't seem to catch on at first. Incidents like these were mostly city kids in poor areas, nothing much newsworthy about that. It was only when the kids in less deprived areas started turning up with the same fatal injuries that they started taking notice. I became even more interested as the weeks went by, something drew me to the events behind these stories. That was when my voices became clear again.
I remember much clearer now that there were voices before. I'd thought this was a new thing, but my mind seems to be playing tricks on me, like it has many times before. I remember the night I woke in a cold sweat and the voices surrounded me, breathed through me. It’s not surprising, I'd been drinking a lot back then and I'd had plenty of blackouts. I lived alone so no-one bothered me and at times I must have been lying on the couch for days. I thought about seeing a doctor, but what would they do? They'd probably just say it was stress, I'd been working too hard, and they'd have been right about that.
My company had ordered me to finish this piece of software by the following month, something that normally would have taken me another two months at least, but I somehow managed to pull it off. I worked from home, so there was no problem hiding my alcohol fuelled breath from my boss. When I'd finished the task the voices had left, so it looked like just another case of man gets too stressed and starts breaking up, it happens. I took it upon myself to have a break from the company after that otherwise I might have lost it completely.
The deaths continued, as did the rise in the sales of Death Alley. The press continued to hound the government about the issues of stress on the young and it just continued like that until the day it hit a bit closer to home. The Prime Minister had left a cabinet meeting early; he’d had some bad news. He must have arrived home pretty soon after that and found what his neighbour later described to the press as 'the most shocking thing I had ever seen, worse than anything I saw during the war'. It emerged later that as he walked into his kitchen he had found his wife and only son both lying on the floor, surrounded by blood. The son's stomach had been cut open, but not by him. A knife still lay in the wife's hand.
The only link the police had was that the boy and his mother had both been playing a game moments before the incident. As if a veil had lifted, the detectives in Scotland Yard suddenly realised that this same game had still been on in one of the other households they had visited. A few investigations later and they had turned up a shocking set of co-incidences. Death Alley had somehow affected the kids' minds.
So there it was, the game that literally every kid had been told to buy by the government was also the catalyst for his or her untimely death. It was removed from sale pretty soon after the discovery, but not before more deaths had been reported. The voices by now had become clearer again; this time I remembered what they had told me. It wasn't until now that I realised that they weren’t in English at all. They were talking to me in a programming language. Now I realised what they wanted, what their ultimate plan had been. They wanted me to start my programming again; they wanted to create another game.
The knife is still in my hand, the other hand clutching my console and I try to drown out the voices, but they keep coming. I know you may not believe me, but I didn't want this to happen. I wished I'd had nothing to do with that damn game, I didn't mean to kill anyone and there is only one way I can stop it from happening again.
----------
Doctor's Report: : #124334
Patient: Nick Darwell.
After 5 months of treatment and diamorphine injections, the patient has shown considerable restraint, although voice patterns have altered (note: probably due to affect of drugs). Monitoring shows that language and behaviour has returned to normal, although some note is made that during sleep the patient still talks in code. Experts in the field believe that he is speaking some form of programming language, although they cannot make any guesses as to whether it is random or a product of his stress from work.
With this in mind, and as the patient's hands have now healed, he is deemed to be fully recovered and released in to society. His company have kindly agreed to keep him on, allowing him to complete one more project in order for him to return to as normal a life as he can.
The End
Let's hope that V and P comes back soon!
In the meantime, the story is still here and I would appreciate constructive critisim later when I'm on MSN
In the meantime, the story is still here and I would appreciate constructive critisim later when I'm on MSN
As I said on V and P, a damn good story.
good post there pB, very interesting read :P
( i did actually read all that )
( i did actually read all that )
Doctor's report: #124332
Patient: Nick Darwell.
Nick had come to the hospital after suffering what seemed like a nervous breakdown. He had attempted to cut off both of his hands and he needed full restraint before drugs were administered. After treatment from Dr Giffen, one of our top psychologists here, he seemed to calm down a little, but also began to speak in some form of codes rather than English. We were concerned over his recent pressures at work and after speaking at length to his boss, the diagnosis is that stress and alcohol consumption were the main catalyst for his breakdown and current mental state.
Newspaper cuttings were found at his apartment, but form no basis for concern. Although recent events suggest otherwise, the medical opinion is that Nick's breakdown was not, in whole or in part, linked to his hobby of gaming.
For the record I include a letter found at the scene of the patient's breakdown, though it has no value for medical diagnosis.
--------------
I didn't mean to do it. That's what they'll read when they find the blood splattered letter on my body tomorrow. That’s what they'll believe, perhaps, when I have said my final word.
It started back in June. The voices weren't loud enough for me to notice back then, just simple noises in my head. I’d played games like this plenty of times with no noticeable side effects, other than the odd cramp in my legs or the feeling of pins and needles down my arm. This one was different though, somehow I could feel it from the moment I inserted the disc into the black machine and watched it disappear into the heart of the box.
Let me tell you a little about this machine. I'd owned all the consoles, from the early 8-bits to the 256-bit monstrosities that the big corporations threw at everyone like meat to a hungry bear. These new machines were the next step, they weren't just boxes of cables, but contained an almost brain-like map of optical nerves. The things damn near thought for themselves. This new one, the U-Beam 3000 was one of the latest of these so called thought consoles and it was by far the most powerful, I should know I’m in the software business myself.
The games hid this well at first. Sure, I know all the games companies release pretty dire launch titles, but this really was retro gaming. Everyone complained that they hadn't got their money's worth, but somehow they knew better things were around the corner and they waited all the same. Then it happened. The new 'breed' of games started arriving. Using experience learnt from the many launch titles, they knew exactly how the player thought. This was not only used for the enemy AI but also for the way other non-playing character treated you. It was a revelation.
They never linked the growing number of teenage suicides to the games. The stress of new exams brought in by a panicked government was blamed for the high rate of teenage death, what else could it have been? 'There are too many pressures put on the youth' ran one newspaper, what better than to relax with a piece of entertainment then. The government's answer was simple, give each teenager vouchers for a console of their choice, as if there was any doubt which one they would flock too. That the ministers had a financial interest in the console company behind the U-Beam was irrelevant to all but the most cynical of papers. This was the real start of having a console in every home.
I had stuck to the more seminal games until that day. I liked the puzzles and the slow plotlines of survival horror titles. These fast paced first person shooters weren't my style. When they finally realised that they could create a much deeper game from mixing more than one genre, the result impressed me beyond anything I'd seen before. Before me lay the resulting commercial success that was Death Alley. It had broken all previous games sales and had been banned in 6 countries. It was also in my hands.
The plot was simple enough; you play the part of a detective hunting a serial killer in London's back streets, only your wits and clues you find along the way to help. What was different about it, what I 'thought' was different about it, was that the plot twisted and turned so much that the main character could well have been the murderer by the end of it all. It was a strange game, but none-the-less it intrigued people, dragged them in and kept them playing. There were none of the usual maps or hints in the magazines either, someone, or something, kept them from printing any. Maybe it was because the game had twisted to the mind of each player, making it a new and different experience for each, but I believe it was something greater.
Then came the stories about the voices, real urban myth stuff that the newspapers love to run in the small 'weird world' columns. People complained that the game was giving out subliminal messages but nothing was ever proved. There was even brief media frenzy, including a consumer programme on the television, which hunted down the games company and accused them of warping young minds. These things pass though and the media moved on to something else, they had plenty to choose from with petrol strikes and two wars in developing countries, which it seemed would ultimately affect the rest of Europe. The games stayed on the shop shelves and virtually rose overnight to the top of the charts, media attention tends to do that to games sales.
It was pretty soon after this that I noticed a pattern forming. I kept cuttings from the newspapers on incidents regarding teenage deaths. The interesting thing was that they all followed a similar pattern; the kids had cut themselves open from their navel to their neck and then just lay their bleeding to death. The media didn't seem to catch on at first. Incidents like these were mostly city kids in poor areas, nothing much newsworthy about that. It was only when the kids in less deprived areas started turning up with the same fatal injuries that they started taking notice. I became even more interested as the weeks went by, something drew me to the events behind these stories. That was when my voices became clear again.
I remember much clearer now that there were voices before. I'd thought this was a new thing, but my mind seems to be playing tricks on me, like it has many times before. I remember the night I woke in a cold sweat and the voices surrounded me, breathed through me. It’s not surprising, I'd been drinking a lot back then and I'd had plenty of blackouts. I lived alone so no-one bothered me and at times I must have been lying on the couch for days. I thought about seeing a doctor, but what would they do? They'd probably just say it was stress, I'd been working too hard, and they'd have been right about that.
My company had ordered me to finish this piece of software by the following month, something that normally would have taken me another two months at least, but I somehow managed to pull it off. I worked from home, so there was no problem hiding my alcohol fuelled breath from my boss. When I'd finished the task the voices had left, so it looked like just another case of man gets too stressed and starts breaking up, it happens. I took it upon myself to have a break from the company after that otherwise I might have lost it completely.
The deaths continued, as did the rise in the sales of Death Alley. The press continued to hound the government about the issues of stress on the young and it just continued like that until the day it hit a bit closer to home. The Prime Minister had left a cabinet meeting early; he’d had some bad news. He must have arrived home pretty soon after that and found what his neighbour later described to the press as 'the most shocking thing I had ever seen, worse than anything I saw during the war'. It emerged later that as he walked into his kitchen he had found his wife and only son both lying on the floor, surrounded by blood. The son's stomach had been cut open, but not by him. A knife still lay in the wife's hand.
The only link the police had was that the boy and his mother had both been playing a game moments before the incident. As if a veil had lifted, the detectives in Scotland Yard suddenly realised that this same game had still been on in one of the other households they had visited. A few investigations later and they had turned up a shocking set of co-incidences. Death Alley had somehow affected the kids' minds.
So there it was, the game that literally every kid had been told to buy by the government was also the catalyst for his or her untimely death. It was removed from sale pretty soon after the discovery, but not before more deaths had been reported. The voices by now had become clearer again; this time I remembered what they had told me. It wasn't until now that I realised that they weren’t in English at all. They were talking to me in a programming language. Now I realised what they wanted, what their ultimate plan had been. They wanted me to start my programming again; they wanted to create another game.
The knife is still in my hand, the other hand clutching my console and I try to drown out the voices, but they keep coming. I know you may not believe me, but I didn't want this to happen. I wished I'd had nothing to do with that damn game, I didn't mean to kill anyone and there is only one way I can stop it from happening again.
----------
Doctor's Report: : #124334
Patient: Nick Darwell.
After 5 months of treatment and diamorphine injections, the patient has shown considerable restraint, although voice patterns have altered (note: probably due to affect of drugs). Monitoring shows that language and behaviour has returned to normal, although some note is made that during sleep the patient still talks in code. Experts in the field believe that he is speaking some form of programming language, although they cannot make any guesses as to whether it is random or a product of his stress from work.
With this in mind, and as the patient's hands have now healed, he is deemed to be fully recovered and released in to society. His company have kindly agreed to keep him on, allowing him to complete one more project in order for him to return to as normal a life as he can.
The End
Patient: Nick Darwell.
Nick had come to the hospital after suffering what seemed like a nervous breakdown. He had attempted to cut off both of his hands and he needed full restraint before drugs were administered. After treatment from Dr Giffen, one of our top psychologists here, he seemed to calm down a little, but also began to speak in some form of codes rather than English. We were concerned over his recent pressures at work and after speaking at length to his boss, the diagnosis is that stress and alcohol consumption were the main catalyst for his breakdown and current mental state.
Newspaper cuttings were found at his apartment, but form no basis for concern. Although recent events suggest otherwise, the medical opinion is that Nick's breakdown was not, in whole or in part, linked to his hobby of gaming.
For the record I include a letter found at the scene of the patient's breakdown, though it has no value for medical diagnosis.
--------------
I didn't mean to do it. That's what they'll read when they find the blood splattered letter on my body tomorrow. That’s what they'll believe, perhaps, when I have said my final word.
It started back in June. The voices weren't loud enough for me to notice back then, just simple noises in my head. I’d played games like this plenty of times with no noticeable side effects, other than the odd cramp in my legs or the feeling of pins and needles down my arm. This one was different though, somehow I could feel it from the moment I inserted the disc into the black machine and watched it disappear into the heart of the box.
Let me tell you a little about this machine. I'd owned all the consoles, from the early 8-bits to the 256-bit monstrosities that the big corporations threw at everyone like meat to a hungry bear. These new machines were the next step, they weren't just boxes of cables, but contained an almost brain-like map of optical nerves. The things damn near thought for themselves. This new one, the U-Beam 3000 was one of the latest of these so called thought consoles and it was by far the most powerful, I should know I’m in the software business myself.
The games hid this well at first. Sure, I know all the games companies release pretty dire launch titles, but this really was retro gaming. Everyone complained that they hadn't got their money's worth, but somehow they knew better things were around the corner and they waited all the same. Then it happened. The new 'breed' of games started arriving. Using experience learnt from the many launch titles, they knew exactly how the player thought. This was not only used for the enemy AI but also for the way other non-playing character treated you. It was a revelation.
They never linked the growing number of teenage suicides to the games. The stress of new exams brought in by a panicked government was blamed for the high rate of teenage death, what else could it have been? 'There are too many pressures put on the youth' ran one newspaper, what better than to relax with a piece of entertainment then. The government's answer was simple, give each teenager vouchers for a console of their choice, as if there was any doubt which one they would flock too. That the ministers had a financial interest in the console company behind the U-Beam was irrelevant to all but the most cynical of papers. This was the real start of having a console in every home.
I had stuck to the more seminal games until that day. I liked the puzzles and the slow plotlines of survival horror titles. These fast paced first person shooters weren't my style. When they finally realised that they could create a much deeper game from mixing more than one genre, the result impressed me beyond anything I'd seen before. Before me lay the resulting commercial success that was Death Alley. It had broken all previous games sales and had been banned in 6 countries. It was also in my hands.
The plot was simple enough; you play the part of a detective hunting a serial killer in London's back streets, only your wits and clues you find along the way to help. What was different about it, what I 'thought' was different about it, was that the plot twisted and turned so much that the main character could well have been the murderer by the end of it all. It was a strange game, but none-the-less it intrigued people, dragged them in and kept them playing. There were none of the usual maps or hints in the magazines either, someone, or something, kept them from printing any. Maybe it was because the game had twisted to the mind of each player, making it a new and different experience for each, but I believe it was something greater.
Then came the stories about the voices, real urban myth stuff that the newspapers love to run in the small 'weird world' columns. People complained that the game was giving out subliminal messages but nothing was ever proved. There was even brief media frenzy, including a consumer programme on the television, which hunted down the games company and accused them of warping young minds. These things pass though and the media moved on to something else, they had plenty to choose from with petrol strikes and two wars in developing countries, which it seemed would ultimately affect the rest of Europe. The games stayed on the shop shelves and virtually rose overnight to the top of the charts, media attention tends to do that to games sales.
It was pretty soon after this that I noticed a pattern forming. I kept cuttings from the newspapers on incidents regarding teenage deaths. The interesting thing was that they all followed a similar pattern; the kids had cut themselves open from their navel to their neck and then just lay their bleeding to death. The media didn't seem to catch on at first. Incidents like these were mostly city kids in poor areas, nothing much newsworthy about that. It was only when the kids in less deprived areas started turning up with the same fatal injuries that they started taking notice. I became even more interested as the weeks went by, something drew me to the events behind these stories. That was when my voices became clear again.
I remember much clearer now that there were voices before. I'd thought this was a new thing, but my mind seems to be playing tricks on me, like it has many times before. I remember the night I woke in a cold sweat and the voices surrounded me, breathed through me. It’s not surprising, I'd been drinking a lot back then and I'd had plenty of blackouts. I lived alone so no-one bothered me and at times I must have been lying on the couch for days. I thought about seeing a doctor, but what would they do? They'd probably just say it was stress, I'd been working too hard, and they'd have been right about that.
My company had ordered me to finish this piece of software by the following month, something that normally would have taken me another two months at least, but I somehow managed to pull it off. I worked from home, so there was no problem hiding my alcohol fuelled breath from my boss. When I'd finished the task the voices had left, so it looked like just another case of man gets too stressed and starts breaking up, it happens. I took it upon myself to have a break from the company after that otherwise I might have lost it completely.
The deaths continued, as did the rise in the sales of Death Alley. The press continued to hound the government about the issues of stress on the young and it just continued like that until the day it hit a bit closer to home. The Prime Minister had left a cabinet meeting early; he’d had some bad news. He must have arrived home pretty soon after that and found what his neighbour later described to the press as 'the most shocking thing I had ever seen, worse than anything I saw during the war'. It emerged later that as he walked into his kitchen he had found his wife and only son both lying on the floor, surrounded by blood. The son's stomach had been cut open, but not by him. A knife still lay in the wife's hand.
The only link the police had was that the boy and his mother had both been playing a game moments before the incident. As if a veil had lifted, the detectives in Scotland Yard suddenly realised that this same game had still been on in one of the other households they had visited. A few investigations later and they had turned up a shocking set of co-incidences. Death Alley had somehow affected the kids' minds.
So there it was, the game that literally every kid had been told to buy by the government was also the catalyst for his or her untimely death. It was removed from sale pretty soon after the discovery, but not before more deaths had been reported. The voices by now had become clearer again; this time I remembered what they had told me. It wasn't until now that I realised that they weren’t in English at all. They were talking to me in a programming language. Now I realised what they wanted, what their ultimate plan had been. They wanted me to start my programming again; they wanted to create another game.
The knife is still in my hand, the other hand clutching my console and I try to drown out the voices, but they keep coming. I know you may not believe me, but I didn't want this to happen. I wished I'd had nothing to do with that damn game, I didn't mean to kill anyone and there is only one way I can stop it from happening again.
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Doctor's Report: : #124334
Patient: Nick Darwell.
After 5 months of treatment and diamorphine injections, the patient has shown considerable restraint, although voice patterns have altered (note: probably due to affect of drugs). Monitoring shows that language and behaviour has returned to normal, although some note is made that during sleep the patient still talks in code. Experts in the field believe that he is speaking some form of programming language, although they cannot make any guesses as to whether it is random or a product of his stress from work.
With this in mind, and as the patient's hands have now healed, he is deemed to be fully recovered and released in to society. His company have kindly agreed to keep him on, allowing him to complete one more project in order for him to return to as normal a life as he can.
The End