It turns out you're not the only one working for a Boss.
[Originally written in 2016 for Medium. Back then I thought to connect this to the song "Heroes" by David Bowie, I guess because he had died recently, and also for the song's connection to irony and its cinematic qualities. I can imagine in some not too distant alternate universe the Bowie estate approving its use for the final cutscene of the game...]
I remember playing GoldenEye when I was in elementary school, at a friend's house. I did like my friend, but I also liked GoldenEye. At that point in my life, I didn't have a lot of experience playing video games or computer games. Just a bit. I've never been particularly good at any given first person shooter. But I still remember those games, the trance of them, the evocativeness of the settings.
I've seen my share of "First Person Shooter" movies as well.
This is an idea for a game. It begins as a short story. I fear that it is a bit clever. I feel like I'm "working for the System" with this cleverness-- maybe you'll understand. I feel like I'm a henchman myself. (You'll see what I mean, perhaps.)
* * *
Henri and Quik 7 suited up in the locker room, the smell of dry cleaning in the air. They were the last two to get dressed that day.
Henri told Quik 7, "Had the worst morning today. The wife was on my case."
Q7: "The usual?"
H: "Yeah"
Q7: "Well, we should get a good bonus today. If we survive, of course."
H: "Haha. Think of what the wife would say if I came home dead. Probably wouldn't care as much about where I've been after work."
Q7: "Quite so, quite so. She's suspecting that you're cheating, right?"
H: "Yeah."
Q7: "Are you?"
H: "No, not at all. I love my family."
Q7: "But..."
H: "But it's hard. You know what I mean? It's a bleak life doing this job. When I started here I thought 'This will just be a while' so I drank to forget --just until something better came up. But now, somehow, the... evil... of this job, it infected my whole life. It's with me when I'm with my wife and kids. It's like I carry the curse wherever I go. I thought The Boss was evil, but now I'm evil."
Q7: "I know what you mean. Being part of The System is a slow lesson in becoming the System. I find myself making ethical compromises all the time. It's like I can't help it. I guess I can, though."
H: "I don't remember what it's like to have morals. You know. Real morals, like when I was young."
Q7: "I know what you mean."
The two men, both looking very similar, tall, angular, muscular, square-jawed, one with reddish-brown hair, the other with black hair, stepped over to their weapons racks and got their AK-47s, made sure they were ready for service, and stepped into the hallway of The Compound.
- - -
...
- - -
"Now, we don't know exactly when Jean-Luc Ormandy is coming by..."
A hush fell over the crowd of men in tuxedos with AK-47s.
Jean-Luc Ormandy! Good God! The man who had singlehandedly destroyed 15 of The System's installations! This was a truly dangerous man.
"...So we're going to be on standby for the next 12 hours... just in case. We have to make sure that the tanks of chemicals and the secret documents don't get compromised."
"If possible, end the threat. If necessary, give your life. You know how things go."
So Henri and Quik 7 and a fair-haired man named Schneider sat around with their decks of cards, their cigarettes, and their languid eyes, telling dirty jokes, but not laughing with their hearts; gambling, losing, winning, but without interest.
The conversation came around to Jean-Luc.
"The thing is," said Schneider, "I want to hate the man, but I can't. He embodies everything I wish I could be. He's a good person. He's working for the forces of good. And I'm stuck here, 'second-rate Schneider' I guess, working for evil."
"Yeah," said Q7, "Sometimes I wish I was badass enough to be a good guy."
Henri was distant. "What if we die? What if we really die? Colette and the kids... Good Lord, what will my sons do without a father in their lives?"
"They won't realize what they're missing" cut in Quik 7. "My dad died when I was 7. I don't miss him at all."
Henri looked on Quik 7, tipped his head to the side and looked down, seeing Quik 7 in a new light.
"Hey, cheer up, Henri", said Schneider. "7 turned out alright, didn't he?"
"Yes." said Henri. "Yes, I guess they'll get along just fine without me. I guess I knew that all along."
They smoked, and they would have drank, and they kept on gambling. Who knows who came out ahead in their various dice games and card games.
- - -
...
- - -
Then, something dawned on Schneider. He spoke quietly and, in his tuxedo, suavely. "What if we could be heroes? What if we could be the ones who save the day?"
"I don't understand. I know who pays my paycheck," said Henri.
"Same here," said Quik 7.
"No, you don't understand. Jean-Luc may be near-infallible, but I don't think he can get past us. The Compound is too well-designed. Unless..."
Henri and Quik 7 suddenly felt something deep in their universes shift around, like a giant geared stone wheel lumbering around to an unsettling new position.
"Unless what?" said Quik 7.
"Have you ever heard of the 1919 White Sox?"
"The baseball team? I'm not sure I follow." said Henri.
"You always have some sort of baseball trivia coming out of you, what of it?" said Quik 7.
"I'll tell you what. The 1919 White Sox were playing the World Series. This is, the biggest thing in all of baseball. You can't do any better than this. The most important time in a baseball team's life is when it starts playing a World Series game... and when it finishes it. Now," he said, shifting his position to hold their deepest attention, "there's a term in baseball for when you intentionally lose a game. You throw it."
"Oh right, like in boxing" said Henri.
"Oh right, like in boxing" said Quik 7.
"Like in boxing! So imagine, this is the series of the year, all the other series of the year lead up to this, you could be the champion... and you throw it. The White Sox threw the World Series."
"The White Sox threw the World Series." said Quik 7.
"The White Sox threw the World Series." said Henri.
"The White Sox... threw the World Series." said Quik 7 with dawning comprehension.
"The White Sox... threw the World Series!" echoed Henri.
And they looked around, in the mutual knowledge that they had crossed a threshold.
- - -
...
- - -
For the rest of the time, not knowing how much they had, they spread, calmly and quietly, amongst their fellow henchmen, the new good news of intentional death. No henchman is too different from another; they all quickly came to one accord, and prepared themselves for the greatest day of their lives.
When the time came for the alarm, they all gathered to their posts, and Jean-Luc broke in through the skylight! No one could have ever expected that!
Jean-Luc Ormandy was a handsome, handsome man.
He wielded an Uzi, and started out by mowing down 5 henchmen, while they wildly shot at the ceiling. If Ormandy had stopped to dance over their corpses (but he was the last person to ever do that), he would have seen a faint smile on their faces.
Despite how devilish the defenses were in The Compound (and there were plenty of robotic death devices which the henchmen didn't know how to compromise), it was strange how well Jean-Luc got past them all, dodging and rolling, with a kind of tired look, as though he had done this a million times before -- but that was impossible, no one in the world could have known the inside of The Compound. Jean-Luc was truly the perfect man.
Henri, Quik 7, and Schneider were gathered in the interior, close to the chemical tanks. They were stationed at gun loops. These loops were nigh impossible to shoot into, but granted the shooters considerable vantage to shoot anyone entering the chemical compound. Jean-Luc was entering in order to secure samples of the illegal chemical weapons stored here, in order to return to the United Nations for their edification --there could be no other purpose to his intense interest in the chemical tanks. And he should have been a sitting duck, and just to maintain appearances, the three comrade-henchmen intentionally missed, with some appearance of getting close. And then he got further in, and came into range of one of the robot guns! The henchmen knew that only Jean-Luc would have the marksmanship to shoot and disable the robot gun. And yet, Jean-Luc was out of ammunition!
At that moment, Henri knew what it was he had to do. He gave a letter to Schneider. "This is for my family. I want them to know I went down as a hero. That though I fought for what was wrong, I died for what was right." And then he gave his lucky fountain pen to Quik 7, and leapt down, shooting wildly from side to side in the air (his bullets strangely unable to pierce the skins of the chemical tanks) a look of triumph on his face. And Jean-Luc shot him in the head, grabbed his ammunition and a first aid kit which he stuffed into his pocket, and picked up Henri's AK-47 and trained it on the robot gun and shot it into submission.
And then Jean-Luc got his chemical sample, stormed the gun loops, shot Schneider and Quik 7 dead, men who would never shoot him, and their bodies somehow disappeared, memory has faded, Jean-Luc has triumphed, he has the secret documents and the chemical sample, he is walking the streets freely, and the Boss is not quite vanquished, and The System will oppress another day, but while Jean-Luc, as the perfect one, is compelled to return to this life of perfection over and over, has the full responsibility of being the best hanging over him, driving him, pushing him to even further peaks of stamina and muscle memory, finding Bosses and Systems in the strangest locales, throughout time:
These three men, in their imperfection, are freed from the cycle of regeneration, and though Henri leaves his family --with honor --and Schneider leaves his collection of Expressionist prints -- to no one -- and it is as though Quik 7 has never been and will never be: these three men are free, and now, finally, they can rest in peace.
- - -
...
- - -
So the game would be a second person shooter. It would be from the perspective of the people being shot. The player would maneuver the henchmen into position so that they can be shot, and though the henchmen instinctively shoot (gunbursts every few seconds), their fire can be directed away from the First Person.