*

There is a far-away city, both within and outside of our own, where the population is content in its purpose: to entertain.

At any given hour of the day, when The One they serve requests it, the city’s inhabitants present themselves to the world as though actors before an audience. In an improvised pantomime of everyday normality, the inhabitants routinely shop for groceries, hurry for buses, grumble in line at cash machines, and pre-empt movie plot twists from the front row. Some mingle in crowds, some loiter the corners nefariously; others sit idly on park benches in the rain and pretend to converse on telephones. There are hundreds who drive a predetermined variety of automobiles along predetermined routes at predetermined times at predetermined rates; others, as though living scenery, perform the roles of background labourers and window cleaners and waiters and vendors, serving street food, as the case may be, to those inhabitants who in turn will buy it.

And then there are a privileged few – those installed to lead from the front. Whether they feature in the guise of a recurring authority figure, a criminal, a politician or kingpin, these few have been entrusted with a more interactive and pivotal status: At specific intervals they are required to deliver select lines of carefully scripted dialogue. The truly special are even intrinsic to the city’s ruling narrative.

The inhabitant’s numbers are fixed at an optimum – the population cannot increase through birth nor decrease through death, for neither is possible. The inhabitants themselves do not age or eat. They mate but cannot breed.

But of the thousands of inhabitants living in the city, not a single one is more important than the next – there is no hierarchy, no class system, no pyramid of rank which the population must adhere to, nor enforced structure of governance. The inhabitant’s task, their ultimate purpose, is what channels the direction of their existence – and each and every member of the city’s population, as though the individual teeth of a single cog which drives a vast clockwork machine, functions selflessly for their one ultimate master:

The Player.

For, as we would understand it, this is the city of the video game – the urban sandbox, an open world simulation, and the inhabitants are merely the actors upon a digitised stage.

Existing solely for the entertainment of Him...

***

Today is a new day, and as such there is a bristling sense of anticipation in the air. The city is subdued, patient, practically motionless – yet it remains as primed as a coiled spring. Rather than banter between themselves as they would do normally during these interludes, the inhabitants wait on their marks like mannequins, running their pre-assigned steps over and over in their heads, should their apprehension foster complacency. The majority of them will not be required for the opening scene; yet, to make certain that the stage is set all the same, the inhabitants busy themselves with last minute tinkering: ensuring that every stop sign on every street corner is pointing in the right direction, that each of the health packs is accounted for, that every ammo crate is fully replenished and visible, and that all the pre-launch bugs have been corrected ahead of time – for a new Player will soon make His presence felt.

And when He does, a select group of inhabitants will step to the fore. Such is both their honour and their burden, their initial duty is to greet The Player as though having known Him for years. Over the course of these first crucial hours, they must act as both His cohort and sherpa without ever acknowledging the latter. In an effort to preserve the facade, they must subtly teach Him without lecturing Him, guide Him through the initial tutorial without fatiguing Him; their foremost task is to train Him, groom Him, direct Him, support Him – and above all else, when The Player departs into the city to begin His adventure, they must ensure that He understands the fundamentals of the game which is shortly to commence...

As though an intuition, every inhabitant suddenly senses that the moment is at hand. Like wooden villagers emerging from their doorways upon the chime of a cuckoo clock, they take a breath, step from their marks, and begin their performances as though a choir erupting into song mid-verse – and through the passenger window of an approaching bus, none the wiser to the incalculable intricacies involved solely for His benefit, The Player gazes out across a city alive with commotion:

Sound-tracked by an 80s remix, a flaming sun bears up from behind the cityscape like a molten glitter ball, basting the skyline in a lush orange hue.

Overhead, two passenger jets skim the high-rises in tandem while another touches down on a landing strip with a squeal of rubber.

The day’s first overground train departs from a terminal minus several passengers whom have missed it intentionally, each hurling their hats to the platform in pantomime frustration.

Running parallel with the urban canyon, a swarm of overweight pigeons scatter from a phone line, while an equally as globose electrician ascends a ladder breathlessly – a moustachioed hot dog vendor on the pavement below begins calling out the prices for with and without guano.

Accompanied by the yelling of a marital spat, clothes and suitcases are thrown from a penthouse window, which in turn a garbage man collects and tosses into the rear of his truck. High heels clicking down central avenue, a business woman recites an off-hand phone conversation regarding her husband’s girth, while a slicker in a red convertible wolf-whistles precisely on cue before tearing up the highway in a cloud of cannabis smoke.

The city is now in full swing, practically throbbing, every sidewalk a scene unto itself. Lights switch back and forth from red to green. Car horns blare like musical notes. A tramp drops his whisky and chases a dog with a half-eaten pretzel in its mouth, while a group of truants lark beneath the spray of a gushing fire hydrant.

And at the centre of it all, the all-important bus continues into the city as though a key slipping into a lock...

Leaning beside a bus shelter with a newspaper tucked under his arm, a burly and barrel-chested man waits patiently – one of the few. If everything is proceeding as it should, the bus will arrive in exactly eleven seconds: the number 47 Greyhound, eastbound, front-left hub-cap on the wonk and taggings up its side. The man knows that when the bus pulls up to the kerb an old lady with a carpet bag will step off, followed by a pair of rabbis, a punk, three college students-

Then lastly, Him.

Out He steps – tall, dark, His shabby preordained clothes already mottled with sweat; a more streamlined and youthful version of the man patiently awaiting Him.

At this stage, as He absorbs His surroundings for the first time, The Player may appear vacant and distracted. This is to be expected – the burly man knows it wise to allow Him a moment to discover His bearings and become accustomed to this new environment, before greeting Him as any sibling would.

Praise be, my kid brother has finally returned home! the man, the brother, rejoices before encasing The Player in a bear hug, a back slap, and other manly platitudes regarding the weather and the length of His trip.

As though a mime, The Player is incapable of responding verbally, as it would complicate the illusion were He permitted to interact with this charade beyond the cursory. This the brother also knows – he will talk enough for them both, anyway. Besides, in terms of His experience in this city, The Player is a comparative baby fresh from the womb – literally, He must first learn to walk before He can run.

As such, this attribute will be instilled via the first important lesson...

Tossing his newspaper into a nearby waste bin, the brother requests that The Player follow him to his car, and proceeds to begin walking down the block. During this clandestine procedure, it is imperative that the brother does not stop, wait, delay, nor turn around to ensure that The Player is still following him through the crowds – all the brother must do is continue talking naturally for the twenty-eight seconds it takes to reach the car. Like any guardian, however, the brother is vigilant of his pupil – a discreet and maternal glance into the reflection of a passing van’s windscreen confirms that He is still keeping pace.

When the twenty-eight seconds are up, at precisely the moment when The Player will least expect it, the brother suddenly steps from the pavement and crosses the road. Better to dash than dawdle in this god-damn congestion! the brother yells over his shoulder mid-sprint, to which The Player correctly interprets as an invitation to do the same. As such, He runs out into the traffic in hot pursuit – a rusted taxi immediately slams on its brakes inches from The Player’s toes, and the driver commences a fevered rant in some foreign language.

Just as rehearsed, the brother smiles privately to himself. So far, so good...

Upon reaching the car, the brother suggests that The Player take the wheel – he offers the ready-made excuse that he’s been hitting the red eye and the red heads all night; but, as we all know, this is merely a means of necessitating The Player’s first driving lesson. This He undertakes without too much difficulty: a slight hiccup when He takes a wrong turn and has to reverse up a one-way street, and several cars and pedestrians are narrowly avoided, or at worst, clipped, en-route. But no harm done – no lasting damage can be inflicted upon anything or anyone in the city, for everything regenerates in the time it takes The Player to turn His back.

Once they have safely arrived at The Player’s designated apartment – His private sanctuary where He can change His clothes, store His collectables, and save His progress at the conclusion of each session; and, explicitly, where no inhabitant is permitted to tread under any circumstances – He and the brother part ways, for The Player must now be left to His own devices. It is expected that He’ll head out and explore the city for Himself shortly thereafter. This is always a concerning time for the inhabitants – with no pathway to guide Him until He chooses to select one, The Player can literally go anywhere and do anything on a whim, just as a dog cut loose from its lead will invariably sprint free of its master. Over the coming weeks the inhabitants will become accustomed to His behaviours and rhythms, and will establish how best to tailor their exchanges to the benefit of His experience; but at this stage the inhabitants must improvise on the fly...

On the occasion of His first outing, all inhabitants know, instinctively, that if The Player comes charging across the street with the intention of stealing their car they must not prevent Him from doing so – only fight back once He Himself has learned to fight with adequate dexterity, a skill He’ll be taught in mission nine. Similarly, if The Player then wraps said car around a lamp post while fiddling with the radio for the first time, so be it. Accidents will happen. Better to preserve the illusion and have The Player become familiarised with the route home from the nearest hospital, rather than make it apparent that you are pandering to His each and every step. Besides, He has the extra lives to spare.

And should fate decide that you are the first policeman He meets, and He pulls His gun on you and puts a round between your eyes just for the hell of it...well, what a lucky son of a gun you are! Many of your fellow inhabitants, the lesser-interacting outskirt dwellers, may yet have even glimpsed The Player, let alone received His virgin bullet. You truly are blessed, blessed, to be His first ‘kill’! You’ll be dining out on that one for weeks!

Yet let it be repeated that there is no stratum operating either formally or informally within the city – every single inhabitant, no matter their role, location, level of interaction with The Player or class of character they are assigned to perform, is any less vital than the next. Put simply: the inhabitants are not the characters they play. A whore is not a whore just because she dresses as one, nor is an oligarch to be revered because of his applied accent and toupee. Unified, the inhabitants modestly consider themselves as mere brushstrokes on a canvas, zeros and ones, as single bricks in an integral supporting structure for which they are all equally accountable.

And this pronouncement applies just the same to the brother. Although he may act as The Player’s elder sibling, crony and right-hand man for the entirety of the game – ready at His shoulder with advice and covering fire whenever called upon – regardless of his unique position, the brother is no more elevated or important than anyone else in the city.

In spite of his private ambitions...

A week into the game, and a routine has already begun to flourish:

With all the zest of a child escaping school for the freedom of the summer holidays, The Player would bound from the doorway of His apartment and embark on the next chapter of His fantastical crusade. More often than not, parked on the kerb opposite with radio loud and engine running, the brother would be waiting in the passenger seat with a spare 9mm locked and loaded, a lesson in dual wielding on the day’s docket. Sometimes it would be a different character who would arrive and take the lead, both literally and narratively speaking; on many occasions The Player would be incentivised to brave it alone. Regardless of the mechanisms devised to initiate it, however, the action always came thick and fast and down-right furious! There were car chases aplenty, gun fights, bank-jobs, stakeouts and hold-ups; each cinematic activity skilfully choreographed by the inhabitants for the maximum amount of theatricality and enjoyment, for they all understood that The Player must want to keep returning to the city, day after day, week after week, eager for the intensifying challenges and adventure therein – and doubly so for the rewards, of which the inhabitants ensured were plentiful: exotic cars in fluorescent paint jobs, briefcases overflowing with money, trophies and alloys and power boats and whiz, bling cumbersome enough to drag down a frigate – and far more besides, all carefully nestled away in the nooks of the city like secret Christmas parcels.

To a certain degree, the inhabitants felt like parents at this early period of the game, with The Player their adopted child. That is not to say that any inhabitant considered themselves somehow above The Player – they revered, respected and idolised Him for the deity that He was – yet it was only natural that a paternal bond would develop in the hearts of the inhabitants, such were the integral interactions that both parties played in the others’ lives. Many inhabitants had to hold back their tears when He took that inaugural hair-raising venture on the back of the brother’s superbike; and those who were lucky enough to see Him down His first helicopter with a sole bazooka shot still spoke of it to this day as though recounting a baby’s first steps. The fact that none of the inhabitants would ever raise children of their own only stirred these paternal phantoms.

It should be noted that very few inhabitants allowed the matter of The Player’s being to dwell upon their minds – or at least to occupy them any more than was necessary. The question of where He came from – not to mention why? – was regularly pondered but never conclusively answered. Who was The Player? the inhabitants often meditated in their quieter moments. Was He, in a sense, like them? – one assuming the guise of another as a means of giving definition to their existence?..

But philosophical conjectures aside, there was one undeniable and inevitable fact that all the inhabitants were perpetually aware of:

One day, when the game was over, He would stop playing...

Just as with any film, novel or drama – or even life itself – the game was not indefinite; eventually the narrative would reach its climax, the missions would play themselves out, and the credits would roll like the falling of a curtain. This conclusion would not signal the demise of the city or the inhabitants themselves – their time would go on; and another Player would ultimately follow in His place. This certainty provided the inhabitants with a great deal of solace; yet, just as when a child reaches maturity and leaves the family home, when the day finally arrived and The Player bid the city a fond farewell, His departure would be both a wrought and emotional moment for every present inhabitant...

But that was a concern for the future. For now, The Player was engrossed and just starting out on His journey – and this in turn meant that the inhabitants were consumed, content, and, above all else, occupied.

Life for the inhabitants, in essence, was presently everything that it should be:

It was meaningful.

***

The next milestone in The Player’s ongoing quest had successfully been overcome with the completion of another mission. And what a mission! The best yet! some exclaimed: A jet ski chase through the suburban aqueducts, followed by an explosive tank battle in the city’s airport, and all rounded off with a ten-man fist fight across the wings of a taxiing airliner. What a marvel! What a romp! The Player could not have failed to have been enthralled! And it was all thanks to the efforts of every single inhabitant, for not one member of the cast – not the brother, the pilot, the henchmen nor the final boss, to name but a few – had put a foot wrong from beginning to end. The mission was literal perfection!

For the inhabitants, exhausted from their labours but unable to stop smiling, it was moments like these that made living in the city worthwhile.

Yet the good times could not go on forever...Following a parachute dive through a maelstrom of bullets and baggage and dollar bills and propellers, as all above Him perished in an implosive ball of fire – including, as was written in the storyline, the brother, signalling his closure from the game – the moment which all the inhabitants had long dreaded arrived thereafter:

To His unremitting elation, and the inhabitant’s suppressed melancholia, The Player had finally prevailed.

To all intents and purposes, it was game over...

The inhabitants could at least take comfort in the knowledge that The Player’s city-wide enterprises were not entirely concluded – there still remained many collectables, secret stages, upgrades and hidden items which required locating before He achieved one-hundred percent completion, and the inhabitants took great pains to ensure that these goodies remained unearthed, at least beneath a layer of fiendishness, for as long as possible.

But no quantity of trinkets can sustain one’s attention forever...

When it came to The Player’s inevitable departure, He did not take His leave immediately. Instead, such was His gradual disinterest, His appearances became less common – passing, short-lived, and for briefer and less enthusiastic periods. As opposed to His primary sessions which could extend for the entirety of a weekend, in His final days The Player dipped in and out of the city as one would a tedious soap opera, His perusals rarely stretching beyond a quick gun-blazing thrash through such-and-such a place before ultimately retiring to one of His apartments once more. Sometimes it was days before any of the inhabitants clasped eyes on Him again – many on the outskirts of the city, those who resided in the hard to reach outlooks which He circulated only on occasion, had been surplus to requirements for months now. As such, they were beginning to grow restless.

Perhaps, they probed delicately, those inhabitants in the more active inner city areas might trade places with them for a day or two? But this suggestion was unheard of: Everyone had a place and everyone must remain there – that was, and always would be, the way of it. The Player would eventually return to those on the outskirts, their fellow inhabitants were eager to reassure – to this end, expansions had arrived and additional hidden items were due to be deposited with corresponding clues – then it would only be a matter of time before He began exploring the lesser frequented spots again.

But when? the unrequited asked with not undue scepticism. Tomorrow? Next Week? Besides, The Player hadn’t been seen since retreating into His sanctuary more than a fortnight ago.

What if something unforeseen had happened to Him?

Maybe, for the peace of mind of everyone, and Him, somebody should go to His room and chec-

No! All agreed this was out of the question! It was forbidden! The Player’s room was hallow – not one inhabitant, no matter their reasoning, was permitted to intrude. Ever!

Yet desperate times called for desperate measures, and the weight of the inhabitant’s consternation only helped to push such measures along. The unenviable responsibility was therefore tasked – and hastily snatched, for he had been made redundant by the city’s narrative and yearned desperately to again be productive – into the trust of the brother: he and he alone would do what was necessary, and enter His room...

While the inhabitants gathered pensively on the streets outside, the brother ventured to The Player’s mansion in the centre of the city, where His last known sighting had been confirmed.

Alone and agitated by the fear of what he may discover – and more so by what he may not – the brother passed under the shadow of the gateway’s marble columns and proceeded to enter the mansion, ascending the dual staircases towards the top floor. He found the gold-leaved corridors to be unnervingly quiet, the guest rooms empty but plentiful, the maroon carpets plush under his workman’s boots. It would be a pity, the brother considered to himself, for such a grandiose accommodation, the reward for so many missions completed, to fall into disuse. Such a senseless waste...

Upon reaching the top floor, the brother paused on the cusp of The Player’s bedroom.

The door was closed.

Should he knock? the brother pondered. Dare he call His name?

Or perhaps it was best, in the off-chance that The Player were indisposed, that he instead peek around the door’s edge? The latter of these options the brother deemed the most appropriate.

With trembling fingers he tentatively leant around the bedroom door no further than was merited, and encroached into the vacant gloom.

Therein, the brother’s and the inhabitant’s worst fears were confirmed.

The Player had abandoned them...

***

Over the months which followed The Player’s departure, the city exhibited all the jovialness of a Christmas pantomime in Spring. With no Player to entertain, the inhabitants meandered around the city in a state of disorientated lethargy – those less aroused could not conjure the reasoning for leaving their beds at all. As a result, just as unkempt hair inevitably attracts lice, it wasn’t long before the city began to exhibit similar symptoms of neglect.

In a real world metropolis these symptoms would manifest in the form of litter, graffiti, cigarette butts and detritus; yet in the inhabitant’s city there was only one result of dereliction:

Glitches.

At first they were inconsequential – a twitching fencepost in the park, a child’s swing frozen in time, a tree with the colour of its branches inverted, a taxi unburdened of a wheel; little more than creases in an otherwise smooth cloth – but, left unsupervised due to the inhabitant’s sombre, these glitches soon seeded and multiplied like a cancer, with major incidents such as upturned planes dropping from the sky and whole floors of buildings disappearing overnight becoming all too regular happenings. Still, if He wasn’t around to witness such failings, why should the inhabitants pay them any significance?

The brother disagreed with this morose outlook. Invigorated by the new-found seniority established during his broaching of the mansion, he countered that the city was an extension of every inhabitant within it, and therefore, Player or not, it must be maintained to a respectable standard.

And there was always the risk, he warned, that the glitches could spread to the inhabitants themselves...

Much to the brother’s vexation, no one paid his forewarnings any attention. Alas, on the morning that a new Player finally arrived, everything came to a head...

***

It should have been a day of celebration. A new Player! A fresh start! Yet no one had been prepared; all had panicked and dashed haphazardly for their places while the number 47 came rolling down main street unannounced. The brother had been the first to reach his mark; he arrived just in time to see the new Player – different in overall form than the previous, yet still recognisable – step from the bus, look around, then fall helplessly into a bottomless void where the kerb should have been, all the result of a single, unrectified glitch.

The Player did not return. In the weeks that followed, neither did another.

Actions, the brother resolved, needed to be taken...

***

In light of the disastrous miscarriage involving the most recently departed player, an emergency meeting was arranged in the city’s central park at the brother’s behest. Speaking from the top of the steps which led to the park’s monuments – which, he was quick to point out, glitched manically as though shards of broken wind chime caught in a hurricane – the brother made his impassioned case for an intervention.

They, he addressed of the inhabitants, had grown careless – the city had lost two players already, and it seemed unlikely that they would be blessed with a third if the condition of the city did not improve. The city was becoming wayward! the brother spat. Unsafe! Downtrodden! With a rising temerity and banging of his fists, the brother upheld that should every inhabitant’s application continue to regress, it would not be long before the city was lost to a catastrophe of its own making!

The time to act, he insisted, was now!

Despite the brother’s exertions, the inhabitants were not aroused – they only exchanged thin and questioning glances between themselves.

But the brother was undeterred. Be it an unpopular viewpoint, his reasoning was this:

The city and its inhabitants needed a solution to prevent everything from sliding any further into disrepair – there must be, as a means of re-establishing competence, the introduction of a clearly defined structure.

There needed to be oversight!

This time there came a chorus of angry jeers from the crowd. If the inhabitants were reading the brother’s intentions correctly, he was advocating a system of governance! Did the brother need reminding – humble inhabitant that he was, lest he forget – that the city had never required governance in the past?

The city had never lost two players in the past, the brother countered sternly. And no, he would not be asserting sole responsibility for this so called ‘governance’, if that was their thinking. Rather, the brother proposed an immediate election where every inhabitant stood as a candidate, with those candidates who received the ten highest number of votes being delegated to oversee the city’s restoration. They, these overseers, would not be permitted to exert their authority onto individuals; their sole remit was to ensure that each and every glitch in their assigned jurisdiction was, and remained, eradicated. That was all.

And to those sly inhabitants at the back: No, they could not vote for themselves...

Despite the inhabitants’ overriding reservations, voting took place that very same afternoon. By the end of the day, ten overseers had been elected and assigned their portion of the city.

Of those ten elected, one of them just happened to be the brother...

On the toll of sunrise following the previous day’s election, every inhabitant rose early and set about the task of rejuvenating their designated sector, being prudent to remove any glitches which had wormed their way into the cracks. While everyone worked tirelessly with their backs to the sun, the overseers acted just as their newly acquired titles suggested – they oversaw. In most cases they participated in the clean-up alongside their fellow inhabitants with every bit the equal effort; yet there were some overseers who deemed it a more efficient use of their energies to supervise from the comfort of the shade, rather than overexert themselves with the hot and heavy lifting. When they considered the quality of their fellow inhabitants’ work to be unsatisfactory, they demanded that it be improved; if progress was running behind schedule then it was the inhabitants’ responsibility, the overseers underlined, to quicken the pace.

At the conclusion of each day, the overseers reported their statements back to the brother – for although the brother was but one of the ten elected, and in no way of a higher stature than any of his nine colleagues, in his own words, ‘Someone has to drive the bus’...

Following the rejuvenation’s completion, it wasn’t long before a new and eagerly heralded bus pulled up beside a freshly sparkling shelter. As was his original responsibility, the brother encased the new player in the same bear hug as always, before leading him around the block towards his car – yet now the brother did the escorting with an air of authority, a bouncer as opposed to a butler. While nonchalantly walking and delivering his lines, the brother made certain to keep an eye on every surrounding activity to ensure that it was running correctly: any pedestrian who dawdled, stuttered, or acted without the inconspicuousness required could expect to find themselves on the receiving end of a furrowed brow.

And if any driver dare stray into another lane, even by a single pixel, they could be certain that the matter would be raised at the newly established post-performance assessment meetings...

With a clapping and a cracking of his knuckles, the brother brought the day’s meeting to order. Foremost on the agenda:

Inhabitant 87245 – newly assigned numbers allowed the administration to run smoother – On the thirty-seventh minute of mission three, act five, the brother berated of the accused, why did you repeat your line ‘Fine weather we’re having’ on consecutive engagements with the player? Why, can you explain to the council, was this so?

Regardless of the reasoning put forward by the stricken inhabitant for his careless misdemeanour, excuses, despite his sympathetic expression, were nonetheless deemed immaterial by the brother. There would be no punishment handed down at this stage, let it be recorded in the minutes – the inhabitants had yet to be warmed to this sufficiently – instead, it was agreed upon by the brother and his overseers that the guilty party must return to their mark and use the time before the player’s next arrival to rehearse. The brother hoped, and expected, that this would remedy said inhabitant’s oversights sufficiently.

Through gritted teeth, the inhabitant thanked the brother and his overseers for their leniency, before returning to his place...

While the attending inhabitants shifted in their seats through restlessness, the meeting continued. Referring down to the reams of paperwork at his desk, there were further mishaps that the brother had noted during today’s performance – but these would be addressed by the relevant overseer at a later date, for the capacity of their roles, it had been decided, was to increase beyond the ongoing restoration of the city. The new system had worked so successfully, the brother insisted, that there could be no discernible argument for its discontinuation – nor against its expansion. For, he reiterated with a thumping of his chest as the meeting reached its conclusion –

The retention of the player’s occupancy must take priority over all our wants!

Albeit privately, many did not share this viewpoint. Unquestionably, every single inhabitant was unreservedly dedicated to serving The Player – after all, this was the sole purpose for which they assumed they existed. However, it was an established truth that every inhabitant had been created equally, and they were, at their core, fundamentally identical – it was only their costumes, per say, those they wore for the benefit of The Player, which differentiated them.

In this regard, democratically elected he may well have been, who was the brother to administer commands? He was no better, greater, nor wiser than anyone else! The only attribute which distinguished him – his bond with The Player, albeit a fictitious and assistive one – was a bestowal of pure fortune, neither earned nor attained. The brother could just as easily have found himself in the guise of a call girl, a bartender, a construction worker or tramp. He was merely a benefactor of chance.

As they trudged back to their homes upon the adjournment of another assessment meeting, some made the point that there were many inhabitants who, for their part, wore the costume of a police officer – yet, despite this, they never acted out their authority beyond the hours of the game...

And never to the detriment of their fellow inhabitants...

Yet the continued preservation of the game, the city, and, foremost, the player, continued to take precedent over these petty quibbles. Indeed, the brother could confirm that the player – as well as himself – was supremely happy with proceedings thus far.

But things can always be improved! So began the brother’s opening statement to that night’s meeting, central park once again filled to the corners with a pasture of weary inhabitants – for attendance was now considered compulsory.

Much to the brother’s displeasure – for he, so he sighed, took little pleasure in having to raise this issue – today’s mission had not proceeded without indiscretion. The pilot of helicopter four, the flight leader in this instance, needed to pay closer attention to their altitudes. It had been observed, due to inhabitant 30483 repeatedly flying too low under bridge nine in sector twelve, that the player had mistimed a pivotal bank on four separate occasions and crashed. It was only the player’s success on the fifth attempt – thanks to some interventionist words of encouragement on the brother’s part – which had convinced the player not to quit the game.

And, heaven forbid, had the player been allowed to quit outright, there was no guarantee that he would ever have returned. Of this the brother was convinced...

To ensure that this fateful calamity would never befall the city, the brother, backed by his twenty overseers, had a proposition:

He wanted to make the game easier.

A startled hush fell over all in attendance. Was it seriously being proposed that there be an alteration to the game’s rules? many whispered. Such a strident idea had never been contemplated before – it was comparable to a dictator inscribing in law that an additional minute be inserted into the hour, or the outlawing any weather beyond that of the inclement. It was inconceivable, impossible madness!

With all the confidence which empowers those cocooned within a mass, the inhabitants soon took the opportunity to remind the brother, albeit respectfully, that they had played along with many of his radical ideas already – roles being switched between inhabitants, depending on the results of their performances, being a controversial and not entirely successful scheme. But a fundamental change in the rules? That was taking things too far! Besides, the capability to instigate such a change was beyond the powers of any mere inhabitant – even one as oh-so great as the brother...

Rallying his voice above the commotion, the brother made it clear that he was in no way suggesting that the game’s overriding laws be altered – all he was advocating was the motion that every inhabitant, including himself, play their part in making the player’s experience less strenuous.

If they would permit him to explain: A player’s enjoyment, the brother had surmised, ran in direct correlation with their victories. Put plainly: whenever a player completed a mission set before them, they were happy; likewise, whenever a player failed a mission, and was forced to retry it over from the beginning, they were unhappy, and as a result their behaviour would become marred in frustration, annoyance, petulance – and ultimately, as everyone had seen today, there was a possibility that the player would irreparably divorce themselves from the game altogether.

This, the brother paused before assuming, nobody wanted...

Henceforth, whenever they encountered him, the inhabitants were instructed to make life a little easier for the player. Not by much – they should not pull their punches or be seen to coddle him, and never should the inhabitants allow the player to feel as though he were being handled with kid gloves – but the player’s progression should flow more serenely than before. The inhabitants, as per the brother’s orders, should now act as a crutch to the player’s impulses, rather than an obstacle – this, the brother maintained, would guarantee the player’s ongoing presence!

Although there were many in the city who disagreed with this hypothesis – the game, they muttered privately, was meaningless without the struggle – the inhabitants nonetheless obeyed the brother’s instructions; and, for a time, said instructions appeared to bear fruit. The player was soon investing more hours into his adventure than previously, attacking the game with a fervour never before witnessed, smashing down the missions like bowling pins made of china.

But it quickly became apparent to many, at this rapidly accelerating rate of progress, that the player would have the game completed before the week was out...if not sooner.

Reacting accordingly, and not without a hint of alarm, the brother demanded that the inhabitants therefore reverse their strategy and make the game more difficult: Drivers were to keep a tighter formation during high-speed chases; stocks of ammo crates should be halved; police should aim between the eyes and shoot to kill; and if it appeared that the player was likely to escape custody during mission twenty-eight’s heist sequence, all must take it upon themselves to step out in front of his car, no excuses! These countermeasures did indeed retard the player’s progress – so much so, following one infuriating mission, the worst case scenario came to pass and the city was again without a player.

The brother called for an immediate inquest.

He alone would oversee it.

***

With another player having departed in an acrimonious manner, and the resulting blame laid swiftly at the feet of those of the brother’s choosing, the city and its inhabitants again fell under a cloud of sullen and lethargic festering. Just as before, the condition of the city began to degrade in unison, with a fungus of glitches sprouting from every unattended crevice – and now, as the brother had previously warned, they began to infect the inhabitants themselves...

When a woman’s leg suddenly bent backwards like wet origami, and she collapsed to the pavement in a fit of violent spasms, it was only natural that the surrounding inhabitants, rather than come to her aid, would anxiously back away. It was not known if the glitches could spread between inhabitants via proximity – but no one was willing to find out. Many stayed off the streets as a result, preferring to remain indoors – the infected kept mention of their ticks and twitches silent for fear of being ostracised. But if your head begins to spin upwards on its axis, or your arms become detached and involuntary, someone was bound to notice. Especially if there are thousands of you suffering from the same condition.

Under the brother’s orders, platoons of overseers were urgently deployed across all effected sectors, instructed with whipping the state of the city, and those inhabitants responsible for it, back into shape. Yet despite their numbers and their bolstered jurisdiction, the overseers were incapable of enacting the brother’s want – the inhabitants, the overseers reported, were refusing to comply. If that were the case, the brother glowered, then he was left with no alternative but to call for the recruitment of more overseers. Anyone who could prove themselves loyal to both the city and the brother would be accepted into the ranks.

The more stubborn the nail, the brother reasoned, the larger the hammer required...

Before long, over a quarter of the city’s inhabitants were tasked with overseeing the rest. So they could function and communicate more efficiently, and also remain uncontaminated from the still rampant glitches and the afflicted inhabitants’ funk, the brother’s overseers were housed in a single block in the eye of the city – the needs of the swelling bureaucracy were soon paramount, and both the size and reach of this block began to expand exponentially like blood across tissue.

In the case of the brother – due to the ongoing crises, his citywide duties and responsibilities were now many – he took up residence directly beside his faithful overseers, in the player’s former, and presently uninhabited, mansion.

But only until the next player required it, of course...

Countless players arrived during this troublesome period – and just as many left. The only distinction between their stays was the length of their occupancy, which was diminishing at the rate which butter left out in the sun turns rancid.

And following the aftermath of every player’s departure, the brother demanded that anyone aside himself foster the blame. He pointed fingers, summoned numbers, had the guilty parties dragged before him on their knees. If an oversight was reported to have occurred on their block, he would sneer morosely at the irresponsible inhabitant beneath his gavel and stipulate what price needed be paid – for the good of all!

On a relatable occasion which had become the talk of the city, a taxi driver had been accused of impetuously changing lanes at the wrong moment – her reckless actions were deemed to have caused the current player to swerve, crash, fail the mission, and consequently quit. Whether or not said driver changed lanes due to the road before her no longer existing was a triviality quickly dismissed with a wave of the brother’s wrist – the city, no thanks to her, was again without a player!

The city was minus a taxi driver, thereafter.

No one cared to volunteer themselves for the vacancy...

Another bleak morning, another bleak sunrise, and another 47 bus came to a shuddering halt as it had so many times before. Even the squeak of its wipers sounded mournful.

In the city’s happier days, the faintest note of the bus’ exhaust would have elicited a mass rejoicing amongst the inhabitants – yet now there was no such fanfare. Rather, as though cows being led to the butcher’s knife, there only arrived groans of dread from the inhabitants: heavy heels dragged late and disorderly into positions, disconsolate grumbles internalised so as not to be spotted by an overseer, and an undercurrent of apprehension fuelled by the fear that any one of them would make a mistake and suffer the repercussions handed down from The Brother’s iron fist.

The Brother...this unofficial yet inarguable title caused many of the inhabitants to feel nothing but disgust for their leader. If another election were called they would vote on mass against Him – not that one would ever be sanctioned. There were whispers of a revolution at hand – a vast populous uprising against Him and his new order – but with so few inhabitants fit enough to contest so many overseers, the plan never came to fruition...

Regardless of the inhabitant’s misgivings, however, a new player would shortly bear themselves forth. What type of personality would they assume this time? the inhabitants wondered between twitches. In what guise would he present himself? These questions and the resulting answers would previously have circulated around the city like confetti on the wind – yet on this joyless occasion, just as one does not dwell on the accent in which bad news is delivered, no inhabitant gave any inclination to caring what form the player now took. He would shortly be gone of his own accord, anyway...

But when the new player did present himself, stepping from the bus in the same unassuming manner as all those before him, the inhabitants in the immediate vicinity were so aghast they practically froze.

Praise be, my kid brother has finally returned home! The Brother announced more loudly than usual, drawing the attention of further nearby inhabitants – and to their disbelief, they saw that the new player shared an uncanny resemblance to that of the original player.

The Player!

Had He?..

Yes! He had come back to them!

Had they not been constrained by the responsibilities of their roles, the inhabitants would doubtlessly have broken character and screamed with delight at His arrival – the only inhabitant who appeared unfazed by this unpredicted revelation was The Brother. Just as always – albeit now to a routine of his own revising – he led The Player from the bus shelter and around the block with an expression laced with smug satisfaction, chuntering away as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

The Brother had even seemed more relaxed than usual, several inhabitants commented afterwards – he’d seemed mellower, less belligerent, his arrow-like gaze not darting vindictively between forthcoming catastrophes and those most likely to instigate them. In a sense, The Brother had acted like his old, humble self. For a time, anyway...

The topic of The Player was, unsurprisingly, also a point of discussion between the inhabitants. All were delighted, to the verge of euphoria, that He was back in His old haunt; and everyone was in agreement that it was just the kind of morale boost the entire city had for so long been starved of. Some even claimed, as a result, that their glitches had cleared up overnight!

However, there were a certain few, those with a sharp eye and sharper suspicions, who couldn’t shake the feeling that something about The Player wasn’t quite right...

Yes, in appearance at least, The Player presented Himself exactly as He had before, identical to a hair – He was even wearing the same exclusive attire from His last appearance, which only a player who had completed the game on the hardest difficulty could attain. And, in terms of His play-style, He certainly tackled the missions before Him with the proficiency one would expect of a veteran.

As a side note, the question of why The Player had deemed it pertinent to start the game a’ fresh was not a point of conjecture – it was not unheard of, in other alternate cities, for players to replay the game from the very beginning; if anything this was regarded as a reflection of the inhabitants’ competency, as it meant the player had so enjoyed their initial experience that they wished to relive it – what troubled the dubious was rather The Player’s overall deportment this time around.

Unfortunately, none of the disbelievers could put their finger on exactly why The Player seemed peculiar – this in turn led their baseless ‘conspiracies’ to be mocked by those who trivialised them – yet they were adamant, as certain in their doubts as they were of their fate should The Brother learn of their misgivings, that something about The Player wasn’t sitting as it should.

He had a vague look about Him, many insisted: dull and expressionless like a statue, His eyes sparkling little more than plaster. Many pointed to the fact that His progression through the early missions was questionable not for its competency, but more so for its efficiency. As opposed to His original technique – lairy and extravagant like a teenage striker – The Player was now taking the most efficient route from A to B, rather than the most challenging, profitable, or fun.

And the most sceptical inhabitants allowed the roots of their imaginations to grow deeper: What were the chances, they pondered sarcastically, that He should return at this very hour, at this very juncture, just when the city looked set to regress into something approaching a civil war? Just a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

Perhaps...Those who had popularised a revolution against The Brother during the hardest times, yet had not found the opportunity to instigate it, said one point was undeniable: The Brother must be counting His blessings!

Yet those who held these opinions were warned, by their more wary compatriots, to not let them be known – if an overseer overheard any inhabitant expressing such crazed dissension, let alone The Brother himself, then their time in this city would be cast into serious jeopardy.

Sensibly, for the time being at least, the rumours clouding The Player’s legitimacy stayed firmly underground – yet here they gestated. It wasn’t long before greater numbers of inhabitants began sharing their own doubts regarding The Player – whispers of ‘wooden’ and ‘robotic’ gnawing like termites at the city’s foundations – while many added that The Brother’s proximity to Him had become more intimate than it had in the past.

Shielded, some would say. They were indeed now like brothers, inseparable, practically joined at the hip. In fact, no one could think of an occasion when The Player and The Brother were apart. At their joint residence in the city’s mansion, it was even rumoured that they stayed in adjoining rooms.

Just a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?

Perhaps...

Born of the mushrooming hearsay which had festered underground over the passing weeks, a plan had been hatched by the inhabitants – and tonight, whatever the outcome, it would be enacted.

The plan was this: Upon the retirement of that day’s performance – or rather at the moment when it became apparent that The Player intended to conclude His session – a small band of the most sceptical and rebellious inhabitants intended to trail The Player and The Brother back to their illustrious mansion, and attempt to uncover the truth behind both of their suspicious activities. This the band did under the cloak of darkness, penetrating the mansion’s boundary walls without detection and gaining access to the building itself via a window. It proved useful that one of the band acted the part of a burglar during game time.

The internals of the mansion had been overhauled by The Brother far beyond the comparative pale of those originally conceived – a vulgar upholstery of gold and gemstones and velvet and silk from floor to ceiling, as though a bomb of opulence had been detonated in every corridor – but the band paid these updates little attention; by now, having evaded the patrols of The Brother’s most devout overseers, the band stood at the threshold of The Player’s room.

They found the door unlocked. Not sensing any movement within, the band took a joint breath, bowed their heads, and crept inside...

The band had not known what to expect from His room – sacred and shrouded in mystery as it was, its contents only conceptualised within folklore – yet, despite what any of them may have imagined, they could not help but be underwhelmed by the space they found before them.

The Player’s mythical abode was, in reality, rudimentary: a single bed, dresser, wardrobe and window, with little else rising above the noteworthy to speak of. If it wasn’t for the unmade bed and scattering of valuables about the floor – yes, that was His gold-plated Uzi from level fifteen resting on the windowsill; unmistakeably, those were His limited edition sandals with the inscriptions on the heel – the band would’ve assumed they had walked into one of the mansion’s many servants’ quarters, rather than the city’s most holy of alters.

Yet the band were swiftly relieved of the opportunity to build upon their disappointment – suddenly, they heard footsteps approaching from outside.

Like startled ants under a lifted slab, the band darted for cover, the only location suitable for concealing themselves being a large wardrobe full of The Player’s clothing. Cramped for breathing space and trembling like caged gerbils, the band’s unblinking eyes stared out from a thin slit between the wardrobe’s doors as two figures entered into the bedroom...

First in walked The Brother, followed not two steps behind by The Player – the former, after dismissing his guards with a waft as though swatting away moths, slammed and locked the door to the bedroom behind him. When he was certain they were alone – a lengthy cupping of his ear to the door confirming this – The Brother began conversing with The Player, who, in turn, as expected of His muteness, at no point replied. Despite being unable to discern word for word what was being said, due to the peevish hisses in which The Brother spoke and the muffling of the wardrobe’s doors, the band considered the overall tone of The Brother’s sentences, the harshness of them predominately, to be most disrespectful. To the ears of the band, The Brother appeared to address The Player in a manner that a headmaster would scold a pupil: combatively, directly, and with a domineering and bullish authoritativeness entirely unbecoming.

In strict accordance with his tightly defined role, The Brother was permitted only to advise The Player within the parameters of his script, not to provoke or chastise or order as he saw fit – and The Brother was especially prohibited from suggesting, never mind demanding, that He take to His bed at once! Yet, to the band’s astonishment, this The Brother did – and even more astonishingly, The Player obeyed without the merest hint of indignation! With all the resistance of a house trained poodle, The Player obediently laid back on His bed, brought His palms to His chest, and peacefully closed His eyes. The Brother, as though a ventriloquist, may as well have been folding the strings of a puppet...

In much the same way that what awaits an individual after their death is both a mystery and a viewpoint of one’s faith, the band had no comprehension regarding what happened to The Player whenever He vacated their world between sessions – no one did. No one outside of The Brother, perhaps...

Some inhabitants imagined that The Player, upon each departure, would simply lay still on His bed and remain in a state of sleep until He decided to reawaken; others had formulated that His body would disappear entirely, only to phase back into reality when He returned for another session. The second of these scenarios appeared to be the most accurate – right before the band’s obscured eyes and The Brother’s judgemental gaze, The Player’s unconscious form began to fade away as though a cloud of ashes from an extinguished fire.

Yet, defying the band’s expectations, He did not vanish entirely.

At the very moment when The Player was little more than a watermark upon the bedsheets, His body gradually began to reassemble – albeit in a less exact guise than before.

Enraptured, the band dared to ease the wardrobe’s doors a fraction wider apart, scarcely able to comprehend what they were witnessing.

Pixel by pixel, The Player continued to materialise on the bed; moments later, His entire body had fully returned, outstretched and solidified in the same resting position as before.

But to the band’s bewilderment, He did not return in the exact form they had expected. In comparison to earlier, The Player now seemed shorter, puffier, His bone structure and complexion altogether conflicting. He seemed like...someone else?..

With a hand over their mouth for fear that their gasps would be detected, one of the band recognised this person now in The Player’s place.

It was one of the overseers.

His expression fixed with a dry contempt for the figure now occupying the bed, The Brother nonetheless offered the overseer a hand and yanked him up. At The Brother’s behest, the overseer spoke with a naked and fragile timidness, offering words of apology for his performance. On The Brother’s part there were further chastising remarks, fingers jabbed in the overseers chest and angry condemnations regarding his mimicry during today’s session – but the dressing down was abruptly cut short when the most enraged of the band, incapable of restraining their abhorrence, burst from the wardrobe and took hold of the overseer by the throat.

Before either The Brother or the others in the wardrobe could react, the inhabitant was striking at the overseer relentlessly, swinging at this false idol with wild and berserk punches which landed with a sickening hollowness. It was only when the overseer’s form suddenly transmuted back into that of The Player that the inhabitant momentarily refrained from his beating.

From his knees, The Player looked up at his attacker with an expression which pleaded for pity, hands together in a desperate and snivelling appeal for reprieve – yet this incredulous act only sickened the inhabitant further. With the arc of a lightning bolt he threw down a punch which smashed a fist-sized cluster of pixels from The Player’s jaw, revealing the imposter’s gaping mouth underneath.

By now The Brother had regained his senses enough to intervene – before the band could restrain him, he grabbed hold of the attacking inhabitant and threw him back across the room with the full force of his build. Before the inhabitant had even landed, The Brother was berating him for his insolence and his defiling of the city’s most strongly held beliefs.

How dare he strike The Player! The Brother screamed at the inhabitant while helping said Player to his feet. Were there no limits to his despicable blasphemy?

Despite the assertiveness in which The Brother delivered these remonstrations, the band, understandably, remained unconvinced – this overseer, this imposter, this devil with wings, was not The Player!

Oh, but The Brother begged to differ. This was The Player.

At least it was in the eyes of anyone outside of this room...

Such was his matchless authority, The Brother explained through the coil of a maniacal grin that he could easily have had this puny band exiled from the city with a merest whistle to his overseers – but never let it be said, despite the unfavourable light in which this band had so unjustly painted him, that The Brother was beyond reasoning...

With their attention fixed, The Brother put forward a quandary: Would they, this band, be content with living in a city perpetually congealed within a slime of despondency? A city sapped of its will, its meaning, its direction, its purpose? A city where the gloomy inhabitants, riddled with glitches as though a colony of lepers, were so depressed that they could not find the strength to slither from their beds each morning, let alone prevent the city itself from falling under the same spell of inertia?

Or would they rather it be the case, The Brother offered with an unfurling of his hand, that every inhabitant were given a purpose? Would that situation not be preferable to the destructive chaos which erupts from nihilism?

These questions The Brother posed without any inclination towards the buckled overseer shielded behind him, half his battered face peeking out from behind that of The Player’s mask. Instead, with all the glory of a preacher, The Brother threw out his arms and proclaimed:

My friends! My fellow inhabitants! Would it not be beneficial – nay, compassionate – that all of us in this magnificent city be blessed with a reason to exist?

Even if that reason was nothing more than a fraudulent illusion? the band returned.

The Brother smiled with a confidence underlying his reasoning. Rather than deliberate with them any further, he considered it more profitable to let the band themselves provide the answer to the dilemma they had posed.

And may the fallout of such an answer lay directly at their feet, he so warned...

Had there been ample time, the band would doubtlessly have weighed the pros and cons of this impossible predicament between themselves until the sun had again risen – but any such debate was halted by a happening from the opposite corner of the bedroom.

Seized by a bewilderment, the band, the semi-costumed overseer and The Brother spun around on their heels and turned their attention to the bed. Gradually, like a venting of steam from a shallow grave, a ghostly form began to assemble on the sheets.

This time there was no argument towards the identity of the figure now solidified on the bed:

It was The Player...

He rose to His imperious height. Slowly, without speaking, He turned and faced those who had invaded His dwelling, who themselves were gripped at the knees by both terror and shame.

With a questioning expression, He cast His gaze across the band, the brother – and then to the mangled replica of Himself. This creature before Him – for that was the distinction which The Player’s expression implied – He studied inquisitively as though sniffing inside a bottle of sour milk. He stared down on His sheepish copy, through it, beyond it, seeking eye contact which the overseer was incapable of reciprocating.

As though considering an overgrown terrain which needed to be scrubbed, The Player then looked passed the overseer and to the bedroom window, drawing His eyes across the cityscape beyond. This He did for a prolonged and indeterminable period as though weighing an enormous decision – all the while the band, the overseer and the brother stood motionless with faces lowered to the floor, awaiting His verdict.

Without a second glance, The Player turned His back on the inhabitants for a final time.

Then He suddenly, instantaneously, disappeared.

The bedroom immediately became darker, as though the lights had been dimmed. The floor trembled. There came a happening on the horizon...

Huddling around the window, all in the bedroom watched in horror as a darkness of absolute impenetrability swelled over the skyline like a tsunami of oil. Under its shadow, every light in every building was snuffed out, every vehicle ground to a halt, and every inhabitant froze. The buildings themselves were then swallowed up in the wash, erased as though equations scrubbed clean from a blackboard in a single wipe. The moon and the stars vanished soon after, leaving nothing but darkness in their place. Not even sound itself escaped the darkness’ deletion, for the city was soon muted.

It seemed He had arrived at His verdict...

The black wave gathered pace, wiping roads and streets and cars and bodies from existence, the entire city lost to the darkness as though a terrain beyond the reach of a lighthouse’s beam. The pinnacle of this beam, those in the bedroom soon realised, was the mansion – but that itself was soon engulfed and digested from the outside in, the bedroom window and the view beyond it suddenly vanquished.

The bedroom grew darker still, seemingly shrinking in spite of a lack of discernible walls. The remaining inhabitants desperately retreated into the centre of the room where the last of the light survived. But not for long – the light inevitably shrunk down to a single disc on the floor, and the brother, the overseer and the band, despite clinging to one another, were lost forever to the darkness.

Then there was nothing.

Then, following a short pause, there was light.

And then everything within the city was reset to as it had originally stood.

There would soon arrive the first bus.

And a new Player.