Pandemic

Even a few years ago, a description of what I did this weekend would have sounded like the beginning of a dystopian sci-fi story. I left the house, as mandated by the government, only for two brief periods of exercise. I interacted with the faces and voices of my friends and colleagues on screens, communicating over a high frequency radio link and a world-spanning digital communication network. In another computer one of my friends set up a physical simulation of a table and a board game with its various cards, pieces, and pawns. A few of us connected to that server and played a game in which you try to save the world from a pandemic.

If I were reading that sci-fi story I would be struck by the absence of a clear villain. In the board game all the players work together against the board, the way the cards were shuffled determines how the game progresses. I would suspect that the author was trying to make some point about simulating the environment that you're currently in, and that the main plot was going to mirror the development of the board game. Either that, or what looked like character development with me seething against whoever the landlord had employed to mend my neighbours fence (they damaged my fence and encroached on to my side of the legal boundary) would turn out to be critical to the main plot. It'll be that property maintenance company trying to take over the world through bio-terrorism! It's barely worth reading the rest of the book now.

Richard "crude simulations all the way down" B