JPod (31 page)

Brrrrr

Shudder

Shake

Milkshake

McDonald's milkshake

Chalk?

Brain freeze

Milk products

Nestle

Mineral-deficient baby formula

Switzerland

Corporations

Globalization

Milkshakes everywhere

Even India

Dairy products

Cows

Confusion

Ancestors

Apu from the Kwik-E-Mart

Donuts

The Fox Network

Five thousand channels

Heather Locklear

Healthy, shimmering hair

Computer-generated hair

Pixar cartoon frames in a render farm

First weekend box office

DVD sales

Home entertainment systems

Karaoke

Fear of Karaoke

Abandoning the party

Driving

Shitty old car

Rain

Car commercials

Money

Never enough

Coupland's business thing with Kam

Rage

Raging Bull

1970s films

Al Pacino

Eyes like Woody Woodpecker

Cartoons of the 1940s

Ultraviolence

A Clockwork Orange

Heaven 17

Pop hits of the 1980s

Pet Shop Boys

London

Plagues

Ebola

Y2K

Hype

Lies

. . . and so on.

Kwantlen College Learning Annex

Course 3072-A

Assignment:
Discuss Your Job with Somebody

Who Probably Doesn't Care about It

"Flog the Dead Donkey"

by Kaitlin Anna Boyd Joyce

Kaitlin:

Hi, Jim. Is this a speaking role?

Jim:

Fucking hell, no. I asked if I could moan or something, but it breaks union rules. Kaitlin, why are you here?

Kaitlin:

School project. I have to discuss my job with an outsider.

Jim:

All that gaming shit? No way. It's such a snooze.

Kaitlin:

Too late. I'm here, and I don't have time to find a replacement interviewee.

Jim:

Crap. Okay, then, what do you and Ethan and all you gaming chowderheads do out in that mothership thingy in Burnaby?

Kaitlin:

Could you at least ask it like you care? Pretend it's a line in a film.

[NOTE: Jim's weak spot is his desire for a speaking role in a TV or film production—any role at all.
Anything.]

Jim:

Okay how about this . . .

[Jim spends the next five minutes delivering the same line.]

Kaitlin:

Enough already. Here's the deal—I have to discuss my job with you, so I'll begin by telling you that I'm working on this videogame called SpriteQuest.

Jim:

As in Sprite, the beverage?

Kaitlin:

No. A sprite is technically a fantasy creature one notch lower on the food chain than elf but two notches above pixie.

Jim:

Right.

Kaitlin:

It's set in the year AD 100,000—among the ruins of what we call Earth. Superior sprite beings from a distant galaxy have crash-landed here and now have to survive in a confusing apocalyptic world where right is wrong and wrong is right.

Jim:

[Jim is not paying attention.]

Kaitlin:

Jim, I specifically said something dumb to see if you're listening, and you aren't.

Jim:

Sorry. I was attempting to prep the emotions for my corpse scene. It won't happen again.

Kaitlin:

Thank you. Anyway, Earth also now has two moons—the one we know, and one that was stolen from Mars.

Jim:

I'm listening.

Kaitlin:

The hero of the game is Prince Amulon. He's neither a sprite nor an elf. He's the prince of a small band of earthlings who have survived across those hundred thousand years. Prince Amulon works with sprites and other characters, and they go through complex perils that will allow him to crack the two moons together. From the resulting cosmic rubble, Prince Amulon will destroy the bad guys, and the energy released will allow the sprites to fix their spacecraft and return home.

Jim:

Wait a second—didn't this used to be a skateboard game starring a turtle?

Kaitlin:

You are correct. But first it was a
generic
skateboard game. Then we wrecked it by adding a charismatic turtle named Jeff. And then we basically had to convert the whole game into a fully immersive fantasy gaming environment called SpriteQuest.

Jim:

Isn't that kind of a dumb thing to do to a game?

Kaitlin:

Absolutely, but it's what I'm told to do by marketing.

Jim:

Have you no shame? Have you no sense of decency?

Kaitlin:

Stop being silly.

Jim:

Who are the bad guys?

Kaitlin:

They're called the Zorrs.

Jim:

[Sighs.] What magic powers do the game's characters have?

Kaitlin:

Using his psi powers, Prince Amulon can win a game of Scrabble using only three vowels. He can also bring fresh air into an unventilated bathroom,
and he
can renovate castles and huts on small budgets using knick-knacks from thrift stores and some well-chosen latex paint colours.

Jim:

You made all of that up on the spot.

Kaitlin:

Okay, so I did. It's—it's just so depressing what we have to do. But I don't want to marinate in shame. Our characters have other properties, too.

Jim:

Like .. . ?

Kaitlin:

There's a servant class of characters called Twix. All they do is have sex and week-long orgasms.

Jim:

Really?

Kaitlin:

Yeah, but because the game is for kids, we can't use the word "orgasm." Instead, we have to say the Twix are "twinkulated." We also can't use terms that might freak kids out.

Jim:

Like what?

Kaitlin:

Radiation. Terror. Blood. Hell. On the other hand, our characters can fly.

Jim:

[Sounding bored.] Really?

Kaitlin:

But they can fly only in trios, squished uncomfortably together while reading boring magazines and eating cheap food that's been badly prepared.

Jim:

Hmmmmm...

Kaitlin:

But if they fly more than ten times, they can then fly solo while selecting from a wide array of DVD entertainment and drinking a crisp California chardonnay.

Jim:

Hmmmm...

Kaitlin:

Jim:

Kaitlin, I'd love to, but I have to be honest—when you say the word "gaming," my brain goes to the same place it goes when people say "country and western music."

Kaitlin:

You're an actor. Can't you pretend to be interested?

Jim:

Oh, all right, then.
Tell me, Kaitlin
—
what do your sprites eat?

Kaitlin:

Sea monkeys. But if they eat too many, they become drunk and vulnerable.

Jim:

[Jim is utterly uninterested.]

Kaitlin:

Well, let's discuss sex again. SpriteQuest is a barebacking sexual environment. Condoms are forbidden, though we can't say that, as such. Instead, the characters kind of melt together into a blob of light. It's all pretty pre-AlDS 1978.
But
if too many characters make out, then the game clicks into a "prude mode," where all the female sprites have to wear unflattering footwear, the male sprites have to have six-dollar Toppy's haircuts and the "un-baby'ed" young female sprites have to go to endless baby showers, where they're humiliated into reproducing.

Jim:

I don't believe that last one.

Kaitlin:

Finally, you're listening!

Jim:

Hey, I'm not totally evil.

Kaitlin:

Good. For what it's worth, there are spells galore, and a large palette of characters you can custom design, and everyone spends the game battling and betraying everybody else.

Jim:

You're starting to lose me again. Is there anything
Star Wars-y
about it?

Kaitlin:

You're too old for
Star Wars.

Jim:

You didn't answer my question.

Kaitlin:

Okay, then, it's generic Hollywood Screenplay 101—Prince Amulon wasn't always a prince. He was born poor in the Mukki-Mukki village, near the Harkka Mushroom, and one day a war-hardened Yalli Sprite told him his destiny . . .

Jim:

Kaitlin, sorry—I just can't listen to any more of this. Do you have enough for your homework assignment?

Kaitlin:

I think so.

Jim:

Do you want to eat from craft catering, here on the set? It's "Flavours of Provence" week. Olive oil, foraged alpine mushrooms and pork loin. But the gummi bears are stale, for some reason.

Kaitlin:

Sure. Thanks, Jim.

Jim:

Look over there—it's Goldie Hawn.

. . .

We decided to pull an all-nighter to inject bonus gore into Ronald's Lair. It was Bree who had the idea: "What if Ronald was kidnapped and we saw him on Al Jazeera three minutes before his execution?"

"What is Ronald doing in the Middle East, anyway?"

"Secretly spying for Royal Dutch Petroleum."

"I don't know if he'd work for another corporation."

"Do clowns have religion?"

"Maybe clowns are like most people, and they merely adopt their parents' beliefs as their own, all the while flattering themselves that they're the ones who made the decision."

"Maybe he's there as an embedded corporate mascot. When they drive a tank through an elementary school, Ronald passes out Happy Meal coupons to the uncrushed."

"Which country's tank?"

"Good question. Do you think Ronald looks Middle Eastern beneath that white pancake goo?"

"No way."

"Maybe he's like that California rich kid who converted and went to Afghanistan. Rich kids are the most screwed up. When they swap cultures they go viral on their old culture."

"Has anyone here ever contemplated bailing out of Western culture?"

Silence.

"Didn't think so."

"Back to Ronald's plea for mercy. When those al Qaeda guys behead people, it's not like they do it in one swoop, like the Japanese in World War Two. They use a steak knife, and it takes forever."

It was that kind of night.

. . .

Next morning:

Steve brought in the new
Conde Nast Traveler
magazine and in it there's this piece on China by Douglas Coupland. He makes it sound like the country is one big cocktail lounge. "Visit the rural countryside, where old and new brush together, creating an almost sexual friction. There's chemistry happening here, folks. The air is filled with hope and passion flower scent. .."

Steve said, "I seem to remember the air being filled with scorched rubber boots and charred auto seats, but he's certainly right about chemicals being everywhere."

I was appalled. "Lies, lies, lies."

Mark said, "Ethan, I told you, he's a professional liar. Get used to it. You're just pissed off because you can't buy into his amazing new revolutionary technology."

"I'm
not
pissed off."

We heard a moan coming from the hug machine—a bug catcher from a basketball game team. (NOTE: Workers come to visit jPod all the time now. Kaitlin has to launder the terry cloth cozies every two days. She's getting lazy and doesn't want to do it at home, so she rinses them in hot water in the coffee room sink, microwaves them for a minute and then hangs them by the ventilator intake to dry.)

Steve said, "You might as well know it—marketing is now becoming spooked about SpriteQuest."

"No kidding."

"The eye candy's not good enough, and now they're worried that a fantasy game strays too far from their corporate tradition of sports franchises and licensing deals."

"We told them that ages ago."

"Nobody listens to you people. That's why you're not executives. My point is that they're planning on pulling the plug."

"They can't."

"Yes, they can."

John Doe moaned, "We have to stop them."

"This is rich, isn't it?" Kaitlin said. "Trying to save that stupid game after all we've been through. But they can't—they
can't
kill our Ronald . . ."

Steve said, "If you kids have done your homework, he's unkillable. Unfortunately, he'll be unkillable inside a game that's

DOA."

We spent the rest of the day in denial as we competed to find the goriest photos we could online, extra points for subtlety. Winners included:

• No seat belts in Mexico City

• PETA cow slaughter video

• Romanian wedding mishap

• Punch press accident

• Drifter takes a catnap beneath Pepsi delivery

truck

• Chickenpox vaccine complications