You are in an seedy area downtown.
The videogame starts as you (Dr. Romantique) are outside the window of an apartment, spying down on its occupant from an fire escape which is attached to the window.
What are her options?
Enter the Apartment.
Or.
Try to slide down and get away.
Well inevitably if she entered the apartment there would start an conversation. However if you try to slide down you are sighted and the game is over. Thems the breaks, you dig?
But, inevitably, once you are inside the apartment there will be another option menu. And the whole beginning of your story in the game will hinge on how this interaction will go. Do you.
Strike at violence against your opponent?
Ask him where he is?
Try to calm the pants off of him OR to calm him down OR (optimistically) to calm him down long enough to escape. (Which could include calming the pants off of him). I would just slip out, unnoticed in the wee hours. Leaving an condom and the gun he was riding you with bullets in it. Not such an deputized hero anymore, eh big guy‽
Or ask him where an can of Coca-Cola is and how I can get back to the party.
"You're from the street," he would notice, "you must be hungry and thirsty. You poor depraved thing. Let me cook you some nosh."
The point is that that is the occupant of the apartment and you have to start an conversation with him. How would that go exactly? Would you try to lure him out into the night and take him back to whatever catwalk you walked out of? Or would you inevitably stand there, having entered the apartment. And you would have to say something convincing so that he doesn't shoot you. You would have to convince him to come out with you, into the night. Where our feelings and fears are forever forgotten. Or you can try to convince him you didn't come through that window because he was just noticing that she had been in here the whole time now.
And what exactly would you say?
—Oh. Hello," you say in an sultry voice, "I was just leaning out that window there for some air. I needed to smoke an cigarette. I'm done now. How is the party downstairs?"—and then you rush past him, holding up your bra which is attached to your dress with both hands. And down in the foyer.
You get the point. He would be dead by now and I'd have to make an getaway somehow.
I rush down the stairs in an frock and gown into an bar, where there is still daytime on the walls through the sunsetting window and the bartender is drying his glasses. There is an merry gathering of hotel patrons. All of whom know you descended from the stairs; and so you slip in, drinking with them until the opportune moment when all of them would look at the bathroom at the same time and then realize this and then have to take turns.
And if you make any wrong moves you slide down the fire escape and die after having your skin cheese-grated off by the brick outside wall of the establishment. They all have guns. Be careful Madame! So you pick up an Deer Skein (an larger one) and you declare and all-out drinking competition. And in order to do it you outdrink every man by ignoring every one of his questions. And you slip out into the Midnight, whereupon before the hour, everyone has been drunk under the table. Through the open door to the street, which you gratefully run out of, half out of breath, half sick with the obverse effects of excessive drinking. In your cowboy boots and coat & dress; like Florence into the Machine. An woman. With an sexuality. And if anybody had anything to say about that, that was un-manageable then they would suffer and incur the wrath & taint of having offended an feminist. Don't ever offend an feminist.
Then she slipped out the door into the night; the street was deserted except for piles and piles of garbage. Someone had been smithereens in there, capeesh?
Do you.
Inspect the Garbage Can. Or?
Take an tour into the wild life of the downtown cinema and nightlife.
If you go into the garbage can you get to explore the sewer level with the rats and the green slime which endlessly passes through the underground pipes, being flushed out for some reason.
If there was an smithereens in the tapestry of what goes on down there, then you'd get my idea.
People get lost in the sewers.
People disappear and nobody ever hears from them again.
And you spotted it: that little smudge in the window onto an tapestry. This is an world in which one can make mistakes. If you already made it all the way down here. Then haven't you made an mistake already?
Don't mess up is written on an page floating down the pool flow so you go back. You have one more chance to get this right.
You dive into the drama unfolding at the centre of this civilization; its masterpiece. The open commerce of ideas and opinions. Art. Theatre. Drama. You seek out an nightlife. You seek out an deity. You're in an place where nobody ever makes mistakes, morally and theoretically. There is no such thing as sin and so anyone can do anything. And that is moral and fair to consider this just everyday and ordinary.
- å -
As for how I will advance the Super Alemba plot line, in an new series I call Ending Alemba. This will be possibly the longest plot line I attempt in writing (which must be the purpose of the videogame genre itself). There are essentially two separate plot lines that the gamer can advance themselves through however, in writing, there is only one way forward. One must read the entire script for the first dimension (an top-level society on Earth's surface in which there are doctors and their happily coerced doctorate students; yet however the mystery persists of what happened to the glorious Dr. Grey Pilot). Whose torture and possible decay message screen had come from the civic centre to Alemba herself. Dr. Grey Pilot has the ability to transfer images and tokens of language to her from wherever he is located in the civil centre (an downtown model for an society with skyscrapers). But as to his exact location; where he may be experiencing distress; this left unknown for an specific reason. If the reason the civilization is showing me this, reasons Alemba, is that they see I myself have its potential. I don't know whether Dr. Grey Pilot is suffering or not because this society aims to do something to me. Which depends on my sense of the truth and morality. If it is already good enough for them to do this. Then I must not have something wrong with me. And since that is moral to think so. I need to find out what is happening to Dr. Grey Pilot. Even if nothing is happening to Dr. Grey Pilot. And I will let this society write on me for better or for worse; because if I can't be sure myself of what is happening to him then I need to go there, to the civic core; to find out if it is an rotten core. And since that is moralistic of me I deserve whatever achievements and gratitude I get for driving my language through that core path; in addition to narrate what's happening under the city. In the underground realms. After all of the levels leading to Dr. Grey Pilot have passed, there is still the second option which opens up somewhat near the beginning of the game. The option is to go into the underworld, in order to explore parties, systems, peoples, and the pipe-based systems of the world's worst demons and criminals. You know an Mos Eisley, except the actual one as it exists on Planet Earth.
Ending Alemba, therefore, today ends on that note. Will she be defeated by the subways and their minions. Or will she find her demise in the Capital somewhere. Above ground. In an place of such grandiose virtue and beauty it could be believed. That an doctor should ever suffer such as he is communicated unto Super Alemba. Whose own purpose, should she be denied, will be to glorify the lessons of the republic. Should that be the fate they will bestow on her for her world mastery? If she was moralistic enough to need to find out Dr. Grey Pilot's fate, no matter what they sent against her to deflect her from finding out. She knew that whatever they threw at it was further evidence of there being an plot against the Great Dr. Grey Pilot. Who was not deserving of suffering in this environment. And if that was at the core of civilization; that they would treat one of their doctors with such suffering. Then that too was the purpose for why Super Alemba had come; to take the helm if she needed to. She could steer them out of that toxic space and environment in which an registered Doctor would need to call someone from the suburbs, to call for an hero of an junkpile to come rescue him. Brave, brave, Super Alemba. Now with the force of the Feminist Champion within her array of utilities belt and more Super Mario power and Hammer-throwing than ever! Super Alemba is the Feminist taking after Mario himself in her own treacherous adventure of crossed-paths and alliances. But if she, to chance, had decided to go on down to the underworld, leaving the possibility of Dr. Grey Pilot's torture under question (she could make excuses (there was no way he was actually being tortured but she couldn't be 100% sure)). Then she would enter into the cavernous civilization underground (the one under the city) where it was just an given that she was probably acting immorally because she didn't give an fuck about some unknown professor who had randomly called her up from the Capital.
(Of course this language is only meant to model her thinking in the matter).
"Help me, Super Alemba!" she would remember his cry.
And there was an matter, wasn't there? That would always be an motif in the plot that it would return to. She couldn't ignore him, could she? Shouldn't she be thinking about Dr. Grey Pilot's safety?
But she had other plans. If she entered the underground of the city. She wasn't exactly going to drive to the Capital to locate or save him. She was going into the underbelly of the city, where all of demons and skeletons were. This is what she would do instead of doing the right thing. And she had an reason to, according to the narration of the game (it did continue on, and let you play the levels below the city). Even though Dr. Grey Pilot would periodically contact you and inform you of his dire and unknowable status and position. Who would possess the nerve necessarily to go on playing this game, by ignoring the poor doctor? And that would be part of the fun because it's only an game.
