GAME ROOMS
If you were blindfolded and
transported in a wandering, deliberately deceptive way to a site deep in the
bowels of one of the following: a casino, an AMC, an HMV, a state-of-the-art
supermall, athree-storey "theme" restaurant and bar, an AMC or
triple-decker bar inside a state-of-the-art supermall, it's unlikely, unless
you wereexceptionally attuned to the subtlest audio impressions, that you could
guess which it was by sound ambient alone. You would be able to
guess that it was
an establishment top-heavy with flourescent and neon,its surface--walls
ceilings fixtures--the kind of glossy metal that returns and multiplies the
sheen of tube lighting. You'd know not only because of the low-level
sputter--which without the blindfold you'd very quickly cease to notice--but
because of the impress of the light on your eyeballs through the cloth.
If you were spun round three times
before the blindfold was removed, it might still take quite a while for you to
identifiy your surroundings. When you did, it would be function, not design and
decor,that gave the game away. And even that might jumble in your head, in
certain
circumstances. A disorientation complete enough to make you think, playing a
slot machine, you were actually watching, or performing in, a movie?--unlikely,
but certainly far from impossible.
You certainly wouldn't know, without
outside information, if it were day or night.
How long would it take--and what
techniques would have to be applied--before your disorientation was so complete
you could be persuaded you'd been shrunk, flattened and inserted into a "hyperreal"videogame?
A man in Florida confessed to a murder he was acquitted of
because all the
physical evidence pointed away from him. So: six days tops I think, of sleep
dep, sense dep or the two in tandem before almost any of us could be persuaded
we were manipulable figures in a mechanical game with a strictly limited set of
entirely predictable moves.
"Hyperreal" in quotes
because this refers to the technology that makes the simulacra in those games
more apparently lifelike, not to any slightest tendency in videogames to
project conditions in the real world. (Hyper-commercial units tend to resemble
them only because
both borrow their
looks from currently dominant styles in film and video.) You don't get three
chances to die in real life before you're out of the game--and when was the
last time you had to kill even one person in self-defense on your way to the
local mall for groceries? Bet you marked your calendar.
This does however suggest a purpose
for the brainwashing technique desribed earlier: it would be perfect for
prepping assassins.No; not unless it were irrelevant to you who or how many
because they'd be as anarchic and univeral in their killing sprees as a
videogame hero. And how would you ever direct that purposefully in a political
sense?
There is another application. This
would be an ideal technique for breeding hyper-consumers. The only key
difference is that they're self-assassins as well, since the giddy whirl of
exploitation and exhaustion of resources, planet-wide, is killing off eco-support
systems at an accelerating rate. This is most unwise unless you have, at least,
a planet or so in reserve to move to.
