GAME ROOMS

                                                                              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.