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a little ramble about big walk (permalink)

What big changes have you noticed in your life since COVID? Do you, like me, notice a particular timorous undercurrent in the way people speak – that, despite lockdown being lifted, people still talk as though we’re all inside; cautious to go out and do things? Not just inside, literally. Though we never wanted for communication during COVID – the platforms were still here – I think we are, on the whole, more dissociated than we were before it.

On the other hand, COVID made me reckon with my finitude. Every time I talk with my friends could be the last time. They may go silent one day, their fate obscured behind a patchy network of contacts; people I don’t know, who may not be my business to know. And if I died suddenly… who’s gonna be around to tell them?

“Fate.” What a flowery word, you think. Your friends will get older with you, and the more you grow old, the less friends you will have. One day, they will say your name for the last time. When will that be? Is anyone really so clairvoyant? Do you know when it’s everyone’s time to go? How long will they stay dead, then? Death is fate, and finitude: we had the first half of the decade to make peace with all the facts we simply won’t know.

But enough about that. You are a human being. Here and now, you are alive.

You are, so far, the only creature on Earth who can indicate an object (point), abstract and codify it with language (“that”), and know that other members of your species understand through context what you mean. Buddhists have a related proverb: Never mistake the finger for the moon. The finger represents the tactics we deploy on our journey to enlightenment. Yet despite these, the moon is always easy to miss. We may point, but our friends might not know where.

We used to be languageless, once.

In Big Walk, you won’t always be able to talk to your friends. Many puzzles require you to improvise signals and protocols. The game transforms you into animals, and dares you to transform back.

Even for those puzzles where you are allowed to speak, language might see you through – but sometimes, when we think we’ve conveyed the moon, we’re much closer to the finger. We think we’ve solved the puzzle, when we’ve only just begun to feel it out. So we refine our communications: We know our friends in the isolated chamber across will know what we mean next time, when we say over the tannoy: “the next peg kinda looks like a broken bindle:”

You will be separated many times, left to wander and wonder the island’s vastness alone, hoping to find a way back to words: something, anything to hear your friends call your name.

On the other hand, you might AFK for a while and return, only to find that someone’s thrown you into the middle of the ocean, but no-one will own up. It’s just a game – you will be found, so long as you trust your friends. You do trust them, right? Even when the back-patter cuts an inch too deep, because their night-shift job saps them of joy? When they put up that wall of irony, and suspend their words in superposition, just to ragebait you? You’ve got to trust your friends to have some flaws.

Whatever chicanery you all put each other through, none of you will dare to act so beastly in the final gauntlet. This isn’t Among Us. Despite the fact that you are all made animals one final time, kindness and curiosity spur you on. You’ve all made too much history on this island to turn your backs. You are over-encumbered with each other’s trust and cannot troll. What a terrible thing it is, this kindness we do not lose:

…Terrible because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, wind up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

At least, that’s how it happened on our island. I hope your party was like mine. Those last thirty minutes were pure zen. Sometimes, in my day-to-day life, I just wish I could go mute, and still talk to the people around me, without words. I increasingly feel like my communication is clouding with age because I am not immediately understood. As if pointing at stuff would be any clearer for the people who know me. But, then again, I suppose that’s language for you. Interlocutors have to lock in and work together. If you turn tail after even the slightest misinterpretation, then of course you’ll always be misunderstood.

After the end, everyone in my party spoke over each other to clarify this, that, and the other. The moon having been thoroughly pointed at, we finally said goodbye, and left the session. And then we continued the call on Discord, through the night. How lucky we are to keep on talking.

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