Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

There’s so much shouting at the beginning. That’s how the game starts, with a squad of recruits in a drab-green tent, a drill sergeant yelling, the game controller vibrating in fury. While he yells orders, I can select my character from the recruits. There’s a square-jawed man with a crew cut, a darker version of the same guy with a short Mohawk, and then another mountain of muscle with a feather in his hair—presumably Native American. It’s what passes for diversity in the game. Three identical brutes of slightly varying shades.

I choose one at random. And while the drill sergeant with the spittle-flecked lips tells me where I’m supposed to go and who I’m supposed to kill, I put the game on mute to silence his shouting, get up, and go to the kitchen for a glass of water. More than once, the sergeant’s shouting has woken the baby. Which means rocking her back to sleep for an hour rather than seeing to my garden.

The lecture is over when I get back to the sofa. I fish a coaster out of a drawer and leave my glass of water to sweat while I gear up. There’s an arsenal to choose from. The standard package is already in place, with grenades dangling from my chest, a knife that runs almost from hip to knee, an assault rifle, an Uzi, and more. I take all of it off, piece by piece, and grab five canteens. They attach to each hip, one at the back, and two on the chest where the grenades were. It’s almost like a boob job, going from the grenades to the canteens. I glance around the empty living room. No one to share the joke with.

My weapon of choice is buried in the menus. An AK-47. It’s the only one that comes with a long knife attached to the front. The last thing I grab is the small pistol. And then I leave the tent and head out into a world of rubble and barbed wire, a world where everyone is always fighting.

A helicopter rumbles past overhead, kicking up dust, low enough to see the men sitting in the door, their feet dangling. It’s always the same helicopter. Like it waits for me to step out of the tent before whizzing past. The game is predictable like this. Do the right thing (or the wrong thing) at the right time, and you can predict the results.

I leave camp through the rusty gate at the front, a fellow soldier yelling at me to be careful, that a squad of insurgents had been seen in the vicinity. There’s the pop-pop-pop of nearby gunfire to punctuate the warning. The gate in the game swings shut behind me—and our home alarm beeps as the front door of the house opens. The rumble of the helicopter had drowned out the sound of a car pulling up. My husband is standing in the doorway, staring at me with the controller in my hand.

“Are you playing my game?” he asks incredulously.

I stare over the back of the sofa at Jamie, who is holding his car keys, half frozen in the act of setting them down. He appears as shocked as if he’d walked in on me having sex with his best friend. I set the controller down guiltily. As another helicopter flies overhead, the controller starts to vibrate and scoots across the coffee table.

“No,” I say, defensively. “I’m not logged in as you. Technically I’m playing my game.”

“This is the coolest thing ever,” Jamie says, finally dropping his keys onto the table by the door. Not only is he not upset—he seems to be over the moon.

“What’re you doing home?” I ask. I check the baby monitor to make sure the volume is up. Somehow, April has not stirred from the door slamming.

“I had some flex hours—was about to fall asleep at my desk—so I took them. I tried to text you—”

“I forgot to plug my phone in last night—”

Jamie joins me on the sofa. Plops down so hard, my cushion jounces me up. “Have you played before?” he asks.

I nod.

“Like, often?”

“Usually while April is napping,” I say. “Daytime TV drives me insane.” I feel like I have to explain taking an hour to myself in the middle of the day, so I start to tell him that it isn’t like I get to clock out at five the way he does, that the job is twenty-four hours a day, but Jamie is interested in something else.

“But you hate video games,” he says.

“I don’t mind this one,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is that I’d tried most of them. The driving game, the sports games, the weird one with the cartoony characters with their spiky hair and massive swords. What I liked about this game is that you could do whatever you wanted. Except play as a woman, of course.

Jamie opens a drawer in the coffee table and pulls out a second controller. “You want to deathmatch?” he asks.

“I doubt it,” I say, picking up my controller. “What’s that?”

“It’s where we glib each other all over the war maps.”

“Glib?”

“Yeah, turn each other into large chunks of rendered flesh. Blast each other in the guts with our double-barrels. Shoot you limb from limb. Rocket jump off your head and turn you into a puddle of goo. It’s awesome.”

Now I know what he’s talking about. I’ve watched him play online with his friends, whom neither of us has actually met. He plays with a headset on, cussing playfully at distant others or angrily at himself. I’ve learned not to interrupt him, to just read a book in the bedroom or take April around the neighborhood in the stroller, or go to my mom’s.

“No, that’s okay,” I say. “You can go ahead and play.” I set my controller back down and stand up to check on the baby.

“No, no, sit.” Jamie grabs my hand and tugs me back down next to him. “I want to watch you play. I think this is awesome.”

I reflect back on all the times he’s tried to get me to play games with him over the years. Even the time when we were just dating that he got me the dancing game—which was okay—and the musical instrument game—which I was horrible at. I feel guilty that I’ve been playing in secret for the past few months, ever since I got home with April and have been on maternity leave. Rather than trying to make me feel bad, Jamie is just excited to see me interested in one of his hobbies. So despite dreading him seeing me play, I pick up the controller. On the TV, the camera has pulled back and is spinning around my character, something it does if you stand still long enough.

“What’s with the canteens?” Jamie asks, squinting at the TV. “You gonna drown people to death?”

It occurs to me that Jamie probably heads off after the insurgents and does all the things the loud drill sergeant tells me to do.

“Why don’t you play for me?” I ask.

“No, c’mon, I wanna see you play. Pretend I’m not here.”

He kisses me on the cheek, then sits back and folds his hands in his lap. I wipe my palms on my blue jeans and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I guide my character away from camp and into the winding streets of a war-torn Middle East neighborhood.

There are pops like firecrackers to my right. I’ve been that way. As soon as I go down the alley, a tank rumbles through a wall behind me, and people start dying. I’m usually one of those people.

Ahead of me, there are civilians scattering across the street, seeking shelter. Faces appear in windows before shutters are pulled tight. Some of the bad guys are dressed just like civilians. I’ve spent enough time running through here to know who is who. There’s a man with a dog I’ve named “Walt,” because he reminds me of our neighbor, who is always out with his cocker spaniel. The woman in the faded pink house is “Mary,” because she makes me think of my sister. Jamie is fidgeting beside me as I pass through the market. I duck around the back of one shop to avoid a shootout in the front. I can hear the bangs like Fourth of July fireworks as I weave through debris in the back alley.