Eden
There’s something wrong with the code.
When the women enter the city, the screen distorts, and the buildings begin to disappear and reappear, and then the character models crumble, and finally, the game crashes. I close the game and go into the source code, scanning it, my lips moving faintly. The June sunlight shafts through the window and shines on the screen, making it reflective. I watch myself: red-haired, sharp-featured, eyes wide and tired. Then I squint and look past my reflection and scan the code again and again.
Months and months of work have gone into this. I can’t even count the number of nights I’ve sat up, fueled by coffee and determination, trying to sort out the snags and bend everything into something that works. I rub my eyes and lift my gaze.
The coffee shop is half-full, midday on a Saturday. In the corner, a hipster-type man sits, his hair tied up in a man-bun, wearing a Star Wars t-shirt (ironically, I’m sure), and typing at his laptop. Businessmen sit to my left, talking in hushed tones. Three women stand behind the counter, swirling milk or stirring coffee or spraying whipped cream into hot chocolates. The coffee shop is all heavy brown couches, plush cushions, and comfortable armchairs.
Months, I think, scowling. Months of work and now the game decides to stop working. Months of work and now the game wants to ruin all my hard work.
I force myself to look at the screen again, to scan the code. There has to be something wrong. There has to be something I’m missing. This problem has hounded me for the past few weeks now. It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep and the first thing I think about when I wake up.
My course is in gender theory, and when I approached my professor and asked her if I could submit a video game instead of a long-form essay, she was shocked. Her gray eyebrows shot up like a cartoon character, and her mouth formed a comical O. And then she stroked her chin, and began nodding.
“Very cutting edge, is it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her, keeping my voice level. I wanted this, badly. I wanted this more than I’ve wanted anything in my twenty-four years. I was desperate for my professor, an old-school feminist, to say yes. But I didn’t want to show her how badly I wanted it. If you show someone how badly you want something, they’ll use it against you. That’s my theory, anyhow.
Finally, she nodded definitively. “A video game,” she said. “But make sure it has something to do with gender theory. You must understand, this is very strange. I understand you’re a computer programmer by trade. Very well. That gives us some excuse, at least. But please, Miss Chase, make sure it has something to do with the subject matter.”
“It will, I promise.”
“Good,” she said. “This will be very impressive, you know, if you can pull it off. I might even get an article in Education Weekly.” She waved her hand in the air, as though spelling out a headline. “Avant-garde Professor Gives Thumbs Up to Daring New Project.”
The conversation comes back to me clear and stark, as though it is happening now, in the coffee shop. My fingers ache from typing code, my back aches from hunching over at my laptop, my eyes ache from staring at the screen—and now a problem has sprung up out of nowhere which I can’t fix.
The deadline is approaching fast, lightning-fast, and there’s little I can do to fix it. All that work—artists, voice actors, animators, and all the coding… all of it paid for out of my own pocket…
I shake my head and take my phone out of my pocket, dial Natalie Smith, my friend and my coding partner.
The phone rings twice, and Nat’s voice chirps through the phone. She’s LA-certified. Nat talks like someone who just fell out of a movie about tech-head teenagers, all squeaky and high-pitched and giggly.
“Eden!” she giggles, but the giggle is dark. That’s Nat. She can somehow make a giggle dark. “Any luck?”
“I was about to ask you the same question,” I say. “What the hell is happening to the environments? Is there some kind of glitch? Have we made a mistake? Because if we have, I can’t find it. Not at all. Not even close.”
“Bet you wish you stuck to an essay now!” Nat sniggers.
I don’t return the laugh. Maybe she’s touched a nerve, or maybe it’s too close to the truth. But video games, women in video games… they’ve been portrayed like bimbos for a long, long time. Sure, every now and then you get an exception to the rule, but the rule is still iron-strong. You have a woman with giant breasts and pouty, big lips and fuck-me eyes and that’s the character. You have half-naked women bouncing all over the screen. Side-characters, minor characters, eye candy. I just want to make a game where the women are the main characters.
“Eden?” Nat chirps, bringing me back to reality. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Just… Yeah.”
“We’ll sort it,” Nat says. “We’ll find it. I’m sure there’s just a line of code somewhere we’ve missed. Or maybe there’s a chunk of code that’s missing, and we just have to write it in. It’ll work out.”
“Sure,” I say, but I’m not convinced.
The problem popped up when I added in the duel-wielding robe-wearing old woman character, but even when I took her out, the problem persisted. Perhaps adding her disturbed something else? Perhaps I’ll have to go back and rewrite huge chunks of it, just to be sure? But that fills my chest with a heavy terror. The deadline is in two weeks, the thirtieth of June, and if I miss it, I’m screwed. Bye-bye Ph.D. in Gender Theory, bye-bye months of work, bye-bye chance at making a video game that lets women do something.
“Eden!” Nat exclaims, breathless. “You keep going quiet.”
“Just thinking, Nat,” I reply. “Sorry. You don’t have to bury yourself in it like I am, you know. It’s my dissertation.”
“Yes, but it’s our video game. I wouldn’t dream of letting you trudge through all of this on your own.”
I can’t help but smile. “You’re a good person—”
“Can it, bitch!”
I laugh. “You can it!”
We hang up shortly after. I’m laughing, but the terror in my chest doesn’t get any lighter.
Maybe she’s right, I think. Maybe an essay would’ve been easier.