To Whom It May Concern:
Included is my proposal for the hypothetical video game, "Bed Bug
Mountain." The following is a broad treatment, more characters and
a "tighter" wrap up for the "restaurant sequence" are in production as
of this date. The following synopsis is written in the voice of the
game's protagonist, a drug addled naturalist named _____. I eagerly
await any feedback you may have, and am always available to field
any technical queries.
BED BUG MOUNTAIN: FIRST TREATMENT
Unfortunately, Mr. _____ thinks, countless times a day the philosopher animal is faced with the dilemma of designating something as sacred or meaningless. It's fallen to us, as a race, not to merely exist and interact with the world as a physical place, he observes, but as one in which every material object is laden with spiritual abstractions, typically pertaining to us, and the things we should or shouldn't be doing with our parts. As the singing, dancing consciousness of the world, humanity can't help but revel in the assumption that the birds of the air sing solely to remind them of life's patented, antiquated, reality-based joys, he posits. Likewise, the, mostly hypothetical, mountains dutifully do little-to-majestic-nothing in order to put a metaphorical face on our steadfastness, perseverance, long-suffering or any other number of laudable, distinctly male human traits.
Mr. _____ removes his shirt and wonders what collective life-lesson will be gleaned from the inevitable bed-bug invasion. Will we be willing to realize that a colony existence of thoughtless duty and systemic flesh-eating is the universe's gentle admonishment that we must do whatever necessary to abolish our obsession with existential individuality? Will we take a quiet moment to brush them from our eyes and reflect on how traumatic conception is really just nature's still, small voice telling us that we didn't invent sexual violence after all? The ancient insects, Mr. _____ suspects, have maintained those mountains and cultivated those wild flowers in order to lure us up to where our size advantage is neutralized by the absence of a swift escape route, and chances are we'll ascend in thin numbers so as to capitalize on a little one-on-one time with nature's proverbial wisdom.
Mr. _____ is not one easily transported by themes, though he recognizes that the chief function of his compromised mind is finding the sacred in-between the fluctuating limits of animatronics. Mr. _____ comes to the conclusion that the lack of a natural environment has contributed to this. Very few of the spaces he inhabits bear the resemblance of anything that has existed for very long in a human vacuum, and the spaces designed to evoke that state strike him as acutely tragic. Even if said environs are designed by specialists, or scientists, or standard-issue authenticity-regulators (always wearing immaculately re-enacted get-ups of the visionary authenticity-regulators from the golden age of authenticity-regulation), they cannot escape the parody of the parking-lot and gift shop. Since, he reasons, people generally hate living the way they do, they put a disproportionate density of faith in the inherent power of nature and travel, subsequently thinking that if they can but just graze the hem of the robe, they'll leave a little less intoxicated by progress than they were when they planned that hike.
Mr. _____ removes his pants and does not think about his recent employment at a rainforest-themed nightmare. He does not reminisce on unloading unsolicited, non-ordinary, potentially-true facts about the rainforest on people while they try to order plaster buckets of ice tea. He proceeds to not think about lying to kids. He sits ape-like, oblivious to how many young people that passed through the nightmare's befuddlingly Caribbean gates he instilled with an enduring fascination with the natural world. He does not share the glory with the, long-extinct, lockjaw gorilla or the regal, yet suicidal-looking, cheetah. More likely than a cynicism concerning the drudgery of eating out, he unknowingly instilled in countless a wide-eyed wonder for wild, open spaces. Mr. _____ contemplates that as you get older your tastes and criteria for an appropriate approximation may improve, but it doesn't change the fact that, more often than not, most don't mind purchasing a fatally-edited synonym. Shielding his rapidly burning face from the epileptic glint of a million sparkling ice-tea buckets, Mr. _____ thinks, "There is something to be said for the fact that the places where we choose to consume often end up emitting messages not too dissimilar from own values." Under the influence of mild hallucinogens, as he is wont to do, Mr. _____ anthropomorphizes the restaurants scattered like satellite debris across the unknowable green-like depths of the valley:
"I long for kinder, simpler times when women were 'Ma'am' and men were 'Honey" and you could sit in a rocking chair and, for once, actually take your time digesting and thinking back on the hearty meal that was just lovingly hand-crafted just for you by a sweaty-browed farmer's daughter up to her elbows in biscuit flour."
"I care about protecting endangered ecosystems."
"I value that every neighborhood should have sort of a, I don't know, common place. Or public square. Somewhere where on any given night you can just walk in and know that there will be someone there that not only knows your name, but knows you. They don't mind when you bring in an entire baseball team full of kids drunk on victory with their kind-eyed, dock-working papas and the papa's wholesome fire-fighting boyfriends in tow. In fact, last year's championship trophy is right up there above the bar next to the photos of dead cops."
Mr. _____ thinks of himself as objective enough to acknowledge that these are all ideas commonly held by decent people everywhere, and that there's really nothing intrinsically wrong with finding yourself in ideological harmony with a place like that. He doesn't necessarily think it indicative of weak character or anything. It's possible, however, that over time, the process of becoming more and more accustomed to profit-driven ventures supplementing our lives with a little subconscious spiritual substance has driven our expectations way down, while subtlety inflating our expectations for what, you know, money can buy. For this reason, day-trips to parks he's always found particularly depressing. He dreads driving up to them, parking and then starting the walk across the parking lot to where the nature starts. As if he could be transported from the crushing mindlessness of automated living by virtue of a duck pond. Like a nature-themed restaurant where you can't buy anything. Losing his composure, he muses "There are no more mystical properties in de-contextualized nature than there are in looking a black hole in the face."
Since most people have taken the angle in life of putting what they'd like to do at direct opposition to what they actually do, it really doesn't come as much of a surprise to Mr. _____ that most people don't identify the peril involved in slowly dying of diabetes and bed sores as being quite as severe as the peril posed by the possibility of being eaten by a mountain bed bug. If given the option, he wonders, what would closet boy choose? ("Closet boy" being the philosophical device in which a non-nurtured human lives in a soundproof, pitch-black closet until he's an adult who can proffer untainted, instinctual answers to hypothetical questions.)
He contemplates his microscopic role in history.
He wonders if technology will eventually abolish our dependence on physical bodies, and longs for his consciousnesses to abandon the physical world. Quickly boring himself, his physical body falls out of the tree at a non-uniform rate while his consciousness hopes theme-restaurant induced obesity might be an evolutionary step in this direction. "Evolution always takes prisoners." he says to the bed bugs.
Thank you for your consideration,
Mr. ___________
