by men riding solo in the side-cars of buzzing three-person motorcycles. Lionel closed his own eyes, expecting to die at any second, when everything went dark.
A chirping could be heard, a hum, the feel of a cooled breeze hitting his face, the smell of a house and dry farmland that he knew well. He was back home, it was early morning, and he had played most of the night. His laptop was on his chest as he lay in bed. He smiled. He had done it! Hayes’ special browser was now his to use. His to spread to a few others of the senior class--attached to an anonymous email, of course. It would take a few days to package it as an executable installation file so that just anyone could download and install it on their own machines in a few clicks. Granted, their machines would have to be high-end, like his, and most seniors at the impoverished campus didn’t possess much along those lines. But a few did.
On presentation days, Perry, the tall, thin English teacher across the hall, would combine his classes with those of Hayes. On these days, usually once or twice a six weeks, they would pack Perry’s classroom, with students sitting on desks, the backs of chairs, each other’s laps, and the floor along the walls.
Hayes enjoyed working with Perry on these collaborative endeavors though they didn’t get a chance to collaborate much, both teaching seven-period marathons each day with 30-minute lunches and a period off to temporarily decompress. Still, Hayes told Perry everything he needed to know about the game for the joint project to be successful, which, in reality, wasn’t very much. He knew Perry wasn’t much of a gamer though and would likely consider it as merely another interesting teaching tool. Hayes was right, but Perry did like the idea of applying games to learning, and the history component of this particular game, and knew what to do with it in terms of applying it to his own course.
An overweight boy in baggy pants and close-cropped hair pulled his speaker notes from a front pocket and unfolded them, his left forearm tattooed from his wrist to his elbow in a way that made the arm look cybernetic, with cables and metal gears seeming to snake through the flesh. He looked at his audience, looked down at his feet and gave an embarrassed grin through reddened eyes. “Don’t laugh because I already know it sucks.” He paused. Then he began giving his report.
“I was a horse trainer in Poland. I am now thin with long arms, so I’m having a difficult time with the cold. My character doesn’t heal well. He has a cut on . . .”
Perry cleared his throat from the side of the room. “Remember the rules, Pete. Refer to yourself as the character, not to your character in the third person.” Pete nodded and continued.
“The camp is surrounded with barbed wire and towers. On one side runs a track with regular trains blowing and screeching to a halt before a long platform of men with the two lightning bolts on their collars. It comes and goes twice a day.
“ I sleep in the second tier of bunks with two other guys.” A few giggles came from the middle rows. “It's not always the same guys though.” Giggles. “I mean, some die right next to you while you’re sleeping, and then you wake up and they're staring at you with their dead eyes and you can’t wake them up so you just push them off the bunk so you can go back to sleep.” There was silence in the classroom again.
“Of course, most of us have a choice of bigger and better things in the camp, particularly if we carry the dead—and the soon-to-be dead. I haven’t done that. Or if we can convince the people that they’re only getting a shower when they’re taking off their clothes. I haven’t done that either, but you hear things from other players during the game.”
“ ' Inmates .' Don’t refer to it as a game. Talk about your experiences as if they are
A chirping could be heard, a hum, the feel of a cooled breeze hitting his face, the smell of a house and dry farmland that he knew well. He was back home, it was early morning, and he had played most of the night. His laptop was on his chest as he lay in bed. He smiled. He had done it! Hayes’ special browser was now his to use. His to spread to a few others of the senior class--attached to an anonymous email, of course. It would take a few days to package it as an executable installation file so that just anyone could download and install it on their own machines in a few clicks. Granted, their machines would have to be high-end, like his, and most seniors at the impoverished campus didn’t possess much along those lines. But a few did.
On presentation days, Perry, the tall, thin English teacher across the hall, would combine his classes with those of Hayes. On these days, usually once or twice a six weeks, they would pack Perry’s classroom, with students sitting on desks, the backs of chairs, each other’s laps, and the floor along the walls.
Hayes enjoyed working with Perry on these collaborative endeavors though they didn’t get a chance to collaborate much, both teaching seven-period marathons each day with 30-minute lunches and a period off to temporarily decompress. Still, Hayes told Perry everything he needed to know about the game for the joint project to be successful, which, in reality, wasn’t very much. He knew Perry wasn’t much of a gamer though and would likely consider it as merely another interesting teaching tool. Hayes was right, but Perry did like the idea of applying games to learning, and the history component of this particular game, and knew what to do with it in terms of applying it to his own course.
An overweight boy in baggy pants and close-cropped hair pulled his speaker notes from a front pocket and unfolded them, his left forearm tattooed from his wrist to his elbow in a way that made the arm look cybernetic, with cables and metal gears seeming to snake through the flesh. He looked at his audience, looked down at his feet and gave an embarrassed grin through reddened eyes. “Don’t laugh because I already know it sucks.” He paused. Then he began giving his report.
“I was a horse trainer in Poland. I am now thin with long arms, so I’m having a difficult time with the cold. My character doesn’t heal well. He has a cut on . . .”
Perry cleared his throat from the side of the room. “Remember the rules, Pete. Refer to yourself as the character, not to your character in the third person.” Pete nodded and continued.
“The camp is surrounded with barbed wire and towers. On one side runs a track with regular trains blowing and screeching to a halt before a long platform of men with the two lightning bolts on their collars. It comes and goes twice a day.
“ I sleep in the second tier of bunks with two other guys.” A few giggles came from the middle rows. “It's not always the same guys though.” Giggles. “I mean, some die right next to you while you’re sleeping, and then you wake up and they're staring at you with their dead eyes and you can’t wake them up so you just push them off the bunk so you can go back to sleep.” There was silence in the classroom again.
“Of course, most of us have a choice of bigger and better things in the camp, particularly if we carry the dead—and the soon-to-be dead. I haven’t done that. Or if we can convince the people that they’re only getting a shower when they’re taking off their clothes. I haven’t done that either, but you hear things from other players during the game.”
“ ' Inmates .' Don’t refer to it as a game. Talk about your experiences as if they are
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