While The Player Sleeps

by Scott Tierney

  While The Player Sleeps

  While The Player Sleeps

  First published in 2019 by

  Acorn Books

  www.acornbooks.co.uk

  Digital edition converted and distributed by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Copyright © 2019 Scott Tierney

  The right of Scott Tierney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  While The Player Sleeps

  Scott Tierney

  *

  There is a far-away city, both within and outside of our own, where the population is content in its purpose: to entertain.

  At any given hour of the day, when The One they serve requests it, the city’s inhabitants present themselves to the world as though actors before an audience. In an improvised pantomime of everyday normality, the inhabitants routinely shop for groceries, hurry for buses, grumble in line at cash machines, and pre-empt movie plot twists from the front row. Some mingle in crowds, some loiter the corners nefariously; others sit idly on park benches in the rain and pretend to converse on telephones. There are hundreds who drive a predetermined variety of automobiles along predetermined routes at predetermined times at predetermined rates; others, as though living scenery, perform the roles of background labourers and window cleaners and waiters and vendors, serving street food, as the case may be, to those inhabitants who in turn will buy it.

  And then there are a privileged few – those installed to lead from the front. Whether they feature in the guise of a recurring authority figure, a criminal, a politician or kingpin, these few have been entrusted with a more interactive and pivotal status: At specific intervals they are required to deliver select lines of carefully scripted dialogue. The truly special are even intrinsic to the city’s ruling narrative.

  The inhabitant’s numbers are fixed at an optimum – the population cannot increase through birth nor decrease through death, for neither is possible. The inhabitants themselves do not age or eat. They mate but cannot breed.

  But of the thousands of inhabitants living in the city, not a single one is more important than the next – there is no hierarchy, no class system, no pyramid of rank which the population must adhere to, nor enforced structure of governance. The inhabitant’s task, their ultimate purpose, is what channels the direction of their existence – and each and every member of the city’s population, as though the individual teeth of a single cog which drives a vast clockwork machine, functions selflessly for their one ultimate master:

  The Player.

  For, as we would understand it, this is the city of the video game – the urban sandbox, an open world simulation, and the inhabitants are merely the actors upon a digitised stage.

  Existing solely for the entertainment of Him...

  ***

  Today is a new day, and as such there is a bristling sense of anticipation in the air. The city is subdued, patient, practically motionless – yet it remains as primed as a coiled spring. Rather than banter between themselves as they would do normally during these interludes, the inhabitants wait on their marks like mannequins, running their pre-assigned steps over and over in their heads, should their apprehension foster complacency. The majority of them will not be required for the opening scene; yet, to make certain that the stage is set all the same, the inhabitants busy themselves with last minute tinkering: ensuring that every stop sign on every street corner is pointing in the right direction, that each of the health packs is accounted for, that every ammo crate is fully replenished and visible, and that all the pre-launch bugs have been corrected ahead of time – for a new Player will soon make His presence felt.

  And when He does, a select group of inhabitants will step to the fore. Such is both their honour and their burden, their initial duty is to greet The Player as though having known Him for years. Over the course of these first crucial hours, they must act as both His cohort and sherpa without ever acknowledging the latter. In an effort to preserve the facade, they must subtly teach Him without lecturing Him, guide Him through the initial tutorial without fatiguing Him; their foremost task is to train Him, groom Him, direct Him, support Him – and above all else, when The Player departs into the city to begin His adventure, they must ensure that He understands the fundamentals of the game which is shortly to commence...

  As though an intuition, every inhabitant suddenly senses that the moment is at hand. Like wooden villagers emerging from their doorways upon the chime of a cuckoo clock, they take a breath, step from their marks, and begin their performances as though a choir erupting into song mid-verse – and through the passenger window of an approaching bus, none the wiser to the incalculable intricacies involved solely for His benefit, The Player gazes out across a city alive with commotion:

  Sound-tracked by an 80s remix, a flaming sun bears up from behind the cityscape like a molten glitter ball, basting the skyline in a lush orange hue.

  Overhead, two passenger jets skim the high-rises in tandem while another touches down on a landing strip with a squeal of rubber.

  The day’s first overground train departs from a terminal minus several passengers whom have missed it intentionally, each hurling their hats to the platform in pantomime frustration.

  Running parallel with the urban canyon, a swarm of overweight pigeons scatter from a phone line, while an equally as globose electrician ascends a ladder breathlessly – a moustachioed hot dog vendor on the pavement below begins calling out the prices for with and without guano.

  Accompanied by the yelling of a marital spat, clothes and suitcases are thrown from a penthouse window, which in turn a garbage man collects and tosses into the rear of his truck. High heels clicking down central avenue, a business woman recites an off-hand phone conversation regarding her husband’s girth, while a slicker in a red convertible wolf-whistles precisely on cue before tearing up the highway in a cloud of cannabis smoke.

  The city is now in full swing, practically throbbing, every sidewalk a scene unto itself. Lights switch back and forth from red to green. Car horns blare like musical notes. A tramp drops his whisky and chases a dog with a half-eaten pretzel in its mouth, while a group of truants lark beneath the spray of a gushing fire hydrant.

  And at the centre of it all, the all-important bus continues into the city as though a key slipping into a lock...

  Leaning beside a bus shelter with a newspaper tucked under his arm, a burly and barrel-chested man waits patiently – one of the few. If everything is proceeding as it should, the bus will arrive in exactly eleven seconds: the number 47 Greyhound, eastbound, front-left hub-cap on the wonk and taggings up its side. The man knows that when the bus pulls up to the kerb an old lady with a carpet bag will step off, followed by a pair of rabbis, a punk, three college students-

  Then lastly, Him.

  Out He steps – tall, dark, His shabby preordained clothes already mottled with sweat; a more streamlined and youthful version of the man patiently awaiting Him.

>   At this stage, as He absorbs His surroundings for the first time, The Player may appear vacant and distracted. This is to be expected – the burly man knows it wise to allow Him a moment to discover His bearings and become accustomed to this new environment, before greeting Him as any sibling would.

  Praise be, my kid brother has finally returned home! the man, the brother, rejoices before encasing The Player in a bear hug, a back slap, and other manly platitudes regarding the weather and the length of His trip.

  As though a mime, The Player is incapable of responding verbally, as it would complicate the illusion were He permitted to interact with this charade beyond the cursory. This the brother also knows – he will talk enough for them both, anyway. Besides, in terms of His experience in this city, The Player is a comparative baby fresh from the womb – literally, He must first learn to walk before He can run.

  As such, this attribute will be instilled via the first important lesson...

  Tossing his newspaper into a nearby waste bin, the brother requests that The Player follow him to his car, and proceeds to begin walking down the block. During this clandestine procedure, it is imperative that the brother does not stop, wait, delay, nor turn around to ensure that The Player is still following him through the crowds – all the brother must do is continue talking naturally for the twenty-eight seconds it takes to reach the car. Like any guardian, however, the brother is vigilant of his pupil – a discreet and maternal glance into the reflection of a passing van’s windscreen confirms that He is still keeping pace.

  When the twenty-eight seconds are up, at precisely the moment when The Player will least expect it, the brother suddenly steps from the pavement and crosses the road. Better to dash than dawdle in this god-damn congestion! the brother yells over his shoulder mid-sprint, to which The Player correctly interprets as an invitation to do the same. As such, He runs out into the traffic in hot pursuit – a rusted taxi immediately slams on its brakes inches from The Player’s toes, and the driver commences a fevered rant in some foreign language.

  Just as rehearsed, the brother smiles privately to himself. So far, so good...

  Upon reaching the car, the brother suggests that The Player take the wheel – he offers the ready-made excuse that he’s been hitting the red eye and the red heads all night; but, as we all know, this is merely a means of necessitating The Player’s first driving lesson. This He undertakes without too much difficulty: a slight hiccup when He takes a wrong turn and has to reverse up a one-way street, and several cars and pedestrians are narrowly avoided, or at worst, clipped, en-route. But no harm done – no lasting damage can be inflicted upon anything or anyone in the city, for everything regenerates in the time it takes The Player to turn His back.

  Once they have safely arrived at The Player’s designated apartment – His private sanctuary where He can change His clothes, store His collectables, and save His progress at the conclusion of each session; and, explicitly, where no inhabitant is permitted to tread under any circumstances – He and the brother part ways, for The Player must now be left to His own devices. It is expected that He’ll head out and explore the city for Himself shortly thereafter. This is always a concerning time for the inhabitants – with no pathway to guide Him until He chooses to select one, The Player can literally go anywhere and do anything on a whim, just as a dog cut loose from its lead will invariably sprint free of its master. Over the coming weeks the inhabitants will become accustomed to His behaviours and rhythms, and will establish how best to tailor their exchanges to the benefit of His experience; but at this stage the inhabitants must improvise on the fly...

  On the occasion of His first outing, all inhabitants know, instinctively, that if The Player comes charging across the street with the intention of stealing their car they must not prevent Him from doing so – only fight back once He Himself has learned to fight with adequate dexterity, a skill He’ll be taught in mission nine. Similarly, if The Player then wraps said car around a lamp post while fiddling with the radio for the first time, so be it. Accidents will happen. Better to preserve the illusion and have The Player become familiarised with the route home from the nearest hospital, rather than make it apparent that you are pandering to His each and every step. Besides, He has the extra lives to spare.

  And should fate decide that you are the first policeman He meets, and He pulls His gun on you and puts a round between your eyes just for the hell of it...well, what a lucky son of a gun you are! Many of your fellow inhabitants, the lesser-interacting outskirt dwellers, may yet have even glimpsed The Player, let alone received His virgin bullet. You truly are blessed, blessed, to be His first ‘kill’! You’ll be dining out on that one for weeks!

  Yet let it be repeated that there is no stratum operating either formally or informally within the city – every single inhabitant, no matter their role, location, level of interaction with The Player or class of character they are assigned to perform, is any less vital than the next. Put simply: the inhabitants are not the characters they play. A whore is not a whore just because she dresses as one, nor is an oligarch to be revered because of his applied accent and toupee. Unified, the inhabitants modestly consider themselves as mere brushstrokes on a canvas, zeros and ones, as single bricks in an integral supporting structure for which they are all equally accountable.

  And this pronouncement applies just the same to the brother. Although he may act as The Player’s elder sibling, crony and right-hand man for the entirety of the game – ready at His shoulder with advice and covering fire whenever called upon – regardless of his unique position, the brother is no more elevated or important than anyone else in the city.

  In spite of his private ambitions...

  A week into the game, and a routine has already begun to flourish:

  With all the zest of a child escaping school for the freedom of the summer holidays, The Player would bound from the doorway of His apartment and embark on the next chapter of His fantastical crusade. More often than not, parked on the kerb opposite with radio loud and engine running, the brother would be waiting in the passenger seat with a spare 9mm locked and loaded, a lesson in dual wielding on the day’s docket. Sometimes it would be a different character who would arrive and take the lead, both literally and narratively speaking; on many occasions The Player would be incentivised to brave it alone. Regardless of the mechanisms devised to initiate it, however, the action always came thick and fast and down-right furious! There were car chases aplenty, gun fights, bank-jobs, stakeouts and hold-ups; each cinematic activity skilfully choreographed by the inhabitants for the maximum amount of theatricality and enjoyment, for they all understood that The Player must want to keep returning to the city, day after day, week after week, eager for the intensifying challenges and adventure therein – and doubly so for the rewards, of which the inhabitants ensured were plentiful: exotic cars in fluorescent paint jobs, briefcases overflowing with money, trophies and alloys and power boats and whiz, bling cumbersome enough to drag down a frigate – and far more besides, all carefully nestled away in the nooks of the city like secret Christmas parcels.

  To a certain degree, the inhabitants felt like parents at this early period of the game, with The Player their adopted child. That is not to say that any inhabitant considered themselves somehow above The Player – they revered, respected and idolised Him for the deity that He was – yet it was only natural that a paternal bond would develop in the hearts of the inhabitants, such were the integral interactions that both parties played in the others’ lives. Many inhabitants had to hold back their tears when He took that inaugural hair-raising venture on the back of the brother’s superbike; and those who were lucky enough to see Him down His first helicopter with a sole bazooka shot still spoke of it to this day as though recounting a baby’s first steps. The fact that none of the inhabitants would ever raise children of their own only stirred these paternal phantoms.

  It should be no
ted that very few inhabitants allowed the matter of The Player’s being to dwell upon their minds – or at least to occupy them any more than was necessary. The question of where He came from – not to mention why? – was regularly pondered but never conclusively answered. Who was The Player? the inhabitants often meditated in their quieter moments. Was He, in a sense, like them? – one assuming the guise of another as a means of giving definition to their existence?..

  But philosophical conjectures aside, there was one undeniable and inevitable fact that all the inhabitants were perpetually aware of:

  One day, when the game was over, He would stop playing...

  Just as with any film, novel or drama – or even life itself – the game was not indefinite; eventually the narrative would reach its climax, the missions would play themselves out, and the credits would roll like the falling of a curtain. This conclusion would not signal the demise of the city or the inhabitants themselves – their time would go on; and another Player would ultimately follow in His place. This certainty provided the inhabitants with a great deal of solace; yet, just as when a child reaches maturity and leaves the family home, when the day finally arrived and The Player bid the city a fond farewell, His departure would be both a wrought and emotional moment for every present inhabitant...

  But that was a concern for the future. For now, The Player was engrossed and just starting out on His journey – and this in turn meant that the inhabitants were consumed, content, and, above all else, occupied.

  Life for the inhabitants, in essence, was presently everything that it should be:

  It was meaningful.

  ***

  The next milestone in The Player’s ongoing quest had successfully been overcome with the completion of another mission. And what a mission! The best yet! some exclaimed: A jet ski chase through the suburban aqueducts, followed by an explosive tank battle in the city’s airport, and all rounded off with a ten-man fist fight across the wings of a taxiing airliner. What a marvel! What a romp! The Player could not have failed to have been enthralled! And it was all thanks to the efforts of every single inhabitant, for not one member of the cast – not the brother, the pilot, the henchmen nor the final boss, to name but a few – had put a foot wrong from beginning to end. The mission was literal perfection!