Penny didn’t know what was so hard about sympathizing with a computer-generated video game character or a Korean woman, but that seemed to be the general consensus.
Penny started out with the mother talking to her lawyer. That much she felt was solid. It was a secure, accessible place from which to world-build. She figured she’d lull the reader into a false sense of security—begin as Law & Order that transmogrifies into The Matrix without warning.
She made herself a cup of tea, sat back down, and tried to imagine the woman’s appearance. Penny began by picturing her hair. Did Korean women get soccer-mom haircuts? Penny settled on giving the mom a bob and dressed her in a gray maternity dress. According to the papers, she was pregnant again by the time she and her husband were sentenced.
What did this woman want? Did she feel bad? How bad? As bad as you should if you ignore your baby to death? How engrossing can a video game be that you forget your baby?
“I am not a bad mother,” said the wife. Mrs. Kim was subdued, with no makeup, and her lips were chapped. Her hand shook as she drank from the white paper cup. She was diminutive and of indeterminate age. As he flipped through her file, he saw she was younger than her husband by twenty years. She’d gone to a good school yet had never held down a job. Mrs. Kim met her husband at an Internet café, and according to witnesses, they were affectionate and companionable.
“I’m not a bad mother,” she repeated in a daze. “I loved my babies more than anything.” She took a sharp intake of breath and corrected herself. “Baby.”
The lawyer glanced up from his notes. The wife’s chin trembled. He jotted down that she still considered the video game baby to be real.
J.A. advised the class on “voice” and how a good way to work through a story was to make it sound as if you were explaining it to a friend over e-mail.
Penny figured texting was as good.
SAM HOUSE
Yesterday 1:13 AM
Wait
Hold on
I want to ask you something
Don’t be offended
Haha does that ever work?
Nope!
Fine
Say it
Be nice though
Writers are sensitive
How does your story count as fiction?
This woman exists
The couple’s real
Sam found a documentary on the couple and they’d watched it together. Not in the same room. Just at the same time, while texting. Every article and TV segment treated them as though they were Internet oddities or space aliens. The documentary, in particular, may as well have been about talking dogs the way they presented the parents. Penny wondered if the perverse fascination would have been as extreme if it had happened in America. A country, by the way, where a guy in Minnesota tried to raise his kid to speak Klingon.
That’s why I want to write about the baby in the video game as well
That’s the fiction part
The fantasy
Does the baby inside know that the real baby is dying?
IDK if the video game baby cares Collateral damage etc
Jesus that’s dark
Is it though?
VG baby lives in constant violence
That’s why SF’s the greatest
You make the rules
San Francisco?
No dork
SCIENCE FICTION
SAID THE DORK WHO CAPS LOCKS science fiction Hahahhahaha
Fair
I like this
I can’t wait to find out what video game baby wants Penny couldn’t either.
J.A.’s homework schedule was no joke. Every week there was a new short story due, and for those Penny wrote about squirrel crime mobs, post-apocalyptic plagues that only took out people over nineteen, colleges in the future where the entrance exams were assassinations, and a Buddhist who died and came back as a toy. Building a world where you rappel in, set up some characters, and ejector seat your way out was a breeze.
J.A. had no patience for breezy, and when she called Penny in for office hours, she told her as much. Her teacher’s room was filled with succulents in rainbow-glass planters, and Penny halfway expected her teacher to extend an offer of friendship she was so pleased with her last story. It was about a crew of powerful moguls and politicians who were set adrift in a spaceship since the planet they were destined for wasn’t where they’d thought it would be. The astrophysicist eggheads they’d left behind had been wrong. These men were the 1 percent of the 1 percent who had abandoned the rest of civilization, and still their billions couldn’t save them. The universe had told them the first no of their lives, and the fight scene was hilarious.
“These are great,” said J.A. began, “but . . .”
Penny hadn’t been expecting a “but.” She braced herself.
“They’re rhythmically one-note,” J.A. continued. “You’re inventive and funny—that’s clear on the page. I want you to work on character motivation. I can’t invest in protagonists when I don’t know what they want, and just as important, why they want it.”
Penny felt color rising on her neck. That wasn’t fair. It was clear what the men in the spaceship wanted.
“They want their planet,” Penny said. She cringed at the whiny pitch she was taking.
“Well, yes,” continued J.A. “They all want that. Humans want to live, that’s a given. The issue is they want the same thing in the same way, and that’s a missed opportunity. You’ve got world leaders here. They’re captains of industry. They’re singular men, but look . . .” J.A. circled some passages. “They speak the same. I’m only picking on you because your excellent dialogue and glitter-bomb observations won’t save you for the final.”
It was clear Penny’s sweet spot was two or three pages. The last story they’d had to write was twenty thousand words. Longer than anything she’d ever written. Penny usually wrote to escape, so her worlds were fantastic and, well, apparently one-note.
Penny thought she knew what her characters wanted. It was trickier to deduce why they wanted anything. And a different proposition entirely to say how they’d get it. Hell, Penny had no idea what she wanted. Why would her inventions fare any better?
Plus, there were so many distractions. Ergo, getting up at five fifteen this morning.
Penny planned to hammer out her three acts, handwritten on note cards, so she could visualize scenes and move them around. Except that as she fanned out her color-coded three-by-fives, she realized that her nails were disgusting. The puny chips of lacquer were sad little archipelagos of poison that were probably falling into her food. She took out the nail kit her mom got her as a stocking stuffer every Christmas and removed the polish.
Penny didn’t want to admit how much she resembled her mother in these moments. It was classic Celeste, to do nails instead of what she was supposed to be doing. It struck Penny that she missed Celeste at the oddest times. Often the most baffling parts of her, too. The way her mom’s rib cage felt when she hugged her from behind. Or how the curly hair of her econ prof reminded her so much of Celeste during lectures. If only there were a way of seeing her mom without either of them having to talk. When Penny’s nails were bare she figured she should wash her hair. There was nothing worse than ruining a fresh manicure with an ill-timed shower.
While Penny stood under the spray she noticed that because their dorm bathroom didn’t have a window, a thin layer of mildew had formed in the caulk. That itself was tolerable, except then mold was a foregone conclusion and that stuff could kill you. An hour and a half later she was clean, the shower stall was spotless, her nails were a matte slate gray, and she was ready. She put pants on so she could apply the seat of them to the chair.
This is what she had so far:
The baby in the game was known as an Anima so she wrote down “Anima.”
Then she Wikipedia’d it since that’s the first order of business when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.