Yet Another Variation on César Vallejo’s “Black Stone on a White Stone”

Michael Washington

I will die in Morrowind. Don’t laugh. After tonight, I am going to turn my back on the real world and retreat into a virtual one. Far away from the shadows of my past, I can assume a new identity, meanwhile keeping my true self under wraps. In a sense, I will be born again—yes, so that I can play the role of a level 70 Argonian sorceress, skilled in all six schools of magic and well-suited for the treacherous swamps of the southern Bitter Coast region, where the game always begins. Once I click “START” I cannot look back, lest I be turned into a pillar of salt. Despite it being a single-player game, I will never feel lonely. Two thousand nine hundred and fourteen NPCs will be there to keep me company, each one repeating the same couple of lines of dialogue as if auditioning for the same part in some new play set in the island of Vvardenfell. And although I will remember having been a social pariah in a past life, in my new life I can enter a cheat code that maxes out my Charisma and makes the entire population of Morrowind—from the most formidable Orc warrior to the smallest mudcrab—fall in love with me. They will laugh at my dumb jokes, compliment me on my full set of Daedric armor, and fight each other to death just for the chance to stand close to me. I might even let a few of them join me on my quest as long as they never know about the unbearable feelings of guilt and inadequacy hiding behind this poised, popular and attractive piscine alter ego. At last I will have something to live for. At last I will be ready to die. I think it will happen on a Middas, in Midyear, at midnight, during an especially beastly blight storm. Cliff racers will fly into a frenzy overhead while a thunder-gust comes slashing down the slope of Red Mountain. I’ll have to swim through the air as it pushes against me from all directions. After everyone else has taken shelter, though, the wind will fade from a roar to a whisper, inside of which I’ll hear a familiar voice. Stop fooling yourself, you pathetic loser. It’s obvious that this is all just an elaborate defense mechanism to protect your heart from getting broken again. You haven’t left the apartment in weeks. This solipsism is unsustainable and you know it. Like, what’s that supposed to mean? For pity’s sake, dude, just try to allow yourself to be more vulnerable. Oh, I’ll show you vulnerability. First I’m going to press “~” to open the console and type in a command that disables god mode, then—after dropping every single item in my inventory—rush right into the eye of the storm, in puris naturalibus, laughing like crazy. The last thing I see will be a flash of lightning so bright that it melts the squamous green skin off my bones and breaks the physics engine, finally causing the game to crash.
by Michael Washington