Spinal Flowers
We
were three: me,
No names. She thinks she’s so
cool. Dressed in tight leather pants, a white shirt, a tweed jacket. What a
pair of eyes and what a perfect spine—I almost think she could have been a good
gamer.
the
Camerawoman and the Assistant.
These two … who
cares about them? Unimportant NPCs, just a bunch of stupid reused assets.
Three
women still half asleep, standing in front of the derelict remains of what used
to be the world’s greatest competitive
OK, here’s the deal. Esports are all about proving
gamers are aristocrats of the mind.
gaming
arena and had since become an illegally occupied gaming commune. This was to
be, we hoped, the crowning moment of sixteen months of research into the
eSports team known as Spinal Flowers
They were five. Are five? Hard
to say, time works differently for them nowadays.
and,
more importantly, the abuse they suffered at the hands of their Coach.
That’s me, babes, providing you with the best live
narration you can hope for. Buckle up, grease up and down the chute we go xoxo
Through emotional manipulation, blackmail and threats of physical
violence, this woman forced the team members into increasingly inhumane
conditions; we could not change what happened, but we still believed in the
value of telling their story.
Five
years ago, the Spinal
Together with some other projects, the Flowers were
part of what I called Gamer Culture Research Unit. GCRU for short, LOL.
Flowers
When we first
started, I forced them to live in a sea of bone dust for five weeks, just for
the lulz. Also: spinal liberation meant they needed to antagonize bones. Like,
they needed to understand one fundamental truth: skeletons are cages.
were
about to be crowned for an outstanding year of flawless performances: they took
part in every possible championship
Well, competitive gaming doesn’t really let you use
cheats straight away, right? But what everyone always wants is to become sort
of a goddess of the game. To be so good everyone thinks you’re cheating. But
you’re not. You’re just on a whole different level.
across
the world, won the top prize in each one and did not lose a single match in
what amounted to almost 4000 play hours logged in less than 365 days. Moments
after the announcer called them on the stage disaster
It was a fucking
supernova. Brightest moment in human history. I. SHIT. YOU. NOT. Of course
we’re just apes and can’t stare at bright stuff for too long, so everyone sort
of tuned it out. But “the Journalist” now returns to the place where it all
happened. Such a good girl. Throw her a bone if you ever meet her, will you?
broke out.
Walls trembled, screens fell
to the ground and the foundations of a gaming arena as big as an Olympic
stadium cracked the exact moment the Coach stepped on the limelight, the
five
black round coffins
After a couple of years fooling around, we needed
to get serious about gaming. Humanity needed us to get serious about gaming,
actually. I decided to put the Flowers into these state-of-the-art tubes that
basically hooked their spines directly to the computer. No more fumbling around
with the keyboard, carpal syndrome or whatever. The input lag was un-fucking
believable, trust me.
that
housed the players following closely behind. Seconds later, the ceremony stream
broke off. We watched this video over and over again: the Coach’s triumphant
smile, the announcer ogling at her, the audience’s
How can I
describe the smell of stale sweat, the ecstasy, the cries of exultation? It
made me fuzzy inside in all the right ways. Think of the frenzy of neural
flowers blossoming from their spinal bone cages.
eruption of cheers and applause, the chaos that ensued.
The aftermath
There are no happy endings. There are no endings,
actually. There’s only the next game, the next match, the next season, the next
update, the next vertebra, the next premium skin.
had
been predictable: the area was cordoned off, an investigation ruled the
disaster a publicity stunt
These dumb
FUCKS! Really? A publicity stunt? I mean, I know—people like to stick their
heads in a hole and pretend the world is the same after any change, but a
publicity stunt? Five towers of bone and nerve, taller than the bloody Burj
Khalifa and that’s the best you can come up with? Ugh.
gone
horribly wrong and public interest moved on rather quickly—there had been very
few wounded and even fewer fatal victims. The rest of the world mostly forgot
about the event, much in the same way it paid little mind to the five white
towers
Their spines
bloomed! It was beautiful! Too bad no one was streaming this. I cried so much,
oh my god. I watched their nerves twinkling as they stretched to the sky.
that
jutted out of the crumbling remains of the arena and into the sky
This story
begins and ends with towers. You know how they say guys with tiny dick love big
cars? It’s the same with us: we pretty much hate our tiny spines so we built
these towers to compensate for them.
two days later. The official line was that these were connected to
the failed publicity stunt. Investigators found them unworthy of attention and
we followed their lead.
Instead, we were obsessed with
the story behind the Spinal Flowers and their relationship with their
manipulative
The lion, the witch and the AUDACITY of this bitch!
Manipulative my arse! Did you notice she just assumes the other two think
exactly like her?
Coach.
A pink-haired petite beauty of a woman with more
charisma any of these idiots has the guts to admit. I’m the baddest, coolest
bitch in town and no one got anything on me.
None
of them had been seen since the disaster and were presumed dead. We had a
different theory: the Coach was still alive, hidden in the gaming
No, OK, for real now. We have been fucking around
with metal and oil and electricity, but nothing is as efficient as the nervous
tower encased in bone that runs from your waist to your skull. What I realized
is that going straight to the metal, so to speak, straight to the bone, the
marrow, the nerve is much more efficient. You want the next level? You want to,
what, visit Alpha Centauri? Liberating the spine is the way to go. The only
teeny-tiny problem is that the nerve is too small. It is held back by the bone.
commune,
avoiding public scrutiny.
If petroleum is a self-aware lubricant, spinal
fluid is … like whipped cream. It’s part of the delicious conspiracy of the
cosmos.
Contrary to our expectations, our request to visit the place had
been accepted, under the condition we were supervisioned by a guide and abided
by their rules at all times.
And so here we were, waiting
in the abandoned parking lot next to the arena’s eastern entrance. The air
smelled of a recently cleaned grease trap with sugary undertones; unpleasant
yet nostalgic, almost comforting. Our guide arrived six minutes late as we
discussed the disgusting perfume.
I can totally see why you might think that truth
would be beyond the capabilities of an interface loop, but that’s where the
spinal nerve reveals why it’s 🔥🔥🔥. Its price is pain, but its reward is vertical
enlightenment. But every brilliant thing has a limit. What I did with GCRU and
the Spinal Flowers was to show how to go beyond that limit.
We did
not know what to expect, but were nevertheless taken aback when a ten-year-old
girl with fishbone cornrows wearing bright yellow clothes and a black surgical
mask waved, beckoning us to approach a hole in the walls of the old arena
There was this Dutch guy once who said that we
always play inside a sacred space and that religion, art and gaming all come
from the same source. So it makes sense that when someone starts playing really
well, like really, really well, they become sort of a priest or a god.
instead
of the sealed gates. She did not give us her name,
I mean, what did she expect? She doesn’t even call
the people accompanying her by their own names.
saying we could just refer to her as First Phase; when asked about
her parents, she giggled and handed us a pamphlet with the rules of our visit.
We were supposed to follow
closely behind her; wandering unaccompanied was completely forbidden.
Evacuation routes were bureaucratically pointed out in case of emergencies. No
cameras nor food
After I shoved them inside the coffins, my Spinal
Flowers lived off streams—they received nutrients not from food, but simply
from watching livestreams, walkthroughs, gameplay videos (no commentary because
no one has time for overly dramatic YouTubers).
allowed.
Questions were only permitted when we reached a save point, of which there
would be only one. Once we confirmed we had understood the instructions, she
turned her back
Spines are like cosmical training wheels. They can
help, I don’t know, a planarian to function in this universe. But they’re
obviously going to hold you back after a certain stage of cognitive
development. I’m all for assistive technologies, don’t get me wrong, but if you
want to take on the universe, you need to learn to survive without them.
to us and moved deeper into the hole, gesturing for us to come.
When she did so, the
Camerawoman gasped and brought her hand to her mouth in shock. Though the child
did not seem to have any difficulties
What will spinal liberation look like? I love to
think that our bones will eventually break open or melt and then release a
fungal fruiting body.
moving,
we could clearly see a misshapen mass of an extremely deformed spine
Spines also protect us, though. From what? That’s a
damned good question. The spine shields us from the trauma of the universe.
Traumas are very leaky protocols. What I have done with the Spinal Flowers is…
I guess I upgraded their firmware. And any sysadmin worth their salt will tell
you that whole network can come crashing down after even a minor patch. No
one’s safe from issues connected to code deprecation and mismatched struts, you
know what I mean?
beneath her shirt. If First Phase noticed our
reaction, she did not seem to mind it. She gestured again and we entered the
building.
#
Our
visit drew a spiral around the
center
I seriously vlogged this once: “the existential
immanence of the gamer is as unfathomable as that of the universe itself. The
gamer is until the gamer transcends. Advanced gaming is the final act of
cheating AKA rule manipulation.” I mean, it’s true, but it sounds stupid when
you say it out loud whilst getting obliterated by some boring griefer.
of the
arena, each iteration digging closer to the building’s kernel: the stage where
the audience once watched intense joystick, mouse and keyboard action. As it
was now, the stadium had become something very similar to the espionage levels
of certain first-person games from the 1990s,
I guess I should talk about trauma. I don’t mean
only the stuff you lived through, but the stuff that came before you. Before
life, before organic molecules, before heavy elements, before stars, before the
cosmic microwave background. A lot of smart people agree on this: we relive the
trauma of everything that existed before we were born.
which was an unexpected display of nostalgia. Corridors were
shaped by barricades of cracked displays, computer cases, empty vending
machines and assorted advertising material—stands, branded desks, boxes packed
full of USB sticks and t-shirts, body pillows in the shape of once-popular
waifus and husbandos.
“It is our belief
OK, real talk now: to speak of truth in scientific
terms smells of incest.
that
gaming is uncannily good at the depuration of things to their quintessential
shapes and manifestations. The world of ideas might be an epistemological
utopia, but gaming can access a place not completely unlike it. Our hallways
are the idea of the derelict hallway purified and made flesh.”
You can think of universal trauma or geotrauma as
that grinding rage you feel when you die for, like, the fiftieth time against
the same boss.
First
Phase spoke to us in a monotone, with a calming voice like those created by
early voice synthesizers, before speech synthesis took advantage of neural
networks. It was boring yet crystal clear
So, what I
realized is that playing videogames is like decryption. You get Answers with a
capital A every second. That happens because game systems grind the
unintelligibility of the cosmic microwave background cypher into dust! That’s
why we game! It’s the only way we will ever get the universe to make sense!
—and, as odd as it felt saying it, scratched an itch we did not
know we had right where our necks met our spines’ C1s.
Corridors
The future: a
riviera of bone stalks growing out of crumbled asphalt. The skeleton was
displaced and the spinal cord is in full bloom. Want the best sightseeing
tickets? Click here!—uWu I’m so random.
led to large rooms that had been separated to create communal
living spaces, workshops and a few private rooms where, we assumed, the members
of the commune slept. We walked among those who lived there as if we were
ghosts, invisible yet still corporeal enough that everyone avoided approaching
us.
“The inmates are all
passionate gamers.
When I’m in a
good mood, in my bathtub, drinking milk-carton wine mixed with gamer girl
bathwater, I look at the mirror and repeat it until it becomes true: gamers are
delicate sugar-free brain flowers.
They
willingly contribute to the maintenance of our commune either via actual labor
or with direct monetary contributions. Resources are shared. There are at least
two gaming devices per square meter. The distribution of food, etc. follows our
internal leaderboard. Mid-ranking inmates receive more food than lower-ranking
It’s like this: if a gamer doesn’t grasp how much
depends on their actions, they’re, like, waste of skin. We’re not in this for
fun, capisci?
inmates;
those with the lowest
Well, those who cannot advance past a certain skill
level, they will still be here. Actually, they’ll probably always be the
majority. Like, apes and monkeys and shit are still around. Human dominance
hasn’t destroyed them. I mean, not completely, at least. We have coexisted for
a long time. We’re all in this together, but some are just better than others.
scores,
or whose scores have significantly declined, can only access nutrients if they
put enough hours in their game
🎶A gamer is a witch is a scientist is a puppet.🎶
of choice.”
The practice seemed more than
slightly inspired by the Spinal Flowers’
You know what they say: wise humans first shed
their clothing, then their own skins. But it is only when they shed their
spines that they stop being human.
Coach
herself and her abusive management of the team members. We held our tongues.
The Journalist
once published a text calling for the abolition of professional eSports
players. She wrote: “The whole practice is a perversion of the Olympic ideal.”
Like, bitch, all athletes are scapegoats.
“I see
you are uncomfortable with this system, but I assure you that we are all free
to leave the commune. No one has ever done so because this is the best place in
the whole planet to get a deep understanding of the inner workings of reality.
Since none of you are in top 2%, you might be surprised to know the better
gamer one becomes, the more one becomes instinctually receptive to this topic.
The more you
think about it, the more you realize that physics are the sociology of the
universe.
In any
case, if anyone were ever to leave, you will be happy to knowing they would
receive enough of their choice of currency
A lot of people
get the coffins wrong. They weren’t about isolation (the Spinal Flowers had
permanent internet access and that’s the one thing I never took away from
them); they were about radicalization. Getting them off ground, stretch them as
much as they could stand, dissolve those bones in LCL.
in order to survive in the outside world.”
Her eyes were ice-white with
bloodshot sclera. She stared at us as if reading our movements
Broke: the
universe of competitive gaming.
Woke: the universe as competitive gaming.
and
tells, in search of our attack patterns so she could vanquish us.
First try, no
damage, only light attacks, challenge run, LMAO!
It was almost effective in distracting us from the insanity of
what she said.
“The exception to these rules
If the universe is a game, physics are its rules. I
wanted the Spinal Flowers to understand the game well enough they could change
its rules without fundamentally disrupting any of its processes. Knowing how to
play games in general obviously leads to insights in understanding the biggest
game ever, AKA the universe.
are
our top
There is no PC master race, there are no console
peasants—that’s just griefer bullshit. True gamers are all about melting in a
vat of primal soup and altering their perception of reality so they can only
parse digital input.
players.
They wouldn’t be able to leave—not that they would ever consider the
possibility.”
Think about it:
games are an interface that allows you to actively, meaningfully impact a
simulated universe. And if you know the rules well enough, you can do much more
than influence, you can change things. I know some programmers are going to boo
the hell out of me, but if you know the interface well enough, you can do
things the programmers don’t want you to do. You can go beyond the system. The
universe works the same way; why wouldn’t it? That’s what the Spinal Flowers
and the GCRU are all about, my lovelies.
First Phase offered no further clarification. Was her spine
writhing in place?
“We will reach the save point shortly. You may want to prepare
yourselves. Think about your strategies. Try and remember if you have faced
this boss before, look for clear tells and weak points and remember there is no
point in hoarding consumables.”
The sweet grease trap perfume we had sensed earlier and which
permeated the whole tour grew stronger. The door at the end of the hallway was
open and allowed us to see a large open area.
“Many people talk about the top and bottom lanes, but, really, the
jungle is what defines the game. You might want to remember this,” First Phase
said and stood next to the opening. She pushed a switch and a yellow neon light
in the shape of an exclamation point shone above her head.
We peeked outside the door: it
looked like a boss area, as implied by First Phase. We looked at each other,
shrugged and stepped into the room.
You know that Austrian cuck spoke about the death
drive, right? Thanatos or some other bullshit. Well, I propose we rename it and
call it the Leroy Jenkins instinct.
#
This
had clearly been a lounging area,
possibly one of the spaces where teams would wait for their names to be called
by the MC. Barely audible music
So, about what happened on that day: it wasn’t
planned, but it was perfect timing, not gonna lie. The Spinal Flowers abandoned
their spines all at the same time. The coffins noticed that, so they started
pumping more chemicals and stuff inside the Flowers. And then they bloomed.
Their vertebrae melted, their cords stretched towards the sky. They exploded
from inside the coffins and, well, started the next level.
started playing from two small loudspeakers on the ceiling, both
installed at the edges of a fissure that allowed sunlight to filter in.
Differently from pretty much everywhere else we had seen till
then, the furniture here had not changed since the events of ten years ago:
sofas, old computers, empty energy drink cans and, most conspicuously, five
round marks on the carpet that indicated something heavy had occupied that
spot. Our minds immediately conjured the images of the Spinal Flowers’ coffins—their
“metallic wombs for the verticalised next step of evolution,” according to the
Coach.
The quiet melody suddenly morphed into a choral piece sung in pig
Latin and Esperanto.
A tall woman wearing a golden
mask and a ragged veil over the mask entered the room from a golden door. Atop
her head was an unsteady, wobbling mass of fake silvery curls arranged in what
might once have been a beehive or some other sort of bouffant-adjacent
hairstyle. The rest of her body was covered in chromed
Every coffin had, like, a small box on the back.
That’s where we’d inject more LCL or other primordial-soup-like things. It’s
also where the Flowers dumped what they didn’t need anymore. Their shit, I
guess.
robes, halfway between cheap beauty parlor and medieval sleeping
gown.
She came down a flight of stairs and more than once we thought she
would fall and break her neck, but there was a certain method to that
precariousness. Never did she hurt herself and her poise remained constant and
unabated. Having reached our level, she said nothing as she walked around us in
circles. Out from her robe came a dancing hand that brushed against the
Assistant’s cheek. We heard hard, labored breaths beneath the mask.
“You can call me Final Phase. You can ask one question each now.
But there is a catch,” her voice was all tease and seductive mockery. “If your
questions are dead-ass stupid, I’ll meet you outside this arena so hard you
won’t know what hit you. If they’re good, meh, I guess you’ll get to see the
stage and the towers up close. Come on, now. Don’t be noobs.”
The Camerawoman jumped at the opportunity.
“What is your position in the
internal leaderboard?”
There are matches and there are matches. Some you
must win because it will benefit you, others you must win because it will
benefit your species. What may look like just a few awkward 3D models is
actually a super important stepping stone towards spinal liberation.
“That’s a very good question. One of the few that matter.” She
took a few steps and almost touched the Camerawoman’s long dark hair. “I don’t
take part in the leaderboard. I am outside.”
“Are you a boss we’re supposed to fight?” The Assistant, of
course.
“Another good question.” She
hummed, lost in thought
The IRL lore surpassed the in-game lore.
for a moment. “But we are not fighting. No game is really about
fighting. Fighting is just something slapped on top of the actual mechanics so
our stupid monkey brains are entertained whilst we’re doing important stuff.
Fighting is … like one of those silly skins that change the looks of your
character. The mechanics, what matters, are still the same whether you’re a
crazy doctor with a giant scalpel or an eye-covered abomination.”
She looked at me, expectantly. I shook my head.
“I want to ask my question after we see the stage.”
She laughed as if she were a 3-meter-tall vampire lady.
“I like your pizza. Your
rankings are abysmal, but… I guess there’s something in you that might be
useful. Come.” She was about to turn around but changed her mind and walked
towards us until her mask’s nose touched mine. “This is not a gamble. The
universe
If the universe is a game, players are
demiurges-to-be.
is
always a game of skill,
If the universe is a game, is anyone playing it?
Think less glass beads, more mecha-spirit-void-dragons with big-ass guns.
not of chance, babe.”
We walked up the stairs and
stood in front of the golden door, once again in silence.
🎶 I’m a goddess with a blade/come and say that to my
face/소리쳐봐 내 이름 / yeah yeah yeah. 🎶
Final Phase led us first into a corridor surrounded on both sides
by the arena’s seating area and then straight to the stage. There was barely
any ceiling here and natural light entered freely from five large fissures on
the ceiling. The five towers rose beyond the holes and into the sky.
They all looked more or less
the same. From up close, the effect was striking: not cheap inflatable plastic
as we thought, but a thick orange and pink stalk that looked like animal flesh
entangled in gnarled strands stretching high above us. Like trees,
Like, think of trees! They immobilized themselves
because this way they had nowhere else to go but up. They tortured themselves
to get where they wanted! We’re doing the same! I mean, I forced the Spinal
Flowers to do the same. That’s trauma, baby! Bang!
the
towers had roots
But gravity’s a bitch and trees can only grow so
much. And they’re super slow. If we keep waiting on trees, we’ll never pierce
the atmosphere and connect to universal trauma. We took the matter into our own
hands.
that
seemed to go deep underground—these were white like the bones one would expect
on a necromancer’s armor. Like a fungus, their bodies ended on a giant fruiting
body. Like a scoliotic spine, they did not reach towards the sky straight on,
but sinuously. Around them
There’s also
another thing. The game of the universe is obviously an MMO. There are other
players and we’re playing against them. I don’t know what happens to the loser,
but I sure as hell don’t want to find out, if you catch my drift. See, it’s not
all about egotism, it’s about survival.
there
was what we could only describe as a small forest
Going vertical is also clearly what we should be
doing. Look at how life evolved. Trees, yeah, sure, but also animals. You first
have those slithering things, then you get loads of species who try to become
more vertical. Birds flying, for instance, or apes tried to stand up. Do you
know how much that messed us up, standing on two feet? It’s obvious life wants
to become vertical. There’s a reason for that!
of computers whose dark cables connected to the towers’ roots and
flesh via small incisions.
The Assistant sat on the
floor, removed her glasses and pressed her palms against her eyes.
I think this is
something really good to keep in mind: “To examine the world as if it were a
simulation is besides the point. An advanced enough simulation is itself indistinguishable
from reality.”
The
Camerawoman seemed overtaken by a terrible itch as she scratched her back with
all the effort she could muster. Final Phase observed with apparent
disinterest. Here she seemed almost liquid, like a joystick-controlled puppet.
Cerebrospinal counter-cryptography—LOL, that means
gaming—will allow us to unlock transuniversal traumas and cosmic net code.
We
tried brushing away the feeling of wonder and see the towers for what they
really were, monuments to exploitation
Yeah, sure, they bitched a lot when we forced them
inside. I guess a bone or two might have been broken in the process. Was that
wrong? Uh, I guess? But they all went really quiet when they saw the latency in
those things. It was quite literally a game changer.
and
abuse,
Being inside the coffin is like being inside a
mesh, you know. They’re like Shinji from Evangelion, but cooler. Instead of
daddy trauma they have geotrauma.
but it was hard to focus. We were here to find the Coach, unmask
her, write our exposé and speak openly about gamer exploitation, but all of it
felt insignificant when contemplating this scene. Perhaps the smell of rotten
grease and pink bubblegum indicated mind-altering substances? As if reading my
mind, Final Phase drew closer and gave me a light back rub.
“Will you accept what you see,
I wonder? Can a noob
More than a game, the universe is a videogame. The
real question becomes what is the genre? An open world RPG is what a noob would
say. MOBAs, though—that’s where the XP really is, babes.
appreciate
a hard-to-get collectible?” Final Phase’s intimate whisper reached our ears as
if her lips caressed our ears. “Press ‘F’ to pay your respects.
The cosmic
microwave background is a hidden invitation. Forget those boring diagrams. The
CMB is like the universe sending you the best moments from its Let’s Play
video.
You
are looking at the rules
It is a
100%-verifiable SCIENTIFIC FACT that every organism relives the experiences of
every one of its ancestors before it is even born. It’s what I always say:
geotrauma, geotrauma, geotrauma.
of the
game
We don’t know what happened exactly, but we carry
the scars and we live through these scars anyway. I know, babes, it can hurt.
as they are bent. Cheating without cheating. Or, actually, I guess
it’s more you’re feeling rather than seeing it.”
The ground
But why? Why does this happen? Well, it’s a bit
like as if we had the rules inscribed inside us, inside our bones, you know
what I mean? The universe is a game and what we perceive as trauma are
basically the rules, the algorithms, etc.
shook
slightly beneath
And, like, games are patched all the time, right?
To make sure everything’s balanced, to add some new gameplay or some lore
twists, that sort of thing. Well, in our case updating means living and dying.
So, knowing all that, I thought: “well, what if we try to freeze a part of the
game, skip the patches, learn how to maximize exploits? Let’s turn the game to
our favor!”
of our
feet. The towers inched higher in a small but visible growth spurt. From this
close, the fruiting bodies at the top of the towers looked like bloodied
skulls. It was then I asked my final question.
If you’re some sort of dirty hippy who thinks
“artificial” is stuff that’s shaped by some active intelligence, then,
newsflash, you dumb fuck: the entire universe us is already artificial. There’s
nothing organic about any of it.
It came to me suddenly, from a deep place accompanied by a mushy
feeling on my lower back.
“Are we winning?”
Winning and losing are, like, the blueprints for
life and death. We don’t live or die, we win or we lose. Have you ever died?
Wrong answer, you totally did. You only truly die when you lose a match.