Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2016 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2016 The Empathy Project: A Novel Evan Corey Crommett Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Crommett, Evan Corey, "The Empathy Project: A Novel" (2016). Senior Projects Spring 2016. 233. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016/233 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Empathy Project: A Novel (Part One) Senior Project submitted to The Division of Written Arts of Bard College by Evan Crommett Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2016 Sproj Acknowledgements (heehee say that three times fast) Mary Caponegro is a blessing to this department and to this galaxy: intelligent, kind and incomparably stylish. She is the original gangster. If you see her around campus, give her chocolate and thank her for juggling ten jobs while continuing to offer her advisees the overwhelming kind of support one only expects to find at home. Thank you to Aleah and Aro. I was going to say, “thanks for being my rock” but there are two of you, and calling you “my rocks” somehow feels wrong. Thanks for being my favorite two pebbles. Thank you, Mom and Dad. You give me faith that art is a worthy way to spend one’s life. And by worthy, I mean: hardly pragmatic. And by hardly pragmatic, I mean: fuck pragmatism I’m happy and driven. Thank you, Amanda. This story wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t grown up around someone willing to imagine worlds with me. Thanks to the plaza guys for inviting me over with the promise of wild nights just so we could play Call of Duty until 2 AM. Other human beings from various parts of my life that have influenced me/this book: Marina Van Zuylen, Melanie Nicholson, Nicole Caso, Patricia Lopez-Gay, Eric Trudel, Keith O’Hara, Lynn Hawley, Joseph O’Neill, Eileen Stevens, Brad Morrow, Everyone in BRAD, the cast and crew of Making a Man, Roger Manix, Ben Hale, Horatio Sanz. “At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.” ––H.P Lovecraft “I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee.” ––Skyrim Guard 1 Elias 1 I stared, glassy-eyed, into the soft glow of my own creation. “You’re almost there, ma’am,” said an animated doctor on the widescreen in front of us. We could see his face and his arms up to his elbows, but not what he was looking at. As he was speaking, white font typed itself across the bottom of the screen. LEVEL 1. THE ORIGIN STORY OF JADEN CHAOS The cries of a woman in labor could be distinctly heard from the surround-sound speakers. “Just keep pushing!” The doctor said; his sweat droplets glitched as they fell. I glanced over at the face of the Ubiware representative. He was sitting in the corner with his iPad, expressionless. Had he spotted the glitches? “It hurts so bad, doctor!” said the woman’s voice. “Something must be very wrong.” “Everything is fine, miss Anderson,” the doctor assured her. “Look you’re almost there.” The woman’s screams came to a crescendo. “Just one more push and…” There was a close-up of the doctor’s eyes dilating in fear. “What is it, Doctor?” “Oh my God,” said the doctor. A nurse behind him fainted. The screen showed the anguished face of the woman. “What’s wrong with my baby boy?” she shrieked. “Miss Anderson, your boy is…” “Tell me what’s wrong with Jaden! Or at least show him to me!” “He’s wildly overdeveloped.” The doctor’s voice trembled. “His muscles are huge. This is no average child. This is some sort of monster!” The camera cut once again to a close-up of the woman’s face, streaming with tears. 2 “No, I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, in a state of shock. “Let me have a look.” The woman screamed, then the camera cut back to the doctor. We could now see the bundle of swaddling clothes he was carrying. “It’s best we put this abomination down before it’s too late,” he said. “But he’s my son!” “This thing isn’t a he. This isn’t a human being at all. It’s nothing but an error. Sometimes Mother Nature slips up and it’s our job to undo her wrongs before it’s too late.” “Okay, doctor. Do what you have to do.” Just as the doctor was reaching for a comically large syringe, the camera zoom-cut to a close-up of the baby’s eyes flashing open. In slow motion, the baby did a backflip out of the doctor’s arms and landed on its feet a yard or so away. He was about two feet tall, able-bodied, and deeply disturbing. He cracked his tiny knuckles. The doctor fainted. I took another look at the representative and was able to discern nothing. I’d been hoping this particular moment in the game demo would elicit a reaction of some sort. A laugh, a snort of disgust, even a look of utter confusion would have been better than this impassivity. A second doctor appeared, scooped up the syringe and pressed a giant red button on the wall with the word “emergency” embossed on it. Alarms went off and red lights flashed in the delivery room. All at once, the cinematic mode of the game shifted to active gameplay. A black banner with yellow, glowing text appeared at the bottom of the screen: Press B to disarm doctor In the chair to my right, one of the animators, Avery, tapped on his controller, triggering the brawny baby to grab hold of the doctor’s wrist as he lunged, and subsequently 3 deliver a series of karate chops to his arm. The doctor crumpled. The baby retrieved the syringe and cocked back a veiny arm to deliver a coup de grâce. “Please don’t!” screamed the doctor. The action momentarily froze, although the baby continued to breathe and sway in the pseudo-fugue state reserved for videogame characters. Another banner appeared at the bottom of the screen with the following text: 1. Okay. I won’t kill you. Get out of my sight and tell no one of this. 2. Why should I show you the mercy you denied me? Avery toggled the controller’s thumbstick, alternating which of the two lines of text was highlighted. “What do you think, guys? How bad do we want Jaden to be?” he said. He glanced around the room. “Up to you, Avery,” said the other animator, Jackson, knowing exactly what would happen next. Avery smiled impishly and selected the bottom line of text. “Goo goo gah gah,” the baby said ominously, and we watched as he stabbed the syringe into the doctor’s chin. Using the momentum from this blow, the newborn hurled the body out of a nearby window. “You monster!” yelled Jaden’s mother, who had been watching in horror. Another black banner with text: New Mission: Escape Hospital Avery navigated Jaden into the hallway and was ambushed by a squadron of doctors holding M16 assault rifles. Jaden had just begun to dodge their bullets when Avery paused the game. “This is where you wanted me to stop, right?” He looked at Noah, the head designer. Noah nodded, and turned to the representative, Jonathan Gust, who had agreed to come in 4 to our headquarters and look at our game. Gust worked for a large gaming corp called Ubiware, which had a history of discovering and backing small indie videogames. He’d said very little since coming in. “After this the graphics get a little shoddy. Plus, you only wanted to see the first couple minutes of gameplay, right?” Noah said, deferentially. Gust nodded. We all waited. Watching the game demo alongside Gust felt a bit like how I imagine an actor feels when she’s aware that a distinguished casting director sits in the audience. “That was incredibly strange,” Gust finally said. Jackson shot me a disheartened look. Gust cleared his throat and went on. “And I loved it.” “Yes!” yelled Noah, unable to resist punching the air. “It’s imaginative, it’s bizarre in all the right ways, and it’s funny. This is exactly the kind of shake-up the game industry needs right now. And the ideas you have for where it’s headed are brilliant.” “Yes yes yes!” said Noah. “That’s exactly what I said.” “I have a battalion of questions, of course,” Gust said. “Of course,” said Noah. “But first and foremost I’m curious to know what the inspiration was for this level.