The Tell-Tale Thump in the Night

It started out like any other evening.

After a long day of work and other errands, I settled down on my couch. A brief stint playing a video game turned into reading a book of short stories, which eventually progressed into exhaustion. The midnight witching hour wasn't too far off by the time I dragged myself upstairs to get ready for bed. I eased under the covers and opened my second book - a Jane Austen, and a challenge - for one last quick read before succumbing to the blank nothingness of not-quite-enough sleep ahead of doing it all over again the next day.

As I scoured through Austen's densely-packed words, I knew I'd hit the jackpot when I began uncomprehendingly reading the same paragraph over and over again. It's time to give it up for the night, I told myself. You'll finish the chapter tomorrow. I closed the book, both reluctant and satisfied, and turned off the light. Time to drift.

Thump thump thump thump.

My eyes jolted open. Had I imagined the noise? What time is it? About 1:15 am, I noted. I was alarmed, but not overly concerned. Probably just house noises, I meditated. Could be the wind. Maybe traffic noise? A trash can lid. Something innocuous, no doubt. It won't happen again... but I'll listen just in case.

Thump thump thump thump.

My heart jumped into my throat. What on earth could that be, at this time of night? It sounds like someone pounding on a door... but why now? And really, wouldn't they ring the doorbell, if it was urgent? I reasoned. I check my phone - no missed calls or texts.

Do I get up? I thought. If it's not someone knocking - and even if it is - then it's someone breaking in, isn't it? On the other hand, I considered, wouldn't they be louder if they were breaking and entering? If I assume the worst, I argued with myself, then someone is slowly and methodically prying my house apart to work their way in. Do I really want to run into them, in the middle of the night?

Thump thump thump thump.

It's not stopping. If I don't go investigate, I'll never get back to sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed. And this is exactly what EVERY victim in EVERY horror movie EVER said RIGHT BEFORE THEY DIED. I sighed. I'll just start by getting up, making a little noise by walking to the bathroom, and I'll see if it happens aga-

Thump thump thump thump.

Ok, I resolved. That settles it. I have to know. It's just a noise - no evidence yet, no reason to panic, no need to call anyone and create unnecessary worry. I pulled out my metal baseball bat. I can't fathom what it is or why I can hear it so well, but I'll 'grand slam' whatever is out there or I'll prove it's nothing and maybe I'll still be able to get some sleep tonight. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't?

I gingerly opened the door and flipped on the light to the landing. So far, nothing to cause alarm. Light scares away predators, I mused. Or... does it attract them like a moth to a flame?

I crept down the stairs, phone in one hand, bat in the other. A real life Nancy Wheeler, I rolled my eyes. A demogorgon would sure hate to run into you alone in the dark. I quickly flipped on the living room light and scoured my house while remaining stationary. Nothing.

Quelling the panic within, I took a seat on the couch, weapon across my knees. I'll just get my bearings for a moment, I reassured myself. I'm nothing if not patient. When the noise happens again, I'll isolate its location like a bat with echolocation. Yes, that's it - I'm Batman. The Dark Knight, steeling myself in the dark night. I laughed nervously... and I waited.

5 minutes. 10 minutes. 15 minutes. 20 minutes. Silence.

Well, I made it this far, I breathed. Whatever it was, it appeared to be gone - but I knew sleep wouldn't come without a complete search. Zoinks, Scoob! Looks like we've got another mystery on our hands. I eased up from my statue position and braced for the worst.

I crept all throughout my house flipping on lights, peering out windows, jabbing the baseball bat wildly in front of me. Nothing here nor there, and no signs of intelligent life anywhere. Hmph. I closed up shop, and left the outdoor lights on. That'll show those monsters.

Clutching my bat, I trudged back up the stairs, resigned but relieved. I was a little jittery, but it was better than still lying frozen in terror in my bed, drenched in sweat and trying to comfort myself with suppositions, all in vain. No sense in making it easy, though - I locked my bedroom door behind me, turned off the light, and climbed into bed, bat by my side. I'll be ready when the thumps come back, I murmured, sighing deeply and closing my eyes. Just you wait and see.

Do you know what you write, or do you write what you know?

Last week, I found my mind requiring entertainment (boredom is not a state I tolerate well). I'm not sure if I was inspired or just desperate, but I pulled up my Hoopla library app on my phone and began the arduous process of searching for the perfect audiobook.

What to look for? Something non-fiction to encourage a renewed mind? No... that genre must be selected sparingly. I wanted to escape, not dissect myself. Something popular and current? No... I was already reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the Hunger Games prequel, on the side. (I've finished it now - highly recommend!) And so, I scrolled through and stumbled upon a classic I'd never read, but have some familiarity with due to its movie equivalent: The Great Gatsby.

It felt like the right choice. (Remember the start of this year, back when people threw parties without a second thought, and many of them were themed around "the Roaring Twenties"? Feels so long ago, now...) I approached the book with skepticism all the same. What is this, high school English lit class? Do I really want to read a literary classic? Is it going to require too much concentration to understand, too much analysis to appreciate, too much... thoughtfulness? Yet, it's regarded as one of the greatest novels of all time. That, in and of itself, should be enough to warrant a listen, should it not?

So I settled in with only middle-of-the-road expectations. I've been out of school awhile now. Give me a world to be immersed in, not a lesson to learn. Of course, I got more than I bargained for: both.

I won't spoil the book for you, in case you haven't read it yourself... but you'll be pleased (or perhaps disappointed) to know that humanity hasn't changed all that much in a nickel short of a century. Many of the themes of the book are still as prevalent today as they were when it was written. We're still selfish, and proud, and greedy. We long to recapture the past (what a poignant thought, in 2020 especially). We're still broken, in a fascinating, starry-eyed sort of way.

Not wanting to miss anything, I consulted SparkNotes for ol' Gatsby - I have plenty of my own takeaways from the book, but I enjoy the perspectives of others and the opportunity to catch things I missed. It certainly helped! But I also found a lot of attention given to little details I scarcely noticed: the symbolism behind a character clumsily knocking a clock off a table, places in the book being representative of groups of people and ideas of the time, weather indicating the emotional tone of the story. I applauded the exhaustive examination, but for me, it begged the question... was it all intentional?

Did F. Scott Fitzgerald write the perfect book, and carefully pepper all of these themes and motifs and symbols throughout his novel? Was it purposeful? When he finished, did he marvel to himself at his own genius and pat himself on the back? I imagine him chortling: "Congrats on a job well done, old sport - you'll have your readers perplexed long after you're gone!"

Or... did Fitzgerald just write what he knew? Did he create a lovable story based on a collection of his own life, his own experiences, his own observations... and it just happened to become a lasting masterpiece? Did he really mean anything by the clock being knocked off the table, or was his character just nervous, and Fitzgerald looked around his own study for inspiration? Perhaps a friend came over earlier that day and bumped into a table, giving him the idea. Was it blisteringly hot one day, when he wrote? When he started working on the next chapter, was there a chill in the air? How much emphasis did he really put in specific settings in his novel - or did his characters just need some different places to go?

I'll tell you what I do know. Fitzgerald's book wasn't particularly popular during his lifetime. It didn't become a classic until after his death - during WWII, as part of an initiative to distribute books to soldiers abroad. (More information about the history, if you have the interest and the time: https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/the-great-gatsbys-rocky-road-to-popularity)

I suppose I'll never know how much of the deep analysis of every detail on SparkNotes is real, and how much is happenstance. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. That teaches me a lesson all its own: it's human nature, to search for meaning in every moment. We long for everything to matter, for things to happen for a reason, for significance. When you look hard enough, you can find most anything you want. The ever watchful eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg stare on.

The Glue that Binds Us

I like to consider myself a bit of a video game connoisseur. Wait - don't leave! I know they aren't for everyone, but hear me out! Video games are art as much as any other medium, these days.

I recently finished a game called Detroit: Become Human. It was made by a French developer called Quantic Dream, who are known for creating gorgeous, interactive games that require you to make choices and live with the consequences. I've played a couple of their games before. What they lack in traditional gameplay, they make up for in thoughtfulness. They mostly involve a lot of exploration and QTEs, or quick time events - basically, a test of your reaction time. These kinds of video games tell a narrative in a way that imitates life. If you make a wrong choice or mess up a series of QTEs, characters can DIE. Consequently, you can miss out on whole sections of a story. (Believe me, it's happened! I've never been so disappointed in myself!) It really invests you in the decisions and the characters, because your actions mean life or death, love or hate, success or failure.

This world is set in Detroit, in the future. Androids - robots that look and act exactly like humans - are everywhere. Most homes have one - for housekeeping, for caretaking, for... pleasure (interpreted just like you'd imagine!). Businesses have androids too, and in a realistic twist, it's causing societal issues because androids are taking jobs away from humans. The world is full of so much hatred and discrimination and mistreatment of androids. But that doesn't really matter, right? After all, they're not human - they're just machines following orders.

...Or are they? This game covers so many relevant subjects. (Honestly, it doesn't even feel like sci-fi. It's scarily plausible. Just saw this article the other day! 😳 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/31/human-like-androids-have-entered-the-workplace-and-may-take-your-job.html) If you ever get the chance, you really should experience this game yourself... but let me describe one of my favorite scenes for you. There are three characters you play as throughout the game. This is the start of one character's story:

~

I wake up in a tech store, surrounded by androids waiting to be bought. I am a female android. A disheveled man comes to pick me up - I guess I must have been damaged somehow, and have now been repaired. I can return to my home.

The man isn't very nice. His wife left him, and he lost his job and is struggling to make ends meet. He lives alone with his daughter, who's probably about 9 or 10 years old. The house is a mess, because I haven't been there to take care of it. (I'm a housekeeping android.) I talk to the girl - I guess she named me Kara - but she is hesitant to engage with me. I get the impression that she witnessed something bad happen to me, that resulted in my needing to be fixed... but I was damaged badly enough that I have no memory prior to being repaired.

I clean up the house and make dinner. Meanwhile, however, the man has been abusing drugs and is in a fit of rage. He yells at the girl, and then smacks her. She runs upstairs, crying. He returns to the couch for a few more drags on his pipe. I go to follow the girl, but the man commands me not to move.

DO NOT MOVE, the game tells me. Is the girl ok? The man is still mad... he's likely to hurt her more, in his state. I can't just stand here. I wait briefly, and then go to move. DO NOT MOVE, the game scolds me. But then... it gives me a button prompt. I follow the sequence. I break free of my programming! I don't have to follow orders anymore.

What do I do now? I could try to talk to the man and calm him down... or I could go check on the girl upstairs. I decide the man probably can't be reasoned with. He seems to resent me. Talking to him might just upset him more. I go upstairs. Earlier, when I was cleaning, I noticed that the man keeps a gun in his bedside table. I also noticed the girl's bedroom window wasn't latched. As I hurry, I make a wrong turn and enter the man's room by mistake... so I open his bedside table. Do I take the gun? As I decide, he storms up the stairs and heads straight into the girl's room. Yes... yes, I better take the gun. Just to be safe.

He's ready for round two with the girl, and is already yelling at her some more. She's cowering. If I had been faster, maybe we both could have escaped before he even got to her room. Or maybe if I hadn't grabbed the gun, I could have helped her out the window. But no matter now. I can't change what happened.

I point the gun at the man, and tell him to get away from the girl. "What did you just say?!" he demands incredulously. He can't believe I'm defying his orders. He is aggressive, and my insubordination angers him further. Next thing I know, I'm battling for my life. He is determined to damage me again. In fact, he directly threatens it as he comes after me. I miss a few button prompts, and the gun gets knocked from my hand. We grapple. The girl is witnessing all of this, but doesn't know what to do. I take some damage, the man takes some damage, (the room takes some damage)... I'm not sure who's winning this fight.

BANG. The guns goes off. I'm on the floor, the man on top of me, the girl off to the side of the room. Where is the gun? Did I shoot him? Did he shoot me? Did the girl grab the gun and fire?

I roll the man's body off of mine. There is blood... human blood. The gun is in my hand. I shot the man. I am a deviant android, and I just killed a man. This does not look good. The girl and I exchange a look, and then we get out of that house. We catch a bus and escape to somewhere. Anywhere but here.

~

And that is one short, opening sequence of Detroit: Become Human. I could have talked to the man - would that have made a difference? I could have been faster - could we have escaped before he came up the stairs? I didn't have to grab the gun. Maybe the man didn't have to die... 😔 If I had failed more button prompts... I probably could have died.

But you only get to live life once, and I've only played this sequence the one time. I kind of like being able to choose not to replay it. I can speculate how it might have turned out differently, knowing what I know now. But in my story, for better or worse, I killed a man in self-defense, I became a fugitive, and the girl and I escaped to somewhere safe.

The other androids you play as in the game go through trials that put them in similar situations. They, too, can choose to become deviant and make decisions for themselves. That critical point usually comes as a result of a situation being evaluated as "unfair." That man hit his daughter... I must protect her! But I was commanded not to move. This isn't fair... this is wrong.

The game really understands what it means to be human. Nothing is more human than to feel empathy for another person. We are the most human when we can look at another person, feel what they feel, and give away part of ourselves to try to help.

I believe empathy was hard-wired into our design, though. After all, we have to have a pretty empathetic God, for Him to send His son Jesus to die in our place and cover our sins... wouldn't you say?