ARCADE KID (5)
By:
November 2, 2023
We are pleased to present ARCADE KID, a ’90s “drivethru” written, illustrated, and soundtracked by HILOBROW friend Nikhil Singh. Our readers are urged to check out Nikhil’s dystopian psychedelic-noir novel Club Ded (Luna Press, 2020).
A century later, in 2017. I was presenting a Hugo Award in Helsinki. One day, I was staring at the convention crowds in a kind of trance. The corporatized horde of cosplay enthusiasts bewildered me. I’ve known cosplay mavericks that are deeply creative. Channelling their own intimate iconography. Elevating it to a kind of art. But, the mass consumer aspect of fan culture that I witnessed at this convention, represented a loss of creativity to me. At one point, I noticed a man in an iconic referee’s shirt observing me. He came over. Introduced himself as Walter Day. He was distributing the trading-cards he had manufactured. Famous sci-fi authors. His own hall of fame. Guinness record quality. A ghost from my Arcade past. In 1981, Walter had transmuted the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa into the online authority on video gaming rules and score-counts. When TIME magazine ran its legendary videogame issue in 1981, Walter was on the cover. All score-counts led to Walter. In Helsinki, he was instantly aware of my metaphysical angst. We communed outside the clamour of corporate interest. He told me a little about his background. Transcendental meditation communities. How metaphysics had shaped his endeavour from the outset. It is a mistake to think of electronically generated spaces and culture as sterile and heartless. They are an extension of humanity’s dream-spaces. Made tangible. Made mutually accessible. An Aboriginal belief states that all material things; computers, cars, everything — these were, at one stage, locked beneath the earth. There, they remained, until dreamed into existence. A simple truth. For, each device must be conceptualised before construction. Each facet of it, however small, had to be dreamed first. We are the dreamers. Caught, within the dreaming of our physicalized modern reality. We live each day in the manifested dreams of others. Some of which, in turn, redirect our dreaming. Many of our dreams become colonised by these feedback loops. Outside images. Scenarios. Characters. The construction of astral cities — to outsider specs. ‘Whole-sale dreaming’. Philip K. Dick obsessed over his dead twin sister. He believed that she continued to exist. In an alternate state, somehow out of phase with our own. Many alien abduction victims speak of similar experiences. Meeting the dead. Doppelgangers. Being pulled directly through walls. As though still dreaming. What are aliens anyway?
More NIKHIL SINGH at HILOBROW: DREAMING MEDIA (Q&A) | JOURNEY TO IXTLAN | HASHTAG FASHION POLICE PROBLEMS | ILLUMINATE OR DISSIPATE? | HATE ISLAND. ALSO: HADRON AGE SF (2004–2023) | ORIGINAL FICTION at HILOBROW.