I looked over the various things in my Uncle’s house and shook my head in disbelief. I was still dumbstruck by the fact that Uncle Tim had left me his entire house in his will. I suppose I was his only nephew and he wanted to help me out, but the last time I had seen him I was a teenager and barely talked with him.
Uncle Tim had always had a nice cushy management job, but I know that he used to do game design on the side although it never took off. The more I explored his home, the more this became evident.
One of the strangest games he had in his basement was a game by the name of Inferno. The first time I walked downstairs I saw that it was still booted up on his ancient computer. It was connected to what looked like an old virtual boy headset. The title screen showed flames rising out of an old Atari graphics house. Curiosity got the better of me one night, and I decided to put the headset on.
I was immediately greeted by a faceless firefighter who explained to me that I had to put out all the fires in the area. Text flashed across the screen as it explained my objective in one of those old computer voice settings.
“Put out the fires, save the civilians,” he said.
The game was not too complex. You used the reticule to aim the water at the flames to save the burning civilians who were avatars represented by a single color. You couldn’t look left or right just at the building in front of you. Once you put out the flames, the civilians threw their hands up in the air in celebration.
However, if you missed a civilian, their body would be engulfed in flames and a burnt black avatar with red patches on its body would curl over screaming. I shuddered as I watched their bodies burn. The gore for a game at this time was probably the reason it was never put on store shelves, and I felt something wrong as I played it.
After each level, it would give you statistics for how many civilians you saved and how many kicked the bucket.
Even though this game was morbid, I wanted to see what would happen if you let the civilians burn up. I watched as the flames slowly engulfed the pixelated people while they screamed for help. Text began to appear on the screen as the text to speech voice spoke.
“Why are you letting us burn? Save us. You have the tools to please don’t let us feel the hot flames.”
I wanted to rip the headset off, but I had to see what happened. The screen suddenly went dark before I saw a red holographic image of my Uncle’s head.
“Congratulations. You failed your empathy test. The guilt I felt from the victims I burned manifested itself in this game. The ashes of all the bodies were flushed away into the river behind my house. I’m watching you through the camera in the basement, Jacob, and if you don’t do exactly what I’ll say you’ll meet the same fate,” said Uncle Tim.
My heart pounded in my throat as I took off the headset and looked at the camera. Somehow, I could tell that the voice was not lying. I put the headset on again and spoke to my Uncle.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
His avatar broke into a twisted smile as his body burned itself. Tears formed in my eyes as the red pixels flashed across the screen because I knew what had to be done.