The Unforeseen Consequences Temple Issue

October 10, 2016

In the game, he is more superhuman than he is in real life: muscles swollen out from underneath low-rising socks—a man who can expose skin because he is not worried about exposure to the brambles left behind by the wind—someone who can bleed and not think anything of it because there has been nothing left to rust. There is no blood.

"John Cena Is the Only Thing That Is Left Here" by Brian Oliu

Once per lifetime, / you may trade fish / for the blessing / of the Lake Goddess. / Successfully hook the elusive / blue trout, throw it back. / The Goddess emerges, / green-haired specter / over water, and boosts / your choice bachelorette’s / affection fifty points.

"Congratulations, Computer!" by Tom Kelly

I had spent far too much time there, longer than the rest of the game combined. I cannot speak of it much. Like its tunnels, Moria is too serpentine, too dense, too dark. I have nothing good to say about that place.

"The Memory of Place" by Berit Ellingsen

Steel, granite, and glass reached for the heavens along a long curved peninsula, true downtown lying on a raised plateau overlooking a tropical bay, causing the blue and green and brown buildings to extend higher. Suburban sprawl, fields of factories, spiraled out from the dense center, bedroom communities and farming towns.

"Some Cities I Remember Building" by Maxwell Neely-Cohen

Here you can slide on the ice with your sister / Here when you are hurt your body is shortened / legs chopped from beneath you / Here if you hold the a-button you can linger in the air / a canyon-jumper

"Whale World" by Hannah Stephenson

Unlike the unfamiliar neighborhoods I had to traverse in my Driver’s Ed car, the Noopy landmarks were straightforward and easy to map: Tom Nook’s place. Able Sisters. The town hall. The dump. The museum. Neighbors’ houses, the river, the bridges, the cliff, the sea.

"Noopy" by Margaret Emma Brandl

War knows your question already. No need to say it aloud. But keep it in your head, just the same. You’ll need it when the music starts.

"Vignettes from Final Fantasy VI" by Eric Shonkwiler

She is destruction. Blazing hair, storm cloud eyes. She is the roiling thunder crack in the dead of morning, noise that stirs the city back to life, out of hungover dreams.

"‘Vindicare’ & ‘Tempestas’ & ‘Inquisitio’" by Emma Fissenden

Specie is a digital currency that allows you to buy bling in all of FBLZ’s social apps for your pet twin, your pet you. You can, of course, buy specie with cash, credit, cryptocurrency—but there is a coinlust to getting it for free.

"The Eternal Sadness of Murin and Reynard" by JD Scott

Sometimes you have to earn the horse, like a weapon or a boat or an airship. You acquire it by completing a fetch quest for a cranky farmer, or jacking a horse out from under some random villager. You are not punished for this because you are saving the world.

"A Horse Draws Near" by J. Bowers

The wind that blew here was surprisingly cold, and Daniel’s lips blued, unseen. A deer picked its way past his body, stepping lightly in the curve of his elbow and springing away when a bird flew off a nearby tree branch.

"The Weight" by Adrienne Celt

Wovo98 kept going because the People of the Light kept on meditating. Eventually a new option in the upgrade tree became available, its title in Sanskrit. Wovo98 clicked it.

"‘Bozart’ Cohn’s Age of Tribes" by Jackson Culpepper