As Hurricane Sandy reminded us earlier this week, massive and sweeping changes can happen in an instant. Many post-apocalyptic works trace this very same trajectory, but two I’ve experienced recently posit a serious and vexing question: even if we could undo the damage, should we?
Bastion is the story of The Kid, a young man who wakes up one morning in his bed, which is floating in the sky. Now, normally it’s supposed to be attached to the rest of the city of Caelondia, so this is something of an issue, especially since all around him is basically an empty void. Climbing out of bed, he finds that solid ground will spring up underneath him, and he sets off to try and meet his friends at the Bastion, the last refuge for their kind in case of a calamity.
The Gone-Away World is the story of an unnamed young man who ends up through a series of comedic and hard to fathom occurrences at the center of a conflict which ends up being, more or less, the End of the World. Thanks to some brilliant and utterly unprincipled research, a weapon ends up being invented (and, inevitably, deployed) that is supposed to make whatever it hits “Go Away”. Oddly, the supposed super weapon without negative side effects turns out to have some, and the world “Goes Away”. Or at least much of it does.
I don’t want to delve too deep into either story because much of their fun is in the journey. However, both stories offer the protagonist a chance to undo damage, at least in some way, and what’s fascinating is that I’m not really sure what the right approach is. Certainly in The Gone-Away World it’s made clear that the cost of undoing the damage is unsustainably high, but an argument could still be made.
Abstracting to the real world, I think it’s a fascinating discussion to have. Not so much on a macroscopic level (I wouldn’t claim that New York is better off for having been flooded, though if it does lead to the development of more resilient infrastructure and better disaster-preparedness, then there might be a point there), but on a personal level. I’ve often thought of the story of Bastion as being analogous to the story of a breakup. When it first happens, we feel adrift, alone, like our whole world has been shattered. All of our efforts are directed at trying to undo the damage, to win back our love. Yet somewhere along the way we realize that we can’t just go back in time, can’t just make things the way they were. Even more to the point, perhaps we shouldn’t. Yes, there’s pain, and yes, there’s loss, but in each of those trials there’s also growth.
The point of both works (at least as I see it) is that life is lived going forward. We can mourn, we can regret, but we can’t undo. Instead of lamenting that, I say we embrace it.
===
Bastion is an XBOX 360 game that came out in 2010. Beyond a deeply moving and compelling story, it also features frenetic hack-and-slash gameplay and one of the best video game soundtracks ever. Also: amazing narration. It’s $10 or so on Live Arcade, and very much worth it.
The Gone-Away World is a novel by Nick Harkaway, and it also came out in 2010. Beyond a compelling and rich story, it also features horse-people, mimes, and ninjas. So you should probably start reading it now.
(Image cc-licensed: "Hurricane Sandy Flooding Avenue C 2012" by david_shankbone)
No comments:
Post a Comment