#don't hungry

The mod was Russian, so I couldn't read the description, and  it apparently was Russian with a lot of typoes, as running it  through Google translate produced nothing but errors.  Still,  I could figure out what it was by the screenshots, and it  installed fine.  I enabled it and when the game gave its usual  warning prompt that mods could cause strange behavior, I  clicked "I understand".  I didn't understand, not at all, not  then.  I do now.  Oh God, how I do now.

As soon as I was back in my file, I cobbled together enough  resources to make a modded effigy and set it up near my base  camp.  The model was poorly drawn, but I'd seen worse.  I  gathered up my pack and it was off to the races.

I actually didn't think about the effigy for a while.  I was  having surprisingly good luck for King of Winter, with a  decent amount of meat and enough hats to border on a surplus.   But then there came something of a parental dispute over a  Tallbird egg, and I watched bleakly as my scientist was pecked  to shreds.  I mean, not like literal realistic shreds, that'd  be messed up, he just kind of fell over.  It's a figure of  speech.

As he dropped, I remembered I had a backup plan.  That was all  I needed, I thought, just another chance!  Proof in action.   But then...things started getting weird.  Instead of panning  back to the base camp, the screen went black, and it seemed to  hang up for an awfully long time.  Just when I thought it had  crashed, the visuals came back, and things were different.   Very different.

The effigy wasn't there.  The base camp wasn't there.  Wilson  wasn't there.  It was just bare grass, but weirdly detailed  grass.  I wouldn't call it hyper-realistic, but it wasn't as  stylized as usual, so it was a little realistic, kinda.  Like  if you squinted it would seem like grass, somewhere in that  mode?  Yeah.

The sound that signalled Maxwell's appearance went off, but it  sounded distorted, and he didn't actually appear.  I was  particularly surprised since I was being revived, not starting  a new game, and then further surprised when text appeared,  accompanied not by Maxwell's signature "voice", but a series  of monotone error beeps, just like what you'd hear if you held  down the wrong key on a keyboard.  It was so loud and jarring  that I removed my headphones and carefully set them on the  desk.

The text was 12-point Lucida Console and simply read "do not  hungry".

After a few moments, the text disappeared, and in its place...

He came back wrong.  That was my first thought.  Wilson had  traversed death and come back from the other side with his  soul twisted up and torn apart, like Pet Sematary or The  Monkey's Paw, his true self was writhing in the flames of Hell  and this grotesque shell remained as a reminder to all foolish  mortals who would dare play God.

My second thought was that the mod had somehow unlocked the  game's alpha mode and that I was glad the devs had decided  against the mullet that apparently had been Klei's first  choice for Wilson's character sprite.

I was scared either way.  What kind of damage had just been  done to my game?  Was this permanent?  It was beyond alpha, it  was like a proof of concept the developers had thrown  together, but it didn't prove anything.  There were basic  elements there--the hunger meter, the clock, and Wilson...no,  I didn't feel right calling this strange character "Wilson".   I knew Wilson.  He was like a friend.  A close, reassuring  friend with a preoccupation with taping rats together.  This  new sprite was more like that guy that had a tendency to sit  too close to me on the bus on Wednesdays.  I uneasily redubbed  him "Wolsin" and reluctantly decided to recoup my losses and  see what I could find.

My first idea was to return to where I had died to collect my  resources, but it was difficult--I couldn't adjust the camera,  and the backgrounds were 2-D, creating the vertigo-inducing  sensation that Wolsin was falling endlessly sideways.  Worse,  the landscape was broken into predetermined "squares", like  Legend of Zelda or Animal Crossing, with substantial loading  time for each grid space passed.  It was like navigating an  oldschool shooter, but quiet, intense mutterings of "pew pew,  krakow" and attempting to attack the space in front of me only  revealed that there were no actions available.  I passed a  tree, seemingly pasted on to the backdrop, but I couldn't  interact with it.  I started to worry about nightfall and the  killing dark, then noticed the clock had no hands.

At last I reached where I believed Wilson had died.  I  shuddered when I saw that contrary to the law of the land, no  skeleton had popped out.  Only an 8-bit backpack remained to  mark the grave.  I picked it up, and it didn't appear on  Wolsin's back, but instead caused a singular item slot to  appear.

Frustrated and more than a little spooked, I stopped to take  stock of my situation.  Clearly there was nothing I could do  to proceed in Adventure Mode--if this hellish landscape even  was Adventure Mode any longer--or even proceed in basic  gameplay.  Quitting would automatically save, presumably  destroying my file, and I didn't want to think about what  would happen if I tried a hard shutdown.  More than that, I  was concerned about the ominous message "do not hungry".  Was  it a very early version of Maxwell's traditional "Say pal"  speech, or was it...something more?

It didn't seem to matter.  Wolsin's stats weren't changing.   Unless I ran into trouble, I could probably explore this  perverse game world as long as I wanted.

And...I did want to.  Something drove me to it.  Maybe it was  the urge to show the community the hidden history of a game  that gave me such joy.  Maybe it was the urge to decode the  mysteries that were undoubtedly secreted away inside.  Maybe  it was the thought that this could even be something new and  current, an extension of the ARG hinting at developments to  come--maybe I just had to wait it out, and I'd find a link, a  download, a video no one had seen before.

Whatever the case, I had to proceed carefully.  Like Wilson  himself, I'd have to rely not just on science, but the old and  dark magic of times long gone.

I knew what I had to do, what I had done in desperate times  before, and didn't hesitate to do it.

And so, with the quarter taped firmly to the mouse button to  keep Wolsin proceeding in one direction, I sat back and  started a game of Birds With Friends on my phone.

It was a waiting game now.

I don't know how long Wolsin traversed that lonely world.   Changes were few and far between, and I quickly stopped paying  attention unless I noticed them out of the corner of my eye.   The background would randomly change, then change back from  one grid square to the next--a different kind of grass, or  dirt, or, once, a disturbing white gooey mass that I fervently  hoped was snow and not...spider leavings.  An occasional tree  went by.  I stopped once when a rock appeared, but like the  tree, there was no way to interact with it, not even flavor  text.

I had just scored a quadruple budgie and was celebrating how  hard I had handed my ten-year-old opponent's ass to him when  it happened.

It wasn't a spider.  Not like any spider I had ever seen.   Maybe it was a hound.  All I could think was "That dog looks  sick".  It was following Wolsin from square to square with  blank-eyed menace, slowly catching up to him, and my heart  seized in my chest.  I had no weapons!  I didn't even have any  tools!  How was Wolsin supposed to fight back?  I moused over  it desperately, but for the third time, no options appeared.

We were helpless.

All we could do was run.

So we ran.

Square after square of screen passed by.  At first I thought  we were making headway, that we could escape, but it was  hopeless.  The creature came, it came on little possibly cat  but also possibly insect or maybe a small marmot feet, and  before I knew what to do, it was on us.

Literally on us.

I stared fearfully as it simply sat on top on Wolsin's sprite,  overlapping it.

Nothing was happening.  They were just...standing there.   Wolsin's stats remained static.  His heart continued not to  beat, his brain didn't shrivel grotesquely like it should  have.

Then, apropos of nothing, it fell over and disappeared.

I closed my eyes to gather my wits, and when I looked up, I  was jerked out of my stupor.  Wolsin's item slot had been  filled.  An item--meat!  It was 8-bit, like the backpack had  been, but it was a familiar sight this time, the kind of on- bone, nondescript, Meat Brand Meat that you used to get in  platformers to restore health.  This had to be it.

Tremulously, I moused over the item slot and clicked on the  food.

Wolsin died instantly.

I didn't move as the screen blanked out, as the error message  resounded in my ears, as the game abruptly crashed and  returned me to the desktop.  The pain was too much, it felt  like my ribs were being split from the inside and my soul  being torn from their delicate cavity, leaving nothing but  darkness and icy cold in its wake.

That had been such a good freaking seed!

I booted up as quickly as possible, confirming my fears: My  lavishly cultivated save file was gone.  Bitterly, I clicked  into the morgue, where a scrambled version of the "Wolsin"  sprite was displayed.  The day counter read 6-66 and the cause  of death read "hungried".

The pain was too much to bear.  I deleted every trace I had of  the mod, started a new file as Willow, and spent the rest of  the night setting the world--my world, my familiar, beautiful  dystopian island world--on fire.

I thought it was over.

I was wrong.

Remember what I said about reading the fine print?

The truth is, it didn't matter how much I played with the mod.   It didn't matter if Wolsin lived or died.  I had signed it  away as soon as I clicked "I understand".  I had given agency  of that thing most dear to all of us away, just because I  wanted an easy way out.  It's gone now.  I lack it, and I am  changed inside.  I feel nothing, no joy, no love--just  emptiness.

$1.99.

I signed away $1.99 that day, as blithely and easily as you'd  sell your soul.

And so I sit here, in my car, watching happy people come and  go.  It's Tuesday.  Taco Tuesday.  I watch those people count  out their two dollars and go away with two tacos.  So happy.   So carefree.  And I clutch my penny as my stomach growls, and  I curse the fine print, and I curse the thing in the dark, and  I curse the vicious cold, but most of all, I curse myself, and  the black hubris that brought me here.

Do not hungry.