remake/remodel

last week I dreamt of Nintendo

The game Animal Crossing begins with the player moving into a modest cottage with a dusty stone floor and an overturned crate for a table. A friendly if overbearing raccoon named Tom Nook is waiting by the train station when you arrive at your village, and though he had seemed to be doing you a favor at the time, you soon realize that he has tricked you into buying the cottage in exchange for working at his general store. So you sweep the floor, you tend to the flowerbeds, you run errands. You meet the villagers — a dopey elephant named Dizzy, a boorish hippopotamus named Rocco, a cheerful frog named Cousteau — and they seem nice enough, mostly. You write the animals long, earnest letters, sharing your daily joys, your secret anxieties, your little obsessions. You bring them gifts, checkered shirts, stripey umbrellas, regal bookcases, exotic wallpapers. They encourage your overtures of friendship, though they often don’t understand at all what you are trying to say. You shrug, follow them out to the town center, and kick a ball back and forth. They like that; hearts and flowers bubble out of their heads.

And of course, you work and you work. Eventually you pay off your debt to Tom Nook. He congratulates you; he immediately offers to build you a second floor. You accept. Your animal friends love what you’re doing with the house, and the Happy Room Academy sends you a ebullient note of approval. You work and you work. You fill your house with things. Your carpet matches your wallpaper. You work and you work. Soon you’ve expanded your first floor. You work and you work. Soon you’ve dug yourself a basement. You fill it with stuff. Animals move into the village; animals move out. You work and you work.

The game is meant to be open-ended; you play for as long as you like, and every day brings new letters, new conversations, new travails, new discoveries, new friends. I dreamt the other night, though, that the game did end. I had just received this letter from Tom the cat, my favorite animal in the village:

Hey Jacob,

It’s great that you took the time to write me a letter, but slow down, brainiac — why don’t you take the time to write a letter that makes sense? Or were you trying to be funny? I’ll tell you what’s funny: A pie in the face, that’s funny. What is it you’re trying to say, anyway?

Brusquely,
Tom

I folded the letter up and placed it in the center of my bedroom. I placed my fishing rod next to it, then my golden shovel that I had received as a gift from the village shrine, the one that I used to plant new cherry trees. I pulled my furniture away from the walls and towards the center of the room. Everything that I owned — chairs, tables, letters, plants, fish tanks, video games, diaries — I piled into the room. I walked outside, closed the front door, and lit a match. I stood and watched as the house burned. I watched until nothing was left.

One by one, the animals of the village emerged from the woods. One by one, they formed a circle around me and what remained of my house. Tom the cat, Rocco the hippopotamus, Leigh the chicken, Pierce the eagle, Dizzy the elephant, Huggy the koala, Pippy the rabbit, Valise the kangaroo, Blathers the owl, Pelly the pelican, Cousteau the frog, Nosegay the anteater, Yodel the gorilla. They stood and stared, their dumb animal eyes watery and expressionless. Tom the cat stepped forward, holding a death’s head mask before his face.

“Game over,” he said, “You win.”