Ever since the car crash, I had been troubled at times with pains in the back of my head and neck, but now for months they had been absent, and the doctor sent me away saying there was nothing more to be cured in me. It was hardly worth his fee to be told that; I knew it myself. Still I did not grudge him the money. What I minded was the mistake which he made at first. When they picked me up from the pavement where I lay unconscious, I was carried to Dr. Archer, and he, pronouncing my brain affected, placed me in his private asylum where I was obliged to endure treatment for insanity. At last he decided that I was well, and I, knowing that my mind had always been as sound as his, if not sounder, “paid my tuition” as he jokingly called it, and left. I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake, and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he gave me none, and I told him I would wait.
The crash had fortunately left no evil results; on the contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and above all—oh, above all else—ambitious. There was only one thing which troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled me.
During my convalescence I had bought and played for the first time, Cory in the House. I remember after finishing the first level that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and made to turn off my DS; and my thumb struck the button to continue to the next level. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening screen of the second level I should never have finished it, but as I looked, my eyes became riveted to the illuminated screen, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing away and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I played it and replayed it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget the District of Columbia where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the developer, as the developer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before Cory in the House. When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to play it. It is well known how the game spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of information anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked levels, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in Cory in the House, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on gameplay in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first level only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.