Dear Future

[h1]Photos of future ruins[/h1] [i]Dear Future (Dear Future Production Committee, 2021) is an asynchronous massively-multiplayer photography game about exploring an abandoned city. I have been trying to write about it for several weeks and have found myself incapable of doing with any organization or distance. What follow, instead, are orchestrated recollections and half-formed conclusions of my time with the game. A half-step towards the understanding I'm searching for. A version with photos is available [url=https://kritiqal.com/articles/dear-future]here[/url].[/i] - - - The sun is setting for the first time. I aim my camera towards the horizon, watch the light fade, and wait to be thrown out. It is more intense than I expect. The accelerated rhythms of this infected city, its empty streets, the strings swelling around me. Has there always been music playing? Despite knowing this would happen I am disoriented. I tilt my head and attempt an abstract photo of the spire in the distance. I miss my shot and the screen fades. I am told to pick one photo to save and then the infection forces me out, out of this city, out of the game. I am alone again. I open my folders. Users, app data, roaming…but my photos are gone. Like they said they would be. There is a heaviness inside me I can't place. - - - The sun is setting for the third time. I aim my camera towards the horizon, watch the light fade, and wait to be thrown out, again. It is familiar. Already I have adjusted to the accelerated rhythms of this infected city, taught my body how to navigate its empty streets, contorted around columns and under cars for snapshots I will inevitably leave behind. I don’t know why I keep coming back. I take more pictures, build more bridges, collect more notes on how everything fell apart. But it won’t – it can’t change anything. The sun sets when it always sets. I cannot stop nature anymore than I can stop the infection forcing me out, out of this city, out of the game. I am alone again. I unlock my phone, open Twitter, scroll aimlessly for a few minutes before remembering what I am looking for. [i]Transmissions from The Foundation[/i] ; photos lifted off these broken islands, out of the game, suspended in cropped frames. The best we can do. - - - I have lost track of how many times the sun has set. I aim my camera towards the horizon, watch the light fade, wait to be thrown out, again. It is ordinary. I organize my time and am ready to go. My photos are deliberate and I’ve made peace with the ones I can’t save. I don’t like to think why I keep coming back. I take more pictures, build more bridges, collect more notes on how everything fell apart. I still don’t know what’s important so I chronicle everything. Papers, road signs, graffiti, buildings. Things I recognize. I open the journal and wonder where the rest of the story lives. If it lives anywhere. The sun sets when it always sets. I can’t stop the infection forcing me out, out of this city, out of the game. I am alone again. I unlock my phone, open Twitter, scroll aimlessly for a few minutes to settle myself. Deep breaths, focus. [i]Transmissions from The Foundation[/i] . I see one of my photos, a black and white rooftop overlooking a soft focus skyline. Three likes. At least someone is watching. - - - The sun is setting. I am lying in bed, trying to remember the last time I held a camera. Everything before last year is fuzzy and I am struggling to organize my thoughts. I unlock my phone, open Twitter, continue scrolling. [i]Transmissions from The Foundation[/i] . I put my phone away. I cannot stop thinking about [i]Dear Future[/i] . I consider playing it again but that weight is getting heavier. The desolation and isolation it portrays is so much an inevitability, to parallel it with reality feels obscene – pointing at a game and shouting, “look, this is what will happen to us.” We are past the point of warnings, now entering some form of literature “deep adaptation.” I was always told learning about something painful before it happens makes it easier, but perhaps some things are too painful to anticipate. But here I am, reading about climate change, mass displacement, the exponential rise in natural disasters in one tab and looking at screenshots of [i]Dear Future[/i] in another. This is the surreal state we all exist in now: tragedy and fiction splintering into one another as we sit in our homes, stare at our screens, unable to look away or do anything to stop what’s happening. All we can do is watch. Chronicle everything. Papers, road signs, graffiti, buildings. We are all watching. - - - The sun has set. I am thinking about the confidence I feel holding a camera. The way it urges me to think differently about space, about time, about who may appear in frame and who will look at it afterwards. I am not always conscious of these things but I understand them intuitively. I feel safe with a camera. Suddenly I am allowed to simply “capture” the moment instead of having to live it. There is a distance with photos. But perhaps it’s wrong to say I am allowed. Nobody has given me permission and as much as I may wish to I cannot step out of time. Taking up this camera gives me perspective, an idea of control, but I am not apart from the things I photograph. Events outside of frame are no less real. This is the part of [i]Dear Future[/i] that lingers with me. Not the particulars of its mechanics, its design, the allegories it invokes and implies. I just remember what it feels like to hold the camera. To momentarily feel safe, a tourist. Chronicling everything. I keep coming back to reclaim this feeling a little longer, throwing a new body into the infected city for a few minutes where the desolation and isolation is just fiction, just snapshots, just a game. But the sun sets when it always sets, forcing me out. Out of this city, out of this game where we are alone, together. [b]This essay originally appeared on [url=https://kritiqal.com/articles/dear-future]Kritiqal[/url].[/b]