nonoperable), so Nick Prendergast rarely made it past low earth orbit. It was time to take matters into the twenty-second century.
SOLAR EMPIRES (1989)
se.exe
IMPORT SAVE GAME? (Y/N)
Y
LOADING…
The screen cleared, the Black Arts logo appeared, then the title screen appeared over a stylized view of the solar system, the player peering in from just past the orbit of Saturn, its ecliptic tipped at a jaunty, inviting angle. This would be Black Arts’ science fiction franchise, of course. Matt sat down to watch, taking a break from updating the bug database.
I pressed NEW GAME and was given a choice of identities from among the Heroes’ far-future analogues: Brendan Blackstar, Loraq, Ley-R4, or Pren-Dahr. To whom would I give the future of humanity? I chose Ley-R4.
The screen cleared, and words began scrolling slowly up from the bottom of the screen:
It is 2113, and the Second Terran Empire is coming apart. At the same time, humankind stands on the brink of expanding into a universe of mystery, danger, and vast wealth.
YOU are one of the four reigning personalities of the age locked in a desperate struggle to be the first to launch an interstellar colony ship, thus becoming the guiding spirit of humankind’s expansion into the galaxy.
It is time to wage interplanetary war! It is time to begin the Solar Age!
It is time to build…
SOLAR EMPIRES!!!
In a map of the solar system, planets appeared as king-size marbles, sliding achingly slowly around the sun as a celestial chorus chanted faintly in the background, a Philip Glass touch.
I heard Lisa sit down behind me. “Ley-R4 again.”
“Does that matter?” I asked.
“It’s just predictable.”
Lisa leaned past me. Her black T-shirt smelled like clove cigarettes.
“You’ve got Saturn’s moons. Shitty for metals, but all the hydrogen and methane you’ll ever want. Get your fusion tech up and running fast.”
“And then what?”
“It’s a four-X game.”
“A four…?”
“It’s what you do. Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate.”
She left us alone with the cosmos.
“I thought she didn’t play these games,” I said to break the silence.
“You didn’t know? She designed about half of it herself; the rest is from Simon’s notes. That’s why it doesn’t play like a Darren game,” Matt said.
“I thought Darren did everything.”
“He did a lot. I mean, it was his idea to start using Simon’s sci-fi material, but the Clandestine games were making so much money he just focused on that. It was more his kind of thing anyway. Plus he was, I don’t know, deal-making, partying with investors, I guess. He was good at a lot of stuff.”
Looking back at the screen, I realized I was seeing Lisa’s cosmos. The stars had a faint shimmer, as if seen through the soft air of an evening cookout. The vacuum of space wasn’t a flat black; it took on an illusion of depth, layered with dark gray and ultradark browns and purples, the downy fur of an immense, velvety night beast. It made you want to explore; it made you feel that the cosmos was a glittering jewel box.
The display zoomed in to a set of three dirty-white spheres huddled in space underneath the sublimely enormous expanse of Saturn’s cloud layer, which was mottled like a made-up fantasy ice cream flavor.
Your tiny ships are blue-and-white spheres studded with antennae, and your bases are like little cartoon college campuses under glass domes; grassy quads and white neoclassical buildings fronted with tiny flights of steps leading up to tiny fluted columns, and—at maximum zoom—tiny faculty and tiny students.
History holds its breath while you ponder your options. You begin scooping ammonia out of Saturn’s upper atmosphere. You receive a communication marked DIPLOMATIC—URGENT. It’s Pren-Dahr, future incarnation of Prendar/Prendergast. His familiar long face and tufted red hair poke out from a sparkly gold toga draped over a purple leotard. He is an elongated native of zero gravity. The sun bulks overlarge in the view screen behind him—he is on the planet Venus, which he owns. Pren-Dahr’s ships are tiger-striped in blue and green; his bases are gold pyramids. He is, fittingly, a corporate overlord. He is friendly, flirtatious even, as if recalling his brief, disastrous marriage to Leira in the Third Age.
You grab for territory. Ceres is dotted with grim concrete bunkers, and a little tail of debris emerges from a mining operation at one end. This is the domain of Brendan Blackstar, a military leader and privateer, who seeks to crush the galaxy beneath humanity’s five-toed feet. His spaceships are maroon with gold highlights, blocky, as if they were made of LEGO, with wide, stubby exhaust jets.