M. Cendrowska
Noah Jay Lucero, my dearest friend and a pretty smart fellow for a twenty-eight-year-old, is the world’s savior. Also, probably the richest and the best-known person in the world right now. I met him in college. He was a decent student, slightly above average. However, two years ago he came up with the greatest idea mankind ever heard of. Noah basically found a cure for cancer. Well, sort of.
His idea was to create a computer game called “1UP” for people diagnosed with cancer. If a person finished the game, they would be cured of cancer. Don’t ask me why it works, that scientific stuff is all gibberish to me. As a programmer, I helped Noah design the game, but a lot of it is still a mystery even to me. He told me that the game cannot be too easy. It had to be challenging, so as to reflect the battle and the struggles of people with cancer. And so it was deeply challenging in a way only a patient usually understands.
During those decades the number of people who died from cancer went up by almost 800%. Despite constant efforts to find the cure, little progress was made. Unable to discern the cause, scientists resorted to predicting how much worse it would get instead of trying to solve it. The world’s population fell into a state of despondency. Stricken with panic, people committed suicide on a massive scale: the ordeal of cancer seemed to grow scarier than a quick end.
I had my reason to support Noah’s idea. My mom had been sick, too. Sadly, she died before we fully developed our project.
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I designed the game in such a manner so as to individualize the experience. Each person willing to enter the game first had to agree to have their brains analyzed. With our highly attuned machines, we sifted through the person’s memories, their greatest fears and desires. As a result, the experience is different for each and every person. The whole arrangement, honestly, is quite complex. I’ll tell you, some of my brightest design ideas came from the past. See, there is a certain book in my family collection. The author of the book is Nicolas Flamel who is also an ancestor of mine. The book presented some unusual ideas about treating patients with different diseases, including cancer. I was able to implement many of these theories into our game. I had already spoken to Noah about expanding our project to treat other diseases and to increase people’s longevity. This book is the key to development of modern medicine, believe me.
The way the game is designed appears to offer plenty of freedom to the players at first; between me and you, I can predict only the opening moves; after that, each individual journey varies at every turn. As a result, I am unable to tell anyone how to beat the game because I don’t know it myself. When the project began, some people would try to bribe me, begged me to tell them how increase their chances of completing the game or making it easier for them. The wealthiest ones would tempt me with enormous sums of money to redesign the game. They wanted to include in-game boosters, spike it with clues, and other bullshit ideas. Of course, they were willing to pay hard currency for those boosters or whatever else that would give them an advantage.
I refused on the basis that high fees that only some people would be able to pay would create a class division where the rich ones would have higher chances of beating the game; I wanted everyone to have equal chances to beat their cancer. Besides, me and Noah couldn’t care less about the money; we are both very comfortable. We earned buckets of dough in our previous, commercial projects. This game, however, is free for all; every patient can come and play at no cost whatsoever.
All the same, I believe if you’re reading this you can be trusted. Therefore, I would like to share with you a hint. This is a secret code. If you are able to solve it, you will have no problem beating the game. The code is:
68(M2) – 44(A1) – 32(N1) – (-) – 76(W4) – 48(A2) – 3(T6) – 99(S2) – 16(P1)
Good luck!
So far it all seems perfect. We’ve found the way to deal with cancer; the world will be a better place thanks to us. So, where is the catch? Well, I haven’t yet told you what happens if you fail. After all, as I said, that the game is not easy. So here comes the controversial part. See, people who don’t finish the game die. Immediately.
Still, a great number of patients choose to try themselves at the game. To be fair, it’s the only way left to survive cancer, the disease that appears to seal their fate. They are going to die anyway, so they are not risking anything. If the choice is between dying while suffering or dying immediately and painlessly, the second option can still save your life – if you can finish the game. It’s not an easy choice. But I know I’d choose to play the game without hesitation.
To be honest, I don’t understand people who choose differently. I’d go as far as to say that I despise them. We created an option to save your life, have some respect and gratitude and use it! I know it’s hard, but there is nothing else that will save you!
I’m sorry, I’m trying to show some understanding for those people because I know it’s not easy for them. The vision of dying while playing the game, while having the hope; the perspective of not being able to say goodbye to family and friends, that’s unpleasant. With cancer, at least you get a couple of months to do what some call the end-of-life stuff. But people who reject the option Noah and I have created for them make me mad.
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There is one person who makes me angry more than anyone else. That person is Noah’s father, Thomas. Not only is he against the game and its beneficial effect, but also seems to wage a personal crusade against us because his wife, Jenna, was patient zero. Yes, the first person to ever test our game was Noah’s mother. At this point, you won’t be surprised if I tell you that she did not survive. Noah was devastated, he wanted to abandon the whole project, but I convinced him not to do that. I told him that Jenna wouldn’t want that. She would like us to continue, to find the cure for that horrible disease. His father was not so forgiving. He went crazy and wanted to kill Noah when he found out what we did. Luckily, he managed to restrain himself. Instead, he decided to fight us.
Eventually, Thomas launched the whole anti-1UP movement, started to spread negative propaganda, insinuating falsely that our treatment is dangerous and results uncertain. Noah keeps trying to repair their relationship, but his father is unyielding. I understand Noah: he lost his mother; he doesn’t want to lose his father too. But he needs to be careful; he cannot be blinded by filial love. So I tell him we must defeat the enemy number one together.
Some of the Thomas’s attempts to stop our project went too far in my opinion. He used to send pretend patients to us, actual spies, with an aim to infiltrate our building, find out how our technology works, with the purpose of eventually shutting the whole project down. And now the last we hear is that Thomas is planning to find a way to infect himself with cancer! He will enter the game as a patient and purposefully lose, so that Noah will have to part with his second parent.
Thomas knows that we wouldn’t be able to stop him; we can’t forbid him from playing the game; we need to respect the rules. It doesn’t work without the rules.
It is beyond me to think how far Thomas is willing to go to destroy something that we worked so hard for. After all, it was Jenna’s decision to enter the game, not his. This drives him crazy. If anything, Thomas should blame Jenna, not us.
He shouldn’t blame anybody, actually. I just hope he won’t do something as stupid as he is threatening to do. I’m slowly losing hope that father and son will ever be able to reconcile, seeing how bitter and persistent Thomas is.
Noah maintains that even if his father went on to realize his plans, he’d be changed by the game. He believes that if Thomas played the game, he’d find a reason to fight for his life, and perhaps he’d also tap some inner resources to make up with us. I’m skeptical, but I hope Noah is right.
The battle goes on. Since the very moment Noah told me about his game, I was fully on board. He planted the idea in my head and allowed it to evolve. Together we share the same goal, to erase cancer as part of existence, to save humanity from this terrible disease, to give people hope for a better and longer life with their close ones.
June 2020