And at once, it was all too much. Today has been a mess.

The Flame has always had the ability to derail my brain, so seven days of intensive immersion in everything I can remember, conversations/interrogations with friends, and arranging what is now 70 pages of letters into chronological order has mangled my mind. I've just recieved a fascinating folder, containing the correspondance of the game's chief "mastermind" character - a man who had files on all the other characters. It's an invaluable reference, but I can't face much more of it without GOING INSANE.

This has been exacerbated by what's going on in Iran. I'm following a bunch of students holed up in a warehouse somewhere: as we speak, they seem to be going through a replay of Reservoir Dogs. They've been seperated from some of their buddies, at least one of them is appallingly injured. It makes for fascinating drama, but I feel utterly powerless, worse than usual for world events. I could stop following the Twitter feed, but that's what makes it most awful. Because I can just switch off and make it go away - bit like when I got too scared by Lady Vengeance to watch it all in one go - and my life will be back to normal. After all, that's the reaction to 99% of people to 99% of world crises. It's my usual reaction. I never watch the news because it upsets me to no purpose. My dad argues the concept of solidarity has some meaning - the people risking getting information out wouldn't be doing it if they didn't want people at the other end of the world to hear it. Well I'm hearing it, and it's making me miserable. I'm wearing green, and I've changed my Twitter location and datestamp to Tehran to confuse the Iranian government, and that's the extent of what I can do apart from just to listen and to care.

So I'm taking solace in computer games: Oblivion for literal oblivion.

Sim City is great, and like the real Sims this is because cheating is easy. It's not about what you build, it's about how you tear it apart. Sure, we've all spent hours getting exactly the right colour scheme of furniture or making sure your family has the right colour hair, but the bits about the sims you remember is when you trap them in a small, locked room with nothing but a firework for company, wait for them to get bored enough to activate it and watch the ensuing inferno. Sim City is the same, only building up a city is that fatal combination of tedious AND difficult, and it's harder to control the final look of your city too. It's got no more sophistication than the smash the gopher game. When people want MORE PARKS, you click "add more parks" - and it doesn't become much more complicated than that. Sure, you need to balance and budget, very challenging - but that's about as much fun as being a city bureaucrat - i.e., not at all. The thing is, not many girls finish playing dollhouses by burning down their dollhouse - but playing with building blocks, knocking them down is part of the point. Most computer games, at one point or another, inspire you with a desire to smash the screen. But Sim City provides a little, wicked smiley marked "disaster" so you can actually take out your fury on the poor little sims themselves.

And for one brief moment, I am a god. Literally as well as figuratively.

I've named my city Chronopolis, which is the name of the Valeyard's stronghold in He Jests at Scars, and when prompted for a name, I chose his eeeevil monicker "The Mighty One". This means my advisors, who are still prattling about education bonuses, are appealing to me "can we raise education funding, Mighty One?" No, my little ones, we need to prepare for the oncoming apocalypse MWAHAHAHAHA. I'm creating new realities here, cackling as I go, until I alone reign as MASTER OF ALL.

And another advisor told me off for abusing the warning siren and "crying wolf". Well, it makes such a lovely noise! And I think setting it off ten times in a row is fair considering what's about to hit the city. I've cranked up the Fight Club soundtrack, and am currently triggering off an infinite number of disasters - tornado, earthquake, fire, UFO, and after a slight consideration for taste purposes, I've set off some riots too - repeat, as the beautiful Chronopolis layout, with its vistas and walkways, becomes battlescarred and ravaged by fire. The sim-people are programmed to walk up and down roads, which is hilarious once tornadoes start taking chunks out of them - endlessly circling. Curiously, despite eleven tornados, five UFO attacks and fifteen earthquakes - earthquake is my favourite - the population does not seem to have dropped.



Hmm, lets see what happens when you put a nuclear power plant in the path of a fire. It takes a few attempts, but finally one catches alight and smoulders for a moment, then explodes, scattering half the map with satisfying "radiation" symbols. Ah, bliss! There's a handy function which allows you to see which areas of the city are protected by a fire station. While the citizenry are relaxing, little suspecting further onslaught, I am using that map to hunt down and destroy the fire stations. I want to see how hard it is to properly eradicate Chronopolis from space, time, and then after that the harddrive, as it's a tedious game.


The answer is half an hour - with the city at the point of collapse, the Sim City crashes and refuses to open back up again due to an "Exceptional Exception ? /". This is proof that I have irretrieviably ruptured time, and it feels marvellous! MWAHAHAHAHAHA

In any case, it's a nice way to sit back, and forget at the other side of the globe my Chronopolis has a real big sister, also being torn to pieces by riots and fires.