Killing Time at Lightspeed
The grand pragmatics of sci-fi fantasies of humanity spreading across the universe run headlong into personal intimacy in the interactive fiction work, Killing Time at Lightspeed. Lured by opportunities for better employment and a chance to start over somewhere across the universe, the main character boards a one-way interstellar flight. The game focuses on a simple Twitter-like interface that the ship provides its passengers hurting away from Earth. Within its platform constraints, you can like your friends’ posts, comment on them, and try to make sense of the turmoil that is set loose on your former home with the rise in cybernetic technology and artificial intelligence. The catch is that the lightyears pass in only a handful of hours relative owing to the new spaceship engine design, but decades pass during that afternoon flight. Months pass every time your refresh your timeline. Relationships grow and crumble. Administrations wax and wane. By manyfold amplifying the way social media technology both connects us to a vast world but simultaneously creates an intense tension of disembodiment and mediation from both the quotidian and profound, Killing time at Lightspeed is an especially relevant mirror in the age of social distancing, where every house is a spaceship drifting.
Creator: Gritfish
Link: https://gritfish.itch.io/ktals
Connections:
An Xiao - The Artist Is Kinda Present
Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto
Pat Cadigan - Synners