I’ve Been Playing A Mobile Game Where You Can Purchase 1:1 Replicas
Of Everything In Real Life

I start with my grandmother’s old house, the farm off FM 92, the tree in her yard
where, once, there was a tire swing. It still looks the same, except there is no tire
swing in the real world and thus there is not one in the game, so I have to go into
town and buy the tire shop where Carlos died from over-inflating a tractor tire, and
then I get distracted and feel I have to go find his grave and purchase it too. We were
never friends but this way, I can pretend. I walk through the cemetery, buying the
graves of anyone whose name I remember until I have walked every row. The next
morning, my boss calls me in for a meeting. You’ve been distracted, he says. You lost the
Johnson account. We’re moving a different direction. I log on and buy the office building, and
I walk up to his desk and buy everything on it, only so that I can destroy each item,
one by one. I send him an email letting him know this. I do not remember if I sent
the email in the game or in this real world, which is feeling less real by the moment. I
buy gas. I log on and buy gas. Every movement must be replicated. I don’t know the
difference between simulation and simulacrum so I buy a theory book. Does it matter
which world I read it in? I want it to matter. I so very much do.