Clairvoyant, the Disc from the Airport

While there are barely any that I have ever been able to play very well at all, when the opportunity arises to try out a video game that seems sufficiently interesting and enough vacant time is available, I usually gladly do so. When I found Clairvoyant in the bargain bin of an electronics shop in a Paris airport, it seemed to fit that description. In fact, I wondered if it was the most unusual game I’d ever come across. Just how unusual became overwhelmingly clear when I decided to buy it and give it a try, a choice that has made writing this necessary.

On the way home from spending a week of the winter break in Europe, it was about one a.m. when I decided to make the most of the unexpectedly long layover in an airport in the French capital and look around. This was a country I hadn’t visited over the break, so I thought exploring its airport would be worthwhile, even if it wouldn’t be quite the same as seeing the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. After I’d passed the kiosks, the bakery stands, the excessively large advertisement posters, the cleaning crews at work, and the occasional group of passersby, I found the electronics shop. It was open even at that hour, so I entered, hoping to find an adapter for a charger I’d purchased a few days ago.

The shop was empty apart from the cashier, who acknowledged my presence with a glance up and a slight, terse nod before resuming whatever task with which he’d been occupying himself behind the counter. Resting on a shelf directly facing me from a little distance away was the charger I needed, and as I approached the register on the right wall of the store, I passed a glass and metal bin at waist height and glanced inside to find stacks of computer games. The educational CD-ROMs and simulacra of more popular games at the top caught my attention, so I dug through them until I found a sky-blue paper sleeve among the jewel cases. It featured a transparent character sprite, which would not have been out of place in some old games for arcade cabinets or earlier consoles, in a wide-brimmed hat below the word Clairvoyant in a yellow, angular sort of font. On the back, the only text read “Would you like to know what it’s like with ESP?” A sign posted above indicated that all items in the bin cost four Euros. Willing to waste that much money and maybe a few hours of my time on bizarre amusement, I brought Clairvoyant with me to the register. Shortly after I had paid for the items, placed them in my knapsack, and left the store, I heard the announcement for my flight and hurried back over to the terminal.

Originally intent on sleeping off the jet lag as much as possible when I arrived home at last, I was restless after unpacking everything and decided to give Clairvoyant a try right then. From the sleeve, I removed the disc, on which the only print, yellow and outlined with black, was the title, in that same VCR timestamp font as it was on the cover of its envelope. Having expected that installation would be required, it was a jarring albeit not unwelcome surprise when, once the disc had been inserted and read by the computer for a few seconds, it started up in full-screen.

The character from the cover was standing amid black space, and unlike on the cover, he was not transparent. The perspective was top-down. His skin was vermilion, his large eyes almost the same shade of blue as the disc envelope, and his outfit was completely white except for the band of his hat, which was a pale yellow. The empty space surrounding this character began to flicker from black to white rapidly and repeatedly. This went on for maybe fifteen seconds before it appeared to turn grey for a split second and then a deep blue, a hue on which it settled. At that point, only the character’s head was visible. It appeared to be bobbing up and down, and many randomly placed white lines were moving throughout the space.

Since I hadn’t even considered until just then that this elaborate title sequence may have been a cold open, as the character hadn’t moved at all, I pressed D, assuming that the controls were the standard WASD. Sure enough, the character’s head turned to the right, so I pressed W and held it down, but although he then faced forward, away from me, I couldn’t tell if he was moving. Another character appeared in front of him, apparently standing on the water. She was in a green shawl and robe adorned with white lines, with a pair of brown eyes the only visible features of her pink face. She would soon be identified as La Mère, but at that moment, she vanished mere seconds after having appeared. Shortly thereafter, however, a forest came into view some distance to the left. I tried to reach shore, but all I could do was make the player character face the forest, unable to move him towards it.

As I continued to hold down the A key, hoping I could swim against the current if I tried, an enormous structure, brown with marble pillars, appeared to the right, behind the character. Still facing the forest, he was rapidly pulled towards the edifice, and though I could still change the direction in which he was facing, this force was even more inexorable than the currents. Just before he was taken ashore, the dark visage of another character manifested on the water at the midpoint between the building and the woods. Although this NPC was only visible for a split second, after which the screen rather abruptly went black, I distinguished the menacing crescents of a pair of large yellow eyes and a bishop’s attire, miter as well as cassock, black with white embellishing lines similar to those on the outfit of La Mère. This character would later be identified as “Le Père.”

After I stared at the blank screen for a few seconds, the player character appeared in a tiny room with a grey floor with black speckles. Empty black space surrounded the room. I was waiting for a text box with instructions to appear, but no such thing happened, so I walked the character straight ahead. As he walked, a sound clip of brisk, slightly echoing footsteps played, like someone in dress shoes walking along a hard floor in a hallway, which confused me since his feet appeared to be bare. The screen cut to black.

The view returned to a black-and-white checkered hallway with ebony walls, with what appeared to be a grey fireplace directly behind the character. Still, no text boxes appeared, so I walked the character to the right to find a door next to the fireplace some distance away. I navigated my character to the door, hoping to go through it, at which point the lighting became negative, dissonant, distorted strings played, and La Mère returned, her eyes now the same angry shape as those of Le Père, along with a text box.

“LA MÈRE: WE DON’T GO THROUGH THAT DOOR SO SOON.”

That text and the manifestation beside her of the second other character who had shown up in the intro sequence along with the outline of a third character whose only distinguishable feature was a pair of large eyes in the empty black space behind the pair, was an effective deterrent for the time being, although it all disappeared in a few seconds. I proceeded down the hallway. It was quite long, and I moved along for what seemed like nearly a minute, contemplating whether I should turn back, when I reached a fork diverging perpendicularly to the character’s left. I decided to take that route rather than continue moving east, and soon found a door on the right. The screen cut to black again when I approached it, though the picture returned sooner this time.

When it did, I found that the character was now in front of a door in a hot spring area, with transparent pixelated grey steam drifting across the screen. A lavender, stocky character with a wide grin and yellow-green eyes was bathing in the water to the right, wearing a purple robe and cap as he did so. After about half of a minute, as I was observing this new area and considering what to do next, a text box appeared.

“MONTCLAIR: Have you finished your tasks for the day, Sinclair? Perhaps some time after you’ve done so, you should give this a try. Quite refreshing.”

This text then changed to a list of options: “-Reply to Montclair, -Don’t, -Leave, -Tasks?” Although I meant to choose the final option, I accidentally selected the second.

“Aren’t you a quiet one! Or you might have not heard, so if that is the case Have you finished your tasks for the day, Sinclair? Perhaps some time after you’ve done so, you should give this a try. Quite refreshing.”

The list of options then reappeared, and I clicked “-Tasks?”

The text box disappeared for a few seconds before returning with Montclair’s reply: “The atrium has been coming along wonderfully, thanks in no small part to your assistance! Have you already gone and extracted more flora for it?”

Before reply options for his next inquiry could appear, the grey steam abruptly vanished, prompting Montclair to exclaim “Convector has done it again! No steam! How disagreeable! Could you have a word with that creature?”

No command box appeared, so I walked Sinclair, who’d remained in front of the door back to the hall throughout the dialogue, closer to the water. Just as Sinclair reached the edge, the view turned negative and panned right, away from Sinclair and Montclair, to the other end of the area, where the nondescript character who’d appeared behind La Mère and Le Père was walking in circles. The convector stopped while facing to the left then disappeared, at which point the view panned back to the left and the lighting returned to normal, the steam also having returned.

“Well done! Now to go extract more flora for the atrium!”

I exited this area to return to the hallway and continue in the direction in which I’d been walking to reach a dead end with one door on the right and another facing Sinclair. I went through the latter door.

This time, I entered a space in which the solid background throbbed from black to a dull red only subtly distinguishable from black. Various leaves circling counterclockwise around some invisible point in the center were the only feature of this new area other than the green square space on which Sinclair was standing in front of the door. When I stepped forward from this space, whatever force that was moving the leaves had begun to spin Sinclair around with them, controls hardly able to move him let alone to turn him in any direction before the wind caused him to continue rotating swiftly and orbiting the room’s center. One leaf began to blink from its dark green to a light blue, so when I was in front of the sage rug again, I managed to struggle through the leaf cyclone onto it, back to stability. I waited until the blinking leaf was in front of Sinclair then walked into it, acquiring it with a tearing sound. Immediately I stepped back, out of the direction of the leaf current not only so as not to be spun around once more but also so as not to take any others and hear that noise again, and left that room.

I proceeded to go through the door on the right, evidently leading to the atrium, as the vast room that awaited me contained so many diverse and vibrant potted plants on the wooden planked floor that walking space was scarce. The atrium was surrounded by yellow rather than the black space around the other rooms except for the previous one. Montclair was waiting in the middle of the room between two plants that obscured him slightly such that I didn’t immediately notice his presence, though it was announced within seconds with another text box.

“You’ve brought another? This will be a sight! Perhaps a scent, too!”

Though taken aback somewhat by that comment, I walked over to Montclair. I was halted some space ahead of him, at which point the leaf appeared, hovering between the two characters, and Montclair spoke again.

“Mint, I see… a fine choice!”

The leaf then became another potted plant in the space between Montclair and Sinclair.

“Send over any more flora you may find!”

I’d begun to leave when the appearance of another text box halted me.

“By the way, how did you get here?”

I then was given the option to type a response, hesitating for a moment or two.

“By water, I guess.”

“Oof. That must have been fun. Me, I was in some arid terrain. Kept cracking and falling through… then I ended up here. It’s not without its pleasures, however! Absolutely not. Anyway, please do send over any more flora you may find!”

Not intent on doing so just then, I left the atrium, returned to the fork in the hallway, and took a right (well, Sinclair took a left). Though it reached a dead end almost immediately, there was a door just before this dead end.

Behind this door was a narrow passage that extended just until the door was out of sight, at which point it opened into a cavern. A waterfall was pouring down into a round fissure in the center of the cavern, neither its origin nor wherever the water must have been accumulating visible. A character with long black hair, khaki skin, a goldenrod shirt and blue pants stood before the waterfall, her back to Sinclair.

Just as I’d decided to approach this character yet before I actually pressed W to do so, a vision appeared in the waterfall of the atrium, evidently swallowed in flames. This vision lasted less than five seconds, at which point I immediately approached her.

The character turned around, revealing a face as minimalist in design as those of the other characters, except for Montclair, with hazel eyes.

“CLAIRE: To honor and take caution or to throw yourself into the tornado that is the present… to see, to be seen… speech or silence… light, its absence, inspiration, expiration, is it just a one or the other world? How different is it all? How different are we?”

Somewhat blindsided by this cryptic existential meandering, I was then asked a less rhetorical question.

“Who are you?”

The blinking cursor indicating that I could type in a response appeared again. At first I typed in “Blaine,” my real name, but decided against it and instead entered “Sinclair.”

“Why are you here?”

“i don’t know”

“It is okay. Montclair seems to take for granted that this is the Intracosm, the innermost region, and that the others are the Infracosm, which he thinks inferior just as he regards the Inflither, and the one realm that is ‘better’ than here, the Supracosm, the existence of which he is not even sure. Yet his foremost preoccupation is with that atrium, hoping it’s ornate enough for the Supracosm to notice. And yet still, only seeming to set aside that hope without abandoning it, he is so easily appeased. Would even a stillness in the room of wind and leaves trouble him? What if it snowed or something in the atrium? As for why I am here, well I can only answer why I stand before this cascade, to search for images within its flow. I arrived by fire, so it is the water that I must study. The moon rises again…”

Claire then turned to face the running water once again. I waited a moment to see if she would say anything else or if I’d get another chance to type, but neither happened. With many questions, I just walked around the water, examining the small cavern to find nothing else of note, and went through the narrow passageway to exit the room.

I walked back down the hallway, stopping in front of the door some distance to the right of the fireplace. After five seconds or so of facing the door and considering whether I should try to go through it again, Le Père appeared in the black space surrounding the hallway behind the door for a split second, prompting me to turn left and keep walking as a short, ominous melody began to play. When I was in front of the fireplace, a text box containing only the options to “-Sleep” or “-Remain awake” appeared, the cursor blinking beside the first, so I pressed the Enter key. Sinclair laid down on the floor, and the screen faded to black.

Claire and Sinclair were in a clearing in the forest, Claire gazing to and fro as various muffled animal and insect sounds called out from the surrounding trees. She asked me a question to which I could then type an answer.

“Where do you think we are?”

“Some uninhabited, overgrown island, perhaps.”

After I entered this, Claire continued to glance around for a moment until she turned to Sinclair with another text box.

“None of this is here.”

Sinclair was then standing on the green rug in front of the door in the room of wind and leaves, which was no longer pulsing but was a solid salmon shade, the leaves absent. I tried to walk forward, and after I progressed a few spaces ahead of the rug, I became unable to move. La Mère appeared in the center of the room.

“Why would you want to do that?”

I was able to type a reply, even as Sinclair began to fall.

“To see when or if the wind would return.”

After I pressed Enter, I’d somehow entered the cavern, though the waterfall was gone, a gazebo in its place. I walked into the gazebo and was asked by a text box whether I’d like to go “-Up” or “-Down.” Neither having realized that it was an elevator nor feeling inclined to go up or down a floor, I chose nothing, leaving the cursor to blink beside “-Up.” The scenery changed once again into the spring area, sans steam, with Sinclair’s back turned and that nondescript character, whose eyes were now rapidly and repeatedly cycling through the color spectrum, facing him. After this character monologued, the chance to type a reply returned.

“AZBYMN: Various names have been given… convector, inflither, something ‘other.’ Interdependent opposites, definition through implied opposition… concepts are compartmentalized in the mind, hierarchies contrived, to try to render comprehensible a contradictory existence.”

“You are infinity?”

Sinclair awoke in the fireplace as soon as I pressed Enter. I’d resolved to go through that door right then.

When I approached the door this time, a text box containing the question “What do you hope to find?” appeared.

“Liberation, unicity, clarity,” I typed, and was able to proceed through the door.

The area I’d accessed at last featured the same chessboard pattern as the hallways albeit the floor here was sprawling, no black space surrounding it. No door was visible behind Sinclair, the only figure in this space. I walked ahead, Sinclair’s inexplicably clacking footsteps louder than ever and echoing. The sound was beginning to get on my nerves after a couple of minutes of pressing onward through the desolate place, so Montclair’s appearance beside Sinclair was welcome until he spoke.

“Diligent cultivation for nothing! The higher beings shall never take any note of us now! Claire claimed that it was her doing, not yours, but I know better! Her ‘conscience’ constantly burning, as the poor atrium was… She can go wash the feet of a VIEUX if she feels the need to do such things, but what good will that do? Inherently we are abhorrent. All that can be done, I say, other than to appreciate that which is pleasing, is the offering of pleasing oblations to beings that may or may not exist.”

Claire appeared on the other side of Sinclair.

“False, especially that second statement. You sought the attention of ‘the higher beings’ for so long, and to what avail? Your cherished atrium enveloped in light surely caught their eye.”

“Enough from you! What do you, Sinclair, have to say for yourself before you come back and face the consequences of the atrocity you’ve committed?”

The option to type a reply to Montclair appeared, so I told him “Well first, what pleases you might not please any higher beings. As for the burning of the atrium, I foresaw it, but of what consequence was it? What if we’re already close to the higher beings?”

Although Montclair said nothing, Claire spoke a few seconds after I pressed Enter and the initial text box disappeared.

“Yet we have seemed so far away, as though left here by them… Do they lack any hope for us? Are we even significant to them?”

I wanted to reply to Claire, to try to console her with beliefs to the contrary of her worries, but the option to type failed to return, so I kept walking until they were both out of sight. As I proceeded, the white squares began to change to blue, and the pounding of a timpani seemed to approach from a distance. When the percussion became loud enough that I was about to lower the volume and the previously white squares were then indigo, the sound stopped and so did I, unable to progress any further.

The perspective moved forward until Sinclair was at the bottom of the screen. Le Père manifested before me, followed by La Mère after his text box appeared.

“LE PÈRE: The sin of to have seen…”

“LA MÈRE: Defiance of creation…”

Once again the blinking cursor appeared, and though I was at first at a loss as to what to type, something that seemed appropriate enough came to mind.

“One, if not the same. Is this such a transgression?”

Azbymn faded in behind them. I took a screencap of the three standing before Sinclair, then the eyes of the initial pair began to spin and cycle through the color spectrum as they became identical figures of a simple design, Sinclair slowly beginning to morph as well. “Is infinity not too much to see? Existence was not rendered dualities without reason.”

I was presented with a list of options, which included “-Try to turn back,” “-Remain here as long as possible,” “-Expose Azbymn to Montclair and Claire,” and “-Kill and usurp Azbymn.”

I carefully selected the second option, but the cursor automatically shifted down to the bottom, to the one option to which I was vehemently opposed. The text box faded and something inside me felt as though it were plummeting as Sinclair’s metamorphosis ceased, La Mère and Le Père transformed to resemble Sinclair, and Azbymn slowly began to do so as well. I pressed Backspace, Delete, Esc, any key that I thought would put an end to this, and still it continued, Sinclair’s ego becoming aggressive in apparent despair. Still I persisted, slamming keys, which finally seemed to have some effect, as La Mère and Le Père disappeared, Azbymn and Sinclair in a now empty space flickering rapidly between black and white until it turned into a sort of subdued silver static for just a moment and at last into black with several scattered pinpoint specks. Here, Azbymn and Sinclair faded to outlines, at which point Clairvoyant exited itself.

I took a few minutes to register that entire experience, to have a glass of water, to shut my eyes, to breathe. It felt more like a dream or a pseudo-philosophical, vaguely spiritual student project than a video game, and exactly why would become clear when I checked the disc drive in the file explorer and examined the properties of Clairvoyant. The creator was listed as “Firmin,” and it was a video file.

Now, when I sleep, I have vivid dreams unlike any I’d ever had before. The absurdity of being impacted to such an extent by what seems to have just been a video game that wasn’t really a video game and which seems to have read my mind has not been lost on me, so I berate myself as well as continually question my state of mind. Still, the ordeal hasn’t been without any relief, whether I’ve confabulated it or not. Less than ever have I been knowing what to believe. This relief, however, has come from some of the dreams. I hadn’t experienced astral projection before, but there have been some nights (perhaps the first was when I managed to fall asleep several hours after having experienced Clairvoyant) when I seemed to have done so, a version of myself composed of light and whom I see and control from some distance having risen out of my rapidly moving shut eyes into my room and drifted to the window.

Upon reaching the window, I find myself in a tunnel composed of rays of light of various colors perpetually twisting and colliding into one another, an ocean of light slowly changing colors below me, and a woman with her hair in a ponytail (translucent and monochrome as I am in this dream, I cannot tell what color), sunglasses, a turtleneck sweater, and corduroy pants drifts into this realm as well in front of me. She’s introduced herself as Claudia, and has explained that she knew Firmin, who, like her, had psychic abilities, but who was misguided and unbalanced, honing them with such a mind that could only lead to catastrophe.

At the cost of physical existence, Firmin threw himself into the causal plane, where he became capable of mind-reading and prescience on a scale and to an extent that may have never been achieved before. Although Claudia has been struggling to reach him since he’s gone to the causal plane, she still physically exists, somewhere in France, specifically, and she managed somehow to find me and inform me of the nature of Firmin, details that she seems to consider advantages. She hopes to extract him from the causal plane back into physical existence, and seems convinced that I have some innate latent psychic abilities (I suspect that she is of the persuasion that everyone does) and, if developed, I can help her in this effort.