Bearly Fair

Sunday, January 5th, 2020

Wake up at 6:30, stay in my pajamas. Get a glass of water. Sit at the dining room table. Play a game about a bear until 10:00. Fry two eggs, top with cheese and tomato. Phone pings. Check it.

It’s an email from the developers of the bear game. Next year, the sequel will be released. Will I take a survey? I put two pieces of bread on the warm pan to crisp. I will. Press the red button.

Koala Survey opened. It’s not an application I’ve seen before. Shrug. Start answering questions. Four questions about the bear game. When did I start playing? How often? How many hours? Where did I learn about it? Flip bread. What’s my favorite bear? Black bear. Why?

I close my phone. Put the eggs on the bread; put the bread on a glass plate with green leaf trim. Sit back at the table. I’m out of water. Refill the cup. Sit back down again. Sip the water and resume answering the questions.

This is a long survey. The questions range from asking about the game to asking about bears to about me. They are surface level questions but unlike anything I had ever seen on a questionnaire. What’s my favorite color? Orange. My favorite snack? Raspberry chocolate.

Then the last question.

After fifty multiple choice questions, the last one provided a blank box for me to type.

“Why do you like bears?”

“Because I am one.”

Click submit. Eat breakfast. Clean up. Put on a load of laundry. Back to bear game.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Get up. Get dressed. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Go to work. Nine hours later, I am home. Let the dogs out. Change my clothes. Vacuum. Let the dogs inside. Feed them. Feed myself. Play Bear Game.

Phone pings. It’s the game developers. Another email. They thank me for loving Bear Game and answering the Koala survey. They entered me to win a prize. I thought surveys were anonymous? Check email from six months ago. It never said it was anonymous.

Shrug. Go back to the new email. They show some screenshots from the new game. I take my laptop to my husband and show him.

“That’s nice, honey.”

“It comes out in January! I’m so excited. Look at this sprite. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Yeah.”

Bring my husband a new water bottle. Return to the Bear Game. Two hours later, I received a new email from the developers.

Donate to help fund the gardening feature on the squeal?

I keep reading. They offer me a collection of floral sunhats for donating. Check my bank account. I have plenty but get paid Thursday.

Thursday morning at work, I donate. How much? The first game costs ten dollars. I really love the Bear Game. The squeal looks great. Gardening! Sunhats! There’s one with pink and orange flowers. Blue and orange! Fifty dollars for gardening and sunhats.

Save money. Work. Evening routine. Make my dog, who looks like a little black bear, sit in my lap and show her the Bear Game. Get a dog kiss. Put her down. Life goes on.

Sunday, November 1, 2020

The sequel to the Bear Game is set to release on Friday, January 1, 2021. The winner to the Koala survey won’t be announced until Thursday, April 1, 2021.

The game developers are putting together a gift box of all things Bear Game and Bear Game Sequel. It looks nice!

Friday, January 1, 2021

Wake up early. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Brush dog as she stands in the bathroom doorway. My little bear.

No work today. There’s only Bear Game Sequel. I take short breaks to clean the house and care for the dogs. My husband comes home from work. We take a walk with my little black bear.

The entire weekend is nothing but Bear Game Sequel.

Monday, February 1, 2021

My phone pings. Another email from the game developers. Another Koala survey about Bear Game Sequel. Another fifty questions, some about the game and some about me.

It ends with the same question.

“Why do you like bears?”

“Because I am one. Bear approved.”

I sign it with the name I use in the game. “Roar, CookieCollecter99.”

Today. April 1, 2021

I’m home. Wake up; get ready. I have a doctor’s appointment at nine. Leave at 8:30. Arrive at 8:45. Phone pings. The Game Developers announced the winner of the giveaway. There are 20 runner-ups. A single loser.

A loser?

My name is called. Close my phone and go. The appointment goes well. I go home.

It’s 9:30. There’s an orange box on my front porch. A package, addressed to CookieCollecter99, sits on my welcome mat. It’s the same size as my mat and a few inches tall. A dark chocolate bar is taped to the top.

Unlock the door; open it. The dogs are barking, sniffing at the box. I set it on the table and go to my room, my little bear acting as my shadow. Change clothes. We go to the kitchen, get the shears. Go to the box. Cut through the paw print tape.

Pop open the package. Lots of white and orange confetti. No prize inside. Dig around the confetti. Shove it to the side. There’s a single piece of paper at the bottom.

A QR code and a black bear paw print. The Game Developer’s name is at the bottom.

I take out my phone and check the email. My username is nowhere. I’m not a winner or one of the runner-ups. Some poor soul called Jackclaw909 is the loser. So, I scan the QR code.

Ding! It sends me to a webpage. I’m invited to a party. The developers are having it at a zoo an hour away. Friday night. It starts at five. Food, prizes, bears, a dress code. They want everyone to dress like their in-game sprite.

“I can do that.”

Text my husband. He’s off tomorrow. He’ll drive. We can come home that same night. I’m excited.

I tell my online friends.

CupcakeDancer67 responds first. “That’s weird.”

I tell them of the Koala surveys. They can’t find the application’s website or anyone else talking about it online.

“That’s super weird. How much did you donate?” Cupcake asks me.

“$50”

“That’s not a lot. Some people donate thousands to games.”

Suddenly, I’m anxious. Sick to my stomach. I look up the developers and their website. Everything looks fine.

“I’m sure it will be fine.” Posts Mellybelly204.

DragonStarKeeper99 disagrees. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. Be careful.”

My husband isn’t worried. We can leave if we want. If I don’t want to go, then we don’t have to go. But bears. The chance to sit and stare at a bear digging through a pile of leaves is too tempting for me to resist.

But, why invite me?

The thought possesses me. As I play Bear Game Sequel, as I eat with my husband, as we go to bed, as soon as I wake up, as I drive to work Friday morning, as evening comes, all I think is that one thought. Why invite me?

I take the invitation out of the box and fold it up. Put it in my purse. Get in the car, wearing a long pink dress and an Easter sunhat covered in pink, orange, and blue flowers.

For the entire hour drive there, I wonder.

Why invite me?

My husband and I arrive at the party 15 minutes before the Bear Game Celebration Party is set to start. I’m nervous but excited. We sit in the car for ten minutes then walk to the front of the zoo to find the party. The staff sees my sunhat. They scan my QR code. They give us a map and point us toward the bear enclosure.

We walk. There’s a rope and a table. A man wearing a bear-ear hat and a Bear Game shirt stands behind it. He scans my QR code and gives me an orange lanyard with my bear name on it. He opens the rope, but he stops my husband from coming through.

“Bears only.”

My husband is angry.

“She’s my wife!”

I don’t like conflict. I tell my husband that I will text or call him if I want to go. He can text or call me when he wants to go. He calls me. I assure him that I won’t be long. People beyond the rope laugh and clap. Someone is talking to a group. I’m missing it!

My husband will be back soon.

The man lets me into the party. “Welcome, CookieCollecter99.”

A group of people, maybe twenty in total, face the bear enclosure and listen intently. I count them.

There’s 22. I check the time.

5:10.

I recognize the man they are listening to as one of the two creators of Bear Game. He is also the man who signed the bottom of all of the emails.

Standing at the edge of the group, I hear him talk about all of the work put into Bear Game. He drones on about the research on bears, gaming code struggles, and Koala survey reactions.

I shift closer.

Everyone here has one thing in common.

All of us had filled out a Koala survey to completion.

I thought to myself that maybe that was the reason I was invited.

The man’s gaze found me. His eyes grew wide. He waved me to the front. Slowly, I walked to his side. With a happy tone, he introduced me as my bear name.

“CookieCollecter99,” he said. “Is going to be our first bear. She already is one in all aspects but physical. Dollop-of-Daisies won our Koala survey so she will be right behind CookieCollecter99 in testing our new virtual reality Bear Game!”

I was happy. Everyone was happy.

“Are you ready? Follow me.”

We did.

He led the group into the Staff Only area behind the bear enclosure. We huddled together, excited and nervous. What if it’s no good?

Enter a yellowish concrete building. There are six cages built into the walls, like a dog kennel. Inside the cages are four chairs. A VR headset is in each of them. Black wires run from the ceiling into the headsets.

I want to leave. But, I’m up front. The heavy metal door slams shut. The game creator tried to fill the room with his voice, but I hear the very sound I suspect he tried to talk over.

The sound of a lock clicking echoes into the breaths of his speech. Check my phone. There is no signal in the concrete building.

I try to slip into the crowd. The man asks where I’m going. I lie.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

The Game Creator asks me to wait ten minutes. I sigh and wait. He directs me to a seat. I sit, putting my sunhat on my lap.

He puts the headset on me. My eyes are closed; a tightness squeezes my head as he puts earphones on me.

Open my eyes. I’m in a meadow. Sun shines down; flowers tickle my nose. A bee buzzes by me. Look down.

I am a bear.

Move forward. Explore tentatively. Attempt to remove the headset. I paw at my round ear.

How am I a bear?

Again and again, I try to take off the VR headset. I want to find my husband and go home. But, the headset won’t come off. I find a forest and rub the top of my head against a tree trunk to scrap the headset off. I sit down and try over and over to get it off so I can go home.

The world around me stays. More bears appear in the meadow as the others join the game. I go to them and we stare at each other.

I’m stuck here. I’m stuck as a bear.

We’re stuck as bears…

What now?