RND/ to consider a mildly apocalyptic digital art Diptych entitled “Suburb”

5999×5334, 16.2MB edited in Gimp

few of us now recall that perilous summer. what began as a game, a harmless pastime, quickly took a turn toward the serious and obsessive, which none of us tried to resist. after all, we were young. we were fourteen and fifteen, scornful of childhood, remote from the world of stern and ludicrous adults. we were bored, we were restless, we longed to be seized by any whim or passion and follow it to the farthest reaches of our natures. we wanted to live—to die—to burst into flame—to be transformed into angels or explosions. only the mundane offended us, as if we secretly feared it was our destiny. by late afternoon our muscles ached, our eyelids grew heavy with obscure desires. and so we dreamed and did nothing, for what was there to do, played ping-pong and went to the beach, loafed in backyards, slept late into the morning—and always we craved adventures so extreme we could never imagine them.

in the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.

the game began innocently and spread like a dark rumor.

– dangerous laughter by steven millhauser

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// how to play big science