CURE-ALL // Chapter 9
Osiris was when Anand created the myth of the post-breakup bounceback. When Tash left, he found comfort in that myth. I’m a phoenix, he’d think, headseted, legs splayed on the living room floor. Of course I’m older, so I need more time to bounce back, but it’s inevitable; it’s coming. They’ll see. I’ll show them.
That was six months ago.
Few see their eccentricities as products of who they are; even the most out-there can be blind to their own eccentricity, while finding the eccentricity of others contrived. To them, it can feel like there’s a million ways in which things can go wrong, but only one in which things can go right. Until their eccentricity catches up with them and they wonder why things can’t be simple. Why can’t we be like those folks whose minds aren’t clouded with doubt and confusion. Why can’t we be like them?
In the six months since, shirt-and-trou gave way to round-neck tees and shorts. Conferences were missed. So were deadlines. Word spread of Anand locking himself up at home, rumoured to be suffering from headset sickness, obsessed with his masterpiece — Osiris 2. Forums were buzzing with gossip. Was it going to be the greatest game ever created? Was it going to be the biggest disappointment? Was he going to be kicked off his pet project? Was it a girl?
The reality is that you either live long enough to slip into oblivion or to become a trope. I am, to them, another eccentric. It’s so passé.
Write to Gianni, Anand says. Gianni, I'll send the Osiris 2 level 1 and 2 maps over today. Have a look. Send it to the Raina in testing. Let her first see if they work.
Send.
Anand hopes Gianni won't bring up deadlines, or the fact that he's missed them all for the past few months, or that this was never a problem they had never faced with the Anand of the past. Diru play Kanye West's Stronger.
Do anybody make real shit anymore, he thinks.