Game of Snake

[electroBeam]

I had a desire to write a story about an arcade snake. I love playing snake, but the game reminded me of something beyond just the game itself. And so I wrote about it.

 

A little snake, just 1 pixel long, was doing some therapy work after years of bullying. The 1 pixel snake since he was a kid, loved tails, and seeing how big snake tails can get. He went to university to be a tailsman, where he learnt different methods for measuring different tail sizes of different snakes. Each assignment though, started getting more and more repetitive, and the snake lost interest. He went into more therapy work for his bullying.

As he went into therapy work, he noticed a video on the internet from snakilized.org by a weird snake without any hair. This snake seemed to have a very long tail, and he made a video called the most shocking tail measuring technique you'll ever hear. He talked about this amazing possibility of growing your tail so long that it covers the entire universe(arcade game). But he said you have to play 'the game' called 'the snake game'. A game with a whole range of different levels, different gemstones you have to collect, different boss battles, weird levels that seem to twist and turn as you progress through them, different ways of knowing how long your tail is and how to get it longer, different ways to go faster or slower or manoeuvre around the game to get your tail longer faster.

Wow, I've always been interested in tails, but never thought you could actually make your tail grow longer! That's university x1000! 

The hairless snake said "to grow your tail longer, you have to enter the first level and collect all the contemplation gemstones, there's a map that shows you where to get them, but be warned! Growing your tail longer is about collecting the contemplation gemstones, not about dreaming about how long your tail is on the map!"

So the little snake went over to level 1, and collected his first gemstone. But his tail didn't grow any longer! So he went and collected the 2nd gemstone, but still his tail didn't even get an inch longer! Collected the third...4th...5th... his tail wasn't getting any longer. He looked at the map again to make sure he was collecting the right gemstones. Then he noticed there was a gemstone that looked like tail! And thought "Those must be the right gemstones!" So he went over to those gemstones and ate them... but again no longer tail. So he thought "what if I'm not meant to be eating them, but attaching them to my body!" So he went over and started attaching them to his body and it worked! His tail was getting longer, then he had an even cleverer idea "what if instead of going to each gemstone, I just cut them out on my map and stick them on my body! That way I don't have to walk over to them!" So then he went and cut out all the gemstones on the map and planted them on his body, his tail was getting very long now! Then he had another amazing idea to draw himself on the map and to draw his tail getting longer. Now he's figured out how to have a long tail! This works very well! He kept drawing and drawing and...

"Slap!" The hairless snake smashed his map and all his planted tails on the ground. And just in a millisecond, the little snake was back to square one, same length tail. This left the little snake depressed because he really thought he had a long tail. "I warned you to not get caught in the map" the hairless snake said, but the little snake didn't listen. 

The little snake then slowly started collecting the meditation gemstones, with a depressed look on his face, because his tail wasn't growing longer at each gemstone collected. He wondered whether growing a long tail is for him, or whether he should just be like the other 1 pixel snakes. This gemstone collecting life is too hard. 

He stopped collecting gemstones for a while and went to the party levels, and career levels for a while. 

Then 1 morning he woke up, and noticed his tail was slightly longer. "OMG this is amazing!" The little snake thought, and just like that was back at the contemplation level to collect more gemstones. 

But there was a downside, each contemplation gemstone collected, the world started changing colours slightly. Everything seemed to get slightly more green. It was a bit disturbing, but the little snake ignored it.

The hairless snake made a new video called "the dangers of collecting gemstones" where he talked about how the gemstones do make your tail grow longer, but they have awful side effects of changing the colour of the world a little bit and making it a bit fuzzy. 

The snake ignored the fuzziness, and kept growing his tail. His tail had a beautiful array of different aspects to it, a tail about vibrant looking trees, another about vibrant looking nature, another on less anger, and another on more peace. Each aspect was 1 cell or pixel long of his tail.

Then the hairless snake introduced the little snake to something called duality and non duality. Non duality is when you can grow your tail by seeing how you can eat different aspects of the world, like the grass and trees, and turn those things into your tail. Duality is seeing how your tail is different to those things and can never be eaten. Apparently everything can be eaten, but that idea turned the little snake off, so he just focused on how the good things can be eaten like candy and the trees and the grass. The little snake didn't want to eat the mud and mush and algae and moss, and Trump, etc. who knows what that will do to his body and tail?

The little snake went to level 2 and started eating the trees,  but not everything else. His tail grew a bit longer but not much. He tried eating more and more trees and grass, but his tail only got slightly longer. He ate and ate and ate, more and more and more, but the tail didn't get much longer. The little snake started getting depressed, thinking that he wasn't spiritually talented enough to grow his tail any longer. The hairless snake said "you have to eat the moss too! Not just the stuff you like!" So then the little snake ate the moss, and BOOM! His stomach swelled up massively. The moss took over his stomach and gave him a massive stomach ache. 

The little snake got so angry at the hairless snake, saying that the hairless snake is making him go crazy and screwing up his life. But as the swelling went away, all of a sudden the snake's stomach grew tolerant to the moss, and the snake could eat all of it!

By this time the little snake's tail was getting very long, now with different aspects of the world attached to it, like moss, algae, grass and trees, it was on its way to be infinitely long.

Then the hairless snake introduced the little snake to more levels of the game. And each of these new levels had a different way of measuring how long your tail is. The first mega level was the no tail level, where you can measure the tail by how much space is inside it, then the infinity mega level, where you can measure the tail by how many atoms are in it, then a very cool level called the God measuring level, where you can measure the tail just by feeling it and being it, and then the Love level, where you can measure the tail by how much love you feel for it. 

The little snake ran to the no tail level, and tried to see how its tail had space in it. But... it was solid, not spacey at all!

The little snake tried using a magnifying glass, but couldn't see any space in it. He then looked at the map for a no tail snake, and saw that the tail had all these holes in it, like a net. So the snake got a net and put it around his tail, but it was still solid. 

The snake ran up to the hairless snake and asked him how to get it done. The hairless snake said it cannot be communicated, so take psychedelics so that you can feel how its done. 

The snake then took some psychedelics, but then the psychedelics started cutting his tail. 

"Nooo!" Screamed the little snake "I've been working so hard to grow my tail so long, you can't just cut it off!".

But the psychedelics kept going, cutting away at his tail, this is what's known in the arcade game as a "bad trip". 

After the psychedelics were taken, the snake got traumatised. The little snake again got very angry at the hairless snake "How could you make me take that! I nearly lost my tail!" Then very confusingly the hairless snake said "to progress onto the next level you need to loose some of your tail". The little snake got confused and so looked at his map again, and it didn't look like loosing his tail. 

But the little snake continued, trying to cut his tail to see what would happen, and at every cut his vision got horribly blurry and everything started going green. So he stopped, but then tried cutting again, and the same thing happened!

So he gave up and just enjoyed himself in the career and relationship levels again.

But then a pulse of energy went through his brain and started cutting his tail. He started freaking out, thinking he was going to loose his tail and loose his mind. 

He tried stopping the pulses but it didn't work.

He ended up in the hospital fearful that he developed a bad disease. 

The doctors told him he was fine though, and so confusingly he left the hospital and walked home.

But as soon as he left home, that massive pulse of energy came up again and started eating at his tail.

He tried running back to the hospital, but it was too late. The energy went up and up, cutting away all of his tail. 

Just as the little snake was about to cry to death, the energy stopped, and surprisingly his tail was still there, but now it looked like a net shape!

"Wow just like the map!" The little snake excitedly said. The snake tail was so empty that it covered all of the air of the video game. It became so large and the snake got so excited.

The snake started feeling it, it was so close to having a tail the entire size of the video game itself. He just had to go through those couple of levels and then he's done.

So he went through the infinity level, where he was tasked with eating every single atom in the game, not just the big objects like moss and algae.

As he was eating all the atoms in the game, he started to notice, that he couldn't tell the difference between different objects anymore, because they were all atoms. 

And then a very scary experience happened, He saw his tail, and then saw the atoms that he was eating, and for a split second couldn't tell the difference between them because they were both the same colour... green!

He freaked out because he nearly lost his entire tail. He went up to the hairless snake and asked him about his scary episode of nearly loosing his tail. The hairless snake said "don't worry about it, just focus on feeling". And so the little snake did, but as he did that, his tail started looking like the stuff he was eating even more.

The little snake freaked out, worried that he was about to loose his entire tail if he keeps going. And all of the work he's built up to.

He looks at his map, and tries to see his map happen in real life. He notices how his map has cool waves on it to signify the God level of tail. and he tries to see those waves as a way to ensure his tail doesn't disappear. 

And that keeps the tail in tact. He now can feel his tail and it feels just like what the map said. Lucky he didn't lose his tail and everything he's worked for and he just went a bit insane for a little while. 

Then the snake moves onto the love level, the final level before his tail encompasses the entire game. 

The love level is the level where you eat the light that the game emits.

And so the little snake starts getting that light and eating it. But as he eats that energy, he again notices that the light is all green, everything he is eating is completely green. 

The little snake starts freaking out, because the little snake cannot tell what he's eating anymore. He can't even feel the food enter his mouth anymore. How is he going to grow his tail to the maximum length if he can't even feel the food enter his mouth anymore?

The little snake goes to the hairless snake to tell him what's happening. He tells the hairless snake how everything he's eating is the same and he can't feel it enter his stomach anymore. The hairless snake says that its fine, and that its true, there are no differences. 

The little snake freaks out exclaiming "but how will I grow my tail to the size of the universe if I can't even eat anymore!"

The hairless snake just says "That's all a story, don't listen and keep eating". 

The little snake starts thinking that this hairless snake is an idiot. Clearly if he can't eat anymore he can't grow his tail anymore. Then the hairless snake looks at all of the levels and the game and they all look like green light. The contemplation gemstones like like the eating chips gemstones, and level 4 looks like level 1. The game just looks like 1 big green wave of energy. 

The little snake starts to get depressed, he built his entire life around making a very long tail, the size of the universe, and now he can't even tell the difference between the different levels. The no tail level, God tail level, Love tail level, all look the same, and the contemplation gemstone looks like all the other gemstones, and all the food looks like the rest of the food, which looks like the levels, which looks like the gemstones.

And then he looks at his tail, and his tail looks completely green, just like the entire level. The little snake gets deeply deeply depressed, because how he can't even tell the difference between the different aspects of his tail, like the peace part, and the vibrant trees part, and the no mind part, and the god consciousness part, it all looks like the level, and he can't even tell if he has a tail.

What if he never had a tail before? And he just thought he had a tail?

He realises that all of his tail was made up. He looks at his 1 pixel snake friends who didn't even start the game in the first place, and just noticed how his tail is the same length as theirs... 1 pixel.

He starts regretting ever playing the game in the first place, just thinking it was a massive ego trip, and he's no better off then his 1 pixel friends. 

From being so depressed, he goes into his green house, into his green kitchen, gets his green knife, and as he is about to put his green knife in his body, he notices that his green knife is the same colour as his green body, and that committing suicide wouldn't do anything.

He then sees how the entire universe is 1 big green tail, and that he cannot tell the difference between his body and the world. As if he had a green tail that was the size of the universe. Literally no distinctions. Absolutely no distinctions at all. 

 

EDIT: and then a few days later, the snake realised that he never went through the game, he was always the game itself, and he made the game just so he could fall in love with himself. ??????????????????????????????????????????????

the snake designed the game precisely to maximise the amount of love he could give to himself. All those tough times, all those wacky experiences, all the times he was lost but also the times that he was excited, motivated by progress, in awe, all those times was just so that he could fall in love with himself as much as possible, and all along he didn't go through those experiences, he was those experiences. 

Edited October 23, 2020 by electroBeam