This piece contains lightly-sensitive plot information for “Pathologic 2,” but—not to worry—you could realistically watch an entire walkthrough of the thing before playing the game yourself and not tarnish your experience. Enjoy the show, and please play your part well.
There’s an impossible structure that I can’t get out of my head.
It shouldn’t exist, and it doesn’t—not really—but its creators don’t know that. Its creators certainly do, though. A distinction without a difference, maybe; I suppose it all depends on who’s inquiring. You may see the difference—or may not—depending on who you are at the moment. That can change, and it will. It’s allowed to. It’s supposed to. The creators know that—
Select your method of interruption:
“The creators do know?”
“Those creators?”
—No, not those creators.
A massive tower like an inverted spire supported only by a single staircase, it doesn’t so much stand on its own as it leans on a set of invisible hands, poised like a surgical tool—or an instrument of intubation, maybe—over a patient afflicted with a sentient plague.
Select your more-than-slightly bewildered response:
“I guess that does sound impossible. What’s that about a plague? Am I in danger?”
“Wait—a sentient plague? That’s ridiculous.“
I thought this was my piece, but these are stellar interruptions. Keep it up. If you must know: yes. A sentient plague—in a sense. Can I get back to the matter at-hand?
Select your answer, and then please continue to do so:
“I guess.”
“You evidently don’t need my permission.”
“Yes.”
Much like a playwright can pen two lines of dialogue which contradict one another on the same page, why shouldn’t a builder be able to erect such a dubious architectural wonder, no matter how implausible?
Gravity, for one thing.
I suppose the problem is that while the writer gets to dictate both lines and then alone navigate all the truths and untruths within, the builder is responding to physics, the peskiest of third-party contributors. Raging against it, maybe—but responding to it nonetheless.
Silly of me, really, to conflate the tasks of builders and those of writers.
But… what about in a video game?
“Yes, but that’s not really building something—saying that a digital man built a digital tower isn’t such a feat as you describe.”
“A video game isn’t real life.”
“This is dumb. This piece isn’t making any sense.”
Of course it isn’t. So far you’re the only one as much as suggesting otherwise. Yet, regardless of whether or not you ascribe to such audacious conjecture, there it is.
“There what is?”
“There is what?”
“What is there?”
The Polyhedron.
“The tower? It’s just coded into the game! It’s not actually anywhere!”
“You haven’t even mentioned that word since the title and now it’s supposed to work as an answer to my question?”
“The what? That’s nothing. This isn’t anything.”
Of course it isn’t!
“What are we even doing here?”
“Okay—I’m glad we agree. Apologies if I got a bit brusque.”
“Come on, man.”
In Ice-Pick Lodge’s “Pathologic 2,” the Polyhedron stands on the edge of town, its crowning spire illuminated to be visible even through nights further shrouded in fogs of smoke and disease. Flaunting its patent absurdity, it’s always waiting for you to turn your head just enough to let it burrow back into your mind. Living in the town are its architects, the Stamatin brothers, and its commissioners, the Kains. The latter talks recursively—romantically, even—of architecture’s might, of its ability to stir directly the souls of its beholders. The former seems less phased than you’d expect for people who seemed to conquer some of Earth’s immutable laws.
Besides these doers and dreamers, in this town is a more educated doctor than yourself—
—by the way, your name is Artemy Burakh.
“… Who?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Okay… My name is Artemy Burakh.”
You’ll get the hang of it.
As I was saying, found also in this town is a Bachelor of Medicine, Daniil Dankovsky. Quite the learned man, a rather dashing dresser, too; it’s perfectly natural to feel intimidated in talks with the man, and more natural still if that intimidation leads you to be a bit curt—or even hostile—in his presence. However you choose to conduct yourself, you’ll notice the man becoming increasingly enamored with that damned Polyhedron. Strange for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which being that Daniil is generally grounded in his strictly scientific ways, but in this structure he’s found something that he believes may contain the secret to conquering death itself.
If you can defy one of nature’s edicts, why not another?
“What could he possibly think those two things have to do with one another?”
“Is he right?”
“Is this because of the plague?”
I’m not about to tell you that. You need to figure it out for yourself!
There are others in the town, too. There are familial oligarchies which form a powerful triad with the Kains, or so they’d all like to think. Your friends from long ago are still around, as are the folk from the outskirts, those who abide by a deep, natural magic that may or may not course under, through, and over the populace.
The local kids seem to have developed their own fractured society yet have collectively managed to take an unsettling interest in the Polyhedron. No—that’s putting it too mildly. They moved into it. It does, evidently, have an interior. Wait until you see it.
If you see it.
“If I see it?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Oh, I’m going to see it.”
Well, you might die, of course! And who knows how many more actors we’ll need if you do. Or maybe you’ll live and have the thing destroyed. That’s what I did, after all.
You see, there’s an impossible structure that I can’t get out of my head.
It’s a reminder of what’s possible, of what’s real. I know it can’t be, but it is, so it isn’t, and I’m not. It’s all just a game—scripted, constructed, and staged. But it only happens, and what happens within it only happens, if I play. Or if you do.
What hell hath I wrought? And what hell will you?
Your father is Isidor Burakh, and you’ve been summoned away from your medical schooling, back to the town of your childhood on the edge of the Russian steppe. He needs you, Artemy. Something truly terrible is about to happen.
“So, what? Am I starting the game now? Is that what this is?”
“Can I stop it from happening?”
“I’m losing my mind—is that what you want?”
I guess that’s up to you! Let me know if you do, I’m eager to hear how you approach the script.
“Pathologic 2” is out now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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