Super Leviathan Brothers
By Stuart Docherty
Thomas Hobbes sat beside me and lifted the rectangular, grey controller, with its round-point corners, black paneling and shiny red buttons. As he lifted it, the cable rose too, and I watched him eye the black rubber cord, all the wires safely contained within. He turned it over in his hands, and I tried to focus on the screen.
“Does this bring you any happiness? Any felicity?” He spoke the last word with gumption, stretching his mouth with every syllable like the way Londoners used to in old movies.
On the screen, my sprite jumped up onto a box. Jumping again, it punched another box above it. I clicked the d-pad to the right and urged the little red figure towards the mushroom that bounced out of the box. When he reached the mushroom, the small red figure grew into a man, stretching up across two frames.
“I guess so,” I shrugged.
I could see him peering at me through the corner of my eye. He’d always had a sour demeanor and I was surprised—and a little relieved—to see it unaffected by my comments. He turned back to the screen.
“Is there some sort of,” he waved his hand in the air, trying to find the word. “Some sort of utmost aim? Some meaning to the plight of this little red man?”
I could feel my shoulders rising again into another shrug but stopped myself. “Not really, you just kind of get to the end of the level.”
“And then?”
“Then there’s another level.”
He began to nod, and I thought I could see him smile.
“Here, look,” I was coming to the end of the level. “I’ll show you.”
I maneuvered the figure across the platform at the bottom of the screen and bounced him up the clay-like brick pyramid. When I jumped across the plane perpendicular to the flag, the controller felt limp, inert, in my hands as the machine took over and my little hero walked forward and disappeared into the dark hole of a doorway. In the top right corner of the screen, the numbers rolled over and over, increasing my total score.
The music shifted, the screen changed, and our character appeared, falling through a gap and landing neatly on a raised dais. The rhythm was slow and heavy—but strong and encouraging. Where before the background showed clouds and blue skies, now all was dark and cavernous. Even the upper panel of the screen had the same earthy-red pixels blocking us in.
“And what of idolatry? Is there some sacred good, some perfect virtue to attain?” Hobbes moved closer to the screen.
“No, not really. I mean, there’s the high scores. But you know the highest on that is like nine million or something. So even the pros have a long way to go before they get there.”
He was nodding again, and I felt him staring. When I turned to look, he was not looking at me, but at the controller in my hands. His smile was cruel and ornery, and I heard him slurp before he spoke, drawing his saliva into the back of his mouth.
“That is all it really is, you see; a continual progression of desire from one object to another, attaining the former as a means to attain the latter. We crave the assurance of future desires, perpetually and unending—forever.”
“Forever?” I was struggling to keep my eyes on the screen while he spoke. His words pulled my attention to the space between him and the game. I could feel an awareness of my future expanding before me as a series of doors at intervals across space, stretching into the horizon.
“Naught can stop it but death.”
The sprite bounced up and fell short of the next platform, dropping down and disappearing off the bottom of the screen. The music stopped, overrun by two notes played an uneven interval downwards and the words “You died” rolled onto the middle of the screen.
Hobbes snorted and stiffened. When the sprite returned to the start of the level and the extra lives counter fell by one, he screwed up his face, confused.
“You wanna go?” I held out the controller to him.
He snatched it from my hand and pushed each button once or twice very slowly, easing the plastic down gently. After a few moments of basic exploration, of understanding the system, he was off.
“Why does your father submit to that wretched job of his?”
“He wants the money, I guess?”
“Yes, yes, but why does he do it? Why does he obey the common power?”
I paused and watched as Hobbes approached a difficult series of ledges, some moving up and down, others floating at unusual heights. All the while, spiked balls swung in regular circuits round a single point and winged turtles spat balls of flickering fire. “I guess because it’s easier.”
“The desire for ease, for sensual delights.” Hobbes spoke while playing. He moved the figure up and paused at the perfect moment, allowing a roving red and orange pixel to glide overhead. “A fear of death, of injury. These all dispose us to abandon that which we might hope for from our own industry.” As he finished speaking, Hobbes guided the figure from the final moving platform and onto the start of a stable and safe landing zone.
“Hey, try to get that box. The one with the question mark. There might be a power-up in it.”
Hobbes wrinkled his nose and shifted forward in his seat. The box was above an open precipice. Moving left and right in the space below it was a thin platform. He moved the character to the right.
“Wait.” I stopped myself from pointing. Hobbes had straightened and turned his head to look at me, side-eyed. “The timing is important. It’ll bounce out so you got to, like, wait ‘til it lines up or else you’ll miss it.”
Hobbes did not reply but snorted and waited for the platform to move. The sprite on-screen punched the box, and a five-pointed star leapt out of the top, bounding away to the right. It changed colors, flashing between red, green and blue.
“Shit, dude that’s a star. Get it.”
“What does this star do, exactly?”
“It makes you, like, invincible. Like nothing will hurt you and, all th—”
“I know what invincible means.”
Hobbes moved to the right and caught up with the star. When he connected with the same square on-screen the figure transformed—every detail flashed between different colors, the same lurid rotation of reds, greens and blues as the star itself. Alongside it, the music changed; suddenly up-tempo and bright.
“A new desire, a new conquest,” Hobbes was mumbling. “To kill, to subdue, to repel or supplant. War inclineth to war, for there is no honor but it.”
Hobbes guided the character across the screen, running through their projectiles, headlong into enemy space. Each time one of the little shells twirled up and away, dropping out of sight, his face contorted into a smirk.
Then, the music stopped. The animation changed too; all the flashing colors ceased, and the character returned to its previous, normal state.
“What is this?”
“It’s not permanent, that’d be too easy.”
Hobbes had moved the character onto a small pinnacle—the top step of a descending staircase. To the left and right identical spiked blocks moved up and down, slamming into the floor then the ceiling. He moved the figure at just the right moment down the pyramid staircase and scurried under the falling block to safety. Ahead of him, a series of golden coins spun in the air; only a few pixels above; only a simple jump would collect them.
“Hey, you gotta get those coins.”
“Oh?” Hobbes continued to guide the sprite forward, ignorant of my plea.
“Yeah man, if you ge—”
“Why? Why should I waste my time on such trivial things?”
“You just gotta. Like, the sco—”
“Ignorance. Ignorance. Ignorance.” Hobbes was leaning forward on his stool, almost standing. “Your ignorance of the original constitution, of the truth, disposes you make custom and example the ruler of your actions. That which is the custom to punish is unjust. In turn, that which is custom is right.”
“Yeah, but, like, if you get them—”
“In such a manner, that which is just is by that which one can produce an example or precedent.” Here Hobbes turned to me, and I saw the full fury in his eyes. “You are a man already, grown strong and stubborn, appealing to reason from custom then custom to reason as oft as you require it. Setting reason as your foe when it suits you, then receding from custom when you need to.”
He sat down again and moved the sprite across the screen, leaping before it crossed the flagpole signaling the end of the level. I could still see him glaring at me, still feel the burn of his gaze on me. My cheeks felt flush.
“I just meant you get more points if you get the coins.” I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me at first but then I saw him straighten his shoulders.
We watched in silence as the little red man appeared on the next screen, the start of the next level. We remained in silence as Hobbes guided him through a series of roving platforms, over stone pyramids and through diminutive tunnels. No matter the foe that came upon him, Hobbes found a way to defeat it, dipping below the threat or leaping up and over to safety at just the right moment.
So it came to pass that he brought the little red sprite to the final level. Something in me trembled as he reached the final screen and the great spiked turtle blocked his path. A text box appeared and before I had a chance to read it, Hobbes clicked through the text. The turtle roared and cast little pixels of orange fire up and out in every direction.
I opened my mouth to speak but my voice caught in my throat and only a dry croak escaped. Hobbes did not turn his gaze from the television. I looked at him then and saw the screen reflected in his eyes, the rectangle of color etched onto them. As he moved the character forward and started the fight, he began to speak.
“It is always ignorance. Of remote causes, it makes men believe in causes immediate. That is all they can perceive. Else, ignorance of natural causes, of nature, leads man to credulity.” The sprite leapt onto the monster's head and the red bar atop the screen dwindled. “This ignorance leads men to lies. To believe and to make them.”
I tried to speak again but, once more, my voice would not come.
Hobbes continued, “The blind man, hearing his friends talk of fire, of its warming effects, and being led to the same himself may believe that there is something which we call fire. He may even believe it to be the cause of what he feels, of his warming.”
Again, Hobbes dodged a ball of fire and struck the spiked beast on the head and again the health bar diminished.
“Yet this blind man has no idea of this fire in his mind, nor can he imagine it or what it is like. So also, by the admirable order of the world and all of the things in it, might a man conceive of a cause of it all. That which we call God. Yet still will have no idea of him in his mind.”
Hobbes struck a third time, taking a blow from one of the spinning spiked balls that emerged at random across the screen. Losing his great stature, returning to the diminutive figure the game had begun with, Hobbes defeated the final boss.
As the words rolled up and along the screen, “Congratulations! New High Score,” Hobbes stood tall and straight. The numbers in the top right corner spun, increasing and increasing and Hobbes cast the controller down onto the carpet.
I watched him chew his words, grinding his teeth and holding back his venom. He would not look at me, his eyes still glued to the screen. Then, with a snort, he turned and stormed out of the room.
“Wait,” I called and reached into the bottom drawer. “Don’t you want to play the next one?” I pulled out the sequel and waved the cartridge at him.
Standing in the door, one hand on the frame, Hobbes turned slowly and smiled a wide, zealous grin.
This story originally appeared in Maudlin House in December 2023.
Stuart Docherty is a British writer and poet based in Tokyo. You can find his work at ergot., Calliope Interactive, and the Manawaker Podcast. You can find him on BlueSky @doc12345.bsky.social.