Chapter 17 — Roshambo
Rufus describes the genesis of Roshambo Careens Off Script, his second novel.
Followed by Chapter 17 —— Roshambo, in which the Saskia’s grapple with who should get the date with Mica.
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Hello Friends,
Life is full of dilemmas and fiction is a mirror to our world. The two Saskia’s in today’s chapter are faced with the uncomfortable need to decide who gets to enjoy the date they have lined up with Mica. It’s the sort of problem we all face now and again: there are two possible paths to chose, they are mutually exclusive but a choice must be made. In the face of such a dilemma, some people try weighing the pros and cons of each option in the vain hope of finding the most just solution. Unfortunately, sometimes problems are zero sum. In such cases I see two options: 1) be magnanimous and simply let the other party prevail, or 2) resort to chance.
Where the later is the preferred option, the toss of a coin is an obvious solution. That, though, always feels very passive. And even picking cards from a pack gives the illusion of agency, if at the risk that one person might recognize some subtle marking.
My personal favorite solution is a game of chance, one that I first encountered back in my days as a college student playing ultimate frisbee. It’s a game of chance that feels both modern and classic at the same time. A game that has multiple variations, and a game that also suggests a storied history. Best of all it leaves both players (or the many players that play, in the case of multiplayer versions) all feeling that they have some agency.
I am of course talking about Roshambo, aka rock—paper-scissors.
Some even consider it a sport. Personally, I wish it were more often considered as a deciding factor in effective draws. Had I had my way, the Bush—Gore election would have been decided with a seven night prime-time telecast, one throw each night. Can you imagine the ratings?! That would have been so much better than a boring court case.
So tickled was I by that idea that I once wrote a TV pilot based on the idea that real-world contestants would be brought in to resolve their intractable squabbles. There’d be stage lights and a mirrored disco ball hanging above the Roshambo ring, and we’d have mind-purifiers to help cleanse our contestant’s headspace before their bouts.
Like all good ideas, it took on a life of it’s own and eventually the I scripted the host characters, the contestants, and even the audience. The whole thing morphed and is now: Roshambo Careens off Script, a novel about free will and destiny. I was going to publish it later this year, but now I’m considering holding off … it might even become season two of Written by Rufus.
Unlike The Curve of Time, there’s no time travel and no mathematics but perhaps from what I’ve told you alone, you might guess that it does trade in some similarly epistemological questions of philosophy. Of course, it’s roots are more germane to the world in which it’s set: the artificiality of television production and how stories are manufactured and what that means for the characters involved.
Anyway, I promise to keep you in the loop as I decide what to do with it. For now, though, time to turn back to The Curve of Time.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
And now, without further ado, here’s chapter seventeen in which the Saskia’s grapple with who should get the date with Mica.
— 17 —
Roshambo
“I tell you I’ve gone forward to try and find my own timeline and you just elide over the fact that you went back all the way to the beginning?” Saskia’s double gulped incredulously for air. “And maybe altered everything!”
“I didn’t change anything,” Saskia protested.
“So you say.”
“I’m not the one who can recall a whole extra sequence of events from a restroom in a restaurant.”
“Seems like I have no idea what you can recall, but going back to where this all started a second time——that sounds like a ‘whole extra sequence of events’ to me.”
“Whatever.” Saskia waved her counterpart off. “We can’t both live here.”
“Well, we could.”
Saskia cocked her head, eyes flitting between her double and the rest of the room, in search of a rational explanation.
“Share the workload.”
“And share Mica?” Saskia shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“We barely know her.”
“Then you won’t mind if I head out now and visit her.” And with that she turned to her bedroom to find a change of clothes.
Her inconvenient clone followed her. “Wait, wait, wait.” Second Saskia stood in the doorway. “What if I want to go?”
“I’m the one who got the date.”
“I let you be our face on the call.”
Saskia shrugged, grabbed clean underwear and a fresh T-shirt from her closet, and headed for the bathroom.
“And you look terrible. Are you alright?”
Saskia placed her clothes by the sink and glanced back at her double, who had followed her into the small tiled room. She paused a moment in consideration, then reached into the shower and turned the water on. She stripped off her old clothes. “Do I really look bad?”
“What happened to you?”
“I am itchy as a dog with fleas.” Saskia turned about. “Can you see a rash anywhere?”
Her double shook her head, no.
“It’s a weird sort of itch,” Saskia mused. “More under the skin than on it. But I haven’t showered in . . . ” She wasn’t sure how to measure the time since she’d last showered.
“Look, seems to me you’re just as likely as me”——Saskia’s double waved her hand back and forth between them——“to be the one that’s caused our problem.”
Saskia shrugged and the piquant up and down of her shoulders gave her small breasts a perky little bounce. She felt irreverent, and stepped into the shower. She let the water cascade over her face and down her body.
It was a remarkable testament to the delicate way that life’s trajectory depended on its initial conditions. She and her double had shared a lifetime of context, and yet as surely as she was wet and her double was dry, their emotional states differed too. How could a couple of days have made such a difference? Saskia hadn’t even had extra time with Mica.
She’d taken a class studying chaos theory in college, but to see it here, so explicitly manifest ...without opening her eyes or removing her face from the shower she asked: “Why don’t you just up and leave? You could reinvent yourself. Completely.”
It was a shrewd observation on Saskia’s behalf. The idea of wiping your slate clean and starting afresh——it had been a fantasy she’d entertained more than once. Sure, it would be tough, but people moved to new cities and survived. College was the canonical example of such a paradigm shift. You moved to a new city where you knew no one, and you had the chance to metamorphose into a butterfly of your choosing.
Some people did it again in the years after college, but they usually moved somewhere that they had some connection to. Somewhere where another friend already lived. Actors flocking to LA were an exception; the lure of the limelight being its own independent guiding beacon that drew the narcissists together. But total liberation was unusual.
Suddenly, Saskia was curious. She wiped the soap from her eyes and peeked out of the shower.
True to their character, Saskia’s doppelganger hadn’t rejected Saskia’s suggestion out of hand. But the allure of Mica was a shiny new possibility they had both long sought, and though minutes ago she had been preoccupied with considerations around which of them bore responsibility for their multiple existence quandary she wasn’t about to give up the bird so close to her hand. She met Saskia’s eyes and shook her head.
“Alright,” Saskia conceded, easily reading her double’s meaning. “I have an idea.” She had read a book titled Roshambo Careens Off Script——they both had——about the host of a television gameshow in which contestants resolved intractable real-life squabbles using Roshambo, aka rock—paper—scissors. Through the steam that was fogging the mirror behind her double, Saskia asked herself: “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Leaning against the bathroom sink, Saskia’s double watched as Saskia lifted the bar of soap back out of its dish in the wall and lathered her legs, her legs. The woman in front of her was her. And there was no fair way to decide who got the date with Mica. “Roshambo?” she asked tentatively, still barely believing it was possible they shared the same past, at least up until a couple of nights ago.
Saskia grinned at their telepathic connection.
They played rock, paper, scissors. It took three drawn hands, before the butterfly effect that was the last thirty-six hours that split their instincts wielded its hand. Finally, their throws differed. Saskia won. Graciously, her double lowered her hand. “That was as fair as any way to decide. I’ll let you finish.” With that she turned and headed back to the kitchen.
∞
“Will you be alright?” Saskia asked.
Her double pulled a tight smile and gave a short, sharp nod, as they continued along the wooden hallway to the front door. “We can figure out what to do about the bigger picture later.”
Saskia gave her double a hug. It was a weirdly intimate experience, feeling what her own shoulder must feel like. Her own hair. She didn’t smell of anything, but then she wouldn’t, to herself. Partly out of curiosity, and partly just to lighten the mood, she grabbed her double’s bum. It was a playful a little grab, and her double recognized it as such. She gave Saskia’s own butt a gentle squeeze in return.
They separated and her doppelganger stepped aside.
Saskia reached for the brass handle and opened the front door. She turned back to herself, held up her hand and twittered her fingers goodbye. “Don’t forget to feed Tomato.”
