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Nine: So what is there to do besides watch football?
Juice: excuse me, are you BORED of football already??? when there are THOUSANDS of games to watch from the THOUSANDS of years you missed????
Juice: because buddy, if you’re bored already that does not bode well for your ability to deal with the rest of, like
eternity
you’re not having another existential crisis are u
Ten: Yeah, is this like your freakout about the football game in the canyon?
Nine: No! That wasn’t a freakout! And it’s not an existential crisis!
Ten: Unfortunately I do have to agree with Juice here. You’re not bored, are you? Because we can talk about other stuff, there’s lots to do and see and experience.
Nine: No, I love football! I’m not bored of it yet, I promise. I was just thinking, people do other stuff, right? Play other games?
Ten: Sure, people play all kinds of games and sports.
Juice: football’s the best tho
Nine: I guess I think of football as our thing? Which I love, don’t get me wrong, but.
Ten: You want to find something that’s your thing?
Nine: Yeah, I guess.
Juice: awww, baby is on a journey of self-discovery!!
adorable
well strap yourself in, friend, because there are a LOT of options.
so, first off, there’s the other football, aka soccer
some people still play it old school style, you know, 90 minutes, regulation field, regulation soccer ball, 11 players per team, all that
Nine: Really? They’re not bored of it?
Ten: Some people are, sure. But it’s one of the sports that’s really rooted in the physical experience of it. Which is hard for us to understand, since we don’t have organic parts, but a lot of humans just enjoy playing it as is. It’s almost like a dance to them, and the act of doing it, of using their bodies like that, is fun.
Juice: plus people still really get a kick
ha see what i did there
anyway people still really get a kick out of the whole watching a game live in a stadium thing
stadium chants have gotten really impressive
Ten: And players have gotten a lot more creative with their moves. But yeah, a lot of people still play and watch old-school style soccer.
Nine: I guess I get that.
I mean, I don’t get having that kind of physical experience, but I get it in theory.
Juice: new soccer is boring as hell though
Ten: No, it’s just a different thing!
Juice: a different boring thing
Ten: I don’t know, it’s restful to watch sometimes.
Nine: What’s it like? What’s different about the rules?
Ten: Well, there’s still a field of play and goals. The winning team is still the one who scores the most goals. But like football, all that got a lot bigger. Here, let’s go watch a game, there’s one on in the Himalayas right now.
Nine: The Himalayas??? How??
Juice: new soccer is basically hiking + ultramarathon + kicking a ball the whole time
it’s meditative for the people doing it or whatever but it’s boring as hell to watch
Ten: It’s pretty though! Look! The sun’s rising over the mountains just now.
Nine: Wow. That is gorgeous.
Ten: Happens every day and it’s always a stunner, going all gold like that.
Juice: makes a pretty good distraction for the other team though. there’s a defender about to
yup, there he goes
other team got possession of the ball.
Nine: She’s just gonna run down the side of the mountain like that? While kicking the ball?
Ten: Yeah. It’s pretty different from our football that way. With new soccer, the rule is the player in possession has to keep the ball in sight, even if they’re not in physical contact with it, and they can’t touch it with their hands. She’s headed for the goal over at Everest Base Camp.
Nine: People still climb Everest?
Juice: nah, nanos kinda ruined that. i mean, they climb it, sure, but it’s not that big a deal the way it used to be.
Ten: At least they cleaned things up on the path. Used to be a ton of bodies of dead climbers and trash all over the place.
Nine: Oh.
So what about the goalie? Wouldn’t that be a really boring position when the field is so big?
Ten: It’s meditative, apparently. Some people think they can achieve enlightenment through new soccer.
Nine: Can they?
Juice: depends on what you mean by enlightenment
Ten: No one’s managed to ascend to a higher plane of existence or anything yet, that’s for sure.
So, do you think soccer or new soccer could be your thing?
Nine: Hmm, I don’t think so. What else have you got?
Ten: Okay, this one’s pretty good. Everyone loves a heist movie, right?
Nine: I’ve never seen one.
Juice: WHAT
time out, we gotta show you a good heist movie
Ten: Yes!! Ocean’s 11!! I haven’t watched it in over five thousand years!
[One hour and fifty-six minutes later]
Nine: Yeah, okay, that was pretty fun.
So what, do people still do heists? Is that the game or whatever?
Or crime, I guess. It’s still a crime to steal things, right?
Juice: yeah, kind of, but honestly no one bothers
money’s not really a thing anymore
and neither is capitalism
so no real reason to steal anything
Ten: And the nanos make violent crime or property damage a non-starter. People mostly do crimes for fun now, and if you tell the cops the crime was to keep from being bored, they’ll let you off as long as no one got hurt.
Nine: Wait, seriously?
Juice: yeah it’s great. as long as your crime is funny or interesting enough, the cops won’t care. like, messing up something people actually care about? still a crime. but vandalism that’s really funny? not a crime.
someone wrecked the D in the Hollywood sign back in 12468 and everyone thought it was funny so they left it that way
HOLLYWOO is what it says now
Nine: What are the cops even doing if there’s no real crime?
Ten: Boredom’s the only real crime now, I guess, so they mostly help folks keep from being bored. Anyway, this is where heists come in. Competitive heisting is a whole new and exciting sport, and it is great.
Juice: it’s kind of like football in a way
only instead of a ball there’s art and instead of trying to get a touchdown you’re trying to steal back your people’s cultural heritage. or steal someone else’s.
Nine: Uh. That still seems like an actual crime?
Ten: Oh it for sure used to be. And it was a serious problem, I could give you a whole lecture about colonialism and imperialism
Juice: please dont, just send Nine some articles or books for later
Ten: Fine. The upshot is that everything eventually got to where it was supposed to be, more or less, with museums sometimes sending things around to each other as part of traveling exhibits. But after a thousand or so years, that got boring.
Nine: I think I see where this is going.
Ten: And now when a museum or city wants a certain exhibit or work of art or artifact, they put together a team to go steal it. If they succeed, they get to keep the exhibition for a year. If they don’t, the other museum gets to pick something from the loser’s museum to keep for a year.
Nine: So people now have turned literal crime into a literal game.
Juice: yeah it’s great
there’s some other kinds of competitive heisting too, bank vaults and stuff
but the museum heists are basically a whole-ass heist movie once the teams put together their footage after the heist
Nine: I think I’ll need to process the idea of competitive crimes for a while.
Ten: While you’re processing, here’s another option for you: Dungeons & Dragons
Juice: uuuuuugggggghhhhh NO
Ten: It’s fun! It’s collaborative storytelling, I don’t see why you have a problem with it!
Juice: it’s nerd shit
Ten: You’re such a jock. You are a literal satellite, how are you such a jock?
Juice: im not a jock im just COOL and d&d is not cool
Nine: What, just because it’s not a sport?
Juice: no because it is currently on edition 390589 of its rules
and people have a lot of opinions about each
and
every
single
one
of those editions
and they NEVER shut up about them
Ten: It’d be such a great way for Nine to meet more people though! They’d love to teach you about it!
Juice: yeah, and they won’t be satisfied until you’ve completed like a bachelor’s degree in d&d
which is a REAL ACTUAL THING btw
Nine: It’s just making up a story with other people though, right?
Ten: Pretty much. You have to come up with a character you play as and then you play out the game with the gamemaster and the other players.
Juice: i think nine needs some baby steps before they’re ready for a whole ass d&d campaign
maybe experience some more emotions
watch literally every single football game in existence before you try d&d
Ten: Maybe just watch other people play it first. The latest season of Critical Role is only 182 years long!
Nine: Yeah, I don’t think I can commit to anything like that just yet.
Juice: there’s video games. you can actually play those with people
there’s even football video games!
Ten: Oh yeah, there’s like millions of video games! There’s all different kinds, I’m sure you could find something you like. There are sports games, like Juice said, and there are fighting games, and farming games, and puzzle games and crafting games. There are even games that simulate human life.
Nine: I get why that would be interesting to us.
But why simulate it if you're a human and you're already living it?
Juice: it’s pretty much like playing with dolls for humans
not that there have been any kids around to do that for a long time
folks don’t really play with them at all anymore
Nine: I guess they have better games and toys to play with.
Ten: No, they’re just too sad to play with them.
Nine: Oh.
So what kind of games do you two like?
Juice: I like those games where you build like a whole city or theme park or empire or whatever
and I make it as weird and fucked up as possible
Ten: That’s what someone whose favorite football game is Game 27 would say.
Anyway, I don’t think I have a favorite genre of game.
I like slow running though. That’s the opposite of speed running a game.
Nine: I don’t know what that is either.
Ten: Oh right, video games in general weren’t really a thing when they made you.
So speed running is trying to beat a video game as fast as possible. It usually involves breaking the game in some way, or exploiting bugs and errors.
But now that time is an infinite resource, people like to do the opposite. They like to slow run it. Take as long as possible to beat a game without straight up failing at it.
Juice: it’s pretty boring
Ten: It encourages careful contemplation of every aspect of a game and its design!
Juice: boring
way more fun to try to do weird shit with a game
Ten: You could also try collecting memories.
Nine: Like people’s memories? All memories?
Ten: Well, pick a kind of memory you want to collect, but yeah.
Nine: Is that a thing a lot of people do?
Juice: it is actually
because it turns out that even with nanos
and even without being able to die
there’s an upper limit to the amount of stuff a human brain can store inside of it
memories fade
get overwritten by new ones
Ten: People can’t die anymore. But other things still can, and still have.
Nine: Maybe that’s for the best.
Ten: How so?
Nine: It feels important to still be able to lose things, I guess. That not everything is eternal. Because if everything was eternal, then nothing would ever change.
Juice: so that’s a no on collecting memories I’m guessing
Nine: Yeah. Sorry.
Ten: Well, some things aren’t games, really, they’re just
Achievements, I guess. Like the kind people get for video games.
Nine: What kind of achievements did people get for video games?
Ten: There were the usual ones for beating a game, or collecting all the items, that kind of thing.
And then sometimes there were weirder, more niche achievements. Like getting a certain character to do something, or say, flushing all the toilets in a game if the game let you do that.
Stuff you absolutely don’t need to do to win the game, just completionist stuff, or stuff the developers thought was funny.
Juice: achievements back in the day used to be like the olympics and oscars and beating records and shit. boring.
like, some people thought you did a good job acting this year, whatever
or you won a medal for being the fastest, who cares
Ten: A lot of people did care, actually.
Juice: and it was boring!
now people pick any random shit and work on unlocking the achievement for it
like reading all the books that have pineapples in them
or cooking and eating every possible potato dish
or going real hard mode and finding every single beetle
do you know how many species of beetle there are
Nine: I’m guessing you’re about to tell me.
Juice: 1.5 million
Nine: So that’ll take a while, I’m guessing.
Ten: That’s the point. Keeps people busy, keeps them from being bored.
Juice: currently number one on the beetles achievement leader board is Madhukar Singh, at 549,622 beetles found
they’ve still got almost a million beetles to find!
probably more beetles will have evolved into new species by the time they get anywhere close.
Nine: I’m sure beetles are great, but I don’t think I can stay interested in them until all 1.5 million species of them get found.
But the achievements thing...
I think I’d like to try that.
Juice: can I suggest
watching every football game is still up for grabs!
Ten: Because it’s a moving target!
Nine: I think I need something actually achievable.
Ten: How about meeting every person on Earth? That’s not a moving target.
And I think everyone would love to meet you, Nine.
You had a good time talking to Nancy McGunnell, right? You could do that with everyone!
Nine: Well that's kind of terrifying.
But
Yeah.
I think I’d like to meet everyone too.