My name is Stephen Hawking. I own a comic and game store in downtown Seattle. I have been permitted half an hour of telnet access, near my room in the psychiatric wing of the prison hospital. I am writing this email in order to explain what I have seen.

First of all, I did not vote for our current mayor. The candidate I voted for struck me as a stronger figure, having worked for the LAPD and also the Chicago Police Department.. Furthermore, I fully approve of the WTO. The prospect of protestors protesting on the streets in front of my game store is not especially appealing. For obvious reasons. Regardless.

Nevertheless I was interested to see what would unfold. I had been something of an activist myself, in the late 1960s of course. In this very community in fact. I am not, in my heart, opposed to protests, rallies, demonstrations, what have you. In a Democratic society such things are to be expected as a part and parcel of the Democratic process. Or rather, perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a side-effect. Or perhaps a failure. These voices have admittedly been excluded from any formal decision-making process. So this gathering is not part of the Democracy. Maybe it has nothing to do with Democracy. Perhaps I am confusing Democracy with absence of Totalitarianism.

Not that I think Totalitarianism is necessary a bad thing. Nor that this country is not Totalitarian. I respect authority but a part of me wants the chaos of opinions. Nevertheless, my major concern was that my store not be damaged.

Not to digress, but I design role-playing games myself. It is somewhat of a hobby -- I am not a talented-enough game-designer to earn a living at that trade by any means. However, I am able to interest customers in my store in my own games from time to time. In any event, the point is that I designed a role-playing game around the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. The game comes with a number of prefigured characters (for example Mayor Daley, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Jean Genet), but players are encouraged to design their own.

What is perhaps noteworthy is that I have a number of customers on the Seattle Police Department, who are fond of that particular game. Most of them have created characters who are riot troops. And, in fact, come to think of it (and this brings me back to the topic of the WTO), in China I correspond with several hard-line party members who are also fond of that particular game. However, I am not officially permitted to market my game to the Chinese public. If China joins the WTO that may become possible. I am not actually concerned with labor statistics, but I understand that hundreds of thousands of Chinese stand to lose jobs if that were to happen. It is interesting to think about the ramifications of that. It is a very large number, certainly, hard to put into perspective. I wish I could remember the number. In my work, of course, as a game designer (not to mention a businessman!) some facility with mathematics is required. However it is all fairly low-level math, and, at least in the work I do as a game-designer, bad math is of little real consequence. However China is, of course, a very populus nation. Interestingly, my Chinese correspondents (who as government officials were able to obtain the official permission necessary to purchase my game) also take the roles of Chicago riot troops. In fact, after all the trouble I went to to design the activist characters -- figuring Intelligence and Songwriting Ability and Public Speaking skill levels -- it is distressing that nobody has ever played the games with these characters. Well, if not distressing at least dissatifying. As far as I can tell, my players simply perform as riot troops, roll dice, bash heads, bust hippies, and don't even bother with the trial aspect of the game -- the part of the game I am perhaps proudest of. Still, the support is encouraging. I have another game in the works about the LA riots of 1992. I have decided to dispense with designing characters who are citizens and instead focus on the LAPD.

I suppose, however, that I shouldn't dwell on these points here. The fact is that I have been jailed as a protestor -- I was arrested along with members of a union of plumbing and electrical workers -- when in fact I was protesting nothing. Nor have I, really, in a great many years. Except perhaps privately. Anyway. What happened has the timbre of a dream. I had falled asleep on my couch listening to an opera by Wagner -- which opera I cannot now recall. I awoke with a start because, you see, I had been hoping to hear President Clinton speak. I discovered that I had overslept and missed the televised speech. Incidentally, I am not sure who was actually allowed to attend that speech. It seemed as though the downtown had been effectively evacuated on the first when the president arrived. Which had admittedly been bad for business. As much as I approve of the security measures, I had been hoping to sell a few Christmas games. Well, actually, an old game of mine I was hoping to sell the last few remaining copies of. Which is perhaps relevant. It is a game designed around a scenario in which Santa's elves rise up and behead him and collectivize the North Pole, to which the United States, of course, responds by imposing sanctions and starting an unofficial, covert war. It was one of my first games and it's not actually, well, fun to play. It is relevant to the WTO, however, in that most of the game involves trade negotiations, and being able to deliver Christmas presents to children in as many areas of the world as possible. When I designed the game, I had not taken into account that there are many world religions that do not recognize Christmas as such. Nevertheless, I feel that the game retain its relevance in that many of the Christmas presents need to be delivered by force, with the sleigh given cover by low-intesity bombing runs and so forth, so the fact that these Christmas presents are being forcibly delivered to, say, Israel, does not seem, on the whole, illogical.

At my window I stood with a glass of skim milk and seltzer water -- what I normally drink to soothe an upset stomach -- and observed the strange play of lights from the downtown. I don't remember deciding to walk downtown -- I presume I had intended to check on the store. I believe I saw police officers waltzing with environmental activists. I saw faces I thought I remembered. There were people dressed as giant mushrooms and turtles, and an enormous puppet that was a dinasaur with the face of Richard Nixon. An iridescent tear gas mist rose in sparkling waves. The chant of the turtles was like an undersea lullaby. But what struck me as improbable was a gigantic craft, an orb of whirling lights. Strangely, everyone seemed so distracted by events on the sloping night street that I was the only one to notice the object. It struck me as imperative to inform a nearby police officer -- simply to get them to look up at what could not be mistaken.

In all, I am somewhat astounded at how poorly I have been treated. I have been refused all contact with the outside world, and the officers I have spoken to seem to have a tacit agreement to refuse to speak of the craft I saw. I am actually rather deeply worried. I am reluctant to admit this, in fact, but they treat me as though I were insane, which severely undermines my status a local businessowner and taxpayer.

In the event of, say, contact with an alien and -- in all likelihood -- vastly superior life form, at an event such as this -- a truly global gathering, but one that was composed of organized dissent -- what faction of humanity would those aliens discern as the ones to make contact with? The humans dressed as turtles? The uninvolved Seattle citizens? Niketown? The academics? The organized anarchists, with their bandannas and drums? The professional protestors? The AFL-CIO? The undergraduates? The cops? The kids having standoffs with the cops for the jolt of testosterone? Or Wagner, who clearly composed this whole event, working through his relationship with Totalitarianism and his clearly nonterrestrial germination?

< >