The New Yorker - USA (2022-01-31)

(Antfer) #1

THENEWYORKER,JANUARY31, 2022 29


SHOUTS & MURMURS


LUCI GUTIÉRREZ


T


here are four possible skin tones
for your orphan avatar, but all come
with red hair. The red hair parts down
the middle and exists, throughout the
thirty minutes, in two long braids. Your
experience takes place in a room, with
sensors placed on your hands and feet,
and a headset that dictates what you see
and hear. Should you wander out of
bounds, a metal railing will restrain you.
Should you flip over this railing, a staff
member will flip you back.
Enjoy the carriage ride down the
Avonlea main road, which dips and
winds as good rural roads should. Wave
hello to the brook, the valley, the hol-
low, the pond landing, and another
brook, over which the carriage goes be-
cause this brook has a bridge. It’s al-
ways autumn in Avonlea. And there’s
always a breeze, mimicked by a fan that
blows directly at your face. Meet Marilla
and Matthew Cuthbert, hardworking
siblings whose skin tones (wrinkled
white) can’t be changed, and who re-
quested from the orphanage a boy, not
a girl. Marilla says “Fiddlesticks!” a lot.
Matthew doesn’t speak but can grimace,
shrug, grunt, nod, or frown. They de-
cide to keep you after all, but remind
you a few times, seriously, and later teas-
ingly, that you should’ve been a boy.
State your name, your real name, and
the computer will intentionally omit
one vowel from it, preferably an “e.” If
your real name is Chen, for the ten min-
utes when you are in the classroom sim-

ulation you will see your name on the
blackboard as Chn, and you can tell
your teacher that you are actually Chen
with an “e.” Without provocation, a
roguishly handsome classmate yanks
one of your fiery-red plaits and calls you
a root vegetable at the top of his lungs.
The room fills with the scent of stale
carrot cake, and a staff member pulls
your real hair with as much force as is
necessary to cause you actual pain. You
will then be presented with a virtual-
weapons inventory, which includes a
slate, a foam noodle, a retractable prop
dagger, an inflatable hammer, and a dead
fish. You can hit Gilbert Blythe with
any of the above, as many times as you
wish, and he will not be severely injured.
Diana Barry, your bosom friend, awaits
you outside the classroom, and for six
minutes she and you go on various life-af-
firming adventures. Will it be the haunted
wood? The cordial cabinet? Jumping on
old people asleep in their beds? Sinking
a rowboat while reënacting a Tennyson
poem? Discussing the latest fashions,
like puffed sleeves or green hair dye, and,
disastrously, trying to procure them? After
bosom-friend shenanigans, your school-
ing must continue so that you don’t grow
up totally daft. You’re at a desk, study-
ing for hours, but in real time no more
than forty-five seconds. The calendar
pages in front of you keep falling off.
Your pencil breaks, and is magically re-
sharpened. What a montage, you think,
and thirty seconds later you’re at Queen’s

Academy, with Gilbert Blythe but not
Diana Barry, whose mother doesn’t ap-
prove of higher education for girls. At
Queen’s, you obtain your teaching license
in one year instead of two and win the
coveted Avery scholarship, making you
the first island girl to attend a four-year
college. Friends surround and exalt you,
even Gilbert, whom you’ve forgiven but
who is now obsessed with you. Trium-
phant music folds in: hip hip hooray! The
V.R. experience can be stopped here, by
selecting “Yes, I wish to end my experi-
ence” from the pop-up menu. You can
then remove your headset and leave the
room feeling galvanized, like you can do
anything, like a woman in 1881 might’ve
felt had she been allowed to attend col-
lege alongside braid-pulling men. Or you
can stay for the final two minutes.
The bank that holds all the Cuth-
berts’ savings fails. Upon receiving this
news, Matthew has a heart attack and
dies. Green Gables is now in danger of
being sold. You decline the Avery schol-
arship and teach at a local school and
help Marilla. Eventually, you do attend
college, and become a teacher who as-
pires to write. Gilbert goes to college,
too, becomes a doctor, makes a proposal
of marriage, which you reject, makes an-
other proposal of marriage, which you
accept, because who else are you going
to marry in this beloved tale? The wed-
ding is held at Green Gables. Gilbert
takes over his uncle’s clinic and you stop
teaching and writing and have seven
beautiful kids, in the space of ten years.
The V.R. experience ends here, and,
though you do leave the room less gal-
vanized, you are relieved that the im-
mense pressure to amount to something
has resolved itself and, in the natural
course of adulting, priorities must change.
A person can’t trailblaze forever; she has
to slow down sometimes and take stock
of societal norms. Also, motherhood is
wonderful, as is running your own home.
But why does your home have to be so
idyllic, overlooking a harbor, a brook,
and a valley somehow simultaneously?
And where are three of your kids? The
husband, of course, doesn’t know, be-
cause he’s not here. So, should the urge
seize you, and with a quick tap of that
red button near your temple, you can re-
turn to the past, the classroom, and, free
of charge, for up to a minute, smack
young Gil again with a dead fish. 

THE “ANNE OF GREEN


GABLES” V.R. EXPERIENCE


BY WEIKEWANG

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