You Can Be One of Them

· 3 min read

I have been known to enjoy crafting a good premise from time to time.

But what if I showed you how I do it? Let’s use one of my favorite digital artifacts.

That is the story for Soldat. A 2D action game. https://www.soldat.pl/en/

As it says, it’s like Quake except 2D and it does allow you to be one of them. I’ve played the game quite a lot, but I’ve read this line dozens of times now through the years.

There is so much to unpack in this story.

  • Why was the decision made?
  • Did they calmly meet about this beforehand and reach consensus?
  • What might happen if only one of them is left?

Poems are falling out of this idea already.

Of all these angles, the most interesting seems to be the meeting where they decided to kill each other. Digging into it:

  • Someone makes a slide deck
  • Someone raises a concern about parking
  • All in favor of killing each other, say “aye”
  • I think maybe the dirt lot behind the abandoned Cub Foods might be a good place to kill each other, what do you think?
  • Does Saturday work for everyone?
  • Is there a Facebook event?
This is the point where I'd get started. An easy first line might be something like

They met Saturday morning
in the parking lot
behind the abandoned Cub Foods.

Now the page is no longer blank.

I know up front the temptation will be to explain why they decided. But the poem is the meeting, not the motive.


Bullet Points

They met Saturday morning
in the parking lot
behind the abandoned Cub Foods.

One brought coffee.

One balanced his laptop
on the hood of his car
and opened the slide deck:

Killing Each Other.

There were questions
about how it would work,
what weapons were allowed—

what happens after.

One said
next Saturday was difficult
because he had his daughter
until noon.

One had tickets
to a Twins game
that started at five
so they needed to be done before.

They picked a time
and began to leave.

One of the cars would not start.

They gathered
at the open hood.

Someone had cables.

They stayed
until it turned over.


I arrange the evidence and walk away.

One of the moves in revision was to keep repeating “One”. Yes that last sentence was also one of them.

Two interesting things happened while I was writing this and I folded both into this poem.

First: I got a call from a software vendor inviting me to a Twins game in Kansas City. They think I still live in KC and I’m not about to correct them.

Second: I was thinking about parking lots and remembered a time when I was 16 that I gave a jump start to a guy in a mall parking lot. He was so thankful. He told me he was a karate instructor and if I ever had any problems with someone, to let him know.

For a minute I moved through the world confident that I had someone to fight my battles for me.