And from my pillow, looking forth by light

Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold

The antechapel where the statue stood

Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude

Political conflicts, intercultural tensions and changes in society can occur in radical and very immediate shifts and even explode into revolutions within days. We notice them immediately, follow them on our screens, read the real-time analysis and see the tweets that pour in within every second of exciting times. But what of the revolutions and the counter-revolutions that take decades? The ones that span generations, but are not driven by contemporary zeitgeist, not by single institutions or people - that would be a bit too close to conspiracy-theories - but still by ideas, ideals and beliefs of how the world should work.

Ideas like the one that the deregulation of all private economical and financial sectors - be it environmental regulations for the heavy industry or the limits of power for Wall Street - will be for the common good, because it strengthens the economy and raises the prosperity and the well-being of society as a whole. Ideas like the one that governmental intrusion is never the solution, but instead part of the problem and that therefore there is a need to reduce its influence, financial means and servants to a minimum. With the notion that this minimum consists mainly of a strengthened military branch, which will define the position of a country through strength and that it is in the interest of its society to be ready to go to war at any time. Ideas like the one, that a strong society is forged by a strict code of moral and conduct and also religious ideals; that acting tough on any form of crime, and punishing it even harder, will be the solution for a rising crime rate. That radical tax cuts, to be introduced along with a reduction of social-welfare-expenses, will let a free and productive society thrive.

"Man is not free unless government is limited." Ronald Reagan

Those ideas were hardly new, when Steve Meretzky´s text adventure A Mind Forever Voyaging was released in 1985. Some of that is the basic legacy of the traditional conservative worldview in the US. In the 60s, law and order carried Nixon into the White House, it was a form of mainstream-reaction to the counterculture-movement. Like no one before him, Ronald Reagan stood for the credo, that the government must be kept as small as possible, that state-regulations should not interfere, unless it is absolutely necessary, even though his practical policies have not always reflected this image.

If you are successfull, you must be right. Right?

Nonetheless, the so called Reagonomics were a deep incision into the economical policies of the US in the 80s and with that came a slow turning in the social fabric of the nation. It was a radical shift in parts of the taxation-system, which aimed for reduced government spending. All under the axiom that lower tax-rates and with them an economical deregulation through all branches of the economy as well as a deregulation of the ecological requirements will bring down the high unemployment and inflation rates the early 80s had seen. It was a model for a society aimed toward private consumption, and with it continuous growth was established - more so than before. This led to presentable successes in the mid-80s. Inflation was slowed, unemployment dropped significantly. The soundness of the taken measures was proven by success?

Who is Steve Meretzky? Steve Meretzky was born in 1957 in Yonkers, NY, studied at the MIT in 1975 (majored in construction management) and came to Infocom through Mike Dornbrook during this time. There he wrote aside from A Mind Forever Voyaging and others the adventures Stationfall, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Zork Zero and - possibly the most famous of them - The Hitchhiker´s Guide to the Galaxy together with Douglas Adams. After the takeover of Infocom through Activision, followed by the closing of Infocom in 1989, he continued to develop Adventure like the Spellcast-101-series or Superhero League of Hoboken for Legend Entertainment and Activision. Later he founded Boffo Games in 1994, though that company was closed in 1997. During this time, Meretzky started the second part of his career, in which he is since then focused on mobile- and social-gaming. After a long period of working with WorldWinner, he shifted his focus to Floodgate Entertainment. Steve Meretzky is a frequent speaker at various events, especially at the Casual Games Summit and the GDC, which he both helps to organize. Steve Meretzky´s Homepage

Meretzky, judging by his work on this game, must have been a liberal-progressive thinker on the left side of the spectrum and he was not comfortable with those ideas and measures, even when they produced results, which could be proven by the numbers: between 1983 and 1985, unemployment in the US dropped from a devastating 11 percent to a relatively normal rate of 8 percent. The question that the MIT-graduated programmer seemingly asked himself was simple: yes, now - 1985 - everything looks fine. But what will the consequences of those measures look like in the far future, decades later?

Meretzky´s answer can be found in A Mind Forever Voyaging: They will be catastrophic.

But at least they can be avoided. If the nation and with it humanity wants to. The almost campy utopian future the game's finale paints, shows what will happen when the opposite of the plan is installed: when a caring, humanist, cautious and basically ideal state is created and lived by such a society. World peace, overpopulation solved by space-travel, everybody is happy, everybody cheers.

But to get there, the player is sent through a hell, that feels all to real.

Citizen in the machine

After the start of the game, the player finds himself as an AI in a simulation. The year is 2031 and an US-Senator presents a plan for a "renewed national purpose". The country suffers like it did back in the early 80s, even more so. At its economical core, the plan is a more radical version of the Reagonomics, the social side involves a strict embodiment of hard conservative ideas. The simulation is supposed to find out how the plan will develop over time and shows a picture of a world that could be in an interval of 10-year-jumps. The playe has no influence ever these jumps, but is merely a spectator of the things that will be, so they can be analyzed back in 2031.

Infocom? What is Infocom? There was a time before computers could display graphics and Infocom, founded in 1979, was King. Their stories were written by talented authors - in the case of The Hitchhiker's Guide Douglas Adams himself helped to work on the game -, but also they had the most advanced parser, which understood even complex commands. Also, the company got famous for their elaborated manuals and adding intriguing packaging elements, their "feelies". In the case of The Hitchhiker that was a pair of sunglasses to help you keep calm, official letters for the removal of Arthur Dent´s house and for earth, the latter in printed in Vogon and others. When the era of text adventures came to an end, so began the demise of Infocom. Attempts to include graphics like in the cases of Zork Zero, Shogun or their last game, Journey, were not commercial successes and the titles from other teams they published - among others the first Battletech-games from Westwood - didn´t fare better. Activision took over the company as early as 1986, but it did not go well for both parties, was accompanied by many misunderstandings and is in away an example of what can go wrong when two different corporate cultures meet. Infocom was closed in 1989, although the name appeared on game-boxes a bit longer. Activision sold the rights to the name Infocom in 2002, right now they belong to a company called Omni Consumer Products who offer a wide variety of stuff - among other things the officially licensed Fight-Club-soap - but no games.

While in 2041 things are indeed looking up, they start to turn bad fast in the later decades. A police state is established which reigns over the street with despotism. The reduction of all government spending beyond the harsh law & order necessities speeds up the unraveling of the social fabric. Ever more radical sentences are issued, only to be replaced by public propaganda trials that paint a dark caricature of the judicial system. The cultural degeneration is shown in the papers and the movies in the cinemas. The breakdown of the social structures shows in the evermore barbaric behavior of the people towards each other. The gap between rich and poor widens to a frightening degree, a radical Christian sect establishes itself to the point, where everything shifts towards a theocracy and it all concludes in what is basically the breakdown of society 50 years after the plan was set in motion.

Still, A Mind Forever Voyaging is a positive work of art, since the player can confront and expose the "evil" senator in a quite clever showdown, so his plan will not be used, but instead a better one is researched with the help of the simulation, which might ultimately lead to mentioned utopia. No question, Meretzky takes it to the extreme both times. But that is the prerogative of science fiction.

A Mind Forever Voyaging was created 27 years ago and, only a short time before writing these lines, the US voted for a new president in November 2012. The ideas with which the republican candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan entered the contest where far more radical than they were in the 80s. And though they lost the election, they still came pretty close. The culture wars seem to be far from over.

The basic maxims to the right of this war haven´t changed that much either. There were - and still are - a lot of calls for lowering the already comparably low tax-rates, especially for companies and businesses. That Washington should stay out of education and public healthcare as much as possible. The same does not apply for military spending, which of course should be raised. And looking at some of the more right-leaning groups, there is not a lot of support for equality-rights in any form to be found, be it for women´s equal rights or same-sex couples. Such phobias are not indulged as openly as they have been once, but they do exist and over the last months they sometimes even made it to the big stage.

Looking at the Republican Party today, it is often said that even Ronald Reagan, judging by his applied policies in the 80s, would have no place in the party that worships him. The shift to the right has gone too far even for his policies to be elected in today's primaries. The plan for a "renewed national purpose" in A Mind Forever Voyaging which has been painted as very radical version of the policies of the 80s, is pretty much a blueprint for a lot of the topics and arguments that have been brought up over the last months of the presidential election, especially during the preceding Republican primaries. And then they were ably amplified through various news channels, pundits and radio hosts. A Mind Forever Voyaging doesn't draw a perfect picture of the great plan, it just has to reduce itself to small impressions and keywords, mostly due to technical limitations. But then again, those seem to work just fine in the media world today, especially within the branches just mentioned, to build up a solid public opinion with broad effect.

The A Mind Forever Voyaging Feelies Manual with a comprehensive story about the city of Rockvil and the development of the AI which the player controls

A map of Rockvil with a few ads on the back: buy Glutman´s Pizza! Only 39,75$!

A ball pen from the future of insurance-advertising: We insure everything, from sea farms to space stations!

A code-wheel, the preferred copy-protection at the time. Technically, that is not a feelie, but a nice 80s relic.

This reduction and shaping of information to easily graspable themes instead of the complex social and economic issues they were before, seems to have intensified over the last 20 years or so, especially within various news-networks, could be one of the reasons, why Meretzkys vision of the year 2031 still seems adequate instead of obsolete. A counter-counterculture-movement contrary to the ideals of the movements that go back to `68 was in full swing over the last few years and it still has to be seen if the outcome of the election took the wind from its sails for good or just slowed it down for the time being. 27 years later, enough parts of the plan keep floating around through the right-wing sphere that it would be easy to piece together the whole thing. So, while things look up right now, there are still a few years to go until 2031. It is kind of frightening that A Mind Forever Voyaging as a whole has not degraded in its relevance. It still can be counted as some kind of dark prophecy, that has yet to be averted.

Still on track(?)

Does it matter which of the two parties have a hold over the White House? Yes, but it seems that only the speed at which the spiral turns towards A Mind Forever Voyaging's vision is affected. Since the End of Ronald Reagan´s presidency democratic presidents have been in office longer - if only slightly - than republican presidents, but yet the timetable for Meretzkys 2031 seems to be mostly on track. The minimum wages have been raised under the Democrats, they have managed to establish Obama-Care as the "law of the land", how congress-speaker John Boehner put it, although he and a lot of other Republicans fought tooth and nails against it over the last years. On the other side: The Democrats seem not to oppose the idea of indefinite detention without a trial too much. The Bush-era-tax-cuts are still debated after one complete Obama-term and so far there have hardly been any real attempts to regulate the banking sector, even after it nearly crashed the worldwide economy in 2008. These and other decisions over the last years may not speed up the way towards Meretzkys scenario too much, but they also do precious little to steer against such an outcome.

Most of this has been about the US - since it is the game's focus - but parallels to other countries can be drawn easily. The London's and Frankfurt's banking sectors are as deregulated as they always have been - even though some token-actions were taken -, the divide between rich and poor is widening as it is in the US and a lot of different social issues within the societies are following - Occupy may have faded mostly by now, but the reason it popped up is still there. Greece and Spain are hurting badly - to put the disastrous situations mildly - and the light at the end of this dark tunnel seems still far away.

In the face of this and keeping in mind that there seems to be plenty of support left for a lot of parts of the "renewed national purpose"-plan, one can only hope, that A Mind Forever Voyaging just painted it a bit too black. We can hardly reset reality the way the players starts the simulation anew.