Weird. He said war room without doing that, so it can’t be a speech impediment.
“Again?” Vlad frowns and explains to me, “1000 Devils just released a fix for a major glitch in that game.”
So, Squirrel Simulator is a game. I should’ve guessed that.
“Is it like Goat Simulator, but with a squirrel?” I ask.
“Much more fun.” Alex’s chest expands with pride. “A squirrel is smaller, so it can get into places a goat can’t even dream of.”
Vlad darts me a quick glance, then asks, “Did the glitch not get fixed?”
I redden. Was that glance in reference to the “squirrel can get anywhere” comment? It might be, since in my case, a type of squirrel was up my butt—and that wasn’t really fun. At least not for me.
“The last glitch is gone, but I think the big update with the fix introduced this new problem.” Alex picks up a remote, and YouTube shows up on the screen in front of us.
A video starts playing with a cute squirrel scurrying under a park bench. Suddenly, the furry creature expels smoke out of its mouth, which turns it pixelated—making the squirrel look like a demon from the deepest circles of hell.
Vlad frowns. “This reminds me of that glitch in the Sims, the one that made babies look like monsters.”
“It’s eerie,” I say, looking at the distortions in the image that look like claws and tentacles. “Almost like you did it on purpose to scare people.”
“Exactly.” Alex opens a laptop on the conference table and looks at his brother. “Can you check if we’ve been hacked?”
Vlad takes a seat in front of the laptop and starts typing away.
“Did you know cybersecurity was yet another one of my little brother’s talents?” Alex asks me with a wide grin.
“Nope.” I shoot a hungry glance at Vlad. Realizing the brother might catch on, I clear my throat and ask, “Have you ever been hacked before?”
“Never—and for the same reason. Vlad set up the security.”
“Have you already found the bug in the code?” I ask.
“No. The development team are on it, but it’s hard so far because we’ve been having trouble replicating the problem here in the office. The only reason I know that video isn’t a hoax are the one-star reviews from angry parents whose children couldn’t sleep after seeing this glitch.”
“Mind if I check out the game?” I ask. “What platform is it on?”
“It’s available everywhere,” Alex says. “Phones, PCs, consoles—you name it.”
Nodding, I pull out Precious and search the app store for Squirrel Simulator made by 1000 Devils.
I don’t find it, but I do see Squiwwel Simulatow.
Alrighty then. It’s really for kids. This explains why Alex pronounced the name that way.
I kick off a download of the game, and as I wait, I ask, “What was the glitch you just fixed?”
Wincing, Alex pulls up another YouTube video. In it, the still-super-cute version of the squirrel approaches a bully-looking kid who’s holding a baseball bat.
The squirrel halts.
The kid smashes the bat into the furry creature.
The squirrel takes flight, and flies and flies until the cityscape under him is barely visible.
Then the plummet begins.
“I take it that wasn’t supposed to happen?” I ask.
“Bug in the physics engine,” Alex says, sounding defensive. “We’re not the first to have something like this happen. The giants in Skyrim send people flying into the sky to this day.”
“Which is why we should’ve left it alone,” Vlad chimes in, his fingers still dancing away on his keyboard.
Alex shrugs. “We were getting hundreds of bad reviews for that, not to mention the emails from upset parents.”
Noticing that my download is done, I bring up the game.
Cute. I get to pick what I look like. I choose orange fur, maximum tail length, and white belly—mainly because that’s how the demon squirrel from the video looked before the horrific transformation began.
The game starts with a tutorial. I learn important facts, like that my teeth never stop growing and therefore I have to gnaw on things constantly to stay healthy. It also teaches me how to zigzag when escaping dogs and other enemies, how to bury nuts so that a fellow squirrel won’t steal them—sometimes even faking the burying process to mess with AI squirrel minds—and how to use my tail for balance and as a parachute during a fall or an umbrella on snowy days.
At least the realism isn’t one hundred percent. I’m sure the complaining parents wouldn’t like their kids to know that there’s a type of squirrel that has giant genitalia—at least for a squirrel. My ex told me about them. Their shlongs are forty percent of the length of their body, and the family jewels are about half that. My ex was clearly envious, especially of the other factoid: During masturbation, these squirrels can bend over and stick their penis in their own mouth. Also, most female squirrels have multiple male partners when they’re in heat—I’ve seen such an orgy a few times in the park.
When the tutorial is completed, I direct my furry self to scurry over to the nearby park, one that looks like the setting of the YouTube video. I figure that with my QA experience, I have as good of a chance of replicating this bug as the next corporate drone.
I climb every tree in the vicinity, eat some nuts, seeds, and a few eggs from an unattended bird nest—but look cute and cuddly throughout.
Hiding nuts doesn’t help, nor does hiding inappropriate things, like the lollipop I steal from a toddler.
I’m about to give up when I spot something that strictly speaking shouldn’t even be in this game—a cigarette butt under one of the benches.
I get that these are everywhere in reality, but this is a children’s game.
I also recall something I read once: Squirrels are addicted to nicotine from eating leftover butts, and also caffeine from licking discarded Starbucks cups.
Would the game let me eat a cigarette butt?
Hopping over to it, I grab it in my furry paws.
Before I can put the disgusting thing in my mouth, Vlad’s voice pulls me out of the game.
“It’s hard to prove a negative,” he says. “But as far as I can tell, you haven’t been hacked.”
Ignoring Alex’s reply, I put the cigarette butt into my mouth as if it were a juicy acorn.
Eureka.
Instead of eating the thing, the game cuts to smoke expelling out of my mouth—which, in hindsight, was a clue—and I become demonic, just like in the video.
“I reproduced,” I say.
Everyone snickers.
Vlad rolls his eyes. “Children.”
“As I was trying to say, I was able to reproduce the problem.” I show the screen.
Vlad stands up and comes over, invading my personal space. “How?”
Though it’s difficult to think like this, I explain about the cigarette butt.
His eyebrows furrow. Then he hurries back to the seat and bangs away on the laptop again.
Alex and I watch over his shoulder.
C++ covers the screen, and Vlad mutters something as he skims the code.
“Aha,” he says and minimizes the code window. He plays around in the source control repository until he has a code submission on the screen. One that, presumably, introduced the problem.