i was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire in one of the neighboring stacks. t
he shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then 
silence. gunfire wasnt uncommon in the stacks, but it still shook me up. i knew 
i probably wouldnt be able to fall back asleep, so i decided to kill the remaini
ng hours until dawn by brushing up on a few coinop classics. pacman, star wars, 
outrun. these games were outdated digital dinosaurs that had become museum piece
s long before i was born. but i was a gunter, so i didnt think of them as quaint
 lowres antiques. to me, they were hallowed artifacts. pillars of the pantheon. 
when i played the classics, i did so with a determined sort of reverence. i was 
curled up in an old sleeping bag in the corner of the trailers tiny laundry room
, wedged into the gap between the wall and the dryer. i wasnt welcome in my aunt
s room across the hall, which was fine by me. i preferred to crash in the laundr
y room anyway. it was warm, it afforded me a limited amount of privacy, and the 
wireless reception wasnt too bad. and, as an added bonus, the room smelled like 
liquid detergent and fabric softener. the rest of the trailer reeked of cat piss
 and abject poverty. most of the time i slept in my hideout. but the temperature
 had dropped below zero the past few nights, and as much as i hated staying at m
y aunts place, it still beat freezing to death. a total of fifteen people lived 
in my aunts trailer. she slept in the smallest of its three bedrooms. the depper
ts lived in the bedroom adjacent to hers, and the millers occupied the large mas
ter bedroom at the end of the hall. there were six of them, and they paid the la
rgest share of the rent. our trailer wasnt as crowded as some of the other units
 in the stacks. it was a doublewide. plenty of room for everybody. i pulled out 
my laptop and powered it on. it was a bulky, heavy beast, almost ten years old. 
id found it in a trash bin behind the abandoned strip mall across the highway. i
d been able to coax it back to life by replacing its system memory and reloading
 the stoneage operating system. the processor was slower than a sloth by current
 standards, but it was fine for my needs. the laptop served as my portable resea
rch library, video arcade, and home theater system. its hard drive was filled wi
th old books, movies, tv show episodes, song files, and nearly every videogame m
ade in the twentieth century. i booted up my emulator and selected robotron , on
e of my alltime favorite games. id always loved its frenetic pace and brutal sim
plicity. robotron was all about instinct and reflexes. playing old videogames ne
ver failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. if i was feeling depressed or fr
ustrated about my lot in life, all i had to do was tap the player one button, an
d my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentle
ss pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. there, inside the games two
dimensional universe, life was simple its just you against the machine. move wit
h your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possib
le . i spent a few hours blasting throu