The Satchel

A pilgrim carries the satchel and the staff, and Dante calls himself peregrin: the game gives him the one and nothing else. It is a grid of twenty cells, five by four, and the reason is that a list costs nothing and so is never decided over, while twenty cells cost, and the decision is always the same one and always a good one. It holds from the first step in the dark wood down.

No panel opens: you kneel, set the satchel eighty centimetres in front of your feet and look inside. The world does not stop by zeroing the clock, it stops by switching off the systems that act, so the flame goes on wavering and the wood stays lit behind you, but nobody walks. Until they were switched off wholesale rather than by list, the open satchel was the most dangerous place in the chapter, because the three beasts had never been included and went on closing in. The grid is a real object, with cells of five and a half centimetres, and a locked gaze leaves the mouse free to choose; go off the side and you land on the racks, which are your two hands.

Nothing is moved by hand, because the game has no pointer: when a thing does not fit, the satchel compacts itself and tries again, and the player never notices. Weapons never enter the grid at all, they are fixed kit, taken once and kept, and putting one away means slinging it over your shoulder. Anything that burns down carries its remaining seconds with it, so a torch burnt halfway and put away does not come back new, and you always draw the most spent one, so you never fill up with stubs.