It’s rare to see Jose Carvalho in the restaurant he owns, Jose’s Pizzeria and Churrascaria. The handsome, graying son of a Portuguese immigrant isn’t what you’d call a “hands-on” kind of guy. Instead, he prefers to manage from afar, spending his days enjoying hundred dollar manicures and playing cards with his pals at his favorite daytime haunt.

But today Carvalho has no choice. He wakes to four messages on his answering machine from a woman named Loretta Largo, who is so incensed by a minor topping mix up (where did all these vegetarians come from, anyway?) that she is going to write a strongly-worded letter to the newspaper. This, it goes without saying, would be disastrous for an already struggling business.

Carvalho calls Largo back and apologizes profusely, then hops inside his seven-year-old BMW convertible and drive the twenty minute drive to the pizzeria. He wants to know how this pepperoni clusterfuck happened not once, but twice in the span of a month. Heads will roll.

Apparently, Largo had complained to the general manager several times before this, but it fell on deaf ears, which made sense, because the tall drink of a beast Carvalho hired to run the place, Lawrence O’Dell, is practically deaf. O’Dell hints at an incident with an Exacto Knife and a blow torch when asked about the origin of his handicap, but always clams up when pressed for further details. On most days, Carvalho only tolerated Lawrence.

Thursday’s are always slow at Jose’s, and Carvalho thanks God for small miracles as he walks through the seating area. It’s enough to be in this florescent nightmare without having to deal with customers and employees. That might be enough to put him over the edge, and it’s not even noon yet.

“Lawrence!” he yells.

An unshaven Frankenstein’s monster pops his head out from the kitchen window. Carvalho doesn’t say anything, just points in front of him. Lawrence disappears for a moment, then shuffles out. He wipes his hands on his thoroughly stained apron and walks across the scuffed tile.

“Do I have to do everything around here?” Carvalho asks, suddenly feeling unoriginal. “I put you in charge to cause me less headaches. And now I’m getting complaints that you’re putting meat on the veggie pizza.”

“It was eggplant. I swear.”

Carvalho sighs. He looks around the restaurant. “Look at this place. Is this how it always looks or did you and Angie have a grease fight this morning? What have you been doing?” He looks past Lawrence’s hulking facade, at the faded, silent Missile Command machine running in the corner. Something catches his eye. “See, this is what I’m talking about.”

“What?”

“This! Look at this!” He points at the high score screen. They both stare at the top score. FAG – 1,543,000. “Do you see anything wrong here? I’m looking at the top score.”
“You think he cheated?”

“It’s offensive,” Carvalho says softly. “I pay you to take care of these little things before they become an issue. You know what a fag is, yes? You ever read a newspaper? Ah, forget it. Go on. Turn off the machine.”

Lawrence shakes his head. “The kid’s done that seven times already. There’s probably a group of them. I shut off the machine, try to reset the high scores, he comes in and does it again.”

Carvalho walks up to the machine. Missile Command. Before he Wii bowled at his niece’s two Christmases ago, he’d never touched a video game before. He’s always felt self conscious around them, like he was the only one left on the planet who didn’t know how to make heads or tails. He spins the scratched up rubber track balls and fiddles with the buttons, his face scrunched up, an ape fooling with a Rubik’s cube. “How do you do it?”

Lawrence scratches his head. “You stop missiles from hitting your cities using your own missiles.”

“Okay.” Carvalho points to the buttons. “And what do these do?”

The days are short in Alberta at this time of year, and it’s dark by the time Angie Platts strolls into the restaurant to start the afternoon shift. She walks past her boss, who is hunched over at Missile Command, jerking and cursing and inserting quarter after quarter, but is too self-involved to question his motives. She plants herself on a stool behind the cash register, cracks open a fresh copy of New Moon, and madly circles a passage with red marker.

Carvalho smacks the cabinet and runs his sleeve against his moustache. He glances at it, surprised to be sweating as much as he is. “No one ever said these things were so tough,” he grumbles. “Hey, Angela. Ring me through a quarter chicken meal.”

Angie looks up from her book. “It’s Angie.”

“With extra piri-piri on that. Need something hot to wake me up.”

Carvalho is still in his thick wool jacket. Lawrence had offered to take it, but looking around the dingy joint, he thought it best to keep it on. He’s managed to chart as high as 7th place on the hi-score board, but that just isn’t good enough. If he wants to get rid of the FAG score completely, he has to get ten high scores higher than 1,543,000. It’ll be a longer and more tedious ordeal than he’s had to endure in over a decade. It’s strange. He’s been playing for five hours now, and he feels like he used to after a particularly grueling upper body workout. Is this what all video games are like?

Angie exits the kitchen with steaming chicken in a Styrofoam container and sets it down on the table nearest Missile Command. “You know, I always wanted to ask you something Mr. C. Why are we a pizzeria and a churrascaria?”

Carvalho smacks the track ball. The End flashes ominously on screen. “Because none of these filhos de puta know what the fuck a churrascaria is.” He sticks his hand in his pockets, and finding only lint and an old valet ticket, eyes the tip jar by the register. It’s packed full of coins.

By the time the dinner rush begins Carvalho has blown most of Angie’s hard earned tip money, but has gained a considerable following. Regular customers, most of whom have no idea that the sweaty middle-aged man spitting vulgarities at the Missile Command is, in fact, the owner of their favorite Thursday night haunt, sit at the tables nearby and study the scene with embarrassed looks and covered laughter.

And what a scene it is! Seven empty cans of Sumol sit on the top of the machine, like a poor South American firing range. A paper cup sits at the player’s feet for regular snort and spitting. Rush’s YYZ is shot out of the speakers overhead. He sways, and the crowd sways with him. It’s fitting; the perfect song for the apocalypse.

Near closing time, the million mark has come and gone. Shit is getting real. Carvalho’s jacket is discarded on a chair behind him. Laurence quits his mopping to watch tiny technicolor explosions on the arcade cabinet. When Angie sees the numbers in the top corner roll past 1,200,000, she runs to the bar across the street and returns, her pockets heavy with dollar coins, jingling like a stampede of a steampunk elephants.

Laurence and Angie and a few customers gather around Carvalho, who looks to be in a trance. His face is a pale, gleaming mask. There’s nothing in the world but him and Missile Command, and the high score that must be eradicated at any cost, because he is the only man who can do it, or the only man who cares enough to. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have the power in his mind to consider his motivation. All he knows is that he can’t pull himself away. There’s a primal competition brewing in the pit of his piri-piri lined stomach, made more powerful and dangerous by the callous anonymity of his opponent.

Four cities down, and only missile silo left. Carvalho mastered the art of the trackball hours ago, but as the missiles rain down, leaving behind a tangle of trails like a rainy day game of pick-up sticks, he feels himself starting to slip. Panic and sweat take over. Another city down, but he’s getting just over the million and a half mark. A lucky chain reaction clears off most of the missiles, save one. It’s heading straight for the last city, all the way to the right. His silo is on the left. He spins the ball and aims low.

“It’s not going to make it,” Angie whispers.

His missile detonates, the very edge igniting the enemy missile. He’s won the stage, and extra points are awarded. It takes a moment for the reality, or the surrealism of it all, to sink in.

Carvalho’s got the new hi-score. He takes a sweaty hand off the track ball and steps away from the cabinet. Everyone applauds as destruction rains down across the landscape. The moment is cheapened by a car horn blaring outside. The small crowd around the Missile Command look to the front entrance. A pair of headlights flicker on their faces.

Angie looks embarrassed. “It’s my boyfriend.”

Carvalho delicately approaches the game he’s been pounding on, abusing for the past ten hours straight. He gently twirls the trackball, selecting his initials with great care.

F_U – 1,600,000

Ah, the sweet smell of marinara and victory. But today’s success is only a small one, because, if he wants to remove FAG from the chart completely, tomorrow he will have to do even better.

And again after that. And again. And again. And again.

That night, while Jose Carvalho eases himself into bed, his eyes hurting more than they’ve ever hurt before, he catches a glimpse of himself in the dresser mirror. He looks bedraggled, red in the face, like after a long night of drinking. He gives a shadow of a smile and slides down flat. He can’t explain what mysterious power overcame him in the store. Something deep within him kept him upright at the Missile Command. Something internal made defending a featureless world from invaders with names like FAG and ACE and FUK more important than the dozen other things he had to do that day.

The more he thinks about it, and this could be attributed to the nuke-addled mutations of his tired mind, the less he feels anything less than kinship with these anonymous gamers. He thinks he shares common ground with these young punks who, like him, work tirelessly in the face of utter defeat, only to have a little piece of the world to give a name to.

Written by Hardcasual’s Canadian Correspondent, Filipe Salgado.