My Father's Footprints Read Free Page A

that. I give him an officious, hearty, no-nonsense parody of myself
    “I thought we might eat lunch together,” he mumbles weakly.
    “No time for me to eat!” I boom, with a big false smile. “I’ve got to get you all packed up, load up the car, get everything
     squared away with the people here while you eat.”
    I have become a Sim. “The Sims” is a computer game in which you build digital people and orchestrate their lives. They marry,
     have babies, get sick, lose jobs. They seem to set themselves on fire by accident a lot. You assign personal traits to each
     one, but the palette of emotional colors is pretty limited.
    I read that in 2001, the people who play “The Sims” noticed an odd phenomenon. Their fake people would begin to cough and
     then die, in uncommonly large numbers. The players began discussing this on Internet message boards and discovered a common
     denominator. The game company’s Web site allowed players to add new furnishings, accessories, and other items not originally
     included on the disc. The people whose Sims contracted this unexplained Simtheria had all downloaded an extra pet, a guinea
     pig, and had been delinquent about making the Sims clean its cage.
    The company admitted that, yes, the guinea pigs were programmed to give the people, in some circumstances, a fatal disease.
     Behind that lay a deeper, more troubling truth. The “things” in the Sims world were all impregnated with programming that
     elicited certain responses. The Sims appeared to have rich identities, but that was an illusion. They were pretty empty, but
     their environments were just loaded with invisible personality fragments that could be activated if touched.
    This is how I feel, during these trying times. Not like a person with real emotional depth but like the framework for a person.
     Some kid’s hand on a mouse is moving me through my days, and when I brush up against a wheelchair or a wristwatch, I maysmile or cry, but it’s just the thing I touched doing a data dump into my hollow self.
    Even so, there is no excuse for my fake joviality here in the elysian nursing home. But have you ever had that feeling? That
     if you gave one inch to your true emotions, you’d be in a free fall? Easier to be a Sim.
    The next day, I bring my faithful and true twelve-year-old mongrel dog, Roy, to the vet for more tests. He appears to have
     liver problems, as does my father, which makes one wonder if I have somehow offended the Liver God.
    By bedtime, I am so tired that I have my father and Roy’s problems hopelessly conflated in my head. I know one of them is
     under strict orders not to eat any more dead animals in the woods.
    Conversation between me and my son, about our aging but preternaturally young-looking dog.
    “How old is Roy?”
    “Twelve.”
    “How old would that be for a person?”
    “I’m not sure. Do you multiply by seven? If so, he’s… eighty-four.”
    “How can he be?”
    “Good care, good food, lots of love. And I think he has good genes.”
    “What are genes?”
    “The parts of your body that say a lot about your health and how you’re going to be, in general.”
    “Do I have good genes?”
    “I think you do.”
    “Do you have good genes?”
    “Um. Probably only so-so.”
    “Who has the best genes?”
    “I don’t know.” (I refuse to say Michael Jordan.)
    (Said with amusement.) “Maybe God. He’s been alive so long.”
    Later. Son, Mexican-American, regarding his brown-haired, brown-eyed guinea pig: “If I were a guinea pig, I would look just
     like Edward.”
    And now I recollect a conversation from a day in 1996, before the terrible sickness set down its giant scaly foot on us. My
     wife is telling my father that Roy is slowing down.
    “That’s what big dogs do. They slow down. They sleep more. They get quieter. It almost helps prepare you for the fact that
     they’re going to die.”
    My father smiles fiendishly and inclines his head toward my mother.
    “Could you