Playground: A Novel

“A quarter of the world suffers from insomnia.”

Makatea is a dreamlike place, but it isn’t immune to the problems of the outside world. Even in the dreamlike world of Makatea, people can’t sleep. Given the small population, the 20 people who experience insomnia aren’t just a statistic—they can be visited, known, and understood. The heightened reality of the dreamlike island makes even statistics more personal and more intense, in contrast to the outside world, where anonymous individuals experience insomnia in painful silence.

“I loved the gawky explorer more than I loved my own mother, in an inchoate way I couldn’t understand. True, deep, embracing first love.”

Evelyne Beaulieu is Todd’s first love, even if she doesn’t know it. He falls in love with her through her book, and she becomes an important part of his early life. This is why Todd’s AI device writes her into the artificial reality of Makatea, returning to Todd in his last days to provide a scripted sense of closure to a journey that began long ago. Everyone Todd loved is on the island, from Rafi to Ina to Evelyne.

“Except that the country this deal promised to boost was itself a work of fiction.”

The passages of the novel set in Makatea contain many allusions to the fictional nature of this AI-generated reality. The allusions, however, speak to the nature of social constructs. The country of French Polynesia is a social construct, abstract thought that binds together islands hundreds of miles apart into the same polity. The promised economic boost may likewise be fictional, yet another lie in the long history of colonial exploitation. While this depiction of Makatea is fundamentally unreal, unreality permeates the human perception of the world.

“I needed to start recording everything. Telling someone.”

Facing the loss of his memories, Todd sets about recording everything. His recordings are the basis of the book, in which he shares his memories with an AI device that compiles and analyzes everything he knows and experiences. He’s creating a memory bank of his life via AI.

“A whole new grace came over her.”

In the water, Evelyne feels at home in her body. Her father’s invention doesn’t just allow her to breathe underwater, but it allows her to feel as though she’s where she was always meant to be. Like the sea lions she watches with Bart, she’s ungraceful on land but something else entirely in the water. Emile’s gift to his daughter is a true understanding of her place in the world.

“That humiliation led to a vow, the vow led to drilling his firstborn son, and the nightly drills resulted in a boy who could read at the Violet level, three years ahead of time.”

Donald Young wants revenge against the world. He turns his son Rafi into a weapon to exact this revenge, drilling Rafi via reading exercises until Rafi conforms to Donald’s twisted understanding of intellectualism. Rafi grows up to love reading, but this ruthlessly competitive attitude lingers in his subconscious and causes issues. Even when he’s writing his postgraduate thesis, Rafi feels the need to read and write better than everyone else. This competitive attitude destroys Rafi’s relationships with his loved ones.

“Without the ability to feel sad, a person could not be kind or thoughtful, because you wouldn’t care or know how anybody else feels.”

Rafi’s application essay provides insight into why he is imbued with a deep sense of sadness, but also shows why Todd’s AI device may be doomed to fail. The AI device tells Todd a story in which the most important figures in his life are waiting for him on a distant island. It’s a happy story but needs an element of human sadness to clarify the positive emotions. Rafi understands this in a way that the AI device cannot, which is why it cannot succeed by telling Todd what he wants to hear.

“My father set me up with a business plan.”

Todd’s father helped him establish the business plan foundation on which Todd built Playground. Todd vastly exceeds his father’s wildest expectations and becomes one of the world’s richest people, starting with this small gesture. Just as Rafi’s father influenced him, Todd’s paternal bond echoes throughout the years in unexpected ways, even when the relationship is mired in tragedy.

“Put on your little beanie cap and don’t release the potato.”

Evelyne shares this phrase with Bart to bond with him and throughout their unconventional marriage, Bart lives by this rule. He gets on with his life and never lets go of Evelyne, no matter how distant she grows from him. She depends on his fortitude and his insistence that she pursue her dreams, which provides her with a fixed point of reference in an ever-changing life. Bart becomes her potato.

“Countless more Makateans lived elsewhere than lived on Makatea.”

The island nation of Makatea is a physical place that is home to 82 people. The idea of Makatea is a much larger country that exists only in the human psyche. The people of Makatea live all over the world but carry within an idea of Makatea that endures beyond the island’s physical limitations. When the AI device creates an artificial-reality version of Makatea for Todd, it plays on this idea, extending the abstract idea of Makatea into the digital realm. There, many more people can continue to live on Makatea than in reality. The dead can live on the digital island, just as the Makatean people can live elsewhere while clinging to their memories of the distant place.

“She had over a thousand songs in her memory.”

The phrasing of Palila’s memory bank of music makes her sound like an electronic music device. She stores her songs in her memory, just like a computer. Ironically, Palila is a creation of Todd’s AI device. Its memory stores the songs from Palila’s memory, using the music to build her narrative. The presentation of Palila’s memory as merely an AI creation distorts her humanity.

“Sisyphus really is happy, brother.”

Rafi’s wry observation foreshadows his future academic struggles. Like Camus’s interpretation of Sisyphus, in which the mythical figure happily pushes the boulder up the hill, Rafi is happy only when he’s working toward his academic goal, not when he achieves it. He finds pleasure in the process rather than in reaching conclusions. Rafi eventually becomes Camus’s Sisyphus, and the threat of his academic program ending causes his self-destructive behavior.

“Almost right away, creditors began to circle the Castle.”

After his father’s death, Todd discovers that his family’s wealth was an elaborate illusion. He spent his life not thinking about money, only to be thrust into a situation with no money and no support. The irony of Todd’s sudden experience of poverty is that he eventually becomes one of the world’s richest men yet does not enjoy his wealth. Todd goes from wealthy to poor to obscenely rich, but his interests and goals barely change.

“Not a man.”

Evelyne assures Bart that she’ll never be able to love another man as she comes to terms with her newly realized sexuality. She is lying by omission, however, as Evelyne loves women, so she can’t love another man. At the same time, however, she knows that no one can offer her the security, loyalty, and devotion that Bart does, transforming their relationship into something different.

“And raise everyone from the dead.”

Rafi becomes obsessed with resurrection. The task appeals to him not only because it enables him to address his supposed past mistakes but because it’s seemingly impossible. Like Sisyphus and the boulder, the prospect of resurrection is something impossible to strive for without ever being able to achieve it. Through AI, Todd invents something approaching Rafi’s objective by creating a digital version of Rafi with whom he can reconcile. The AI device fails to provide Todd with catharsis, however, suggesting that Rafi was right to focus on the journey rather than the goal itself.

“I don’t know when I fell in love with her.”

Todd is frank with his AI device, admitting that he fell in love with Ina even though she was his best friend’s girlfriend. He didn’t just fall in love with Ina as a person but also with what she represented to Rafi. For his best friend, Ina was a source of friendship, catharsis, and meaning. Todd never experiences this in his life, so Ina comes to represent the idealized sense of unknown love. Todd falls for the idea of falling in love as much as he falls for Ina.

“People are like sculptures.”

Ina’s comment is especially ironic given that this version of her is a creation of Todd’s AI device. It represents the device’s attempt to recreate her in a digital space by learning everything about the real Ina to tell Todd a comforting story. She is, in effect, a digital sculpture, just like everyone around her on digital Makatea. Ina’s words are ironic because she’s simply recognizing her own status as an artistic representation.

“Seconds later, Rafi took a red pen from the desk and began working over the poem, crossing out and circling words, sending them to other spots using carets and long arrow.”

As soon as he reads his poem to his friends, Rafi begins to edit it. By reading the unfinished poem, Rafi intends to provide insight into his true self, but the immediate desire to edit the work provides insight into the real Rafi. The editing process, striving to find the perfect way to say the unsayable, means more to him than the poem. His editing of the poem foreshadows his editing of the thesis, showing Todd and Ina that the process of creation means more to Rafi than the finished product.

“We had confirmed for him his enduring nightmare: People he trusted were judging him.”

After Ina spends the night with Todd, Rafi visits them. He makes scathing comments about the possibility that Todd and Ina had sex, though he knows that this is almost certainly not true. More important is Todd’s emotional betrayal, as he shared with Ina stories about Rafi that were intensely private. The notion that the two people closest to Rafi might talk about his most vulnerable memories is the ultimate act of betrayal and ruptures Todd and Rafi’s friendship beyond repair.

“I trust you’ll agree that this is cleaner, cheaper, and better than going to court.”

Rafi’s message to Todd is just the latest iteration of their competitive game-playing, though Todd doesn’t yet realize it. He calculates his words to elicit a particular emotional response, using his knowledge of Todd’s pride and insecurity to force him into a wrong move. Rafi uses his knowledge of chess and Go to play a whole new game, one that Todd doesn’t yet understand.

“Working it out, he dismissed her lifetime of guilt with one casual flick of his hand.”

In the final days of his life, Bart provides Evelyne with an important moment of catharsis. For years, she has felt guilty about her absence and about forcing him to structure his life around her. This guilt gnawed at her, but Bart barely registers such a negative emotion. In his dying days, he breathes new life into Evelyne’s existence by assuring her that she hasn’t acted badly.

“Every stone produced a collective gasp of delight or dismay.”

The AI device tells a story about Makatea that deliberately echoes the youth Todd spent playing Go against Rafi. This final game contains the spirit of every game they played, so much so that the count of Makatea’s referendum uses the same Go tokens that measured out their friendship years ago. This is the latest, final iteration in a game that they’ve played for many decades, even if Rafi is no longer alive to play.

“You have raised the dead and given us one more turn.”

Todd thanks his AI device for the digital Makatea it created. The story it told him is captivating and cathartic. Rafi, Ina, and Evelyne are three of the most important figures in his life, and the AI device has woven together a story about a referendum that brings Todd to them. Todd has one more chance to play the final move in a game that ended far too quickly. The AI player may not be real, but as Todd approaches death, he craves the chance to repair his relationship with his friend Rafi, as unreal as it may be.