Bientôt l'été

Bientôt l'été is a video game for two players. Two players pretending to be lovers. They pretend to be lovers separated by light years in space. They take solitary walks along the shore of a simulated ocean and think wistfully of each other. Thoughts from the old earth literature of Marguerite Duras. The empty beach, the strong wind, the soft music and a small colony of electric gulls are their only companions. But their hearts are full and their minds confused. They walk along the shore until they encounter emptiness. When everything becomes too much for them, they run towards each other. Enabled by intergalactic networks, they touch each other's holographic bodies in cyberspace. A surreal chess game becomes the apparatus through which they, man and woman, can talk to each other. The words they have were given to them, as they have always been for lovers everywhere. The sea remains and tugs at their hearts, if not at their hair and clothes, just as it itself is tugged by the virtual moon. And as great as their longing for each other may be, they cannot stay away from the wind, the waves and the sand. Each time they find a new treasure. An abandoned tennis court. A pile of coal. A dead dog. Ordinary. Absurd. Meaningless. And yet comforting. You enter a café, leave a villa, enter a casino, leave the ruins of an old colonial mansion. We know that this is not real. So it doesn't surprise us. Nothing surprises us. It doesn't matter if you feel the pain of love. Being in love, falling in love, leaving in love. There is no such thing as time. There is only love. And it never ends. No matter how much it hurts.