To read without genre expectations I find impossible, even when investigating an entirely new form. Interacting with “The Lucky Ones” and “Same Day Test” on the computer, I was still comparing that experience with other experiences of fiction, both in film and on the page. But clearly the narratives were only part of the point here. Why did the authors choose this medium, and what was being conveyed by the functioning of the interactions within each work?

The uninflected, objective narration of “The Lucky Ones” I hoped hinted at something subversive at work behind the smiling character icons, simple videos, and sensually-rich materiality of the characters’ “desktops.” By the third episode, I finally realized I could open the letters, journals, and blog that had looked so promising. Ah, the relief of finding and releasing individual voices from the scraps of text; predictable (with the exception of Jesper), but wonderfully subjective nonetheless. The entire piece, I suppose, comprises the “voice” of the car; it doesn’t bob and grin at us from the line of icons, but it is ultimately the strong, silent hero of the story. Alas, nothing subversive there.

In terms of its interactions, "Same Day Test" seemed quite plain by comparison—a simple choice to make following each text passage—but it is ultimately a very provocative work. Reaching the end I went back and relived the day, this time with an alcohol problem, to see if my lifestyle had any impact on the results. Unlike others in the class, I did get the same negative result and found myself strangely uplifted by that fatalism. (I’m sure it would have been different had the results both been positive.) That the news was delivered in the depersonalized format of the computer printout seemed to underscore the fact that the ending was outside the narrator’s (my) control. —As is this narrative’s critical beginning: the story opens after the unprotected sex that launches it, so that (arguably) the most significant choice has already been made. Does that make the narrative arc(s) that connect the beginning and end of the work more important or less so?

—Ann