Shawn knew that in the real world there were very few uses for dog poo. Sure, you could scoop it into a bag, then put it on a grumpy neighbor’s doorstep and set it on fire, so that he’d stomp on the bag and get it all over his shoe. But if you tried that with anyone in Darksyde City, he’d shoot you or stab you or blow you up, which took much of the fun out of the prank.

The logic of the game world worked differently from our own. There was a lot of metaphor involved, as Gus had said early on. And Shawn knew that in the real world people made bombs out of fertilizer-in the virtual one dog poo would probably perform the same function.

Shawn stole an SUV from a parking lot and filled the passenger’s compartment with the poo. He drove it into the alley behind the jewelry store, noticing that the car’s keyless remote had grown a new button, one illustrated with a cartoon explosion. Apparently Shawn was on the right track. He was about to push the detonator button when he saw the girl casually strolling out of a side exit. He didn’t think to grab her then-it seemed more important to make sure she was free of the blast zone, since he’d finally figured out that the game tended to penalize the player for indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians. He watched her walk out of the alley, then put her out of his mind.

At least he did until the next time he was inside the game. The explosion had worked spectacularly-too spectacularly, as it turned out. Not only did the car bomb blast through the steel walls, it wiped out the entire city block, vaporizing Shawn’s avatar into pixels that swirled for minutes before resolving into the “game over” screen.

Clearly, Shawn realized, he had used too big a vehicle, and once he had the game restarted, he grabbed a tenspeed that some bike messenger had left outside an office building and filled its courier pouch with the poo, then rode it back to the alley. Fortunately the SUV’s keyless remote was still in his inventory. More promisingly, its detonator button had shrunk down to half its previous size. Shawn assumed that meant the explosion, too, had been right-sized.