Carlos steered his olive drab character over a small hill, a victorious charge with his MP5 blazing. The moment his avatar’s head crested the earth it exploded in a volley of submachine gun fire.

After a brief moment, he respawned. Electing for a flank maneuver, Carlos sprinted along the very edges of the battlefield, feet splashing through sand and ocean water as the greater battle raged further inland. His plan was simple: shoot targets of opportunity. An enemy soldier had the same idea. Despite being so far away as to appear as a black speck on Carlos’s screen, the enemy’s muzzle flashed and Carlos’s character died again.

Carlos sighed, taking a quiet moment to collect himself. He chose to respawn as a machine gunner. Maybe further back and laying down a hail of gunfire would be more effective? He was shot by a sniper within moments.

He respawned as a medic and was gunned down midstride by plane’s strafing run.

He respawned in a plane and was shot down instantly by anti-aircraft fire.

He respawned in a tank and was blown apart by artillery that he never saw.

Carlos didn’t hit the button to confirm his respawn this time. He was painfully aware that he was only providing kills, and points, to the enemy team. Points that could be used to call in devastating cruise missiles, powerful personal weapons, or nigh unstoppable tanks. He was feeding.

Soldier of Valor was a run-of-the-mill WW2 first person shooter. Two massive teams vied for the usual kills, points, and objectives. It was nothing extraordinary, but it had a special place in Carlos’s heart. It was fast and simple, and matches were plentiful.

Carlos ventured a glance at the baby monitor. Gracie was still sleeping soundly, for now. It had been an hour, and if he was lucky, he had a half hour left. Then it was back to the hustle and bustle of baby care. He looked forward to it, she was impossibly cute, but still a baby that sapped the energy out of him. This was one of the few moments he had to himself, and he was trying to make the most of it.

Unfortunately, he was 37. Not being able to commit as much time to Soldier of Valor as the younger crowd, he found himself consistently outgunned and outmaneuvered, and out of date from the current meta. His old gamer friends didn’t have the time or interest anymore. He didn’t have the reflexes to win quickdraw contests. Still, he wanted to be useful. Or at least not detrimental.

He chose a scouting class, one that carried a seldom used tool. He chose a respawn point far from the front lines, beyond the reach of even the most ambitious sniper. The position afforded him a good view of the battle at large. He pulled out a spotter’s scope and began to watch the battlefield. Peering through the scope magnified his vision at least six times. As he swept the map, he saw two tiny enemy soldiers charging through the brush. Training his scope on them for a moment, a small red X appeared over each of their heads and Carlos received a modicum of points. The soldiers suddenly scattered, receiving a notification that they had been spotted. It was too late, however, as each of Carlos’s allies could see the red X’s no matter how well they hid. Carlos watched with satisfaction as a hundreds of guns fired towards the X’s, and the two enemy soldiers were obliterated.

Carlos had to smile. The spotter’s scope basically granted x-ray vision to his whole team to see any enemy unfortunate enough to catch his notice. The X’s indicated whether a target was a person or a vehicle, and would remain for a time, even if Carlos lost sight of them. It gave him a tiny amount of points to spot someone, and only slightly more when one of his spotted targets was killed. But at its best, spotting made him feel like the conductor of an orchestra. Vast amounts of firepower could be leveled with a glance, and if a squad was clumped close together, they’d be wiped out. He especially took pleasure when, after highlighting several enemies at once, one of his team’s planes would bomb the area. He could change the flow of battle by paying particular attention to a location, providing valuable intel for everyone, and aiding the more cumbersome weapons. It also kept him out of harm’s way, meaning the other team couldn’t capitalize on his lack of ability.

His was a very lonely job. Spotting gave few points, no glory, and very little excitement. His kill death ratio at the end of the game was an embarrassing 0:6. His team lost the match, the skill gap was just too vast.

A squeak from the monitor. Carlos grabbed it and closely inspected the tiny form in the crib.

“Shh. It’s okay, mija,” he whispered to the screen. She was still and quiet. Just a squeak.

The next match started. Carlos decided to save himself the frustration and spawned as a scout right away. His team spawned all around him, and valiantly charged toward the first capture point. Carlos hung back, finding himself a nice dirt pile to inhabit. He knew this map well, a crescent moon-shaped island with control points all along. As it went, teams collided on the middle point after capturing the two on their own sides of the island. From there it was a back-and-forth battle to take and keep control.

He eyed the center through his spotting scope, a raised pile of rocks with a flag on top. The first collision was about to occur, and he managed to spot a few ambitious enemies sprinting in the open. As the two groups met on the hill, the marked men were dispatched almost instantly. It felt good. In matchups between highly skilled players, tiny differences mattered.

Carlos took a minute to reposition himself for a better vantage point. The central battle was raging, but the pile of rocks proved a significant obstacle for his spotting. The tanks would be arriving soon, and whichever one managed to destroy the other first would provide a significant advantage to their team.

He finally found an adequate shrub and crouched behind it. When he looked back to the battle, he saw a few tiny red X’s already waiting for him.

“What the hell?”

He saw more X’s appear as the older ones were killed. He began to scan around for a source, but a spotter is naturally very hard to find. Carlos shrugged and continued to spot, adding his own X’s. After he placed a few, he noticed the other X’s had stopped. Then, after a few moments, they started again. Carlos looked around again. No sign of the other spotter. They continued this pattern together for a while, each pausing intermittently to search for the other, but to no avail.

“Is that what it’s like?” Carlos asked aloud. Trying to find the guy seemed almost unfairly impossible.

Carlos could only tell his counterpart had a complimentary view to his own, X’s appeared on enemies he couldn’t see. Carlos found himself getting slightly frustrated—whoever this other player was, they were stealing what few points available to him. He would sweep his view to spot more enemies, only to find them already spotted. So, he would jump to other parts of the battle and begin to spot there instead. His counterpart would pause, only briefly, and then start spotting even further afield.

It was annoying…but he had to admit the result was impressive. The battle had swung considerably in his team’s favor. He imagined they must have had near perfect knowledge of every enemy on the battlefield, allowing even the most unskilled players to at least pour bullets in the right direction. Ambushes were impossible and, to the enemy team, they must have seemed precognitive.

A vehicle icon appeared out of his view, spotted from the opposite side of the island. One of his team’s planes made a beeline for it and unloaded a salvo of rockets at the icon. A damaged tank appeared over the crest of the hill, smoking and sparking from the aerial assault. It retreated to the beach in Carlos’s side of the island, its spotting indicator disappearing as he left the sight of the other spotter. A quick flick of Carlos’s scope, and it was re-spotted. The plane made another pass, and with a fresh salvo of rockets, the tank was obliterated, its turret launched into the air like a discus.

Carlos laughed. One spotter was a rare annoyance, but two? That’s just cheating. Nowhere was safe, the ‘You are spotted’ indicator pulsed on every enemy’s HUD. Perhaps if they crouched harmlessly in a hole the spot would fade, but any ambition would be punished.

The center was finally taken, and the army pushed on. They charged toward a hangar complex, rafters blasted into a dynamic web work of climbable scaffolds and hiding places. Dilapidated planes littered the area in the approach, becoming a labyrinth of ample cover. Carlos began spotting the interior of the hangar, where the enemy would primarily be spawning. The cover made spotting difficult, people tended to cluster together. This time, the other red X’s only appeared on the enemies hunkering in the approach. An accord had seemingly been reached.

An X appeared far in the back field of the enemy line, further down the island and away from the fury of battle. Carlos glanced over to see what had garnered the attention. He saw a single figure sprinting toward the hangar, then leaping, crouching into a power slide, sprinting, spinning, jumping, sliding. It was an acrobatic display born out of habit, as he was completely unthreatened by enemy fire. His outfit was gaudy and over accessorized. These were the signs of a top-tier player.

Top-Tier threw down a smoke grenade, and the X disappeared along with him. Carlos went back to spotting the hangar, tagging Top-Tier as he ran through. He winced as Top-Tier, despite being spotted, wreaked absolute havoc. The speed of his acrobatic movements made him nearly impossible to hit, and his reflexes and aim were so precise he could handle a 3v1 without breaking a sweat. Eventually he was downed, but he must have killed at least 15 people on his own. Significant ground was lost for Carlos’s side.

“Oooh, I gotcha,” said Carlos. It was clever, damn clever.

Carlos kept an eye on the enemy back line, leaving his team to fight without the precognition he provided. Sure enough, Top-Tier reappeared far away from the din of battle, likely to avoid spawning in front of an errant bullet and marring his KDR. Carlos’s counterpart tagged him first, another smoke grenade and the X was lost. Top-tier jumped down an embankment and, as with the tank, Carlos picked up the tag once more. He took great pleasure in seeing the acrobatics briefly cease as Top-Tier spun around trying to find the source, to no avail.

All at once, a plane dive bombed the sole highlighted target on the battlefield and tore him to shreds with strafing gunfire. All the skill in the world couldn’t avoid that kind of heat.

Top-Tier appeared again, and was instantly tagged, carrying the X like a scarlet letter no matter where he ran.

“Sorry, buddy,” said Carlos. That had to suck. He watched Top Tier get singled out by a sniper’s bullet that never would have found him otherwise. But the lack of talent at the front lines made a difference—the hangar was falling.

Carlos watched Top-Tier try everything in his power to avoid the tags. He crawled, swam, crept, and even tried to just be a sniper hidden in some brush. None of it mattered. He was always visible to at least one of the spotters, and, being the sole X on the field, was a priority target. In desperation, Top-Tier dashed from a cloud of smoke into dense tree cover. Carlos saw him slowly crawling his way out, like a snake trying to escape a hawk’s notice. Tagged. Top-Tier suddenly went stiff, T-posed, and disappeared. He had disconnected.

Carlos’s feelings of guilt were shallow. The imminent threat gone, the attackers were once again blessed with precognition, and the battle for the hangar swung hard in their favor.

One control point left. Carlos heard another squeak and chanced a glance at the baby monitor. She was up.

The little form in the crib was sitting up, swatting at her blankets in a quest to reach a stuffed cat that was just barely out of reach. She was still quiet, bleary from sleep. If she was happy to entertain herself just a moment more, Carlos was happy to let her. He resolved to take her out for lunch if she extended her generosity to the end of this match.

Carlos and his counterpart lit up the battlefield with their X’s. The enemy army had seemingly grown sick of them, because the smoke grenades were going off like mad, shrouding them from the spotters’ gaze. Carlos saw snipers scanning the horizon, desperately looking for the source of intelligence that was tipping this battle so completely. It worked, to a point, as Carlos was forced to stop spotting and find a new hiding place. However, solving one problem introduced another. Covered by smoke and unthreatened by snipers, Carlos’s team’s offensive push easily penetrated the chaos and scored kills that normally would have been prevented.

“Get ‘em, boys!” said Carlos. The boys, indeed, got ‘em.

Suddenly the offensive corridor lit up with artillery fire. Heavy shells began raining down on Carlos’s team from far behind the enemy lines, tearing whole squads to pieces. Carlos traced the fire to a distant cannon deep in the furthest backlines of the enemy spawn zone. He was able to tag the lone gunman, but no allied unit was able to engage, as they were busy being torn to shreds hundreds of yards away.

Something had to be done. Each team had a limited number of respawns to prevent games from going on forever, and this artillery fire was chewing through them. Carlos sighed and switched to his sniper rifle. It was a dusty weapon for Carlos. His aim was terrible, and giving away a good spotting position by the glint of a sniper scope usually meant a subpar match afterwards.

The artillery nest was at the furthest range of his rifle, and the gunner was only just barely visible, obscured by some barrels that surrounded the cannon. Carlos pulled the trigger. His shot missed by a mile. He fired three more times, and finally on the third it connected. At that kind of range, the damage was greatly reduced, but it was still enough to make the enemy soldier back up a step and recover. It wasn’t long enough though, he stepped forward when his health returned and began firing. This time it took Carlos five shots to make a connection. Not nearly good enough. He had only one choice.

Carlos dove into the water and began to swim toward the nest. With luck, he would reach the gunner from an oblique angle and manage to kill him…assuming the gunner both failed to notice him and was also terrible. But as Carlos swam, he realized no more X’s appearing were appearing on his screen.

Why did the other spotter stop tagging? Carlos wondered. He came to the only logical conclusion—his counterpart was doing the same thing he was. Carlos swam back to land, tagged the gunner, and continued firing at him. His shots were trash, the spots meaningless, but he was a distraction. Every so often the gunner, wounded, would have to take a step back. The other spotter would continuously get information about the pattern. As long as Carlos supported the support, they could make it happen.

Another shot landed. The gunner, likely only annoyed, stepped back to recover his health. The red X over his head disappeared, and Carlos got the points for an assisted kill.

“Yes!” Carlos pumped his fist. With the abatement of the artillery fire, his team was swarming the final enemy stronghold. Carlos lit up the remaining enemies with red X’s. His army of super men, with their x-ray vision and precognition, made short work of the last defenders.

In the final moments of the game, Carlos stood from his hiding spot and looked toward the artillery that had vexed his team. A tiny figure stood on top of the gun barrel, looking back at him, crouching and uncrouching rapidly. Carlos began crouching and jumping back, and the tiny dot copied him.

The screen faded to black, then the scores appeared. Knowing he had only moments, Carlos frantically scrolled through the massive list of names. He wanted to say something to this mysterious comrade, a hello, a congratulations, anything. He knew they’d have a KDR of 1:0 and would have a middling number of points. But the countdown for the next round was starting, and there were hundreds of names.

He found it with seconds to spare. Carlos squinted at the screen. His new reading glasses were somewhere in the room, but he had yet to find a permanent home for them. Songbird? S0nful? Then a bunch of numbers? He jumped up and searched for his glasses. He was certain he left them on the coffee table. Or had that been yesterday? Had the baby moved them? At last, he found them on the end table next to his seat, his wife having carelessly placed them exactly where she said she would. He held them against his face. In the moment it took him to readjust his vision, the screen faded to black once again.

“Noooooo!” Carlos howled and collapsed on the couch. Gracie was beginning to call for his attention. He sighed and gave a melodramatic flop of his arms. Then he sat up straight and saluted the screen. “Adios, amigo.”

Like all good things, it had come to an end. And it was none the worse for it.