Exerion

Castro, Pablo A. "Exerion." Dimension Latino: Anthologie de SF latino-américaine. Sylvie Miller, editor. Tarzana, California: Black Coat Press (Rivière Blanche - Collection Fusée #2), 2007.[1] In English, translated by Andrea Bell, in Cosmos Latinos, which see.

Exerion is a real arcade game, described thus in the Wikipedia entry,

Exerion features parallax effects and inertia simulation. The player shoots formations of bizarre alien amoeba, egg-throwing birds and Pterosauric creatures, as well as UFOs while flying over the surface of a planet. The player has two types of guns: a slow double shot (unlimited) and a fast single shot (limited).[2]

The translators and editors in Cosmos Latinos note

Video-arcade games feature prominently in Castro's fiction, and in this story the game becomes an extended metaphor for the trauma suffered by thousands of Chilieans during the brutal military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989). In the futuristic landscape and language of the high-stakes date storage and retrieval world popularized in cyberpunk, the bitterly ironic "Exerion" captures the desperate feel of the search for information undertaken by families and friends of the "disappeared" in Chile.[3] The main character's addiction to computer games bespeaks his emotional emptiness and estrangement from reality in the wake of his father's violent abduction, and the Gibsonesque finale suggests the self-sacrifice and potentially endless state of suspension risked by those who demand truth and justice in a totalitarian world. (p. 293)

We will call attention to the early description of the protagonist and suggest comparison and contrast with opening description of Vashti and her room in "The Machine Stops" and Virek in a life-support vat in Gibson's Count Zero, and associated writings. Note also theme(s) of implants and prosthesis[4] and literal interfacing of a human with devices electric and electro-mechanical, and almost literal interfacing with the screens that are a portal to the cybernetic. There is also a suggestion of the hyperreal in the unreality of the game as a kind of up-close and personal spectacle, supplanting more material realities.

His body lay almost inert in a hydraulic chair [...] while his one arm served as a hook. His legs didn't reach the ground, because he no longer had any. [...] Only the screens seemed real enough, active enough to reanimate him. Cables extended from them that connected to him via small jacks installed in his head and in the stump of the arm he didn't have either. [***]

But the program was becoming more and more inadequate as the invisible and indestructible nanoraser devoured faces and places, covering over the gaps with a nebulous and dreamlike void that wasn't enough to gestate any feeling or emotion awaiting its chance. But he was sure that something still trembled within his soul, a place where the subatomic electro-eraser couldn't reach [...]. (p. 295)

RDE, finishing, 15Sep20