I’ve been a super sorry spy again. THAT’S AGAINST YOUR AGREEMENT, Mr Wang shouts in text form, subsequently yanking away the bonuses afforded to me by my decision to adopt the Wang way. I didn’t think working the Wang into my thang would be this stressful, to be honest.

It started out unassumingly enough. I stumbled across a community book store while wandering the streets of Zero Parades’ Portofiro. The books were free to take without having to prise them from the mitts of a shopkeeper, with the option to leave some change in their place if you’re up for respecting the honour system. I did, despite being incredibly stingy by nature. One of the tomes I picked up was The Wang Guide to Improvised Firearms, volume two.

It was about gun ethics, and also how to make your own from random odds and ends. I had no need for a gun at that point, but hey, it sounded like useful knowledge to have. So, I read the words of the great gun philosopher for whom the guide was named. Confronted with his pro-gun self reliance-focused philosophy, dubbed the Wang way, I decided to embrace it. In practice, the Wang way meshes near-perfectly with the doctrine laid out by prominent real world theorist Madonna Louise Ciccone, in her treatise Sorry, a foundational text of her 2005 anthology Confessions On A Dance Floor.

The people Zero Parades protagonist Hershel Wilk runs into. They don’t wanna hear. They don’t wanna know. Please don’t say you’re sorry. They’ve heard it all before and they can take care of themselves. They don’t wanna hear. They don’t wanna know. Please don’t say ‘Forgive me’. They’ve seen it all before and they can’t take it anymore. Don’t explain yourself ’cause talk is cheap. There’s more important things than hearing you speak.

If I opt to let Wilk show any kind of regret in her chats with Portofiro’s many denizens, alarm bells start to ring. The Wang way has been violated. The associated boons – boosts to the potential of Wilk’s coordination and technoflex skills, plus the swapping of the word ‘kill’ for the word ‘wang’ in her dialogue – are whisked away. Naturally, it’s that last one I always miss most. And yet, I’ve regularly found myself doing without it in my wander through Zero Parades so far, because I cannot stop feeling bad for people.

Look, Mr Wang, it’s very hard not to say anything remotely remorseful to Wilk’s former gang, a network of mates and spy contacts dubbed The Whole Sick Crew, whom she abandoned to fend for themselves during a botched job five years prior to the events of Zero Parades. It’s tough, when you’re caught up in conversations about just how terrible and terrifying their lives got as they were forced to go to ground, some successfully, some not, in the wake of the gig going tits up. I can’t even say things like “She looks haunted by her past decisions” about a young girl wasting away because she’s been irreparably scarred by torture at the hands of your ruthless enemies in espionage.

That is, of course, the point of the Wang Way. To drive you down the path not just of denial, but of a remorseless trampling past people’s emotions, a bullet seeking the most direct way to your target, no matter the bodies and walls you’ve got to pass through on the way. It’s wang or be wanged, so you must hang your pangs of regret up at the door and march forth, a heartless fang, to slam-bang the bloke your controller mentioned when they rang.

Just as there was once no room for sorry cops in a world that needed a cop of the apocalypse, there’s no room for an apology world tour in a world that needs hardened followers of the Wang thang. Just as there’s no room for any other form of philosophising for those whose senses are sharpened to a useful point by fantasies of missile strikes. Just as there’s no room for sleeping between 9AM and 4PM for those who’ve embraced the shadow realm.

In this version of Hershel Wilk’s tale, a well-honed tool of communist snooping must stalk the streets of Portofiro, expression unflinching and finger on the trigger. A knife through the word soup, the endless chatter, the sentiments stacked impossibly high to form senti-skyscapers. A razor blade scything paths through a throbbing brain. A human gun in the matterless dark.

A gun that I never actually bothered making from those random odds and ends, because simply buying one turned out to be the easier path, if a very expensive one. Despite Mr Wang’s near-constant whipping of my back whenever my mask has slipped and empathetic droning has leaked forth, he said nothing about my decision not to bodge together my own implement of death.

This one transgression I’ve seemingly been permitted. Perhaps Mr Wang is so enamoured with guns that his way allows for those who acquire one through more conventional means. Perhaps I’ve committed a sin so grave that he knows punishing me appropriately for it would require him to admit regret at ever having let me subscribe to the Wang way in the first place. Maybe that’s why he’s so gung-ho about chastising me for my verbal transgressions.

It mirrors what Ms Ciccone once sang. I’m not half the Wanger I think I am. So, Mr Wang compels me to save my words, because I’ve gone too far. He’s listened to my lies and all my stories (listened to my stories). I’m not half the Wanger I’d like to be.

He doesn’t wanna hear. He doesn’t wanna know. He doesn’t want me to say ‘Forgive me’. Mr Wang has seen it all before and he can’t take it anymore. I was the chosen Wang. I ate the pages of his life’s work. I was supposed to be wanging in his name. Instead, I’m staging the world’s most regretful rebellion.

I’ve been a super sorry spy again. Time goes by so slowly. Mr Wang doesn’t know what thang to do.