Deus Ex is a game, I really, really loved. Still do, in fact. Back then it was ground­break­ing. I didn’t like the suc­ces­sor, Deus Ex: Invis­i­ble Wars, though. They fucked up because the tried to use the same code base on two dif­fer­ent sys­tems: on a con­sole and on a PC. Of course, for PC gamers it really sucked hard. Leav­ing all the game­play issues aside, the story wasn’t a bum­mer either. And still … there’s one phrase that still sticks in my head: “The only fron­tier that has ever existed is the self.“.

I tend to believe that this say­ing is true. Even though it was issued by a fic­tional arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence called Helios in the sec­ond install­ment of Deus Ex. Humankind has come a long way since the dawn of human­ity. We’ve made some progress and all just because of a few good men who con­tin­u­ally pushed the enve­lope. We’re right here, we con­sider our­selves mostly civ­i­lized and we mas­sively use tech­nol­ogy to achieve great things. In the end, it’s always about push­ing, about try­ing harder than ever before, about sens­ing out the frontiers.

What is it that dri­ves us? Is it pur­pose, that dri­ves us? Pur­pose that pulls us, that guides us? If so, you would like to ask “To what end?”, wouldn’t you? Are we talk­ing about some kind of mech­a­nism of evo­lu­tion? Do we like to grow up by con­stantly test­ing our­selves? One thing’s for sure – not every­one is dri­ven by it. I for one can’t resist to expend myself until I reach my lim­its. And more often than not I like to go beyond. Some­times it’s hard, some­times it’s easy. What­ever the efforts; if I can reach beyond I push the fron­tiers. And every time it makes me feel proud.

After­wards, some­thing always is dif­fer­ent than before. I can’t pos­si­bly describe it but I think it’s a slight shift in per­cep­tion. Things seem to be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent even though they look the same, almost as if I’m look­ing at them from a dif­fer­ent angle. It’s a weird expe­ri­ence to make but it is more sat­is­fy­ing than sex. So, if I can con­stantly push it, how far can I go before I break? What lim­i­ta­tions can I over­come if I push hard enough? I’m not afraid of break­ing. I’m afraid of what lies beyond? What can a human become if he pushes in the right direction?