Why would anyone build a secret room no one can access?

Its a night-time cityscape, much like Montreal at night. Only this is a game: a game we are building. Slumbering birds are affected by the colour and intensity of nearby streetlights. If the conditions make them uncomfortable enough, they will leave—alternatively, they may just build a nest, hang their hats, stay awhile.

Birds have preferences related to this one focal point of the game: street lights. But how far do these lights extend? What do their halos touch? The edge of a tired dog-walker's feet? The shell of an abandoned egg? The cornea of a crow just now awoken by the nightmare scream of a bee? Or a sleeping child's first mile of hair, lightly tangled on the surface of their quiet pillowy room.

this is not a screen shot of the game: it's a bird-rabbit happily hanging out with its insect-rabbit neighbours, in the magical world of my mind.

I'm learning to code. I look at the bird's code, and I feel strongly: these birds need community. They need to feel things about the birds around them. What bird should be forced to stand alone? What bird should only think of one thing, be it light or whatever a game cares about despite them? So, ignoring the fledgling game designer in me, yelling that this is convoluted, and will only confuse everyone (the players, the code, and me!), I give the birds a tangling mess of code. I fight with myself, and the code, but after a few arbitrary decisions, its done: the birds can love or hate other birds--their neighbours. Strangely, it doesn't concern me that the code is useless. It comforts me that it's there, hidden in the folds of the game.

I've always loved secret pockets... you know that vintage perfectly tailored coat? You pull it on, and on the inside, against your breast you discover a softer seam, and the smallest button, like a button made for the child of a child, a dexterous doll that hides candies for its grown-up coat.

Now, beyond the love of hidden/useless artifacts, can an argument be made for this kind of building, this kind of thinking? Might a parallel be made with an athlete stretching before a performance?

I'm not much of a sportsman. I've heard interesting things said about stretching in the context of physical activity. I would say that what I gave myself was a little room to maneuver. Perhaps like stretching muscles, or perhaps like stretching the area through which I could think.