If you've never heard the real life urban legend of the Polybius arcade games, I highly recommend Googling it before reading this novella – I really think it will increase your enjoyment of the story. According to the legend, which may or may not have some basis in reality, in the early 80’s a handful of Polybius game cabinets were placed in a select few arcades in Portland, Oregon. Apparently, the game was highly addictive, to the point of long lines forming and fights breaking out over who got to play next game, and reports were made of players exhibiting symptoms such as blackouts, amnesia, and night terrors. Periodically “men in black” came and extracted some kind of unknown data from the machines, and then, suddenly, one day all the Polybius game cabinets disappeared without a trace. It is one of these game cabinets that Jarrod Foster stumbles upon in Nightlife: Hazardous Material.