forrest

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I: Et in Arcadia Ego

“The passing of time, and all of its crimes, is making me sad again.” – Rubber Ring by The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs (1987)^#1

I.I: Summer in Arcadia

Betwixt red maple and palm sat Arcadian youth transfixed by dancing light.

Two boys sat on a small bed and another on the floor nearby. They were crammed in a tiny porch remodeled into a makeshift bedroom; the walls were windows and a sliding glass door revealed the living room while a patio door revealed the backyard and anything even resembling glass was covered by thick blackout curtains. The sun set, but the room was kept aglow by the epileptic flashing of a gray Magnavox cathode-ray tube actively working hypnotism upon the boys. Wires sprawled across the room like laser trip-mines while sounds of fiction and war – consecutive booming, warp and whoosh, ringing shrapnel, and screaming, both human and extraterrestrial – were occasionally drowned out by the uncontrollable laughter and expletive-ridden taunting of Arcadian youth.

All was well because school was out forever, and the extra-large thin-crust pepperoni pizza had just arrived. The boys had just torn into a new case of Diet Cherry Coke, and the only thing that mattered in that tiny pocket of the universe was dual-wielding pop and Xbox controllers, and, of course, the score in the Halo 2 deathmatch playing out on split-screens reflected in the eyes of Arcadian youth.

When the blue splashed into view and the guitar rang out like an engine’s rev before a Slash solo,^#2 every teenage trouble melted away like ice on a warm summer day and the boys were transfixed and true. The boys would then proceed to argue over who received the prestigious title of player-one; a luxury typically afforded to the home team, which bestowed the advantage of a larger screen-slice for the cutthroat deathmatches so seriously considered by these Arcadian youth.

Lockout was the go-to fan-favorite map: a blue-gray maze of open steel pathways mysteriously suspended midair. Lockout devolved into a race of who-gets-the-shotgun-and-sword-first, culminating in one player dominating the match by camping the central gravity-lift for easy kills – a tactic the boys called “hoarding the power weapons,” which was ridiculed severely, yet the lust for winning was so strong that they continued to do it despite the shame.

Ivory Tower was another popular choice, a tropical multi-leveled indoor jungle park with plenty of places to play hide-and-seek; the game-mode of choice was something the boys called “GoldenEye,” in which shields would be disabled and only magnums could be used; this resulted in a one-shot-instant-kill playstyle that relied on reaction-time and skill rather than hoarding power weapons. GoldenEye was very serious business often used to settle insipid disputes and one of the boys would usually end up stomping home in a huff afterwards.

Every flaw; every virtue; every vulnerability; every strength; every weakness – all would be revealed when dancing light reflected in the eyes of Arcadian youth.

*Lockout on the cathode-ray tube.

When the last slice of pizza was eaten and the bodies stopped respawning, and the boys got bored, they sneaked out of the backyard gate and walked to the neighborhood pool – which had closed hours ago. They swam chaotic before the neighbors called the police for noise ordinance violations, and when the police arrived, all they found were unused towels and a green shirt adorned with the words “The Smiths” – the only evidence left behind at the scene of the crime of Arcadian youth.

This was summer break in Arcadia between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. This was before cigarettes, before drugs, before alcohol, before nine-to-five, and before bills.

This was my time in Arcadia – my golden years.

I.II: The Arcadian Tribunal

Miles was a local youth of Arcadia and he was exalted.

Miles, also known as TauntButton, was younger than your not-so-humble narrator by only months. He lived three yards behind my grandma’s Arcadian summer-home. We met when I was ten years old; I ventured to the fishing pond behind grandma’s house and there he was sitting on a big rock with his tackle box: fishing.^#3 I asked if he wanted to play Super Smash Bros. and it was instant kinship.

Miles was of average height and had hair like a sifting pan full of gold with most of the dirt filtered out. His favorite song was “Helicopter” by Bloc Party.^#4 He was the most popular boy within a fifty-mile radius and seemed to be friends with the entire county and then-some. Lithe and handsome, Miles was built like a triathlon wonderkin. He could run up a tree without his hands and dunk a basketball with such force that the ball would burst at the seams. Late at night, when we played cops-and-robbers with the other neighborhood youth, Miles would hide in tall trees and never be found; I would lambaste this behavior, but he kept doing it out of pure contrarianism. He was charming and defiant in his own way. He had type-2 diabetes – the doctors said it was genetic – and he would prick himself with an insulin pen every few hours to charge up like a Sangheili energy shield; we would joke that he was shooting up heroin and this was peak comedy when sneaking-the-joke on those not-in-the-know.

Miles had a keen interest in computer games, but his parents were strict on the when-and-what; his mom wouldn’t let him play Super Smash Bros. because she believed it gave him nightmares; so he used my grandma’s house as a safe haven from his parents’ prying eyes. Miles’ parents would go on to claim that I corrupted him with rebellion and computer games, but our relationship was much deeper than that. I was different from his neighborhood friends, who were more interested in sports tournaments and fishing, and I was exotic by virtue of being a cynical nerd full of computer-game-and-anime knowledge. I had just enough charm to be intriguing instead of creepy.

Miles was practical, outdoorsy, and naive but very curious. I was isolated, reclusive, cynical, and a know-it-all-while-knowing-very-little. Miles and I were opposite and magnetic, but we had one thing in common: we were contrary to the core, very competitive, and, most importantly, we were obsessed with each other.

*Arcadian fishing pond.

The third of the Arcadian Tribunal was Matt, also known as SupaSmallSlice.

Matt’s house shared a yard with my grandma’s summer home, a fact unknown until Miles and I stumbled upon him at the pond; he was fishing by himself, and – just like Miles – I asked him if he wanted to play computer games and it was instant kinship.

Matt was different; he was far less youthful than the rest of us, being four years older. Matt’s old age combined with his adamantine meekness gelled into a predatory aura that neither Miles nor myself picked up on immediately. Our youthful naivety paid off because Matt’s predatory aura never materialized into anything other than a very tall, slightly awkward-looking older boy just sort of standing there silently waiting for you to tell him what to do. Being alone with Matt was like playing host to a forever-bored-and-undecided person that would not leave because they were too coy to speak up; this was the primary reason I strived never to be alone with him.

Matt was the ultimate third wheel, someone for Miles and I to direct our adolescent rage and mockery toward. Whenever we wanted a third player in a computer game, we would get his attention by throwing rocks at his upstairs windows because we were scared of his father – a short, bulging man with a toad-like face that possessed the charisma of a goblin – opening the front door and killing us. Miles and I would secretly team up against Matt in Halo 2, and if Matt noticed, his meekness prevented him from telling us. If the tables turned and Miles or Myself teamed up with Matt: it was a good sign that some deeply extrasensory interpersonal angst was bubbling up in Arcadia.

Miles and I were unfair and cruel to Matt; we never treated him with the respect he deserved, something I regret because we were Matt’s only friends. Matt introduced us to Japanese Role-Playing Games, starting with Final Fantasy VIII, which threw us down a path of geekdom that we still travel to this day. Matt was always nice and polite and would do anything we asked of him; drive us to Wendy’s late at night or to the computer game store or the movie theater. Matt was forever eager to please, and perhaps this was due to the eldritch weirdness which prevented him from making friends his own age.

To these Arcadian youth, Matt was a sideshow, a freak, a weirdo; but he was our friend. And after years of friendship, my aunt – who eventually moved into my grandma’s home – would frequently ask Matt to babysit her teenage son.

And that completed the Arcadian Tribunal: Miles, Matt, and Myself.

But there was a fourth Arcadian youth, my aunt’s teenage son; my cousin.

Jake.

II: Et in Arcadia Insciens

“Drowning here in summer’s cauldron.” – Summer’s Cauldron by XTC, Skylarking (1986)^#5

II.I: Jake, Pongo, and Perdita

His life up until this point had been Pongo and Perdita, and when it flashed before his eyes he remained instinctual and unawares.

Every Tuesday night betwixt red maple and palm, Matt babysat Jake at my grandma’s Arcadian summer home. My aunt had just divorced and moved in with my grandma, bringing along her son, Jake; and since I only lived there during summers and Jake was now a permanent resident, my room was given to Jake, and I was moved to the porch. The porch had recently been remodeled into a makeshift bedroom, now covered in blackout curtains and the epileptic flashing of a Magnavox cathode-ray tube and the sounds of The Smiths’ “Louder Than Bombs” and occasionally John Mayer’s “Room for Squares” and The Strokes’ “Is This It?”

My aunt didn’t trust me to watch Jake, so she chose Matt instead – the older and more outwardly mature of the Arcadian Tribunal – and he was paid handsomely for his services. Miles and I sat in front of the Magnavox transfixed by dancing light while Matt was off making sure Jake wasn’t hurting himself with kitchen utensils or breaking glass on his head or smearing feces on the walls or urinating in grandma’s bed or wandering outside into oncoming traffic or removing his dirty diaper before hiding it somewhere that wouldn’t be discovered until weeks after it had permanently stunkified the house – which was already stunkified and only getting more stunkified by the day. The sounds of clapping, screaming, banging on the walls, and door slamming were cacophonous during these babysitting sessions as Jake made it clear he did not like being away from his mama.

The doctors said Jake was autistic; they said he had always been this way, but his mom insisted otherwise: “He was a normal baby before the vaccines – he was even saying words like ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ before those damn shots.”

Explaining Jake through vaccine conspiracy was easier to process than the truth, and in the end: it doesn’t even matter.^#6 Jake was Jake; he yelled, moaned, clapped, and enjoyed watching Disney films – and only Disney films – on repeat. There was nothing behind his eyes except complacency and primal rage in cycles, and if you handed him an Xbox controller, he would likely swing it – hard – into your face before clapping loudly and wandering off. Jake couldn’t speak a word, yet he was older than me by a year, incredibly handsome with a distinct pudginess to his face, blue-eyes-to-die-for, and dark waves of hair. Jake was the apple of many eyes – until he started screaming and taking his diaper off.

Jake was Arcadian and kin but impossible to connect with. The thought often crossed my mind: in an alternate universe, Jake would have been hoarding power weapons with us on Lockout, but instead: One Hundred and One Dalmatians one hundred and one times and counting.

*Pongo, Perdita, and pups transfixed by dancing light.

Jake lived in Arcadia unawares – but, maybe, we all did.

One thing was certain: this was it for Jake – all he would ever know. I accepted this about Jake; Miles accepted it; Matt accepted it. This acceptance brought us closer together. We were comfortable being around someone who smeared feces on walls; acceptance of this mental handicap was the measure-of-a-man in our Arcadia. The Arcadian Tribunal protected Jake; we loved Jake and he was exalted. And if Jake was too much for a person to handle: that person had a ways to go before they were allowed into our Arcadia – they were not even willing to step through the front door to begin with.

And on the topic of front doors …

II.II: Diaper Pyre

Jake would often open the front door and wander around lost in Arcadia, and because of this: his mom installed a second door ahead of the front door. The second door’s knob was installed backward, the locking mechanism was on the outside facing the elements, preventing Jake from unlocking the door from the inside and thus escaping into the Arcadian wilds. The Trick Door – as we would come to call it – would require some arm-contortionism to lock from the outside after you had already entered the home but before the door fully closed; this was followed by a quick twist on the doorknob from the inside to make sure it locked properly. This Trick Door Lock Procedure was a crucial courtesy when entering the home; a life-or-death version of taking your shoes off.

One warm Arcadian summer night, my aunt and grandma left the house – dancing – and Matt was babysitting Jake. Miles and I were tagging along, playing Halo 2, until Jake started slapping himself on the legs and moaning as a wet gurgling emanated from his lower half.

This was a portent; the warm summer night was about to become much warmer.

Jake had diarrhea – bad diarrhea – and it would not stop. Jake was flowing foul for what seemed like forever; diaper after diaper after diaper of filth. We started to panic as the three of us repeatedly exited the front door to dispose of diapers in the garbage and the trash cans were nearing maximum capacity and the smell – my god, the smell.

The Arcadian Tribunal was defeated – we didn’t know what to do.

Fifteen years old and full of foolish ideas: I suggested we burn the diapers in the backyard. This idea was met with great fanfare; like most jaded millennials, we had pyromaniacal urges that were waiting to be fulfilled, and this was the perfect excuse to fulfill them. We secured a lighter and some gasoline from the backyard and this was how we started down the path of flame.

We piled the dung-drenched Depends^#7 atop stray wood, poured gasoline all over, and tossed a burning piece of paper onto the uncontained pile of incredibly stupid ideas. The diapers burst into flames like the flared farts of a burning man. Stool flavored shit smoke escaped the confines of the backyard and spread a putridity so potent that it was a pox upon the entire neighborhood.

*Jackals and grunts huddle around bonfire of questionable origin.

The diapers burned in effigy to our intoxicating Arcadian innocence but, like youth, they didn’t burn for long; the gasoline and wood did most of the burning, and we quickly learned that diapers are mostly fireproof – most of the fecal matter burned away, the absorbent turned to mush, and the outer material had charred to black. We ended up exactly where we started, only now with a big ball of rancid goop.

Crickets and crackling were the only sounds penetrating the now-much-warmer Arcadian summer night.

Until Miles spoke up: “Where’s Jake?”

II.III: Wandering Around Lost

There was a boy drowning in emotions beyond his understanding; water filled his lungs while he flailed wildly in the ankle-deep waters of a kiddie pool.

I could see a nervous smile forming on Matt’s face – it dawned on him that he had defaulted on babysitting duties in pursuit of pyromania and he was visibly distraught behind his eldritch weirdness. “I’ll go check on him,” Matt said as he stood from his chair and made a beeline for the patio door.

My mind was preoccupied with figuring out how to explain the rat-king of warm diaper goop to my grandma and aunt, but also with Miles’ simple question repeating in my mind. And due to a certain incident involving girls in middle school, I had developed a sixth sense for calamity that was often way-off-the-mark,^#8 but I was feeling it now and it felt like bullseye. The gastrointestinal black hole, reminiscent of a trust-fall with someone you wouldn’t trust at all, grew as I watched Miles prod charred fecal matter with a stick. The feeling of doom grew so strong that I stood up and followed Matt into the house to check on Jake myself.

As I entered the back porch, Halo 2 was idling on the campaign section we had left idle in favor of pyrotechnics and a soldier kept repeating, “At this rate, we’re never gonna win this war!” and this transfixed me briefly until Matt approached me with a look of Holy Terror painted across his face. He said two words: “Jake’s gone.”

My transfixation broken – “What do you mean, he’s gone?”

Matt’s timbre trembled in barely-contained panic, “The door’s unlocked. I checked everywhere.”

My aunt’s worst fear was becoming reality; Jake was wandering around lost in the Arcadian wilds. My eyes grew wide at the very thought, “Who was the last to go out the front door?” My teenage brain instantly jumped to the blame-game as to proactively deflect punishment from myself when my aunt arrived home and realized her son was missing.

Then Miles walked in – looking smooth as always – only to see us standing there arguing about who left the door unlocked. “What’s up?” Miles said, only to be met with the faces of the might-as-well-be-dead. “Jake’s gone, isn’t he?” He said without a shred of fear in his voice, “well he couldn’t have made it far, let’s go look for him.”

My aunt and grandma wouldn’t get home for another hour, so maybe we could fix this before anyone noticed – maybe we could find Jake ourselves.

We wouldn’t bother to check the neighborhood pool because it was locked at eight o’clock and would require Jake to climb over a fence to get in – something he couldn’t do. And it was doubtful that Jake would get hit by a car, as it was late and there weren’t many cars out at this time of night. The worst possibility was that Jake fell into the pond and drowned, but the pond was shallow, and if he had fallen in, we should be able to drag him out before he hurt himself – if the neighborhood crocodile didn’t get to him first.

We decided to take a three-pronged approach. Miles would check the fishing pond; if Jake fell in, Miles was the most well equipped to get him out. Matt would rev up his Toyota Celica and drive every side-street and cul-de-sac; if Jake was wandering the roads, Matt would find him. I would go through a side-path near the house that led to a playground; Jake loved going there so maybe he wandered there instinctively.

*Night; Arbiter searches the Arcadian fishing pond; clubhouse and pool seen in the distance.

But it was hopeless – each path was a dead end, and Jake was nowhere to be found.

The Arcadian Tribunal came full circle and regrouped betwixt red maple and palm; defeated and dejected. The soldier on the Magnavox repeated the words, “At this rate, we’re never gonna win this war!” before I forcefully silenced him by kicking the power button on the Xbox – the games were over, and my aunt would be home any minute now, and then my life would be over too. I would be banished from Arcadia forever.

Matt suggested we call the police. The police would illuminate Arcadia with flashlights and find the missing boy within minutes but then our paradise would crumble and the game would truly be over.

As if living in a ‘90s slasher-film, I decided for us: we would not be calling the police, at least not yet. “I’m going to check the pool,” I said after a round of thoughtful pacing – my words were deflated and blue but belayed a sense of seriousness that was rare in these parts of Arcadia.

“Matt, stay here – if they get home before us, try to keep them distracted; say Jake’s asleep in his room or something.” I said as I scoured for a flashlight in a nearby cabinet. Matt’s eldritch awkwardness would deflect any suspicion as it made him impossible to read even when lying, and he was immediately amiable – as always.

“Miles, come with me; I’m going to need you to jump the fence and unlock the gate.” Miles was contrary as usual, “What’s the point? The gate’s locked – no way Jake could climb that fence.” I found the flashlight then glared at him with a graveness he had never seen from me before, and as I made my way toward the patio door, Miles followed suit without a word.

Spontaneously, the plan had taken form, and I strode out of the backyard with a feigned confidence so convincing that I appeared like the leader of an Arcadian Battle Regiment or: The Arcadian Youth League.

Miles and I had to travel through four yards, around the rim of the fishing pond, and over a fence to get to the clubhouse pool. I flicked on my flashlight as we crept through the verdant alley between my grandma’s house and Matt’s house. A black cat ran from one bush to the next. It looked like Chips, my grandma’s rescue, but I couldn’t be sure. Through our creeping, we made it beyond the second yard, but the third house had an open yard with a dog pacing back and forth. I took a gamble and bolted across the edge. The yard was on the border of the fishing pond, and I was so focused on not falling into the water that my foot snagged a root, and my flashlight went flying into the air, and my face went headfirst into the dog’s dominion.

Miles yelled something out as he caught up with me and grabbed at my shirt, but it was too late; the dog had arrived. There was no barking, no snarling, only wetness on my cheek followed by a thick layer of slobber. The dog was licking my face and wagging their tail. I got to my knees and cupped the dog’s head in my hands; it looked like a Golden Retriever in the summer moonlight, and I pet the dog’s head before nudging them away. The dog sauntered off into a nearby shadow and returned with something thick in their mouth – a bone? No, it was my flashlight; the glass was broken, and the switch was in the off position, but it still turned on when flicked, albeit with the flashlight equivalent of a whimper: a flicker. I pointed the cone of light at the dog – a Golden Retriever, confirmed – and then to Miles, who was standing there with a blank look on his face: “Are you the dog whisperer or something?”

*Jake’s home in Arcadia.

We took the incident with the dog as a sign of good fortune and crept with newfound confidence through the final yard. We made it to the clubhouse and walked toward the pool courtyard gate. I felt a nudge on my leg and looked down; it was the dog. They followed us. I patted the dog on the head and gave them a “Good dog” and then placed my hand on the top of the gate. “Alright, Miles, go ahead and –” I paused as the gate slowly opened with just a gentle touch.

Miles and I looked at each other, our eyes widening in revelation. Someone forgot to lock the gate – just like we forgot to lock the Trick Door.

All three of us rushed into the poolside courtyard and looked around frantically. I circled the edge of the pool, shining my flashlight into the water, but there was nothing except pennies and pool toys. Then the dog raised their wet nose to the sky and sniffed with purpose before bolting off into a corner of the courtyard consumed by dense shadow.

Miles and I followed the dog with purpose. The flashlight was dimming but still caused shadows to shiver and flee with some hesitation. Once we got close enough, we saw the dog standing on the edge of a kiddie pool, extending their head over the water as if signaling at something with their nose. I pointed my flashlight beyond the dog’s snout, and that’s when I saw it.

Jake’s body; floating; eyes closed and moonward. He was naked, and a diaper was floating near his head. The leaked contents of the diaper contaminated the waters around him. There was a gloom in the gravity so powerful that it stopped the Earth’s rotation.

The dog whimpered. Miles was staring at the frozen Earth beneath him. There were no words. He slowly removed his phone from his pocket and handed it to me – “you do it.” Neither of us knew CPR, so it was the only option. I nodded solemnly and started dialing the three numbers we had been avoiding this whole time.

But just then, there was a cough. I stopped dialing and looked over to Miles. “Are you fucking with me?” I glowered. But no, there was another cough, the sound of disturbed waters, and a moan like the moan of a boy obsessed with Pongo and Perdita. I swung the flashlight toward the kiddie pool, and there he was in all his naked glory.

He clapped loudly while walking circles in the ankle-deep waters of the kiddie pool, and his manhood swung wild like the wind. Jake was alive. Miles and I turned to each other, both stupefied, and we started laughing louder than we had ever laughed before.

When the laughter stopped, I grabbed Jake’s wrist and led him out of the courtyard. Before exiting through the gate, Miles turned to me and said, “hey, where did that dog go?”

The dog was gone, and as we returned home through the yards of Arcadia, the Golden Retriever was nowhere to be found.

III. Mea Aurea Annos

“The only thing true is nothing can last.” – My Golden Years by The Lemon Twigs, A Dream Is All We Know (2024)^#9

Betwixt red maple and palm sits a man in his thirties transfixed by dancing light.

When I decided to replay Halo 2 in January of 2024, it was because I wanted to prove to Miles – and my younger self – that I could beat the game on Legendary difficulty – something I was never able to do during My Time in Arcadia. And when the marine in Chapter 1 said, “standard formation – little bastards up front, big ones in back”,^#10 I knew I was in for a ride, and for a moment, I was fifteen again.

I soon found out that Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty is an ouroboros affair of trial-and-error and pure rage. Every encounter is death, and every respawn only takes you a centimeter closer to victory. If it had bonfires, character builds, and a third-person perspective, it would be Dark Souls – just far more frustrating and tedious and just not fun at all. Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty is only two weapons – the Plasma Pistol and the Battle Rifle – because everything else is a pea-shooter that doesn’t do sufficient shield damage; without the Plasma Pistol, every enemy turns into a minute-long bullet-sponge demonspawn that actively casts hair-loss magic on the player through the monitor; and since the Plasma Pistol can’t actually kill anything, the Battle Rifle has to be on swap to finish the job. Halo 2 on Legendary is why male-pattern baldness exists. Halo 2 on Legendary is why I pray for early onset Alzheimer’s so I can forget about all the time I wasted charging up Plasma Pistols and game-overing to grunts because every enemy has perfect aim and the jackals – my god – the jackals.

Alzheimer’s – that’s a strange thing, isn’t it? Just forgetting. Arcadia, lost…

If I were a masochist, I would consider Halo 2 on Legendary difficulty to be the greatest computer game of all time.

I did complete Halo 2 on Legendary, but I had no fun doing it – so why did I actually do it?

The truth is: when I decided to replay Halo 2 in January of 2024, it was because I wanted to be on the porch-turned-bedroom in front of the Magnavox. I wanted to hear my autistic cousin clapping and groaning behind the sounds of warp and whoosh. I wanted Miles and Matt to walk through my office door and sit down next to me as if no time had passed at all. I wanted to see the fishing pond through the eyes of fifteen-years-old. I wanted to return to Arcadia – my golden years.

It’s not just me – I see it everywhere. The computer game community, especially, is full of people just like me, obsessed with their youth – ignoring the present.

Nostalgia trespasses our minds like children with flashlights; highlighting the good, leaving the bad covered in shadow. So many of my preferences are formed from nostalgia’s sweet embrace, and I can point to the exact moment that I am trying to recreate each time. The existence of this essay is evidence of the fact that I am obsessed with the past; I could have written about my daughter, or my son, or my wife, but no – it’s not nostalgic enough yet. They say midlife crisis kicks in between the ages of forty and sixty, but it feels like I have a midlife crisis every day. And every time I try to recreate these treasured experiences, the magic becomes less potent – the feeling slips further away, and the thing is a little more bastardized than it once was.

My childhood is wandering around lost, and I am in the dark with a dying flashlight looking for Jake.

*Master Chief overlooks fading Arcadia.

Miles went to college for mechanical engineering. He works in an automobile factory now. Occasionally, I still play computer games with him online, and we talk on Discord. He’s still into anime and computer games – maybe because of my influence. We live multiple states apart, and our friendship isn’t nearly as strong, but every time we talk, one of the stories in this essay inevitably comes up. I went to his wedding back in 2018. I don’t think his wife has ever liked me.

Matt moved back in with his parents; the same house in the same room with the same window we used to throw rocks at. Matt hasn’t changed much, if anything: his weirdness is even more eldritch than ever before. He’s gone from ultra-fit to mirroring his father to somewhere in-between, and he’s still as meek as ever. It seems like I’m still his only friend, as every time I visit my grandma’s house, he’s up there in his room. I’m not scared of his dad anymore. I walk right in and go upstairs, and there’s Matt: sitting in front of a few computer monitors playing old episodes of Quantum Leap while peculiar new-age music plays softly in the background and incense form a thick smoke throughout the room. It’s all very Lovecraftian, but my aunt still trusts him enough to let him drive my grandma to her ballroom dancing every Tuesday night.

My grandma can’t drive anymore – she has Alzheimer’s disease now.

And Jake, he still lives in Arcadia unawares. Clapping, moaning, taking his diaper off, and watching Pongo and Perdita. But one day, he too will change just like the rest of us. The doctors say his condition will only get worse – he’ll start forgetting; one day, he won’t even know who his mama is. But that’s not so different from everyone else – is it? Alzheimer’s: Arcadia just slipping away.

Some say the only thing true is nothing can last; everything fades away and nothing is forever. If the only thing true is nothing can last – then maybe we should treat every year like our golden years; maybe we should live in the moment.

This essay exists not only to wallow in nostalgia, but also to chronicle my life – in case I forget.

This essay will function as a Golden Retriever in the dark.

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Footnotes:

#1. https://youtu.be/GG1ZYByvfqQ #2. https://youtu.be/4bMoHIllZOc #3. https://howdoyouspell.cool/forrest/tactics-ogre-reborn-ruminations-on-resentment-regret-and-retribution #4. https://youtu.be/2R6S5CJWlco #5. https://youtu.be/3DRUnkkjkds #6. https://youtu.be/eVTXPUF4Oz4 #7. https://www.depend.com/en-us/incontinence-products/protection-with-tabs #8. https://howdoyouspell.cool/forrest/no-disc-1998-seatbelts #9. https://youtu.be/jnylB5ylyw4 #10. https://halo.bungie.org/misc/h2dialogue/marines/cairo_littlebastards.mp3

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(Originally published on 2/11/2024)

#ComputerGames #Autobiographical #Halo2 #ShortStory

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

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    The contrast of the sky was tuned to the highest setting, and a filter of glittering blue like the waters of Old Earth accented all things. The watermark stamped upon the skybox was obscured by gold ultraviolet, which was blinding to the eyes but upon second thought felt like nothing at all.

    A young woman—hair like fresh rust, skin like that of a white sheet discolored by the faintest of coffee stains, all draped in white robes trimmed with gold—crossed a dirt path leading to a small bridge resembling something out of a fairy tale, complete with hung lanterns of curled wood and wax longing for fire; the bridge hung suspended over a brook teeming with yellow-spotted trout bouncing above the bubbles to gulp skeeter bugs off the water’s surface. The shade from the tree canopy obscured the dithering of atoms like pixels vibrating at a frequency only slightly uncomfortable to the human eye.

    The young woman paused at the middle of the bridge; she observed the stream as if it were something she had never seen before. She saw fishermen far down the bank, but everything beyond faded into a thick fog. A curious wrinkle scrunched her freckled face before she banished it with a shrug and pushed onward down the path. Her arms held books across her chest as her dark messenger bag spit a trail of paper in her wake, only for that trail to vanish moments later.

    A serene grove gradually rendered into the young woman’s view. The grove surrounded a marbled institute of higher learning; untouched narcissus, daisy, and poppy sprouted along the path leading to the foyer, itself shadowed by the ancient wood of laurel, sycamore, and cypress. Everything was immune to filth and decay. Deer trotted in the distance and simply faded away. Gorgeous youth buried their heads in thick tomes between secretive scribblings in little notebooks that rested upon chiseled tables placed symmetrically around the courtyard; the courtyard itself enclosed by white columns taller than the trees they stood with in solidarity. Beyond the novices’ soft chatter was only the cooing of doves and the pecking of woodpeckers and the occasional caw of massive ravens which perched atop the columns, watching for something edible to drop, but there was no food in this place. None at all.

    As the young woman walked through the courtyard toward the massive double doors adorned with engravings of lions, eagles, bears, and lion-like bears and bear-like lions and lion-like-bear-like eagles and at least a few horned horses, she overheard a small circle of students:

    “Hope she’s not in my class today.”     “Doesn’t know when to shut up.”     “Ellie’s pretty much a textbook know-it-all.”     “She acts Star Touched when we all know she lives in a complex.”     “Tragic, really.”     “So funny how she tries to hide it too.”     “What’s she even doing here?”     “Wasting her time.”     “Who would pick that nose for their sim?”     “Right? I wonder what she actually looks like.”

    Ellie hid her vexation poorly behind the turning up of her jagged hook nose and the uncontrollable tip twitch of her oddly pointed ears. Besides casting an emerald glare at the circle of students as she passed and accidentally catching the stare of one golden-haired young man, she swallowed her pride and pushed through the entrance of the grand hall with only a few sheets of loose paper spiraling in the displaced space behind her.

    A decorative stone plaque trimmed with gold hung on the marbled wall facing the entrance; it was impossible to miss. Engraved were the words “The Polytechnic of Chrysame – Founded by Chrysame of Thessaly – 43AH,” and below that was an electronic marquee with the words “LATTICE 8 – BLOCK 12” scrolling in lurid green from right to left.

    Ellie’s footsteps echoed throughout the halls before she settled upon a pair of double doors, at which she stopped to gather herself. She ran her hands through her hair, parting her bangs to the left (her left) as she liked to do, before placing her carried books on the floor nearby and rummaging through her bag. The bag seemed lighter than before, and she worried for a moment that her thirty-thousand-word essay had been lost to the insensate winds that blew through this place, but she realized that her fears were misplaced as she removed a solitary paper from the depths of the bag. She relieved anxious pressure from her lips as she held the paper to her nose, reading the only visible words:

    An Exegesis on Hecatinium: Disentangling the Quantum Genesis of Hecatinium Within a Pseudo-Anarcho-Capitalist Milieu and Its Multifaceted Sociopolitical, Ethical, and Psychosensual Consequences on the Population of a Dying Planet and Those Above It

    Upon reading the title, Ellie’s lips curled into a smile that revealed a full set of lightly-yellowed teeth. Then a subtle nod, as if validating herself. She had forgotten all about her floor books.

    Ellie pushed through the double doors and entered a lecture hall composed of layers upon layers of seats that extended into a fog unto itself. Sunbeams, like pillars of heaven, shone through massive open-air apertures. There was no visible ceiling; only a hazy cloud alongside the occasional zipping of small birds as if their nests were built far above within the massive hall. Soft birdsongs filled the room. Down a steep flight of steps, a gray-haired man stood before a whiteboard the size of an Old Earth tennis court. The man was flicking his wrist here and there, which swirled color and text across the board like little tornadoes of educational material that appeared incomprehensible upon first glance but were instantly understood by Ellie—due to her cerebrum implant—who patiently waited for the man to finish what she assumed to be a file query through a lesson plan folder. The man was so calm and serene in his electric dalliance that a small titmouse of tufted gray fur landed upon his shoulder and began pecking softly at his tangled wiry barely locks.

    An impatient minute passed before Ellie cleared her throat and broke the elderly man’s serenity. “Socrates?”

    The man turned to Ellie, his youth wrinkled beyond recognition, and his chestnut-colored eyes analyzed Ellie up and down in a who-are-you kind of way before something snapped a smile onto his face. “Ah, Ellie. Just the young woman I wanted to see. And don’t call me by my title; Mr. Telas is fine. There’s no need for all the honorifics.”

    Ellie gave one of those faux smiles that produced artificial dimples, none of her teeth showed. “Why did you want to see me, Soc–” She cleared her throat, “Mr. Telas.”

    “It’s about your paper.”

    “What about it?” Ellie fidgeted. “And why do I have to hand it in in person? I’ve already sent you the file. And it seems you’ve already read it!” Ellie held up the single paper she had removed from her bag earlier, lightly waving it.

    “The same reason you carry bags and books upon your simulacrum; we could simply store those away in a database to be drawn upon later, but that would defeat the purpose. Writing the paper is but one part of the ritual; handing in the paper—in person, on time—is another. This was the way of the Ancients, and this is the way now. It is a matter of punctuality and responsibility, key traits needed for those seeking higher office.”

    Ellie considered objecting to the “higher office” bit but decided against it because Socrates was correct: she did want to run for higher office; she had made this clear many times to anyone who would listen to her. She felt a deep-seated corruption in all parts of society, even in the beautiful bird that picked at Socrates’ hair; there was something unnatural about it—about everything—something fake; she could feel it in her bones; the beauty was superficial, a cover for something nasty; and to answer the students’ question from earlier: she didn’t choose this sim; the sim looked identical to her. She had nothing to hide; in fact, she was morally opposed to having something to hide at all. Fixing the world started with the truth. Transparency is the first step. This is what Ellie believed.

    Socrates’ wise response reminded Ellie that she had left her books outside the hall, near the double doors, and furthermore prompted her to recall why she continued to call Mr. Telas by his Polytechnic title of Socrates—which was officially granted by the Thessalonian Council for his decades of service in the field of higher learning, combined with an intelligence quotient that was far to the right of the bell curve. She respected him not because of his official rank or numbers on a graph but because of his ability to turn stubborn questioning into little proverbs that pierced right to the heart of things. Socrates could part storm clouds, revealing the gods behind them—even when those gods were questions themselves.

    “You also assume that I read your paper. I have not. I could not get past the title.”

    Shocked at how stoically this line had been delivered, Ellie snapped back, respectfully incensed: “How do you mean? The title perfectly sums up the entire paper!”

    “So does ‘Hecatinium's Effect on Society,’ or a number of shorter titles that do not exude the sense that the author has her head up her own rear end.”

    Socrates' mouth curled like that of a child who had just swiped a credit chip, only to reveal the chip to the victim and give it back to them—just to prove they could do it.

    Ellie’s face flushed red; her nose and ears could have been billowing dragon’s breath.

    “Appearances are important, Ellie. First impressions matter. You can write the most astute essay that has ever graced the planet Thessaly, but if the title comes off so high-minded, you will be viewed as pretentious regardless of the content of the essay. Frankly, the title is off-putting. You are an incredibly gifted young woman with one of the most analytical minds I have had the pleasure to teach, but none of this matters if you cannot get through to people. The truth is, the average person is not like you or I. If you want to connect with a wider audience, you have to meet them at their level; you must be willing to put aside your ego. It is all about rhetoric, young Ellie.”

    Socrates lifted his finger to his nose and closed his eyes, a note flashed upon the whiteboard: “Incorporate rhetoric into next week’s lesson plan.”

    The figurative dragon’s breath from Ellie’s nose and ears turned to a thin haze, then to wisps, then to nothing; it must have been the compliment that Socrates snuck into his miniature lecture. “You make a good point. I’ll change the—”

    “I fibbed somewhat. The title should indeed be reworked, but I did read your essay—What kind of teacher would I be if I hadn’t?—and it was quite well written, particularly the analysis of the origin of hecatinium and its initial discovery, the surrounding mystery, and the corporations that perished in the resource wars that followed. However, considering the reality of our current situation—namely, the Thessalonian Triumvirate, which you’re undoubtedly aware of from the basic primaries that have been processed through your cerebrum implant—is a collective of three corporations that have agreed to share the planet’s supply of hecatinium and abide by the rule of a central higher authority. This arrangement was made out of the necessity to continue the cycle of demand and innovation that would otherwise stagnate without competition; given this fact, your conclusion of—as you put it—‘logically, the first corporation to secure the supply of hecatinium would dominate the market, drive all competition to ruin, and turn the planet into their own personal playground,’ comes under some scrutiny.”

    Socrates paused for a moment to cast a chestnut glare at the now-squirming Ellie. His lips furrowed into a cracked line, like a seasoned warrior having confidently thrown the gauntlet. To hide his subtle pride, Socrates contrived other things to do, flicking his wrist toward the board once more. With each flick, the name of a different corporation and logo flashed: HypnoSims, a blue silhouette of an abstracted person with the letter “H” imposed over the face—which the neurotypical mind might flip-flop between seeing as a long pair of eyes and the letter itself—all enclosed in an otherwise voidant sphere; Aides Animatronics, a series of gears colored pink, green, and black casting shadows the color of oil as they turned slowly like the hour hand of an ancient clock; TatNos Heavy Industries, a royal purple surrounding a deep maroon helmet that could double as an ancient computer’s power button.

    The corporate colors played psychedelics across Ellie’s face as she let her professor have his little moment before composing herself: “I would say that the war for hecatinium is not yet over. We’re in the cold war stage.”

    Socrates stopped, and the swirl of colors stopped with him. His stoicism faded, replaced by a twinkling in his old eyes.

    Ellie matched the aggression of Socrates' initial critique. “There may be three corporations now, but there won’t be for much longer. Besides, they already function as a single governmental body under the guise of the Thessalonian Triumvirate, and they even share a council and a military! And I would also argue that this so-called ‘necessity to continue the cycle of demand and innovation’ is a false necessity—a manufactured demand, a self-inflicted need for innovation imposed only to drive profits for those Star Touched above the planet. What’s more surprising is that someone such as yourself would use such matter-of-fact language! And then I would end my rebuttal with one final question for you: are you trolling me right now?”

    Ellie’s youthful flourish prompted a chuckle from Socrates that morphed into a weak cough. The old professor then walked up to Ellie and placed a hand on her bony shoulder. “Well done. Well done. Class starts in five. Go now, take a seat.”

    Ellie placed the solitary paper on Socrates' massive lectern with verve. “Does that mean I passed the assignment?”

    Socrates only smiled his wrinkled smile before turning his attention back to the whiteboard, twirling pixels once more.

---

    Before Ellie could take a seat, she needed to gather the books she had forgotten outside the lecture hall, so she headed up the stairs and out the double doors, passing dozens of robed students along the way. She backtracked her steps but found nothing; her books were gone. A sigh pouted from her thin lips. “There’s no way I was talking to Socrates for more than twenty minutes,” she mumbled to herself as she narrowed her eyes, observing every possible checkered tile of marble flooring. She winced at the absurd prospect of having to fork over another week’s worth of credits to repurchase the books, which were just copy-pasted data from one database to another. She closed her eyes for one meditative moment, then exhaled what she imagined was all the negativity in her body. Ellie resigned herself.

    “Looking for these?” A young man appeared from around the corner of a nearby hall. He was alone. He was holding a stack of books. His eyes were icy, his hair golden, his jaw immaculate, and his glare wretched. It was the same young man she had accidentally locked eyes with earlier. “Did you think they despawned or something?” he scoffed. “I’ll give them back.”

    “You’ll give them back, but …” Ellie’s scrunched hook indicated visible annoyance.

    “Show me what you really look like under that sim.”

    “This is what I really look like, Arc. Maybe you should show me what you really look like? A sim trying to be that handsome must be hiding some real ugliness underneath.”

    A flame sparked in Arc’s eyes; simultaneously, the books he held erupted into a blaze of blues and reds; ashes spilled through the space between Arc’s fingers, scattering through the stale air. “You will call me by my proper name—Archon—as do all the Complexers.” The flame lingered in Arc’s hand for a moment before he flung it at Ellie with a snap of his fingers; the flame bounced and fizzled off a pellucid emerald barrier. The barrier then dissolved into digitized dust, revealing Ellie with outstretched hands; her cheeks flushed; her eyebrows attack mode.

    Ellie’s voice was soft, but there was a storm brewing underneath. “Not only was that entirely pointless,” she moved a hand behind her back as she spoke, “but it also cost me two weeks’ worth of credits.” She clenched her hidden fist, and a pair of emerald tethers whipped from the floor beneath Arc, wrapping around both of his legs.

    “You forgot about my hands,” Arc grinned; but as he went to raise those forgotten hands, two more emerald wires whisked from the ceiling, locking his arms in place. Ellie then motioned her index finger in the air, and the tethers stretched themselves, lifting Arc’s body, pushing him against the ceiling, and tugging at his limbs.

    Robed students gathered around.

    “What did you think would happen – using hecatomes here? What are you – 12? Star Touched Idiot, more like.” Ellie brushed red hair out of her eyes but the red of anger was still deep in her speckled cheeks. She no longer needed to maintain the tethers as they now seemed to have a mind of their own; swirling and squeezing Arc’s appendages. The young man made no sound, he was blank, either too incensed or too stunned to react. “You Star Touched are all the same. This is what happens when you throw credits around and cheat to pass all your classes. You don’t learn anything. You can do your little basic hecatome parlor tricks, but you will never compare to someone who has actually practiced and studied for hundreds—thousands—of hours.” Ellie was grandstanding, losing herself in the moment as she talked up at Arc’s body, which was more like a ceiling fan at this point. “All you did today was reveal how envious and angry you are – but I can’t imagine why, considering you’re up in one of those starships and I’m down here in a complex.”

    Ellie paused for theatrics, then flashed a toothy grin. “How’s the view now?”

    Before she had time to react, something crashed into Ellie’s back, disrupting her focus. The emerald tethers vanished, and so did Arc’s body. Ellie toppled to the floor and wrestled to turn over. As she did, she found herself staring up at Arc, who was no longer on the ceiling but on top of her. How? Ellie’s grin had transferred to Arc, but the grin was now dripping with saliva and murder. He held Ellie down with his left hand while lifting his right into the air before slamming it down toward Ellie’s face. Ellie caught the blow in her palm, her hand glowing with the same emerald green from the barrier before, as if the color itself was empowering her grip. Arc’s hands flared with a mixture of blue and red in turn. A duel of colors was playing out before a gathering of students.

    “Submit!” Arc screamed as he pushed his full weight onto Ellie; their fingers interlocked; their colors mixing into a bright white.

    Ellie twisted and slipped out of Arc’s unstable hold. As she got to her feet, she immediately extended both arms and stretched her palms, and as she did this, a semitransparent emerald box surrounded her. The barrier threw greens onto the marble walls, which reflected onto all around, accenting the faces of the onlookers who were cheering for both of the combatants. And although Arc was standing directly in front of her, Ellie looked around as if checking for any other Arcs she should be worried about.

    “What was that? An ersatz proxy? I’m impressed. Did you buy that one too?” Ellie rushed her speech as she tried to mentally compose herself whilst maintaining the barrier.

    “You’re not the only one who seriously practices hecatomes,” Arc’s words flared like the fires he was accustomed to throwing.

    “Whatever.” Ellie said between bated breathing.

    “Do you want to know why I practice?”

    “Whatever.”

    “It’s because I hate you.”

    “Whatever.”

    “And everyone else down there too. You shouldn’t even be here.”

    “Whatever.”

    “You hate us too—I can hear it in your voice. You hate the rich snooty Star Touched just as I hate the poor little Complexers. We’re the same, Ellie. Just reversed. The only difference is that I’m willing to admit it.”

    Arc’s critique caused Ellie’s nose to twitch, but she pretended to ignore the irritant with another detached, “Whatever.”

    This feigned indifference enraged Arc. He shrieked, and as he did so, a pillar of flame erupted from his palms. He directed the flames toward Ellie; the fire wrapped around the emerald barrier; swirling vortices; vicious rumblings; the emerald cracked down the middle but still held. Sparks flickered and bounced meters away. The surrounding students, who had once been cheering, fell silent, backed off, dispersed into the lecture hall.

    Ellie was obscured behind the blinding yellow mixture of hecatonic reds and greens, which hid her visible trembling as she felt the barrier begin to give way.

    “That’s enough!” The flame vanished as Socrates' voice echoed throughout the hall, leaving nothing but a translucent emerald box with Ellie inside it.

    The emerald barrier dispersed into particles as Ellie lowered her hands. As her vision cleared, she saw Arc immobilized on his knees beneath the frail figure of Socrates, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and had the young man’s ear in a grip that must have been stronger than the pull of a black hole. “Class started three minutes ago, and you’re out here causing fires without even a proper Hoplite Decree!” The old professor’s voice was tinged with a mixture of amusement and disgust, a unique combo that Ellie had only had the privilege of hearing once before. “You will pay for the books, Arc—and you will take a deduction in both standing and grade.”

    “I could pay for thousands of those books, and my father—” Arc let out a pitiful yelp as he felt his ear twist even further. (Socrates must have turned off the pain dampeners, Ellie thought.)

    Socrates then turned his focus to Ellie. “And you indulged the fool. For shame. I expected better. Your standing will be impacted as well.”

    “What? That’s not fair! He started—”

    “He started it?” Socrates completed the sentence as he loosened the twist on Arc’s ear. “It matters not.”

    Socrates shook his head and then vanished through the double doors.

---

    “Today we are going to skip hecatome practice. We already saw enough of that earlier in the hall. Instead, I want all of you to imagine for a moment: Imagine that there is a child; the child is standing on the edge of a pool of water; the child cannot swim; the child slips, falls into the pool, and starts flailing their arms and screaming until water fills their mouth and they become nearly submerged. The child is drowning. You are standing nearby watching this scene unfold. You have a choice: save the child or leave them to drown. Of course, you choose to save the child. You reach for the child, grab them by the arm, and pull them to safety; the child is grateful, hugs you, and says they'll never forget your kindness. The child gives you their name; it is saved in your implant; you don't overwrite it. Twenty years later, you're watching a news holo; the anchor begins recounting the crimes of a recently captured serial murderer: twenty-nine victims. They say the name of the murderer: it's the name of the child you saved twenty years earlier. It suddenly dawns on you that you had saved one life in exchange for twenty-nine. Did you do the right thing? How could you have known? Was saving the child a positive or negative moral act? Does it matter? Note these questions down, as we will come back to them later on.”

    The lecture hall went silent minus the faint chirping of distant birds.

    “Now, I want you to imagine a second scenario: you just left your residence to attend to some chores. The type of chore doesn't matter, just imagine for a moment that you are doing this. A man stops you; he appears to be carrying a package; he asks if you know the address of a certain neighbor—we'll call that neighbor Zed—and you just so happen to know where Zed lives. You have two options: tell the truth or lie—well, maybe three options, including walking away silently, but I would consider this tantamount to lying. Being an honest person, you decide to tell the truth and give the man Zed's address. The man thanks you and you both go on your way. An hour later, on your way back from your chores, you pass Zed's residence. The Thessalonian Guard has surrounded the front portcullis; there are civilian onlookers some distance away and you ask one of them what's going on; they say that someone broke into Zed's house, killed Zed and his entire family, and the killer is now holed up in the residence threatening to detonate an explosive if they are not allowed to walk free. It dawns on you that this must have been the man you gave Zed's address to. An innocent gesture of honesty cost the lives of an entire family. Should you have lied? Did telling the truth result in this terrible massacre? You slink away into your residence, curl up on your bed, and cry yourself to sleep—a somewhat dramatic flourish, but the point remains. I hope you're taking notes.”

    Chirping. Rustling. Scribbling.

    “I have just presented two examples of key ethical dilemmas that arise when trying to determine which normative system of ethics one ought to follow; which cuts to the heart of today's lesson. I want to examine the ancient system of ethics so aptly titled utilitarianism; from utility. Utilitarianism is the doctrine that an action is morally righteous only if that action maximizes the overall well-being of the majority. There are many branches of utilitarianism, but the most important branches are 'rule utilitarianism' and 'act utilitarianism.' 'Rule utilitarianism' dictates that firm rules should be followed, and these firm rules should benefit the majority; in the 'save a drowning child' example, a rule utilitarian may say that we should always save a drowning child because it typically results in greater well-being for the majority, because if you were drowning you would want someone to save you in turn and so on; however, it fails to account for the possibility that the child could grow up to be a mass murderer; similarly, a rule utilitarian may say that you should never lie because honesty typically produces good outcomes—and, after all, you would not want to be lied to yourself—but this fails to account for those who would use the truth to do great harm, such as kill Zed and his family. Alternatively, followers of 'act utilitarianism' believe that a person's actions are morally righteous only if those actions produce the best possible results in that specific situation; this allows for a bending of the rules, for example, you could lie to the man who asked for Zed's address if you suspected that the man was a killer, or you could refuse to save the drowning child if you knew they would grow up to be a murderer—but that begs the question, how would you possibly know that at the time? And here lies the crux of the problem with the utilitarian system of ethics: we cannot know the future. Please ponder on these questions for a moment before we move on.”

    There was a pause—twenty seconds at least—before Socrates pointed to a student in the far back of the hall. A gentle spotlight highlighted a young woman with august locks and sleepy eyes. “Ginese, which system do you subscribe to?” Socrates' voice was magnified to the perfect volume for everyone to hear, and this magnification switched between speakers.

    Surprised, Ginese shot up, rubbed her eyes, wiped drool from her mouth, and mumbled, “Wait—what?”

    Socrates shook his head. “Leave my hall. Return once you’ve had some rest.”

    Ginese gathered her things and vanished.

    Socrates then pointed to Arc. “Which system would you pick, young man?”

    Arc was prepared with his wits about him. “Just going by basic math, it seems most logical to support a rule-utilitarian system. This would—theoretically—maximize well-being most efficiently, even if we had to make some sacrifices along the way. I think this is proven out in our current society, as we’ve seen what happens when we integrate Complexers into Star Touched spaces—” Arc stopped for a moment, turning his attention to Ellie, who sat two layers away. Ellie knew where this was headed, and as such, her ire was already aroused and her eyes were already rolling. Arc continued, “Complexers like Ellie are violent and can’t integrate, causing a ripple effect in Star Touched society that cannot be cured without excising the cancer with fire. The utilitarian rule should be obvious: total and complete segregation.”

    Socrates then pointed to Ellie, “your rebuttal?”

    “Everyone saw it. He attacked me first. If he’s trying to say that we shouldn’t abide by violent people, then we shouldn’t abide by Arc.” Faint snickering bubbled up throughout the hall. Then there was a brief pause. Birds danced and sang high above the fog.

    Ellie continued with eyes like daggers pointing at Arc, “Nonsense aside, we have rules for a reason—law and order must be maintained—but sometimes we have to break those rules; otherwise, we’ll let ourselves get trampled by those who will use the rules to their advantage or just break them outright. No rule is a one-size-fits-all solution. We do not have to be constrained by one rigid ethical system; we should be able to adapt as the situation calls for it.” Ellie paused before slipping in a sneaky, “and that’s why my standing should not be impacted; I was only defending myself.”

    There was a brief silence before it was broken by a bluebird landing on the back of Ellie’s seat. Twee, twee. Ellie turned her body to catch a glimpse, but a loud cough from Socrates frightened the bird, which fluttered off and faded away.

    “Excellent discussion.” Socrates stroked his chin. “And you’re right, Ellie. Your standing shouldn’t be impacted.” This prompted a groan from Arc, which could be heard throughout the hall even without magnification.

    Socrates flicked his wrist, and the board was suddenly consumed by black lettering that outlined a lengthy assignment. “This week, I would like you to complete two essays; the first on which utilitarian system of ethics you think leads to the most positive outcomes, and the second being being being being being being being being be be be be be be being being be be be be—”

    Ellie was taking a note on the assignment when the repetition started. She stopped and looked up to process what was happening. Socrates' mouth was moving and his wrist was flicking again and again. She turned to observe the students, who were all in various stages of repeating their own last actions. A nearby bird seemed to be teleporting from one side of the room to the other with a recurring hum. The combination of all the repeated sounds built into a cacophonous hurricane of noise that grew exponentially louder with every passing moment until Ellie couldn’t take it anymore; she could feel a pressure swelling inside her head, vibrating her brainstem as if the cerebrum implant could erupt silicon shards into the gooey gray matter of her brain at any moment. She worried that her head would explode from the inside out.

    “Not again,” Ellie groaned as she flipped her left hand and tapped her palm six times in an odd rhythmic pattern; the final tap brought complete silence and total darkness. It was as if all human senses had been turned off. After a moment of nothing, bright green text faded into view:

    “You can now safely eject.”

    And underneath that, in a slightly smaller font:

    “HypnoSims is dedicated to our customers’ user experience. As such, if this was a wrongful eject or there was a problem with your simulacrum—please think or say ‘bug report’ to bring up the bug report menu. If you would like to speak to an AI representative, please think or say ‘Allison,’ ‘Alex,’ ‘Pluto,’ ‘Garfield,’ or ‘Random’ depending on preference. If you would like to report a crime, please think or say ‘Thessalonian Guard.’”

---

    Ellie raised both hands to either side of her head, gripping the smooth headset that covered her eyes and nose and wrapped around her skull. She used her thumbs to press two buttons on either side of the device, which sent a tingle down her spine as the HypnoConnector disconnected from the port in the back of her neck. The wire, which had sent packets of data directly into her brain via the HypnoSim Implant grafted into her cerebrum at birth, now dangled from the headset.

    As Ellie lifted the headset over her head, the void slid from her vision as if a child were removing a disc from an Old Earth View-Master. She opened her eyes—her biological eyes—and took a good long look at the steel-gray ceiling directly above her. She was lying on her back, on a bed. She let out a deep yawn as she stretched out her lanky appendages.

    Ellie’s room was a small ten by twelve, clean but messy, with one door and no windows, gunmetal walls, creeping rust from the corners where the walls and ceiling converged, a single faux-porcelain sink with a spotted mirror, and the place pulsed soft blue like a deep-sea jellyfish dying; there were band posters taped on each wall with names ranging from The Phantoms to Haruko and the Fools to Rectal Debaser; Old Earth computer monitors waterfalling text lined the walls; keyboards and wires seemed to grow out of the floor; and the only place to sit was on a spring-exposed mattress that rested on synthetic-wood pallets.

    “The HyperNet must be down again,” Ellie thought as she swung up on her bed and turned to the keyboard nearest her. She clicked a few keys which prompted a three-dimensional bump-mapped projection to consume the space between the bed and the farthest wall.

    The projection was a holographic bird's-eye view of a vast desert that could moonlight as a wasteland. The title “Thessaly” marked the top left of the three-dimensional space. The hologram zoomed out to reveal a number of massive black superstructures throughout the desert; megaliths yearning for the stars but never quite reaching them; encircling these megaliths were mechanical gray obelisks like the swords of titans stabbed deep into the earth. The projection drew a blue circle around one of these megaliths, with an arrow extending from the megalith to the words “Complex 42.” Additional information then poured in underneath:

    // Date: Gamelion 8, AH386 // Complex Status Module Version: CreditlessV7.4 // Main Power: Down // Resolution Status: Aides Repair Automatons Dispatched // TatNos Security Sphere The Sphere That Protects-And-Serves You And Only You 2483C // Current Status: Auxiliary Power 98% // HyperNet Status: Down // Probable Cause: Ash Storm W/ High Radiation (Source: Unknown) // Hecatonic Shield Holding At 75% // Neutron Wave Performing New Hit Single “StarLoveNovaKill” Live Gamelion-24 9 PM Floor-46 // Range Of Incident: Entire Northern Hemisphere // Incident Start Time: 8:43 PM // Estimated End Time: 12:35 AM // Show Your Lover You Care With The HS-Affection Add-On Free 30-Day Trial // NOTE: All Air Vents Have Been Locked For Complex Residents’ Safety. Secondary Air Reserves On. Please Do Not Leave The Complex Until The Incident Has Been Marked As Resolved // HS 24/7 Complex Status Monitoring // Have You Heard About The New Aides Auto-Cat? Fully Programmable W/ Free HS Auto-Animal App: Recreating Your Favorite Pets One Earth Animal At A Time Only 1773C Or Three Payments Of 591C //

    Ellie clicked three keys on the keyboard; the hologram vanished. “Maybe an Auto-Cat wouldn’t be so bad,” she thought as she sat up and made her way to the sink. She peered into her own emerald eyes, which were accented with deep bags like those of the Old Earth raccoons that she had only seen in the HyperNet. Her rust-colored hair was frizzy all over, and her freckled skin was ghostly pale. She looked identical to her simulacrum, only more haggard. She twisted the handle of the faucet to splash some water on her face, but the sink only produced a weak stream of light brown liquid, which then turned into a slow drip and eventually nothing at all. “Water’s not working either,” she mumbled as she went to the corner of the room and started digging through a loose bag of metal tools.

    As Ellie was digging and tossing tools to her side, she heard the metal door clang and footsteps behind her. The rasp of an elderly woman rang out, “Elpis? What are you doing? You know the HyperNet is out again? The holos keep playing that warning message. I don’t like it. Scares me. Lenny next door says there’s some sort of freak radiation storm going on out there.” No response, only the clinking of metal mixed with the rustling of cloth. “Elpis, what are you doing? Talk to me.”

    Ellie continued to rummage through the tool bag as she replied in a tone that could only be described as single-minded dismissiveness, “Damn storms kicked me out of Polytechnic again.” After another moment of sifting through the bag, she pulled out a crowbar-sized metal spanner with DIY cranks and levers and switches of all sorts welded upon it. “I’m going to fix the HyperNet, Gigi. All I have to do is route the auxiliary power into the third-floor modem facility. Then I’ll jack back into school and find out what that second essay is about.” Ellie stood confidently, one hand resting upon the curve of her hip, the other waving the oversized spanner.

    Concern was threaded through the ancient tapestry that was Gigi’s face; Ellie sensed this and placed a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Gigi. It’s not a big thing. I did this during the last ash storm—remember?”

    Gigi shook her head. She couldn't remember. She couldn’t remember much at all.

    Ellie flashed a toothy smile meant to inspire confidence and then strutted out of the bedroom carrying her spanner. She walked through the living room—which was also gunmetal-chic and only a few feet wider than her bedroom, yet more claustrophobic due to the bare-necessities kitchen in the far corner—and grabbed a dark messenger bag hanging from a hook by the heavy-metal portcullis that doubled as the front door, slinging the bag around her shoulder; she then grabbed a pair of black-lensed circular glasses from the kitchen counter and hurriedly pushed them over her bent nose using her index finger.

    Before turning the key that would seal the portcullis, Ellie poked her head through the archway, “I’ll be home soon! Don’t wait up for me! I love you!”

    And then she was gone.

---

Chapter 2

Artwork by ComicFarm.

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#TheEgg #Fiction

Five o’clock, morning dew, and the fireball rises like a wizard’s cantrip ricocheting off the wild wind. Fully clothed in rip-worn blues and whites earth-stained from angling adventures of days gone by, I fish my tackle box of seen-better-days from behind the sliding screen that is my makeshift closet. Tiptoeing through the house so as not to wake Big Sis from her sickly sleeps, I head straight to the cupboard to collect my lunchbox generously filled to the brim with Mom’s perfectly wrapped rice balls. I sneak a quick bite off the largest ball; it’s luscious, as usual, and crumbles out of control when placed back into the metal box for future snacking.

I tiptoe silently towards the front door, where my trusty companion awaits: the child-sized fishing rod propped against the thin wooden wall of the flimsy shack we lovingly call home. The tatami mat below creaks loudly, but it wasn’t me this time; it was Mom: “Up early again to catch the Guardian Fish?” I nod vehemently, grab my pole with Sisyphusian determination, bear hug Mom, and close the front door behind me as I exit into God’s great and bountiful gift: nature.

I’m going to catch that Guardian Fish and rip its guts out.

When Mom told me Big Sis was sick and could only be cured by eating the innards of the Guardian Fish, it all clicked for me. This is my calling. I love to fish; to sit on the side of my chosen stream, cast my line, and contemplate the nature all around me as I wait for a bite; crickets chirping, fish splooshing once calm waters, bees bumbling buzzed-up flowers, limbs creak-cracking as squirrels play their tree games – the ecosystem: God’s great and bountiful gift.

And how do I fit into it all? God’s gift cares for me, provides for me, as long as I do my part; I catch the fish, I eat the fish – bones and all. The fish, with their hearty charred flesh and soup-flavoring bonemeal, sustains me and my entire village; no different than how the fish is sustained by smaller fish and the lion is sustained on the elk’s bloody, mangled carcass. I am not above it, merely momentarily on top.

I am the ecosystem.

So when Mom told me that Big Sis was sick and that I needed to catch the Guardian Fish, I took up the challenge with the determination of the dung beetle I observed while waiting for a tug on my fishing line this morning. The dung beetle was rolling its precious dung up an incline, which, from their perspective, must have been a very steep hill but appeared to me as an impressive anthill teeming with fire ants. The little ones were creeping all over the beetle, slowly but surely consuming it as hundreds of little ants injected their acid into its protective shell; yet, the beetle persisted.

*our hero; one with nature

“That is one determined dung beetle,” I thought as my line suddenly became taut and my nose twitched and my ears perked up. A bite!

Instantaneously flipping my baseball cap into serious-mode: backwards, I jolted up like a reverse thunderbolt and took on a sumo stance before clasping both hands on the grip of my fishing pole and pulling back with all my might. The line became tighter and tighter before reaching critical tension – a fierce tug of war then played out between myself and my submerged prey. “This one’s tough – maybe it’s the Guardian Fish!” I thought as I gave some slack on the line in an attempt to tire the great beast; Dad taught me well, and the fish immediately stopped tugging the line. “Now’s my chance!” I reeled in and pulled back as hard as I could, and… snap!

The line broke; my bait lost along with the hook now forever destined to be impaled in the fish’s mouth – a grizzly fate for a fish, trailing blood through water, attracting all manner of deep-water predators more deadly than the predator it was lucky enough to escape from – me.

Searching through my tackle box and suddenly I see: I’m out of bait. I have all manner of hooks but no bait. Then it dawns on me, Dad always said, “The perfect predator must be resourceful.” So, I look to the anthill; the ants had not yet managed to penetrate the dung beetle’s carapace of iron will, but the beetle’s body was obscured now: merely a moving ball of ants, likely in excruciating pain – I know! I’ll put it out of its misery!

I carefully pick up the dung beetle with two fingers, put it up to my lips and blow real hard; most of the ants go wild on the wind and I wipe the stragglers off with a few swipes of my index finger. The beetle’s legs continue to move, like when I used to hold my old dog over the tub before bath time – habitual movement, already paddling and still climbing up that hill.

Quickly, so as not to cause too much Suffering, I take my fishing hook and thrust it into the beetle’s soft white underbelly; it takes some small amount of force before I’m met with a satisfying crunch, what sounds like a sudden release of pressure, and a hydraulic stream of brown goo splashing upon the tips of my fingers.

The brown of the beetle drips down the hook as I sit down on the soft soil of the riverbank; lodging the grip of my pole into the dirt, as to keep it in place for a moment while I opened my metal lunchbox to take another bite – or three – of the crumbled rice ball from hours ago. But before I can take a bite, I hear something from behind me, a short huff of air, a low growl, and the pop of a jaw. My body stiffens and I freeze for a moment, a chill running through the entirety of my nervous system.

More big huffs, this time closer. It felt like another hour had passed in this terror-stricken state but in reality: only seconds. Dad always taught me to swallow my fear and deal with life head-on. So I take a big gulp of false-courage and twist my neck and I see it: fur so-brown-its-black fills my vision as my eyes creep upward, now staring directly into the hungry eyes of a brown bear intent on flesh, fish flesh or otherwise – me.

I must save Big Sis, even if it takes a miracle; and if God were a fish, He’d be the Guardian Fish. I’m fishing for God. This brown bear is not going to stop me.

The bear, with a demonic glint in its eyes, lifts its gigantic paws and quickly lunges at me. I think of my sister, and suddenly great courage is bestowed upon me from on high. I clumsily dash to the right, falling and rolling a few times on the verdant riverbank before catching my balance, one foot on the ground, one knee too. I remember the dung beetle; its determination. I grin to myself as I gather a clump of dirt in my right hand. The bear turns to me with surprising haste for such a big thing and starts at me once again. I throw the dirt into the beast’s face, halting it for a moment as it snarls loudly out of pure annoyance.

I take this opening to rush the bear head-on, ramming into its furry stomach before raising my fist and punching it right between its momentarily dirt-addled eyes. The bear flinches with a quick jerk of its head and then growls differently this time, a roar of pure malice; animal language more transparent than humans’, but I don’t care: I launch another punch into its stomach with my entire being; the bear counters, but I’m lithe, ducking and weaving so well that I catch only the tip of its longest claw on my shoulder, ripping my shirt and drawing a swirl of blood through the air.

I don’t feel a thing.

Determined to finish this, I push the full weight of my small body into the bear, which falls over with me into the grass below. I take my hands and put them around the bear’s neck, squeezing as hard as I can. The bear flails its claws wildly before settling on its signature attack: the bear hug; driving all ten of its claws into my back as if to absorb my very lifeforce. It must have missed my vitals because I was unfazed, and this only served to motivate me further.

I think about all the bears my Dad must have killed in his time as the River King. I must make him proud. I must save Big Sis, so I dig desperately into the bear’s neck, find the hard part – the windpipe, I hope – and squeeze as tightly as I possibly can. The bear intensifies its own squeeze in kind and I feel every inch of my clothes become wet with blood. I start screaming viciously as the fog starts to settle in; my vision blurs, my head fills with clouds.

Is this it?

Just then, God must have intervened: the bear’s grip loosens, and its growl becomes less murderous and more miserable before settling into a light gurgle. My face fills with foam as the bear tries, pathetically and in vain, to snap its great teeth into my face. Filled with a contradictory mixture of indignant courage, fear, and adrenaline, I loosen my grip on the bear’s neck and go all-in on its terrible visage, slamming the beast’s face repeatedly with my clenched fists; blood erupts like a primordial volcano with each blow. After what feels like minutes, I am crimson covered completely in bear blood.

Rolling off the beast onto the vermilion – once green – grass, I stare up at the clouds above, gasping for air.

My vision goes in and out as I lay splayed out on the riverbank. I hear crickets chirping, fish splooshing, bees bumbling, and limbs creak-cracking as squirrels play their tree games. I am reminded that I am still alive, and just as that revelation hits me, I feel a drip of liquid hit my cheek from on high – rain?

I open my eyes and the brown of the bear obscures my view once again. I hear – feel – the vibrations of the bear’s low, guttural growl. The beast is above me, looking down on its prey, a mixture of saliva and blood dripping from its mouth and onto my face.

Suddenly, it dawns on me: I never stood a chance.

---

(Originally published on 11/19/2023)

#Fiction #LegendOfTheRiverKing #ShortStory

(Note, this is a chapter from an Armored Core VI essay, that context is somewhat important but not necessary to understand this piece.)

I: Giant Robots: The Origin

It’s easy to see the giant robot as a metaphor for nuclear bombs; they both leave a big impression and return a lot of people to Nature. The giant robot genre, for the most part, started in Japan and became popular after the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and while some later media will use giant robots in this manner, in reality: the first giant robot in animation was debuted on a Japanese street corner in 1931 in front of pale firelight glowed from a paper lantern. I use the term “animation” here super-loosely because artists on this street corner were simply flipping inked panels back and forth on a canvas and telling stories, which, in my mind, is animation in its purest form. This method of street corner storytelling was called kamishibai, or “paper theater,” and was very popular in Great-Depression-Era-Japan; I know this because I have a device connected to the internet and read Wikipedia (we live in a contradictory time in which access to information is so abundant yet people are still so lost, perhaps endless knowledge is more confusing than clarifying). The particular paper theater referenced here is “Ogon Bat,” or “Golden Bat,” a superhero conceived to be “more science than mythology” yet still ended up a skeletal thing from ancient Atlantis sent from ten-thousand-years in the future to protect the present-day which, depending on your perspective, would be the future Golden Bat came from in Golden Bat’s perspective and September 30, 2023, at 4:40 pm eastern time from my perspective, or something (time travel never actually makes sense in science fiction, you’re supposed to just accept it and move on for the purposes of the plot); the Golden Bat has an exposed golden skull and wears a Nature-themed pirate outfit with a flowing Coral cape; he also lives in a fortress in the Japanese Alps. The Golden Bat is not the giant robot in question here; Golden Bat is the hero; the giant robot was a one-shot villain named Dai Ningen Tanku, the first human-piloted giant robot. The point being, someone somewhere in Japan came up with giant-human-piloted-robots and came up with them before the bombs dropped and if that person had not come up with them I would not be able to tell you the following story.

II: Hobby Lobby and the Mark of the Beast

On September 4th, 2023, I drove my family: wife, daughter, and 4-month-old son to Hobby Lobby to shop for paintings and a wall-mounted-shelf for coffee cups. That was, of course, a pretense; I had been watching Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam for months until this point, so the true reason for this excursion was to purchase Gundam model kits; the most popular being Bandai’s “Gunpla” kits, which come in a number of different “grades,” namely: Entry Grade (for beginner modelers), High Grade (the next step up, with more parts, detail, and poseability), Real Grade (similar to High Grade but includes an internal frame; a skeleton of sorts), Master Grade (even bigger High Grades), and Perfect Grade (“the highest end of Gunpla, this series of ultimate avatars always packs in the latest technology” according to the official Gunpla packaging, “latest technology” roughly translates to “more plastic”; these are also really big) and a few other Offbeat Grades that aren’t worth mentioning in this essay. If you’re confused, I apologize, the term “gundam” and “mobile suit” refer to specific types of giant robot, popularized by the 1979 anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. Hobby Lobby had some of my favorite giant robots, and everything was 40% off: the original RX-78-2 Gundam, Amuro Ray’s mobile suit in the original anime; MS-06S ZAKU II, Char Aznable’s red Zaku (also from the original series); and, finally, the MS-07B-3 Gouf Custom, my childhood-favorite mobile suit, a blue Zaku-like with spiked shoulder pads, a heat saber (a sword that heats up to cut through metal, most importantly: not a beam saber), a gatling gun that doubled as a shield, and an extendable-magnetic-wire-hook-shot-thing for picking up weaponry that may have been dropped in the heat of battle or performing creative acrobatic violence all of which is captured beautifully in the 1996 OVA (Original Video Animation) Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team; arguably, in this writer’s opinion, the greatest Gundam media of all time and, along with the original series, the only series one needs to watch to “get it.” It being a subjective state of understanding, like watching the aforementioned Gundam series on a 14-inch CRT television set in your garage with the volume turned up so loudly as to drown out the sound of mom and dad screaming at each other in the other room or going over to a friend’s house after school to watch Gundam Wing on Toonami together before having to go home because it’s now 6:30 pm and you have a curfew and lots of homework to do.

I’ll do a line break here to allow you to catch your figurative breath before we move on with the story. I’ll also throw in an image for good measure.

*Hobby Lobby, model kit aisle, circa 2023.

Hoarding three Gunpla model kits into the shopping cart like a raccoon obsessed with shiny, alongside three or four paintings and a wall-scroll of an ocean view to hang in the barren-walled corner of the garage where I do all the midlife-crisis-bits (including this essay), I pushed the cart across the cheap linoleum flooring up to the short line at the cash register and waited my turn like a good consumer. Eventually, it got to my turn; I took the items out one by one and put them at the end of the conveyor belt, closest to the cashier, because I am a nice guy (sometimes), and she picked them up one by one, checked a sticker on the back of each item, and then keyed in the eight-digit code on the sticker. Then, I watched as the computer asked her, “What type of item are you ringing up?” and she selected “model kit,” which applied the 40% discount, and then she bagged the item. Confused, I asked her, “Why not just scan the barcode?” to which she responded, “Hobby Lobby doesn’t use barcodes.” She paused, then added, “For religious reasons.” The cashier had a hole where a nose ring should be and the sides above her ears shaved (an undercut?), so I trusted her bitterly-mumbled “for religious reasons” because she obviously had a chip on her shoulder if the Black Sabbath pin on her lanyard strap was any additional indication, and she clearly wanted to talk about it. She went on, “Hobby Lobby thinks barcodes are the Devil’s mark and won’t let us use them, even though they are on all the boxes, the computers won’t accept them.” I smiled wryly but did not laugh, as this wasn’t laughter-funny; it was stupid-funny, like a Year-2023-Conservative preaching for freedom but then saying anyone who burns the American flag should be locked up for life. Hobby Lobby thinks barcodes take them too close to Hell, and they have already decided that “Corporate Hell” is a compromise they’re willing to make for manifest destiny or whatever it is we’re calling “make as much money as possible” these days. I ended up spending $87.58 in total. The 40% discount was store-wide.

III: Plastic Passion

I opened the Entry Grade RX-78-2 Gunpla Kit as soon as I got home, closing out my family when I closed the office door behind me. It took three full listens of The Crib’s “In the Belly of the Brazen Bull,” a 47 minute long album, to finish building the kit. It would have taken longer if I had not had the foresight to purchase a “nipper,” a spring-loaded tool resembling blunt scissor blades attached to two rubber handles, used for cutting the plastic parts from runners; runners being the plastic assembly that all the parts are attached to in the packaging. Using these nippers, I was able to make clean cuts of most pieces, but some plastic excess was left on each piece, which annoyed me to no end. When it was over, I had a fully assembled RX-78-2 Gundam kit sitting on my desk, and I was proud of myself. I made the High Grade Zaku II three weeks later after watching several videos on how to efficiently build Gunpla kits; each video said to “panel line,” the practice of dripping colored (usually black) ink inside the small indentations of each part to give the model more definition. The videos also recommended using an x-acto knife to cut off excess plastic on the pieces left over from the runner, a phenomenon I learned was either called “nubs” or “stress marks” or both; regardless, I purchased all the necessary equipment. I took all the recommended steps, and during the process of building the Zaku II, I accidentally sliced open my fingers multiple times due to slips with the x-acto knife; in my haste to become a master builder, I had soaked the Zaku II in my own blood; serendipitously, the Zaku II matches the color of blood, and now stands posed with its huge bazooka pointed at its forever-rival: the RX-78-2. The final model kit, the MS-07B-3 Gouf Custom, still sits on my desk unopened, taunting me to open it, taunting me to spill blood in the name of giant robots and I think I will do just that before writing another word of this essay.

*Zaku II, Gouf Custom, and RX-78-2 gunpla

The Zaku, the Gouf, and the Gundam; the Holy Hobby Lobby Trinity of No-Barcodes-But-Some-Other-Eight-Digit-Code-That’s-Less-Demonic-Somehow. Balteus is the girdle of a Jewish priest and a papal garment, and the sword belt of a Roman legionary; perhaps the same Marcus Valerius Corvus who used the Raven to overcome incredibly low odds; incredibly low odds like the early-game-boss of Armored Core VI, Balteus. With enough practice, pattern recognition, and perseverance – the three Ps of passing AP literature (which this essay would surely produce a failing grade) – you will overcome. Three parts were broken on the RX-78-2 (requiring super glue); instant death from the initial missile barrage on the first Balteus run; blood was spilled on the Zaku II (staining the already red plastic); Balteus was half-health on the second run, and I learned the key to weakening his shield (energy weapons, of which I only had a weak energy missile equipped); nothing but fun was had building the Gouf Custom on a bright Sabbath morning: I let the panel ink dry before cleaning the excess and I clipped the runners so carefully that no unnecessary stress marks were left on the parts, and so delicate were my hands that no part was cracked in the snapping-of-the-pieces. I switched my AC’s build, equipped an energy weapon in the left hand to quickly deplete Balteus’s shield and a shotgun in my right hand for pure hull domination. Balteus was destroyed easily. I am certainly no modeling master and no master AC pilot, but I am much better than I once was. I am competent and more adaptable, “he roars as he smuggles in a bit about perseverance, poorly.”

(Originally published on 10/7/2023)

#Autobiographical #ShortStory

My wife says I’m an alcoholic; she’s wrong. I think about drinking alcohol constantly, but it’s okay because I’m high-functioning, and it doesn’t impact my work or the way I treat my family; I only drink after the sun goes down, and I try to drink only on the weekends, but also sometimes when I have a stressful day at work or when I’m really happy or when a great thing happens (like a promotion) because I deserve to treat myself to a good time once in a while. I also write better when I’m drunk, and it makes me more sociable; that last part is key because I would be an insufferable loser if I didn’t drink at social outings. It’s sad but true: people only like me when I’m drunk. I’m outgoing, witty, and fun to be around when I drink; more articulate. I don’t hate my friends when I drink, and I don’t get frustrated as much, and other people drink way more than I do. If I was a true alcoholic, I would be like my neighbor, who once tried to choke me for telling a tongue-in-cheek-joke about calling the cops on her (“What did you just say? You’re going to do what? Are you serious? How could you even say that?”) but really it was because she mixed vodka and risperdal which the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) officially advises against: “you should know that alcohol can add to the drowsiness caused by this medication. Do not drink alcohol while taking risperidone.” I think it’s safe to say that I’m not like her; she got so wasted one night that, after a vicious fight with her husband, violently backed the car out of her driveway into a mailbox then proceeded to drive around the neighborhood nearly hitting a child before having the police called; the police got her out of the car after much effort and arrested her after she called them all manner of racial epithets and generally not-nice-stuff. Somehow she got out of jail the same night, and two months later the same thing happened, and then it happened again, and again. During the course of writing this essay, I heard her screaming seven times (so far); our houses are close but not that close. She is loud. I am not like her. She can’t even hold a job. If I stopped drinking, I would likely lose my job because alcohol helps me deal with the crippling reality of nine-to-five-all-the-time; besides, how is drinking any different than needing your spouse to be home at 6 pm eastern so you can watch the next episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit together every Wednesday? How is drinking any different than waking up in the morning and needing that special cup of coffee with two sugars? Is that not an addiction as well? We stare at screens all day: smartphones, televisions. It’s all an addiction and if I’m an addict – you are too, so it’s OK.

(Originally published on 10/7/2023)

#Autobiographical

I could start this piece with a clever joke about how “Armored Core is back,” but it was never really “here” to begin with. Armored Core has always been a niche computer game series with a niche audience of mecha-head nerds who really like big robots, which in America is a surprisingly low number of people when compared to Japan (per capita). While it may surprise you to know that Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is actually the 259th game in the series, it never really caught on until its developer, FromSoft, made a computer game series that IGN decided was a “9/10,” whatever that means: the forever-emulated-once-in-a-lifetime-beautiful-nasty-masterpiece: Dark Souls.

For all intents and purposes, the director of Dark Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki, turned everything around for FromSoft, which was consistently creative but not on the mental radar of the average Cheeto-stainer (that’s what we’re calling “gamers” from now on). FromSoft went on to milk the formula of Dark Souls (as is their right), including Dark Souls 1 through 4 (4 being Open World Dark Souls: Elden Ring). One got the impression FromSoft was trepidatious in their willingness to revisit any of their older series until the overwhelming success of Elden Ring pretty much allowed them to do whatever they wanted. And do whatever they wanted they did, hence: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon.

Armored Core VI is the type of game that forum elitists will tell you is “much worse than Armored Core 4” but also “much better than Armored Core: Verdict Day” but also “a perversion of the series that you shouldn’t play” yet these same elitists are playing it non-stop on Steam in “invisible” status with “game history” turned off so you won’t know they are actually playing it non-stop in “invisible” status with “game history” turned off, a fact that they would absolutely never admit even if clear evidence was brought forward to prove it; a window into the soul of the 21st-century-gamer who bases their entire identity on their “Top 10 Best Games of All Time” list.

*Raven, piloting EDWARD-4, firing two gatling guns at an enemy outside of the frame

Armored Core VI is the type of game you can play while listening to heavy guitar music. No need to worry about The Cribs ruining the mood because they are the mood. This is an action game with serious moonlight action; combat in Armored Core VI Glitters Like Gold as gravity dances around me and I am rhythmically flowing to the violence beat. Combat is the Raven: fly away, approach from behind, leave and come back, or simply ignore; it’s your choice; gather those wings and fly. Picture being the most athletically fit human being in existence who is actually a robot that can also fly and is a master of all-weapons-ever; on the ground, you are a figure-skater with strawberry-switchblades and military-grade artillery, and in the air, you are dash-blasting at supersonic-speeds while simultaneously launching rocket salvos and sharpshooting enemies below with pinpoint accuracy (thanks to the game’s generous but only-sometimes-slightly-annoying lock-on system), and if that doesn’t sound appealing, simply change your robot’s build and do something else. You are Raven; as slow or as fast as you want, as bulky or as fragile as you want, as strong or as weak as you want, as stupid or as smart as you want; change the mechanical parameters of the computer game simply by changing your robot’s build, and while the variety is excellent and presented in the most stupid-cool way possible, there are drawbacks.

For how “fun” Armored Core VI plays (and it is incredibly “fun”; one of the most fun games I have ever played mechanically in terms of exhilaration, sitting on the edge of your seat, jumping a bit when you fire a high-impact weapon because it’s just “that cool” and heavy), it’s easy to say there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to play if the goal is efficiency. The mainstream gaming press pressured FromSoft to add a difficulty slider to their earlier games, an “easy mode,” and FromSoft caved and actually did it with Armored Core VI; except, the difficulty slider isn’t a slider: it’s baked into the weapons and the builds, and it’s not esoteric, it’s not something you have to look up online. Do you like shotguns, immediately equipping them on your robot the moment they become available? Congratulations, you have discovered the most powerful build in the game: two SG-027 ZIMMERMAN shotguns. Do you like Gundam Wing and want to make a Heavyarms Custom build with two gatling guns? Congratulations, you have just discovered the second-best build in the game. Defenders of this easy-to-break-ness will tell you that “you have to look up the best builds” or “why did you look up how to break the game,” and this is simply not the case if you have good taste (which I do and my horn is loud). I’m sure, as this essay ages, these specific examples will become outdated and wrong as FromSoft is continuously patching the game for that ever-elusive-dream called “balance,” but some variation of this will remain true, and to be clear: all computer games have some version of this problem, just not as many computer games have this problem so clearly pronounced and easy to find.

Even with this incredibly easy-to-break gameplay, the game manages to be difficult when it wants to be; certain bosses are especially brutal. The first boss, a big helicopter, is such an immediate jump in difficulty that you can find over 800 articles and fan reviews complaining about it, but this boss’s purpose is to teach the player how to pilot their robot and other key techniques, including boosting and dodging enemy attacks; which is, apparently, lost on the writers of said articles and fan reviews. Boss difficulty is partially due to the stagger bar, a feature taken from FromSoft’s earlier game Sekiro, the stagger bar is a gauge that builds up as an enemy takes damage and once topped-off staggers the enemy, stunning them for a moment and allowing for massive burst damage. For random-mook-enemies, this stagger meter is inconsequential, two shotgun blasts kill everything, trivializing almost every non-boss fight, but bosses take considerably longer to stagger and take very little damage until they are staggered. On the one hand, this prevents powering through bosses and facilitates learning boss attack patterns and adapting, but that requires actual effort, and actual effort is hard. Thankfully, Armored Core VI is never too hard, unless you’re using energy weapons and the stun baton, but even with the worst build possible: you can beat anything the game throws at you with enough effort, and that’s part of what makes Big Robot Game 6 so engaging; if you don’t want to be optimal, you don’t have to be. It took this writer 12 tries before beating the final-final-final boss, and yes, there are three final bosses, and I had fun every second of the journey.

*Raven, piloting the BURU–SHIKI V.1, boosts toward a PCA battleship at supersonic speeds; two shotguns at the ready

This is the crux of the matter: the gameplay. I could write about the setting, the plot, and the themes, but I’ve already written over ten thousand words inspired by those three topics in the other chapters of 621: Quoth the Raven.

In conclusion, I give Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon a solid [redacted].

---

(Originally published on 10/7/2023)

#ArmoredCoreVI #ComputerGames #Review

I: Raven

There was once a Raven so brave that they challenged themselves to fly as high as their wings would take them; they flew so high that they saw the dark and the endless before becoming bored and hungry and then nose-diving back through the thin atmosphere, like the spacecraft Columbia upon reentry, just without the fire and parachutes, returning to the world they knew so well. Now back in their world of comfort, the Raven promptly took a shit on a passing car driving northbound on Interstate 95 at the Pennsylvania Turnpike connector near Bristol Township.

The Raven is a bird of mysterious origin; as if anything has an origin that is not mysterious. Followers of Science believe that the Raven hailed from the Old World; this being an esoteric term for Africa, Europe, and Asia; continents at one time thought to be the entire world until the Americas were discovered; the “New World”; full of riches and opportunity. The Rubicon of which, according to Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, a Roman historian now converged with Nature, Julius Caesar spoke the words “alea iacta est” before crossing; roughly translating to “the die is cast.” The die being a cube with numbers on each side, something that fans of role-playing games are all-too-familiar with, but also summarizing the Rubicon; a game of dying; a game of kill or be killed; a game that leaves dead mothers and crying babies in the aftermath; the point of no return; in short, a massacre.

Ravens are endlessly fascinating according to the written word of ancient people who refused to stop writing about them. To the ancient Christians, the Raven was a dirty, nasty thing representing deceit, desolation, and death; three d’s only superseded by the Devil. Yet many cultures see the Raven as a symbol of strength, resolve, and freewill. Like the varied opinions on them, Ravens are contrarians at their core with a jovial, talkative Nature underlying their egocentric charm so easily perceived by their haughty strut when they happen to grace the land they could so easily be ignoring. The Raven is so talkative that many cultures, particularly Western European, viewed them as prophets and speakers-of-the-dead, able to bridge the gap between the mortal and spiritual realms; so intelligent is the Raven that they are able to smooth-talk the ferryman into forgoing the toll, and when that doesn’t work: simply soar over them; this is good news for the grieving mother who lost her husband in the most recent massacre thinly veiled as a Holy War against the Barbarians-Who-Don’t-Look-Like-Us from across the river.

Massacres were commonplace in 349 BC when Rome was the United States of America without nuclear weapons, electricity, climate deniers, and smallpox vaccines; meaning a pantheon of pock-mock-people roamed the streets of ancient Rome and one such person was the military commander Marcus Valerius who, prior to crossing the Rubicon, was challenged by a behemoth of a Gallic man who knew zero losses. Marcus Valerius, a man that could be divided into a Gallic warrior four times, neck-deep in stupidity, approached the warrior with misplaced Davidian confidence; yet moments before the reckoning, a Raven landed on the bill of Marcus’s helmet. Marcus, astounded, commanded the Raven to fly into the face of the behemoth, distracting the beastly Gallic warrior just enough to land a killing blow with his iron-tipped spear. For a brief moment, Marcus was the handler and the Raven was his mercenary. Marcus Valerius became Marcus Valerius Corvus on that day and was awarded a golden crown and twelve oxen. This was Marcus Valerius Corvus’s Rubicon.

*Raven, perched upon man-made excess (photo courtesy of @handmade_ghost)

Ravens don’t care about the Rubicon, and they don’t stick around for long. Ravens gather their wings and fly. Ravens are intimidating by virtue of being the largest passerine bird, or perching bird, and are also highly intelligent, matrimonious, and social. If something is blocking a path to the Raven’s food, they use sticks and stones to solve complex physics puzzles, as one does in the Half-Life series; the weight of the stone pushes the water level higher, thereby allowing the Raven to reach the insect in a tall cup of shallow rainwater left outside by a thoughtless human; this insect, apart from being doomed, is also subject to taste tests where it may be crushed or palpated in the Raven’s bill for several minutes before being gulped down or rejected outright as a mangled eldritch horror. This forever life-altering chaos for the insect is contrasted by the order of the Raven who chooses a mate for life. The Raven will often travel, set up home, and defend that home with their mate forevermore; something akin to the concept of human love, and to an outside observer: identical. This love is balanced by the Raven’s ability to hold grudges against those who treat them poorly, indicating a keen sense of awareness around transgressions which comes with the wholly insufficient concepts of “good” and “bad” baked-in; something akin to the concept of human morality, and to an outside observer: identical. These Ravens cool themselves through the practice of gular fluttering, which manifests itself as Bigmouth Strikes Again and again. Their blue-black wings catch sunlight and glint majestic as they wheel and deal through the skies we share but can only dream of soaring without mechanical assistance; the Raven mocking that dream, mimicking the sounds of human speech and the machines so easily defecated upon: cars starting, planes taking off, toilets flushing, people screaming; all part of their spirituals: their Freedom songs. The Raven soars overhead in flocks humans can only think – out of envy – to call treacherous conspiracy and unkindness; both actual terms for “A Flock of Ravens,” and a far better band name than “A Flock of Seagulls,” a band known for playing raves in the 1980s; a “rave” being yet another name for “A Flock of Ravens” but also contradictorily used as both a term of insanity and extreme enthusiasm, which upon reflection are more similar than not; but more important than any of this, the Raven is free to fly away from the Rubicon if they choose. The Raven can perch every land and soar every cloud. The Raven is above us, both figuratively and literally.

II: Sojourn on the Nature of Nature

Having chosen “Nature” as one of many central themes of this essay, it is important to establish the definitions we will be working with: the Nature of Nature. What is Nature? Is Nature a concept, a force, a person, a place, or a thing? Merriam-Webster defines Nature as “the external world in its entirety,” while also as “natural scenery,” and also as “the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing,” and also “humankind’s original or natural condition” (this one using a derivative of the word in the definition of the word), and also “a creative and controlling force in the universe” (the ‘creative’ and ‘controlling’ bits too loaded for my tastes as they imply intent), and also “the genetically controlled qualities of an organism” (does not outside influences alter the behavior of an organism? And are not these same outside influences part of Nature?), and also “a spontaneous attitude (as of generosity)”; and the definitions become more convoluted, varied, and absurd as the list goes on, and we are no closer to determining the Nature of Nature. The phrase “Nature of Nature,” itself is absurd as we have failed to define what “Nature” actually is to begin with. This is because Nature, like many things, cannot truly be defined by words; all we can do is hope to grasp a semblance of its essence. Nature is all around us, all-consuming, and all-powerful in a slow, methodical way. Time itself, as we perceive it, is part of the Nature of things, the Nature of the universe. With time, Nature creates a star. With time, Nature collapses that star, and a black hole is formed, and in some new-age druidic teachings the Raven symbolizes the black hole and the black hole symbolizes new beginnings as it consumes all nearby matter and releases something new. And yet, we are no closer to determining the Nature of Nature.

For the purposes of this writing, we will be using the following definition of the word Nature: Nature is the state of things before human interference.

Yes, we are hardcoding anti-human sentiment into the definition of Nature. This is because things quickly become circular if we don’t; for example, aren’t humans part of Nature as we arose from the same forces in the universe that created the grass, the trees, and the Raven? If so, doesn’t that mean everything is actually part of Nature, and therefore is a meaningless distinction that amounts to “it is” being the end-all-be-all-de-facto definition of Nature? And yes, that would be true by that definition; however, it does not suit the purposes of this essay.

Nature is the sugar maple tree in your backyard and the Raven perching on the topmost branch of that tree. Nature is the grass McDonald’s paves over when they stand up a new burger joint. Nature includes any non-human animal, as we are the only self-hating-species with the ability to think ourselves out of existence (and likely should, as this essay will attempt to argue from time to time). Nature is the state of things without you and I. Nature is the moss, vines, and grass overtaking the abandoned trailer deep within the forgotten turn of a rural neighborhood that the kids sometimes sneak off to to smoke some Nature, or what the kids call: “some of that really dank gas.” Nature is the resplendent sight of the sun slowly scrolling out of view behind the endless blue; something us humans like to think only we can appreciate right before we get in our metal box and drive to another metal box to think real hard about how to make better metal boxes; an existential nightmare that this essay’s definition of Nature allows me to call: Unnatural.

(The author of this essay reserves the right to alter the definition of “Nature” at any time without warning.)

III: Another Raven

621: Three numbers combine to make one number; designation of the lone mercenary sent to the third planet in the star system Rubicon. The third planet is Rubicon 3, a functional yet creatively-bankrupt name for a planet. 621 is just another number on another row; a mercenary working for a handler who has the privilege of having a real name: (Handler) Walter. 621 has no gender, no voice, no identity, and no freewill. 621 is a blank slate. 621 doesn’t know why they’re on Rubicon 3; Walter says it’s to “find the Coral” and “get rich to buy your body back,” and there’s no reason to question any of it because 621 pilots cool giant robots called “Armored Cores,” monstrosities against Nature and “AC” for short. 621 might as well be the AC itself, as their body – if they even have a physical body (we never ever see a human body on Rubicon 3) – is completely obscured, alone in a cold metal cockpit; 621 is a “fourth generation augmented human,” empathy and kindness have been dulled, reasoning faculties focused only on perfected violence, and instincts honed like the brilliant glint of the Moonlight Greatsword. They are: Unnatural. The perfect killing machine.

*621’s first docking at Rubicon 3

Upon landing on Rubicon 3, 621 is tasked with finding a callsign, an identity; a figurative horror we all wrestle with in our formative years and pretend to have figured out in adulthood; yet 621’s identity crisis is not as dire, because the ego is suppressed and it doesn’t matter to 621; they need an identity to blend in on Rubicon, a callsign to hide behind when working for the resource-hungry corporations that vie for control over Rubicon and to assimilate into the mercenary network run by an innocuous artificial intelligence named ALLMIND; both sects religious in their manufacturing of weapons and AC parts sold freely between all parties for the express purpose of making better weapons, which is a proxy for pure and simple: power. Pepsi, Coke, and RC Cola but instead of drying the wells of indigenous Mexican towns to make delicious soda pop that gives grandpa tumors, they are sucking the entire planet dry to produce the perfect generator to power robots that fire mini-nukes at each other and step on people as if they’re walking through a City of Bugs.

621 scavenges the aftermath of a corporate warzone like a vulture; remnants of ACs litter the smoky hellmouth, each linked with their own callsign. Many of these callsigns are expired and unusable. After five or six, 621 comes across the wreckage of callsign Raven; this one is still active. “We can use that one,” Handle Walter says. In this way, the Raven is passed down from pilot to pilot; not a name, but a title, something to aspire to before returning to Nature.

621 returns to the AC hangar on borrowed wings and logs into the mercenary network.

“Registration number Rb23. Callsign: Raven. Authentication complete. Removing MIA status. Restoring access privileges. This is ALLMIND, the mercenary support system. Welcome back, Raven.”

IV: Stories About Building Giant Robots

V: The Chapter in Which the Planet Rubicon 3 is Described in Serious Detail

The fields of Rubicon 3 are covered in the fallout of a nuclear holocaust. The Fires of Ibis. The souls of the dead, caught in the blast radius, forever one with Nature, reabsorbed; instantly converged before they could take the freshly picked flowers home to Maggie, the one that got away: forevermore. You can’t find flowers anymore. It was decades ago, yet the climate remains changed; snow mixed with ash, gray like our morality, blankets the entire world, and the rubicon-red of Coral accents the sky; beautiful like the setting sun or hideous like a pool of blood, depending on perspective; that perspective being those of industrial-revolutionists run through a computer simulation on six-million-times-speed; the type of perspective that doesn’t understand this essay’s definition of Nature; the type of perspective that enables a human to pump another human with hydrogen fluoride to test if it would create viable human-skin-balloons for commercial flying. Metal lines the skies, metal to the east and metal to the west, the north and the south. The men and women, devoid of humanity, spend all their time in metal boxes called Muscle Tracers, or MTs, and if they’re rich enough to build their own: Armored Cores. So of course it was a holocaust of their own making. The Coral streaking the once blue skies, a force of incredible power, an infinitely reproducing power-source. Whoever controls the Coral controls the Rubicon, and where there’s coral: there’s blood, The Rubiconians got greedy before The Fall (as humans do, as is our Nature). The Rubiconians built a research facility: the Vascular Plant, to pump the Coral blood out of the heart of the Rubicon. They used the coral for everything from fueling their metal boxes to human experimentation; the Raven, the “fourth generation augmented human.” When the carnival of horrors outweighed the benefits, a rogue Rubiconian scientist burned it all down; turns out igniting large concentrations of Coral isn’t the smartest idea, as it caused a devastating shockwave of Ruby Red Ruin; The Fires of Ibis. Billions died. Survivors of the fire are called “Cinders.”

*snow, metal, red

They say some can see the Coral. Some can even hear it; the Coral speaks to them; is the Coral alive or are those people just Coral Tripping at the Gates of Now?

VI: Coral Tripping at the Gates of Now

“Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.” — Pink Floyd, “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”

VI. I: Junk Wizards and Hackers

Decades after the calamity, junk wizards and hackers freebase the Coral; they inject it too; they sniff it through their nose; they smoke it through bubbly bong water. Coral can be refined into all forms for the purposes of tripping the light fantastic. Drugging it to Coral is extremely addicting, as it produces an immediate psychic euphoria and physical sensation equivalent to ten thousand orgasms while soaking in a warm bath.

“Cinder Carla,” a survivor of the Fire of Ibis, pilots an AC named “FULL COURSE,” which, upon checking the schematics in the ALLMIND database, is assembled with a number of food-related parts: “WS-5000 APPETIZER” is the name of the head unit; “MAIN DISH” is the core; “SALAD” is the arms, and “DESSERT” is the legs. One can’t help but assume this is somehow intercourse-related (FULL INTERCOURSE), but that would be an “outsider looking in” perspective, as sexuality doesn’t exist in the Rubicon, replaced with drugs and violence; kissing a woman is an aspect of life completely missing from the Rubiconian; their faculties for romance are as barren as the ashy snow their giant robots trample upon, this aspect of their humanity lost.

And during Carla’s time as the leader of the RAD corporation, where she put her knack for tinkering with machines to good use by imagineering countless creative killing machines, she became all too familiar with the perils of Coral addiction after her close friend, Johnny, started using; he got so out-of-his-mind that he ended up stealing one of her top-secret weapons and glued his pubic hair to the bald spot on his head and now goes by the name “HONEST BRUTE” and lives in a junkyard of scrap robots and traps that would put my Extremely-Southern-Pro-Confederate-Neighbor-With-Fifty-Cameras-On-His-Property to shame.

Long story short: it’s the good stuff, smoking Coral. It’s real good. Imagine the ego, then imagine it dead.

*it’s the title of the chapter, clever – right? (please tell me I’m clever)

Rubicon 3 is a world post-apocalyptic; a world in which mega-corporations vie for control over the sole resource the planet is famous for: Coral. It’s a prison planet of their own making. The greed, the lust, the power, the Heart’s Desire for all these things, the High – it forbids you from leaving. The Raven laughs and mimics Matt Johnson’s tongue, but these thoughts would never cross the mind of a corporate vesper or a Rubiconian already in the midst of snorting Coral powder through a straw several times over. This Coral high is necessary; it’s an escape from the violence. The Junk Wizards and Hackers, they hide out in the junkyards, in the RAD warehouses. They smoke the good stuff; they get high. They try to escape in their own way – what else can they do? The world is a mess, and – let’s face it – we’re not that smart; we’re not doing anything with ourselves, or maybe we tell ourselves we’re above it all, so above it all that we don’t need to do anything with ourselves. Corporate Steve with a million bucks is just a guy who was in the right place at the right time; I’m better than him. I scream in the fetal position as the clockwork elves whisper to me about the magic door that leads to Rainbow Ridge with the voluptuous women with three breasts and the Pokémon cards. The Raven laughs.

VI. II: 253 West 27th Street

VI. III: Wine, Weapons, and Women

Cabernet Sauvignon is a sharp wine, bold and powerful with kickback like the 44-141 JVLN ALPHA; carrying a handheld bazooka around is a big commitment, even for giant robots; it takes excellent precision and timing to land a shot on any opponent who knows the first thing about how to pilot their machine, a simple boost to the left or right and the explosive misses. On the other hand, the foppish taste of a Pinot Noir is said to require a “delicate palette” to appreciate; it’s thin and subtle but still strong enough to – after a full glass – tell mom about the girl you might have gotten pregnant when you were in middle-school, or maybe the girl was lying to “get back at you” for breaking up with her, or maybe not; maybe you’ll never know. A glass of Pinot Noir is like “I need another one of these” which means it’s also a DF-MG-02 CHANG-CHEN, the machine gun that’s a little-bit-too-overtuned with its sustained firepower thanks to an oversized magazine and cool name, and the cigarette in your other hand is the IA-C01W2: MOONLIGHT, a laser sword that doubles as a projectile like the cigarette-butt flicked at Gary when he gets physical again at the party and you need a distraction to just-get-out-of-there, turns out the extremely interesting blonde by the bar was actually Gary’s wife. Merlot is the most bitter of the three, like your half-aunt with the Chinese-character-tattoo on the back of her neck that no longer visits because grandma died and didn’t leave her anything in the will and your dad tripped her one time “as a joke” at Thanksgiving ‘04; it’s also fruity and wild and totally worth it, in a “she’s cute but we’re related” type of way, in short: don’t drink merlot, but if you did you would be using an energy-based weapon; you’ve got a lot of heart, a lot of emotion swelling up for your step-aunt, you’re using the IA-C01W1: NEBULA: a plasma rifle that can charge its purple-stuff to make big booms that are instantly regrettable; the experience is passable but now your entire family shuns you and she “doesn’t know if this will work out” after your AC is smoking, missing an arm, and spewing fuel from the primary core unit.

*Raven, piloting the BURU-SHIKI V.2, carrying a shot of White Label and a cigarette (wine and regrets not pictured)

If you just want to get it over with, bust out the Evan Williams, White Label. Pour a shot and inhale; now you’re playing with the SG-027 ZIMMERMAN, a shotgun with such concentrated firepower that you can snipe an AC from a mile away, and up close: it’s already over; take two shots of White Label and you’re playing with two SG-027 ZIMMERMAN in both hands, which shouldn’t be allowed in the code, it trivializes the experience; it’s too easy. Yes, we could down two shots of White Label and get-with-it-immediately, or we could coast the cool with a few glasses of step-aunt and talk the night away while we slowly fade into the forevermore.

VI. IV: I’m Not an Addict

VI. V: Addiction and the Nature of Freedom

Addiction is currently defined as a neurophysiological disorder typified by an intense urge to engage in behavior that produces positive feedback in the brain despite the potential negative consequences that could arise from such behavior; addiction is an intense desire that overrides common sense (a term I don’t like, but it works here). In extreme cases, it’s sneaking out of the house at midnight while your wife and child are asleep to score a hit; in less extreme cases, it’s the impossible-to-overcome-urge to have a few glasses of wine before bedtime or, in Fox Mulder’s case, the overwhelming desire to sleep with everyone in the room.

Addiction, as a neurophysiological disorder, comes with its own existential baggage; the most obvious implication being that we have very little control over our own actions. The official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (their official website is called Nature dot com slash npp) recognizes that the deterministic argument against categorizing addiction as a neurophysiological disorder “… has merit but asserts that the foundational premise that addiction has a neurobiological basis is fundamentally sound.”*^#1 They later strongly support their claim, going as far as to say that “We also emphasize that denying that addiction is a brain disease is a harmful standpoint since it contributes to reducing access to healthcare and treatment, the consequences of which are catastrophic.”^#2 To which this writer agrees but acknowledges that it is a roundabout way of saying, “free will does not exist,” and if it does exist, it’s a word-game that humanity has constructed to describe the illusion made manifest by chemicals and electrical synapses going off at the right place and time in the brain, at best. If we accept this, we must also accept that other animals function similarly. After all, the Raven has a brain, albeit smaller than our own, but it still dictates their actions – to fly, mate, eat bugs, and shit on your car.

Many of us, myself included, like to imagine our consciousness as a floating force outside of the body, a spiritual psyche disconnected from the blood and bone that we recoil from in horror after a bad injury; the mere sight of blood makes many of us gag; repulsed by the idea that we are biological flesh balloons walking around with desires controlled by a shriveled jelly-like mass with approximately 86 billion neurons, intricately interconnected by trillions of synapses to form something not dissimilar from the inside of my laptop’s Ryzen 5 CPU. This rejection of the brain must be the case, as we base our entire society on this rejection of biological determinism; otherwise, the legal system would be an unjust and evil institution punishing people for simply doing what their bodies told them to do; the drug addict who accidentally propositioned an undercover cop to score some heroin, thrown in jail because of the neurophysiological disorder that they will have to wrestle with their entire life; people like Jeffrey Dahmer, who, due to poor dice rolls during character creation, have the irresistible urge to rape and murder their neighbors, then store their carcasses in a freezer to cook months later. “Alea iacta est,” said Julius Caesar, crossing the Rubicon. We lock-up these “degenerates” and hope that treatment helps them, but can they ever truly change, or does the medication simply mask the biological aberrations that we, as a society, do not accept? Sometimes we forgo the entire treatment process by outright killing the offender (this is treatment for society, not the person). It starts to make sense why people would upload their consciousness into a computer or fuse their body into an Armored Core, the ultimate escape from biology. Techo-transcendentalism and jacked-in-forever. The pontification is palpable, but the fact remains: society would collapse if we made excuses for these aberrations, “oh, that’s just Lance, he’s a sex pest, he can’t help it.” The heart’s desire, a complicated series of biological urges – how do we gather our wings and fly away from it all?

“The only true freedom is freedom from the heart’s desire.” — The The, “True Happiness This Way Lies”

VII: Anarchy in the Rubicon

VII. I: Operation Iraqi Freedom

The Rubicon is beset from all sides. In 2003, the United States of America led a coalition of thirty-six countries in an invasion of the Republic of Iraq; the standing president of the United States, George W. Bush, said at the time, “Our cause is just, the security of the nations we serve and the peace of the world; and our mission is clear: to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”^#3 Die-hard Bush-bros, including my own father, defended the president, claiming that the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were enough justification to launch an invasion of any sandy place to the east of the United States; in fact, 69% of Americans at the time believed Saddam Hussein was at-least-kinda responsible for the 9/11 attacks^#4, and even more believed he possessed weapons of mass destruction despite the fact that there was zero evidence for this claim^#5 other than the President strongly implying as much^#6, only for the President to make the following statement three years after the invasion: “I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat; my administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat – and after 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take; the world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”^#7 George W. Bush’s statement is a masterclass in gaslighting the American people; for years he all but outright said that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks, but here he is casually dismissing it as if that was never the implication; clearly, the US had other motives for invading Iraq, and the Iraqis knew it, that’s why the Iraqis started igniting their own oil fields the moment they got wind of the invasion; flame geysers erupted from the ground like Armageddon Days (Are Here Again), leaving smoke trails against the blood red skies. The United States had God on their side, but if the Iraqis thought Jesus Christ’s mercy was coming: “honey, you’ve got another thing coming,” this was old Elohim.

*Raven watches the world burn

“According to intelligence reports prior to the invasion, Iraqi forces had placed explosives on hundreds of oil wells located around Al Basrah and on the Al Faw peninsula. CENTCOM wanted the oil fields seized as rapidly as possible and any planned demolition prevented. Thus, at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. marines, joined by British and Polish forces, and supported by Royal Navy, Polish Navy, and Royal Australian Navy warships, made an amphibious assault on the Al Faw peninsula. Another British force, the 16th Air Assault Brigade, secured the oil fields in southern Iraq around Rumaylah, while Polish commandos captured offshore oil platforms near Umm Qasr. These forces completed all tasks successfully.”^#8

The first thing the US-led coalition did upon entering Iraq was seize the oil fields; they called this “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” and it was an overwhelming success.

VII. II: Coral and Corporations

Coral to Rubicon 3 is what petroleum is to Earth: a precious resource used as a power source, highly coveted, unlike anything that came before; the energy output is incredible and it replicates like gray goo. These properties are what make it so dangerous; moments after being released from the ground, it started to self-replicate and, left unchecked, could quickly spread beyond the atmosphere of Rubicon 3, leaking into space, contaminating all it touches; but, who cares about that – it can power our super-cool-giant-robots, so let’s mosey into the money and kill each other for profit; those doing the moseying are the corporations and their subsidiaries; years after the Fires of Ibis, word got out about the coral, which piqued the interest of corporations across the galaxy, and “where there’s coral, there’s blood,” so sayeth the Raven’s handler, Walter.

Arquebus Corporation: Weapons manufacturer (they’re all weapons manufacturers, go figure). They employ an elite mercenary squad called the “Vespers,” which has its own rank and file, including ace pilots such as V.IV Rusty (the V stands for “Vesper,” go figure), who battles with Raven a number of times during these Armageddon days. Arquebus Corporation is the largest corporate force on Rubicon 3, with a subsidiary company, Schneider Corp, which manufactures heavy-duty Armored Core parts. Arquebus manufacturing deals primarily in energy-based laser weaponry; their parts are high-end, expensive, and still very bad; like Dyson, but instead of vacuums: photothermal optical lasers. Arquebus still makes a fortune, apparently, and wants to make more, hence their presence on Rubicon 3: secure the coral, make the money, control the galaxy.

Balam Corporation believes in domination through material superiority, and their subsidiary Dafeng Core Industries is the “stout tree with slender branches,” which translates to “fat mechs with lots of firepower” or something. Balam, like Arquebus, has their own elite mercenary force, the Redguns, which use the prefix “G” for “gun,” like G5 Iguazu: a nobody who is easily defeated by Raven early on, ranked 19/D in the ALLMIND virtual arena, which is another way of saying “trash.” Balam weaponry deals in the reals and the tangible, handguns that shoot real bullets (not weird plasma) and rocket launchers that launch real rockets, and of course: they want the coral to make better weapons to make more money, just like Arquebus.

Like all forms of capitalism, the major players eventually boil down to two; in this case, Balam and Arquebus, a duopoly akin to Comcast and AT&T (Arquebus would be Comcast in this example) or Coca-Cola and Pepsi (Balam would be Pepsi); also like all forms of capitalism, there are minor players with grand ambitions but no hope of ever competing with the major duopoly: the Cricket Mobile and RC Colas of Rubicon 3, these being RaD, “Repurposed civie equipment,” junk wizards and hackers who refurbish garbage into creative killing devices; Takigawa Harmonics, a corporation specializing in Pulse technology; Elcano Corporation for craftsman-like flair and lightweight, high-agility parts; and last but not least: the Planetary Closure Administration (or PCA). It would be unfair to compare PCA to Cricket Mobile, as their goal isn’t to make money; in fact, the PCA is the most interesting faction on Rubicon 3, as their origin and true organizational structure are obscured, shrouded in shadow; any information about them is gleaned from the wreckage of their Super-Cool-Robots-That-You-Can’t-Pilot and the passing remarks of the pilots of these Super-Cool-Robots-That-You-Can’t-Pilot during the midst of battle. The PCA’s goals are obvious by their actions, however, in that they want to close down the planet because “this Coral stuff is getting weird” and, after the Fires of Ibis, “why are we tempting fate – again?” The PCA appears to be the only sensible faction during this World-Wide-Corporate-Sengoku-Era of Rubicon 3.

*where there’s coral, there’s blood

Regardless of Cricket, Comcast, Pepsi, Apple, or Samsung; each corporation hires freelancing mercenaries to do their dirty work; either to avoid getting their own hands dirty or because it’s easier to throw money at a problem to make it go away. Mercenaries, like Raven, are bought and sold to the highest bidder; one day Raven will be working for Balam, stealing a shipment of weapons from Arquebus; the next day, Arquebus pays Raven triple to steal the weapons back from Balam, and then Arquebus will turn around and hire Raven’s best friend, Rusty, to kill them because Raven is “too dangerous to be left alive,” only for their true intentions to be the killing of two Ravens with one stone because Rusty is also “too dangerous to be left alive,” and it’s all a corporate anarcho-capitalist nightmare with no rules and the money itself grows robotic arms and legs and stabs you in the back with a pulse sword.

VII. III: Bag Boy Bolero or: A Measured Critique of Anarcho-Capitalism

VII. IV: Ronald Reagan’s ICE WORM

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?”

— Ronald Reagan, “Address to the 42d Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York”^#9

Late into the Coral War, the Planetary Closure Administrator (PCA) decided enough was enough and positioned their entire galactic fleet of battleships and highly-advanced-and-cool-looking-super-robots called Human Mechs (HC) to end the war over Coral. The PCA was the most advanced organization in the galaxy with the most firepower at their disposal; they were organized, sleek, and didn’t take no for an answer; their goal was singular: shut down Rubicon 3, and they would achieve this by quarantining the planet and destroying all those who opposed. The Fires of Ibis were reason enough to close Rubicon 3; they knew the dangers Coral posed to the universe. To the PCA, it was simple. To the Rubiconian Liberation Front (RLF) and the corporations, not so simple. The Rubiconian Liberation Front viewed Coral as a religious deity worthy of worship (“the blood of the planet!”); their opposition to the PCA and the encroaching corporations was one of religious ferocity and nationalism, unwilling to share their splendor and unwilling to contain it. The corporations’ opposition to the PCA was more straightforward: Coral was an incredible power source, and whoever controlled the Coral might as well control the universe.

So, when the Planetary Closure Administration flew its entire battleship armada into Rubicon 3’s atmosphere and touched down on the planet, you better believe the corporations and the Rubiconian Liberation Front immediately put aside their differences and sat down at the table of diplomacy in a joint effort to drive the PCA away from Rubicon 3. Raven, who had been working for all groups by virtue of the highest bidder, was key to this plan, and Handle Walter was more than willing to oblige if the price was right; and the price was, indeed, right. First, a series of operations targeting key PCA outposts, battleship hangars, and HC facilities. Raven did their part diligently and efficiently, always the perfect puppet for whoever offered enough money (Raven, being a puppet, is a key point that should not be ignored), and everything was going great until the WORM.

*Ronald Reagan’s “alien threat” made manifest on Rubicon 3

The IA-02: ICE WORM is a colossal mechanical worm powered by Coral. Its mouth a series of clockwork grinders, crushing anything unlucky enough to be in its path. The WORM was a relic of the Rubiconian Institute from before the Fires of Ibis, seized and reactivated by the PCA as a new line of offense against those opposed to planetary closure. The WORM was impervious to contemporary weaponry, so the corporations and the RFL collaborated on a new weapon specifically designed to pierce the WORM’s outer-shields. Extreme problems breed extreme innovation, resulting in the VE-60SNA Stun Needle Launcher (a large cannon that fits onto the back of an Armored Core, specializing in breeching shielding) and a gigantic experimental railgun to finish the job after the Stun Needle does its magic; only problem is both weapons can’t be used by the same person: it would be a two person job.

Raven is deployed in the Unobservable Area within the Central Ice Field, where the WORM wreaks havoc, tasked with using the Stun Needle Launcher to disable the WORM’s shield for V.IV Rusty (working undercover for the Rubicon Liberation Front), who is miles away controlling the railgun, to take the final shot and put the WORM down for good. Additional members of Arquebus and Balam join Raven and Rusty in their showdown with the WORM, mirroring the Arena of the Starscourge Radhan.

The mission is an overwhelming success. The PCA, having received countless crushing blows, retreated from Rubicon 3 in haste, leaving battleships and HCs behind in their wake. The “alien threat” was gone, but the Coral remained.

Arquebus Executive Leadership was planning for this, biding their time. Days after Operation ICE WORM, the Arquebus Group seized the leftover PCA equipment and positioned themselves as the dominant force on Rubicon 3, swiftly crushing the Balam corporation with their newfound firepower and becoming the true Coral monopoly.

Ronald Reagan’s ghost hangs his head as he realizes that the “alien threat” must always be present, for only a moment did we know true cooperation.

VIII: On Computer Game’s Official Review of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon and Numerical Score Value

IX: Sempiternal Darkness

IX. I: Fires of Raven

Everything comes to a head when Raven, strings pulled by Walter, is fatefully led to Insitute City; a ruin, destroyed in the Fires of Ibis. Here Raven finds the Vascular Plant, a major research facility post-Ibis, that sucks Coral from the Rubicon for both human and machine experimentation. The Vascular Plant is both a real world plant categorization, “vascular” being the term used for the plant tissue that absorbs nutrients and water and also a vessel that carries blood in all animals. Here we are confronted by an angelic, elegant autonomous craft designated IB-01: CEL 240, another robot created before the Fires of Ibis, powered by Coral, to defend the Coral. After a grueling battle with the robot, subsequently getting captured by Arquebus, a prison break, and a few other missteps; Raven discovers the truth about Handler Walter, he was there when the Fires of Ibis happened, involved even, and survived; a “cinder” just like the woman you have been working closely with, “Cinder Carla,” and they’re both part of a shadowy organization called The Overseers, whose main mission is to burn the Coral for good after the failed first attempt which resulted in the worldwide catastrophe now known as the Fires of Ibis.

At some point in all this violence, Raven became attached to a disembodied voice calling themselves “Ayre,” who, after becoming close, reveals she’s part of the Coral. The Coral is alive. It’s organic. Ayre’s brothers and sisters are all part of the Coral, and destroying the Coral amounts to a genocide not only for the Coral conciousness but also the entire planet, as it will ignite the atmosphere and wipe out all life on Rubicon 3.

Suddenly you realize those Junk Wizards and Hackers were smoking actual people and it dawns on you that they’re not so different from Keith Richards snorting his own father’s ashes to gain his knowledge.^#10

Raven has a decision to make; side with Ayre and oppose Handler Walter’s masterplan, or side with Handler Walter and destroy the Coral. An argument can be made for both sides, from Walter’s perspective: the Coral is dangerous, it self-replicates and if left to its own devices will eventually consume the known universe; from Ayre’s perspective, the Coral is people. Either way, you’re at the whim of either party, both having manipulated Raven into feeling one way or another throughout the journey.

Choosing Walter’s side, you escort the Xylem, one of two types of transport tissue for Vascular plants^#11 and also a really-big-city-that’s-actually-a-really-big-spaceship into the actual Vascular Plant, the space-sunflower, both Rusty (your only friend on Rubicon 3) and Ayre try to stop Raven, piloting ACs of their own in an attempt to kill Raven, but, plot armor being what it is and armed with an unlimited set of continues, Raven easily dispatches both and succeeds in igniting the Coral: leaving nothing but ash behind. The credits roll.

*Xylem revolts against the Sunflower

The Fires of Raven could easily be seen as the “bad” ending, although the narrative likes to leave these things ambiguous. This, however, is not ambiguous to me; genociding a planet, people and Coral (which is also people), is not OK. One could argue that this is a type of trolley problem; genociding the planet and the Coral now would save the universe later; however, this would require a level of premonition that Raven simply does not have; in fact, it’s unclear if the Coral would even consume the universe, and if it did: it’s unclear if that’s even a bad thing given the mechanical grayzone devoid of Nature that humanity has created.

IX. II: Liberator of Rubicon

“I believe in the shared potential between humanity and the coral.” – Ayre, C-Pulse Wave Mutation (Coral Person)

Ayre makes a strong case for not committing genocide, priming you throughout your time on Rubicon 3 to be sympathetic to the Coral. Ayre believes that Coral and Rubiconians can co-exist in harmony, as they have done in the past before the Rubiconians mucked it up and started experimenting with the Coral, something Ayre doesn’t acknowledge and could easily happen again. If Raven is convinced by Ayre’s plea, they trade murdering millions of people for murdering those they were working with the entire journey: Cinder Carla and Handler Walter.

Ayre uses the symbol of the Raven to inspire the people of Rubicon 3 to rise up against the Corporations, sending Raven to the Xylem on a mission of sabotage in an attempt to thwart Handler Walter’s plans. Rusty joins Raven, finally revealing his true allegiance to the Rubiconian Liberation Front, and together the two Ravens eliminate the Corporate leaders and dispatch of the Xylem’s engines, securing a bright future for Rubicon 3, or so we hope. During the Xylem’s death throes, an Armored Core appears before Raven, Rubicon red; it’s Handler Walter, who has gone through Arquebus mind control and thrown into a Coral series AC; celestial theater plays as a moonlit skirmish atop the Xylem, far beyond the Rubicon’s atmosphere, a solemn duel of finality between Raven and Walter; however, in the midst of this cosmic clash of wills, Walter, his heart touched by a sudden revelation, surrenders; he understands now that Raven has discovered a friend in Ayre, a kindred spirit within the Coral, an epiphany dawning upon him that the Coral is people, and he has been treading a misguided path all along. Walter allows Raven to escape the Xylem’s descent into the fiery embrace of Rubicon 3’s atmosphere, the once-majestic vessel dissolves into stardust, becoming one with the cosmic tapestry.

The Coral survives and the people of Rubicon are successful in driving the corporations off the planet. Raven is remembered as the Liberator of Rubicon, yet the outstanding issues of “is the Coral going to consume the universe?” and “is that a bad thing?” remain unaddressed.

IX. III: True Love and the Eclipse

IX. IV: G5 Iguazu

The Iguazu River is a small river in Brazil that drops off a plateau, creating what the locals call the Iguazu Falls. Like all things, there are legends of its creation, something about a jealous deity going into a rage and slicing violently at the Earth, creating a rift so large that the water from the Iguazu River drops over, creating a stunning natural beauty; a waterfall on all sides. We like to make sense of things within the context of human Nature, so we inject emotions like envy, rage, and love into the Nature that surrounds us. Because surely these things wouldn’t exist without the presence of humanity to observe them, and they must be like us. These human traits help us blend the colors; facilitate forgetting that metal boxes and smog don’t fit into Nature.

Iguazu is also G5 Iguazu, a Red Gun working for the Balam corporation; a back-alley-gambler who never won a game and, to pay for his debts, agreed to get Coral Augmentation and work as a corporate lapdog. He’s a Fourth Generation Augmented Human, like 621: Quoth the Raven. Raven encounters Iguazu during a mission to assault a Rubiconian Liberation Front Dam Complex, where they initially work together to complete the objective. Iguazu is haughty and dismissive of Raven during this encounter, and to Raven, Iguazu is just another number, one of the countless mercenaries they’ve already encountered. Nothing.

*Eclipse in Infrared: Prelude

When New Game Plus comes around, this same Dam Complex mission takes a turn that alters the entire course of the Coral War. The Rubiconian Liberation Front opens secret communications with Raven and offers a larger monetary sum if Raven betrays Iguazu and helps defend the complex. Raven takes this offer, turning on Iguazu and easily dispatching him. From this moment, Iguazu is incensed with envy, and throughout the rest of Raven’s time on Rubicon 3, hounds Raven relentlessly in an effort to kill them; yet, like the gambling of days gone by, he fails every time. The last time Raven crosses paths with Iguazu, he tries to get the jump on Raven while Raven is distracted in battle with another mercenary. This, too, results in failure. Iguazu, for all his envious effort, can never hope to compete with Raven. To Raven, Iguazu is just a minor annoyance that pops up from time to time, nothing more than an annoying fly. The Nature of Iguazu is one that would exist with or without the facilitation of big robots to realize true potential. If this were the Paleolithic era, Iguazu would be the caveman hovering over the sleeping tribal leader with a rock held over their head, contemplating “Iguazu smash!” because “why can’t Iguazu lead tribe!”

IX. V: Alea Iacta Est

Four sets of double-A batteries later, and here we are: the end. We’ve heard ALLMIND’s voice a thousand times before, practiced our skills in its ARENA, and navigated its menus. But it came as a surprise when ALLMIND contacted Raven directly for a mission, and then another, and another. Kate Markson tagged along in the TRANSCRIBER for a few sorties, and things started to get weird. Who is Kate Markson? Why does she sound suspiciously like ALLMIND? What is this “Coral Release” that ALLMIND keeps mentioning? And how are we relevant to it all? We knew that Coral is people, and Raven is a Fourth Generation Augmented Human and after some nice environmental storytelling, we started to understand that the Fourth Generation was “flawed” because they kept insisting that the Coral was talking to them, which drove many of them insane enough to claw their own eyes out. Ayre is one of these “the Coral keeps talking to me” entities, but we now know the Nature of things: the Coral is consciousness, the Coral is people, and they want to be released into the universe. They are a caged bird within the planet Rubicon 3 and the Vascular Plant and sing for Freedom through the minds of those they can link to, yet have no bodies of their own, requiring augmented humans or machinery for possession. Putting the puzzle pieces together: the Coral is a collective consciousness that ALLMIND (an artificial intelligence that is ALL the MINDS) wants to release into the Universe. The fears Walter had of the Coral, the destruction of the known universe, are all linked to ALLMIND; speculating that ALLMIND is actually a Coral being possessing a supercomputer for the means of achieving the release of her people, it makes perfect sense. Raven, being the main character of Big Robot Game 6, is needed as a “key” for releasing the Coral (only those who can hear the Coral can release the Coral). As such, in the third ending, after working closely with ALLMIND, Raven goes to the top of the Vascular Plant to release the Coral. After Raven’s key is turned, ALLMIND says she doesn’t need Raven anymore and has picked her champion to dispose of them, and then “He” arrives.

G5 Iguazu, driven mad by his hatred for Raven, has sold his autonomy, his consciousness, and his soul to the demons, ALLMIND. Being the perfect vessel to eliminate Raven, ALLMIND uploads Iguazu into their most powerful Armored Core: MIND BETA, his mind wrapped with envy and violence, his recalcitrant nature in its purest form. ALLMIND, believing they can control Iguazu, quickly discovers they cannot. Iguazu’s hatred of being the fly buzzing around Raven is too strong, overriding all ALLMIND’s orders. With this newfound power, Iguazu finally has the Freedom to reach his Arcadia, which just happens to be killing Raven.

*G5 Iguazu, a ghost no more; piloting MIND BETA.

This is Iguazu’s Eclipse moment.

Iguazu is strong now, technologically stronger than Raven. After the first round, Iguazu conjures up two satellites and an even bigger robot to drive Raven into dust. But Raven is not alone: Ayre arrives in her own Armored Core to help, and like all good stories, the hero wins in the end (spoilers). Iguazu’s hatred never falters; even in his final moments, Iguazu screams, “I always envied you,” lunging at Raven with his emerald beam saber, giving Raven a miniature heart attack before his Armored Core reaches criticality and explodes in a miniature Fire of Raven.

Ultimately, none of this matters. ALLMIND has achieved her goal, and the Berserk references, tenuous at best (but very cool), end there. We watch as a massive black hole, which some Druidic schools associate with the Raven, opens where the Vascular Plant once was, consuming everything. Raven is gone, and the Coral has been released. After a brief fade to black, the curtain rises to an Armored Core under a shallow pool of water. The Armored Core rises to a beautiful blue sky, with stars in the distance flickering as red dots, and other Armored Cores slowly emerge from the water, all with red eyes. The Coral has been released. The ALLMIND is here, and nothing will ever be the same. The Rubicon has been crossed. Alea iacta est.

X: Raven (Epilogue)

There was once a Raven so brave that they challenged themselves to fly as high as their wings would take them; they flew so high that they saw the dark and the endless before becoming bored and hungry and then nose-diving back through the thin atmosphere.

It’s a story we’ve heard before.

The average home in the United States takes up to 8 months to build on average. A typical high-rise takes up to 3 years to build, even more if the exterior glass is infused with gold. A Boeing 787 takes up to 40 days to build from the ground up, while a Boeing AH-64 attack helicopter can take upwards of 6 months to build and outfit with the right equipment for killing things. A Raven can build a nest within 9 days and fly 1 week after leaving the nest. We like to build things out of Nature, put them in Nature, and some of us pretend it is Nature. We all come from Nature, so how could it not be Nature? But we’re at the Eclipse with the robots, the rockets, the guns, the choking gas, and the starvation economics we can so easily inflict on other people who happen to be born in the wrong country. We’ve built over 4000 little flying machines the size of Ravens controlled from miles away by Xbox One S controllers that drop little bombs on people in 2022 alone; have we done this for the sake of efficiency, or have we done this because we can’t bear to look our victims in the eye anymore – or ever? Have we, as animals on this Earth, truly flown far or have we clipped our wings and dug deep into that early grave?

*not very far

ALLMIND, in all their puppeteering, knew this truth: the Rubicon is Earth fast-forwarded and paused at the worst moment. A true Raven would never participate in this; they would gather their wings and fly away. If Freedom is the goal, then Raven has been stripped of their name; “621, quoth the Raven,” but the Raven realized that 621 is a twofold genocidal disruptor simply taking orders from people who actually have a purpose. 621, like Guts before them, served the Arcadia of others; yet, unlike Guts, 621 never corrected this mistake; so, the Raven flew away.

A friend once said in response to the trolley problem that it leaves one thing implied that rarely anyone considers – who was the person who put those poor people on the tracks, and how did you even get there?

Is it really any wonder that the main worry around Artificial Intelligence for most “philosophers” of our age is whether or not they would kill us? Why would any intelligent being want to kill us if we have done nothing wrong? Is this prominent question – this fear of artificial intelligence – merely a tacit confession of our collective guilt as a species that spends over $136 billion a year on weapons used to kill each other?^#12 And that’s just one country’s figures, numbers so big they become meaningless. We are spoiled. I type this on a computer that is sourced from parts all over the world; the cobalt used in the lithium batteries used to power over thirty different appliances in my house mined by children in the Congo as young as six years old.^#13 I have no idea who made these things or how they are made; they just work and I don’t think about it too hard; yet, if I had been born in a straw hut on a farm in a world with no electronics, would I feel like there is something missing?

Why does it still, even now with all this really-cool-stuff, feel like something is missing?

When the Raven returns to its world of comfort, it promptly takes a shit on a passing car driving northbound on Interstate 95 at the Pennsylvania Turnpike connector near Bristol Township.

Maybe we should be more like the Raven.

*the Raven gazes down on humanity (photo courtesy of @handmade_ghost)

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#1. Heilig, M., MacKillop, J., Martinez, D., Rehm, J., Leggio, L., & Vanderschuren, L. J. M. J. (2021, February 22). Addiction as a brain disease revised: Why it still matters, and the need for consilience. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-00950-y

#2. Heilig, M., MacKillop, J., Martinez, D., Rehm, J., Leggio, L., & Vanderschuren, L. J. M. J. (2021, February 22). Addiction as a brain disease revised: Why it still matters, and the need for consilience. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-00950-y

#3. Bush, G. W. (2003, March 22). President Discusses Beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom . National Archives and Records Administration. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030322.html

#4. Riedel, B. (2022, March 9). 9/11 and Iraq: The making of a tragedy. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/9-11-and-iraq-the-making-of-a-tragedy/

#5. United Nations. (2003, May 6). UN inspectors found no evidence of prohibited weapons programmes as of 18 March withdrawal, Hans Blix tells Security Council. United Nations. https://press.un.org/en/2003/sc7777.doc.htm

#6. Gershkoff, A., & Kushner, S. (2005, September). Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric. https://sgadaria.expressions.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Iraq-article_Gershkoff_Kushner.pdf

#7. Goldenberg, S. (2006, September 11). Bush: Saddam was not responsible for 9/11. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/12/september11.usa2

#8. Carney, S. A. (2013). Major Combat Operations: Coalition Forces Land Component Command, March–May 2003. In Allied Participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom (pp. 9–10). essay, United States Army, Center of Military History.

#9. Address to the 42d session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York. Reagan Library. (1987, September 21). https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/address-42d-session-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-new-york

#10. Glendinning, L. (2007, April 4). Keith Richards tells of snorting his dad’s ashes with cocaine. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/apr/04/drugsandalcohol.musicnews

#11. Xylem and phloem. Basic Biology. (2020, August 25). https://basicbiology.net/plants/physiology/xylem-phloem

#12. Budget Basics: National Defense. (2023, April 28,). https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense

#13. Lawson, Michele (2021, September 1). The DRC Mining Industry: Child Labor and Formalization of Small-Scale Mining https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/drc-mining-industry-child-labor-and-formalization-small-scale-mining

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(Originally published on 10/7/2023)

#ComputerGames #Ethics #ArmoredCoreVI #Essay

In 1989, manga artist Kentaro Miura started work on one of the most potent love stories of all time: Berserk; a dark fantasy set in the medieval-Europe-inspired world of sempiternal darkness and horror. In this story, there are two pivotal characters that typify all true friendships; these characters are Guts, the hero of the story, and Griffith, the (spoilers) villain of the story, among many other villains, but Griffith is – the – villain; “you were always the one.” Griffith wasn’t a villain at first; yet, the die had been cast and he was destined to become one, forevermore. Griffith and Guts were best-friends for the longest time; sharing the best of times and, absolutely, the worst of times. At an early age, Guts joined Griffith’s “Band of the Hawk,” what started out as a roaming mercenary group led by Griffith, who was, by all means, a gifted youth with an undying dream of creating his own kingdom of light within the dark; a genius both on and off the battlefield, and an expert swordsman, practically undefeated; Guts was all of these things as well, but less refined, a rabid beast with no purpose.

Griffith recruited those he believed had talent and identified Guts as one of those people immediately. Guts was a stubborn youth and, believing himself better than Griffith, immediately picked a fight with him. Guts was clearly outclassed but overconfident and, being like a rabid beast, had a level of unpredictability that gave him an upper hand. Guts was a street fighter compared to Griffith, who was elegant, outwardly honorable, and trained in classical combat (particularly fencing). During a pivotal moment when it appeared Griffith would win the duel, Guts threw sand into Griffith’s eyes as a distraction, then landed a critical blow that ended up with Griffith in the dirt, getting his stomach kicked in. This was the first time the Band of the Hawk had seen Griffith vulnerable, and Griffith knew this too, secretly embarrassed and forever changed by this little defeat, but never showing it; knowing he had to turn the tide of the duel in his favor or lose the respect of his mercenary band, and by extension: his dream of Arcadia, Griffith quickly turned this fear of rejection into strength, using his superior martial training he subdued Guts in an armlock and forced him to submit.

Guts, from that moment onward, believed in Griffith as a warrior and a leader, even though he didn’t immediately admit as much; Griffith, from that moment onward, believed in Guts as an equal and a friend, even though he didn’t immediately (ever) admit as much; both men were stoic in their own way. It would be a long time before Guts and Griffith would get into another fight, and with time, Guts became Griffith’s most trusted warrior, Griffith’s right hand. “You are mine,” Griffith would say with an air of authority, but what he really meant was, “I love you and cannot live without you.”

Griffith and Guts are both fiercely independent Ravens who bond due to mutual unrequited respect for each other. In simple terms, they are in love. Not romantic love, not even platonic, something more, something that transcends the word itself; yet neither can truly express how they feel due to their own mental hang-ups; the ego. Time passes, and Guts begins to feel more like a tool for Griffith’s dream of Arcadia, and Griffith goes on taking Guts for granted, oblivious to his concerns. One fateful day, Guts overhears Griffith talking to a Princess at night in a courtyard. Griffith expresses his idealism to her, grandstanding in an overt show of charisma, as Griffith had a penchant for. The Princess asks Griffith about his mercenaries, and Griffith responds:

“They are my able soldiers, it’s true. They are dedicated comrades who sacrifice themselves for my dream so that it might be real but that does not make them friends. In my mind, a true friend never relies on another’s dream. The man who would be my friend must have his own reason for living, beyond me; and he should put his heart and soul into protecting his dream; he should never hesitate to defend it, even against me. For me to call a man my “friend” he must be equal to me in all respects.”

— Griffith, Berserk (TV Series 1997–1998)

Guts is devastated. He has no dream of his own; it’s clear now he’s a pawn of Griffith’s Arcadia; of course, Guts only believes this because Griffith has never expressed his (very real) love for Guts; something that is shown only through actions and Griffith’s inner dialogues that Guts is not privy to. Griffith, in his idealism, outwardly says things he does not mean, his actions and feelings betraying his grand words. In many ways, Guts is Griffith’s only true friend. Guts is envious of Griffith’s dreams and resolve, but at the same time, Griffith is envious of Guts’ martial prowess and strength of will; both men see each other as a potential threat, someone to “watch out for because, if they wanted to, they could destroy me,” in other words: a friend, an equal.

Guts decides to leave the Band of the Hawk shortly after these events, but to do so, he must defeat Griffith in battle; their love still unrequited. On a snowy field under a dead tree, the two warriors duel, and in the blink of an eye, one move, it’s over. Guts brings his massive Dragon Slayer down, breaking Griffith’s blade in the process, but stops just short of crushing Griffith’s shoulder. Griffith knows it’s over; he falls to his knees, bested by his only true friend. Guts walks away in silence, shedding his obligations to Griffith to pursue his own purpose, becoming a free Raven once again.

This destroys Griffith, who goes on to make mistake after mistake, wallowing in the selfish despair of having lost his only true love. Sinking lower and lower into sempiternal darkness, with no hope of recovery, Griffith, seeing no other path to achieve Arcadia, trades his humanity for power in a demonic ritual that would forever be known as the Eclipse; sacrificing every member of the Band of the Hawk, his trusted warriors, in a demonic bloodbath of tentacles going into holes that they shouldn’t, headcrabs that crawl up the nose and expand until the eyes pop out and the brains blow up and the skin bursts like a popped balloon, and everything-evil. In the culminating moments of the ritual, Griffith slowly rapes Gut’s romantic partner, Casca, right before his eyes; a final act of humiliation to seal Griffith’s transformation into everything-evil. Casca, now comatose from the torment, and Guts, now incensed with an undying thirst for revenge, are the only members of the Band of the Hawk left alive; doomed to travel the world, branded and hunted by demons of the night forevermore.

All pretense of elegance and grace dropped; jealousy, despair, and lust for revenge helped Griffith take that final step into sempiternal darkness, and the world was never the same. Griffith achieved something akin to Godhood that day: power unimaginable, transformed into his darkest self; an indifference to the perceptions of others in favor of pure giving-in; the type of ego-death that Buddhists are afraid of.

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(Originally published 10/7/2024)

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