Psycho Wand, My Beloved [part2]
Part 1 | Part 2
Chapter III: Gibson & Associates & Decay
“David swiveled into the glow of his own dimension.”
The glow of six-thirty glew the green of David’s eyes so green that he had to wipe away the radioactivity before the digital clock blinded him completely.
David had thirty minutes to get dressed in his cheap gray suit and khakis, pull his Nirvana hair into a presentable ponytail, grab a bite to eat, kiss Blair goodbye, hop in his black Kia Rio,42 and drive to Gibson & Associates – which was fifteen miles away – where he spent eight hours a day, five days a week cold-calling poor souls from an unknown number and dropping little life bombs on them like you-owe-such-and-such-amount-and-we-can-garnish-your-wages-and-we-can-take-your-firstborn-and-we-can-break-your-kneecaps-and-your-credit-score-is-very-important, but David much preferred dropping little magical bombs on Boomas in Phantasy Star Online instead.
As David stumbled out the front door – already twelve minutes late to work – he turned to Blair for a kiss but she rebuked him. “David, when you get home, don’t forget to leave the phone line open – your mom’s final round of treatment is this afternoon and the hospital is supposed to be calling.” David, somewhat taken aback by the cold shoulder and also wondering why she would tell him this now instead of when he returned home from work, nodded in hurried agreement before rushing out to the Kia. David then fiddled with the ignition and took off down the road, nearly hitting a trash can and a stray dog and a mailbox and a small child due to an imbalance in the humours of sleep and fluster.
David hated his job, but he pushed through because he had eight years’ tenure and he was fit to make sixty thousand per year next raise and he wanted to give Blair a nice place to live; at least, that’s what he used to tell himself. Now, his work was his lifeline to Phantasy Star Online and boozing it up in his ten-by-fifteen office that smelled like yeast infections and rotten hops. David figured that if he lost his job then he would not be able to get another for quite some time: having lied to the recruitment officers when they asked if he had strong knowledge of financial concepts and principles; and if he had proficiency in using accounting software for tracking and managing collections; and if he had the ability to negotiate effectively and maintain professionalism in challenging situations; and he used his now-dying mother as a phony reference. To David, this losing-of-job would result in an inability to purchase tall boys#43 and pay his phone bill and – most important of all – he would lose his hunter’s license.#44 And this fear kept David working, but he had a couple grand saved up to keep him going for a few months if something were to happen.
David was forty-six minutes late when he pulled into the parking lot of the raw concrete structure that was a testament to modern American office architecture in that it was as brutalist as his quarterly revenue goals. He let out a tired sigh as he gazed up at the massive crimson-square logo plastered near the words Gibson & Associates and whispered something not unlike a here-we-go-again or the classic just-fucking-kill-me-already.
David stumbled wearily through the double doors into the office and walked by people he considered zombies, ghouls, monsters, and non-playable characters without realizing that he exhibited the very same traits: a crumpled-sheet-with-legs, an assembly-line-missing-its-most-important-parts, something-that-looked-like-a-person-but-with-donut-hole-eyes-and-drool, and he exuded a strong aura of decay; some called this the Deskman Droops or Salesman Sickness or Pencil Pusher Psychosis, but David just called this wanting-to-go-home-and-control-the-magical-techno-elf and he cared little for the judgment of his peers.
David ignored everything and everyone as he sank like syrup into his swivel chair. His cubicle was covered in Phantasy Star Online concept art printed from the Gibson & Associates industrial-strength printer with which he had used at least two-hundred dollars worth of ink cartridges printing magical-techno-elf artwork, and then denied ever doing so to his boss who happened to have a list – in chronological order – of all the files ever printed from that specific printer.
*David finds great comfort in the magical techno elf pinned to his cubicle wall
David’s cubicle was situated perpendicular to William’s, who was hard-at-work talking to someone on the phone and animating every word with his hands as he was prone to do. “Ma’am, with all due respect to your deceased dog: you still owe sixty-eight-thousand-seven-hundred-forty-one dollars in back dues and – ” William paused for a moment as if being interrupted by the brightness from the Excel#45 sheet upon the screen of his four-by-three stock Dell Dimension#46 monitor. “Yes, I’m aware that your father just died and you had to pay funeral costs and that you spent two grand on the casket, but ma’am; like I told you last week: cremation was the cheaper option for a woman in your financial situation. It’s not our fault that you are irresponsible with money.” William paused once more and then abruptly stated, “I will give you three more days – or else,” and slammed the phone silent.
Moments later, William’s phone rang – it was the same woman; she wanted to settle the debt.
William turned to David, who was half asleep in his cubicle, and proudly proclaimed: “See David, that’s how it’s done – Ye Ol’ William Hang Up. It literally works every time.”
“Huh – oh right, yeah.” David said, still recovering from the mental boot loop#47 caused by a psychic blue screen that cited a very complicated error message.
“Something wrong, man? You seem tired lately – how are things with the ol’ lady?” William said in his signature impossible-to-tell-if-being-sarcastic-or-not tone that made most people want to kick him in the balls and then spit on him.
David swiveled into the glow of his own dimension. He decided to ignore William from now on; this decision was made because William failed to defend him from MetaMark’s harassment on Ragol. William and MetaMark would power-level#48 together and David suspected that they were laughing at him behind his back, and this made him so insecure that he exuded such a powerful aura of contrived confidence that anyone with optic nerves and a cerebellum could see right through it. William was a MetaMark sycophant and, therefore, could not be trusted. William was the enemy. Going forward, David would focus only on becoming stronger. Friends were irrelevant – a distraction. He double-clicked the Internet Explorer#49 icon on his virtual desktop and started typing furiously into one of the many search toolbars#50 that consumed his screen real estate:
“HOW DO I FIND THE PSYCHO WAND?”
After an hour of Yahoo searching, David’s eyes grew wide as he found a result on the sixth page; it was a pso-world.com forum thread titled “Psycho Wand Location & Drop Rates.” And like getting a shot of adrenaline, he was now fully awake and totally engaged in reading this very-poorly-written thread: “acording 2 datamined#51 files, teh best place to solo for psycho wand is ruins stage on very hard & the p wand drops from chaos sorcerers & has 1/1497966#52 chance to drop.”
The last five words caused David’s stomach to do somersaults, which forced him to cover his mouth to prevent a reflexive bile from bubbling up as if his body and mind and soul knew that those numbers were truly wicked and pure evil. But David swallowed the bile and repeated the words back in his mind: The Chaos Sorcerer has a one in one-million-four-hundred-ninety-seven-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty-six chance to drop the Psycho Wand. He repeated this probability in his mind like a self-help mantra before he removed a small notepad and pen from his satchel and wrote the number down and circled it a heinous number of times before crashing his head into the keyboard from exhaustion.
*David dreams once more
David was system shocked into the waking world by an aggressive tap on his shoulder. He shot his head up and rubbed his eyes while swiveling to face the lego-block-shaped head of his manager, Merenie Wiggins. Merenie stood in a dark suit with massive padded shoulders – her peacocking in a male-dominated business morphed her into one of those same male dominators – and this nearly hid her portly figure. She had almost-literal raccoons under her eyes and a permanent frown made of wrinkles, and this made her look twenty-years older than she actually was. She stunk of sour perfume trying its damnedest to cover up two-packs-a-day. She was fearsome to the meek and a harlequin to the rest. She stood as the perfect representation of the little bombs Gibson & Associates dropped upon unsuspecting debtors who don’t know that they can simply request-to-never-be-called-again-and-hang-up-the-phone.#53
“Yes, Merenie? I was just uh…” David paused to wipe some drool from the side of his mouth, visibly nervous with QWERTY#54 branded into his cheek like scarlet lettering that denoted one of the cardinal workplace sins: sleeping-on-the-job.
“Come to my office. And it’s Ms. Wiggins, not Merenie. I’ve told you this before.” Her voice was the deep buzz of a bumblebee after sucking down three balloons.#55
Ms. Wiggins made her way through the mouse maze of tan cubicles back to her small office in the back of the building. As she was doing this, William turned to David and made a you’re-so-in-trouble face. David only raised his right hand in a fist then used his other hand to imitate a cranking gesture as he slowly cranked up his middle finger. William scoffed with a dismissive wave.
Moments later, David was sitting in a black plastic chair in front of a large wooden desk with multiple segments. Merenie sat behind the desk in a massive faux leather executive office chair. Merenie was very comfortable, David was not; this was intentional. Merenie cleared her throat three times within the span of two minutes of otherwise silence. Being a woman in corporate America, Merenie found great pleasure in making men feel uncomfortable. She was tapping a pen to a white sheet of paper with a long list of text printed in Times New Roman,#56 some of the words were underlined, many were in bold.
“Do you know why you’re here, David?” She said with a question mark but really it should have been a period because she immediately continued: “It’s because of your performance. You have made no revenue in the last – let’s see here – four months. You have used over two-hundred dollars of ink cartridges on non-work-related prints and –”
David interrupted, “that – that wasn’t me.”
David’s denial caused Merenie’s eyes to narrow with determination as she flipped to another sheet of paper, “FOnewmArt.png, Pioneer2City.jpg, FOnewearlPanties.png, PSOwallpaper6.png – I could go on.” She stopped and glared at David before continuing, “We looked up your browser history, David. You spent a total of seven-hundred-twenty-six hours and forty-seven minutes on the website ‘pso-world.com’ in the last month alone; that is over sixty percent of your work time, David. And your co-workers are complaining about your hygiene; one even described your odor as –” She looked down at her paper once more, “– quote ‘a mixture of expired cheese and decomposing animal corpses and just really, really bad stuff’ unquote, and while I wouldn’t go that far: they have a point. And you have been sleeping at your desk.” David squirmed in his chair; he felt like a lab mouse that was strapped down for electroshock testing and every word that escaped Merenie’s thin lips was another hundred volts. “Frankly, David, your conduct has been unacceptable. And none of this would matter if not for the fact that you make us no money.” She paused and pushed the butt of the pen into the bottom of her lip as if supporting something heavy in her mind.
Merenie began lightly chewing the pen, “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
David looked like the worst magician in the world as he was trying to conjure spells with his fidgeting hands but no magic would come out. After several awkward minutes, he spoke the only words that he could think of:
“Psycho wand.”
David was broken. “The Psycho Wand. I – I just need the Psycho Wand. Merenie, please. Give me another chance. Once I have the Psycho Wand, I’ll do better. All I need is the Psycho Wand then I’ll be able to show William and MetaMark and then I can start doing the cold calls again. Please, Merenie.”
Merenie only shook her head, “You’re fired David. Get out of my office.”
David mumbled to himself on the drive home. His words were like the soft chanting of a monk whose meditative isolation had driven him insane instead of serene. “Money saved up. Can make it for at least three months. Psycho Wand. Just have to cut back on food. No more steaks. Get the Psycho Wand. I’ll switch to off-brand Cheerios. Prepay the mortgage for two months. Ruins on Very Hard. Blair to switch the cat food to a cheaper brand. The Chaos Sorcerers drop the Psycho Wand. MetaMark said LOL. Didn’t revive me. Laughed at me. One-million-four-hundred-ninety-seven-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty-six chance to drop the Psycho Wand. Tell Blair I used vacation time. One-million-four-hundred. Get the Psycho Wand. Ninety-seven-thousand-nine-hundred-sixty-six.”
And when David arrived home, Blair was gone.
Chapter IV: You Could Not Be Connected to the Server
“Please check that your provider settings are correct before connecting. The line was disconnected. PRESS START BUTTON.”
The cats were gone too.
It was the eleventh moon of September, and David had done the math. He had finally calculated the most efficient way to farm#57 the Psycho Wand. He discovered that the mission titled “Doc’s Secret Plan” contained ten Chaos Sorcerers, and he scribbled it all out on a Pizza Hut napkin; he had been eating nothing but large-pepperoni-with-extra-sauce-and-extra-cheese every night since the incident, and there was no other paper in the house. The napkin was covered in markings only legible to himself and read something like: “10 Chaos Sorcerers divided by 1497966 equals 149796.6, and it takes roughly 11 minutes to complete a single run,#58 and If I play for 11 hours a day, that’s 660 minutes, which means I can run Doc’s Secret Plan 60 times per day, which means the Psycho Wand has a 2496.61 chance of dropping each day.” David knew in the back of his mind that it could take almost seven years to find the Psycho Wand, but he reasoned this away as he fancied himself luckier than most.
Finding the Psycho Wand was David’s Grail Quest and the Dreamcast controller was his Galahad. Nothing else mattered. He drank nothing but liquified heartburn in a can and developed perpetual alcohol sweats,#59 and ate nothing but pizza to the point that he earned so many Pizza Hut Pizza Points that he would get a free pizza every four days like clockwork. At max level, the missions were a breeze; he tore through those poor Chaos Sorcerers, and as revenge, they dropped nothing but sweat and blood; literal blood, as David’s left thumb had ripped open from overusing the hard-plastic thumbstick, but he ignored the pain and wrapped it in three Pizza Hut napkins held together with Scotch#60 tape like some makeshift war bandage. And to prevent boredom, he removed the television set from the living room and placed it in his office, then ran a fifty-foot cable through the house so that he could watch reruns of Star Trek: Enterprise,#61 which he felt was thematically similar to Phantasy Star Online and this put him in an almost dreamlike state of ultra-science-fiction while he slew Chaos Sorcerers. He could have moved his office television into the living room instead, but there were too many windows, and he was very particular about the lighting; it had to be just right; a soft orange glow had to envelop the room for David to fully appreciate Phantasy Star Online – to feel like he was actually there on Ragol – as this was the glow present the first time he played the game, and the office was the only area in the house that could produce such a mystical glow. This Pavlovian response#62 went unanalyzed by David as his thoughts were filled only with Psycho Wand.
Every time David logged into Phantasy Star Online during this epoch of ruin, he saw a pop-up labeled “important announcement,” but he never read the context of the message as he skipped through all extraneous details. Nothing would steal precious time away from his Grail Quest.
*the Holy Grail; the Psycho Wand
It was on the sixteenth moon of September that David decided to make a beer run to the nearby 7-Eleven.#63 Before leaving the house, he turned the Dreamcast off for the first time since the incident, which freed the phone line from Phantasy Star Online’s grasp and, as if the Moirai#64 themselves intervened: the phone cried out mid-ring as if someone had been calling for hours on end. David panicked for a moment, thinking it was some sort of tornado alarm, but snapped to his senses and picked up the handset. A gruff male voice was on the other line, “Is this David Finch?” David was silent for a moment. The receiver could have been spitting thunder clouds as there was a psychic-storm front moving into the room. David mumbled something in the affirmative. The voice on the other line responded, “We’ve been trying to call you for several days now, Mr. Finch. I don’t know any other way to tell you this, but – your mother has passed away.” David heard the words but refused to process them. His eyes glazed over and his mind filled with Psycho Wand. “After her treatment on August twenty-third, she developed pneumonia. We treated it the best we could but her body was weak from the radiation therapy. She passed away on September second. Her last words were your name, Mr. Finch. Your sister is organizing the funeral and she has been unable to reach you. We would like you to come down to the hospital and –” David interrupted with a sudden “thank you,” then abruptly hung up the phone and stared at the thing for a whole minute as if trying to analyze the contents of its plastic soul. He then grabbed the entire phone base and ripped it out of the wall, taking some drywall along with it. The bringer of bad news would bring no more bad news. There would be no more distractions. He left the house and didn’t notice the tears in his eyes as the Kia’s ignition roared. David returned home twenty minutes later with a thirty-six pack of tall boys. He had two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-ninety-four dollars left in his bank account.
It was the twenty-eighth moon of September and there was something in the stale office air that night; and it wasn’t the god awful stench. David had slain over one-thousand Chaos Sorcerers and eaten at least half of that in pizza to the point that Pizza Hut would no longer grant him Pizza Points. He was on a Pizza Points Freeze according to the very-professionally-worded email complete with pizza imagery below the email signature. He continued ordering pizza regardless. David only had a little over one-million Chaos Sorcerers to go before his beloved Psycho Wand would appear before him – statistically. His Pizza Hut branded thumb bandage had torn open and soaked the Dreamcast controller in blood, but he was on his second-to-last run of the night, and he had no plans of reapplying the bandage. Every time he made a wrong move or was knocked down by an enemy,#65 he would let out a blood-curdling scream of pure rage but continue on as if being cajoled by some malevolent force. Beer cans were forming a series of intricate pyramids on his desk and he had to pee real bad but ignored it in favor of completing the mission.
And then it happened.
Just as David landed the final blow on the final Chaos Sorcerer of the final run of the night, he heard the noise; the dopamine jingle. The jingle was so potent that he dropped all pretense of being a civilized human being as he pissed his pants into a sopping mess while letting out a howl of joy into the popcorn above.#66 David, sitting in his own sweat and urine, then maneuvered his magical techno elf to the spinning-red-item-box on the flat-textured floor of the Ruins, and as his character approached it, he saw the words: PSYCHO WAND.#67
David, upon equipping the Psycho Wand, pushed his face into the television screen and absorbed the image of his character holding the magnificent scepter. The wand was a misnomer, as it was a two-handed staff with three blades of blue plasma jutting out at the tip. The Psycho Wand had the aura of something that the extraterrestrial-equivalent of Lisa Frank#68 would use to paint alien-night skies. After minutes of analyzing every little pixel in excruciating detail, David wrapped his arms around himself as if making love and rolled over onto his own thumb-blood and piss and sweat. It looked as if the corners of his mouth had been sliced open as he had a gigantic, inhumane smile on his face as he drifted off to sleep.
Morpheus took him once again.
The dream showed David visions of the tabby and the tortoiseshell; it showed Blair as the beautiful-princess-of-death; it showed his mother all serene and motionless surrounded by figures sobbing into their hands. But the Psycho Wand was too powerful. The wand slowly enlarged itself into view like a bad PowerPoint#69 animation. David saw himself wielding the wand like a god-among-magical-techno-elves, and he used its great power to instantly evaporate facsimiles of Boomas and Chaos Sorcerers and MetaMarks and Williams and Blairs and cats and even his own mother. With the Psycho Wand, David controlled his dreams; and in his dream, he laughed a maniacal laugh.
David resolved himself to find MetaMark and William in-game and show them his newfound glory. He imagined himself finding them, entering their room all mysterious-like, pushing the thumbstick ever so lightly as to produce a Clint Eastwood#70 swagger, and, upon coming face-to-face with his archnemesis, typing only the three letters of sweet revenge: LOL.
Upon logging in the next morning, David was met with another “important announcement” which he canceled without reading. David then spent all day searching for MetaMark’s group. He scoured every lobby. Every stage. Every zone. He read every group description and even asked random players if they had seen characters matching MetaMark’s description, but it was all for naught. He did his Clint Eastwood walk for strangers and this gave him some satisfaction but it was not enough; he had to find MetaMark, he had to find William; they had to know about his accomplishment; about his Grail Quest; about his Psycho Wand.
David spent twelve hours searching before retiring on the mattress now located on the floor of his office. The mattress was stained the color of algae, and applying any pressure whatsoever caused plumes of dust and visible stink lines to erupt from its innards like a corpse explosion. David didn’t smell a thing as the sounds of Star Trek and blackbirds lulled him to sleep.
On the morning of September thirtieth, David rolled off the decaying mattress into his garbage island and immediately pushed the blood-stained power button of the Dreamcast. The bouncy ball and the swirl played upon the phosphor as the Dreamcast whirred to life. David cracked open a tall boy while waiting for Phantasy Star Online to load. This was his morning routine. He skipped through the splash screens and the introduction video and the title screen and found himself at the front door of his virtual paradise: the login screen.
Going through the motions, he selected ONLINE PLAY then rubbed some crust out of his eyes. An error message appeared: “You could not be connected to the server. Please check that your provider settings are correct before connecting. The line was disconnected. PRESS START BUTTON.”
David rubbed more crust out of his eyes. This happened sometimes; Phantasy Star Online’s login experience was not perfect.
He tried again: “You could not be connected to the server.”
He tried a third time: “You could not be connected to the server.”
*you could not be connected to the server
David had a blank expression on his face as he started mumbling, “Must be a mistake or maintenance or maybe my connection is wonky or maybe the wires got damaged outside or –” David noticed the phone number for the Sega helpline at the bottom of the screen and resolved himself to call. He walked into the living room, hooked the phone up once more, and dialed 1-800-SEGA-ROX. He waited on hold for some time while ambient music played; an eerie, almost-industrial track that sounded as if doomed sea animals were singing alien harmonies over sparse synths.#71 After minutes of waiting, someone finally picked up with a less-than-enthusiastic “Yeah? Can I help you?”
David responded with an inflection that reflected absolute zero: “Can’t login to Phantasy Star Online. Pretty sure it’s not my connection. Can you look into it or something?”
The Sega representative was quick with an answer: “Uh – didn’t you read the announcement in-game? The servers closed, man. The online was shut down as of today.”#72
David tightened his grip on the phone. His thumb was bleeding again, and the blood was dripping down the plastic of the receiver into his mouth. He could taste the iron-rich hemoglobin on his trembling bottom lip.
“What do you mean?”
The Sega representative was dumbfounded, “What do you mean by what-do-I-mean? I mean the online servers were shut down. The servers are closed, man. The online is kaput. Sorry, dude – anything else?”
David slammed the phone to death. Another yell. Another tear of the cord from the wall. This time he launched the phone into the drywall on the opposite side of the room which was followed by a loud knock on the front door near the new hole with the phone dangling from it.
David let out another piercing scream. The mouse looked like a wild beast as he opened the front door with an abrupt “Yes? What is it?” And standing before him was a man in a gold-star-adorned cowboy hat wearing full sheriff’s getup with guns and all. The lawman raised an eyebrow at David and the wild beast went mouse once more. “I’m Sheriff Richards. Are you David Finch?” He said with a thick southern-boy accent before David responded with a delayed and very shaky nod. “You’ve been served, buddy.” The Sheriff said before giving David a look as if measuring his existential worth; “Better hope you can afford alimony too,” he added with a chuckle before pushing some papers into David’s hands and then sauntering off to the pickup truck parked in David’s driveway.
David closed the front door and looked down at the papers. He started to read the first line, “Blair Finch. Decree of Divorce.” He stopped reading.
David had no job. He had no wife. He had no friends. His cats were gone. His mother was dead. He had only two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-forty-three dollars left in his bank account and he owed one-hundred times that on his home and half that in credit-card debt and his car still had payments and the air conditioner was still broken and paint was dripping down some of the walls and the house was full of empty beer cans and his mother was dead and his wife had left him and his mother was dead and he had the Psycho Wand but his mother was dead but he had the Psycho Wand.
David started with the insane-monk chants between bouts of giggling, “The Psycho Wand. The Psycho Wand is mine. I have it. The Psycho Wand. It’s mine. I have the Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand.”
David dropped the divorce papers on the floor. He cracked open a beer from the fridge and drank it in one gulp and then grabbed another before stumbling into the office. He sat down in front of the television set which continued to loop the futuristic synths of the Phantasy Star Online login screen. David navigated to “ONLINE PLAY” and pressed the confirmation button.
“You could not be connected to the server.”
He pressed the button again.
“You could not be connected to the server.”
And again.
“You could not be connected to the server.”
And again.
“You could not be connected to the server.”
And again.
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
“You could not be connected to the server.”
Footnotes:
#42. The 2003 Kia Rio retailed for $9,995, making it one of the cheapest new cars on the market that year. My first car was a Kia Rio, although it was a 2010. Despite KIA’s reputation as poorly manufactured and the fact that they’re commonly referred to as “Korean Industrial Accidents,” my Kia held up for a long time.
#43. A Tall Boy refers to a 16-ounce can of beer, initially introduced by Schlitz in 1954. While Tall Boys can come in larger sizes, such as the 24-ounce cans that debuted in the 1990s, the 16-ounce can remains the original Tall Boy.
#44. Phantasy Star Online had a few versions; the first was free-to-play and referred to as “Version 1”; when Version 2 (Ver2) came along, they added more content and tacked on a subscription fee of $5, this fee was dubbed “The Hunter’s License.”
#45. Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet editor that has existed since the dawn of time – or something. It has been used to crunch numbers for businesses since at least November 19, 1987. The United States government likely uses Excel to track your location and favorite food. Excel has the signature look like that of an indoor tennis court: white and green with lines all over the place. Those who work with Excel take it about as seriously a semi-pro tennis player, with gaining-more-formula-knowledge being akin to perfecting-your-backhand.
#46. Specifically: the Dell Dimension 2300, released in 2002; it was a popular office computer model due to its affordable price and mid-range processing power, perfect for basic number crunching and file browsing. The tower was almost a perfect rectangle if not for the rounded edges. It came equipped with one CD drive and a gray flap on the front that lifted to reveal USB slots and audio inputs and outputs. The power button was centered on the gray flap above the circular Dell logo, and it had a soft push like that of a robot’s pillow. Almost all Dell Dimension 2300s came with the Windows XP operating system; a few came with Windows ME. This model persisted for what felt like ages; one could find Dell Dimension 2300s (or one of its various sister-cousin models) in offices going as far into the future as 2010.
#47. A reboot loop (or boot loop) happens when a Windows device unexpectedly restarts during its startup process. This behavior signals a critical computer issue. A true boot loop must manifest like a dragon eating itself tail-first.
#48. “Power-leveling” in computer games occurs when a high-level player helps a low-level player complete stages/bosses/levels/whatever that the low-level player would not be able to complete on their own. This results in faster leveling and other benefits. Power-leveling, in this author’s opinion, detracts from the fun of computer games and is closely associated with the min-max-psychosis. A significant aspect of playing a computer game is the journey and the struggle; power-leveling removes this aspect and cheapens the gaming experience.
#49. Internet Explorer was released by Microsoft on August 24, 1995 and it was the worst internet browser ever created. Before Internet Explorer, Netscape dominated the internet browser scene, and as such: Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with new Windows installs to kill Netscape – and they succeeded, eventually. Microsoft can be thanked for putting in motion the chain of events that lead to Firefox – the browser I use to this day (as of 4/28/2024) – as Firefox is the spiritual successor to Netscape, as the Mozilla Organization (creators of Firefox) was created by Netscape in 1998 before its acquisition by AOL.
#50. It was easy to install internet-browser toolbars back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, especially so for Internet Explorer. 2003 was around the time substantial security measures were rolling out to prevent accidentally installing CPU-eating toolbar spyware; you still found PCs infested with this stuff well into 2005 and, in extreme cases: now. Some of the classic spyware bars were MyWebSearch, MySearch, 2020 Search, PowerStrip, Browser Accelerator, DogPile, GoodSearch, Altavista, NetCraft, EarthLinkSearch, NeoPetsSearch, MapStan.net, Teoma, Access One, AimAtSite, Y! Bar, ULTRABAR, AskJeevesOfficialBar, Addresses.com, BadassBuddySearch, Vivisimo, ICQ Search, and SpiderPilot. Several were released by “reputable” companies like AOL, Yahoo, and Google because they wanted a direct feed into your PC usage, and since the internet was still newish: we just let them do it. Nowadays, these “reputable” companies still do it, but they’ve integrated the bars so deeply into our lives that we don’t even notice it – see Google’s monopoly on personal data.
#51. “Data mining” in this context refers to the process of extracting game data, typically from ROM/ISO images or source code, and analyzing the bits and bytes (I’m not technical) to understand the mechanical workings of a game or uncover secrets hidden by the developer. If you find a drop rate table for any role-playing computer game, it was likely obtained through some form of data mining, as drop rates are not usually published by developers, especially for older titles.
#52. This is not a fabricated number; it comes directly from the Psycho Wand drop table on pso-world.com. MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games) have long been notorious for employing this type of predatory gameplay design. In the case of Phantasy Star Online, which features only a few stages with some variation in missions, the absurd drop rates serve a very specific purpose: game-time multipliers and, less so, facilitators for in-game trading markets. Additional predatory practices in MMOs include: creating vast game worlds where traversing by foot takes hours while offering very limited fast-travel options (as seen in early Final Fantasy XI, Everquest, and World of Warcraft), requiring significant time investments for leveling up (spanning days or weeks at higher levels; this applies to almost all MMOS), and implementing penalties such as player deleveling upon death (Final Fantasy XI and Everquest, again). This wouldn’t be too bad if not for the fact that the publisher is charging you for the experience. Each example subtly prolongs the time players spend in-game, resulting in more monthly payments to the publisher/developer/whatever. The greatest MMORPGs blind you to the fact that they are stealing your time and money via tedious gameplay mechanics by making you feel totally immersed in a world that’s better than your own. The continuous-money-flow aspect incentivizes developers to build robust worlds and formulate fun ways to keep your attention, but it also incentivizes dirty tricks like: hours-to-get-anywhere, drop-rates-that-statistically-take-decades, years-to-hit-max-level, and deleveling-upon-death.
#53. Per the US Federal Government Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, “If a consumer notifies a debt collector in writing that the consumer refuses to pay a debt or that the consumer wishes the debt collector to cease further communication with the consumer, the debt collector shall not communicate further with the consumer with respect to such debt …” Source.
#54. The QWERTY keyboard, pronounced as KWEHR-tee, stands as the prevailing typewriter and computer keyboard layout utilized in regions employing a Latin-based alphabet. The term “QWERTY” comes from the initial arrangement of letters on the keyboard’s upper row, encompassing the first six characters: QWERTY. If the letters are raised they could – potentially – leave an imprint on one’s cheek if pressed against them for a long enough period of time.
#55. This barely makes sense and was definitely inspired by weird Robyn Hitchcock imagery like “I’m the man with the lightbulb head, I turn myself on in the dark.” The idea is that Merenie tries to sound intimidating like a bumblebee’s deep buzz, but her femininity (like helium) causes her voice to register higher than she would like. Helium changes the sound of your voice because it is much lighter than air and has a different density, so when you speak the sound waves travel through this helium-corrupted space and resonate differently in your vocal tract. There are some dangers associated with sucking helium; the main one is dizziness or passing out due to oxygen deprivation since the helium replaces the oxygen in your lungs.
#56. Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931. It was commonly used in formal documents during the early 2000s, including print, essays, and email. Times New Roman is stoic and cold, akin to receiving a termination letter with all-the-reasons-you-suck listed out in excruciating detail, followed by a “sincerely” at the bottom that you can’t tell if sarcastic or just part of the default-signature template. Calibri largely replaced Times New Roman after its creation by Lucas de Groot in 2007. Calibri possesses a roundness to its structure that exudes a more playful and fun aesthetic; however, this playfulness is a ruse designed to lull you into a sense of comfort before hitting you with some really terrible news, such as you-are-never-allowed-to-see-your-kids-again-and-your-wife-is-suing-you-for-fifty-grand, with a “thanks” right before the lawyer’s name.
#57. “Farming” in this context refers to repeatedly completing the same task in a computer game in order to obtain some sort of beneficial result. This ties into MMORPGs sucking your time away like a chrono demon by requiring you to kill the same monster over and over again so that it will drop a specific item. Phantasy Star Online is one of the most heinous chrono demons in existence.
#58. A “run” is computer gamer lingo for completing a stage a single time. Used commonly in the following context, “let’s do a few more runs of X” or “I’m down for one more run” or “I hate running this mission because the enemies are too annoying.”
#59. Alcohol Sweats happen when the body is dependent on alcohol but has not ingested any for a certain period of time. Depending on the degree of dependency, these sweats can emerge minutes to hours after the last drink. People experiencing this may suffer from dehydration, flushed skin, insomnia, and persistent headaches, even while consuming alcohol. And while a “nasty odor” isn’t a direct byproduct of Alcohol Sweats, it often accompanies this condition if the afflicted is not careful about their hygiene. My old friend from high school suffers from this condition and you can smell him through six walls made of pure lead even after spraying the strongest of odor-fighting aerosols.
#60. Scotch is a brand of tape developed by a company called 3M. It’s not some random name someone came up with for clear, thin tape that you find in offices or schools – it’s a brand name with a trademark and a rights-reserved and everything. I didn’t know this until doing research for this piece.
#61. Star Trek: Enterprise aired from September 26, 2001, to May 13, 2005. It follows the adventures of the crew of the first starship “Enterprise,” commanded by Jonathan Archer. The show has been met with a lukewarm response by the Star Trek community, but I quite enjoyed my time binging it in full nearly ten years ago. The season finale is questionable, however, and divisive among fans.
#62. My personal belief is that nostalgia is some sort of complex Pavlovian response – also known as “classical conditioning” – which is a behavioral procedure in which a biological stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus: a dog drools at food, a bell rings every time the dog sees food, repeat this process, and the dog now drools at the bell because it associates the bell with food. In our story’s example, there was a soft orange glow illuminating the office the first time David played Phantasy Star Online; as such, he insists on that lighting being present every time he plays Phantasy Star Online. This insistence is to replicate the original feeling of playing the game, even though the “original feeling” is long dead, only returning as a shade of its former self; forever fading fast. If David happened to walk into a similar room with a soft orange glow, he would instantly think of Phantasy Star Online; and vice versa: if he played Phantasy Star Online, he would think of the soft orange glow and want it to be present. It’s not quite the same, but it’s similar enough to be you-might-on-to-something material – maybe.
#63. 7-Eleven is a convenience store franchise found all over the United States. The first 7-Eleven popped up in 1927. It’s famous for its human-baby-sized mega-gulp Slurpees and fountain drinks that may or may not cause cardiac arrest upon the final sip; as such, drinking an entire mega-gulp is like playing dice with the fates: alea iacta est. Sometimes the fountain drink machines will mismix the solution or run-out-of-syrup and spit out poison-death-water instead of Sprite or Coke or whatever; this is especially dangerous with Sprite because you can’t tell if it’s poison-death-water until you take a sip; however, if you observe the Sprite pour closely, you’ll notice less bubblies or carbonation, which is usually a decent indicator of poison-death-water (it took years of practice to figure this out). My friend once got a mega-gulp of poison-death-water and, upon taking a sip in the parking lot, immediately threw the cup at the 7-Eleven window. I turned to him like I was looking at Charles Manson, and he said only one word: “Run.” We ran.
#64. In Greek mythology, the Moirai (also known as the Fates) were the personification of destiny. Three sisters: Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, who determined the length of the thread; and Atropos, who cut the thread; birth, life, and death. The Moirai were popularized in Disney’s 1997 film Hercules, where – in addition to cutting strings – they passed around a loose eyeball used to see into the past, present, and future.
#65. Phantasy Star Online features a haptic feedback system in the form of literal in-real-life shaking due to how frustrating the combat system can be. This frustration stems from one single aspect: a single hit will knock down most characters (depending on their DEF stat), and the get-back-up animation takes 3 whole seconds (I counted). While this may not seem like much in text, it feels 100x longer in-game, and it adds up quickly. The rage grows with each knockdown. Mechanically, this is one of the aspects of Phantasy Star Online that I feel most critical of. Sega, for some reason, thought it was appropriate to take the player out of the action for 3 whole seconds – removing control from the player entirely; this is antithetical to game design, especially when it can result in a stun-lock when being surrounded by attacking monsters. Developers can include ways to make games tough without taking control away from the player; I’ve seen it done.
#66. “Popcorn ceiling” is a ceiling with a bumpy or rough surface that looks similar to popcorn or cottage cheese. It’s made by spraying a mixture of paint and tiny particles of polystyrene onto the ceiling, and if the home was built prior to 1979, it was likely mixed with asbestos, which can cause mesothelioma and lung cancer. Popcorn ceilings were originally favored between the ‘80s to early 2000s because they covered up flaws and made the room quieter; however, they have since fallen out of fashion. The first thing most modern homeowners do when they buy an older home nowadays is say, “We have to get rid of the popcorn ceiling.”
#67. In actuality, the Psycho Wand would drop as a ???-Rod that would then need to be appraised by the TECHER in the Pioneer 2 shopping center, but this entire process would be anticlimactic to the story, so I made the executive decision to manipulate the truth a bit here, and I’m not ashamed of doing so. This is when the sunglasses lower from the top of the screen and land on my face and the words “deal with it” flash at the bottom.
#68. If you grew up in the ‘90s or early 2000s, you likely know who Lisa Frank is. Her artwork was all over kids’ lunch boxes, trapper keepers, and binders during that period. Her artwork typically features animals swimming in seas of rainbows or floating through the clouds of what-has-to-be alien planets. It’s all very psychedelic. What you may not know, however, is that Lisa Frank may or may not make the artwork herself; as it’s all branded “Lisa Frank Incorporated,” and Lisa Frank herself is never specifically cited as the artist. Lisa Frank is a businesswoman, first and foremost, and is mysterious and secretive and has done only a few interviews, and in at least one video interview (with Urban Outfitters in 2012 per Wikipedia), she requested to have her face blurred out. This mysteriousness is likely driven by a desire to stay out of the public eye, which is a wise decision – but it makes her all-the-more interesting.
#69. PowerPoint (or: “Microsoft PowerPoint”) is a presentation-creation program originally created for Macintosh computers but later purchased for $14 million by Microsoft in 1987. PowerPoint originally utilized an intuitive UI that allowed users to create “slide-based” presentations intended to be shared on a large screen. PowerPoint was known for its ridiculous “WordArt” that utilized Lisa Frank-like coloring, polygonal word shapes, odd shadowing, and super-deformed lettering; in later versions, you could apply animation to certain presentation elements, such as: zooming, slide-ins, twirl-ins, fade-ins, and much more. PowerPoint has become increasingly more difficult with the continued addition of new features that no one asked for and is a great modern example of “feature bloat”; regardless of all that, PowerPoint has monopolized the presentation-tool market and continues to be the #1 tool used in the corporate world. Nowadays, PowerPoint presentations (also known as “decks” in corporate hell) serve as a great way to pretend-like-you-really-know-what-you’re-doing when you’re really just wasting everyone’s time with stuff that no one cares about; these presentations are then emailed to the meeting audience as an attachment with a brief recap in the body of the email; the PowerPoint is then saved in some folder within a folder and subsequently never opened, and then forgotten about; and in this way, PowerPoint decks are to corporate goons as Pokemon cards are to the annoying rich kid that you knew in middle school.
#70. Born May 31, 1930; starring in over 60 films; Clint Eastwood often played characters who would walk slowly into tense situations – usually saloons – and quickdraw everyone in the place at the first sign of danger. He was known for his rugged stoicism, gruff manner of speaking, chiseled jaw, and dirt-handsome face. He usually portrayed anti-heroes or ex-bad-guys forced back into a life of violence due to some heinous event outside of his own control. “I don’t kill people no more – OK, I’ll do it again just this once.” Eastwood is best known for his roles in Western films, particularly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), in which he wore his infinitely-copied outfit: a vest covered in a brown poncho tossed over his shoulder and a brown cowboy hat. He popularized the cultural meme of “Go ahead, make my day,” which is uttered by people of all ages even today.
#71. The Sega helpline used music from Echo the Dolphin as their hold music back in the ‘90s and early 2000s. I know this because I was a kid who frequently called the Sega helpline back then. The specific track used was “The Marble Sea” from Ecco the Dolphin Sega CD. The track can be found here. This song is what I envisioned playing in the ambiance during the rest of this chapter, so if you’re able to play it while reading: please do – starting now. Play it on a faint, low hum so that it’s not overbearing; so that it’s just kinda there in the background, setting the mood. (A side note, the 1-800-SEGA-ROX thing was made up, I don’t remember the actual number and I couldn’t find it online.)
#72. The official North American Phantasy Star Online Dreamcast servers were shut down on September 30, 2003. Note that the Dreamcast was discontinued roughly two years earlier on March 31, 2001. This means new bytes for PSO were being written for 913 days after the final Dreamcast was manufactured.
(Originally published on 4/28/2024)