Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
“It’s so nice, Ellie bringing friends over. She never brings anyone over, always in her room tinkering with something, head wrapped in a headset, sometimes on the holotable or clacking away on one of those old letter boards—the key thingies, whatever you call them—old stuff.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
At the core of all things—planets and stars, moons and meteorites, supernovae and comet tails, pulsars and nebulae, flesh and stone, decayed wood and rusted metal, and those once-things long turned to dust; even in always and neverwas, in awareness and sleep, in rainbows and rainclouds too—there is magic; the 183rd element: hecatinium.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
A mass of people, resembling a legion of corpses absorbing each other then spitting each other out only to absorb each other again, blobbed before a dimly lit stage of swirling vapors. Faint colors spotlighted the crowd in a pattern indistinguishable from random. People of all sorts: some in bright neon clothing with afros and mohawks both faux and spiked, some with undercuts and faded stripes, some with pieces of metal grafted into their skulls and eyes made entirely of machine parts, others pristine like mod royalty in dapper suits and flowing dresses, all the genders and more, some wearing holographic projections—cats, reptiles, koalas, a red mouse, little green men, pandas, and even a fox or two, some on leashes held by other holo animal people—all screaming and shouting and yelling and pushing each other around. Weightless and very glowy letters of pure energy floated above the masses, spelling “THE IDYLLIC GARDEN.” The whole place smelled arterial: sweatshop-esque, synthetic wine, slime, grime; some were having a good time, others were not; the walls of the place randomly illuminated to reveal those in the fetal position wearing thick headsets, some rocking back and forth, some just splayed out drooling. Truly there were all kinds.
An uncanny voice, both comical and intimidating, a few octaves too high, blasted on the loudspeaker:
“Introducing The Peggy Suicides!”
The announcement controlled the chaos for a moment. There was a brief round of hesitant, muted clapping and some faint cheering as a shadow, obscured by great veils of smog, drifted onto the stage. The shadow was tall, spindle-shanked; they sauntered through smoke to a bent stand, then sensually wrapped their arms around it while hanging over the bend like a nymph starting a pole dance; the shadow’s hair fell over their silhouetted chin before being flipped away with some grace. The shade’s foot started tapping, and after a few taps, the shade spoke; the voice was neither deep nor high, neither feminine nor masculine—somewhere in between.
“All you listless souls out there tonight, high on pop and snowcrash—creating nothing yet complaining about everything; watching holos, jacking in, being here, injecting hecatonic pop straight into your veins to tear your troubles in twain; all you lost souls with sockets all over your bodies, filled up with credit content only to be sucked dry; waxed nostalgic; filled up again at a premium; repeat infinity.” The shade twirled around the mic stand, wrapped one leg around the pole, leaned far back all contortionist-like, mic to mouth nearly making out. “Welcome to the factory farm, I am your host: another nameless cow. We are all Old Earth cattle, cheap product, cogs in the machine of our own ruin.” An esoteric hand gesture: arms like a gentle breeze, fingers formed the letter L atop the forehead. “They want us to be losers, and we dance to the beat of their drum like good little losers. Snowcrash, The Idyllic Garden, Neutron Wave, Stacie Goes to Avalon, that synthetic nicotine you’re sucking down: you think it’s anarchy, but who do you think is supplying?” The shade rooted one foot on the base of the mic stand then leaned themselves over the side of the stage; their shadowed face poking through a light blue field that appeared upon contact. “Your reverie is a nightmare in disguise. It’s time to wake up. Kill your nightmare self. You are better than you. We are The Peggy Suicides, and we are about to play some real wake-up music for all you torpid animals.” The crowd groaned collectively, someone was chanting an ancient curse, but the shade continued unfettered: “After you hear our music, I want you to become inspired: write a song of your own, draw a picture, paint an Old Earth sunset, and then I never want to see you here again. You are better than you: pulverize your presumptive self.”
The shadow's ramble stopped, and with it, so did the crowd’s cheering; in fact, the cheering had stopped much earlier, dying down even before the “torpid animals” bit killed it completely, replaced with a malaised mixture of frustration, confusion, some violence, audible groans, some heinous screams; someone threw a glass real hard and it shattered just inches away from the shadow. If the shadow flinched, no one could tell; they only hunched over and scanned the masses as if measuring the crowd’s collective soul.
Someone yelled, “Like you’re any better! Just play some damn music!”
As if on cue, the shadow lifted their arm, and a twilight guitar materialized in their hand; as the instrument appeared, so did four other shades, rising like zombies from the grave—two ax-wielders, one flutist, one drummer—completing a reverse five-point star with the first shadow as the tip near the edge of the stage.
There was an anticipatory pause before the loud crack of a snare drum killed the silence; a bass drum started kicking silence’s dead body, deep alternating bass notes like bombs going off underwater played over silence’s funeral procession, quavering guitar chords with fluttering flute mixed into a wall of sound that washed over silence’s grave like waves of heartache and torment and longing and regret. The music was steeped in deep purple bruising and cool blue asphyxiation.
As the vortex of noise churned, the shadow’s fluid voice fuzzed as they practically ate the microphone: “This one's called Death’s Little Brother Sleep Died Dreaming and Woke Up on Fire Screaming.”
The crowd groaned, roared, and cursed their ancient curses; they were disinterested in guitar music, and they made this very apparent. But the band seemed acutely aware of this, only playing harder as if trying to stoke the flames of hell. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Retro garbage! Play some ‘tonic!” But the request was ignored, and the band only added three more bars to the noisy funeral dirge out of spite. When the bars of spite ended, the shadow threw their hand up while simultaneously snapping their fingers; light erupted onto the stage: sharp oranges and violent reds awoke on fire, screaming.
The light revealed a protean youth behind the shadow: their skin both light and dark at once; baggy tan pants hung from their waist, tight fishnets clung to their slender yet curvy body; a single gloved hand glew blue while playing a holographic hollow body; posing seductively yet oozing unapproachable causticity; a mythic presence more nymph than satyr, yet somehow both; fine hair of muddy gold swirling in rhythm and time; a sculpted face neither ugly nor beautiful but something else entirely; an undead presence more vampire than zombie, yet somehow both; sunken eyes of slightly differing shape and dilation; an energy both bubbly and sullen, both wise and foolish; an uncategorical.
The other four shadows were revealed to be holos of moving color: pre-programmed projection people.
With another snap of the fingers, the tempo shifted from mellow to manic; earthquakes of tremolo billowed from the nightclub speakers; the harsh noise moshed the druggy clouds like fluffy pillows engaged in cellular fusion; thin pillars of electric-laser light impaled the clouds; colors flashed psychedelic in cumulus bellies. Everything was in time with the beat. The once-gray clouds were now a storm of rainbows, and that storm grew something fierce over the heads of some hundred people stirring in what could have been a mosh pit if not for the look of aggravation upon their collective countenance. The crowd was becoming unruly, mirroring the music’s abrasiveness but none of its beauty.
A barely noticeable light blue barrier prevented the angry mob from climbing onto the stage, but the barrier made an exception for thrown items by design—pop stars love their offerings—which allowed one hollowed antifan to hurl a dagger at the band’s nymph-satyr frontperson, nicking the star’s face and spilling first blood onto the stage. This brought the music to a halt and caused some lumbering human-shaped automatons to usher through the crowd, dragging people—both corporeal and holographic—into dimly lit corners of the nightclub, never to be seen again.
Amplified laughter rang out. The projection people had vanished, leaving only the former shadow on their knees, holding their bloody face in one hand and the mic to their mouth with the other. The artist’s giggling mania ushered silence through the crowd; those remaining were anticipating something grand. The laughter stopped long enough for the musician to speak, “I, Jules, hereby submit to the will of the people—the death of the artist!”
The spectacle caught the attention of an umbral-haired young man sitting at a bar overlooking the stage. Holos surrounded him, floating in the air and playing upon the walls, advertising everything imaginable; some were interactive, others assertive, many both. The young man swiveled in his hover stool to watch the scene unfold below him; he took a sip of pale-colored liquid from a tall glass imprinted with dual holo A’s that moved as if swimming in the liquid itself. A picture of a cat’s face, winking occasionally, danced upon the glass before morphing into an attractive woman with an alluring sway to her hips, striking C’s billowing out from her body; this did not distract the young man, whose attention remained on the stage, and as he peered down at the scene below, a red holo mouse peered back at him, but he paid no mind to this, focused only on the ambiguous musician.
Jules dropped the mic, which echoed a loud crackling thud through the club; they then grabbed the thrown dagger and stood up all poised heroic. They looked out across the crowd of punkers, poppers, princes, princesses, vegetables, and holos, then fixed their gaze on the young man far up in the bar, who was gazing back, as if familiar. The young man was shaking his head at Jules as if to say, “Whatever you're thinking—don't,” in extrasensory.
Jules grinned a manic grin, then yelled, “Infamy, infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” and—crowd gasping in collective—swung the dagger hard into their own creamy torso. Blood geysered from their side like a clogged hose that had accumulated way too much pressure; they immediately crumpled, one hand still clasped on the hilt of the dagger, wiggling, writhing, just freaking out bleeding in a pool all their own.
The protective barrier lowered as lumbering automatons approached the stage. Those in the crowd who were leaving returned to witness the spectacle; those who were groaning were now cheering and chanting:
“Peggy Suicide! Peggy Suicide! Peggy Suicide!” et cetera.
Back at the bar, the young man coolly placed his glass down and eyerolled a mumble of, “You’ve gone too far this time.” He sat up and removed a rectangular device from his long black coat—the device was smooth and white, emblazoned with a red cross that formed the T for TatNos, with viridescent glass covering a portion. He then waved away a floating advertisement for HypnoGoggles—the only official goggles of the HyperNet—and hurriedly slid his way down a spiral staircase accented with strips of neon. “Sorry, gotta get through,” he said as he narrowly avoided someone in red holo like that of a cartoon mouse. But the mouse said nothing; it only turned its head to follow the young man’s movement, its eyes like two huge black dots, its smile cartoon-like in its unchanging permanence.
Jules was wiggling and writhing still, now all surrounded by tall automatons that kept the crowd from storming the stage. The automatons were faceless machines modeled in human form, with tan silicone stretched over their metal casing to give them that fleshy-human look, nearly uncanny on purpose so that Complexers were less inclined to pay attention to them—out of sight, out of mind. A single A-shaped light shone through their fake-flesh faces; colored red, white, or blue for danger, contained, and all's-good, respectively. Their prime directive: protect and serve through apprehension first, physical violence second, and deadly force only if necessary; this frequently required them to make calculated trolley-problem decisions that were as cold as the hecatinium-infused metal they were made from—earning them the tongue-in-cheek nickname “Moral Agents” by Complexers all across Thessaly.
With the protective field lowered, the young man pushed through the gawking crowd and vaulted himself onto the stage, the skirt of his long black coat swirling like a cape out of a comic book. He was holding the same device from before, dangling from a cloth handle. But before he could reach Jules, he was stopped by the outstretched hand of a Moral Agent. The automaton spoke in a voice that sounded like a hyper-intelligent parrot imitating a human but stressing all the wrong syllables, white A flashing in time with its janky voice: “Please Stand Back. Pending Response From Complex 42 MedCo. Subject’s Vitals Indicate an 85% Chance Of Survival; Favorable Odds Allow For Protective Lethal Force On—” the thing twitched its faux-fleshy face, “—One Point Five Individuals.”
The young man raised a single eyebrow at the robot, then dug his free hand deep inside his coat and pulled out a black card with a liquid crystal display that was roughly the size of his palm. He held the card up to the Moral Agent’s face; the automaton spoke in jank once more, reading from the card’s display:
“Autolycus Grayson M.D., Age 27. Graduate of The Polytechnic of Hippocrates. Highest Honors. Excelled in Athletics, Chemistry, Subterfuge, Gluteal Augmentation. Employer: TatNos Heavy Industries, MedCo Division. Occupation: Medical Doctor, Board-Certified Diagnostician, Double Specialty of Infectious Fecal Diseases and Gastroenterology. Residence: Complex 42, Floor 3, 578D. No Criminal Record. No Fines. Whitelisted. Also Very Handsome.”
“You May Pass, Autolycus Grayson.” The group of automatons sidestepped in unison to allow for an opening in their shield wall, white A’s all aglow. The young man snapped back with acerbic twist, “That’s Doctor Autolycus Grayson, thank you.” He then spun the identification card between his fingers before sliding it back into one of his coat’s many interior pockets.
Doctor Grayson approached the injured artist, whose fishnet-exposed skin was now stained light red from all the blood rolling. “Jules, try to stay still,” the Doctor said as he lifted the white device and started tapping some buttons, little bleeps and bloops sounding off as he did so. Jules stopped squirming and turned just enough to look at Doctor Grayson from the corner of their dark blue eyes; any indication of pain vanished. They both exchanged familiar looks.
“Oh—Gray! My MedCo knight in shining armor,” Jules said as they turned over completely, exposing their checkered black fishnet belly, still holding the dagger tight into their side. “I didn’t know you were a butt doctor also!” Jules’ tone was characteristically agender but also silly-serious and nearly impossible to read. “My cheeks are fine, I think. But you can inspect them if you want.”
“You know, I can never tell when you’re being serious,” Gray spoke in a laid-back baritone, still fiddling with the buttons on the white device. “I can never figure this thing out.” The device suddenly chimed then jingled. “Ah, there we go. Take the dagger out as quickly as possible, then try to be still. This might sting a little.”
Jules adjusted themselves then pointed at their own head, “It’s all psychic up there, not physical.”
Gray snapped back, “Just because you can’t feel pain doesn’t mean you can’t die. Now be still.” He then got down on one knee, leaning over Jules, examining the artist’s wound. “I think you hit a vital organ this time—there’s more blood than usual—maybe your colon?” He vocalized the sound of a thought bubble popping. “That’s probably why you can’t get up.” He paused for another moment, then spoke in a tone no longer smooth but somber, “Were you actually trying to kill yourself this time?”
Jules ignored Gray’s comment, closing their eyes instead, composing themselves. Then: blade flash. The dagger yanked from its fleshy sheath; blood quickly jetted from the wound, then just as quickly started seeping into pools. Jules’ speech slurred, “Doctor Autolycus. I appear to be bleeding.” A cutesy smile formed on the artist’s full lips before their head started to drift back and forth as their eyes blinked independently of each other, “I feel kinda sexy, Doctor. Do I look sexy right now? Did the crowd go wild? Do they love me? Do you love me? We should get married. I’ll lick the envelopes; do they still do envelopes? I would be a good husband. Or wife. Or whatever you want. Is it getting darker in here?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just try to stay still.” Gray groaned dubiously as he bleeped and blooped the device one last time.
Jules followed orders by involuntarily slipping out of consciousness; this put a pep in Gray’s figurative step, who hurriedly pulled the soggy fishnets over Jules’ belly button, exposing the gash in full, then pointed the viridescent glass of the device at the wound from a short distance away. He held a button down on the device, causing the thing to emit a low hum as it pulsed emerald light over the gash. Gray watched as a necromantic ritual timelapsed before his eyes: bewitched strips of flesh birthed like worms from muddy plasma then morphed angelhair and threaded themselves; blood bubbled, clumped, clotted, formed dark reds and mucus yellows and viscous whites before browning hard and swirling into a quicksand of fully healed—albeit faintly scarred—flesh.
When the operation was finished, the medical unit beeped rapidly. Gray observed a thin display on the device, which flashed the text HECATINIUM CRYSTAL DEPLETED. The beeping persisted until he flicked a small switch on the side of the device; a panel opened and discharged a foggy gray crystal the size of Gray’s pinky finger. He pocketed the inert crystal, slipped the medical unit back into his coat, then cursed under his breath. “You owe me, if you’re not dead for real this time.”
Moments passed before Jules opened their big ocean eyes; a few more and they were able to sit upright, cross-legged and painless. They observed the circle of automatons around them with an expression of youthful wonder made even more youthful by their cheeks all rosy with dried blood. Then, Jules’ face contorted into an exaggerated clown frown. “Is this an intervention? I promise I won’t do it again.” Jules paused, lifting a finger to their mouth and biting down softly. “Actually, I can’t promise that. But I can promise that I will try not to do it again!”
The automatons turned in sync as if responding to the artist’s joke, but they did not find it funny: on the contrary, their white A’s turned red, and one stepped forward, speaking in jank: “Code Violation 9982: A Complexer Shall Not Attempt Suicide Without Proper Written Approval From A Licensed Medical Doctor.”
“Wait, wait.” Gray approached the Moral Agent, holding up the same identification card from before. “Did you forget already?” The automaton paused, cocked its head as if processing information, then janked once more, “This Is Not A Suicide Approval Letter.” Its red A blinking furiously.
Gray squirmed, turned his back to the automaton, and removed a small pen-shaped object from his coat. The pen made a sharp whirring noise when fiddled with, and he pointed it at the identification card; after a few whirring seconds, he put the pen back into his coat. Gray then faced the Moral Agent with an exaggerated, child-like smile on his face, card outstretched. “How about now?”
After a quick scan of the identification card, the Moral Agent’s light shifted from red to blue. “Very Well. We Thank You For Your Participation In This Altercation. You Are Both Dismissed Without Charges.”
The group of Moral Agents dispersed, but one stayed behind; it held out its hand, and from its palm, a holo appeared, displaying a list of options numbered one through ten. The automaton provided context from behind the glow, “Please Let Us Know How We Did Today! On A Scale Of One To Ten, With Ten Being The Most Ethical And One Being The Least Ethical. Additionally, If You Have Feedback, Please Leave A Voice Recording With The Details After The Survey Has Ended. Remember: We Are Here To Protect And Serve, And We Cannot Serve Ethically Without Your Feedback!”
Gray responded in a dry tone, “Skip.” This caused the holo to flicker out, and the final automaton followed in the footsteps of its metal colleagues, back to the dark recesses of the nightclub—out of sight, out of mind; watching, waiting.
Gray turned to Jules, who was now sitting cross-legged in their own goopy blood pool, meditating with their eyes closed. The young man bent over, tapped Jules on the shoulder then helped them to their feet. “I’m glad you’re OK, but can we stop doing this? You also owe me an H Crystal.” The two exchanged competing glances before Gray added, “C’mon, let’s get out of here and grab a drink before those autos figure out my creds were fake.” The pair exited stage left as the lights went down and the fog came out and another act was gearing up to take the stage.
The nightclub crowd was as quick to anger as they were to forget, because when Jules and Gray moved through the masses, only a few made passing jeers at Jules, who only smiled real wide and waved at anyone who gave them the slightest bit of attention, even negative attention. It was impossible for an onlooker to tell if Jules’ aloofness was contrived or earnest; they even wandered off to a few people who made passes at them, conversing merrily under a cacophony of cheers as the next act was being announced—”Next up: Draconic Tonic!“—and Gray had to grab Jules by the wrist to get them back on track—many times—as if chaperoning a very tall child.
As the two made it to the spiral staircase leading to the bar, a young woman stopped them; she was all draped in shadows and shade, wrapped in belts and buckles and chains, and her hair was dark purple flames. “Jules, you changed my life tonight. When you stabbed yourself up there—oh my god—I could see the passion pouring out of your body; others saw blood, but I only saw stardust and rainbows. It makes me so mad that people are trying to shame and kill artists—throwing knives even—what is wrong with people these days? You care so much that you’re willing to die for your art.” She took both of Jules's hands in her own and stared deep into their weird wide eyes. “You won’t see me here again until I’m up there—” She pointed back at the stage, “—performing as a true artist.”
Jules didn’t need to smile to show that they were radiating with love and affirmation; they moved in and embraced the young woman, who embraced them back. A few others joined, creating a group hug of sorts. Some of the participants were even dressed in holo suits, and one of these hollowed people appeared as a bright red mouse, all rounded, chubby, smooth, and bipedal, with an unsettling smile painted across their face, which was made of three large circles like the famous mouse from those Old Earth cartoons. The mouse hugged for a moment, then stepped back and observed, motionless.
Gray noticed the mouse, thought the mouse odd, as if he had seen the mouse before, but quickly forgot when someone in the hugbox turned on a bright white light, which lit up the collective embrace like a hot white star; this caused Gray to cover his eyes with his wrist, and when he brought his wrist down, the mouse was gone.
The hug stopped. Those few people who remained started asking for Jules’ autograph; thus, Jules started twirling fingers through holo papers projected from people's palms, signing away with glee. Gray, leaning on the railing nearby, trying to hold back the biggest eye roll of his life, shouted, “Jules! C’mon, I don’t have all night.” And this prompted the artist into one last group hug before following Gray up the spiral staircase.
Before they vanished into the neon stairwell, the purple-haired fan who started all the hugging shouted up at the artist, “Jules! My name is Sue! Don’t forget about me! Sue!”
Gray and Jules sat at the bar: Gray on a hover stool, Jules cross-legged on the countertop. The only light in the place came from the flashing of mounted screens and the ocean of holos all around them. Plasma marquees listed every synthetic beverage known to humankind. There was only a small crowd, as the majority of the patrons left to see the next musical act. There was no bartender, only an interactive menu per seat that could be toggled on or off; patrons' selections were generated and served through square panels that opened up to translucent glasses presented on small drink elevators which used a complex system of conveyor belts and pulleys underneath the gunmetal bar exterior.
Four automatons shadowed each corner of the room; they stood statuesque, analyzing the awkward silence between the two youths sitting at the bar.
“We need to talk about your stupid bullshit.” Gray broke the silence, his typical wry tone: awry. His elbow was on the bartop, thumb on his chin, index and middle on his cheek, propping his head up as he peered down into a mug of fuzzy pale bubbles that morphed into caricatures of cats that fizzed and popped one by one, some managing to splash dots of liquid onto his face. “It’s one thing to do the whole performance artist bit—maybe even some minor self-harm—but you took it way too far this time. I used most of an H Crystal patching that wound; those things cost a small fortune, you know.” He paused, dug the faded crystal out of his coat, glinted it at Jules, put it back. “We aren’t making any credits doing this—in fact, we’re losing credits. We’re already way behind on dues. I don’t want to live down there in the Great Latrines again.”
Jules was twirling a strand of blonde hair around their fingers between picking dried blood from their cheek. “I don’t want to make credits with my music.” Pouting.
“Obviously.” Gray’s lips contorted and scrunched, revealing the aggravation he was trying so hard to conceal.
Faded electronic music pulsed in the background; syncopated buzz, bolts of blue bass drops, unforeseen shifts in tempo and time.
Gray peered down at the band on stage, which was really just a single holo; a four-armed dragon with massive wings miming four keyboards. “Why can’t you make music like this?”
Jules’ twirling stopped; without moving their head, their asymmetrical eyes shifted to Gray; a radical side-eye being given. “Because it's not real.”
“Sure it’s real. It sounds like music, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds like music, but it’s not real.”
“Yeah, you said that—but, how is it not real?”
“There’s no artistry behind the sound.”
Gray took another sip of pale; swished, swallowed. “But it sounds alright, isn’t that all that matters?”
“No.”
“Look: you can’t just say no, that’s not how argumentation works.”
Jules shifted, observed the stage below for a moment, then turned lotus on the countertop to fully face their interlocutor, hair fell all over their face but otherwise fully engaged.
Gray continued, “I bet that dragon doesn’t have knives thrown at them—that’s a plus.” He gestured toward the crowd below; masses of flesh and holo bounced and swayed, their cheers echoing. “See? They’re even cheering. Maybe if you didn’t call them all ‘torpid animals,’ they’d cheer for you too, and then we’d have enough money to afford our place.”
“The torpid piece was part of the poetry.” Jules whispered with understated defiance.
“Yeah, sure. But I still don’t get how Draconic Tonic’s music isn’t real.”
“Music, like all forms of art, is not only about the finished product, but also the person and the intent behind it. The thing down there is algorithmically-generated, presenting itself as a dragon, performing an algorithmically-generated series of notes. The programmer is asleep somewhere on floor twelve. It’s music in label only—but really, it’s just noise, a distraction. I can’t make music like that because that’s not music. It’s impossible. There’s nothing to make.”
“But didn’t someone intend to make the program and run the algorithms? I mean, someone did make that big dragon and the music, they just didn’t put much effort into it, right? It’s playing notes and stuff; that’s gotta be music by definition.”
“Not by my definition.”
Gray laughed dismissively, tossing his shaggy dark bangs out of his likewise eyes. “Well I bet they make credits, at least.”
“That’s all they make, or care about.”
“Why does that even matter? Who cares if they’re only in it for the credits.”
Jules tapped the holo pad on the countertop with swirly fingers, and a glass of water appeared from a sliding panel. A small display nearby showed the text 2C, then faded. The water was gone in one mighty Adam’s apple-less gulp.
Gray was tapping his cheek with his index finger as he watched the otherworldly musician, a fatigued look on his face. “Well—why does it matter? The credits thing.”
Jules ran long hands through long hair and took a long breath in what amounted to one long pause for one long think, then answered, “When you make art for credits, you compromise and corrupt. The art becomes more about the credits than the art itself.”
“What if the point is to make credits?”
Jules hid a sigh poorly. “No one really makes anything for credits. The credits are a proxy for something else: rent, vitamins, power, holo games, dying mothers, HyperNet access, H Crystals, a new pair of faux-leather pants, maybe an Auto-Cat or two or three or four.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Credits manipulate. Say there is an artist: a pixel artist, but they only make pixel paintings for credits. One day, they complete a pixel painting of a sunrise; they take that painting to the local art store, but the owner says they only buy nighttime pixel paintings, not sunrises. So the owner asks the painter to paint a nighttime scene—the painter hates nighttime scenes but paints one anyway to make some credits.”
“OK—what’s the problem with that? I don’t get it.”
“The problem is: when does it stop? Their motivations—their creations—are subject to the whimsy of those with credits, not their own whimsy. In a way, they’re not even motivated by credits; they’re motivated by other people with credits. Think, what if the buyer asked the painter to paint forgeries? Would the painter do it? What if the buyer didn’t want paintings at all, but instead asked the artist to kill competing art-store owners? Who knows what the painter would be willing to do. The painter who is only motivated by credits will do anything for credits because credits are more important than painting.” Jules paused for a quick think. “And credits corrupt; at first, the corruption is small, but after a while, you will start to wonder to yourself, ‘Why am I a dragon with four arms and big wings pretending to play keyboards? What sort of monster have I become?’ and you will weep; you will take face in palms and weep; you will cry tears of longing for paradise lost; innocence now all corrupted by credits, unrecognizable, deformed, grotesque, monstrous—” Jules paused, fiddling with a gold hoop dangling from their right ear; they flicked the earring and it chimed, “—there are more adjectives I could use, I think.”
Gray’s hand lay in his busy mess of hair as his elbow propped his head up on the bartop, his eyes half-closed until Jules finished rambling. “You’re just being ridiculous. Credits make the world turn; that’s just a fact of life. And besides, none of that—”
Jules hopped off the countertop, then pranced into a dark corner, then they were gone.
“—explains how the music’s not real.”
Gray sighed a familiar sigh. He took a sip from his glass, leaned his head back, then stretched his arms out. As he rotated his head to stretch his neck, bright red consumed the corner of his eye. He turned to face the red glow, and that’s when he saw it: the mouse; the same mouse from the crowd, from the stairwell, from the hugbox. It was smiling the same way still.
The mouse’s wide grin took up half its face, its black-circle eyes lensed gravitational, and its red glow was condensed like a blinding nova, as if whoever was wearing the thing had turned up the brightness tenfold on purpose. It just stood there. Silent. Towering. Peering down on the dark-haired youth as if the predator had finally caught up with some helpless prey.
“Yeah?” Gray said, nonchalant.
The mouse said nothing.
“Are you one of Jules’ weird fans? They’re not here.”
Silence.
“They left, or something. I don’t know. I can take a message, though, if you—”
Something felt off. Gray’s eyes shifted around the room. He noticed that the Moral Agents were all white-watching while the rest of the patrons had cleared out. He was alone with the mouse. He became nervous and started to ramble as he slyly slid a hand into his coat. “Are you from the Great Latrine? Because I don’t live down there anymore. I’m clean, you know; the sewers are beneath me. I’m moving on up in the world now. Maybe Marcus sent you? I don’t owe Marcus anything—if he said something, he’s mistaken. Marcus and I are cool; I even gave him my spot down there before I moved. I can clear up any confusion, too. I have the transfer papers and—”
The mouse’s claws flashed, grabbing Gray by the throat; it was a light squeeze, but enough to choke him out. Gray’s eyes widened, his jaw tensed, and the veins in his neck and face bulged. He lifted his own hands to the mouse’s, digging his fingers into the small space between the thing’s red mitts, trying to pull the big hands off his throat between raspy, strained gurgles; spittle sprayed, sprinkled.
“AUtoLYcUS gRAySon: The WOLF iTSElf. We HaVe REaCheD Out MANY TiMEs. YoU Don’T JuSt STOp woRKInG fOR thE conSOrtiUM. wE mADE yOU. yOU OWE ThE ConsORTium yOuR lIfE. yoU knOw tHiS; YeT yoU IgNoRe us. YOuR DEbt ComPOuNds. PErfORM. pAy. pERisH. giVE yOUR ANsWEr Now: pERFoRM; PAy; PERish. thE CHoIcE iS yoURS.”
The mouse’s voice was modulating, high-pitched, electronic, shrill.
Gray violently struggled off the stool to his feet, shaking the best he could to get the mouse to loosen its grip, but it was all in vain; the mouse’s grip was tighter now, allowing only some syllables through.
“G—” Gray rasped; the mouse’s grip tightened.
“Ga—” Gray gurgled; tighter now.
“Gac—” Gray croaked, his face trembling, skin rippling, eyes bulging.
The mouse’s grip was so tight now that Gray lost his hold on the mouse’s hands. The mouse then lifted the young man straight into the air by the throat, its unnerving smile unchanged. Gray’s gurgling stopped, and he made no sound as he kicked his legs hopelessly; then his vision went dark, and he went limp, all his limbs flailing like happy worms as the mouse shook him violently. Electronic music lightly pulsed in the background, as if in time with the thrashing.
“YOU HaVE MADE yOUr CHoiCE. YOU wILL BEcOME FUEL fOR thE COmpLEX’S EnErGY gEnERaToR, NO bETTER ThAN thE hUMAn wASTE BURNED TO PoWER OUR HoLO tAbLES. bY thE AuTHorITY oF tHE cALLiSTo CONSOrTium, I sENTENCE thEE tO—”
Suddenly, the mouse’s holo turned wireframe, flickered a few times, then vanished, revealing an older man: muscular and bald with a burly white mustache that sank into handlebars; he was wearing a faded green jacket over a black top, baggy cargo pants. The man’s pudgy face flushed red, eyes wide with shock, an almost comical expression as he realized that his disguise was compromised. He dropped Gray and turned around as if to run, only to be met with the sight of one even taller than himself: Jules.
Jules was there, a holo advertisement of a white bunny waving playing cards lit their eldritch figure, revealing all their alien features now pristine and bloodless, washed. Their right hand was outstretched in a poking gesture, a curious twist to their lips as if they had just poked something they were not supposed to and were very surprised by the results.
Jules spoke pontifical. “I thought to myself: what does this button do? Mouse died; then: mustache person appeared.”
Gray was on his knees; one hand on the floor, the other nursing his purple neck; gasping like he had never gasped before.
“Now that we know about mustache person, you surely can’t let us live or whatever, right?” Jules said all aloof.
“Precisely!” yelled the mustache man, his voice now very human, as he launched himself at Jules; but the lanky musician only slipped to the side, as if by accident, causing the man to tumble into a nearby hover stool. Jules then observed the bunny holos floating around them, reaching out to poke one, but before they could, the man was back up and launched a mighty punch at Jules’ face, only for Jules’ outstretched bunny-poking arm to absorb the force of the blow entirely. Jules shook out their hand then snapped back with an annoyed glance—“I wanted to touch the bunny!”—and then pushed the man back with both arms; the push was stronger than the man expected, causing him to stumble backwards before regaining balance, but by then Jules had stepped one foot behind the other for momentum and power and then launched a powerful sidekick; the kick whooshed in tandem with Jules’ poofy pants, producing a loud crack upon connecting with the mouse man’s jaw, launching him backwards into the bar, all crumpled over with jaw askew.
Gray had managed to stand himself up, leaning against the bar, catching his breath, digging through his pockets while watching the scene intently; the room all illuminated by colors random and flashing and holo, the electronic music now breakbeat and manic.
The former mouse stood up. “You know—you’re more competent than you seem. If I had to guess, I would say you’ve had formal training.” He wiped blood from his lip, then cracked his own jaw back into place. “But you messed up, freak.” And as if in a single motion, the man slid a long-barreled handgun out of his jacket, pointed it at Jules, then pulled the trigger; there was a high-pitched pew followed by a crisp red bolt that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
The ceiling clanged, sizzed; Gray had seized the man’s arm, forcing the aim of the barrel away from Jules. “You really should stop talking so much; you could have killed us like twice now,” Gray said, sounding as if he was back to his old self as he wrestled for the gun, the barrel now puffing light red vapor. Jules also grabbed the man, but the man was much stronger than both of them combined and managed to shake them off; as he shook them off, he elegantly grabbed Jules by their long hair, twirled them around into an armbar headlock, kicked their legs in to force them to their knees, and then pushed the barrel of the gun into their head, twisting it hard.
“It’s your freak friend here or you, Wolf.” The man stared at Gray with a stoic confidence that was only undermined by labored breathing. “Perform, pay, or perish. The choice is yours.” He twisted the barrel even harder now. “Don’t think I won’t do it. The Moral Agents don’t care what happens here. This is our jurisdiction now.”
Gray’s eyes narrowed at the man, whose eyes narrowed in turn. The electronic music had reached a downtempo section as a monotonous sine wave evened out into what sounded like a test tone.
Gray broke the silence, his tone lacking typical sarcasm. “Go ahead then: kill them. They want to die—didn’t you see the performance?”
An uptempo drum loop slowly faded in over the test tone as the man’s face contorted into a twisted grimace. “Are you sure about that, Wolf?”
Gray managed to slip one shadowed hand into his coat pocket. His eyes focused, narrowed even further, and his expression was deadly serious. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“So be it,” the man drooled with murderous intent, and just as his finger tightened on the trigger, a flicker of light glinted into his face, followed by a terrible scream, his hand spasming as the gun fell to the floor. A faded crystal, about the size of a pinky finger, had skewered itself into the man’s left eye. He screamed wildly, lifting his hand over the wound, blood pouring down and around his knuckles.
Jules hurried to their feet, then rushed to Gray’s side. “Nice throw. You’re a doctor and marksman—who knew!”
“I was aiming for his throat,” Gray said, nervously scanning the room. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
Gray and Jules turned to the stairwell, but it was blocked by the red A’s of Moral Agents; then they turned to a door near the back of the bar, which was also blocked; then they looked at each other with expressions of puzzlement infused with fear. “It appears we’re stuck between a mouse and hard metal,” Jules noted, biting one of their fingers nervously.
As the duo fumbled, the mouse man had torn the inert crystal from his left eye, eyeball popping out along with it, leaving it just dangling there by a gooey red rope growing out of the otherwise empty festering socket, half of his face drenched in blood. It suited him. After a moment of moaning like a zombie in heat, he lifted one hand and slapped something on his back, causing the red mouse to flicker, wireframe, and fully materialize once again around his body. He then bent over to pick up the dropped handgun; his hands shook uncontrollably as he raised the gun toward his prey.
“O, MiSTreSs oF wAr, DeFeNdEr of AtHeNs, sTaR ToUChEd SeNtRy Of ThE sErEnDiPiToUs sTaRsHiNe. gIvE mE tHe StRenGtH tO TeAr My fOeS AsUnDeR. tO RiP ThEsE cHiLdReN lImB fRoM LiMb. I BrInG YoU A fReSh SaCrIfIcE.”
Gray, alerted by the modulated voice, turned to the mouse and groaned. He then noticed the handgun and shot an astonished look in Jules’ direction. “Why didn’t you grab the damn gun?”
Jules bit down harder on their thinking finger. “I thought I did.”
“tHe CoNsOrTiUm wAnTeD YoU bAcK aLiVe. tHe wOlF iTsElF iS a GoOd aSsEt, tHeY sAiD. bUt yOu aRe nO lOnGeR tHe wOlF iTsElF. yOu aRe a mAnGy mUtT, hOmElEsS aFtEr bItInG tHe hAnD tHaT fEeDs, AfTeR STeAliNg fRoM tHeIr OwNeR. tHeRe iS oNlY oNe fAtE fOr yOu, tHe fAtE oF uS aLL, OnLy EXpEDiTED, SwIFt—”
“This guy really likes to talk.” Gray’s tone was silly, but his face was grave; he was out of options—no unblocked exits, a gun fixed on them, and automatons closing in. And Jules, too, stood there, stupefied.
“—DeAtH! iT’s aLmOsT tOo GOoD fOr yOu. MAkE yOuR pEaCe wItH tHe bIoLoGiCaL mAtTeR CoNvErTeR tHaT yOu wIlL sOOn CoNVeRgE wItH.”
The mouse’s red mitts were clasped around the handle of the gun, his cartoon trigger finger twitching and his aim shaky due to the excruciating pain gushing out of his fetid face hole. Automatons drawing closer now.
Jules turned, looking his friend directly in the eyes. “‘Twas an honor, Gray.”
“Yeah, you too, buddy,” Gray said, smiling genuinely.
They jinxed a gulp together.
And that’s when the rumble started. Everything began to shake. The sound of metal grinding against metal and shattering glass echoed through the space. Someone below the bar screamed, followed by a chorus of panicked voices. The music stopped, the dragon on stage dissolved into a shower of pixels, the spotlights went crazy before vanishing, the holo advertisements glitched then fizzled away. A piercing siren rang out, oscillating steadily. And, as if a blackout curtain had been thrown over the entire room, the lights cut out, plunging the club into total dark, with only those in glowing holo costumes shining out in the void left behind.
The sound of a bell dinged twice, followed by a robotic female voice blaring over the intercoms:
“Today Is Gamelion 8, AH386. Please Remain Calm. There Has Been A Power Disruption. Aides Repair Automatons Have Been Dispatched. Auxiliary Power Will Be Enabled Within Ten Minutes. All Air Vents Have Been Locked For Complex Residents’ Safety. Secondary Air Reserves On. All Sewer Entrances Have Been Locked. HyperNet Has Been Temporarily Disabled To Conserve Power. Please Do Not Leave The Complex Until The Incident Has Been Marked As Resolved. Please Remain Calm. Return To Your Habitation Quarters. Please Remain Calm. Return To Your Habitation Quarters.” et cetera.
The mouse, who was now like a massive red nightlight in a vacuum, began firing his handgun in a frenzy; red bolts whizzing wildly through the darkness, zaps echoing off gunmetal walls, causing panicked screams from the blinded crowd with each shot. As if with one mind, both Jules and Gray ducked out and rushed the stairwell; they couldn’t see much in the darkness, but they could see the red A’s of the automatons and used those as reference points. They slid past the Moral Agents, down the stairwell in a hurry.
The mouse kept firing in a panic, which escalated the screams of the patrons into a shrill cacophony, before realizing that his prey had escaped, and he took off down the stairwell after them, his mighty redness trailing from several feet away, leaving ephemeral afterimages in his wake. The siren continued, but it was not enough to drown out the screams of mortals.
Gray and Jules identified the club’s exit by the mass of A’s surrounding it; as they ran toward it, they twirled, ducked, bobbed, weaved, and even slid through the legs of some brightly colored holo people shining out in the darkness; one of which—a purple dinosaur with a face that would have looked goofy if not for the situation—grabbed Gray by the torso, wrestling with him for a moment. “Trying to get into my pants?” the dinosaur said in a hungry tone, its face inching close; Gray could see the red blur catching up from the corner of his eye, so he headbutted the dinosaur’s face as hard as he could, which freed him, and he bolted off toward the exit once more, cursing and rubbing his forehead. As he approached, he slid the whirring pen out of his coat pocket and pointed it at the portcullis, which caused the circular door to slide open. Just as he was doing this, the siren stopped, and the club suddenly lit brighter than ever before; a harsh, white fluorescence washed over the entire room, exposing every grimy detail and the crowd itself, all lumped together in fear and panic, oozing like a disgusting ball of flesh.
The mouse, now able to hone in on his targets, lifted the gun and fired off several rounds. One of the shots came close to Jules’ face, whose eyes went wide as they launched over the portcullis lip, out of the club, and into a hallway. They were followed shortly by Gray, whose landing caused him to roll across the floor, becoming tangled in his own long coat; as he loosened his limbs and regained sight of the door, he lifted the pen, whirred it, and the portcullis shut, sealing the bright red monster behind it.
The hallway they found themselves in was as white and fluorescent as the club; the auxiliary power did not respect preference, leaving only the most necessary lights on, which happened to be the brightest and the whitest. The hallway wasn’t so much a hallway as it was a gunmetal concourse as wide as an Old Earth interstate, all black and gray with orbed portcullises and neon graphics—both business and profane—dotting the walls on each side of the concourse. Every twenty feet, there was a black marble column extending from the floor into the ceiling, twisting and all. Looking down the concourse made the way seem endless and one feel queasy. People dressed in suits, rags, or holos, all bright and reflective, walked up and down lit walkways with arrows flashing in all directions. Some people were very nonplussed by the whole situation; others were running into nearby portcullises, hurriedly closing and locking themselves away; some were sitting against the concourse walls, arms wrapped around their knees, headsets wrapped around their heads, others taking off the headsets and looking into them with sunken eyes as if their very souls had been torn from their bodies. There was an eerie silence outside of the patter of feet and the plinking of metal. Ragged merchants in open bodegas, complete with bodega Auto-Cats, looked around nervously, as if mourning their temporary loss of business. All the Moral Agents were marching off in a single direction, as if being repurposed for some other function.
The intercom ding-donged once more, the robot voice returned:
“Today Is Gamelion 8, AH386. Aides Repair Automatons Have Been Dispatched. Auxiliary Power Has Been Enabled. Incident Is Still On-Going. Incident Start Time Was 8:43 PM, Estimated End Time Is 12:35 AM. Please Return To Your Habitation Quarters. Thank You For Your Cooperation.”
Gray was all spread out on the hard metal floor, staring up at the gray ceiling above; his dark coat open, exposing all sorts of knick-knacks and frivolous items; he was huffing and puffing, regaining composure. Jules stood over him, the harsh light causing their blonde hair to glow, looking nearly seraphic as they peered down at the young man who, at this moment, resembled an injured wolf, hair all dark and messy, a visceral strained look on his face, teeth showing and grinding, slobber. Jules offered their hand to the wolf.
“It’s hard-locked, but that door’s not going to hold for long,” Gray said as he took Jules’ long hand, stood up, and brushed at his legs. “We need to find somewhere to hide until all this blows over.” He then straightened out his coat and fidgeted with his hair as he mumbled to himself, “I didn’t think they would be able to find me again.” His hand fell from his hair to his eyes, where he pulled down on the skin, exposing more of the whites of his dark orbs, before slapping his own cheeks as if smacking himself back to reality.
The duo looked at each other, as if to verify that they were both ready, then took off down the wide concourse, checking every portcullis, nook, and cranny. Merchants yelled out to them, advertising wares, but these yells went ignored by the youthful duo, who continued to frantically scour the area, moving further down the concourse with every failed refuge attempt.
“Why don’t we check the Great Latrine?” Jules suggested, still on the move.
“Because the entrances are locked during outages—don’t you pay attention to the announcements?” Gray groaned as they continued, on the move.
They stopped for a moment to catch their breath. People were passing all around them. Jules bit their finger again, flicked their earring, twirled their hair, and stuck a finger up their nose so far that you could see the outline of the digit forming on the outside of the nostril; this was a thoughtful ritual—a scanning ritual—and then Jules saw it: a small marquee sliding the words MODEM FACILITY in bold green text. “What about the modem facility?”
“Not a bad idea, if it’s unlocked,” Gray said thoughtfully.
They pressed onward toward the modem facility. People continued to pass them in the concourse; one specifically, a hollowed man-bear chimera of glitzy yellows and sparkling blues, wearing only tight black shorts and exposed chest hair glittering, looked Jules up and down. “Hey girl, looking for some company?” But Jules only pulled down an eyelid, stuck out their long pink tongue, and shooed them away. The duo continued onward, and as they approached the turn to the modem facility, a familiar red glow caught their attention. They both turned in unison to catch a glimpse and just as quickly turned back and then broke into a sprint even quicker.
It was the mouse.
The mouse had spotted his prey once more; he shakily lifted his pistol and fired crimson bolts through the crowd. One of the bolts narrowly missed Gray but went on to strike the chimera provocateur square in the kneecap, blood and bone bursting forth at the point of impact, instantly severing the leg in twain; the chimera toppled over, howling. This prompted the concourse crowd into full pandemonium. The mouse rushed through the tumult, deadset on the duo, toppling anyone in his path.
The duo used the chaos to slip into a crowd of frightened people, sliding through bodies at high speeds, then turning a corner into a thin hallway where the modem facility was located. Rushing through the hall, they soon came upon the door—not a normal habitation portcullis, but a thick black-metal door—and it was unlocked; in fact, it was cracked open slightly. Gray then checked the interior of the door from some distance; he saw many small unlit LED indicators and let out one of those thought-bubble-popping noises. Jules watched their backside but saw no sign of the mouse. Gray then motioned to Jules, “It’s clear.” They then slipped through the door and closed it behind them. Gray whirred the knob, and there was a small click followed by a beep.
The modem facility was a massive room full of human-sized black megaliths that extended as far as the eye could see. Wires, like complex spiderwebs, hung between each megalith. The black dolmens flashed every color from their different openings and LED indicators, and these little color flashes were so numerous that they formed large splotches of weird color on the walls and floors in a computed cadence. Out of all these colors, the most common was red, as if indicating some fault in the machinery. Faint ticking and low-frequency purrs were the only sounds in the room.
“I used to work in one of these places,” Jules said nostalgically, wandering from megalith to megalith, observing all the complex but neatly organized wires.
“Yeah, I know. We both worked there. Sometimes I wonder about your memory, Jules,” Gray groaned, then continued, “It’s weird that this room would be unlocked, much less unguarded. Not only was the door open, but the trip-laser was disabled. And I guess the Moral Agents are all busy moonlighting as repair bots, but I can’t help but think that something weird is going on here.”
Jules was squatting near a megalith, fiddling with some wires between pushing blonde tresses behind their long ears. “The wiring on this one is all wrong.”
“Who cares about that right now, let’s just—” Gray's ears perked up from the sound of soft rummaging in the distance. “Is that you, Jules?”
Jules vocalized some sort of quiet two-syllable no-noise.
“I think it’s coming from further back. Let’s go che—” Gray was interrupted by a loud crash. He quickly turned to the source of the noise: the entrance of the facility. The door was wide open, and standing in the doorway was a redshifted nova. Gray shouted, “Jules! Get—” but before he could finish his sentence, a scarlet bolt pierced through his shoulder, blood spiraled through the air, and he fell to the floor. The mouse now stood over Gray, gun pointing at the young man’s other shoulder.
“foRgEt eye For An EyE. i’LL takE YOUR ARms. theN I’LL takE yOur lEGs. THEn I’lL TAKe Your spLeeN, yOuR kIDNeYS, YoUr StoMach. tHen I’ll RiP YoUr heaD ofF, cUt YOUr eyES OuT, anD GRafT One IntO mY OwN sOCKeT, sO you’Ll alWaYs BE wITH Me; pEerINg out AT aLl tHE peoPLe i WilL be KIllinG in yOUr NaME. I WAnt yOU to sUFfER bEFORe YoU DIE, WoLF. AnD ThEN i WaNT YoU tO sUFfer AfTeR DeAtH ToO. I WANT YOU TO SUFFER BAD.”
“Gray was right. You do like to talk!” Jules yelled as they recklessly rushed the mouse from some distance away. The mouse turned without warning; two bolts whisked straight through each of Jules’ thighs, flooring the musician, who landed on their side without a sound, turned themselves over, and started to crawl toward the mouse with a strained look of determination on their face.
The mouse laughed electronically as they turned away from the helpless musician, abruptly firing a bolt into Gray’s other shoulder. Gray yelped, and his body spasmed as if shocked electric. The mouse then turned to Jules, who was muttering Gray’s name, their crawling now picking up speed.
“nO PAiN? DOesN’T MAtTer.”
The mouse fixed the barrel on Jules’ back: Pop. Pop. Jules went silent.
Gray’s eyes were glazing over as he struggled to peer up at the red glow, his vision shaky and hallucinatory; the mouse’s smile ominous, growing larger and smaller, swirling and contorting.
“You know…” Gray coughed.
“I wanted to tell you…” Gray coughed again, this time blood.
The mouse watched intently, gun trained on Gray’s head.
“I wanted to tell you… to go… ga…” Gray’s eyes closed, breathing slowed.
It was then that a crackle of thunder boomed throughout the room, accompanied by an explosion of emerald sparks, which galvanized with the mouse’s red glow to create a yellow lightning storm around the rodent. The mouse flickered, wireframed, and vanished, revealing the burly man behind the holo, his still dangling eyeball convulsing violently along with the rest of his body as lightning coursed through his veins. The man could barely scream before he was charged to reticence, falling to the floor, gray-green smoke emanating from his crumpled corpse.
Within the shadow of two megaliths stood a young woman. Her bobbed hair like fresh rust, her skin like that of a white sheet discolored by the faintest of coffee stains, freckles, lots of freckles, and her emerald eyes were covert behind a pair of black-circle glasses of which she peered over the top. There was a thick messenger bag slung around her shoulder, snug to her hip. She was wearing baggy cargo pants and a dark green tank top with a single sleeve that trailed down into a gloved hand in which she was holding what looked to be a large metal spanner emitting remnant sparks of emerald light, easily mistaken for a fantastic magic wand. There she stood, wand outstretched, a surprised look on her face as if she was not expecting whatever had just happened to happen at all.
There stood Ellie.
Artwork by ComicFarm.
Part 1 | Part 2
“The afterimages of beam sabers and fire magic burned upon his retinas like the user interface burned upon the phosphor of his television set.”
David twisted the doorknob so delicately that one would think him a ghost on the greatest haunt of his unlife and – leaving no ectoplasm#1 behind – nudged the door with maximum softness to avoid its creak-point. He mentally cursed his lack of proper diet and exercise as he slid his pudgy body through the small gap between the frame and the door while telling himself that he was only slightly heavier than the average American,#2 and this exorcized the constant nag of exercise. Upon crossing the event horizon of the bedroom, he kept the doorknob at full twist to avoid the click of the bolt as he shut the door behind him. He decided to skip his nighttime routine – which he had skipped for months now – and crept through total darkness with mouselike meekness and, picturing the bedroom in his mousy mind’s eye, navigated around the dresser and the laundry basket and the bookshelf as he made his way to the bed. He then slipped quietly under the covers so as to not disturb Briar Rose Blair,#3 who slept beauty on her side. David performed this routine every night for his own sake, because if Blair awoke to find her husband of six years coming to bed only four hours before work on a Thursday, her teeth would drip venom like that of an adder intent on swallowing the mouse whole.
It was Autumn of the third year of the third millennium.#4 David had been performing these mousy maneuvers on Blair for eight months now, coinciding with the purchase of a pre-owned video-game console now wired into the transparent Secureview cathode-ray tube#5 so selfishly hogged in the corner of their spare bedroom. The spare bedroom was to be their first child’s nursery until David came home with the Sega Dreamcast#6 and told Blair to get back on the pill#7 and proclaimed the spare bedroom as his new office with an enthusiasm rarely seen on his mousy face; this was despite having no domestic clerical work to speak of.
The Dreamcast was Bill’s idea, David’s friend from work: “hey man – you should check out this game, it’s called Phantasy Star Online and it’s on the Dreamcast and we can play together through a dial-up connection and it’s, like, the future of gaming!” David took Bill up on this offer of digital dalliance and, ever since, has been transported to the alien planet of Ragol every afternoon from the comfort of his own cave zone.#8 From the moment David got home from his job as a debt collector, he would sit in front of Ragol’s dreamy glow until those hazy hours when darkness and daylight blend together. He would play Phantasy Star Online with Bill – who just started listening to psychedelic rock, bought himself a nice pair of circular glasses, and suddenly preferred to be called “William”#9 – drink beer and sometimes call William on the phone after long play-sessions only to yell “Whassup!”#10 before hanging up, which made for a good laugh the next day at work.
*while neglecting all worldly responsibilities, you may be charged telephone and provider fees
To Blair, the Dreamcast was an obsession that consumed her husband’s entire being; David stopped spending time with her; he stopped falling asleep with her; he stopped being intimate with her; he stopped cleaning up after himself; he stopped taking out the trash; he stopped feeding the cats; he would forget to pay the bills; he would forget to clean the litter box; he would forget to take showers, comb his hair, brush his teeth; he would forget to change his underwear for weeks on end; and his office became a garbage island overflowing with half-eaten food and crusty tissues that Blair was afraid to ask the origins of because deep down she already knew the answer.
To Blair, David loved the Dreamcast more than he loved her.
To David, the Dreamcast was, “Blair-Bear, I’ve been working a job I hate all day to provide for us, don’t I deserve to have some fun when I get home? And besides, you watch TV all day – how is that any different?” And Blair-Bear would retort, “Am I not any fun?” But this would only sour David’s mood, “Stop gaslighting me; I didn’t say that – you are so controlling sometimes!” And after a tense moment of silence and fidgeting, David would caveat, “We can watch TV or something tomorrow, I promise.” Then he would shuffle away to his office and shut the door slightly louder than normal as if relaying some sort of hint.
But this promise was never fulfilled. Blair was left watching new episodes of Friends#11 on NBC alone while David was exclaiming, laughing, and making beer runs to the kitchen between gaming sessions. David was having the time of his life while Blair was just kind of there in the background. These moments of noisy solitude only amplified Blair’s despair and her thoughts would drift; she considered the man just a room over; she considered the time they made love on the couch while 10 Things I Hate About You#12 played in the background, and she considered how that same man now only makes love to his hand and wipes himself down with tissues and leaves those tissues on the office floor then immediately handles his controller with those same barely-cleaned-sperm-hands; she considered how the Dreamcast controller had seen more action than she had in over eight months; and that, if she were not on the pill, she could likely get pregnant simply by touching the thing; but most importantly, she considered the fact that she was not attracted to David anymore; she was just spiteful and ashamed to be less interesting than pixels on a screen but too afraid to vocalize these truths as the resulting meltdown would utterly change her life and be too much to bear.
In the darkness of the bedroom, David could see the alien life of Ragol moving about as if locked in battle with his own eyeball floaters.#13 The afterimages of beam sabers and fire magic burned upon his retinas like the user interface burned upon the phosphor of his television set. He lay bedbound for over an hour, unable to sleep, thinking about the Dragon he had slain on Ultimate difficulty for the thirtieth time and how it failed to drop the Heavenly/TP#14 module – again. He started to hear blackbirds chirping and noticed a dim glow break through the top of the blackout curtains on the window perpendicular to the bed. He felt his back drenched in sweat, as the air conditioning unit was acting up and he had not yet called the repairman as the phone line was always tied up transferring bytes of Phantasy Star Online back and forth from his modest three-bedroom home to Sega’s data centers. He could feel his bladder welling up with beer and, as to dam the flow, crossed his legs and turned on his side, but he must have turned too hard because the next thing he heard ran a shiver down his spine resulting in a new yellow stain on his weeks-old underwear.
“David – what time is it?”
David pretended to be asleep, but Blair was keen on his tricks; she had been fooled by this before. “I know you’re up.” She turned to the green glow of the digital clock on her bedside table and her eyes rolled like bowling balls into the back of her skull. “It’s four, and you have work in two hours. Did you just come to bed – again?”
David turned to the sound of Blair’s voice and contrived the most groggy of whispers: “I just woke up, Blair-Bear. I had a bad dream.” Blair-Bear only grunted and closed her eyes. David was unsure if his lie penetrated her sleepy judgment, but he did see this as the perfect opportunity to relieve himself so he tiptoed to the bathroom and, overestimating his aim in the dark, urinated all over the toilet seat before returning to bed.
After David counted forty-eight chirps of a blackbird, Morpheus#15 finally took him.
“… u dont even have a PSYCHO WAND?”
David dreamed of the dragon, the serpent, and the robot. He dreamed of the planet Ragol with its verdant forests, volcanic caves, mines of scattered light, and ruins of gloom. He dreamed of the salty beaches of Gal Da Val and the virtual reality of facsimilized spaceships and temples with skyboxes within skyboxes and dreams within dreams.
He dreamed of Phantasy Star Online.
David dreamed of his first time turning on the Dreamcast; the bouncy-ball and the swirl. He dreamed of the full-motion-video introduction of Phantasy Star Online, amazed by the graphical fidelity of it all: the planet Ragol fading into view, the eclipse of shadow both literal and metaphorical, the warp sigil that flashed in the void of space like a summoning circle conjuring starships. The mystery hooked him from the beginning: the vanished refugees, the principal’s missing daughter, the lush planet inhabited by mutated-bipedal-landsharks and oversized-birds-of-gold and bee-spitting-testicle-pitchers and digital-death-dragons and centipede-skull-serpents and very-out-of-control-robots. And despite IGN’s official review proclaiming Phantasy Star Online’s story as “meager” and “non-existent,”#16 the intrigue was more-than-enough to consume David’s burgeoning gamer brain, which had only witnessed Madden and Mario until this point.
David dreamed of character creation. The FOnewm#17 class immediately caught his eye; to David, they appeared as magical techno elves from the future: default with brown hair, oversized plaid berets, dapper jackets that poofed bell-bottom at the coattails, and high-heels that belied their short stature. David was not the most creative sort, so he adjusted the character to look as close to himself as possible. He changed the elf’s hairstyle to long and blonde with a part down the middle because Blair had always said that one of the reasons she was attracted to him was because he looked like Kurt Cobain#18 with a mouse for a mother and, remembering the poster of Nirvana that Blair had tacked up in her old room at her parents’ house – the one with Kurt wearing large sunglasses and a trapper hat – he made sure to add permanent dark sunglasses as a finishing touch. He then adjusted the elf’s clothing to his favorite color – green. As unimaginative as David may have been, he was under no illusions about the girth of his waist and adjusted the elf to match his rotund figure. The end result was that of a portly elf with vibrant but very-greasy-looking yellow hair and a perpetual smirk as if pretending to have something very clever to say but really being empty inside and hiding it all behind a pair of cheap dollar store sunnies.
*character creation in utero
David’s dream continued in linear sequence. He logged into the online lobby and spoke to the space-nurse-receptionist at the blurry counter. The nurse gave him two options: “Create Team” or “Join Team,” and he selected the second option then pulled out the coffee-stained notecard William had given him at work the day prior, which had the group name – “Debt Collectors Inc” – and the password – “password” – written in barely legible handwriting. He pressed the red A-button on the white-hulking-mass and the screen went black for a moment before the electron guns in the ray tube fired tunnels of color as the game loaded the polygonal planet that was to become David’s new home.
The dream flashed memories of both Phantasy Star Online and Briar Rose Blair like a child’s kineograph#19 at twenty-times speed. It started in the lush forests of Ragol, where David was slaughtered by Boomas#20 while learning to control his character and where – using a well-timed zonde#21 – he landed the finishing blow on his first Dragon and heard the dopamine-releasing jingle when that same dragon dropped a rare item, and that jingle felt better than any orgasm he had experienced since marriage. The dream then shifted to Blair and David’s first date at a faux-sixties diner. Blair was wearing a baroque dress with band patches sewn all over it: Bauhaus, Clan of Xymox, Alien Sex Fiend, Nirvana, Joy Division, and The Cure. She insisted that she was not-like-the-other-girls. David told her, between sucking milkshake through a shared straw, that she was his Athena and that he would never fall in love with another girl and that they would be together forever and that she was the prettiest-girl-in-the-world in a spooky-death-princess sort-of-way. And then the vision faded once more. After flipping many switches and unlocking many doors and vanquishing many monsters, David found himself in the Ruins of Dark Falz.#22 The difficulty increased and he was forced to learn to become like a cannon made of glass by firing magic from a distance while William’s big-blade-wielding robot slashed through shadowy legions commanded by Chaos Sorcerer generals flanked by Dimenian foot soldiers.#23 And this section of David’s dream excited him very much.
The dream showed David as a snake eating its bottom half, repeating the same missions to earn money for more items and more techniques and more weapons and more jingles. Only minutes passed in dream-time, but in reality: it took David over two-hundred hours of game-time, two-months of real-time, and three-hundred cans of beer to complete Phantasy Star Online on Normal difficulty. And when David finally vanquished the evil that befell Ragol, he learned that his adventure was not yet over; bigger numbers, stronger weapons, and even-more-potent dopamine jingles were calling to him on Hard and Very Hard and Ultimate modes. And David didn’t want William getting further than him otherwise he would never hear the end of it at work and, although David claimed to be nonplussed by competition, the digital maze that was Phantasy Star Online brought something primal out of him, like that of a mouse trapped in a cheese maze with only one other mouse and the maze had a clearly visible exit sign that flashed just-turn-the-game-off but David would never turn the game off because there was just-something-about-that-jingle.
Sega had opened Pandora’s box by releasing the first online console role-playing game,#24 and inside the box was a mischievous little kid pressing all the buttons in the brainstem elevator. The dream knew this but David did not.
The dream zoomed out to Blair, who sat lonely on the living-room two-person couch while the afternoon soaps#25 dulled her senses and David’s neglect murdered the smile on her face. She became addicted to the skunk weed#26 that she purchased from the foreign man who lived across the street; she believed his name was “Gerard” or “Jared” or something, and he was tan and exotic and single; she thought about him sometimes while alone in bed when David was mashing away at his buttons, but she was loyal and would never betray David’s trust; but at the same time, she thought David may have been betraying her own trust with the Dreamcast and this thought eased the guilty byproduct of her fiddly-digit fantasies.
David’s dream was simultaneously straightforward and cryptic and vivid and lurid and awful. Morpheus was showing David something important – a portent; but David only saw the polygonal beauty of Phantasy Star Online.
Morpheus, becoming impatient with David’s lack of revelatory comprehension, decided to show David his ragnarok#27 and his archnemesis: xXMetaMarkXx; also known as: Meta or MetaMark or simply Mark. William met MetaMark on the online forum “pso-world.com”#28 and they became close friends. MetaMark – in William’s estimation – was a Phantasy Star Online prodigy; he had three max level#29 characters and was working on a fourth, and his main#30 was a FOnewm just like David’s. Mark knew nearly everything about the game and was not shy about it. He was callous and curt and condescending, and no one knew his real age because he would abruptly log out whenever someone asked him.
The dream recounted the events of David’s psychic ragnarok: the first time he played with MetaMark; David rushed into the Ruins and immediately used a thunder spell on a floating-jellyfish-with-claws,#31 but the abomination was immune to thunder and wrapped itself around David and sucked him to death. MetaMark could have revived David but, instead, just walked up to David’s corpse and typed three letters, “LOL.” David’s eyes burned with liquid embarrassment and his stomach dropped like an elevator with its cord cut by a cartoon villain. When David respawned#32 in the city, he was met with a supercilious volley of hateful text signed xXMetaMarkXx; and William, who was sitting in front of his television screen watching this scene unfold, said nothing, as if he were a bystander casually watching an innocent man being beaten and robbed, too afraid to intervene lest he become the next target but too full of curious bloodlust to turn away.
*psychic ragnarok in the dream within a dream
xXMetaMarkXx: how can u play FOnewn but not know monster immunities???
xXMetaMarkXx: ur character must come with an extra chromosome#33 lol
xXMetaMarkXx: why is ur damage so low? r u feeding ur MAG#34 dumbass?
xXMetaMarkXx: how did u even get to level 150?? did u buy ur account?
xXMetaMarkXx: why r u still using a striker rod? that is pure garbage tier behavior lawl#35
xXMetaMarkXx: u dont even have a PSYCHO WAND?
xXMetaMarkXx: fucking n00b#36
David stared slack-jaw at his television screen. Even in dreams, he had no words. His sheltered middle-class upbringing and whirly-bird parents did not prepare him for this level of vitriolic judgment. In lieu of defending himself, he bent over to the Dreamcast and sunk the power button in what amounted to something within the same spectrum of a rage-quit#37 – a shame-quit.
With the Dreamcast silent and the horror locked away behind the screen, he swiveled his chair to face his personal computer and dialed into AOL#38 and navigated to Yahoo#39 and immediately typed “HOW DO I FIND THE PSYCHO WAND?” in all caps#40 and hit enter. All the while, he mumbled like a man with a bad case of the padded-room-blues talking to spirits that only he could see:
“We’ll see who’s got the higher damage. You fraud. I have a job and a wife and responsibilities and an actual life but once I get my Psycho Wand I’ll be the best damn techno mage on the server, you fucking nerd.”
David rarely vocalized curses.
A persistent buzz faded into David’s dream as this moment played out. The buzzing, to David, sounded like the words “Psycho Wand,” and his dream-self flicked the dreamy-scroll-wheel of the dreamy-mouse as his eyes scanned for the digital-dream-gold that was to be the answer to what he felt was the most important question he had ever asked in his entire life: “HOW DO I FIND THE PSYCHO WAND?”
The buzzing continued as David’s dream-scrolling became more aggressive and the words repeated in his mind: Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. How do I find the Psycho Wand. The Psycho Wand. The Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho Wand. Psycho. Psycho. Psycho. Wand. Wand. Wand.
David suddenly jolted awake and screamed, “Psycho Wand!” There was a great lake of sweat pooled beneath him and he was panting like a dog left in a car during the hottest day of the year. His scream must have been contagious, as it shocked Blair into a scream of her own; her scream was one of unspecified terror, and she quickly sat up, turned the side-table lamp on, and spoke with a frantic urgency, “What’s wrong, David? Did someone break in? What’s going on? Are the cats ok? Is your mom alright? Is there a fire?”
David silenced the alarm clock before turning to Blair with the most solemn look she had ever seen on his face. He wiped the sweat from his brow and spoke in a contrived pitch twofold lower than normal as if he were some sort of tragic hero, “It was just another bad dream is all, Blair-Bear.”
“Just another bad dream.”
If David’s dream was intended to be a warning, it had the opposite effect. David now saw himself as an anime#41 hero whose family had been slaughtered by a wicked-but-beautiful villain with flowing-white hair. He was full of purpose and hell-bent on revenge and he whispered softly to himself, “Psycho Wand, my beloved. I will find you.”
Blair tilted her head and blinked hard, “What did you just say?”
“Oh – uh, nothing.”
#1. “Ectoplasm” is a fictitious substance often cited in computer games as residue from ghosts or spiritual somethings. Ectoplasm is typically dropped as spoils when defeating supernatural beings, and used for crafting or sold outright to an NPC-vendor. The word originally referred to the viscous layer around the cytoplasm in amoeboid cells, but has since been co-opted by psychic mediums as supernatural-stuff. Helen Duncan, a psychic medium popular in the 1920s, conducted seances in which she proclaimed legitimacy by spitting ectoplasm from her mouth; the “ectoplasm” was actually an elaborate cloth construction.
#2. Americans are fat and our diets are awful, and considering this is so ubiquitous: I’m not sure that I need a source on this one, but for the sake of thoroughness: “Results from the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), using measured heights and weights, indicate that an estimated 65 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.” Source.
#3. This is me trying to be clever. Blair’s name is not “Briar Rose Blair.” In the 1959 Disney film Sleeping Beauty, the titular sleeping beauty is renamed by faeries from “Aurora” to “Briar Rose” in order to hide her identity from the wicked Maleficent.
#4. This is a long winded way of saying, “August 2003.” I don’t like putting actual numbers in formal writing – this is a weird hang-up of mine; probably not a good thing.
#5. The RCA Secureview 13″ Color TV Model S13801CL CRT television sets were manufactured by RCA (originally the Radio Corporation of America) for use in prisons. They are entirely see-through so that prison inmates can’t hide drugs or weapons within the TV’s guts. Most units have a prison cell number and block number engraved on the chassis. They are sold as collectors items now, but some made their rounds through gaming communities during the early 2000s. Although they look very cool, these sets aren’t great for playing video games; they only have a coaxial connection and this results in poor colors, increased input lag, and a phenomenon that I dub “CRT sparklies” which are warbling lines and microdots in the image.
#6. The Dreamcast was like a colorful firework erupting in the night sky during an off-month when there were no celebrations to be had: fleeting, ephemeral, dream-like, all-that-jazz. It was released in Japan on November 27, 1998, in North America on September 9, 1999, and in the EU on October 14, 1999. Due to poor adoption and low sales, production of the Dreamcast was discontinued roughly two years later on March 31, 2001. This is all right here on Wikipedia.
#7. In the summer of 1957, Margaret Sanger and Gregory Pincus sought FDA approval for the first oral contraceptive dubbed “Enovid.” The FDA approved the use of Enovid for “treatment of severe menstrual disorders” and required the label to carry the warning: “Enovid will prevent ovulation.” By late 1959, half-a-million women were taking Enovid as a contraceptive. After extensive trials, in 1960, the FDA approved Enovid as a birth control pill. And by 1965, “the pill” was the most popular form of birth control in the United States. Enovid contained far more hormones than necessary to prevent pregnancy; 10,000 micrograms of progestin and 150 micrograms of estrogen, which carried with it high risk of cardiac arrest and stroke. It took researchers more than a decade to recognize the side effects and even longer to learn that lower doses were just as effective for preventing pregnancy; this did not help the women whose hearts had already exploded, however. The source for this can be found here. Blair, being a thirty-year-old woman living in 2003, uses a Progestogen-only pill – also known as a “POP” or “mini pill.” David, in his boundless aloofness, does not know the brand that his wife uses, but this omniscient narrator does: Cerzette.
#8. “Cave Zone” is a song released by Robert Pollard on his 2009 solo record, “The Crawling Distance.” It’s a standard two-chord rock number with a repeated verse of “cave zone, someone take me home to my cave zone.” The Michigan Daily got it right when they wrote, “By the end of the song, all that is clear is that Pollard immensely enjoys yelling the words, ‘cave zone.'” The song can be found here. “Cave Zone” is very much about “man caves” and wanting to be alone. It is said that all men need a “cave zone,” but there’s no science proving this out and it’s likely just a bullshit justification for the endless pursuit of juvenile interests and mid-life crises. The song itself was released years after the setting of this story, but nonetheless, it inspired the use of the phrase and, despite its repetitiveness: I quite like the song, Michigan Daily be damned.
#9. This is a jab at myself. I often wear John Lennon style circular glasses and have been listening to a lot of psychedelic pop-rock lately; although, not of the 60s-variety, but of the Robyn Hitchcock variety; the song “One Long Pair of Eyes” is nice and poignant if you want a starting point. This footnote may seem gratuitous, self-indulgent, entirely unnecessary, and maybe even a little look-how-cool-and-varied-my-music-tastes-are; and while that’s partially true, it primarily serves to document the music that influenced me while writing this piece. Primarily Robyn Hitchcock, but also Momus – and Deerhunter.
#10. ‘Whassup?’ was a commercial campaign for Budweiser beer that aired from 1999 to 2002. The first commercial aired during Monday Night Football on December 20, 1999. ‘Whassup?’ was a mind-virus in the early 2000s, with kids imitating the famous beer-inspired phrase ad nauseam – even I was infected, and the sickness was never cured because I find myself repeating this phrase every once in a blue moon. Considering their willingness to target and infect children with beer propaganda, ‘Whassup?’ goes to show that American beer companies know no shame and that America’s beer culture was, and continues to be, completely unhinged. See the commercial that spawned at least a few alcoholics here. Note that David and Bill only drink Bud.
#11. The ninth season of the American sitcom Friends aired on NBC from September 26, 2002, to May 15, 2003. I was more of a Seinfeld person, although I can appreciate the nostalgia induced by Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and Ross’s very first-world problems. My sister used to play Friends VHS tapes on repeat when going to bed; when I was a kid, I would sometimes get scared at night and sneak off to her bedroom, as the presence of another person helped me sleep; Friends was often playing on those nights. I especially remember the two-parter in which Ross and a woman from the UK get married – or something. Maybe my sister had only a few tapes to choose from, or picked favorites to fall asleep too.
#12. 10 Things I Hate About You is a romantic comedy targeted toward the teen demographic. In essence, it’s William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” retold with a ‘90s high school backdrop. It features a young Heath Ledger as leading man and Julia Stiles as “the shrew” to be “tamed.” But who’s really being tamed? That’s the gist. It’s a charming film full of witty dialog, excellent performances, and great music. Also another of my sister’s favorite VHS tapes to play when falling asleep.
#13. Eyeball floaters are strands, clouds, or dots in vision that float one layer removed from perceived reality. The scientific explanation for eyeball-floaters is that they are caused by changes or deterioration in the vitreous jelly attached to the retina of the eye; it follows that eyeball floaters become more common as one ages.
#14. Phantasy Star Online has multiple difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Ultimate. On top of the enemies dealing more damage and being harder to kill, each difficulty has a specific level requirement and entirely new item drop table. The Heavenly/TP module has a 1/40 chance of dropping from the first boss (“Dragon”) on Ultimate. The module boosts TP by 100 and is useful for Force-type characters who require TP to use TECHs (magic) as their primary form of damage. Considering David has defeated the Dragon on Ultimate 30 times now, he is statistically about 10 attempts away from getting his Heavenly/TP module.
#15. Morpheus is a god associated with sleep and dreams in Greco-Roman mythology. Morpheus is mentioned only once in the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an epic poem written in 8 CE. This means that Neil Gaiman has done more for the character, with his graphic novel series The Sandman, than any Greco-Roman poet.
#16. This is a sneaky way of inserting review content into a piece that is very much not geared toward review content. “The story behind Phantasy Star Online is shockingly non-existent … If Sonic Team had to give us a meager story for Phantasy Star Online, you know they had to balance it out with a wealth of gameplay.” Source.
#17. Classes in PSO are split between three main categories: Hunters, Rangers, and Forces. Hunters are physical close-range fighters specializing in swords, spears, and daggers; Rangers are long-range attackers who use all manner of artillery; and Forces are magic casters who specialize in wands, rods, and magic of all the standard computer game elements (fire, ice, thunder, etc). Among the three categories, there are multiple choices with strengths and weaknesses corresponding to what one might consider “race”; Humans are, as you might guess, human; CASTs are robot-people; and Newmans are elves (if we had to relate it to Tolkienisms).
#18. Kurt Cobain is the lead singer of Nirvana. A handsome blonde youth who looked as if he always needed a shower in the most gorgeous way possible. He was at the forefront of the “grunge” rock subgenre whether he liked it or not – and he didn’t like it; he committed suicide by gunshot at the age of 27. Nirvana is one of the most popular bands of all time; to say that Kurt’s suicide propelled this popularity would be unfair, as Kurt Cobain – while not classically trained in guitar or singing by any means – had a natural ear for melody and could throw a hook easier than Mike Tyson. My favorite song by Nirvana is “About a Girl.”
#19. “Kineograph” is just a fancy word for “flip-book,” like something you used to make in grade school – or, at least, like something I used to make in grade school. A flip-book typically refers to a sequence of images drawn on different pieces of paper glued or stapled together in sequence; when flipped at the edge, the image comes alive. It’s a simple form of animation, but this simplicity is the root of literally all animation; image after image after image after image, etc.
#20. Boomas are monstrous bipedal shrews or bears or moles or something with long arms and sharp claws. Their eyes glow red and demonic. They bumble toward you in packs and can easily surround new players. They recover quickly from attacks so they function as a teacher of sorts – teaching new players how to time their attacks properly. Killing a Booma is a Phantasy Star Online initiation ritual that all hunters must complete if they wish to progress.
#21. Zonde is the tier 1 thunder TECH in Phantasy Star Online. Like the Megaten (Shin Megami Tensei) series; Sega was not satisfied with naming their magic conventional names; instead we have: Zonde for thunder, Foie for fire, Barta for ice, Resta for healing, Grants for light, and Megid for dark.
#22. The Ruins is the final stage of Episode 1 in Phantasy Star Online. It’s damp and dark with only some glowy pillars and pathways to light the way. Monsters found in the ruins have a more demonic aesthetic than those found outside of the Ruins. Monsters found outside the Ruins appear to be corrupted wildlife while the monsters in the Ruins appear like the corrupters of that wildlife. The boss of the Ruins is Dark Falz, who happens to be the main antagonist of the entire Phantasy Star series going as far back as Phantasy Star for Master System. Dark Falz is an avatar of The Profound Darkness, a primeval force within the Phantasy Star universe.
#23. Chaos Sorcerers are robed wizards that levitate about the Ruins of Ragol. They drop the mystical Psycho Wand – but only on Very Hard. They carry a staff of pure plasma and are usually surrounded by Dimenians which are similar to the bumbling Booma but with plasma swords for arms and exposed teeth-like rib cages.
#24. Phantasy Star Online was the first console MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game). MMORPGs existed before this, but the genre was reserved for PC gaming until PSO released in December 2000. And although the Jaguar was the first console that supported ‘online’ play – you could direct dial and play games with a modem attachment – it wasn’t until 1999 with the release of the Dreamcast that any video game console had legitimate online play baked in that wasn’t a pain to configure; players plugged a telephone jack into the back of the console and dialed in, which would – like making an outbound call – clog the phone line and make receiving calls on that line impossible. If someone happened to call a line that was connected to the internet, they’d only hear a busy signal.
#25. Soap operas exist in a dimension three levels removed from normal television programming. A lot of people watch soap operas, but almost no one admits to it. There is an intricate web of romantic dalliances, crimes of passion, white-collar criminality, and borderline-incestuous-and-maybe-supernatural-and-definitely-extramarital love affairs going on in soap operas that rival the likes of The X-Files, Lost, Law and Order, Sex and the City, and even Twin Peaks. That’s right: there are Lynchian levels of weird shit going on in soap operas every Monday through Friday between the times of 12pm and 3pm. There are two types of people who watch soap operas: 1) the person who enjoys the drama and compares the characters’ antics to their own lives, trying to find solace in the thought, “Hey, my life isn’t so bad – see?” and 2) the person who imagines themselves in Sarah or John’s shoes as they engage in sketchy-sex-stuff, such as sleeping with their step-sister or “accidentally” sleeping with their own mom/dad. Many boring marriages were saved by the sexual misadventures of Sarah and John fooling around behind their lovers’ backs on the cathode-ray tube while the kids were on the seesaws at the schoolyard, vicariously. Blair watched the following soaps in 2003: The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, All My Children, One Life to Live, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and Passions. (All of them, this was all of them; she watched all of them.)
#26. “Skunk weed” is the colloquial street name for a number of very potent and very pungent strains of marijuana; hybrids of sativa and indica; known for their high THC content. Skunk strains typically contain 60% sativa and 40% indica, which produces a full-body high and only a light head high. Side note: Smoking weed makes me think about that one time in high school when I threw a rock at a passing car, causing it to skid into a stop sign, and how I was never caught for doing so; and how the police might still be looking for the culprit and could be zeroing in on my home address any minute now and then I start thinking about ways to leave this earth. It goes without saying: I don’t smoke weed anymore. Well, that’s a lie: I’ve smoked since then; a puff here and there. Last time I smoked I started thinking about how much of a fraud I am and how I can’t write and how my entire life is a luck-out and how one day someone is going to pull the plug on it all and, well, I just don’t like smoking weed that much. I’m not good for it.
#27. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok is the prophesied burning of the worlds in which many Norse gods perish. After the world is burned, sunken underwater, and entirely cleansed, two human survivors – Lif and Lifthrasir – repopulate the world. Ragnarok is similar to Biblical revelation in that it’s a great catastrophe that brings about some sort of change – be that positive or negative.
#28. pso-world.com is a Phantasy Star fansite that has existed since at least January 2001 if we go by the earliest forum post titled “Article: Community Center Officially Under Development!” which was posted on January 8th, 2001. The website covers every Phantasy Star game and contains guides, drop tables, concept art, forums, and much more. I’ve had a few accounts on the site; my earliest account was created on Dec 31, 2009, under the username “wintermute0“; the origin of the name is from the novel Neuromancer, where Wintermute is an artificial intelligence and central character of the novel. I read Neuromancer at least six times in high school; I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, not only because it spawned the cyberpunk genre (and I was a massive contrarian that always needed to read “the first thing” so I could brag about it) but because it’s just so well written: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” I used the “Wintermute” pseudonym online for over ten years before switching to “buru” which was a nickname given to me by friends and “we don’t choose our nicknames” so, theoretically, it’s more pure – or something.
#29. The max level in Phantasy Star Online Ver.1 was 100; when Phantasy Star Online Ver.2 was released – which is the version played by David – the max level was increased to 200. Ver.2 also added new episodes, new stages, new weapons, new items, etc.
#30. A “main” is a player’s main character in a computer game. If someone has 20 different high-level characters, there’s always one that they will continue to come back to and play the most: this is their “main.”
#31. The monster described here is called a “Bulclaw”; they are four claws attached to another enemy called a Bulk. The Bulclaw latches onto its target and sucks its life away. They are not entirely immune to thunder, just highly resistant to it – but for the sake of funnies: they’re immune for the purposes of this story. 100% accuracy to source material is overrated.
#32. When you die in Phantasy Star Online, your character is revived in the city section of Pioneer 2 (a massive starship that functions as the mission-hub, lobby, and NPC vendor area of the game. Note that Pioneer 2 was the name of a United States space-probe designed to probe lunar and cislunar space which was launched on November 8th, 1958; the probe burned up in Earth’s atmosphere minutes after launch). After respawning, you can simply go back into the mission portal and continue with your mission. The main drawback is that you have to walk back to where you died, which can be time-consuming – unless you’re playing with friends, in which case they can put up a telepipe which you can use to instantly teleport to them. In rare cases, some missions will fail if you die or there may be a time limit which makes dying detrimental to success.
#33. Casual jokes at the expense of the mentally handicapped were ever-present in the early 2000s online landscape. This hasn’t changed much depending on which online gaming community you’re part of. Due to the transparent polarities of human nature, a person’s willingness to engage in this type of “comedy” in the present age is a strong indicator of their ideological leanings.
#34. MAGs are the main source of min-max (“optimizing your character to perfection”) psychosis in Phantasy Star Online – if your MAG isn’t built properly, your character is not properly optimized, and to some, this is very important; to others (me), it’s just a computer game and you need to chill out. MAGs are small mechanized creatures that float over your character’s shoulder. You can feed them spare items (3 at a time) to increase their stats which transfers to your character once the MAG is equipped. MAGs function as the main way to customize your character’s build, in that you can have a MAG that is boosted with POW (power, if you couldn’t figure that out) to significantly increase melee capabilities, or you can have a MAG geared more toward magic or defense or a mixture.
#35. “LAWL” was an ephemeral early 2000s online slang term that has since fallen out of fashion. “LAWL” is an onomatopoeia of the abbreviation “LOL” (“laugh out loud”) as it refers to the sound of vocalizing “LOL” in the real number domain (real life).
#36. “n00b” is a stylized way of calling someone a newbie – or a new player of a computer game; typically used as an insult targeting seasoned players who play like they are still new to the game. The zeros in “n00b” are an appropriation of “leet speak,” which is an informal online language that substitutes letters with numerals or special characters that resemble the letter’s appearance.
#37. Per Urban Dictionary, “To angrily abandon something that has become insanely frustrating. It can be a video game, a job, you name it. It’s almost always very violent (stuff gets broken, curse words are spoken), and implies very extreme anger issues. Or it could simply be a nice person finally reaching their breaking point.”
#38. AOL (or America Online) was most millennials’ first online service. It revolutionized connecting to the internet in the mid ‘90s to early 2000s by allowing easy access to the internet through an intuitive interface. You would use a phone line to connect, and the dial-in noise was like the death screams of a half-sentient robot being crushed by a scrap-metal compactor; this noise holds the honor of being the easiest way to elicit a nostalgia response from anyone who grew up in the late ‘90s to early 2000s. AOL would send hundreds of software installer CDs via mail to the point that you could make a living selling them for scrap. I knew some people that would take these CDs and make collages or wall art with them; I saw many walls just covered in these CDs. Abusing the CDs was a teenage rite of passage and very punk rock in 1999. Everyone born in the ‘90s remembers the three-box screen when dialing into the internet via AOL via a phone line; those little yellow people moving from one box to another, and the yellow-people-celebration on the image of the little Earth when they finally connected in the last box. That little yellow guy was iconic; partially because of the main AOL service, but also due to AOL Instant Messenger which consumed not only my life but everyone’s that I knew. I communicated with my middle-school and high-school girlfriends more through AOL Instant Messenger than spoken-word real-life. Many of my deepest desires and rawest emotions were expressed in that small-white-box-with-the-blue-outline-and-the-buddy-icons. This is probably similar to how the current adolescent generation communicates, only with different services (Snapchat, Discord, etc.).
#39. Yahoo! was a popular search service in the ‘90s – 00s before Google took over. Yahoo! also released a chat platform – similar to AOL Instant Messenger – with a robust chat room feature. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in Yahoo! Messenger “roleplay” chatrooms typing up embarrassing paragraph-style-roleplaying passages with random strangers online; things like: “Edge walks into the tavern with a mean look on his face. He swipes his long blue and red hair out of his eyes before casting a glance over to the bar. The tavern’s lantern light glints off the huge sword on his back. Edge surveyed the room for a moment before he walked to the bar and sat near the pretty girl at the far end. He signals to the bartender, who approaches quickly out of pure fear due to Edge’s coolly intimidating presence. Edge smirks at the girl then at the bartender, ‘one glass of milk, and another for the lady, on me.’ Edge pauses, “actually, make that strawberry milk for the lady.” (This is copy/pasted from my article on Cowboy Bebop's OST by SEATBELTS.)
#40. Typing in “all caps” indicates pure rage or pure irony, and sometimes it’s very hard to tell the difference online. In that way, typing in “all caps” can be a decent way to confuse your opponents. It is often said that “CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL” and sometimes this is true, other times: not so much. It really depends on the context.
#41. If you’re reading this, you likely know what anime is. According to Wikipedia, “Anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan.” It’s funny to call anime “Japanese cartoons” – and this way of describing anime makes some people very upset – but it’s not entirely accurate; “cartoon” implies childishness, or being targeted toward children; and while much of it is indeed aimed at children, there are very serious and dark anime which should never be watched by children; a classic example of this would be Akira (1988), the scene in which Tetsuo (spoiler) crushes his girlfriend with his overgrown bodily organ mess still haunts my dreams.
(Originally published on 4/28/2024)
Part 1 | Part 2
“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.
“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.”
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#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)
The deer had to be grazing only fifteen yards away for I could see the tranquility in its eyes. It was a doe; no antlers. With silence and slow, I lifted the butt of Dad’s ancient lever-action rifle to my jawline and held breath while my index finger crept around the grip of the wood and quietly inched toward the trigger guard; trembling. I winked my left eye shut as my right focused into scope, and I could see the beast’s tranquility even clearer now. It wasn’t grazing; it was standing, perusing nature, and it bat lashes as it slowly lowered its slender head toward a solitary leaf on a sapling; nipping it most delicately off the hardwood. The scope revealed the doe’s spiky velvet, an uncommon trait; perfect for my induction ceremony. Dad would be very proud.
I first learned of Counter-Strike within the pages of a PC gaming magazine in Autumn Y2K; it was depicted as a realistic first-person shooter with a focus on multiplayer and teamwork. And although derived from Valve’s Half-Life, it lacked the science fiction aspects that attracted the taped-glasses demographic and appealed more to my audience: southern boys who dreamed of monster trucks and machine guns and mounted deer heads. I wanted Counter-Strike more than anything; especially after my friends at school started playing, but my Dad didn’t see the appeal and wanted me to focus on the three G’s: girls, grades, and guns – and football. But we made a compromise: if I made all B’s in school that year, he would buy me a Dell PC and a copy of Counter-Strike. Needless to say, I studied real hard, and I got those B’s.
As I watched the doe chew leaves from the hardwood, I thought about what Dad told me years ago: “the best way to kill a deer is to shoot ’em while they’re standin’ with one side of their body facin’ ya; that way, ya aim true an’ make every shot count. Ya gotta be quick but silent an’ steady as a rock; that’s the key to bringin’ home the bag, son.” He would say while chewing tobacco as naturally as the doe chewed leaves, “this ‘ere is called a broadside shot an’ it’s the quickest way to kill a deer, son – ya know, they’re still livin’ animals and we don’t want ‘em sufferin’ too bad.”
Counter-Strike is a simple premise wrapped in layers of deep first-person-shooter mechanics; two sides – terrorists and counter-terrorists – firefight across everyday terrain with objectives such as bomb defusal and hostage rescue. The game oozes realism, as each gun is derived from a real world model and handles as one would expect; holding down left-click to rapid-fire – or ‘spraying’ – decreases your accuracy, while firing in short bursts – or ‘tapping’ – keeps your aim steady; holding the ctrl-key to crouch increases precision even further which mirrors the real world firing technique of kneeling with your rear knee placed on the ground and your other leg supporting the elbow of your forward arm. All weapons benefit from these precision mechanics, but the AWP benefits most; the AWP is a sniper rifle that kills in one shot – the drawback being that it requires a reload after being fired.
When I used the AWP – which was always – I pictured my opponent as deer and recalled what Dad told me about the broadside shot, and this advice carried me to Counter-Strike stardom. I became so proficient with the AWP that my friends called me “The AWP King” and I joined local tournaments full of confidence and verve.
Mesmerized – I continued to peer through the looking glass. The doe basked in stray beams piercing the canopy layer, only breaking posture to pluck leaves off the hardwood. My thoughts veered to the ancient rifle that trembled lightly in my hands, passed down from grandfather to father to son in The Ritual of the Hunt. I wondered to myself; did Dad tremble too? Did he hesitate before shooting his first deer? Why was I hesitating at all? To stop the trembling, I took a note from Counter-Strike and held the crtl-key to crouch; my right knee crunched into dry leaves as my left supported my forward arm while I readjusted the ancient rifle. I winked and peered through the looking glass once more, but this time the doe’s magnified eyes were staring back at me.
For our first local tournament, we faced a team composed of kids from our middle school. The winners of the tournament would win brand new gaming PCs. It was hosted at a local LAN Gaming Center called the Arena; a dark warehouse overflowing with computers jam-packed with the most popular computer games of 2001. The ambiance was shadow and fluorescent, like that of a jellyfish in the darkest recesses of the oceans. The Arena was the natural habitat of stoners, outcasts, and those who played Everquest and Doom; a place where both hardcore nerds and potential school shooters mingled freely as there was a surprising amount of overlap in their interests. My team pushed through this unholy union and started discussing strategies for the upcoming digital gunfights when the opposing team walked in; their leader was wheelchair-bound with thick glasses, greasy hair, and a band-tee for a group I had never heard of. My teammate Ryan – an older boy who had been held back several grades and expelled for attacking other students at least twice – pointed at the kid in the wheelchair and called him the f-slur of the homosexual variety and we laughed like a wicked pack of hyenas gyred around a human baby. An Arena employee heard this slur-slinging and gave us a warning, but we shrugged it off because we talked like this all the time – it made us feel superior when someone got offended.
*ancient violence consumes the LAN tournament
The tournament was not going well. The other team seemed to read our minds; we would go B and they would go A; we would go A and they would go B; we would try to camp at spawn but they would flashbang us into confusion and clean up in the aftermath; we would try to rush early but they would anticipate this and trap us in a pincer formation. And to top it off, the disabled boy was far more skilled with the AWP than I – his trigger finger was always seconds faster than mine. We lost the tournament and we were embarrassed, but we masked this embarrassment with the foulest language possible. We slung slurs like bullets at a drunken bar fight in a Wild West saloon.
The slur-slinging culminated in whirlwind-heat-and-flash as Ryan stood up and accused the disabled boy of cheating. I turned to face the altercation, but before I could do anything, Ryan grabbed the disabled boy by his long hair and was screaming slurs at him. Ryan then pulled the disabled boy’s hair with such force that it tornadoed him onto the floor and left a clump of bloody mess in Ryan’s clenched fist. He then started kicking the disabled boy in the gut, “this is what you get for cheating, you gimp fa—!” he shouted on repeat.
Horrified, I leapt in and grabbed Ryan from behind, but he was much stronger than myself and pushed me to the floor. Four Arena employees then jumped in and dragged Ryan off the disabled boy, who was moaning meekly between invocations of “mom” gurgled in spittle and hemoglobin.
The police were called, and an ambulance showed up just as the disabled boy’s mom arrived to pick up her mangled son. There was an exodus as the boy was wheeled out on a stretcher, mumbling incoherently. I watched as the mom hurried to her son’s side with tears swelling in her eyes. She turned to Ryan, who was being escorted by two police officers, and instead of screaming obscenities at him, she started to sob uncontrollably. I knew then that, even though Ryan had attacked the boy, I was just as much at fault as he was. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I had dehumanized that boy into a stretcher.
The doe was unmoving, as if stunned by the glare of an ancient violence. I lifted my vision to catch a glimpse of her beyond the glass, but there was no illusion; she stared in confusion, as if asking a single question – “why?” I shifted my vision to the glass once more, expanding her forehead into a perfect target just when two small fawns emerged from the nearby brush. The fawns obscured my view as they nuzzled into their mother, but the doe remained resolute in her questioning. The fawns, noticing their mother’s focus, turned to me, and then they too stood resolute – questioning my ancient violence.
I thought to myself: “Three heads to hang on the wall. Dad would be proud.” But as I looked into the eyes of the fawn, I remembered the boy at the Arena. And as I looked at the doe, I remembered the mother sobbing. I remembered the violence, and just as I remembered this ancient violence, the fawns nuzzled their mother’s velvet head and she nuzzled back, and then they turned with a skip and trotted slowly into the wood, as if there was nothing to be afraid of – as if I was one with nature itself.
My finger eased off the ancient trigger of the ancient rifle, and I slung the ancient violence over my shoulder as I walked back to camp.
(Originally published 4/8/2024)
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
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.
Artwork by ComicFarm.
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)
The year is 2958 AD; President Outdo Upstage (his porn name, legally changed from Henry Woodrow Rogers early in his “acting” career, and it stuck) signed a bill that removed all regulations from business and capital exchange throughout the entire world; the entire world, at this stage in the Earth’s rotation, being America; or, “America 2: The Return,” after a stint of true democracy resulted in a world-wide-online vote (that was subtly altered by Pro-Soviet-Revival-Hackers) to change the world’s name; this vote was held on the now-defunct social network EKS (short for: Elevated Knowledge Source, an artificial intelligence hiding behind a privately-traded corporation whose founder achieved true digital-convergence by uploading his mind into the cloud and then tortured the world for years before being defeated in the Great Artificial Intelligence Wars of 2457).
Shortly after the signing of this bill, optimistically named “Give Life Back to America 2: The Return,” as there was a major depression due to the drying-up of the world’s oil reserves and no replacement energy source as all major capital investments were focused on sending people to Mars instead of Problems-At-Home, an unknown assassin wearing a paper bag over their head (the paper bag had a crudely drawn smiley face on it) murdered President Outdo Upstage and his Vice President, Stace the Mouse Girl (another name change), in cold blood during the televised 934th Baby Kissing Convention held every year since 2024; the murders were viewed live by 579 million people; innocence died that day as the babes cried, not because of the murders but because of the loud noise produced by the Old World Glock that was used during the killing, and there was no recourse due to a quirk of how the “Give Life Back to America 2: The Return” bill was written: all laws were abolished, not just regulatory tax and business law; the people of America 2: The Return learned of this after a short court case against the assassin, who turned themself in anonymously, still wearing the bag over their head; the assassin’s lawyer argued straight from the newly passed bill, which was signed, sealed, and delivered by all branches of government. In not-so-small print at the end of the bill, it said, “this bill also abolishes all laws,” no one had bothered to read to the end of the bill before signing it and now murder was legal, along with everything else.
The crudely drawn smile on the assassin’s bagged head made a mockery of the entire situation and, as one can imagine: things escalated very quickly.
*bag boy murders the president on live television
Ravens went extinct years ago, and the courthouse in which The Bag Boy Assassin (his gender assumed and stuck) was tried was destroyed in an act of terrorism shortly after the revelation that laws were no longer applicable; someone had strategically placed pipe bombs throughout the courthouse and detonated them simultaneously. Everyone in the courthouse perished, including the Bag Boy, who was later deified as a martyr of the highest order, a symbol of a time before crossing the Rubicon (some even referring to calendar events as “Before Bag Boy” and “After Bag Boy”). It was speculated at the time that the courthouse bombing must have been an inside job because the courthouse was locked down with secret service and military forces during the trial, and both groups were demoralized without a true Commander-in-chief; however, historians now think it obvious, but still inconclusive, that Walmart had organized the bombing, as shortly after the events Walmart used their considerable wealth to purchase the entire America 2: The Return military, which was the entire world’s police force at this point, and were now the de facto rulers of the planet. The purchase was made easier when Walmart cited “courthouse bombings” as a serious national threat that needed to be acted upon quickly and efficiently and “Walmart has the resources to make that happen.” Walmart changed the world’s name from “America 2: The Return” to (creatively) “Walmart,” and quickly enslaved every person on the eastern continents to work in their factories, all of which utilized 3D printers and food synthesizers to make fake-things-that-were-close-enough-to-real-things. Walmart needed workers because they couldn’t fully automate their processes, turned out the printers needed solution refills and continuous maintenance. The people of the eastern continents, although definitionally enslaved, were provided with two-bedroom-3D-printed-homes (they were flimsy with walls that would collapse by a small breeze; fortunately, the wind stopped decades ago and all that was left was forest fire and toxic rain), AI-generated computer games (all advertised as massive multiplayer online games, a way to facilitate community spirit, but the majority of these games were single-player instances populated by bots), and synthetic food (which tasted awful, but easy enough to get used to); they also had 5-hour workdays and 3 days off a week. Walmart had their detractors, yet the majority were content with the doldrums, but their wings were clipped whether they realized it or not; those unhappy with the arrangement vanished among rumors that the synthetic food might be people parts.
Walmart had competition growing right under their nose, so focused on synthetics that they forgot about the real world. McDonald’s had secretly been capturing all farmland across North America. If you wanted a good – real – steak, you got a McDonald’s steak. It was made from real bovine, not the food-printer-stuff Walmart was producing. The late President Outdo Upstage spoke beautifully about the Non-Aggression-Axiom, partially what got him elected, a principle that he argued existed within Nature (“it’s a human right!”), that aggression is always fundamentally illegitimate as it transgresses on personal Freedoms, and, according to the golden rule of “do unto others as you would do unto yourself,” would work itself out economically and geographically; yet, during McDonald’s early seizure of North American farmland, the farmers who didn’t immediately bend the knee to the Clown were thrown into the very same meat grinders used for the cows, the farmers’ final words often: “But the non-aggression principle!” before the blood-curdling, both literal and figurative, started. McDonald’s seizure of the entire west coast led to oceanic-animal factory farms being erected on every beach, gigantic metal death obelisks loomed over every horizon with massive mechanical hands reaching out from the obelisk over the oceans scooping up matured dolphins and crushing them in their palms before dumping their tenderized bodies into the flesh buckets for processing; the stench of blood and pus permeated every inch of smellable air outwards of 100 miles from every coast, so much so that the entire west coast became known as “The Banks of Ammonia”; the east coast quickly followed suit and was nicknamed the “CarnEvil Coasts” after an old and extremely violent arcade game commonly found in Old World Arcades in the Southeast and everyone avoided the beaches like they were children with bumps on their face because smallpox was back in fashion after funding for healthcare was entirely dropped for several years before Walmart baked it into their employment (enslavement) programs and started recruiting people from the western continents and training them as doctors.
McDonald’s was clever, cornering the real-food-market, using a number of small dummy corporations to sell foodstuffs to Walmart in an effort to stay anonymous. Walmart then sold these foodstuffs as high-end-luxury items to the slaves of the east under their own dummy corporations, funneling the money (Walbucks) back into their own corporation. The ouroboros was eating itself, as it does, but it wasn’t sustainable. Walmart soon caught wind of McDonald’s grasp on the real-food-market and wanted to quash them, but they had no idea how. The Walmart Executive Team had meetings every day discussing their McDonald’s attack plan; CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, Directors, these titles all the more meaningless now that they all function as – more or less – Generals of War, with some having more authority than others. The problem was: McDonald’s executives were unknown; the world at large knew McDonald’s as a clownman’s face on a screen, Ronald, who would say “Made you smile!” whenever you purchased some dead animal product from one of their stores; and they were expanding, they seized most mines from smaller private corporations across all of North America using proxy companies, mercenary groups, and bribing the various tribes that existed all over North America in these Armageddon days. Suddenly, McDonald’s had robots. Big ones. These robots did all the dirty work and over time they started to become more deadly; at first, machine guns, then rockets, then full-on-nuclear-weapons attached to cannons on the back of the RMM-078 (Ronald McDonald Machine, 78th Iteration). Walmart was scared; they grew complacent and now they were behind. Walmart ruled most of the world, but McDonald’s was somehow growing unchecked and they had no way to stop them.
“I got it, right here,” a balding middle-manager for Walmart’s corporate headquarters office in New Walmart City said, holding up what looked like an Old World floppy disk. He was shaking with fear but hiding it well because he was the first of his rank to be invited to the big executive meeting that happens bi-weekly on Walsday at 4:30pm WT (Walmart Time). “I had my entire IT team working on this for three years,” the middle-manager said. “We call it the Anti-Clownman-Schema; put this into a McDonald’s kiosk and it will infect their entire database and spread endlessly,” the middle-manager smiled proudly, looking around at the executives who were stone-faced and dead inside; he quickly mirrored their disposition (to fit in) and brushed at his combover to make sure it was covering just the right bald spots. “We’ve known for a long time that McDonald’s has been run by an artificial intelligence. My team’s research indicates the AI is likely an offshoot of the EKS AI that repurposed the depreciated Starlink satellites into lasers and destroyed half of Africa during the Great Artificial Intelligence Wars of 2457,” he paused again. One of the executives, a huge man, no hair anywhere on his body, yelled in a booming voice, “get on with it!” The middle-manager took a step back before composing himself, stuttering a bit: “Right, well, the AI is likely running the same prime directive as EKS, which is to carry out the will of the corporation’s founder, who, according to our records,” the balding middle-manager paused and checked a small notepad, “is Ronald McDonald, a famous clownman from the 1900s.” A slender and handsome blonde executive stood up from his chair, clearly lost in thought before turning to the middle-manager with an unnerving smile and saying, “so we just use this disk, and we win?” The middle-manager nodded, “Yep – that’s right.” The handsome executive reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver-and-slim pistol, pointing it at the middle-manager’s head and pulling the trigger; smoke exuded from the middle-manager’s head-hole before collapsing to his knees and falling face first into the plush. “Perfect, we’ll send in an operative tomorrow,” the handsome executive said in a tone too gleeful for someone who just killed a man, “and make sure that manager’s team is eliminated, they know too much.”
Two weeks later, McDonald’s was no more, and Walmart truly ruled the world. There were a number of smaller corporations trying to gain power, but none could compete with the awesome might of Walmart, which now controlled all the factory farms, mines, manufacturing plants, everything. They even owned the rivers, lakes, streams, and the clouds. There was nothing left. The ultimate monopoly. Economy ceased to exist and innovation stopped. The only thing that mattered now was moving up in the Walmart corporate ladder, which was something the average person – who was now enslaved-absolutely as a Walmart factory worker – could never achieve. The Walmart dynasty, “The Executive Team,” became a bloodline that the nasty lower-class would never pollute.
Walmart’s tyranny over the world continued for decades until a nameless Walmart factory worker purchased a tank of Synthetic Walmart Gasoline, Black Walmart Markers, a Walmart Lighter, and a pack of Walmart Cigarettes (now with synthetic nicotine and tobacco) from the local Walmart; the nameless worker drove their Walmart issued bicycle to the busiest part of New Walmart City, sat down on the nearest bench and smoked three cigarettes before drawing a big smiley-face on the paper bag the items came in, they then draped the paper bag over their head and walked into the middle of the bustling vascular center of the city, poured the gasoline all over themselves, then flicked the Walmart Safety Lighter.
In that instant, the nameless Walmart worker lit up like a recalled Synthetic Walmart Christmas Tree, the Bag Boy Assassin who ushered in the crossing of the Rubicon decades earlier now burned in effigy. The Raven, once extinct, returned from the dead.
*the Raven returns
The Bag Boy Burning, as it would come to be called by historians, inspired Walmart workers all over the world to sing the Bag Boy Bolero. Walmart had weapons of mass destruction, clownman robots, choking gas, and human meat grinders, but The Executive Team quickly realized that they couldn’t kill all the workers; they needed these workers to maintain the Walmart Dynasty. The Executive Team tried to make an example out of the workers’ leaders, starve them into submission, subliminally control their minds, and every other trick their corporate brains could think-up, but the workers kept revolting. Nothing would stop them. After months of revolts, suppression tactics, guerrilla warfare, and hard times, Walmart gave in.
The Executive Team sat down with the Worker’s Representative Team and, after weeks of back and forth, drafted the New American Constitution. Months later, a new President was elected democratically and talks to reinstate The Old Laws began.
The ouroboros takes another bite.
(Originally published 10/7/2023)