by Douglas Lain
So I’m watching a livestream of the resurrection of Club Penguin at Montgomery Park and waiting for the district to decide if they are admitting defeat and closing school for the day.
9:27 AM
Bucky says you’re wearing the new goggles and your own chroma key suit. I’m not surprised you went for it, even though you aren’t a gamer, but I wonder if you think augmented reality is good enough for the afterlife? Are you in a Biblical MU? Are you talking to an NPC Jesus, or are you talking to Bucky himself?
That’s the beauty of the new economy. There is a game for everybody, or at least for every demographic. The rule is this: From each according to their abilities, to each according to what their psychometric profile indicates, based on what their previous gameplay, FB clicks, and favorite movie titles indicate they’d like to play next.
9:33 AM
You know that I pretended to go school even after I dropped out, right? I don’t think I ever told you that, but you know, right?
I didn’t want my mom to know what I’d done, not right away, so I faked like I was still going. I’d get up at the same time as always, at 6:45 AM. Same thing everyday—Shredded Wheat or Cookie Crisp, a cup of coffee, quick shower, brush teeth, and then I’d walk to Klickitat Street before deciding what I was actually going to do or where I was actually going to go.
It was like something you’d read on Buzzfeed: “This honor roll student dropped out during his senior year, then pretended to still be in school. You won’t believe what happens next!”
Only, nothing happened next. Not for awhile anyway. I just wandered around.
One time I went to Cathedral Park and spent the afternoon talking to a homeless man named Brian. He was bald with a big bushy orange beard, wearing a dirty Christmas sweater in February, and he smelled bad.
He showed me where I should stand so the arches of the St. John’s bridge would resemble a cathedral. I mean, they have a plaque at the spot where you should stand for the best view, but it was nice of him anyhow. He told me about growing up in Idaho and meeting Janis Joplin once, but I didn’t hang around long enough to hear the whole of that story.
I used to go downtown and ride the tram to OHSU. One time I got on at 8 AM right when all the doctors and nurses were arriving and, jammed in with them, I imagined that I was in a science fiction film about overpopulation and a deadly pandemic.
9:39 AM
Really though, I didn’t do anything with my free time. I won a few Bash Bash money matches but otherwise I didn’t do anything noteworthy and nothing noteworthy happened.
Until I met you.
9:45 AM
Do you remember Peyton?
That lady kept sipping cough syrup, right from the bottle, while her mutt Peyton kept on barking and running back and forth from booth to booth. He left paw prints on the vinyl seats and begged for french fries and ice cream.
It was annoying, but he gave me an excuse to talk to you.
9:50 AM
Are there rules against dogs in Dairy Queen? I mean, did we ever really find out? I remember Googling the question for you and going down a rabbit hole. We found out a lot of good information.
Like, you didn’t even know that Warren Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, which is a multinational holding company with a controlling interest in Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Geico, Helzberg Diamonds, and the Kraft Heinz Company, before I told you he was. And you didn’t know that Dairy Queen’s mission statement promises that creating a customer friendly atmosphere and a family environment is the company’s fundamental priority.
That family environment meant that you should have asked Peyton to stop licking his balls in the middle of the Dairy Queen, but you didn’t do that, did you?
But was there a rule about dogs? We didn’t figure that out.
10:00 AM
There wasn’t any Wi-Fi at your Dairy Queen and I had to use my phone’s data plan to Google stuff for you. That’s what we talked about next. After Peyton and his Nyquil-swilling owner left, that’s what we were reduced to. I read the names of the local and locked Wi-Fi connections aloud:
NotaMethHouse
Bobby
Xfinity2312 (or something like that)
Without Peyton I was awkward. And when I noticed that the Apostolic Church on the other side of Duke didn’t have any Wi-Fi either you said that it made sense. You said Jesus didn’t need a website because he had the Bible. He didn’t need Wi-Fi because he could communicate with people through the Holy Ghost.
Should we even be together? I mean, I’m an awkward nerd and you’re a Jesus freak.
10:11 AM
But we are together.
10:12 AM
We were together.
10:14 AM
Maybe it wasn’t the dog but the ice cream that did it. When your shift ended you gave me ice cream which was how I knew you liked me too. You gave me a Grasshopper Blizzard but you grabbed two spoons. Why did you do that?
That’s when I fell for you. In the parking lot of the Dairy Queen eating mint ice cream and getting brain freeze, listening to you explain what was good about living in a cult. What it was like to live in the Jesus is Light of the World compound. That’s when I sorta knew that you were the thing that was going to happen. You were what I’d been looking for when I’d wandered around playing hooky.
10:17 AM
Do you remember what you said when I asked you what it was like to live in a religious cult, without Wi-Fi? You told me that it was sweet. Do you remember? You said that it was sweet. Maybe too sweet. Like a Blizzard Grasshopper ice cream from Dairy Queen.
10:22 AM
What game are you playing right now?
10:33 AM
Are you getting these DMs?
Dad Returns
MATTHEW MUNSON, 544-23-1102, FACEBOOK POSTS, 04/16/17
9:12 AM
Mom went to work this morning like it was any other day. Her newsfeed was filled with the usual cat videos and listicles enumerating Trump’s personality disorders, so she didn’t realize that most of her clients at the Multnomah County Child and Family Therapy Center would be missing their appointments.
I wonder if Bucky is providing Zoloft and Ritalin to the thousands of street fighters and assassins in his system.
Anyhow, I’ll probably call Mom around noon. It should sink in by then that something’s gone wrong; that something is different.
9:25 AM
On the other hand, Mom has a real talent for normalizing weird stuff. Like, when Dad and I showed up together after my Bash money match, she didn’t even think to ask where I’d been the night before, or how Dad and I had met up or any of that. What bothered her was more immediate: Dad was in her house, unannounced, and was planning on staying over for awhile. An unscheduled visit. An unannounced stay was beyond the pale apparently, but when I told her that I’d stayed the night in Gresham because I’d been too drunk to come home she didn’t even pause.
Dad stole my drama. You’d think I’d have been grateful because this fight between them took the heat off, but I wasn’t. I wanted Mom to react. I’d dropped out and wrecked my chances at MIT or wherever, but when I announced this fact it was treated like it was no big deal. Mom stopped her argument with Dad, sure, but only to tell me that she’d known all along and that we’d work out what to do about school later, but she only ever said the words summer school and online courses and SAT. We never worked out anything. There wasn’t time for that.
Dad was back. That was the main thing. And that meant I wasn’t going to get into any real trouble.
I watched the two of them arguing in the living room, Mom getting angry on multiple levels; angry because Dad showed up unannounced, angry because he’d left to begin with, and most of all angry because he was listening to his phone while he talked to her. She couldn’t get his full attention even when he needed something from her. He was standing there in the doorframe, at the edge of our orange carpet, waiting for Mom to back down and let him in, bu
t half of him was somewhere else.
“You have to ask in advance,” Mom said. “We’ve been over this. Our lawyers have been over this.”
“We haven’t signed the papers, remember?”
“Yet. I haven’t signed the divorce papers … yet.”
But that was it, really. That’s all the fight she had in her, and Mom invited Dad in on the pretext that they would discuss the slow process of their divorce. Mom said he should come on in, and then she walked away from him as if she were too disgusted to keep talking, but she was really inviting him to follow her, which he did.
I didn’t know if they were going to the kitchen or the bedroom, but I just parked myself on our dirt-colored couch and then fetched the joint Yuma had given me the night before and lit up. Why not? I smoked my joint and didn’t even open the window. When I heard the sound of pots and pans clanking I followed them into the kitchen.
I was hungry.
Mom had set to cleaning. She was piling dirty dishes into the sink reflexively. She was wearing her blue, paisley-patterned, grease-stained apron and collecting various kitchen utensils and instruments from the stove. Dad didn’t move to help or anything, but explained that he needed to field test the program. He tapped a button on his phone and waited for her to ask her next question, but she didn’t ask anything so he made what he was asking for explicitly clear.
“I need a place to stay. This is work that I have to do on the outside but it’s unapproved. I’m on my own with this,” he said.
Mom tossed an egg beater and fork into the sink. She grabbed a dirty butter knife and our ladybug coffee cup from the kitchen table.
“You can’t just waltz in here …” She made stabbing motions in the air for emphasis, thrusting the butter knife in his direction, but then gave that up. She turned to me for moral support. “He’s not even listening.”
Dad was texting somebody, and he still had an earbud in. I couldn’t hear any music but I imagined he was listening to Daft Punk or something like that. He always liked Daft Punk.
I was wrong about that.
“What I’m telling you, Lorrie, is that something has happened. Something has happened. I wouldn’t show up out of the blue otherwise.” Dad put his hands down on the kitchen table, leaned forward towards her, and tried to look confident, maybe even commanding, but he couldn’t stop himself from flinching when Mom grabbed a ladle from the counter and held it front of his face. And he couldn’t help but sigh in relief when she turned to toss the ladle into the sink of dishes behind her.
I didn’t want to watch them fight. What I wanted was to play some Bash. I tried to be as inconspicuous as I could as I found some wheat bread, a jar of Jiffy, and a clean butter knife. I took the ladybug coffee mug, washed it out, and then filled it with chocolate milk.
“It’s an invasion of privacy,” Mom said.
“I’ll stay out of your way.”
“No. That’s not it. If you’re here that means they’re here too,” Mom said. “Right?” She slammed the dirty skillet she was holding into the sink and shattered one of the blue tinted mason jars we use as drinking glasses.
“You’re going to cut yourself. Don’t just pick up the shards with your fingers,” Dad said. “Look, you’re always under surveillance. Everybody is always under surveillance. All the time.”
“But not like this, Jeff. You know how I knew you were coming home? You know why I knew to expect you? I saw a white van parked across from the house this morning.”
“That’s not serious. That’s just stagecraft. Agency theatrics. It’s meant for me, not you.”
Mom turned away and started washing dishes. Dad stepped up behind her and put his hand on her back and she didn’t pull away. This was how it went. He was never there, he was nothing and nobody to us most of the time, unless he deigned to show up and then, really no matter how long it had been, there would be a reconciliation between them and I had to pretend we were a normal family.
9:43 AM
I sat on the couch for awhile. I found the roach of my joint on the arm and relit. Then, when it was really dead, I turned on the GameCube but even then I didn’t start playing right away. I just stared at the menu screen, listening to the Bash Bash Revolution fanfare play in a loop.
It’s not bad really. Video game music is underrated. I think a lot of Bash music would work well for a movie or a TV show. The menu screen music sounds like something from a spy show you might watch on TV Land, one of those shows from the 80s about FBI men with sideburns who drive fast, fight hard, and always end up chasing Russians across the same three or four rooftops or through the same parking lot.
The fourth time around the loop I pressed the start button and selected Robin Hood.
Nobody uses Robin Hood for tournament play because he’s so weak, but I always choose him to play against the computer because he makes it more of a challenge, and Robin Hood is a good pick if you want to practice defense and distance attacks. At close range there really is no way Hood can win, not even against the computer. His bow is no good as a shield and only barely works as a blunt force weapon, but at a distance he can win. Playing him is a good way to develop as a player, I think, because if you can win as Robin Hood it means you’re controlling the space. It means you’re staying out of reach. Robin Hood helps you learn strategies for running away.
The computer played Eagle Person which made it easy to stop listening to what was happening in the kitchen and just concentrate on avoiding wings and talons. I jumped over Eagle Person’s roll kicks, ducked his laser blasts, and let my mind wander as I waited for an opening. Playing against the computer was all about developing muscle memory. I’d played this out a hundred times before. I took a shot at the back of Eagle Person’s head, knocked him off the ledge, and then pounced on top of him before he could make it back to the platform. Digital blood and feathers filled the space where Eagle Person had been as I did a backwards somersault to safety.
I waited for Eagle Person to respawn, stared straight ahead, and tried to ignore Dad. He was standing over me, trying to tell me something, but I focused on the game.
“Your mom says I’ve got the couch,” he said. “Maybe you could wrap up your little game for me?”
Fuck him, right?
Dad grunted and then walked around me and my territory and went to set up the couch. I didn’t look away from the screen but in my peripheral vision I could see he had a pile of old blankets. There was a rustling sound as he cleared newspapers and crumbs off the sofa, followed by a series of hollow thwacks as Dad tried to beat some shape into the desiccated interior foam pads in the couch cushions.
I felt pinpricks on my back and neck, but I didn’t turn and look. I kept my eye on the red, green, and blue pixels on the CRT.
Charging at Eagle Person, I landed a kick to the head. The computer followed this up with an efficient grab and a throw, but I L-canceled and countered—two quick arrows to Eagle Person’s groin, catching him mid-kick.
The first time I let myself be angry at Dad, the first time I realized that his judgment and his ideas didn’t always (or often) make any sense, I was maybe seven years old. That was just before he left.
You’d think that realizing that Dad could be wrong would have been a big relief, but not so much. How it happened was I realized that, despite Dad’s temporary conviction otherwise, we were not trapped in a computer simulation after all, and it came as a disappointment. It was a like learning the truth about Santa Claus or the truth about life after death.
I’d known for a long time, well before Dad showed up at that bus stop in Gresham, that Dad could be wrong, the world was real, and there was no such thing as magic.
That’s what was I thinking when Eagle Person grabbed me and started in pecking at my eyes. I spun the C-Stick but couldn’t get away, so I pressed the “B” button and rolled. Both of us, Eagle Person and Robin Hood, end up going over the edge. I didn’t let go. I was one kill up. I could afford the life.
It was a double su
icide for the win.
Trapped Inside the Matrix
MATTHEW MUNSON, 544-23-1102, FACEBOOK POSTS, 04/17/17
11:45 PM
I just read that some volunteers for the GameCube economy are participating in world creation instead of games. They’re creating third, fourth, and fifth lives or something. And this reminded me that I never did explain why Dad thought we were all trapped in something like Second Life already. I never did tell you about how it was that Dad went into voluntary solitary confinement when I was in first grade.
Back then the AI he was working on was called Buzzz, and Buzzz was a thinker. I’m not really sure what that meant, but Dad talked about it all the time. He said that most AI programs talk but don’t think, but they’d been cleverer and written up a program that did the opposite. That’s what Dad told us about it before his own vow of silence took effect.
Dad was working from home back then, but even so, I rarely saw him. And when I found him sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, drinking coffee and staring blankly at the screen, I didn’t know what to do about it. It was disruptive. A break from the routine. I mean, he was in my chair, but I decided not to say anything. I just put my bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch down on the opposite side of the table and waited for Mom to bring orange juice.
Dad was singing tunelessly under his breath as he typed. That wasn’t different. He used to sing code to himself, under his breath, all the time. I’d sit outside his office sometimes and listen to him sing stuff like “(int i = 0; i < size(); i++)” to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
“Hello, sweetie,” Mom said. She kissed Dad on top of his head, not minding the grease and the smell of cigarettes, and then came over to my side of the table and handed me my orange juice. “What are you doing up so early?”
“I want to know what Buzzz is thinking,” Dad said.
He didn’t look up from the screen, and when he didn’t elaborate further, Mom and I just let the subject drop. Dad was doing something with his program. We didn’t really need to know what. I ate my cereal, Mom drank her coffee and we went over the words for my spelling test.
