Tony also met the woman of his dreams there, L. Her real name was Lana, but she would punch you if you called her that. She started as a waitress when they both were around sixteen; and she worked there until the shit hit the fan. It took Tony a few years to trick her to fall in love with him, but eventually she did. Perry and Tony were at Treetop pretty much every day, after school and then after work when they were older. And if L was working, she would always produce exactly what they wanted, before they could even ask: two slices of pepperoni and a caffeinated drink. She would even stay after her shift was over to play games with them. She was a good gamer herself. She liked story based games, not the competitive stuff Tony and Perry played. Tony would finish playing a game and always go looking for her, inevitably he would find her beautiful long brown hair at some sort of role playing game. She was famous for her green pants and heavy jacket, from the back she looked like Lindsay from Freaks and Geeks.
L and Tony had a connection right away, they both liked hard rock and heavy metal. Tony liked weird stoner rock like Mr. Bungle, Clutch, and Maximum the Hormone. L was a more traditional metal head, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Metallica, with some Viking metal. But their spheres of taste overlapped and they shared a love for bands like GWAR, Primus, Faith No More, Tool and Alice in Chains and went to many amazing shows. Of course Valley Forest had no live music venues or any reason for rock bands to come through. Anytime they wanted to see any of those bands they’d have to travel to LA, sometimes they’d drive all the way to SF.
Perry, L and Tony were a threesome, but not in the way you’re thinking. When they first met L, Perry saw their instant connection over her GWAR shirt and he knew he didn’t want to come between them. All three of them did hang out a lot. Although Perry preferred electronic music, he liked going to metal shows with them, mostly for the drugs and overall pure chaotic fun that is a rock n roll pit. They all had some of the best times of their lives together at those shows. In those golden years, they tried to balance epic gaming sessions with epic psychedelic metal shows.
One day, years before they discovered heavy metal, hanging out at Treetop, eating their cheap pizza and watching an old hot dog turn, Perry and Tony noticed a spot they hadn’t previously, the pinball area. At this time in Tony’s world, the pinball area was a time warp to back when his dad used to take him here. Old, long haired, skunk smelling guys, barely moving, standing in front of these long machines, eyes quickly glancing up at the display every once in a while. Seemingly in a trance, except when they lose, then they dance around in a circle, grimacing and slamming their fists on the machine. The flips and buzzers and ringing don’t make it too far out of the dark pinball corner in any arcade, the screeching and beeping and explosions of the arcade games drowning it out. It was always there, but they never noticed it until now. They wondered why.
2
BALL ZERO
One day Perry and Tony went back into that dark pinball corner. They had wandered by thousands of times before, and at a casual glance it was always the same thing, a bunch of guys that smelled like skunk standing around, watching a silver ball bounce around. Pretty boring. But this time was different; the guy who was playing wasn’t just standing there. He was animated, he was into it, the machine was flashing and dancing in time with his flips and body jerks. He still smelled like a skunk, which they would soon discover why. They couldn’t help but watch him. He launched balls and hit targets with such accuracy that the pinball machine went crazy. They had no idea pinball machines could get so animated and excited. His score was in the billions. They both fell in love with a whole new part of Treetop. Pinball become a regular part of their gaming lives, and kind of a big part of their lives in general.
Pinball is reality; that ball sliding around inside the machine doesn’t move along a programmed path. Even the most satisfying video games, if you play it twice in a row you can recognize the tendencies. It’s all part of what the guy on the other end of the game thinks it should be. The game is programmed to do certain things, and that never changes. Every single pinball game is different, no matter what you do, even if played on the same machine two times in a row. No two pinball machines play the same, even if they’re the same game. One pinball machine will play different if put in two different locations on Earth, it’s dependent on gravity, the slant of the ground, the temperature, the surface the machine is placed on, etc. Its real physics, nobody had to guess at the paths that meteor debris would take if you blew one up in space. There was beauty in that, instead of being in some fantastic digital world portrayed through a screen with arbitrary rules like a video game, a pinball game is here, in our world, using the rules and judgments of the world that we live in every day. Games are programmed to “cheat” sometimes, but when you lose at pinball, it’s your own fault. Not bad programming, no screaming at the screen. It was just you and the ball. And they were ok with that.
Perry and Tony, after many thousands of hours of playing pinball, developed their own philosophy based on pinball.
Most pinball games have three balls for a play. Ball three is your last, and money time. It’s the ball you can lose or win on. You know how some people say you only need to watch the last two minutes of any basketball game? It’s like that. You can lose the first two balls of a pinball game in one second each, and on the last ball you can break the Guinness Book of World Records score. Ball three is life or death, make it or break it, whatever slogan you want that inspires clutch play.
Sometimes their pinball philosophy would slip into their lives outside of Treetop. There was a classic moment, playing baseball at school, bottom of the 9th inning, two outs, Tony and Perry’s team was down by one, Tony’s up. As he walked up to bat, Perry just said, “Ball three” as he walked by. Tony knew what he meant instantly. He got a hit. They didn’t win, but Tony did his part and got on base in his ball three moment. It became an inspirational thing after that. “Ball three baby, let’s do this!”
Most pinball machines also have an Extra Ball players can earn. If you’re on ball three (last ball) of a game and get an extra ball, it takes the pressure off. You can relax again, it’s like you’re now on ball two again, playing with house money. Ahead of the game, through nobody else but yourself. Another extra ball, and it’s kinda like you’re on ball one. Another extra ball...and you’re on Ball Zero.
Ball Zero? What a trip. Perry and Tony loved that thought. Scoring points before the game even begins. Getting to Ball Zero became another goal for them that they got more often than not. When they got to Ball Zero during a pinball game, it was like a football team walking out on the field up by ten points before kick-off. Any points you scored on Ball Zero were bonus. If ball three was being clutch at the end of game, ball zero was scoring before the game even begins. Every game is better with Ball Zero. Ball Zero is so good it’s almost like cheating, but it’s not against the rules, it’s just being really good. If only everything in life had a Ball Zero. Their philosophy in life became, The Search for Ball Zero.
3
BLACK FRIDAY TO BLACK EVERYDAY
The Ball Zero philosophy helped motivate Tony and Perry in their lives. But change happens, sometimes often and quickly. One day, right when you’re feeling too comfortable, life will switch gears and take you on an entirely new path. Sometimes you don’t realize or have time to say goodbye to your old life before being thrust into a new one. Times change so fast, sometimes you only know you had a good life when it’s in the past. What can seem like a boring time sometimes quickly transform into fond memories, even though they didn’t seem so wonderful when you were living it.
They were living in one of those boring times. Perry, L and Tony, having fun when possible, thinking their lives were boring, but not realizing they were living in a golden age of a protected society. Taking for granted the peaceful lives they had. It’s not like they were even accepted in society. Where was the place of a gamer / metalhead in a “normal” city in the beginning of the 21st century? They had great times in
a few places during those times: in the gaming lobby right before playing an eight player VERSUS mode of Left 4 Dead with your friends and in the mosh pit of a metal band. In most other places, you’re an outsider.
But no one in society saw this change coming. Valley Forest was a shitty boring town, but it was the crux of where shit splattered all over the face of humanity. It did happen to be the focal point of the shift from their peaceful lives as harmless, slightly insane consumers, to a life of violent, war torn consumer driven apocalypse.
It started slowly at first, probably like the world you live in. It all starts at something like a Black Friday shopping holiday when people are standing in front of the door, quietly waiting and letting the tension build. What is it? Nothing, it’s not an innocent holiday hinting at buying things for you loved ones. A first come, first serve, trample children to get your discount TV philosophy. That mentality spreads like a virus as people see others who get a competitive advantage with the more effort they put in. “If this asshole is going to camp in front of Walmart for one week and he gets to buy the cheapest TV, I’ll just camp out here two weeks.” “If this lady will trample my children to get the newest iPhone, I’ll trample her children!” Is it anyone’s fault? It’s kind of hard to pin the blame on anyone. Is it the cheap bastards who first started camping out so they could be first in line? Or is it the company who promoted their Black Friday sales were so insane that people should sleep in front of the store? Doesn’t really matter now. (Clips from that South Park Black Friday episode, specifically of the people in the mall parking lot. Those are hilarious and prophetic.)
It’s easy to see how Black Friday sales first start at nine, then eight, then get earlier and earlier as stores reap the profits of people’s greed. Then all of sudden there’s a Cyber Monday, then it’s a Black Week, and inevitably it’s Black November. How can a company who needs to increase profits every year infinitely not take the next step and move into Black October. Invent a new holiday is to fill in the gaps and build up more demand for crap. Like Halloween, people couldn’t get excited enough all October for just one day, so they split Halloween into 2 holidays; one on the 15th and one on the 31st. They also added gift giving to Halloween. After that Halloween created a Black October. After a while of this, every single day becomes an insane shopping holiday. Open 12 hours? Screw that, stay open 24 hours! 365 days a year, 24 hours a day mega Black Friday sales, Black Everyday. It’s inevitable. The only question is how long it takes to get there.
Then one day, after impossible to stop consumer inertia has been achieved, and the biggest companies dwarf all governments. Someone tries to stop it, confront the corporate evildoers and tell them that they couldn’t go any farther. Valley Forest just happened to be the place where that confrontation happens. Elohssa corporate headquarters were close, so they got to be the testing ground for a lot insane new technology, ICs, or Internal Computers were tested and launched here, and they were the first city to see a warstore. On top of those two awesome and tragic events, Valley Forest was also the place where the US government tried to stop the warstore, and failed epicly.
4
OLIGOPOLIES & ICs
Tony remembered one time in Economics class, learning about markets, the teacher said a funny word, “Oligopoly.” Sounds like that game they always play. The teacher then went on to say that in a free capitalist market, without interference, markets will eventually, most likely, become an Oligopoly or a Monopoly. That eventually some winners will emerge join up, buy other winners and losers, bla, bla, bla, until at the end, a handful of companies control the entire market, an Oligopoly. Or one company buys up all the other ones, a Monopoly.
Right at the time when he learned that Tony started noticing it was happening. Things like Warner buying Time and it becomes Time Warner. Then AOL buys Time Warner and it becomes AOL Time Warner, and it keeps going and the name keeps getting bigger and/or more obscure. At the same time this company is buying up everything it can, its competitors are doing the exact same thing, for fear of becoming trampled and past tense, instead of merging into one of the huge acronyms.
All of a sudden there’s a race to eat up all the companies, and that lasts for a good amount of years until the food runs out. No more Ma n’ Pa liquor stores, they’re 7/11 or Circle K. And if you follow the corporate family trees, 7/11 and Circle K both end up at one of the handful of these top companies in the Oligopoly. MicroBoeingEBayPepsiViacomJohnson&JohnsonSoft probably owns one of them. Actually that’s a joke. There’s no company called MicroBoeingEBayPepsiViacomJohnson&JohnsonSoft, it’s called MBEPSoft.. So, the corporations get bigger, the CEOs at the companies get paid more, the workers get paid less and/or are replaced by automation, there are great leaps in technology at the great cost of the planet, all the usual stuff. There are a million new phones and gadgets to buy, with more memory and they’re easier to use.
There’s one thing most people agree is a good thing, people are living longer. The longer people are alive, the longer they’re spending and making money. That’s reason enough for these mega corporations to invest billions to save and extend people’s lives, it’s a good investment.
So people are living longer, spending more, a lot of people’s lives suck, but some are better than ever. Then, seemingly out of the blue, the dark horse in the corporate war, Elohssa Corporation pulled out the greatest product ever known to business. The innovation that changed their world. Most generations have something like this: written language, the wheel, printing press, telephone, cars, TV, PCs, the internet. Theirs was ICs, or Internal Computers.
An IC is a system of nanobots that creates miniature computer hardware inside of your body and that hooks into your bodies systems to influence and enhance them. Very basically, Windows for your body and your eyes are your screen. It’s very easy to work, you just think and it happens. You need to know the time? You can have it pop up in your vision whenever you want, you can keep a clock going anywhere in your vision, or put it in the lower right corner of your eyes so it feels just like Windows.
ICs were a reflection of the time they lived in, the greatest thing in the world that unites us all and isolates us at the same time, ruins some people’s lives while enhancing others. Just think of being able to surf the net in 10 or 100 different windows, while playing multiple games and downloading anything, chatting with all your friends, and enjoying any amount of music, movies or shows that you can comprehend simultaneously (it turns out humans can comprehend a lot simultaneously, with some practice.). Everything in custom displays layered over your eyesight that you can instantly create, move, stack infinitely deep or hide at a moments thought.
ICs contributed to the Black Everyday phenomenon, by creating super connected, yet super isolated people. One of the biggest factors in society that creates problems is people thinking the world revolves around them. It’s easy to do with our brain, it’s crazy easy to do with ICs. ICs give people the power to be their own God in their own Universe. With a single thought you can delete everyone in your world, if you wanted you could transform every single person into your own personal sex slave, or whatever type of slave you could imagine. It may be virtual, but it’s a super real virtual that fools your your eyes, ears, all your senses. It’s easy to see how many people go down that rabbit hole and never are heard from again.
Indeed, once ICs were created, it has been proven that most people never see 100% of what’s in front of them; they’re always doing something with their IC obstructing their view. In extreme cases, people have been known to live for years with 99% of their vision encompassed by unlimited, ever changing porn, only leaving a tiny peephole to look through and see the real world. That’s mostly a guy thing as you can imagine, but Porn Blindness is a real thing now.
With ICs masturbation is outdated. Rubbing yourself alone to simulate having sex with another person is hilariously insane in a world with ICs. Sex is pretty much a strange, exotic, disease filled trip that is more of a hassle than anything. W
ith ICs anyone can come at any moment—there’s no build up, that takes too long. Most people with ICs are coming every moment. For a real thrill, they don’t come for a few seconds. Now that is a real twisted pleasure for IC users.
The other great things about ICs: You never have to upgrade, there never is lag and your brain never crashes. Not to mention, your IC comes with a free “wireless” connection to the internet. About ½ the people on Earth have ICs, so that’s about 25 trillion people to add to your friends list.
Getting an IC is easy; it’s nothing like plugging a giant needle into the back of your head like those barbarians in the Matrix. It comes in a little transparent tube, like a straw or a pixie stick. The tube is filled up ¾ of the way with a metallic looking liquid, that kind of looks like lumpy Mercury or silver sand. You buy the tube, open it up and drink the sandy mixture. You could chew it, it really doesn’t help, it feels like chomping down on a mouthful of tiny rocks. It really just needs to enter your body, any way is ok; so technically, you can shove your new computer up your ass and it would install perfectly. The fastest way actually is to snort it, but only druggies really do that. But you do need to ingest all of it. Each nanobot has a certain job and even though there are backups, if you lose too many, your IC will fail and you’ll have a metallic speckled shit one day.
ICs gave the everyday person the power that programmers had so long held to themselves. Anyone could modify their IC and create new programs and “apps” just by thinking about it. Everyone was instantly connected to each other and everyone had the most powerful computer on the market, the human brain. Anything you can think of that modifies any of your senses is fair game with an IC, the possibilities are endless.
Every IC has a virtually unlimited memory capacity, using your brain. The first couple days of having an IC is like being in heaven and hell at the same time while tripping on mushrooms. Everything you remember is recallable, reliveable, editable, copy able and shareable. You can even enhance memories, change them, edit them with other memories and set it to music. Dreams are recordable. This was a huge one, who would’ve guessed that in the future, the hottest thing available to buy would be celebrity dreams. It’s like a TV show with unlimited episodes, until the person dies that is. Michael Jackson’s are the best. He’s really a great showman; even in his dreams filled with young boys and jesus juice parties, he has a great stage presence. (Yes, they kept his brain.)
The Search for Ball Zero Page 2
