234,438¥ (Chapter 5 of 38)

Gil has a few people at his house for the first time since Amy died. It's his grandson's friends, but company is company. Anything is better than the silence and boredom. But it's not until he hops into the virtual world of Yi with them that he realizes what he has been missing all these years. "Video games" have come a long way. Bang!  

Transcript

That Friday I picked up my grandson and his three friends, Isaac, Mabelle, and Francis, at around 6 pm. As we drove back to the house I got a kick out of listening to them talk.  

“I just finished an old book I found,” Park was telling his friends. “It’s called 1984.” 

“The 80s looked so cool,” Mabelle said.

It did? Big hair and square cars?  

“It wasn’t really about the ’80s though,” Park said. “I think it was written in the 1940s. It was a futuristic novel, and man it was depressing. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“That movie came out a few years ago,” Isaac said. “It’s a 360. Although I don’t understand why they made it a 360.” 

“Oh is that the one with Jebidiah Clooney?” Mabelle asked.  

“Right. Yeah, and it wasn’t depressing either, so it’s probably not the same story. It was a romantic comedy, and to be honest, kind of boring. Other than the cyberpunk aesthetic I didn’t think much of it.” 

“Yeah, had to be a different 1984,” Park said. “This was anything but boring, and bleak as fuck —sorry Pop. What was the movie about?”

“It’s basically about this guy who works in a cubicle with Big G and falls in love with a girl in a cubicle in another department. He wants to date her but obviously, it’s against the law because they work in the same company, so he tries to date her without the company finding out. He’s constantly writing hand-written love letters to her which he balls up and throws into her cubicle. But of course, Big G finds out and they drill him until he admits his undying love for her, not knowing she is watching him on a camera she installed on the HR lady’s shirt. He gets fired, she meets him in the street and tells him that she also loves him, then she quits, and they live happily ever after—blah, blah, blah.” 

I didn’t have a clue what a “360” was, but Lig told me after that it was a movie where you didn’t watch it from a fourth wall (I don’t know what that means either) but watched it from the inside with VR glasses. It was called 360 because they used 360 cameras so, for example, if there was a scene in an elevator it was like you were literally inside the elevator with the actors. But just like 3D in my day, it didn’t catch on as much as everyone thought it was going to.

“It sounds similar,” Park said. “Were there any rats?”

“Rats?” Isaac said. “Why rats?” 

“What about, ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is…something.’”

We all looked at Park like he lost his palm. 

“What in the name of God do that mean?” I said. 

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Mabelle said. 

“It does in the book,” Park said. 

“I’m not sure I want to —Oh wait, I remember now. Yeah, I guess they changed it the movie. I think it was, ‘End war. End ignorance. End…slavery?’ War is peace? That’s a contradiction. Where did you find the book?” 

“At that used analog store in town. The old guy in the store just handed it to me, and said, ‘Read that.’”  

“Isn’t that guy crazy?” 

“All analog store owners are crazy.”

“That stuff is so expensive,” Mabelle said. “For old junk.”

“The book wasn’t. He gave it to me for a dollar.” 

“I wouldn’t call it junk,” Isaac said. “I love that stuff. I’ve got a collection of VCR tapes my great-grandfather gave me. I wish I could watch them.”  

“Why haven’t we asked a shadow yet?” Park said. “Pop, you have Lig synced with the car?” 

“No, but I’m right here,” Lig replied from my pocket.  “This car’s old operating system keeps booting me out. The poor thing is getting senile. I’ll do my best. Are you wondering about 1984?” 

“I am.” 

“There’s nothing being sold by that title online, but there are bootleg copies that consist of pictures of the pages of the analog book. There was also a movie starring John Hurt in 1984. Titled, aptly, 1984.”

“There isn’t a single digital copy?”

“Not from Amazon or Audible, but as I said, there are private bootleg copies. Although they seem to get deleted fairly quickly. Was it a small publisher?” 

“No, I could be wrong, but I’m sure it said Penguin Books on the front.” 

“Okay, well Penguin was a huge publisher. Strange, but all I’m finding is the movie, and there isn’t much detail about that. I can’t even find any references to it in abandoned chat logs.”  

“Oh well, it’s probably not the same,” Park said. “What was it about, Lig?” 

“There isn’t much information other than it was about a dystopian future with a fascist government. I can’t find any copies to watch either. The movie Isaac is referring to came out two years ago. It’s as he described. A romantic comedy about a lovable, but confused Big G employee, Winston Smith, who falls in love with a clumsy, sweet girl from another department, Julia. The basic plot is about both of them trying to have a relationship without the company finding out, and hilarity ensues.” 

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Isaac said. “But there wasn’t much hilarity.”  

“I guess it was a lame reboot,” Park said. “Oh well. I think you’ll like the book better. It’s really dark but it’s interesting. Zero humour. And I mean zero.”  

 “I’d like to read it,” Francis said. It was the first word they said since getting in the car. 

“So what’s this video game all about you’re playing?” I asked since I didn’t have a sweet clue what they were talking about. They also got a big kick out of me calling it a “video game.” 

“It’s a fantasy adventure RPV.”

“What’s that?” I asked.  

“It’s a verse called Yi.”

“Oh, it’s online,” I said. “I should have known. What does RPV mean?” 

“Role-Playing Verse,” Isaac said.  

“Why are you all getting together if it’s online?” 

“It’s more fun,” Mabelle said, “even if we are in the verse. And we won’t be in it all night. I only have 2 hours left on my verse allowance for this week anyway.”

“So what are you going to do when you get out?” I said. 

“Have a chat maybe,” Park said. “Maybe go down in the beach and have a fire.”   

“Now you’re talking. That sounds like something my generation would have done. Good for you. Just make sure you keeps the fire close to the water, and not the trees. If the tide is low it will douse it when it rises, which is a good thing. But you should douse it before you leave anyway.”

When we got to the house they all went down in the basement to play their game. It was nice to hear shouting and laughing in the basement for a change instead of the dead silence. While they were playing I asked my shadow what the game Yi was all about.

“Yi?” Lig asked. “Since when did you get into VPRs?” 

“Park is playing it.”  

“Yi is an online fantasy-adventure role-playing verse created by the software company, Peach, recently acquired by Bekrub Technologies Incorporated. Peach is located in Tianjin, China. It currently has 1.3 billion users and a market cap of six trillion yuan. 

The setting of the game is the Song Dynasty during the tenth century. Players must navigate through the countryside and cities of this ancient culture —although the AI is translated to English for North American players— and find out—”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s good. You lost me at Soon Dynasty. The only thing I knows about dynasties is a show back in the 80s.”

“Song,” Lig said.

“What?” 

“Song Dynasty.”  

Now, normally on a Saturday night, I would be playing One-hundred-and-twenties with Amy, and maybe have a light beer while she sipped on a glass of white wine. But, like a lot of things about my life that I was used to, that was over. So I just sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and listened to the kids. 

As I said, it was nice to hear, as my poor old mother used to say, “laughin’ and whiz-giggin’” in my home again, after the silence of the last few months. Melvin used to have a crowd downstairs too when he was that age, but I had to be constantly watching them. As I already said, Melvin was a hard case, and so were his friends. Drinking, smoking dope, fighting, and God knows what else. One night I went down and they were all gone foolish, but I couldn’t smell weed and I didn’t see any beer around, so I didn’t know what was wrong. Every time I spoke they would all be rolling around on the floor with laughter. I asked Melvin did he put any wood in the stove and they all laughed so hard I thought they were all going to pass out. It was like they were possessed or something. It got to the point where I started to get scared, and ran back upstairs out of it. It was only the next day when I saw the pot on the wood stove with brown crud burned into the bottom of it that I realized they had been drinking tea. Not Tetley either. 

But the laughing downstairs I was hearing that night had nothing to do with drugs. Not that I know of anyway. I got so curious that I decided to go down and put a few junks in the stove, just to see what they were up to. I reinstalled the wood stove when Amy got cancer because she was always cold and nothing heats up a house like wood heat. The problem is if the house burns down I won't get a dollar of insurance. But I figured, at my age? What odds? I only light it in the nighttime so no one can see the smoke. If they want to come and take it away from me, I guess they can go ahead. 

All the kids had headsets on, something like the ones that I saw at the old age home when I visited an old friend. The last video game I played was on Xbox that Melvin owned years ago. I can’t even remember what it was called. All I can remember is that you would drive around some American city, shooting people. Grand Theft? Anyway, like all his generation, Melvin did play video games, but he liked the outdoors too much to get hooked on it like some of his friends.  

“Anyone want something to drink?” I asked. 

“I can hear someone on your mic,” Mabelle said. 

“That’s Pop,” Park said, and lifted his headset.

“Anyone want a glass of water?” I asked. 

“No, we’re good, thanks,” he said, and slid his headset back down. 

“They have abused these farmers long enough!” Park suddenly shouted. I shouted in fright and stumbled upstairs.

I was having another tea when Reverend Tom called. 

“Do you play video g —verses?” I asked after we were talking for a few minutes.

“I have a headset, but I don’t play games on it. Mostly church and business.”

“I always wanted to try the online church.” 

“I think you’d like it, but there are some things that simply need to be done in person. It’s like a rock concert. The online experience is amazing, but it’s just not the same vibe as being there in person. I’ve never hosted a service, but I’ve been promised I will in the future. It terrifies me and excites me to think I could be speaking to a virtual audience of millions.” 

“Millions?”

“Sometimes more. Why do you ask?” 

“My grandson, Park is playing a new game on it, called Yi.” 

“Oh, well, if he’s playing verses like that he has a top-of-the-line headset, the ones that read your brain.” 

“That’s what scares me.”

“Meh, that’s progress I guess. As long as he’s keeping out of trouble. At least he’s in your house. Kids these days with their verses, drugs, and BAD words.”

“Bad words? Which ones?”

“Well, I shouldn’t say them obviously. Seriously, you never heard of BAD word parties? It’s happening all over the country. According to the media anyway, but who knows. Kids getting together and chanting hurt speech. Some are even chanting hate speech apparently. Although I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, there’s always been bad words that teenagers like to say, but they just weren’t illegal before.” 

“Gil…you do realize that BAD is an acronym, right?” 

“A what?” 

“Acronym. It stands for something. Like our church acronym, LBEPQMRANSAU?” 

”Ohhh, acro-nym. Right. So what does BAD stand for? I can’t remember.”

“Ban Avert Discern.”

“Cool.”  

“Yeah…so anyway, they get together, take drugs, and chant the BAD words over and over while dancing around a fire. It’s grotesque. They caught a BAD word party on the west coast last month and the kids had to pay thousands in fines. Well, not the kids, their poor parents I imagine. I tell you, this new generation is clueless.” 

“How many BAD words are there now anyway? I can’t keep up with it.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. Dozens?”

“What drugs were they on?” 

The Reverend shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not the drugs I’m worried about.”  

We were silent for a moment. 

“Did I tell you that I’m thinking on going to college?” I said. 

“Really?”

“Why, you think I’m too dumb or what?” 

“No no, I just…I…um…really?”

“Yes. Sure who knows? I always wanted to get my education, but when I was in school I figured you had to be a genius to go to college. But from everything I hears it’s just a lot of hard work. I don’t mind hard work. Even if it is with my brain…well, we’ll see…maybe I’ll go to seminary school. I like Church more than anything else.” 

“You’d be surprised at the amount of middle-aged and older that go to seminary school. I have to tell you though; the jobs will be slim pickings. Religion is dying my friend. In the Western world anyway.”

“Is it really millions in the virtual church though?” 

“Yeah, but you have to remember that’s around the world. Pretty low numbers when you think about it.” 

“It’ll come around again.” 

“I’m not so sure. We need something really bad to happen. Like a nuclear holocaust or something. That’ll get the people back in the pews. People say fear is bad, but if it brings people back to the church, I say make lemonade out of lemons.” 

“Well, there’s a war going on not far from us.” 

“That’s not a war, that’s just the military walking over civilians. Or as they call them, ‘terrorists.’ At least it’s brought a few new families to church. But no, religion is dying. And I don’t know what’s going to replace it. Nothing any better I’m sure. Folks like us will keep fighting the good fight, but we’re losing.”

“It’s all about keeping up with the Jones.”  

“I’m not sure. I used to think it was all about consumerism too, but I don’t know…”   

“Know any way I can raise up $83,000, roundabaouts?” 

“For college? That’s only enough for two semesters. Unless you do it online.” 

“No, I think I’m going to get that vaccine.” 

“What, the one from Bekrub?” 

“That’s the one. I already got my house up for sale.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Dead serious.”

“This seems all of a sudden. Have you really thought this through, Gil?” 

“My son says it’s all a scam. Do you think that?” 

“No, I think it’s legit. Maybe? Who knows what’s real these days, but Bekrub is a huge corporation. I can’t see them trying to pull off a scam unless Bekker has lost his mind…which is not impossible. But I still think you really need to think this through. Plus, isn’t there a huge waiting line?” 

“Yes, I already looked into it. Three-year wait. Perhaps longer.” 

“There you go. You’re not a young man anymore, Gilbert. Maybe you should just enjoy the rest of your life, instead of scrimping and saving for a treatment that might not happen. That’s a lot of money.” 

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. 

I went back downstairs to put another junk of wood in the fire, but I ended up standing over the kids with my mug of tea, watching them move their heads around. I wasn’t sure I should at first because in my day when an adult was around you watched your P’s and Q’s, but Park’s generation didn’t seem much bothered by adults. They didn’t know I was there anyway. They still knew I was close by, upstairs, but that didn’t seem to bother them much, because they laughed and carried on like there wasn’t an adult within ten miles. They talked about dirty stuff and used the worst kind of language. I tried to pretend like I didn’t hear it at first, but when Mabelle started talking about “finger-banging his asshole” I blushed so hard that I started to sweat. Finger-banging? Asshole? If I had to use those words strung together in any way around my grandfather when I was young, he would have thrown me over the wharf. 

I crept back upstairs and called down to Park. When he came up I said, “Now then. I don’t mind you carrying on but you can’t be letting your friends talk like that in my house.” 

“Talk like what?” he said. 

“Them words! Dirty words. What that girl was saying.”

“That was just Mabelle acting fengkuang. She tends to just blurt out things when she’s in that mood.”

“What’s fungkwang?” 

“Crazy.”  

“Even with adults standing in the room?”

“You were standing next to us?” 

“I came down to check on you.”

“How long?” 

“Not that long. Few minutes.”

“Nosey.” 

“I should come back down and play,” I said. “That’ll keep you kids in check.  

“That would be dogshit,” Park said. 

“I know. I was just joking young fella.”

“So you don’t want to?” 

“Sure you just said it was dogshit.” 

“Dogshit is good, Pop. You gotta keep up on the slang, old timer. Come down and play with us. We have an extra headset.”  

With a little more coaxing I went downstairs and to my surprise they all wanted me to play.

“So what do I do?” I said.

“Put on the Occip and we’ll show you,” Park said.

“Hocksip?”

“Occip is the name of it, but it’s short for occipital lobe. That’s how the game works. It reads your visual cortex which is in the occipital lobe.” 

“You might as well be talking German young fella.” 

“It’s the region of your brain right at the back of your head,” Mabelle said. 

“This thing connects to my brain?” I said.

“Not directly,” she said. “It reads the electrical pulses.” 

“I didn’t even know there was electricity in my brain,” I said.  

They all looked at each other. 

“Seriously?” Park said. “How did you think…your brain…works then?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “I got a soul that’s all I knows. Without that I wouldn’t be alive would I?” 

The way the kids looked at me then. They didn’t scoff. They didn’t roll their eyes. They didn’t all burst out laughing. They just smiled at each other, like I was a four-year-old who just told them that the Tooth Fairy was going to take my tooth tonight and put twenty dollars under my pillow. They didn’t just disagree with me, they didn’t even respect what I said enough to tell me that they thought I was wrong. I had to wonder if it was worth being young again in a world where people don’t believe in souls.  

“Just put it on, Pop,” Park said, still smiling. “I’ll help you. It doesn’t read your mind or anything — well, technically it does. I mean to say it doesn’t read your inner dialogue, it just reads your physical intentions in the game. It will seem awkward at first, but after a while, moving your arm in the game will feel not much different than moving your own arm.”

“You don’t have to explain every little thing,” Isaac said. “He might be an xer, but I’m sure he’s worn a headset before.” 

“Not in my life, young fella. And what’s a zer?”

“Xer, is ex-er, like generation x-er. And you’ve never worn a headset before? Seriously?” 

“Never had one on in my life. And I’m not too excited to put one on now seeing as you just told me it’s a mind-reading machine.” 

“That’s wild,” Park said. “I would have got you to try this a long time ago if I knew that. I didn’t think there was anyone around who had never been in a verse at least once.” 

“How is that even possible?” Isaac asked. 

“What’s an old chunk of coal like me going to be using this for?” I asked. 

“For everything,” Isaac said. “Dad bought a piece of land in Lost Vegas for fifty thousand dollars last month. Don’t tell anyone that though.”

“Lost? All this time I’ve been calling it Los Vegas,” I said. They thought that was funny but I didn’t get the joke.  

“It’s a virtual Vegas lost in space on a spinning meteor. Pure dogshit. They only started selling land recently. Dad said he’s opening up a business on the land, but he won’t tell me what it is. Probably a casino? I don’t know why he’d be secretive about that though.”

“Are you that naive?” Park said. “He’s opening a skin shop! Have you seen the new wetsuits? The model R5 has two hundred thousand pressure points.”

“Been doing our research have we?” Mabelle said to Park, with one eyebrow stuck up in the air. 

“Let's get back to the game,” I said, while Park turned ten shades of red, and Isaac stared at Park like he just found out there was no such thing as Santa Claus. I didn’t know what a skinshop or a wetsuit was, other than for swimming, and I didn’t want to know. The kid named Francis had yet to speak, except to titter once in a while.  

“That’s an older model headset,” Park said to me, “so it’s is a bit clunky compared to ours, but you’ll still love it.”

“Do you think he’ll get nauseous?” Mabelle asked Park. “What model is that?” 

“Gods no,” Park said. “It’s not that old. It’s a Drift23. He’ll be fine.” 

“I better not get nauseous,” I said, while they showed me how to put it on. “And if you think this little thing is clunky I wouldn’t want you to see the ATV helmets I used to have to wear. It was like you had a bag of cement tied to your head. If you leaned out too hard on a turn you might break your neck.”  

“The only thing that has any weight at all is the noise-canceling headphones and that little attachment that covers the back of your head. The glasses aren’t much heavier than a pair of safety glasses.” 

And then there was light. Good Lord. For a second I almost yanked it all off. It was too much too quick. I had been sitting there in the darkness, and then this new world opened up in front of me that looked as real as the world outside my door, only better, because in this world it was a beautiful sunny day, with a cow path stretched out before me through tall grass swaying in the breeze. Not that I could actually feel the breeze on my face…or could I? The grassy knoll was on the side of a brook that led to a fifty-foot waterfall that I could hear roaring in the distance. On the other side of this waterfall was what I thought first was a shrub-covered stone tower. But it wasn’t. It was some sort of sharp little hill made of lime, and on top of it was perched a blue dragon, with three legs and the sunlight glistening off wings that were too small for its body. Its chest slowly heaved in and out of its massive frame with each breath, and tiny tendrils of what I thought was smoke puffing from its scaly nostrils. In the distance, trees that looked to be at least two hundred feet tall scattered the rolling hills. I held out my hands and a pair of cartoonish white hands appeared in front of me, not attached to any limbs. I looked down but there were no legs or feet. Truth be told, that was even weirder than the dragon.  

“Judas. Where’s my feet?” I said, and again I could faintly hear laughter, but the headphones were muffling it. I might not have been able to fully hear the laughter, but I could certainly hear the wind and the birds. 

“Make no wonder,” I said, but my voice was louder than it should have been, and I could hear the trembling in it. “Make no wonder you’re all addicted to this. Sure how could you not be?”

I stared at the river and tried to walk over and look into it, but although I felt my body moving, my body in the screen wasn’t keeping pace. The next thing I knew I was stumbling over my couch and onto the floor in my basement. I pulled the headset up over my eyes, and the boring reality of my dimly lit, damp basement rushed back in. For a second I thought the basement was fake and that place I was just in was real. Park and his friend’s worried faces were staring down at me, asking me if I was okay and if I hurt myself, but I was fine, other than the embarrassment.  

“You’re not the first person to do something like this,” Park said. “There’s literally thousands of old videos online of people doing stupid things while in the verse. It’s not stupid though, it’s just people being tricked by their brains. Some girl in Vancouver jumped off her friend’s balcony because she thought she was jumping over a fence. And it was being streamed.”  

“How high up was it?” I said. 

“Twelve stories.” 

“I hope she didn’t realize her mistake until she hit the ground,” Isaac said.

“The stream was floating around online. I know someone who watched it,” Park said. “You don’t want to know.” 

“No I don’t,” I said.

I hauled the headset down over my eyes again.

I was still dumbfounded by what I was seeing. 

“How can I feel the wind on my face?” I said. 

“Can you?” Park said. “Seriously?” 

“It feels like wind to me,” I said. 

“Bang. You’re lucky. Different people get different ghost senses. It’s sort of like amputees who can still feel pain in their missing limbs. Your mind fills in the gaps. Your brain believes you’re in a windy place, so it creates the feeling of wind on your face. Everything is in your head pop.” 

“That’s like magic,” I said, “but it comes and goes —there! I felt it again.” 

“I’m the only one in this group who has never had a ghost sense,” Park said. “Francis can feel the grass on his fingers sometimes, Mabelle feels wet when she’s in water, and Francis swears he can smell horse shit when he’s in a barn. Why can’t I smell horseshit? I’m jealous.”

“I guess your brain just isn’t wired that way,” Mabelle said. 

“So I think it’s best if you just explored for now,” Park said to me. 

“Why don’t you just get him to do the training sequences?” Mabelle said. “We should be in open-world mode anyway.” 

“He can do that after. I’m just going to show him the basics —hey, he’s doing it already!” 

And I was doing it. I was moving forward. I just thought about my legs moving, concentrated on a point in the distance, and just like that I was moving through the grass. Then I started to run. There were tears in my real eyes, but I was glad no one could see them. I had not run this fast through the grass since I was a little boy. Now of course I wasn’t really running, my legs weren’t moving, but it still had that feeling of freedom, like the first time I rode a bike and didn’t fall. I could go forever and never get tired. And in this world, I actually could go forever! Or so I thought. It turns out that concentrating on one thing won't beat you out as fast as running, but it still takes effort, just a different kind.

The rest of them kept shouting at me to wait up, and even that was right because it wasn’t as loud as when they were standing next to me. The wind was louder than their voices now, and so was the bubbling brook to my right.

“Now I knows why they got so many of these at the home,” I said.

“Who’s home?” Park said. 

“The retirement home. Shady Pines.”

“That makes sense,” Mabelle said. “Being bedridden might not be so bad if you have one of these on.” 

“You’d be surprised how many people dies playing video games these days,” I said. “A fella I used to work with who was younger than me, keeled over playing a game last year.”

“What kind of verse was it?” 

“I heard it was some kind of janitor simulator. He was a janitor all his life. Said he missed it. I missed it too, to be honest.”   

I looked behind me and got surprised when I saw that the girl talking with Mabelle’s voice didn’t look much like Mabelle. 

“You’re Asian!” I said. “You’re all Asians.” 

“You can’t be Chinese without being Asian…well, not really, but you get my point.” 

“Am I Asian?” I said. 

“You’re nothing except a white glowing ball with red hands,” Park said. “You have to choose which character you want to be.”

“Oh I don’t care,” I said. “You do that for me.” 

“Are you sure?” Park said. 

“Yes, I don’t have the patience for that. You figure out that stuff.” 

“If you say so old timer.”

“So who do we fight?” I asked. 

“Fight?” 

“Yeah, do we fight that dragon up there?” I said, pointing at it. 

“Who, Bob? Why would we fight Bob? He’s a guardian.” 

“Guardian?”

“Yeah, there’s a magical guardian class, but none of us had much interest. They’re invisible to the AI characters, but they’re very limited in some ways, and powerful in others.”

“I think they’re dumb,” Francis said. “I want realism, not fantasy shit. Why do all these kinds of verses have to have magical bullshit in them?”

“To appeal to the dumb masses,” Isaac said. “Are you surprised?” 

“Well I like the guardians,” Mabelle said. “Call me a dummy.” Francis just rolled his eyes and Isaac didn’t know what to say.

“The problem is that everyone tells us that we need at least one if we want to complete any of the hardest quests,” Park said.

“I will say he seems like a nice guy,” Isaac said. Francis agreed.      

Then the dragon released its perch from the mountain. It had tiny little wings, but not big enough to fly with, so it just sort of wiggled through the air like a snake swimming downwards underwater. Creepy. I knew it wasn’t a real dragon, but that didn’t stop me from being nervous. I mean it’s like they always say, everyone knows you’re probably not going to get hurt on a rollercoaster, but that doesn’t mean you won’t stop sobbing long enough to scream at the teenage ride conductor with red hair to shut it down or you’ll sue the company every time you whizz by him at eighty miles an hour, and then eventually throw up over your new pair of Levis, and pass out, and then your ten-year-old son gets off the ride when it over and pretends he doesn’t know you. 

Park must have sensed my nervousness, which I don’t understand because he couldn’t actually see me. “It’s not real,” he said, laughing. 

As the dragon wiggled down towards us I said, “Why does he have three legs?” 

“That one in the middle is not a leg,” Park said.

“Oh, it’s his tail.“ 

“Nope.”  

“Well if it’s not a leg or a tail, then what…Judas!” 

It was the biggest dragon penis I ever saw. It was the only dragon penis I ever saw. I didn’t think dragons had privates. It had to be at least two feet long, and that’s soft! When it untucked its comically small wings to hover for a moment, and then drop to the ground, that big ol’ hog was the first thing to touch. I couldn’t stop staring at it. It reminded me of the first time I saw Bruce Dickinson in those skin-tight jeans with Iron Maiden on the Much Music channel back in the eighties, when we first got cable around the bay. When the dragon’s two back legs were on the ground, it opened its mouth towards us. I stepped back and covered my face, and again I used my real legs, but this time I simply flopped down on the couch on my arse, so it wasn’t as bad. I figured I might as well stay there. Then out of its mouth poured a below of…fog? I was expecting flames. But no, it was just an endless stream of fog, like a smoke machine. It poured out for a solid five or six second for sure. When it stopped we could barely see the dragon, and we certainly couldn’t see anything else around us.

Then a very pale, fat, middle-aged naked man walked out of the fog. He was mostly bald, with sporadic patches of hair all over his chest, a white goatee, and he was not what I would call a handsome man. He wasn’t as ugly as me, but definitely not a looker. The good thing was that his gut hung down over his privates so you couldn’t really see anything only what looked like a patch of tree-moss between his legs. And, well, I can understand why the dragon penis was so big, if what he had was really that small.

“What do we do?” I said. 

“Nothing. He’s here to help if he wants to.” 

“Supposedly,” Isaac said, “but every time I see him, he’s just sitting on that mountain and watching the sunset. Maybe he’s depressed.” 

“In for another round?” Bob said when he got up to us. His voice matched his avatar. It was thick and nasally. It didn’t really suit the body of the dragon, but it suited this. 

“Not really,” Park said. “Just showing my grandfather here what this is all about. He’s never been in a verse before, believe it or not.” 

“Any verse at all? Seriously?” Bob said. “I’m so jealous. What I wouldn’t give to experience VR for the first time. I was so young I can’t even remember it. My parents told me that the first time I ever put on an Occip was in a playroom on a cruiseship when I was three years old.” 

“I don’t know what to think of it,” I said. “It’s almost too much. I think my poor old brain is going to explode.” 

“What generation are you?” he said.

“X according to them.” 

“Wow.”

“Where are you from?” I said, and everyone looked at each other. 

“Pop—“ 

“It’s okay,” Bob said, holding up his big paw of a hand. “He doesn’t know.”   

“Don’t know what?” I said. 

“You don’t ask people where they’re from in a verse,” Park said. “It’s considered rude.” 

“Oh,” I said. “Am I allowed to ask what he does for a living in the real world?” 

“That’s even more off limits usually,” Bob said, with a chuckle. “But it’s fine. You’re new to this, and I don’t mind telling people. I’m a sales rep for Swell Line Cruises. We have the largest cruise ships in the world. And if you don’t mind me saying, Gil, we have an excellent two-week package coming up at the end of the month for our South American line.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, but I had no intention. I never saw the appeal of being stuck on a boat with a crowd of strangers. 

“Sorry, I’ve been at this job for too long,” Bob said. “It just spews out of me on auto-pilot.” 

“No problem,” Park said, “Have you made up your mind yet?” 

“I have,” Bob said. “I think I’m going to join your quest.” 

“Bang!” Mabelle said.

Isaac and Francis didn’t seem as excited, but I guess we needed him. 

Truth be told, I wanted to know about him because it kind of creeped me out to see a grown man in the same game as a bunch of kids. Well, teenagers — same thing. Especially with that big ol’ hog hanging down between his legs when he was in dragon form. Judas, did he need to put so much detail? There were veins and everything.

So we roamed around with Bob some more, but eventually Park did…well, something, and I was cast into a two-dimensional selection screen with Park selecting through stuff that I didn’t understand. And then it was done. 

“You made me into an old man!” I said when he was done. I was a bent Asian man who looked to be about a thousand years old. Here I was in a world where I could be anything from a rabbit to a runway model and I was going to be a bald old man, almost as ugly as the real old man. Me. Park thought it was hilarious. 

“Well, that’s what you are old timer.” 

“I should have known you’d do something like this,” I said. 

I spent another hour playing the game with them and learning how to use my avatar at the same time. Apparently, some people have a hard time getting the movements to work, but Park told me I was a natural. I said it probably worked better with stupid people like me who didn’t already have too much stuff clogging up their brains. I have to admit it was the most fun I had in ages. An hour went by in minutes. Like I said, I played video games off and on until I was in my early twenties, but I forgot how fast the time went when you were doing it. Another thing I liked, was that when I was concentrating on the game it was hard to worry or ruminate about anything else.

After we stopped playing the kids went down to the beach and had a fire. A real beach. Not one in the game. When Park came back he reeked of smoke, but I didn’t mind. After all, you can’t smell smoke in a VR game. Well, some people do. It reminded me of when I was his age, on the beach with my brother and his friends, carrying on and having a laugh with wieners and marshmallows.   

“I wasn’t joking about you being a natural in the game,” Park said. “I mean, you weren’t a natural when it came to understanding the game, but your occipital lobe-synching with the mechanics was the fastest I’ve ever seen.”  

“I always said I had a good hockopital lobe.” 

“You know, I’d say your generation is the first one that didn’t stop playing video games when you got older. I mean you did, but you’re a bayman. But a good percentage of you didn’t.”

“What’s that I keep seeing online, people playing games and stuff for money. Can we do that? Streaming? Is that what it’s called?” 

“Not allowed to stream Yi. It’s part of the user agreement. I don’t understand why. Keeps the mystique I guess? I mean people try, but it keeps getting taken down, and then the streamers get demonetized. Not worth the trouble. Why would you want to stream anyway? I’m surprised you asked. Down on money or something?” 

“I needs all I can get young fella. I’m going to get the shot. De-aging.”

“De-aging? Seriously?” 

“That I am. But to be honest it’s probably not going to happen anyway. There’s a three-year waiting list.” 

“Wow, I’m…kind of surprised.” 

“Why?”

“I just didn’t think you’d be interested in that. Being a Jesus-freak and all.” 

“I didn’t either until I realized that I was going to die too, not just everybody else.” 

“Are you sick?” 

“No. But I’m old.” 

“You’re not that old…well, okay, you are, but you’re still healthy. It would be awesome though. To grow up with you. That would be nice. We’d be like best friends or something.” 

It choked me up when he said that, so I didn’t respond. Just stood there like a dummy. Finally, I said, “We are now aren’t we?”

“Yes, but there’s too much age difference. If you were a young man that would be bang.”

Bang it would.