#i was too tired and panicking on the gc last night to say anything

[jinhyun]

this is why we can't have nice things 😭

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #3)

(cw: alcohol) <-Previous | Next-> ----------- 12/18/87  4:04 AM

Hey. 

Don’t know why I’m keeping up with this.

But don’t worry, I don’t think so little of you that I’d believe you were dead without question.

My first theory was that it was all a big joke. Some prank you’d set up with literally everyone other than me, probably payback for one thing or another. Far-fetched, but, hey. Less far-fetched than you being dead.

That theory was stretched to its limits pretty much right away. Game Central Station went on lockdown for a couple days, and then there was this… event. I guess it’d be called a memorial or something. Whatever it was, it was a Devout thing. There were preachers and everything, and GCS was done up all fancy. Everyone kind of pretended to be Devout that evening, all dressed in blue, like they’d all run for cover under this one idea that they thought would protect them. What you did, no one had ever seen before. I don’t think anyone even knew it was possible. And once they did, no one knew how to handle it. The world did not seem safe anymore. The whole arcade was just hushed and shaken and at a loss.

But, I gotta say, this “memorial,” it really wasn’t any sort of honor to your memory, or a funeral, or anything like that. I’m certain you would have wanted the arcade to come together and collectively wonder how in Litwak’s name they were going to go on without you, but that just didn’t happen. Hate to break it to you, but after the stunt you pulled, you stopped being a ‘good guy’, shot right past ‘bad guy’, and landed square on ‘worst guy’. No one really came to proclaim their love for the worst guy.

I am sorry about that.

Pretty much every sprite in the arcade was there, though. My whole game came out, with Fix-it being way too clingy, as usual. When I was able to get some time away from him, I even found Tapper. He closed his game down so that he could serve traditional blueberry wine at the memorial. When I saw him standing behind that table draped in blue cloth, part of me hoped that he would shed a bit more light on the situation for me. But he, like everyone else, reacted to me in a way I’d never seen. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, not quite with happiness, but with a sort of relief that seemed almost painful. It looked like he would have hugged me if I’d let him. Instead, he just told me how glad he was to see me all in one piece. And how sorry he was, a sentiment I was quickly growing tired of hearing. He did give me an entire bottle of that wine with his condolences, though, so I didn’t complain. 

But I didn’t drink it, either. I felt a storm toiling in my belly, and it thundered at the thought of ingesting anything.

The event had a handful of preachers lined up to say their piece on the situation and try to give the masses some sort of faith to hold onto in such dark times. I didn’t absorb too much, but I was admittedly not paying close attention. My bored, wandering mind had found something else, and gotten entirely stuck on it. 

There were two empty game ports that had otherwise been filled, last I could remember. Your game, and the game you hated. The entrances had been framed with blue ribbons and flowers of all things, and it was crossed with Surge’s yellow tape, barring entry. There were no lights, no gold hallway, just a black, empty terminal with a hole where the train tunnel should have been. I could see right through to the floor of the arcade.

There’s no faking that. It didn’t feel like a joke anymore. It went back to feeling like a dream.

It was all a really long in-depth dream, and I’d wake up on your couch, covered in candy wrappers, with a wicked hangover. Then I could tell you that your memorial flowers were blue, and you’d make gagging noises and tell me to lay off the sugar before bed. There would be soda and takeout leftovers for breakfast, and the arcade would open and close like any other day, and I’d no doubt end up on that couch again, covered in candy, goofing off with you. As per usual.

Just the thought cut me out of the heavy atmosphere around me and placed me in a fragile, eerie calm. That’s when a preacher finally earned my attention.

She was the only one who even spoke directly about you. None of the others had the nerve to do anything other than tiptoe. Though, she never did actually say your name. She just referred to you by a lot of unflattering descriptors that I don’t want to honor by repeating. Overall, her point was that you, by disrespecting the Devs’ design, let into your code a festering digit of binary that spread and corrupted your once favored, blessed, pure data. She said, in your final days, that you played host to a virus of avarice. You abandoned all the blessings and protection of the Devs for your selfish desires, and took innocent lives with you. 

So then, of course, she turned it all into some bullroar cautionary tale. She said we are all, as sentient beings, at risk of your “fatal corruption,” and reminded everyone how to avoid a repeat of this disaster: The textbook long-winded “Follow the Devs, follow the program, sit down, stay still, shut up.”

Barf, right? I thought so, too. I’d had quite enough of it. Someone had to shut her up, and no one else was going to do it. I gave even less thought to consequence than I normally would -- none of it was real, in my head, so none of it would matter. It was free game. 

So, I did just about the worst thing I could have done, and painted some fireworks. In the brightest red I could conjure up. You know, the color they should have been using for you. 

Those split seconds between the whistle and the bang were some of the best I’ve had since you left, purely for the look on the stupid preacher’s face when I cut her off. But when the explosions hit, and Game Central was bathed in red light, and the whole crowd broke into screams, something deep inside of me changed. 

I panicked.

That snap reaction, that fear that did not feel irrational, but rather, instinctual, took hold of me like a gamer’s command. I ran. I needed to get away, far away, quick. You know I live for my fireworks. But right then, the screams and the burning lights, they were something right out of a nightmare.

Even if I hadn’t been clambering to get away, that would have been my last moment at the event. The crowd didn’t take kindly to me or my display, so I was chased out of GCS by an instant angry mob. Shouting abuse and throwing their wine glasses and all that. 

I hid myself away in my game, trying to rationalize it all. It had to be a dream. It was just a vivid, terrible dream, and I could wake up at any moment. So, I had the unique experience of staying up all night just trying to wake up.

There could be no reality where you and your game were gone.