Re union, p.1
Re:union, page 1
Re:union
Eric Liu
Copyright 2011 Eric Liu
I was born twice, but the first time wasn’t my choice. In fact I don’t remember anything about it. The second time. Now that’s a different story. It began with a game.
**********
Sweat. Adrenaline. Focus. The sound of my labored breathing echoed inside my helmet, mixing with the deep thuds of clasped shoulders and the distant cheers of the fans. Down in the huddle, the smell of freshly cut grass pierced my mask, seeping through every pore in my body.
“Last play of the game, boys,” I shouted. I had never been a great talker, but I had been practicing this speech for fifteen years. “On this field, the world stands still. We fight for yards, as we have always fought. We play the game for glory, as it will always be played. Just fourteen yards separates us from victory. And victory is all that separates us from the weak.”
“You call it, Troy,” Carter said.
“We are strong,” I yelled.
“We are mighty,” Webster continued, falling into the cadence of our team chant.
“We are Titans,” we all finished in unison.
“Mississippi Mayhem,” I called. “Break.”
As I stepped into position, the vibrant green of the immaculate field burned into my retinas. This technicolor stage was my field of dreams, my chance to shine, and yet it took all my discipline to keep from running off the field. Though my heart wandered, my mind must not. I owed it to my teammates to lead them to victory.
Sadly, many of them were missing, replaced by generics that made all the right motions but showed none of the heart. But this was no time to dwell on the past. Carter was here, and Webster too. And the Terrible Trio was all we needed to run the Mississippi Mayhem.
“Hut One. Hut Two.”
A nameless teammate hiked the football into my hands. I faked a hand-off and then faded back to the right. Seeing Webster open up a lead on his defender, I fired the ball like a heat-seeking missile and almost didn’t bother watching the rest. I knew it was perfect. Webster would do his end zone dance, and the crowd would go wild. Helmets would fly into the air like casually tossed confetti, and I would be hoisted on the shoulder of my comrades like a war hero. And why not? We had just won the game we never played fifteen years ago.
My gaze went immediately to the stands, searching for her. As my eyes searched through the empty bleachers, they passed by the exultant fans and lodged instead on the empty seats beside them. As the adrenaline of the game evaporated from the crowd, I could feel the mood turn somber as if the celebration made the absence of loved ones all the more painful. We hadn’t celebrated for fifteen years, and yet perhaps it was still too soon to forget the tragedy that had so abruptly ended our senior year.
But then I saw her, and a feeling more rare and precious than the rush of victory sprang into my heart. Michelle. She was just a dot in the stands, a splash of blond highlights, sitting far in the corner away from the crowds. She had always watched my games alone so that she could be free to yell, or more likely, to cry. I smiled at the comfort of her memory. She had always been so emotional and so passionate. And she was here.
I separated myself from the guys and ran over to the front of the stands. She saw me and came rushing down the steps, eager to throw herself into my arms as if the last fifteen years hadn’t happened and we were still two carefree teenagers with a blissful future together. She leapt off the last step in slow motion, stretching out the beauty of the moment. But then she began to stutter mid-air, her trajectory caught in a strobe light. I suddenly realized she was dropping frames, but could do nothing about it. No!
**********
Too late. I slammed my fist into the table as I pulled the electrode net off my shaved scalp. In my rush to get up, I fell out of my chair as the shock of the sudden lockup wreaked havoc with my senses. I mourned the loss of my chiseled abs as my gaunt figure struggled back into the chair. Reality sucked.
I pulled out my wallet and looked at the only picture I had left of her, a faded photograph whose printed paper had managed to outlast the corporations which had hosted our memories. There she was, golden curls cascading across one shoulder of her cute white top. And in her arms she held, not me, but that stupid raccoon. Of course I did owe that stupid raccoon quite a bit: he was the reason we were ever together.
When I first laid eyes on Michelle, she was crouched in the middle of the road, drenched from head to toe, a pale ghost in the beam of her headlights. After almost running her over, I got out of my car to talk some sense into her. Instead, she talked me into rescuing a half-dead, potentially disease-ridden raccoon and keeping him at my father’s house.
“You can’t domesticate a raccoon,” I told her. But still, every day she came over and took care of “Rocky.” I didn’t mind, though I worried about how much she loved that little creature. We fashioned a tiny splint for Rocky, force-fed him nutritious concoctions that I certainly wouldn’t eat, and soon, the raccoon was walking again. Of course he disappeared within a week because you really can’t domesticate a raccoon.
I had expected her to be upset, her eyes capable of turning into faucets at the slightest provocation. Certainly she would organize a search party as she had for a neighbor’s missing cat just the week before. “Aren’t you sad?” I asked, surprised by her dry eyes.
“Sometimes if you love something, you have to let it go,” she said as she held tightly and refused to let go of my arm. “I just wish we got to say goodbye.” We never said goodbye either, and that was one mistake I hoped to rectify. I needed to get back in.
**********
“Milton,” I yelled, as I pounded on the wall hoping to disturb whatever he was doing next door. I just kept pounding and pounding, letting the reverberations shake years of dust from the corners of the duplex. Luckily, before I choked on the cloud of detritus, I heard a knock on my door.
“It’s open,” I yelled angrily.
Milton walked in, his demeanor oddly calm in light of the fight I was trying to start. He glided into my cramped apartment and perched on the edge of my bed, the only other piece of furniture that I owned. His white linen robes seemed to glow in the dim light of my tiny living room, the one continuous surface amongst the complex texture formed from a decade of abandoned tools and projects that I had scattered across every bare inch. “I see you still haven’t moved your orbiting junkyard into the bedroom,” he remarked. “Either one.”
“None of your business,” I snapped back. I hadn’t even stepped foot into my father’s room in months. It was easier that way. And Mom’s room? Milton knew better than to bring that up.
“But I assume you have some business with me,” Milton said. “The constant thumping at my wall, while rhythmic, didn’t quite match the tempo of my chants.”
“My bandwidth got cut off,” I said, getting right to the point. “How you manage to meditate all day and still hog all the bandwidth is beyond comprehension.”
“You know, next time you could just come to my door,” Milton said. “I always welcome guests.”
“I gave you half of this month’s crop yields in order to get online for this reunion,” I said, refusing to let him derail me. “And I just got booted because someone was hogging the hardline.”
“You didn’t let down your teammates did you?” Milton feigned concern. He carefully picked a single speck of dirt out from underneath his perfectly trimmed fingernails, making me glance down at my own dirt-crusted hands. When I failed to respond, he continued. “Of course not. Like father like son; team players to the end.”
“Then be a team player and get off the line,” I said. But I knew it was hopeless. Milton’s eyes had seen the photograph still clutched in my hands. He knew I was desperate. It was my fault for telling him too much.
“Well, unlike you, I was never invited to join any teams.” He curled his lips back at an attempt to smile. “I was generous enough to sell you my old set of SymGear, a morally difficult move for me considering your father’s well-known distaste for all things Sym. He was a reality nut, but I respected him. And now you want me to sell you bandwidth as well?” Milton’s fingers twitched slightly in the universal gesture for bribery.
I sighed. Father had parceled out so much of his urban farmland to our neighbors that it barely left enough to sustain my own needs, but Milton knew how to squeeze. “I’ll give you half of next week’s crop yields if you get off the pipe,” I offered.
“Trading fresh food for netspeed?” he said, acting shocked. “Your father would be outraged. Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow after you’ve had time to think about this.”
I grimaced. He knew very well that the reunion would be over by then. “Half of the crops for the next two weeks,” I offered. That would force me to go hungry on the odd days of the week excepting Saturday, but this was my only chance to see Michelle again. I didn’t have time for negotiations.
Milton zeroed in on my urgency and just dug harder. “I don’t feel right about this. Your father... He really did hate SymSpace.”
“One month,” I said, just trying to end the conversation. Father had hated SymSpace, but he had also hated borrowing food from the neighbors, and I would have to do that soon as well. I had already dipped too far into the emergency stores. But Michelle was worth it. “Shut up right now and go fix this, or you get nothing.”
“Agreed,” Milton said all too quickly, and just like that, I was alone in my room once more.
**********
I walked to the window and pulled back the shades to lo
Once, after finding out I had skipped school to login all day at a friend’s house, he made me work the garden for three days straight, even sleeping in the fields. He stayed with me the whole time and preached about how you can’t replace a true connection to the Earth with a computer. He went on and on about SymSpace and how it was just escapism from reality. I in turn shut my ears and complained the incessantly, but now looking back, I can’t think of a happier time: me, my father, and dirt.
I stayed out of SymSpace for years after he passed, but my father would have understood why I needed to do this. He had adored Michelle and had felt her loss almost as much as I had. He said she reminded him of Mom, back before she got sick. In fact, when thing turned for the worse, Michelle sat by my mother’s bedside every day and wept the tears I lacked the courage to produce. She had never known my mother, but she loved her just the same.
My father never wept. He just worked. I thought he was crazy, devoting his life to soil in a world where food overflowed from store shelves and expired uneaten in the trash. But then the FourH hit, and suddenly he didn’t seem so crazy anymore.
In a matter of weeks, all our savings had become worthless, and the starving began. Our garden wasn’t as good as the three “g’s” of gold, gas, and guns, but it had been enough to save us from the Great Conversion that followed. It had even been enough to save many of our neighbors, and yet Michelle had slipped away from my grasp without a fight, without even a muttered goodbye.
I last saw her two weeks before the FourH. I remembered everything about that day, down to the number of sugar packets she dumped into her chai and the way she wore her hair tied back because she hadn’t had time to primp in the morning. Hell, she hardly had time to see me.
“Stay with me just a little longer,” I implored. “We can make this night last forever.”
Her smile dropped just enough to make it look as if she considered it, if just for a moment. “You know I can’t do that. My flight leaves early tomorrow, and there’s only one flight out to Kenya a day.”
“If you miss it, I’ll carry you out there myself,” I said. “That way we’ll never have to say goodbye.”
“Who’s saying goodbye?” she asked. “I’ll only be gone for a month. I refuse to say goodbye because I know you’ll be right here when I return.”
And then the world had gone to hell, and she had disappeared for fifteen years. But she was right, I would still be here for her when she returned.
Turning back towards the SymGear, I caught a glimpse of my reflection on the window pane. The emaciated ghost that returned my gaze looked nothing like the man Michelle had loved fifteen years ago. Would she still
**********
I opened my eyes in the school gym. I had missed the post-game celebration but had made it in time for the party that followed. The Sym designers had faithfully recreated the echoing acoustics and the slightly musty feel of the air, but they had really gone overboard with the decorations, swathing the room with streamers in Titan red and white. I strode confidently over to the reception table, running the strong fingers of my twenty-one year old avatar through a thick head of wavy blond hair.
“Troy,” the cute brunette at the table cooed upon seeing me. “We’re so glad you could rejoin us.” She picked up my name tag from the table and handed it to me. “Of course everyone will recognize you without it, but here you go anyways.”
“Thanks Helen,” I said, slowly regaining my confidence.
“Oh, and you better fix your jacket,” she said, pointing at a mismatched seam on my letter jacket.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. I paused out of the simulation for a few moments to fix my avatar. I couldn’t afford a custom design and had coded this one up myself. The features were oversimplified, like those of an anime character, and the shading was a bit off, but at least it was recognizably me.
Assured that my avatar wasn’t too much of a disaster, I scanned the room looking for Michelle. Unable to pick her out, I meandered over to the food table and filled a plate with simulated goodies.
“Pow! Tastes exquisite doesn’t it?”
I turned around to see a middle-aged portly man in a perfectly cut Italian suit behind me. He was one of the few people who had come as their current selves, and no wonder. Judging by the grade of his avatar and the size of his belly, he was doing quite well for himself.
“It’s good,” I replied, pausing for a second trying to place his face. “Rick Chang,” I said, nodding to myself. I didn’t remember much about Rick, but I certainly knew why he was rich.
“Glad you haven’t forgotten me, old buddy,” Rick responded. “And thanks for the compliment. I designed all the food here, or my company did anyhow.” He gestured grandly with both his arms. “How are you liking the ambiance?”
“It’s good,” I repeated, my mind still focused on Michelle. But Rick gave me hurt look, and I had to search for a more engaging response. “And yes, the food is good, I mean, better than good. I haven’t tasted anything like this since...”
“The FourH?” Rick finished for me. “I’ll tell you a little secret,” he whispered. “SymGrub was always better, even before the Four Horsemen wiped out the food crops.”
“I wouldn’t say simulated food is better,” I objected, my father’s viewpoints automatically finding their way to my lips. “Fresh food has a hearty quality. It’s more robust.”
“More robust?” Rick’s face looked like it was about to burst. “You’ve got to be kidding me. In a couple weeks, a mere four diseases managed to wipe out the world’s crops of rice, soy, corn, and wheat, and you’re calling real food robust? The code for SymGrub isn’t dependent on a few base modules, and the recipes are stored and backed up across multiple data centers around the world. That’s code diversity that agriculture never came close to matching. We’ve never lost half our users in a couple months, quite the opposite actually.”
“But it doesn’t feed you,” I said. “It’s just for pleasure.”
“It’s SymSpace, Troy,” Rick said. “It doesn’t have to feed you. Calories, fat, sugar, and vitamins are all irrelevant.” He sighed. “I can see you haven’t spent much time in SymSpace since you were a kid. Things have changed a bit. Here, take this.”
I took the data card from his hand and watched it dissolve into my palm. “A million VC’s?” I exclaimed after integrating the data. “That’s, well, it’s very generous.” Generous? In SymSpace, a million credits put you in tycoon territory. It was much too generous coming from someone I hardly knew.
“No need to thank me,” Rick said. “Just go out and enjoy yourself. Learn about everything you can do in SymSpace.” Rick looked him up and down. “Buy yourself a better avatar for starters. I’m sure you could use a little fun.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It’s no secret that you’re a little,” Rick paused, searching for the right word, “disconnected. I didn’t need to hack into your privacy settings to be able to tell that you don’t jack in much.” Well, he was right about that. “I just wish we had reconnected before your father passed away. I could have funded his Conversion.”
“My father didn’t want to be Converted,” I said, starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. How did he even know about my father?
“Why not?” Rick continued, oddly interested in the subject. “He could have stayed with you longer… indefinitely given the proper financing.”
“My father worked hard to save us from the Great Conversion,” I replied, drawn into a conversation I did not want to have. “He wasn’t about to volunteer.”
“Stubborn man,” Rick said.
“Great man,” I insisted.
“Yes, my father was a great man too,” Rick said. We all knew that. His father had started SymSys, the company that had created the first kernals of SymSpace. And that had ended up saving billions of lives, though my father hadn’t seen it that way.
