The Metaverse

 by Tony Go

I guess I like thrift stores. I mean I like them as much as you can never be too sure what you’ll find. So I guess I also dislike thrift stores. I simultaneously like and dislike one particular thrift store in Arizona, it’s called Half Priced Media. Half Priced Media is a misleading title- nothing in the store is actually half the price of its retail value. I suspect that the name of the store is some sort of false advertisement; but I don’t suspect that too much because I still go there regularly. My favorite thing about HPM is that they organize everything by color. Books, movies, video games- they are all organized by the color of their spines. It’s an artful lesson in color and organization. The store also uses a lot of typography in their store. Each aisle is decorated with giant Helvetica-based lettering which denoted the exact nature of its contents. For a place that dealt in the wavering value of used goods, it appeared surprisingly hip and trendy. Sometimes I would try to find patterns amongst the colors. Horror novels, it seemed, had a propensity for red lettering on black backgrounds. I wonder what that meant?

One day we were looking through the (decidedly small) orange section of the books when we found a copy of Stanley Kubrick’s Ubik with Cody’s name written on the inside cover. We knew it was Cody’s because his mom sold a lot of his older books from his room when his family moved houses and he was off in college. Emily bought it back for him because she made a lot more money than the rest of us; and she was the only one with any money left after we spent two hours earlier at the arcade.

You’re probably wondering why theres a girl like Emily hanging out with a bunch of boys at a used media exchange. Emily appreciated the subtleties and humor of being the only girl among a group of guys. Of course, she liked books too. And video games. Movies maybe. I think she also liked me a lot too. Wherever she is now, I bet she’s having a good time, no matter what it is. She is probably not even thinking about me.

The thing about Half Priced Media is that, unless you know exactly what you are looking for, it is difficult to find anything. You would have to know the exact color of the object’s spine in order to find it among the slices of color spectrum. HPM was not a good place to browse for things. Me? Well on this day I knew exactly what I was looking for- Metaverse.

Metaverse. It was a video game made by a small development studio somewhere in Richardson, Texas. It was the studio’s first, last, and only game. The initial run of the game spanned all of 600 units pressed onto 256MB cartridges and sold by a single retail chain that had 6 stores throughout northern Texas. Of those 600 units, 2 of them were debug units with a very special line of code in them. Playing either of these special copies of Metaverse would teleport you into a magical world. I know that sounds like some lame metaphor about escapism, but I’m being literal here. Just let me explain.

Cody said it was some kind of paradox in quantum computing. I was content to believe it was indistinguishable from magic. Proper quantum programming, at the time and even now, are still many years away. But he would contest, “When something is discovered, does that mean it suddenly starts to exist? When gravity was ‘discovered’ it had been around forever. The world had seen its effects but we as humans had only just begun to quantify it.” Cody had a point, but that didn’t make any of this easier to believe. Honestly, if you can’t find yourself believing what I’m about to tell you, then that’s okay. If anything, it’s an interesting story and it will explain why my closet has 207 copies of Metaverse in it.

It’s safe to say that Emily is cuter and smarter than most girls. Not quite as smart as me. We’ve known each other for a few years. I have always had a thing for her. She says she only wants to be friends. She knew that even before she met me. We still liked each other almost immediately.

At some point I knew everything, except how talk to girls. I would quiz Emily for tips on meeting girls and even try out my own interpersonal relation theories with her. One day my intentions were a bit too obvious and she threw my bag out the car window while I was driving down a freeway. We never had any classes together because I was stuck in so many advanced courses. When we couldn’t hang out one night because I had to study, Emily burned the bread she was baking. I ate it, it was awful.

Eventually I figured out how to talk to girls and I started dating a girl named Ashley. Ashley enjoyed crafting things out of paper. From houses to tiny dragons. Ashley and I went to a wedding and she let me bring Emily because they met once and really hit it off. Ashley doesn’t like Emily anymore. Not after I spent the whole night drinking a stolen champagne bottle with Emily at the bottom of a drained pool while Ashley, too afraid to get her dress dirty, stood somewhere at the top no doubt regretting her invitation.

So anyway, there was nothing special about Metaverse. It was more or less a pretty average game. There were points to collect and things to move, but if you can manage to get to the fifth level, and walk up the green stairway; and you manage to hop onto the second blue platform and then stand under the bell at just the right angle the game would start to blur. Once it started to blur you had to push the gamepad button at just the right time in just the right sequence and then POP!. Don’t ask me how or why, but whoever was holding the gamepad at the time would be sucked into the Metaverse cartridge and reappear in an entirely new world. It was a new world, but it felt old. It’s a lot like when you lose your keys but then find them. The keys are the same old keys, but they are different now- perhaps changed by their temporary freedom. Well Cody and I would take turns going into the Metaverse because it only allowed one player at a time. The Metaverse was filled with people to talk to and things to do. The best part about the Metaverse is how time is much slower. One hour in the Metaverse was only a single minute in the real world. The thing about the Metaverse is that the people in it all know you are from somewhere else. To them you are a constant threat like a virus amongst lymphocytes. They don’t have good movies in the Metaverse. Mostly the theaters are filled with over budgeted science fiction- it’s like watching TV where the only channel is one that only shows the Star Wars prequels. This had always frustrated me and I tried to make my own movie but the people in the Metaverse did not take kindly to an outsider trying to “influence” their youth.

I didn’t want to tell Emily about the game. Sometimes she would ask if she could come over and I would tell her I was too busy doing research or something. Once I fell in love with her, it became a much harder secret to keep. I didn’t fall for Emily because she was the only girl around. I didn’t fall for her because she could cook curry or because she had decent taste in music. I definitely didn’t fall for her because she could draw. She is much better at talking than she is at drawing.

I became overly fond of Emily because she told the worse jokes and she liked the worst cartoons. She was great because she could do nothing and still enjoy herself. I know most guys probably liked her for other reasons, but I liked her for these ones. I mean, I’m no professional at determining whats cool or trendy, but at least I knew what I liked. One night I gave Emily a hug and smelled her hair. She said it was weird but didn’t stop me. Her hair smelled like vanilla that night.

I might be smarter than Emily, but she is a lot more cunning than me. One day she invited herself over and tried to show me a magic trick that involved me leaving the room. I don’t know why I believed her because she was never really a fan of magic. I figured she had just recently bought some “magic for amateurs” book. That is something she would do.

Most people think Emily ran away. That is something she would do. What really happened that night is that Emily played Metaverse. She saw the directions written on the nearby notebook. She got to the 5th level without a hitch, and walked up the green stairway and hopped onto the second blue platform and stood under the bell at just the right angle and watched as the game blurred. Then she pushed the gamepad buttons at just the right time in just the right sequence and then POP! She disappeared. I tried to follow her in but the game would not let me. One player at a time. Emily would come back when she wanted to come back.

Cody suggested that I simply wait for her to return. The most he or I ever stayed in the Metaverse was 15 hours- 15 minutes in the real world. By now Emily had been gone for 2 days. Emily could be off exploring some unknown realm and learning all types of mystical recipes she could cook here if she ever decided to come back. Maybe she met some guy in the Metaverse. They probably starred at each other for a moment before he got the nerve to walk over and ask her to dance. And she’d say yes because words were never my strong point. I hope she comes back soon. I miss the way she smells.

So now you’re all caught up. And here I am at Half Priced Media. There are two copies of Metaverse with a special line of code in them. One is at my house blocked because the girl I love is somewhere inside it. The other I have yet to find. Emily has been in the Metaverse for two weeks now- more than two years in the Metaverse...