VEG

by Zachery Nims

  Chapter 13: Summer

  Time: Five Years Prior

  Source: Personal Computer log

  User: Evo

  Last year was the budding of Kira and I’s relationship. Phantom and Knightcr@wler took the news of us dating well, only fussing when it interfered with our quests and guild raids. They were like our two children that we constantly had to appease. We were all sitting in Phantom’s basement, a hideout so to speak, on the brim of summer.

  The room bore a masquerade of retro gaming collages. Nintendo Power posters were strewn about, honoring the roots of grinding it out. Grinders was a term loosely given to gamers that spent countless hours doing repetitive game play with the intent of having an extra advantage in the quests to come. The first grinders were that of old RPG games like Final Fantasy that sat in lower level based zones, spending days leveling up so that when they continued they had the advantage. Those players were the bread and butter of VEG users. Patience was one of the strongest virtues we had in our clan.

  I was connected to this group because they were true gamers. Guys like us respected the origins of the movement. There was a huge cult following of console games, being the roots and or catalyst for VEG’s creation. Knowing those games and original works, now considered art, helped in questing. Most VEG users studied everything about the generation that Charles Sanders lived in because of how much help it gave in questing. He left secrets and Easter eggs for the dedicated fans. It was what most of us lived for, solving the riddles that no one else could. The more you knew about the history of games the better equipped you were for VEG.

  Phantom and Knightcr@wler were sitting Indian style in front of a screen that covered the whole basement wall, playing excite bike on the original Nintendo. Excite Bike was a motocross racing video game that they had spent months on the very first level. They went back and forth racing single player, trying to break each other’s fastest time. Any slight mistake made the difference between failure and a perfect run. It didn’t help that when either one of them raced they took it upon themselves to talk as much trash as possible during the minutes of game play.

  “So whatís the plan for this summer guys?” I said after Phantom’s race finished without breaking the record.

  “You mean other than you and Kira’s marriage and your constant attempts at making ugly abomination babies? Kira, you have thought about how your children will turn out right?” Phantom asked, still sticking it to the both of us every chance he got. Knightcr@wler smiled snatching the controller from Phantom’s hands.

  “Yes, other than that. I mostly was referring to VEG,” I said, knowing that the best method to overt Phantom’s wrath was to accept his banter with a smile. Phantom was too quick witted for anyone to match his shit talking. The only one that even came close with clever quips was Kira.

  “I say we do the same thing we do every summer,” Knightcr@wler said and at once Phantom and Kira both chimed in, “TRY AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD!” They loved getting the chance to reference the television show Pinky and the Brain. We had finished gathering the best equipment from PvP since we currently held the number one spot in the United States, so like always, we had the entire summer free to do what we wanted.

  “Enderís Quest,” Knightcr@wler said in a soft whisper.

  “My GOD, every single summer… what is it with you and this mythical quest?” Phantom scolded Knightcr@wler jarring the controller from his hand mid turn after a single crash. “It doesn’t exist! It’s a stupid fucking blogger that got his kicks off sending Easter Bunny believers like yourself on his trail of shit. Besides, if Charles Sanders did invent the greatest hidden quest, wouldn’t you think that someone would have found it by now? I mean did you read the description of the item that blogging loon thinks is at the end of his rabbit hole? It’s a sword that literally makes you invulnerable and honestly how would he even know?” Phantom threw the controller after his bike overheated. It shattered against the wall, his player in the game cooled off on the side of the 8-bit track.

  Phantom rose calmly and printed another controller from Knightcr@wler’s 3D printer. 3D printers were capable of building anything at this point and were standard in every household across America. Knightcr@wler had an extension on his house that was printed by one, as did most of the houses in his neighborhood.

  Knightcr@wler looked annoyed waiting for the controller to finish, “Alright, what do we know? We know that Charles Sanders favorite book was Ender’s Game. He said that Ender was the only character that he had a true connection with. In a number of his first augmented quests he had elements from each of the Ender’s series books.” With a flick of Knightcr@wler’s finger, virtual screens appeared, suspended in midair showing playbacks of multiple quests that had Ender’s Game elements.

  “The key though, is that Charles loved Ender, related with him and understood the battles and trials he endured to become a leader. One of the main obstacles in Ender’s youth is the free roam adventure game that focused on his psyche. It made him face his deep-seeded fears and manifested negative character attributes. I think that game struck a chord with Charles, the parallels with his life were uncanny.”

  All of the virtual screens changed abruptly, and were now showing Ender morphing into a rat and running up to a Giant with two different potions. ìIíve always thought that there was a version of the free roam Giant’s Drink game somewhere in VEG. I hadn’t found it because I was looking in the wrong place.” Knightcr@wler had all the screens showing the countless quests and journeys we as a group had gone on in prior summers. “So if you were Charles Sanders where would you hide the first clue of an undetectable quest?” Knightcr@wler looked around at us with an excitement in his eyes that I hadn’t thought possible.

  “Probably somewhere that no one in the world would be clever enough to think of except for… Oh my god Knightcr@wler!” Phantom said pretending to be bored with the conversation.

  Knightcr@wler ignored him and continued with even more excitement. “In the real world!” he paused again waiting for our reaction. “Look, Charles was a huge fan of adventure, right? You know Indiana Jones, The Goonies and all of the classics. A man that spent his early years before video games would want our generation to unplug and realize that VEG isn’t everything. It was right there in front of me all along but I couldn’t detach myself from the never-ending amounts of code to search. The real kicker was Ender’s Universe in VEG. It had everyone looking in the wrong place. A user could spend a lifetime searching its vastness. When you overload a system with arenas and maps it sends people down a rabbit hole that will never end, but if we search in the real world first we might find the beginning. I’ve been searching every summer and I think I finally found something,” Knightcr@wler said.

  Kira actually moved forward a little bit taking remote interest and to my surprise Phantom dropped the newly finished controller mid game and turned around. “Where?” Phantom asked.

  “No forget it, it’s stupid… Let’s just do something else this summer.” Knightcr@wler picked up the controller like he hadn’t just hooked us and was now toying with Phantom.

  “You little,” Phantom said, attacking Knightcr@wler. They both rolled around on the floor wrestling for a bit with spurts of laughter and banter.

  “Alright, alright,” Knightcr@wler said sitting upright. “Put on your Jacks.”

  “Jacks” was the term Knightcr@wler used for the VEG’s Jackers, and he was hoping that the lingo would catch on. It was used amongst our clan, but it hadn’t fully hit amongst the other users of the world. He placed a virtual screen in front of us and began again. “Alright, so going back to the whole Giant’s drink quest. An unknown billionaire purchased a good amount of land in a small town in Utah. Three lots to be precise, and each purchased under someone else’s name as to not reveal his own identity.”

  The excitement started to rise in Knightcr@wler’s voice. “On
these plots of land the man built three establishments. The first was an Inn that was made in the shape of an egg called Weird Egg Inn, one of those wannabe strange destinations in the US for road trippers. On the second plot, an arcade was built called Gamer Needs that paid homage to the old cartridge systems as well as pinball machines, and the best arcade games over the last century. On the final plot of land, the unknown investor built a bar called Dethroned the Wolf. It was the only one of the establishments that saw any profit, even with its obscure name. The interesting part of these investments is that the bar started construction three years before the Inn and the arcade yet it finished two years after the other two completed. Another curious part about the bar’s construction is that it was the only one of the three that was blocked from public view by a fifty-foot concrete wall. The entire plot of land extends a good football field distance behind the establishment.”

  Phantom interrupted Knightcr@wler, “so what does any of it have to do with Charles Sanders or Enders Quest?”

  Knightcr@wler disregarded his outburst and continued in a calm manner. “Weird Egg Inn, Gamer Needs, and Dethroned the Wolf are all curious names don’t you think?” He looked around at us, nodding as if we understood where he was going with all of this. “They are all anagrams!” he said with a smile plastered across his face.

  “What?” Kira said.

  “Anagrams! Letters rearranged to create a new word or phrase. It was Charles Sanders favorite type of word play,” Knightcr@wler said and without waiting for us to take it in he began writing the three establishment’s names up in virtual space.

  “Look, Weird Egg Inn.” He wrote the glowing letters in the air and then moved them around with his hands to form two words.

  I read it slowly, “Ender… Wiggin.”

  “YES!” he said now jumping to his feet. “Gamer Needs, becomes Ender’s Game and finally the one that brings us back to my first idea is Dethroned the Wolf!”

  He rearranged the letters slowly as we all watched mesmerized and there it was clear as day “The End Of The World,” Phantom whispered. His eyes were locked upon the letters.

  “Exactly!” Knightcr@wler was becoming more and more exuberant.

  “In the first book Ender’s Game, after Ender kills the giant, drowns the wolves, and lowers himself down into the well, he comes across a door that has THE END OF THE WORLD written in glowing emeralds on it. The bar is the key. Why would a nine hundred square foot building take eight years to complete? Charles must have built an underground adventure and we all have to travel to Utah to check it out!”

  “Slow down there old Indiana. You want us all to fly across the country to spend part of our summer in exotic Utah, so we can break into a bar that could potentially have an underground fortress that leads us to the mythical best item in VEG?” Phantom said.

  “Yes,” was all Knightcr@wler could manage.

  “Sounds good, I’m in… but me and you are going to make babies in that Weird Egg Inn while Evo and Kira watch,” Phantom said as he grabbed Knightcr@wler’s hand and brought him in for a hug.

  “Quit it, you know your guys homoerotic fantasies turn me on,” Kira said as she came in closer to the two.

  “There is a good chance we will all come back Mormons but I’m in,” I said smiling. I joined the group in the center of the room and felt whole.

  I had spent so many years as an outcast to society that it now almost hurt to feel so accepted and loved. I looked around at my three best friends and thought I couldn’t picture a better life for myself. Still something felt surreal as if it could be taken from me in a flash. Like an illusory world was about to disappear, leaving only that lonely feeling that used to fill me. Nights spent sitting in front of a computer screen alone, telling myself that my online friends were all I needed. You wanted to leave but as the real world relationships fell apart around you, new cyber relationships replaced them. The feeling was fresh now, bathing my body in the old senses. I wanted to leave it but I might miss something, fall behind and become unwanted in the game world. Miss something was all I was doing. I was missing the marrow of life, the companionship of others, and the physical and mental interaction that makes us human. VEG changed that, now I had a family that cared for me and was there for me. I was… happy.