by Ellen Oh
No matter how often we moved, or what else was going on in our lives, The Land of the Morning Calm was there. Until it killed my mother.
I shove our fat cat, Muta, off the chair and plop into it. She bats my foot with a paw in irritation before slinking off, tail up in the feline version of flipping me off.
Dad puts a hand on my shoulder, leans into me gently. “It feels like we’re losing her again.”
“Eun-Ha,” I say softly. When the game’s servers go offline, Mom’s character, Eun-Ha, will be wiped with them, erasing the last remnants of her from the world.
I blink away tears and reach for the fake purple pearl around my neck, the kumiho bead from the costume Mom was wearing when she died. I saw it on her during the viewing, and I took it just before we closed the casket. It was weeks before Dad found out that I had it, but by then he couldn’t do anything about it. He could hardly blame me for wanting something to remember her by. Over the years, whenever I would start to forget what Mom was like, I touched the bead and saw her again as clearly as if she were right in front of me.
I nudge the computer mouse and click on the Start Game button. I try to remember my password. Our family has a lifetime subscription to LMC—which seems morbid when I think about Mom.
Dad’s phone buzzes. He checks it, and the gloom lifts from his face.
“Tell Lisa I say hi,” I say.
Harabeoji makes a disapproving sound, and the temporary peace between him and Dad is over.
Dad kisses the top of my head and squeezes my shoulders. “Will do.”
I close the program and turn off the computer. The aging machine takes forever to chug along. When the fan switches off, it’s suddenly really quiet in the living room. So quiet, I hear Harabeoji’s stomach rumble.
“I’ll start dinner,” I say.
Mom looked over my shoulder while I created my user account for LMC on the living-room computer. She reached for the mouse to show me where to click, but I slapped her hand away. “I can do it!”
I was excited because Mom was finally letting me into her world. It seemed like she preferred spending time in a virtual re-creation of ancient Korea with a bunch of strangers to playing board games with her family. We’d never done the things TV tells you mothers and daughters do together: braiding each other’s hair, clothes shopping, trying on makeup. Once I’d asked her to help me make a Toph Beifong costume for Halloween, but she stayed up all night to make it herself. It was terrific, much better than anything I could have done, but I hated it.
“Shouldn’t you be writing?” I asked.
“I can do that later. You have to pick an animal,” Mom said.
“I know.” I clicked on the owl. The little animated bird flapped its wings and went, “Whoo, whoo!”
“Why did you pick that?” Mom asked.
I shrugged. “It looks cute.”
“This is an important decision! You shouldn’t rush it,” she said.
“Can’t I change it later if I don’t like it?” I asked.
“Life doesn’t work like that, Sun.”
“This is just a game.”
She sighed. “You’re starting to sound like your grandfather.”
“Harabeoji is old and wise,” I said. “Oh, I’m going to make my character a venerable shaman!”
“Maybe you aren’t ready for this.”
Hot tears slipped down my face. “Mom! Please. You promised.”
She threw up her hands and walked away. “Fine, do whatever you want.”
After dinner, Harabeoji goes out to drink and play hwatu cards with the other Korean old men in the neighborhood. Home alone, I curl up in bed with my laptop and prepare to plow through a mountain of homework.
But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Mom and LMC since I got home, so instead of answering discussion questions on 1984, I open my browser and load thelandofthemorning.com. The site hasn’t changed much since the early two thousands, except for the front-page notice about the game ending, with a timer counting down to midnight next Friday, GMT+9. They’re planning a big blowout to bring the game to a conclusion, and everyone’s invited. For its last week, LMC is free-to-play. A download button is right next to the timer.
Before I change my mind, I click the download link. While the game installs, I fiddle with Mom’s kumiho bead, and it all rushes back to me: The countless evenings I’d spent watching her play while I read on the couch. The stories she and Dad would tell from their online adventures, as detailed as if they’d really happened—which she had tried and failed to work into her sprawling novel-in-progress. Late nights spent as a family trying to destroy King Yeoma’s undead armies. My final visit to the Land, the night before Mom died and my world ended.
It takes three attempts before I remember my password. When I succeed, I’m surprised to see my old character, Isang the Brave Bear Cub. Isang the Naïve. He had waited for me all this time, unchanged. But Isang has a mother, and I don’t anymore. Life hasn’t been on pause for me, and I’m a different person now. So I create a new character.
I select the gwisin-hunter class, and this time I pick a girl and make her look as close to my actual appearance as I can: glasses, white tank top, black tights, short black hair with a blue streak. Some people, like my mom, put on masks and costumes to feel more like themselves, but I haven’t been into cosplaying for a long time. I don’t mind adding thick combat boots and a ludicrously large broadsword to my ensemble, though. That’s just sensible gear to have.
As a final touch, I give my avatar a necklace with a single purple pearl.
Then I consider for a moment—it’s a big decision after all—before choosing an owl spirit again. This choice isn’t only fueled by nostalgia, though; wings will let me cover the most territory as quickly as possible. I plan to log in just long enough to fly over the Land’s Three Kingdoms one last time. And it doesn’t matter anymore, so I enter my real name, Sun_Moon.
I sit up straight in bed when one name in my friends list catches my eye: HannaKimmy. Status: Online.
Mom.
It has to be a bug in the system, a cruel glitch. The last time she could have logged into the game was five years ago. But there’s no harm in firing off a private message to her: “Mom? It’s Sunny.”
It’s as foolish a hope as buying a Powerball ticket. I wait and wait and wait, but there’s no response. Of course there’s no response. I don’t believe in ghosts in the real world, but that’s the joy of the Three Kingdoms. It’s a fantasy world where animals can turn into people, people can become gods, and basically anything can happen. The eleven-year-old girl in me who once believed in magic still wishes there was something on the other side of death.
It takes a moment to reorient myself to the game’s controls, but I let sense memory take over, and soon it’s like I never left. The Land of the Morning Calm is just as I remember it, and my heart practically aches at its beauty. I should have come back sooner.
I start the game in the village of Yangdong, in the southeastern part of the peninsula. I don’t have a destination in mind, since I was just planning to explore for a little while, so I wander around aimlessly. My first encounter is with a stag walking on his hind legs. The green text floating above his name identifies him as ShaolinSucker: Level 719. Wow, that’s really high. I’d only gotten up to around level 73 when I quit, and that was pretty respectable.
“Good morning, Sun_Moon! You’re new here?” he types. “Do you need some help?”
I type: “Long-time player, new character. I’ve been away for a while. Thought I’d take one more look around before they switch off the lights.”
He types: “Bad news, alright. But hopefully the new server will hold up.”
“New server?!”
A private message pops up, along with a friend request from ShaolinSucker. I accept both. (Still no response from HannaKimmy.) I open his message and see an IP address.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“A player named Jeoseung set
up his own private server to emulate the game. While he’s testing capacity it’s invitation only, unless you find an access point in-game to transfer your character over. I hear it’s running Underworld source code right now.”
I laugh. “Clever,” I type. In the Korean myth that LMC is loosely based on, Jeoseung Chasa is a kind of grim reaper working to collect souls for death.
“Sure I can’t help with anything?” He sends me a smiley face.
I hesitate, but as silly as it is to ask, it’s also silly to be afraid to. “I’m looking for someone who used to play five years ago. If you’re Level 719, you must have been around for a while.”
“Since day 1,” he types. “My user ID is 88.”
“Did you know a kumiho named Eun-Ha?”
It isn’t that much of a long shot that he would know her. Millions of people play the game, but in her heyday, everyone knew Mom. She was a guild leader and was active both in and out of the game, not to mention she was pretty well known for her LMC cosplays.
“Sure,” he types. “I saw her a couple of weeks ago in Hanhoe. I was just passing through, so I didn’t stop to chat.”
That isn’t possible.
“HannaKimmy?” I type.
“That’s her,” he responds.
A chilling thought occurs to me: Someone has hacked Mom’s account, taken over her identity. LMC has a wonderful, supportive community, but like any online group, it also has its share of assholes and opportunists. Mom was in the 500-level club, and everyone knew she possessed a few of the rarest items in the game. Dad and I left a lot of credits on the table by leaving Mom’s character untouched, which could have translated into real-world money. Maybe we should have done more with Eun-Ha, tried to secure Mom’s legacy somehow. Then we would have discovered that someone had stolen it, or prevented it from happening.
“My guild’s planning a raid on the palace later if you want to come,” ShaolinSucker types.
“Thanks, but I’m just going to explore a bit.”
“Have fun! Be careful out there. Dokkaebi and mul gwisin have been more active in the 3K lately. Stay away from open water.”
Not all gwisin are harmless. In Harabeoji’s bedtime stories, some of them would try to waylay travelers to eat or drown them, like the mul gwisin—“water ghosts”—ShaolinSucker warned me about. And then there are the dokkaebi, Korean goblins, who might challenge you to a wrestling match. More nightmare-fuel for imaginative little kids.
I turn my character into a giant white owl and get airborne. Thanks to ShaolinSucker’s information, I now have a goal: Look for whoever is masquerading as Eun-Ha.
It may just be that I’m running the game on a more powerful computer, or else they’ve upgraded the graphics engine over the years, but the Three Kingdoms have never looked better. I had read that the number of active accounts was way down from the millions of people who used to play LMC daily, but the countryside is clogged with travelers. People cluster in villages and climb the mountains on whatever random quests they’ve undertaken. News of the game’s shutdown must have brought them back, as it has for me.
I land in Hanhoe and shift back into human form. I walk up and down the village streets, and I realize that most of the travelers I see are computer-controlled characters interacting with players, making the game seem more active and alive. These NPCs, “non-playing characters,” typically react according to programmed algorithms meant to simulate human behavior. I marvel at how many there are in one place; practically the whole village is full of fake people.
I try asking a couple of NPCs if they’ve seen a nine-tailed fox, but they won’t diverge from their scripted actions. They aren’t programmed to think. Instead, they only comment on the weather or mention items they’re looking for, people they’ve lost track of—offering side missions that I don’t have the time or interest for.
Then I see her.
Even without the “Eun-Ha: Level 999” (wow!) above her head, I would know Mom’s avatar from all those countless hours of watching and playing beside her, and of course, her outfit resembles her kumiho costume.
My shock and happiness at seeing her again, even as a digital artifact of her former self, is quickly overcome by anger. Her avatar is walking back and forth aimlessly just like all the NPCs around us. Back and forth. Back and forth. I hurry over to her and click the Talk icon.
“Who the hell are you?” I type.
“Greetings, Sun_Moon. Fine day, isn’t it?”
“Who are you?” I type again. “Eun-Ha is my mother’s character. You stole it. How did you access her account?” Then I notice that her kumiho bead is missing. “Where’s her necklace? Did you sell it?”
“I am Eun-Ha,” she says.
“MY MOTHER IS DEAD, ASSHOLE.”
Her avatar graphic glitches. “Have you s-s-seen my hairbrush?” she asks.
That really unsettles me. I can practically hear Mom’s voice: “Have you seen my hairbrush?”
Mom always used to lose her brushes and combs. It got so bad that we bought them in bulk and sprinkled them around the house so that one would always be nearby, and even so, they slowly started to disappear. But here, it’s been presented as a mini-mission. This can’t be another person behind her character, but maybe someone coded her likeness into the game. Sometimes programmers added little tributes to their players when enough people asked for it. Dad and I never did—we were done with all this.
What would happen if I found or bought a brush in the game and brought it back to her? Would she give me a clue to some kind of treasure or a cryptic hint for defeating Yeoma’s hordes?
Then a tiny, hopeful voice in the back of my head wonders whether it could be her.
“Mom? Mom, if you’re in there, it’s me, Sunny,” I type.
I try any number of different approaches, but she never responds in anything but a limited, robotic way. Eun-Ha is just like any other NPC, a slave to the game instead of an agent of her own fate. And yet . . . It was like Harabeoji said. I know her. This is more than a mass of glowing pixels on my screen. It’s my mother. And I have one more thing to try.
I get up and go to my desk, rummage around, and grab my old gaming headset. I pull it on and plug the mic into my laptop.
“Mom?” I say. “Hello?”
The word “Sunny” appears onscreen. For a moment, I think her character is just remarking on the damn weather again, but then I hear her voice, too. “Sunny,” she says. “Sunny.”
I start crying.
I have to crank the volume up all the way, and even then it’s barely audible, nearly lost in an electronic hiss and crackle. No, it’s composed of it, noise and air, like very poor audio sampling. Her voice is distant and breathy and strained, but it’s her. And while I never forgot what she looked like because we have so many photos of her, I’d forgotten what she sounded like.
“Mom, it’s really you in there,” I say. “How? What happened? What are you?”
“I don’t know what happened, I’ve forgotten. It’s been too long.”
“Five years,” I say.
“You look good, little flower cake.” I don’t know if she’s referring to my avatar or if she can somehow see me beyond the screen. This is so strange.
“I sort of remember . . . I was in two places at once, in my body, and here,” she says. “I see Oppa sometimes.” Her father.
“Harabeoji thinks you’re a gwisin.”
She laughs, a harsh, disharmonious sound in my headphones, like garbled sound effects.
“He says you visit him. You move things around,” I say.
“I was try . . . get his attention.”
So she’d been trying to communicate with us in the only way she could, just to let us know she was there. But why Harabeoji and not me?
“The computer,” I say.
Harabeoji was the only one who used our old computer with LMC installed on it. Maybe that is her link to the real world. If Dad and I had continued playing the game, would we have found her in
it sooner?
“Mom, we didn’t know you were still . . .” Not alive. “Around.”
“You left me here,” she says.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know! But is it okay there? You used to love it in the 3K.”
“It’s wonderful, but I miss . . . real . . .” The sound garbles. “How’s . . . father?”
“Dad? He’s okay.” I hesitate. Should I mention Lisa? “He met someone. She’s nice.”
“I think I knew that. Good.”
“I should text him to come home. You can talk to him, too!” I pull out my phone, trying to figure out how to get him to believe me. What about Harabeoji? He’d want to see her again while he can.
“No, Sunny. Let your father be. This time . . . It’s for us. How are you?”
I almost shrug off her question with the same answer I give Dad and Harabeoji and the school counselor when they ask how I’m doing: “I’m fine, really. My classes keep me busy.” But this may be the last time I get to speak with her, and I don’t want to lie.
“Not good,” I say. “I miss you so much.” Tears drip down onto my keyboard.
On-screen, her character hugs mine, and I can almost feel her arms around me. I do feel her, I’m certain of it—like a cool breeze wafting over my bare arms. I shiver.
“I miss you, too,” she says. “Tell me everything.”
“I don’t know. I go to school. I come home. I cook dinner. I do homework.”
“Is there . . . Are you see . . . anyone?”
“Like I have time for that. Which works out, because no one else has time for me.”
“You used to have a lot of friends.”
“I used to have—” A mother. I chew my lip. “Never mind. We’re wasting our time. Mom, I found your book on your computer. I read it. I hope that’s okay.”
She’s silent for so long, I worry we’ve lost our fragile connection. “Of course. What do you think?”