by Sean McGinty
After a while I couldn’t take it anymore. So one night, it was around one o’clock in the morning, I climbed down to his cube to see if we could work out a deal. Dulah’s portal was open, and I found him lying on his pad, staring at the ceiling. His eyes were open wide and he was waving his hands around all loopy and funny like some kind of magician or possibly the victim of a seizure.
“Hey, are you all right? Dulah?” I gave him a little shake. “Dulah!”
He touched something in the air and sat up blinking like he was coming out of a trance.
“WHAT UP, NEIGHBOR!” he shouted over the reggae. “WHEN DID YOU GET HERE?”
We went through that complicated handshake ritual that drug dealers have, and then I told him I’d just dropped by to see—
“SPEAK UP, MAN!”
“—JUST DROPPED BY TO SEE WHAT’S UP BECAUSE IT’S PRETTY LATE AND PROBABLY EVERYONE WITHIN THE BLAST RADIUS IS HAVING A HARD TIME SLEEPING ON ACCOUNT OF THE REGGAE, WHICH, DUDE, YOU HAVE TO ADMIT IS—”
And then of course the reggae stopped and the only sound was my voice shouting out those last few words.
Dulah turned to me. His eyes were all funny. “Say that again? What did you have to admit? I couldn’t hear you over the music, man.”
“Are you OK? What are you on?”
“FUN®.”
“What?”
“I’m having FUN®, man.”
“Fun doing what?”
Dulah just looked at me. “The chip in my head. The lenses, man. Fully Ubiquitous Neuralnet. That’s how you say it: having FUN®.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of FUN®, but it was the first time I really paid any attention. Dulah gave me the rundown. It had started in Korea and spread from there, and now it was coming to America, but the home version was still in beta, and they needed testers to report bugs.
“Get on while you can, neighbor. My whole world has changed. Like right now? I’m running the frogskin, man.”
“Frogskin?”
“It makes everyone look like a frog. You look like a frog, man.”
“Oh.”
“Ribbit ribbit, man. And the best part is, I’m earning FUN®. And FUN® is money.”
“Actual money?”
“Enough to pay my rent. More than enough.”
“How?”
“Bug reports, bonuses, gold mining—but the most FUN® is with YAY!s.”
“What’s a yay?”
Something flickered across his big, dark pupils. “Repeat after me: Yay for FUN®!”
“What?”
“Say it,” said Dulah. “Say, Yay for FUN®!”
So I said it. “Yay for fun.”
And Dulah was all, “BAM! I just earned plus 10 for getting you to say that! If I talk about it, I get even more. This shit is for real, yo. Once you’re having FUN®, you won’t ever want to stop. Everyday reality is a drag™, man.”
And although he was earning FUN® for saying the official tagline, you could tell that he actually kind of meant it, too.
So the next afternoon I went downtown to see about starting to have some FUN®.
The lensing station was located in an office on Pine Street, sort of like an optometrist’s but without the glasses. The lady handed me a pad, and I clicked through the User Agreement.
YES I AGREE
YES I AGREE
YES I AGREE
She took the pad and sent me to a little room in the back. I sat in the recliner. The machine lowered. A voice said:
CONCENTRATE ON THE DOT.
PREPARE FOR CHIP AND LENSING.
The dot moved around in a jittery circle. I felt a prick in the base of my skull. Then everything went pixelated.
And as I stumbled out of the chair and into the light, the world had changed. It was bigger now, brighter, the entire landscape webbed in a shiny digital overlay, bonuses and interfaces just waiting to be touched. I stood at the doorway with the sensory information blowing over me like sand on a windy day at the beach, and a blinking robot face took shape—two eyes, no mouth. When it spoke, a readout appeared at the bottom of my vision:
> hello!
i am Homie™!
i will be your guide!
i will be your very
best friend!
r u
ready
to have
some
FUN®?
:)
OK, now I would like to say YAY! for the Shit. And by “the Shit,” I mean “anything that is superior in a pleasing way.” Like for example fine wines, making out, or Psyke2® IntraCranial graphics chips. FUN® was the Shit. Especially at the beginning. I mean, people are always talking about some new shit, and sometimes it’s decent shit, and occasionally it’s good shit, but most of the time it’s just…shit.
Not this time.
This time the Shit was for real. You could see it and hear it and touch it—you could hold the Shit in your hands. You couldn’t smell it or taste it, but that was fine because it was FUN® and it was everywhere. You were swimming in it. And the other cool part was that not everyone had it yet, so it was like being part of this special club. Of the Shit.
Like, I’d be wandering around the Mission and I’d see a couple exclamation points off in the distance—exclamation points that only I could see—+1 user! +1 user!—and then I’d catch sight of the people under the points, and it’d be a couple cool kids just like me, and as we passed each other we’d YAY! out in our minds like superpsychic adventurers on the hunt for bonus fun.
So that part was cool, and it was fun, and it was FUN®. (Well, duh. It was the Shit.)
But there were some minor issues, though. Bugs and glitches or whatever. Take for example Homie™. It’s evolved over time, but back then it was just this pixelated, barely 3D robot face. Bluish on top, orangish on bottom, no mouth, no nose. Two dark, blinking circles for eyes. Pretty much the first thing my Homie™ did was catch a communication virus, the infamous allyourbase_ex, and after that you never knew when the voice recognition was gonna glitch out, or maybe it’d start talking in half-Japanese. Both of which happened when I was trying to final confirm my username.
What I wanted was the last cowboy, but when I told Homie™, it blinked and said,
> ok!
i cannot understand u now!
please to speak louder!
“Confirm username: the last cowboy.”
> ok!
what was that?
u r desire of original name?
is this can be for a person?
“Yes, an original name. For a person. Me. I desire to final confirm my username: the last cowboy!”
Homie™ flickered.
> “original boy”?
“No!”
> i’m sorry!
that is a name already taken!
would u like “original boy_1”?
“THE LAST COWBOY!”
> i’m sorry!
that is a name already taken!
would u like “original boy_2”?
“Start over!”
> awesome!
original boy_2 confirmed!
:)
When I contacted an Admin he told me it was like 800 to unconfirm it, which was total crap, and in the end I was like, Forget it. I’m not paying. Anyway, it could have been worse. I could’ve been original boy_3 or 4 or whatever. Sometimes I still feel a little pang of envy toward original boy_1 and, of course, the original original boy. Really, though, the last cowboy was what I wanted. Personally, I think that would have been the Shit.
So there I was, living in SF, having FUN®, free as a bee on the sea. Yeah, the hivehouse was weird, and yeah, I was scamming my family, and yeah, any insect flying over an ocean is bound to get fatigued and crash, but for the moment it was awesome. I’m kind of amazed I got away with it so long, but the truth is this: when people want to believe something, you don’t have to work that hard to convince them. Every week or so I called Evie and Dad to give an update on my li
fe in Sacramento. School was fine. California was fine. I was fine. And they bought it! I think they were just happy to have me out of their hair.
As it turned out, I was one of the last people to have FUN® for “free.” It was like a week later that they got FDA approval, and people started paying for beta. In retrospect, I should have read the User Agreement, because it was a way crappier deal to get on for “free” than to pay for a contract.
One problem was, they kept changing the rules. Like the YAY!s. At first they were optional, but then they became mandatory, and then you couldn’t just YAY! a hot product in the YAY!log to collect points—you were supposed to talk about it, too. It was a lot of work. I started to get a little behind. OK, a lot behind. Because the truth is I hardly even touched the YAY!s.
Here’s the other problem: FUN® is fun, but it’s also got some really addicting distractions. Like take, for example, the game Tickle, Tickle, Boom! (YAY!). Say what you will about the console versions, the FUN® adaptation is insane. You get to the point where all you want to do is play until your eyes fall out. And if you get serious about it, you’ll of course want to skip the grind—but you can’t skip the grind for free. Or say you want to respawn on a friendly face? That’ll cost you, too.
Not gonna lie—I got hooked. Pretty soon I was spending all my time on Tickle, Tickle, Boom!, and even though I was doing a decent job earning (so I thought), there was bound to come a day when the roof caved in.
It was a Tuesday, I remember, right after I’d defeated the Boss 4: The Pandacorn on Tickle, Tickle, Boom!, maybe three months into my life in San Francisco.
I woke up like any normal day—took a leak, munched some Zazz—but when I went to log in to Tickle, Tickle, Boom!, Homie™ popped up and was all,
> access denied!
user = FAIL!
And I was like, WUT?
And Homie™ was like,
> u r a FAIL!
:(
So I told it to bring up my account info, and that’s when I saw the problem. My balance was at –10,000. How did that happen? The truth is, I knew exactly how it happened. You don’t spend a month on your butt playing Tickle, Tickle, Boom! and not fall a little behind. But FAIL? I thought that was reserved for, like, egregious trolling or whatever.
I asked Homie™ again if I was truly in FAIL, and it was like,
> i’m so sorry!
u are truly a FAIL!
:(
So I took a deep breath and asked Homie™ what I had to do, and it said I had two choices: file a Petition for Return to Normal or an Application for Termination. In order to do either, first I had to earn back all my FUN®, plus catch up on my YAY!logs—100 in all, and they all had to be user approved, meaning I had to get more YAY!s than BOO!s. Plus complete all the regular YAY!s. In the meantime, I was in FAIL:
No mindtalk™.
No timestop™.
No brainzip™.
No unauthorized games.
Basically no real FUN® until I earned back the FUN® I owed. As I sat there reading the terms of my fate, it occurred to me that my rent to the hivehouse was due in a week.
So now what?
How would I have some FUN®?
Homie™ blinked.
> that’s easy original boy_2!
u can go to a party™!
YAY! for Parties™. In the beginning, they were kind of all right—everyone getting together IRL to exchange YAY!s. But they kept changing the rules and adding more time, and pretty soon no one went unless they had to. Listen: if everyone who is at the party is only there because they have to be, then where you are is not a party—even if there are balloons. Which there were not. Instead, it was 80 people crammed into a dimly lit meeting room in the basement of a building on Pine Street, with a single ironic disco ball dangling from the ceiling.
They’d handed out name tags at the door, like actual name tags—more irony, I guess. The other person in my party pair was this hipster girl named Sasha—username sasha.c8kes—and she was having a lot of FUN® and not paying much attention to IRL. What she did was she accidentally grabbed my name tag and slapped it on her shapely chest without even looking—and now she was original boy_2. So I took hers: sasha.c8kes.
Her mood was WHATEVER, so I changed mine to FLIRT? just to see what she’d do. She didn’t do anything. So I told her a joke, the one about what’s long and brown and sticky, the answer to which is: a stick. But either she didn’t like it or she didn’t get it. Not that there’s all that much to get.
The reason we were there was to review the latest Animal of Wonder & Light®, the Buffaloon™. I’ll say this much: they were getting better with the haptic response. You could almost feel the bristly hairs. But as for personality, I don’t know…the thing just stood there flapping its wings…and every once in a while it would whistle. Also: you could give it virtual “hay” and, you know, watch it eat.
> somewhat docile
is how I summed it in my review,
> maybe change head to a lion or a snake?
The Party™ planners could see that the Buffaloon™ was kind of a bust, so they announced a double bonus for revised summaries, and just as I was getting started on it, Homie™ popped up.
> !
time out original boy_2!
u have 1 call(s)
it’s from evelyn o’faolain!
“Send it to voice mail.”
> ok!
here is your 1 call(s)!
“Aaron? Are you there?”
“Hey, Evie. I’m in the middle of something, so—”
“We need to talk.”
“OK, but—”
“Right now.”
So I filed for a bathroom break and stepped outside. I was certain she’d found me out. My sister is a newspaper reporter and she’s got a nose for scandal. Nothing can stay buried for long. It was like, Oh, shit! Here it comes! I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead. I was starting to twitch a little.
“Hey, Evie. So what’s up?”
“It’s Grandpa Henry,” she said.
“What about him?”
“He shot himself.”
“Shot himself? Is he OK?”
“No, he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“I’m so sorry, Aaron.”
And for a moment there I was just like, WHA—? with that last T hanging silently in the air. I hadn’t thought about Grandpa Henry in forever. And now he’d killed himself? Old people aren’t supposed to kill themselves. They’re already at the end. It’s like dropping out of a marathon at mile 25.
OK, this might sound awful, but I was kind of relieved. Not that Grandpa was dead but that my sister hadn’t discovered my lies. I asked Evie what happened, and she gave me the story:
Dad hadn’t heard from Grandpa in a while. This wasn’t unusual. They didn’t really talk. Then there was a snowstorm, and it dumped six feet on Antello and shut everything down for a couple days. So finally Dad called to see if Grandpa was OK out at his place, but no one answered. They found him in the basement on the dirt floor. He’d been there a couple weeks at least.
It was a lot to process. I didn’t know what to think. I started walking down the street, weaving through the crowd, everything a little blurry.
“The funeral’s next weekend,” she said. “You need to come home.”
“Home? Who says?”
“Me. You have to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“YES, YOU DO. Talk to your teachers and get all your homework. Take a train. Dad’s going to send you money for a ticket, OK?”
“Evie—”
“Aaron. It’s your grandfather. And there are some things we have to discuss. You’re coming home. Got it?”
> end of conversation
connection has terminated!
I needed to think, so I just wandered the streets for a while, heading generally downhill as a person will, and eventually I ended up at the piers, and stood there listening to the waves washing agains
t the pilings. A cloud of flies swarmed a seagull carcass. What are you supposed to do when someone dies? It’s so weird. One day they’re here, and the next they’re not, and most of the time you don’t even get to say good-bye.
When I got back to the Party™, sasha.c8kes was gone and I’d missed the double bonus. This guy, Dan_Bomb, had taken her place at the table. He was a little guy with big hair, and he was a very serious partier—by which I mean he took the party very seriously—and when I asked him about Sasha, he gave my name tag a funny look and ticked off something on his score pad.
We spent the next hour discussing the tactility and resolution of the Buffaloon™—or at least Dan_Bomb did. But I had other things on my mind. In our coevaluation Dan gave me a 10 out of 10—which he didn’t have to do, of course, but actually kind of did, because if he didn’t give me a 10, I wouldn’t give him a 10, and then we’d both be screwed, quid pro quo–style. Dan wasn’t happy about it, though, and in the comment section he wrote:
> unenthusiastic work ethic, incorrect name tag, distracted to say the least…i hope i never have to party™ with original boy_2 again.
I took a train home for the funeral. Sodas were a500 each, and the tiniest packet of Zazz was going for a750. I was still getting used to the new currency—the ever-fluctuating value of the mighty amero—but I didn’t need a conversion table to tell me when I was getting screwed. I had two seats to myself until Reno, and then this old dude got on. His name was Cody or maybe Cory, and he was a businessman of some kind, but which kind I forget. He was also a drinker and a talker, and once he got going there was no stopping him. I stared out the window at the smoke factories passing by and thought about my grandpa.
I didn’t really know him much, but I will never forget this: he was the first person who ever told me I was smart. OK, maybe he wasn’t the first person, but he was the first one I believed. This was maybe an hour after he told me I was the stupidest person to ever walk the earth, but even so…