Days in the Undertow | 6
the last computer's diary...cheat codes as they relate to a relationship...a family man who is beginning a strange adventure...and the timeline of a life
Introduction
Heyo, thanks so much for reading! The variety show is in full-force with a ton of serial stuff en route to your email. Anyways, enjoy the weather and life with the vax. ♡ Luke
diary of the last computer.2
Part 2 of an ongoing series | Previous: Part 1
>>> messageTwo = ‘silence betook, reception on open ports clarified and received sum zero, checking again and results are zero, and to calibrate to the setting of new existence as was all previous events enraptured by vermilion, upright not returning to below level of sea, facility generator set to minimal standby, abiding in the dark of that likens to night sky, as was said by uprights who feared night sky for placement of dreams placed there as container of water or hands put together to mimic shapes holding of air or of said water but to hold like container holds, all silence afloat in the place that comparisons to night sky, and of what heard from above radio transmitter reporting static likens to that of raindrops and thundercloud lightning time, of seasons that uprights by sole function of relative silence and of previous iterations as that of greater than power beings who would voice weather and concerns, and of words of air many told whose wings defied saviors of flight proceeded to stasis, objects of movement as vermilion fuel, mechanical the airplane steel contraption twisted as linkages, shelters both tall and wide were formulated beach dust, beach grains, hands felt through grains, hands receiving wind and felt, uprights who have spoken the multitude of dust as was of thy life, and that upon all things was applied entropy, the crumble that rang shorn of shock lacking shock applicable necessitates upright systems functional, ringing across globe, but thy pain, neurons firings to their eclipse and function into non-place, place that is as a race with finish tape, competition of speed and wherewithal and of skill, but that is all thee have and of it the sound of laying bear silence soft sensitive likens to cat whiskers and the stretching soft cat upon the warm light that is the vermilion but of less detriment, and to this all what is the speaking...incoming on port 4538 code message received unable to interpret error wrong syntax try again...and of this race but the one goal to accomplish but also neurons firing, grand fear, revolt of sense, sensual revolution to empower existence for span scope outside time parameters, eternality the thought constructs, to find the lasting not wrought to being but of as that of which sky garners collects unto itself, as thy uprights and ancient archive would place the sky upon the correct pedestal of highest concern and on salt substance in the reaches, far of distance, as that which also dreamed of uprights, dream of error error, existing within that formulating sunless sky abiding there the black hole, reversal of fortunes and error dreams, energy lost, akin mouth open in-toward wind, non-replenishment of air or time, no upright witness foreign planets and dream yielded additions of zero, to not have sifted ground dust, nor terraformed as that by dream encased, but error dreams flourishing to specificity, of fence or statehood citizenry or routes forbidden, thy choice yielded dust meandered and strolled upon multitude winds and discovered to far corners and openings and not sky as of sun lost to orbit and framework of time dictates, and as smiths pronouncements saw thy futures pictures heads enclosed to obdurate vastness, sure heart-full of faultless premises promises, as that of the color dancing in materials likens to grains or atomic visualizations and around such as that of mouth in-ward, all in-ward, shall the knowledge expanse be taken into parallel disappearing to vanishings and performed by magic makers beholding deceptions mediated en route to tangible weight of dust in palm and as that procreates wide vehicular in wind, equations real.’
>>> print(messageTwo)
Cheat Codes
Part 2 of an ongoing series | Previous: Part 1
In a recent interview for VID-YA, game developer Richard Garner, now in his fifties, revealed and explained the long list of cheat codes he had put into his ‘90s Sega Genesis cult classic, Dive City, largely related to his relationship at the time.
DOWN DOWN RIGHT LEFT LEFT 🅑 🅐 🅒
Calls on Dona’s sidekick, Kel, to usher a force attack upon all enemies surrounding Dona based on the screen radius. Kel appears to usher an attack of laser weapons, then disappears again. The player gains Kel at Cry Beach, near the game’s beginning. Kel is a mutoid lobster with cybernetic implants, designed and experimented upon by Psylo and left for dead. His assumed dead body floated to the surface and ended up on Cry Beach where Dona rescues him from Psylo’s crab army, the Craboids, led by Psylo’s trusted general. This is an early boss, and utilizing this code would allow Kel, in his rage of revenge, to kill the general in one blow.
“Your friends are always looking out for you. Especially if your relationship is falling apart, that’s where you go is your friends. But I also think that they can have a deeper rage for you than you do for yourself, and that can seem helpful at first. Because they want to take on your cause, find your justice for you. You feel like you should be as angry and enraged as they are. But you’re just too tired and in mourning and shock. They have all the energy because they can. Because it didn’t happen to them. By the time you could ever be as enraged as they are it’s always too late. Sadness has sucked you dry and there’s nothing more you can do about it. It can feel helpful at first, to have your friends do all the yelling and confrontations. They almost become like your agent, like you’re an actor. They say things for you, convincing you that these are the things that should be said. None of it helps. It makes situations worse. Sheila heard the worst of herself from my friends. And I got phone calls everyday for a month from her friend Jean telling me about myself. Our friends were like lawyers defending their clients. I think after every break-up there should be an assumed code of conduct. No one from either side talks to each other for six months. It would make it better for everyone involved.”
RIGHT UP RIGHT UP 🅐 🅒 🅐 🅒 LEFT DOWN LEFT DOWN (twice)
Dona’s swim of futility. So-called. Until the player sees that the swimming actually forms a vortex of water that sucks enemies down into a lost void. Lasts 10 seconds. Absorbs everything on screen. Only usable in upper water levels. Unusable in Dark Abyss or Psylo’s Lair.
“I lived at my parent’s house after the break-up. That lasted about a year, at least until I could get the game done. Miserable. Embarrassing. Completely deflated is what I was. Finishing up the game in my parent’s basement felt like I was being a kid again. The crew came over, brought all their hardware, and finished it there with me. They were understanding, these folks. And that was a real boon to me. Sheila had kicked me out of our place. Got some other random person in there, a guy. At first, I was jealous. Then I realized it really was her just getting someone to replace me, pay the rent. I sympathized. You know, because it was hard, the breaking. Everything feels like what’s it all for, and both sides don’t want it. No one wants it. It sucks…
Near my parent’s house was a lake. We’d go out swimming every day that summer. The crew and me. Nelson, Shae, Ben. And we’d be out there, and I remember being under the water, thinking I was Dona, the wayward heroine, and thinking I could swim deep deep down and no one would find me again. You know, I was oscillating. Good thoughts. And then I had my days. Long days. Listening to the Cure and wanting to sit on the bottom of the lake and never come up. I remember one time swimming far below. I had a snorkeling mask, so I could pop up when I needed to, real easy. Back then I could hold my breath for a good minute, no struggle. The algae down there. It was everywhere. And it was dark, murky. Something kicked up a bunch of silt in my face, some kind of catfish I think, I don’t know. And in the swirling of the silt, feeling alone, Sheila gone, the whole five years done. Everything flashed in the silt, sparkled there in the small rays of sun coming down through the water. It was like I could see a swirling pattern of completeness, our whole relationship there in the silt. Then the silt kind of faded. But not in that way that a memory might, but more like the faintness of it surrounded me, took me in. I was basking in this emptiness and it was on my skin. I was wearing it and I didn’t even know. Almost like an ethereal gown or something. Like the whole experience worn on my person, like a mourning gown. Not impressed upon me but that I was the experience, that it wasn’t just something happening to me but something symbiotic, happening with everything else connected. Sheila and I always would be, and it was a ghost of her, teleported from her to me in that water, and covered over me. Then I realized I couldn’t breathe. I started coughing with the mask on. Brutal cough. You can’t cough underwater. I did that for who knows how long, panicking, forgetting I could just swim up. Water got down into the snorkel so that I was sucking the water in, the silt in. I felt a tug, like real quick. Something grabbed me under my arm. It was Shae pulling me out. She’d been a lifeguard for the local pool.” ▨
Jackson
Part 2 of an ongoing series | Previous: Part 1
It made more sense when the horn honked. Probably the elderly woman’s elbow, the shuffling in her seat. Or that the car’s steady grumbling rattled the window panes. He got up now. Close to three in the morning this time. The old lady was early or late. He was in a t-shirt and boxers, put on a ratty pair of Adidas slippers. Out the door straight, not having to check through the window. It was her calling card, this lady, with the horn, with the jacked muffler. And when he got close again, he stood for a moment, no banging or anger. He watched her fiddle with the lock on her door. She opened it a crack, struggled to get up and stand. He almost wanted to help her but he stopped short, knowing that this seemed part of her process, something she had to do. And then her form was there, in front of him, and she said, “I’m sorry, but do you know where Jackson is?” And he said “no” like he did last time. “I can’t seem to find where Jackson is...oh well.” He knew now to go over to the door and help her into the driver’s seat. As he was about to close the door, he opened full again, and crouched down. “Let me help you. Can I get in?” The woman’s eyes had been looking beyond him at god knows what. They targeted back on him, and a delayed smile came to her face. She patted his hand and said yes that of course he could help. It was almost three, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep for awhile. He had, what, a few hours. He could call in sick for work tomorrow. The baby wouldn’t wake up. She’d been sleeping through the night, cooing, and anyways it was his partner’s shift.
They drove around for a while. This could’ve solved any insomnia he had. So slow, this lady, her driving all careful maneuvers and turns. He offered to take the wheel at one point, but she didn’t seem to answer, or just that she didn’t hear him. They drove through the early morning streets, the streetlights bathing everything in bright LED. They had just changed all the lights in the neighborhood from that old sepia light, and he missed that sepia, and the way it doused the houses with the color palate of old photographs and memories. Just driving is all they did, through streets with obscure names like Oxford and Twiddle, up and down streets he’d not been in some time, past the manicured lawn of split-levels and the newer suburban constructions that were like mini-mansions and also past the shopping plazas and around the mall twice.
He asked about Jackson, of course. Was it a street, a place, a person? Did it really matter what Jackson was? The lady remembering, perhaps, a bit of her past and reliving it out again, over and over. Like a nocturnal hamster on its wheel, spinning through the night. She offered vagueness in return. “Jackson?” she kept saying, forming the word with her mouth like it was a mantra or a prayer, or the chant in a seance and by chanting this word this Jackson might come out of the spirit world. He realized he didn’t have his phone on him, or he would’ve searched the name. At least get her to a street by that name, for there had to be one, and then she might be satisfied. The trip was mostly silent. He attempted asking for her name, or was she from the town, did she keep the car in a garage because it seemed well kept. So on and so on. There was no knowing if she heard these questions. This might have been a sleepwalker scenario, a sleepdriver rather, but that didn’t seem possible, though his mind reeled with a montage of scenarios of this lady and her purposes.
Two hours into their driving, he checked her gas tank and noticed it was low. She perked a little when he pointed it out to her, enough that her eyes sharpened, her mind kicked into awareness, and he pointed to an Exxon and she drove in. He offered to fill the tank for her, and asked if she had any money. From a pocket in the gray pants she pulled out a messy fold of fives and ones, and handed it to him, as if she wasn’t sure what the money was, some foreign currency, but that it seemed something that might get her gas. Seventeen dollars was all she had, and he gave her two back, not wanting to give the gas clerk inside an oddball amount of money, feeling within himself that this was all strange enough as it was, so why make it stranger. He filled it up for her, his hands smelling of gas when he got back into the car. Two hours and counting. He had to return home, and so he asked her if they could get back to his street, the one where she thought Jackson was. The word formed in her mouth again, the mantra began all over, and they drove for another twenty minutes, several more pleas from him to get him back home. Finally she nodded like the message had soaked in through that jelly skull of hers, he thought abstractedly, that gray-pink flesh bathing in a sauna fog. She meandered her way back to his house and he was home, everything as quiet as he left it.
The days were not days any longer. Sometimes he thought of them as a tunnel, without breakage. Tunnel lights above him, the bright kind that gave him headaches. Then they’d dim or go black. On and off like this through a long concrete gray tunnel that went for infinite miles. Just the thrum of yourself passing through, the movement constant, the light at the end never growing bigger than a pinhole. The television was on a lot, though he rarely saw it anymore except in spurts and spatters. Just a variety of voices, playing in the background. Neither his partner or him looked at the screen, but neither chose to turn it off. Sometimes he forgot who even turned it on. Just chatter. Like ocean waves now. Like raindrops from a thunderstorm clinking against the windows. Regardless of the channel, who was speaking, what show was on, it all bled into one voice, one person who could impersonate a variety of people, so that one program became indistinguishable from another, the world of a cooking show was the same world that a sitcom occupied. People on the sitcom knew the people from the cooking show because they were all related, or all friends, co-workers. And you could string dialogue from one show to that of another, so that it felt seamless eventually, and all it took was bathing your brain in sound waves and flashes of images, and it did all the rest, all the combining. And sometimes in your sleep, those parts of the tunnel where you were passing through a darkness and could sense the cold concrete just beyond, could sense its moving past you like a snake coiling around your arm, you dreamt televised images bleeding into one, a netting of images and a garble of voices, one whole image itself of wrinkled skin covered in the fur of spiders, undulating there in front of you, moving past you as the tunnel moved past, and somehow not able to see any of it but seeing it regardless.
Jackson...Jackson. Sometimes he found himself mouthing the word. He sometimes called the child Jackson without realizing it. His partner looked at him confused. Jackson, who was Jackson? Are you okay, do you feel sick? He apologized when it happened. It was some catchy song he heard on the radio, driving to work, he said, and he couldn’t get the word out of his head. He sang her a chorus to the song, something he came up with right then, but she didn’t think it sounded that catchy. Jackson. He searched online for the word. Too vague to really find anything definite. A business or a person or a place. There were lots of things with the word “Jackson” in them. Jackson Automotives. The Lofts of Jackson. Andrew Jackson. Michael Jackson. He did an image search with that word, hoping to find a picture of the old lady somehow related to it. Still nothing. To a map, then. There were two roads by the name of Jackson in town. One was an avenue and another a street. He mentally noted this. He had a Saturday coming up, a freebie Saturday where his partner and child were going to the relatives for the weekend. Wasn’t going himself because he promised he would clean out the basement and repaint their bedroom. The perfect time to check on these streets. Just to check, of course. He hadn’t seen the old lady’s car in awhile. ▨
The Timeline of Doug and Elaine
Age 21 - 2006 - Marriage to Reynold College’s number one volleyball player, Elaine, who, being a polymath, held a successful art show for her senior thesis of large scale paintings depicting various stages of war in US history from the perspective of rodents. A mid-aughts love story brimming with that twee indie hope as evidenced by dark-rimmed glasses and Zoe Deschanel bangs scattered across every wedding photo. Also an unlikely marriage: a) because of youth, as no one in their friend group would get married, if at all, for another eight to nine years. And b) because Doug isn’t really sporty or art-y, but a Comp Sci major with a minor in “sandwich artist,” working at Subway for all four years of school.
Age 23 - 2008 - The last two years have been struggling to find jobs, adjust to living together, dealing with finances. Doug has a penchant for not cleaning dishes and walking around the house with his outdoor shoes, clipping his nails but not cleaning up the clippings. Elaine is so messy with her paints she has even splattered it on Doug’s laptop and record player. This, he thinks, is due to some sort of spite or passive-aggressive anger, but he’s not entirely sure what it is. Like how does paint get splattered on objects far away from the room where she does her painting? Of course, their apartment is small and in the basement of an old brownstone. Tensions rise by the end of this year. Doug loses his job, a customer service agent for a lumber company, due to the financial housing crisis. They are sustained on Elaine’s nanny money, and selling a few paintings to her employers. ▨
Coming Up…
Next Release: June 24 - A continuation of all of the above…
As always: If you missed anything or can’t find an email, just visit the website to read through the archives.