4am and the birds sing outside my window. anyone normal is asleep.
in an oddly alert state of consciousness, i retreat back to my screen.
terminal would be a more appropriate term. the word has a immediate
feeling to it. terminal illness. terminal failure. terminal program.

it could have been any night. late ninety-five to mid-ninety-seven.
you would have been in that dim empty room. eyes
dry. fingers, hands, arms all numb. a nagging psychological hint that
you shouldn't be here now. this is all wrong. you want to get up and unplug
but you can't. you haven't used drugs (yet?), but this is
what an addict must go through.

everyone has their vices. caffeine. nicotine. alcohol. maybe you collect
shoes. perhaps you like stamps. or maybe you just have a fondness for
those neat special edition Pepsi cans they put out sometimes. or maybe,
just maybe, at one time you liked to stay up until early hours of the morning
sitting in front of a computer, staring at a screen full of text describing a
fantasy world in a fantasy time, full of real disillusioned people like you.

Giant angry dwarf throws his smith hammer at you for 8 damage!
You slash Giant angry dwarf for 7 damage!
Giant angry dwarf falls to the ground!
You gain 2 experience.
*Combat Off*
[HP:87]=

you go north. you go south. you go everywhere but outside. it's bright out
there. there's people. real, live people you can't use your sneak
ability on. it's scary out there in the world where you can't fall back
on your 58/9 armour class and major healing potions. who needs reality
anyways? everything i need is here in my little world. food, water, friends.
some of these are real. some of these are false fronts.

you spend more time talking to some guy named Johnny Modemspeed then your
parents. you know Violet the level 23 mage better then your sister.
so you think. venture into the chat module and attempt to carry a conversation.
oh yeah i forgot - you can't mention mud. what? i can't talk about mud?

suddenly your mind begins to put it all together. here i am, in the
company of eleven other people that i really don't even know. the only
connection we share with each other is copper and silicon. your fingers
lifelessly dangle over the home row. someone types "hehe." you type "ugh".
two minutes later, the chatrooms empty as you've all /gone mud.

welcome back to the realm - you're still pathetic. inside your head you
make up these justifications for your continued playtime. i just need to level.
i'll quit when i kill the giant worm. i want to have enough money to buy
the glowing sword of kickass from the overpriced pawn shop run by
the one armed ogre. for the more nefarious among you, thievery results
in the possession of ill gotten gains.

you play your deepest, darkest wishes of reality on your screen. you
can't admit it but sometimes you wish you were a giant dwarven warrior who
could split open your teachers head with a battle axe when he cast
the room-effect homework spell. while your old friends were busy stealing
baseball cards from seven eleven you were busy pilfering the purses of
a dim-witted half-orc.

Lifeless bumps into you.
Lifeless bumps into you.
Lifeless gives you 1 copper.

at times you think you might just be onto something. just around that corner,
just down that pipe, in that next town you'll find that reward that has
made this all worthwhile. fourteen hours later you find yourself there,
and the platinum coin you just received for killing the evil commander
doesn't seem worth it. you've anticipated the moment like a small child
awaiting santa. the hunt is better then the kill. except you didn't
want to kill anyways, you just wanted the hunt.

life begins to revolve around your game. wait, i just called it a game.
no, its not a game! it's your world. a world where nothing can go wrong
that cant be fixed with your superior intellect and ability to type faster
then the other guy. people you normally found stimulating in real life
become quickly bored by your incessant ranting of how great your other
world is. you fail to convert the naysayers so you just decide to ignore them.

another fourteen hours later. your ass is sore, you smell, and you realize
you probably haven't bathed in a while. you stop only when you can't
feel your fingers anymore or the game/bbs malfunctions.
if your lucky, maybe it was that previously mentioned psychological twinge finally
hitting the correct impulse control patches. dazed, you arise from your faux
leather chair and drag your limbs into the kitchen. caffeine. i just need
caffeine.

it doesn't even do anything now. i need three glasses of it for the slightest
satisfaction. forget this awakened state. i cant play. my brain says play,
but my body screams sleep.

maybe you brush your teeth and take a shower. maybe you just fall into
the bed. either way, you'll repeat this whole cycle tomorrow. yesterday's
triumphs will dance in your head from the moment you wake. tunnel vision
will set in early. the light at the end of the tunnel is the dimness of your contrast
control. it would be 80x25 24x7 in your world. unfortunately there's
this whole life thing you are forced to deal with. who invented this crappy
game? you don't even get to pick your eye color.

maybe it was you. maybe it was just me. maybe it was all just another ugly
part of growing up we want to forget. i could see it in the psyche
of faceless identities. i wasn't alone in this experience.

i wasn't alive.