Sketches in Memorandum | "Extra Lives"

I died yesterday—but don't worry, I'm fine. I can come back, so long as I've made the correct preparations at the correct places. It's truly inconvenient, though. Nobody really likes to backtrack, after all. I'm not a ghost, and if this is what Heaven looks like then my pastors lied to me. No, I'm afraid I'm quite ordinary—ordinary compared to a spectre, anyway—but I can be more than just a Basic Nerd whenever I want to be (it comes with the whole Basic Nerd gig, after all).

It all started about six or seven decades ago; this business of being more than just yourself. It was tennis. Not everyone is good at tennis, but anyone could be good at this tennis—this Tennis for Two. From the tennis court, it ascended to the stars, then it hung around arcades, used computers, sold consoles, and even wasted time on telephones. I wasn't there when it all began, but once I boarded the proverbial train, there was no getting off.

First, I was given a key. I was shown a shadow and the end a world. My world. I couldn't let it happen, again. I couldn't let the shadows steal more stars from the sky, more worlds from the firmament. So I took my key, and I fought them. I fought them with friends and I fought them alone. Before I could defeat the shadows, I was called to a more familiar place, somewhere far away and long ago—a place I remembered from my childhood, a place I still visit today. I came back a second time. I came back even when it was made of toy bricks. Twice, for that matter.

My travails took me all over. I went back to fight the shadows. My brother and I were rival spies. I was an archaeologist. I was a racer. I was a rock star. I was a tank driver. I fought in World War II. One day, our cousin rocked out too hard, and the dream-machine came crashing down—

—but not forever. The train started, again. The adventures were in my hands and on the black mirrors. I was a soldier, again. I took to the desert, and then I took to the stars, but this time to a different galaxy far, far away, and to a time which has not yet come. My brother was a cowboy, and I was a mecha pilot. Together and apart, we were adventurers. Builders. Destroyers. Heroes. Villains. Knights. Dragons. I found another key and fought the shadows. I raced. I wrestled. I saved worlds, created worlds, destroyed worlds.

I was like a god.

Like a god, but still a man. No, still a boy—a boy who escaped to places where he could be something more. He was not a boy. He was a hero. No, he was a superhero. For a time, at least. Then I was a builder. I was a builder for a long, long time, living in a land of cubes, with a square sun and moon. I crafted homes under mountains, and galleons which sailed through the sky on zeppelins.

But I did it alone.

Alone.

The adventures weren't working, anymore, so I stopped. The proverbial train stopped with me. I paid attention to other things. They worked, for a time, but the train still called me. I had to move, again, and I knew now that I could move with my new discoveries; discoveries that a Basic Nerd—not a soldier, not a superhero, not a god or a dragon—had made, and when the train crawled into locomotion again, I was a man. I could be myself, in my hands and on the black mirrors I could be more than myself, and with both, I could be unstoppable.

The broken black mirror—the one which once folded, but now must stay still or perish—became a Bastion for my exploits. I tried building again, in a different land, but it was not enough. I sought other endeavors, and found my world all twisted, stranded on a rock in the sky. I got up. I ran across flying roads and through blasted wastelands. This time, I was a Kid, a robot, a modifier, and a would-be King. Then, I was a determined a human, a lady without a voice and a gent without a body, a fox with four seasons, a Reader, a typist, an empty knight, and a space cowboy—but not a gangster of love, and no one calls me Maurice. I returned to the faraway galaxy of the distant past, and I guided a child who held the sun in his hands. I was not alone. I would not be building, exploring, and rescuing alone.

Or so I thought.

One day, alone, cut off from these sundry escapades, I explored the gems of days gone by—timeless quests, unbounded by the four corners of a black mirror. Journeys of pen and paper, shield and sword, of motley fools and jolly wanderers (also yelling at plastic geometries when they have the wrong numbers on them). I looked to the journeys ahead: journeys of ink and parchment, light and sound—some even of my own making—and saw that my joy would last years more; and in good company, at that.

With two decades of thrilling adventure, captivating stores, and smiles and tears under my belt, I hope that I may hame forever; even if I have to do it as a ghost. A dead nerd who still plays videogames and rools d20s sounds very interesting, after all. Besides, I should be fine. I can always use those extra lives I've been saving.