Chapter Text
Let me ask you a question: When Did This All Start?
Hm…to answer that, let me start with a bit of a tangent.
Y’see, Long Distance Relationships are a facet directly tethered to the modern world. Through social media, online forums, and a myriad of other internet-messaging services, you can find people all over the world to fall in love with. In any other era the gulf of distance would prevent you from even knowing the other person existed, much less hoping for a miraculous meeting written in the stars. However in the modern day? Here in 2016? Such problems are water under the bridge. Sure it isn’t all sunshine, roses, and long walks on the beach, but there’s the potential for a connection and that’s what matters.
If I had to say, all this starts…with a random message at 3 in the morning:
“Please, won’t you at least consider going out with me?”
Wait. No. That’s not quite right, that’s way too late into things. I need to start with Get With It , I think…
As you probably know, Get With It is an exceedingly popular online platform that’s been called the Super-Mall of the Internet. Wanna be an author? Post your stories here. Wanna be an artist revered by the masses? This is the place for you. On this website influencers, stand-up comedians, and droves of ordinary people can find a home and following here. Truly, genuinely, honestly Get With It has everything…including a raging online dating scene.
Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, all these online dating sites became outdated the second the Lover’s Nexus partition of Get With It was opened to the public. At light speed, romantic connections were being made internationally, a fact that was devoured by the media at the time. Outlets the world over ran headlines talking about how effective Lover’s Nexus was at putting people together and moreover how those relationships were lasting. A phenomenon some people called supernatural was taking place, and here, 3 years later, that phenomenon was still ongoing like the great machinations of some Otherworldly Machine.
Perhaps it’s the Match-Maker component, where you and other singles submit their profiles to the (allegedly) unbiased person assigned for pairing people together. The one, the only “Eve.”
Or perhaps it’s the cross-platform integration with the VR game “The Grand House,” where you can either craft an avatar that’s a perfect replica of yourself (with in-house scanning software), or you can make a strange creature to scrabble across digital fields with. The VR City where all this takes place, the titular Grand House, contains a variety of date locations and casual meetups for all your bond needs. There are cafes, and movie theaters, and gorgeous rivers under moonlit skies. You can climb to the top of Mt. Stellara and see an aurora borealis, you can travel deep underground to caves untouched by man for years, and you can simply spend a day at home. All this and more can be done with people you’ve never occupied the same space with. Sure, VR headsets are pricey, but honestly that became a non-issue once people started to realize the efficacy of using Get With It and The Grand House in tandem for online dating.
Or perhaps (though I in no way believe this) it’s the company behind Get With It , “B-Immortalized Industries” that’s enacting some kind of protocol to draw people in against their will. A special kind of subconscious programming that draws you into it and locks you in place, all for the sake of some Larger Plan…Yeah I don’t see how people buy it either. B-Immortalized Industries is shady, I’ll concede. Shoot, “Draped in mystery, yet filled with love for mankind” is their slogan! However it’s been over 3 years and there haven’t been any clear indicators of plans to subjugate humanity or something world-ending like the conspiracy theorists have suggested.
Is all this set-up really necessary? Like, you’re sure there’s no way to cut this down at all?
Ah-I know, I know exactly what you’re getting at. I’m droning on and my commentary is really dry, right?
No, that’s not what I-
It’s probably because I’m nervous, real nervous honestly. I’m not good at distracting myself when I’m nervous, y'know? I mean this isn’t how I expected things to go . In fact, that’s been the case for a long while now. Ever since I met that girl . I would later learn her full name, but for right now I'll stick to the name she introduced herself to me with: Luka.
As for my story with Luka, that began 6 months ago, March 14th, 2016.
See, I’d gotten tired of playing the love game in my own city. Girls either already had a significant other, or they were aromantic, or in some really harsh cases, really really weren’t into me. Which y’know what? Fair. Completely and totally fair!
3 things rapid fire for you: 1.) I am not owed a chance by these people, 2.) It makes me happy to see others happily engaged in a lover’s life, and 3.) I appreciate the honesty before I make a move and embarrass myself. Love is a complex thing, after all, and sometimes the reason you aren’t finding that girl you’re Meant To Be With is because she isn’t in your school…or city…or state.
However…
I somehow had worse luck online. This is most likely because I’m a skeptic, someone who, despite wanting to get with someone, fundamentally has a hard time trusting who other people say they are online. Maybe it’s the way I was brought up; my parents really hammered home the whole “don’t trust strangers online” spiel when I was a kid. I could no doubt drudge up other reasons if I thought about it for longer, but for now we’ll stick to skepticism being the prime culprit. It’s easier that way, after all.
And easy is the exact word I would use to describe getting to know Luka.
It had happened in the Roman Forum part of Get With It . I’m something of a sucker for the Roman Empire (who isn’t), and as I was touring the digitally recreated Forum of Augustus in VR, I saw her there. A girl who, according to her profile, was about my real life height. It was clear she’d made a great effort to depict herself as the Genuine Article. Her face was photo-realistic, painstaking detail was paid to the color, consistency, and length of her hair, and as she spoke to the group of people she was with you could tell she’d splurged on a high-end mic. Oh and when I brought up her profile, she had the ultra-sappy status of “Looking for a Loverboy to be a Lovergirl with!”
Yeah, I gagged too.
And yet…
There was something there…
Something beyond words…
A pull that could be called either cosmic or primal…
Like I was looking at a whole new way of life if I’d just walk up and talk to her…
Like my whole world was about to change…
And it did.
Our eyes met, and as she looked down at me, she pointed. A big grin spread across her face, highlighting her rosy cheeks as her eyes twinkled in the setting sun. The Forum of Augustus was dyed in shades of orange and pink, people swarmed through it like ants in a colony, and I was on the other side of the large space. And yet I heard it crystal clear as a bell, the jovial tone of the girl who’d spotted me through it all:
“Bring me that Penguin!”
And then she caught herself, hand flying to her mouth as though she’d said something foul. Her gaggle of companions chuckled a bit, then took to following the direction she’d been pointing in. Within moments they’d spotted me too, and hastily spreading through the crowd like trained agents, plucked me from my spot. They air-lifted me back across the forum, right to her feet as though I were an honored guest meeting the Queen of the Land.
Then, a grin still spread on her face, she crouched down to my eye level (oh wait my avatar was a penguin, sorry I forgot to mention that) and, placing a hand on my head, said “I had a dream you’d be here y’know? A lone penguin touring the Forum of Augustus. My friends here called me crazy, but I just knew something would happen if I came!”
The shape of the words were lost on me, but the effect her voice had was profound. Bubbly and upbeat, it sounded like the notes of a songbird, and yet there was a gentle gravelly note to it so that she sounded mature in spite of it all. Luka, what a gal to meet! In this virtual space she was dressed in the elegance of traditional roman attire (45 bucks, plus tax), wearing a red silk tunic, over which was wrapped a gold stola that complimented the tunic. Layered over that was a black pallas, the hood of which was draped over her head, shading her gentle features from the sun. The elegant, layered look was quite striking, all in all.
That said, I wasn’t quite smitten with Luka or anything, just drawn in by her dedication to how she presented herself, and admittedly how transparent she was in what she wanted. It took a bold, determined, and a little bit desperate person to put their desire for love on blast for anyone and everyone to see. Especially on the internet, that even with Get With It’s militant moderation team, still charmed all kinds of scum to scour its web-face.
Walking around the Forum with Luka and her friends for the rest of that day, I came to appreciate her as someone who knew exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it, and how she wanted it. I remember it was just yesterday. Because of my small avatar (and the beauty of VR interactivity) she’d carried me all over the place like a stuffed animal won at a carnival. All the while chatting with me and giggling at every interjection and half-hearted musing that spilled out of my mouth. I was the group’s collective tour guide, and they flocked to me, asking questions about the Forum and the Roman Empire at large.
They also asked if I’d ever seen Luka before, but not online or in person…if I’d ever seen her in my dreams . Being of sound mind and body my answer was an immediate “no,” but…was that really true? It was enough to inspire some second-guessing of my memories. Regardless, I’d logged off for the night around 2am having had my fill of web socialization. That’s about when I’d gotten a private message from Luka. It was a simple offer: “Join Our Group! You’ll Fit Right In, I Just Know It!”
Given my conversations with the rest of the gang were strictly as professor/student, I was resistant to the idea of joining this group, and told Luka as much. As I said though, she knows what she wants, when she wants it, and how she wants it. For two whole legal weeks I was subject to a torrent of conversation starters, dumb jokes, and towards the end repeated pleas to just give the group a chance! In the end I relented, but not because of her efforts. Another dude in the group, Laffin (username DSD_Stricken) reached out to me privately and explained that Luka was real depressed about me not joining, and wanted to know what the big deal was. “What’s stopping you from just giving it a fair shake, mate?”
Which, okay, maybe not really jiving with the rest of the group was a paper-thin excuse in the end, but honestly even at 23 that core philosophy of not trusting strangers on the internet still had a grip on my psyche. I’d wanted to dip my toes in and see what they had going on, but honestly what if they were hackers and took my data? I had a steady job and some generous savings, having all of that wiped out would be catastrophic to say the least. I was already living away from anyone I knew, losing my money or having my identity stolen could well be the final nail in my coffin.
Plus, I wasn’t exactly the perfect picture of a social butterfly, especially since most everyone in Luka’s group had all spent the time and money to make themselves Super Accurate just like her. Remember: I looked like a penguin for crying out loud! Against that backdrop of Fleshed-Out Characters, what role did the sillier-than-life me have in all that?
I could see it now, I’d join, and they’d immediately set to working on me. They’d tell me how strange it is to go around in a space like Get With It as a penguin, especially at 23! And yes! That’s another thing! They’d know how old I was and where I lived and the fact that my full legal name was-!
[My throat hitches just at the memory of that time.] I was…admittedly a bit of a sad creature then, but weirdly prideful about not acknowledging that fact. That night was actually a bit of an eye opener since I’d gotten to the point where I couldn’t even join something as simple as an online group of strangers without thinking too deeply about it. In the spirit of seeing where life would take me, I took Laffin up on his offer, and joined their server.
Welcome, J0^4, to “The Lonely Hearts Club!”
We Hope You Stay A While!
The first thing to greet me was…a hearty torrent of emotes, gifs, and thank-you messages from Luka (username Upstairs_Luka) mounting to a wave that drowned any and all other welcome messages from the other group mates.
After she’d calmed down, Luka had welcomed me to the group properly, and I’d gotten to know the rest of the people there. 8 total “main members” (Luka included) that had access to a special section of the server only known as “The Club,” and a wealth of other members just chatting and hanging out. A good quantity of that number had sent me a welcome message in some capacity, a couple had sent friend requests, and to my surprise a few blocked me immediately…can’t win 'em all.
And so it’d began… not . Yeah, despite joining in high spirits and getting some really nice messages, interactivity with others had dropped off a cliff. I prided myself on being polite, but it seemed to manifest as “overwhelmingly plain” to others. Despite having met the group running the joint, I wasn’t allowed in The Club; that was a privilege only extended to Select Candidates chosen by “Queen Quartet,” which was what others called Luka (I could only assume “Quartet” was her last name). And thus I more or less continued to lurk and live my life, filling my shelves with books and records and other knick-knacks, occasionally writing a little something when the fancy struck me, going to work of course. Then…one day it all changed again.
And of course, it changed because of her .
It had been a month since I joined the server, and on this particular night I’d just finished eating dinner. My body was locked into a VR suit that tracked all my motions, my gaze looking out over the digitally enhanced recreation of Rome. Dinner that night was frozen lasagna (my roommate’s favorite grocery store cuisine) and the location was the top of the Colosseum. Sure the scene lost a bit of serenity when I considered to everyone else I looked like a penguin, but the waves of calm that washed over me at the sight were still overwhelming. It was probably my favorite place in all of The Grand House, and I came here often when I wanted to just stop and think for a while.
That night I wasn’t there for anything as serious as that though, just appreciating a view that (despite my savings) would break the bank if I really tried to go see it. All this to say, when I abruptly got a text from Luka, I was feeling more amicable than usual. She and I had gotten to talking sometime in the week before this, just casual conversation and getting-to-know-ya type stuff. Luka had told me a good bit about her life (as I said she was real easy to get to know) and she worked tirelessly to chip away at my defenses. To try to get me to open up too, y’know? Ah- but I was a stone wall still, admittedly I wanted to share but I had to take small steps. I’m stubborn to a fault when it comes to things like that.
Anyway, Luka had a mission that night, a staunch determination to ask the question that’d been weighing on her heart since she first laid eyes on me!
“Please, won’t you at least consider going out with me?”
Wow, really? After only a week?
HA!
As if!
No, that came quite a bit later.
Instead she asked a different, though equally pressing question: “What does the equation in your username mean anyway? J0^4?”
My answer was simple, yet elucidating: “Uh, really weird nickname. When we first met, my roommate tried to convince me that I looked like the composite of four average Joes. Joe to the power of four, he’d called me. When I signed up for Get With It I didn’t have any other ideas, so I went with that.”
Silence.
And then, a gentle response: “So, do you look like four average Joes put together?”
“Personally I don't think so.”
“Really? Then, I guess you could say that nickname… doesn’t add up! ”
Crickets on my end, followed by my phone buzzing from getting a voice call. You can already guess who it was. I sighed, then answered and prepared myself for-
“Oh C'MON, that was funny and you know it! And clever too, c’mon! You gotta give it to me! Go on, laugh!”
“Huh, is that how this works? You made a frankly abysmal pun, it doesn’t even really work!” I smiled as I spoke, and judging by her tone of voice she was smiling too.
“That was genius, I won't hear anything else about it! Anyway, I’ve decided! We’ve gotta get you a new nickname! ‘Jo to the power of four’ is lame and a mouthful! I propose we use the shorthand phrasing for that equation!”
“Sure, just tell me what it is and I’ll swap.”
“Ehhhh? You don’t know off the top of your head? I thought you were nerdier than that! Okay, then we’ll just come up with something ourselves!”
“Or we could, y’know, just look it up . We have easy access to the internet, after all…”
“Nope! No fun! It’s way better if we come up with something ourselves. So lessee…power of 2 is squared, power of 3 is cubed…power of 4 would be…let’s just say ‘starred!’”
“You do realize that breaks the naming convention right?"
“Doesn’t matter! I prefer it this way, so that’s the way it’ll be! From now on, until you tell me your name, you’ll be…”
“Jo-Starred!”
And then I got a notification:
Congrats, Jo-Starr, you have been invited to The Club in the server “The Lonely Hearts Club!” Join Now?
Some part of me marveled at the typo, made mere moments after giving me the name, and wondered if the ‘ed’ had been intentionally omitted. Either way, I clicked the ‘accept’ button, and the ding of a bell locked in my choice. In response to this, Luka let out a loud cheer, followed by her voice becoming garbled as she said “Oh! Looks like you’re already in The Grand House, that makes this easier!”
I didn’t even have time to ask what that meant before suddenly the scenery around me warped and morphed to teleport me elsewhere. Where else, you might ask? The Club, of course. And what I saw when things stabilized…utterly baffled me.
I was standing on a cliff, looking out over a vast and seemingly endless sea. To my right was more sea, but to my left the landmass extended out quite a ways, white buildings dappling the scenery and what appeared to be people milling about the space. As far as I could tell this was Ancient Greece, or some variation thereof, which was really weird. Mainly because the Greece update hadn’t landed for The Grand House yet.
The release schedule for time periods and new lands operates on a yearly schedule. 2 years prior, the Rome update had been released, last year it was Ancient Egypt, and later this year the Greece update is supposed to release. All that to say, me being there was some kind of mistake. That’s what it felt like at the time, anyway.
As I looked around behind me, I was greeted by an intense copse of trees, and as I felt my way through them, I began to notice something rather worrying: I couldn’t feel myself in my room. VR could be really enthralling and engaging, it was the closest someone could get to living in a game world. However there was the obvious barrier of your body still experiencing the sensualities of the real world in tandem with those of the digital world. But here? In this Strange Space? Nothing. My hands scraped against the coarse surface of tree bark, tall grass and branches whipped at my bare legs as I stumbled through them, the heat in the air caused sweat to bead up and roll down my skin, and the sounds and smells of nature filled my senses. As I fanned my shirt to alleviate some of the heat, that’s when it clicked:
I’m ME Right Now!
Immediately my hands flew to my arms, my face, my hair. I had no mirrors, but I could tell by touch alone that I wasn’t waddling about as a little penguin anymore. Someway, somehow I’d been rendered into The Grand House. Internally I wondered if this was even a part of The Grand House. Could this experience really be tied to anything on the internet? Either way I’d soon get my answer as I began to speed toward a clearing ahead of me, yet screeched to a halt right at the edge. The reason why was a strange bit of public art in the dead center.
It had 8 pillars, of which nearly all were carved with some strange otherworldly avatar. Maybe they were the Greek Gods? Probably not. If these monsters were intended to be Godlike, then the sculptor had made a misstep. Some seemed weirdly humanoid, others looked like manifestations of machines, in all they gave me the heebie-jeebies. It took me a moment to notice that at the top of each pillar a person was perched, each clothed in extravagant fabrics and designs you couldn’t pay me to wear, each standing watch over the figure in the center of the piece. Except for one in the back, which had neither a figure carved into it nor a person occupying its flattened top. Sitting in a throne at the center of it all, as though she were a Proper Regent, was Luka. And even though I was 50 feet away, I could tell her lips were split in a toothy grin at the sight of me.
Crooking a finger in my direction, I was beckoned closer. And yet…something was wrong.
As I looked down at the edge of the clearing, specifically at the harsh line delineating the forest and the clearing, I felt something foreboding about stepping across it. Sorta like stepping over someone’s grave, or trespassing across the threshold of a stranger’s home. In effect, crossing that line would be a “mistake,” and I knew good and well that some mistakes out there were fatal. Sensing my hesitation, one of the people hopped down off his pillar and began to move toward me. It was a guy with an afro and long black beard wearing all leather and silver chains that caught and cast the sunlight around the space. Did he intend on dragging me into the clearing? Either way, Luka stopped him with a simple “Stop! Don’t force this, Grant!”
Obliging, the man named Grant turned back, and with a single leap mounted his pillar once again. Reaching the top he spun around, and meeting my eyes seemed to silently command me to cross. In fact all of the people there were giving me that same, commandeering look. It was 8 against 1 and I feared what would happen if I turned and ran. Would I even be able to leave this place? And yet, as I looked down at the boundary, I couldn’t help but remember my Dad’s old woodshed.
As a child I’d been terrified of the place, despite nothing being really “off” about it. My Dad was a craftsman, and so the space was filled with a hearty stock of wood and more sharp edges than a knife shop. Tools of all shapes, sizes, and purposes lined the walls, and for some reason I was always deathly afraid they’d fly off the walls and slice me up. The mind of a child is a strange thing, huh? Regardless, I always felt safe so long as I didn’t walk across the insulated edge of the doorframe. “If I respect this boundary I’ll be safe,” I would think to myself.
And yet I wanted to know. I wanted answers about this place, about Luka, and if I could get home. Just that and I would be happy. I’m really simple about these things, after all. And so, with trembling foot clad in a black sock, I raised my right leg and stepped over the barrier. Gently placing it into the green grass on the other side…nothing happened. Relief flooded my system like I’d just gotten a nice, cool drink of water after hours of dehydration, and with newfound confidence I stepped fully into the clearing with my other foot.
Oh! You collapsed then, right?
…Yep.
Instantly a fever assaulted my body like someone had taken a match to me, and I began to flail and writhe on the ground. It felt like something was scratching its way under my skin from the scalp of my head down into the soles of my feet. My screams were loud and at one point I came close to vomiting up my lasagna. Feebly I clawed and pried at the VR headset I could suddenly feel on my face again, trying and failing to yank it off my face. Through it all I noticed the sound of footsteps drawing near, and then suddenly I was being cradled.
Turning towards the person holding me, my near-unseeing eyes were greeted by the gentle visage of Luka. There was a simple smile resting on her face, and her lips were parted as though saying, or perhaps singing, something. Then she gently grabbed my left hand, and holding it for a second, guided it upward and helped me leverage it under the VR headset. It slipped off so easily that I winced from the transition of the game world to my over-crowded room. My face stung like someone had taken a knife to it, scoring the skin, and as I felt around I winced as my fingers soon found grooves around my eyes.
Stumbling to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror and gasped at what I saw.
Outlining my eyes were a series of thin concentric circles, the top and bottoms of which had parallel lines running a bit up my forehead and down my cheeks. It was then that my roommate, Clancy, came around the corner to see what I was yelling about. (Oh yeah that’s right, he had been out getting groceries when I’d put the lasagna in the oven, and took so long I started eating without him)
Seeing the marks on my face, Clancy had no sympathy. Between fits of laughter and gasping for breath, he repeatedly remarked how I looked like a raccoon, and asked if I screamed the whole time I tattooed myself or just towards the end. Needless to say I wasn’t amused, and as Clancy calmed down and took a closer look at the lines, worry carved itself into his face. We talked about how I’d gotten them, he offered me some ointment to take the edge off the stinging, and then I’d turned in early for the night.
As I lay in bed, waiting for sleep’s kind grasp to pull me under, I reflected on what had happened back in The Club. Was that even the right place? VR Viruses were getting really potent, I’d heard. In fact the marks on my skin had been found on people exposed to a certain strain of malware with varying potency. I blindly groped around for my phone and, bracing myself for the harsh white light that would no doubt sear my eyes which had adjusted to the dark, began to do a quick search on that malware.
And yet…nothing turned up. Exceedingly strange, I thought. A couple of weeks ago there had been multiple articles and research findings into what the malware was, who was administering it, and methods of protection against it. I could’ve sworn there were even reports of people dying from it, while others dropped off the map after recovering. Something about the malware ate at your brainstem, I think that was the professional consensus. As I said though, I scoured the internet for a good long while, yet nothing turned up. Every scrap of info had been expunged from the internet, and I fell asleep that night feeling crazy.
Y’know what that’s probably, actually, genuinely where it all “started.” And uh…yeah y’know what this isn’t working for me.
What?
[The girl sitting across from me tilts her head in confusion, shoulder-length hair swaying as she does, the black beret on her head managing to hang on despite the angle. Her fluorescent orange eyes, slightly hidden by her shock of black and cream-colored bangs, pierce into me, filled with inquisition and a burning fire for understanding.]
Yeah I’m sorry I just don’t do the whole question and answer thing y’know? I’ve been doing okay I think, but really it’s better if I pick up and just-I dunno I just recount things as they happened. We take ‘em chronologically and you get all your answers, right? Not everyday someone like me shows up spouting bizarre nonsense with evidence to back it up.
Hmmm…I guess that works. This isn’t, like, a super long story by the way, right? I, um, have some stuff to take care of later.
That’s a bit of a hard question to answer. For the average person it’s probably kinda long, but for you, specifically, I think hearing everything is important. I’m laying out a sequence here, you see.
I see, I see. Guess there’s no arguing with that, then. Just as brief as you can, okay?
I will most certainly do my best. Also I think I ought to tell you at the outset, this is a story about connecting with people , with all of the dramatic moments that implies. And it all starts... on April 17th, 2016.