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Disclaimer: Edgar Roni Figaro is copyright Squaresoft, Inc and Amano Yoshitaka. This really isn't about him at all. In fact, I don't even own a playstation, VR system, RPG account, or any such video game device, nor have I ever or will I ever. This is partially why.
A smooth silver rectangle, a row of keys lined up waiting to be punched for battle. Edgar changed from moth to monarch butterfly. He pressed the “enter” button and wondered if anyone had anything to say that hadn’t been said already in four different languages. He was swiftly growing up, growing out of his habits and into new ones. Previous skins lay pinned up on his wall to remind him of how far he had come.
At night he pulled his curtains taut over his windows to block out the sounds of the sand. His rectangle glowed and he fell asleep on the floor, a broken mobile of angels twirling over his head. Someday he would wake up beside someone who would reward him for unchanging fixtures of personality; someday someone would laugh at his quirks and repair the waxed wings.
A princess of the streets, the ever-pouty punk-rocker Jude readjusted her fishnets and her plywood wings and entered the club. A remix of a remix, the music playing had evolved past itself, torpedoing forward as the underage unwanted generation gyrated to it. Drugs were being passed around; smoke filled lungs and infiltrated pores and clothing. Jude put a butterfly clip through her perfectly streaked blonde hair and laughed. Overhead, photographs of people hooked into the WiredNet flashed and glittered at her. She could see them, in their own self-induced comas of worlds better than this one, not existing, not really living. She was glad for the perfection she’d finally found, here in reality. She was never going back.
Silver awoke from her dreams by the telephone ringing. Pulling herself off the couch, where she had fallen asleep watching advertisements, and walked trancelike down the hall. Before she could even say hello, a voice spoke to her, sending colors over the transmitter into her brain, a beautiful shade of indigo. It asked her if she wanted to donate to the addiction network. It said that the WiredNet was starting to infiltrate the minds of the young ones, that they were going to need to go out into the woods without hookups and learn what it was like to breathe again.
She told him she wasn’t interested.
He told her to go upstairs and hung up, leaving her mind cold and colorless.
Her cat, Golden Rust, bounded down the hallway, chasing after an imaginary mouse. It had been in a Virtual Reality game and now couldn’t settle for the fact that their house was nearly so dull. Silver watched Rusty devour the invisible mouse. She could almost see the blood splaying all over the carpet, hear the squeaks of the babies within the mother mouse. She put her hand over her forehead and leaned against the paneled wall. “Rusty, you have to stop this,” she said to him, turning to look at the cat. The cat was nibbling at a mouse, but she could see it. The mouse’s blood was staining her white carpet. Had that always been there? A trickle of electricity slid across her brain and fired. She winced, picked up the cat, and carried it upstairs to see how her son was doing.
Halfway up the stairs, she passed out, dropping Golden Rust, who scampered up the stairs and into her son’s room. There, on the floor, lay Edgar Roni Figaro, king of the desert, surrounded by followers, intrigue, and beautiful women. The room was empty. Golden Rust nuzzled against the crook of his elbow, loudly mewing for attention.
Edgar rolled over to pet the cat, twisting his neck in the wire attached to his skull. He ceased breathing. The broken angels craned around for a better view.
“I don’t know,” Silver replied, pulling a syringe out of her pocket and shooting PleasantFactor into a main vein. Her eyelids fluttered and she breathed in the dank dusty air. “I thought he was okay up there.”
“Were you aware,” the officer said, trying to keep his anger under control, “That your son had skipped school for two weeks to lock himself up in his room attached to the wall? Did you notice that he did not come downstairs for meals?”
She shrugged and giggled.
“Does he have a father?” the officer asked.
“Somewhere,” she said airily. “I can’t remember what happened to him. He left a while back, though.”
“What kind of a stunt were you trying to pull back there?” Silver asked Raphael, her son. “Ralph?” She shivered, could feel her brain pulsing. To stop the sensation she reached into her pocket, pulled out another syringe, filled it with a stronger substance than Pleasant Factor, and shot it.
He watched her. “My name is Edgar Roni Figaro,” he told her numbly.
“Your name is Raphael Jonathan Young,” she replied pointedly. The shot wasn’t enough and she didn’t have enough time before she went into withdrawal unless she left now. Without another word, she ran down the hallway, through the winding staircase, and out the door, towards the subway.
Jude’s plywood wings smashed to glittering dusty pieces as she pushed herself through the narrow alleyway. She couldn’t remember what had happened to her, but something had short-circuited somewhere and now she was being chased. Her fishnets were glowing in the dark, giving them something to follow. She, however, outpaced them and disappeared down a series of alleyways that were impossible to follow from a distance. Coming out, she was near the Our Saints Hospital. Glancing both ways, she slipped inside.
The castle of ones and zeroes crumbled into its numerically calculated foundation if right angles and dreams. Their king wasn’t there, in the dream, and the valets left with the hookers as the sand whistled the television theme song of a show forgotten, cancelled, and taped over.
Edgar Roni Figaro’s twin, Sabin, (alternately known as the version of him as of his last save), rejuvenated himself in the ruins and began to walk the desert by himself, flipping his double-sided coin. He served as a fill-in until the real Edgar Roni Figaro returned to resume the game. This way, the other players wouldn’t be playing by themselves if no one else were on; although with a game like this, most of the players were usually on. The fantasy was better than food. While the body deteriorated, the mind soared.
“He is,” Jude overheard a doctor say to another in a darkened corridor in the psych ward, “not in this universe. He doesn’t exist with the rest of us so to speak. He’s essentially catmose, unresponsive to this reality.” She leaned over and watched them converse.
“Not the first case of this phenomenon. We should let the kids go back to playing sports and reading books and participating in after school activities. Remember playing soccer? Did you ever go to a football game? Eat a hot dog at a baseball game? Isn’t it all over? Isn’t it a pity?”
The first doctor shrugged. “I played video games myself.”
The second paused. “Whatever suits you. You were never so bad as these children, though, were you?”
“Nope. I’d be very interested to see this, however.”
She followed them (from a few corridors behind) to a room in the center of the wing. In the bed was a dark-skinned brunette with large black eyes. He looked petrified. He was grasping the side of his bedpost so hard that his knuckles were turning yellow.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “What are you attempting to do to me? I am the king of this land and I demand that you take me back to my castle.”
The doctors watched him passively, glancing at each other knowingly.
“I’m serious,” he whispered violently. “I have men that work for me –”
“I’m sure they’re very bulky, loyal men,” doctor two said, smiling wryly. “I’ll let you think over what they’re going to do to us while my companion and I get a bite to eat.”
With that, the two of them turned around left, nudging each other and raising their eyebrows.
“Coming out like that is difficult,” she said quietly from the doorway, making him jump.
“You had quite an unpleasant fall,” he replied, watching her wing configuration.
“I didn’t fall.” There was no way this guy was going to make angel allusions and hope to win any favors from her. She unsnapped what was left of her wings and let them fall to the ground with a loud crack. He watched them impassively.
“You had this happen to you as well,” he said, cocking his head at her.
She kicked her wings to the side of the room.
“Is it true that if one dies on the WiredNet, he or she triggers an automatic save and gets to live there forever?” he asked her.
“No,” she snapped.
He looked at her inquiringly.
“I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”
Sabin lay down in the sand, staring up at the sun. Its rays caused the air to wither and wobble. Eventually, in an RPG, if the character doesn’t return within a few days, the ones and zeroes (and sometimes twos, if the character is important enough) will begin to unwind, causing the character to unwind. This is a painless process for the “twin” still in the game. Sabin neither felt nor detected anything as he began to dissipate.
“I have to go back. My character will die,” he cried out desperately.
She shrugged. “I used to carry around a cord with me all the time, ready to plug in whenever nobody was paying attention, but those days are behind me.”
He lunged for the telephone, but it wasn’t functioning.
“No phone calls out from the psych ward,” she informed him, pulling out a cell phone and handing it over.
Silver arrived at the hospital with a WiredNet cord in her purse. Upon arriving in her son’s room, she found him sobbing, clutching himself.
“Hurry, Mom – all I’ve ever worked for will die soon!” he whimpered.
She pulled out the cord and handed it over to him. Standing in the corner of the room was a pale girl in ripped clothing, watching her innocent son out of the corner of her overdone eyes. Silver could only think of her as a prostitute or some other female lost in her way.
He hurriedly plugged it into the wall and then another correspondingly into the jack at the base of his skull.
At this very instant, Sabin had crossed the threshold, taking Edgar Raphael with him.
“What happened?” Silver cried, pulling out another needle from her bag to calm herself down.
“Reboot,” Jude said, leaving the room and walking down the stairs, back out onto the street.
Edgar re-awoke on the floor of his room, broken angels shattered on the floor by his feet. He pushed his long blonde hair back into a ponytail and shook himself off. What a dream, full of drug addicts and frightening perfect-faced demon girls. He pulled himself together and walked down the stairs, calling out to his servants to feed him and help him dress. He was ready for another beautiful day.
Jude paid five dollars an hour for a hookup. She could buy cheap unlimited service but this kept her from going overboard. Sometimes she couldn’t help but drop back – even if just for a few moments.
A flurry of activity was happening down the sand path near his castle. A superfluous procession was approaching, accompanied by trumpet frills and bright streamers. He watched in curiosity and asked the butler who was coming.
“Why, one of the single princesses from the nearby land across the Nile,” he replied, raising a single eyebrow. “Sure you knew?”
“What are the chances I’ll like her?” Edgar asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a double-headed coin – twice heads.
Already, the procession had arrived and his servants were readying a banquet. He went downstairs to bid them welcome. Carried on a chair held by four people, the princess waved at him. He could see that she had beautiful, lilac-colored wings. He strode out to shake her hand, give her his arm, lead her in. The coin in his pocket felt warm against his thigh as he beamed at her in her black dress and red fishnets. It was going to be a good day.
In the booth, Jude pulled the cord out of her jack, and died.
“Welcome to my palace, I hope you enjoy your stay here. It is our pleasure to have you,” Edgar told her.
“The pleasure is all mine,” she replied. She dropped down to the ground beside him, and took his hand. The two of them went to spend the rest of infinity together in the castle of ones, zeroes, dreams, and the occasional two.