Days feel lethargic
when there’s barely a couple more.
Days feel weightless,
when all the burdens are left behind.
But days keep being days…
The move, driven by fate,
Will have to be done.
Days feel lethargic
when there’s barely a couple more.
Days feel weightless,
when all the burdens are left behind.
But days keep being days…
The move, driven by fate,
Will have to be done.
Thrusting efforts
Just to go so far
All the way to the verge of tipping over
It’s the way we’re designed
Arched over self-proclaimed dreams
Over idealistic goals
It’s the way we’re designed
to head back once it’s done
with eyes still on the horizon
rocking backwards
Time before we ever try again
To be what we used to be
To live life exactly the same
Thrusting forward…
And not getting there.
Many a people would wish
To simply tip over the edge
To straighten out those arches
To never walk backwards
To be anything else
but a rocking chair
With sweat dripping down his strong face, Lawrence made an effort to identify the time on the nightstand clock. A pounding itch reverberated in his ears… a perturbing sound made it difficult to execute something as simple as reading the time on the analog clock. It took him a while to figure out it was already noon. Morning was no more. Morning. Breakfast. The neurological impulse generated by his exhausted brain crossed the synapse as fast as it could, trickling down the long highway of axioms of his spine, until it found a hitch right around Lawrence’s stomach. Hunger, his brain reported after the impulse returned from its ephemeral journey.
Time. It simply felt wrong. His life, the lives beating around him, all ticking hours, minutes and seconds away. Crowds, people, strangers… yet everyone still hangs by the same thin line of time. How he despised time. It had been a handful of years since he first started doubting – and finally despising – the idea of time. It was halfway through high school, right when Philosophy and Logic came along. The Philosophy and Logic professor from Dove High was truly one of a kind. At first glance, he would look like the typical church choir guitarist – carrying his guitar and songbooks everywhere he went. Yet when the professor talked, Lawrence conscience shot up looking for the infinite. Every word said in class, Lawrence took it as a challenge prompt and thought about it, deeply. Right before next class, he forgot. His subconscious rusted locker still hung on to the developed thoughts.
It was that random class when the professor touched the topic of time. From Aristotle to Einstein, every single figure had a different theory for the idea of time. Lawrence, who liked to see things from an abstract perspective, he concluded that time as a human invention. Being that time was invented, it technically didn’t exist before people started to implement the idea of time in their activities. He seldom talked about his discovery; Lawrence kept his theory “safe”. According to him, there was a time where humans actually lived, not by the ticking of a clock, but by good actions and memories. People changed because they felt they needed to, people grew wiser and saw more of the world. Time, however, became an obstacle for the normal transition of humans in this world. Lawrence truly believed – at least his subconscious did – that humans were born and merely transited this world. Death was simply a sign that the individual felt the need of finishing; a journey, that both starts and finishes. Time basicallyaccounts mathematically the human life. Call it hamburgers, sections, or seconds; it’s a system of logging a past and a future. Lawrence specifically proved himself by stating that only the present can possible exist. However other humans embrace the past, it still cannot be lived. However other humans embrace the future, it still a speculation of what could happen – thus cannot be lived. Therefore, Lawrence states, time does not exist. The present transition had to be lived. The present, he thought out loud. A strange feeling still shook his subconscious loud thoughts, a perpetuating tremble from outside his spaced-out void. Now.
It immediately clicked. Not necessarily immediately, but it clicked. His dogs. Those canines were the only remainders of his short-lived relationship. He had not fed them breakfast. The itch came again, hammering as hard as ever did. Lawrence was sure it was the distinctive of barking sounds of his two adorable idiots. Making his way out of the bed, Lawrence shoved his slippers on and dug for clothes in his treasure chest closet. His heavily damp body demanded rather thick clothing; the rest of his apartment had a peculiar chill every morning. Lawrence also despised the peculiar chill that ran down his spine. He was pretty sure his dogs didn’t like it either. If those dogs ever felt anything. Putting a white robe on, he took lethargic strides towards the kitchen. I really need to wake up. His body had been begging for coffee for what seemed an eternity. There goes the damned time once again.
The red sun strangles the moon
From sunrise to sunset
Do I really hear it choking?
This feeling I dare to feel
Diving out of bed
To jump back again
Wake me down
So I can put you up to sleep
Just knock for me when
Belief has gone broke
Only if it’s broken.
It’s the cycle we can’t fix
Yet we keep on fixing.
It was any man’s dream. To transfer imaginary worlds into virtual realities – years of coding and programming made possible the animation of a completely playable virtual environment. It was not simply a third party animation in which the user just stands by, idly watching the screen. The dream was to create the omnipresent involvement of the user with the virtual reality. Thanks to vast hordes of code monkeys, design studios and programmers in general, the world saw the birth of the MMORPG’s. And with the birth of Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), came a new age – the age of Modern Gaming.
Like puppies born as a big litter, MMORPG’s came (and keep coming) in all different shapes and sizes. There are virtual environments created for the single purpose of satisfying the players’ gaming fetishes – either it’s a vicious slaying or an eternal pursuit of hidden treasure and pointless adventures, there’s a MMORPG for it. But behind every thematic and storyline, there is a concept bigger than the game itself. It’s a concept that comes into existence as players unite under a single flag… a concept fueled by the vital media feedback. It’s the concept of gaming communities. (A concept which I will write about in a separate article)
Let’s face it. A playable virtual environment is seldom generated and then locked away in an offline server, never to enter the World Wide Web. A playable environment will always crave for players; as long as new players are added to the user list, the game will be able to evolve and grow. With the rapid exposure of material in the web these days, a beta release of a MMORPG could be public this instant and already have a decent exposure by the next 48 hours. The Internet has a huge network of eyes and ears that are in a relentless search for updates and new material. Yet the real question is how and why these virtual environments grow so fast, so easily? How can virtual worlds, controlled by human players, (even through bot interference) become the total opposite of the real world – also controlled by human beings?
Every MMORPG, as it exponentially grows in user database size, it acquires the inherent characteristics of the human world: culture, society, economy and even the essence of politics. As years add up since the first release, the user infrastructure is so colossal and complex that a complete shutdown is only considered – if and only if – a plague of zombies take over the world. Only then, is it imperative that the remaining human users conserve the virtual environments from undead players. Now, perfection has a price; it’s no lie that every MMORPG has suffered from rebellions, hacks, economic crisis, and what not. But never has a MMORPG pushed the restart button in order to solve these problems; nations today keep deposing previous leaders with new ones – the inevitable transferring of dangerous power. That’s how perfect MMORPG’s really are.
The example MMORPG that will be used as an example is the legendary Runescape, launched massively in 1999. Since then, the game has evolved from the classic retro look to an outstanding, hi-definition, and full-screen resolution game interface. Needless to say, the game now has incredible graphics (evolution right there). On top of that, the game has gone through storms, hurricanes and strong whirlpools of crisis. And the amount of users online everyday makes other similar games look weak, puny weak.
Let’s talk money. Game money.
Since its creation, the main hub of trade focused on shops. General stores and stores that both bought and sold specific items. Similar to the shop systems in the early American 1800’s, when there was a store for every item – shoes, lamps, beds, tables, belts, soap and the list goes on. In Runescape, there was a shop for general items, clothes, weapons, armor, food and rarities. The specific stores – the artificial intelligence (AI) – bought items at a certain price based on demand and supply. There was also direct trade with other players, but usually the initial cash for beginners came from the AI.
It took the people living in small Western towns centuries to realize they were growing too fast. It took Runescape users about four years to realize the user database was getting quite crowded and larger every day. Growth was clearly good for business, but for the game creators/developers. Users suddenly experienced a serious economic inflation of prices – even everyday objects suffered, thanks to the smart AI – followed by a grievous recession. While players lived through the gloomiest days of Runescape, developers probably were pulling all-nighters trying to reach a solution. The game was mirroring the current economic status at the time. It was truly frightening, both for the game developers and players.
How did the game change? Although forums talk about change within the game’s infrastructure, it is more about evolution. MMORPG evolution: A logical process, in which both developers and users indirectly share feedback and collaterally take part of the shift. The game itself remains, yet it shifts towards a better state. There is no pre-stated shift order, nor a limit of number of shifts permitted without damaging the game itself. After its embarrassing economic flunking, Runescape economy shifted a good couple of times before settling in a steady growth. The question still remains: why can’t the actual economy make that shift?
There is one characteristic that clearly differentiates real world trading from MMORPG trading. For example, in the virtual environment, real people take part of the trade. In Runescape, players go to the Grand Exchange (GE) for profitable trade; the players “bag” only holds up to 27 – 32 items at a time – in the Grand Exchange a player can trade any desired amount for any price. A stand-by AI offers current pricing (high-low) but does not directly take part of the trade; the AI merely watches over the whole economy, making sure nothing goes out of hand. Au contraire, in flesh and bones, humanity has achieved having every type of AI interfering with trade.
First AI: Laws and loopholes. That’s the uttermost irksome AI meddling with trade across every land, every country. Created with the purpose of balancing the economy, laws permit a whole lot more than it prohibits or “controls”. The same lawyers, who brought the rulings to life, know exactly how to avoid them. And so do most of the lawmakers across the globe. With the passing of time, these laws and loopholes accumulate, creating a foggy vision of a profitable future.
Second AI: Analytical Software and Economic Forecast. The creation of software that even dares to forecast trade stats has been the worst invention of the last century. Humans are unpredictable enough themselves, how can our actions be less so? Creating a future that will probably never be… It’s simply preposterous. Some experts coined the term speculation for the input these softwares generated; speculation really shares the same meaning of the urban immortal bullshit.
Third AI: the Stock Market. Although it may generate controversy, it is necessary to categorize the stock market as an AI. It has a life of its own… and that does not benefit us in any way. Why? Go back to the days (centuries ago) in which businesses where either owned and maintained or sold completely; when a “company” could not be transferred ownership it just shut down and fade away – leaving space for other owners to try their luck with business. The economy grew back then, at a kind and steady rate, without stocks, bonds or futures. Yet the seed was already planted by the early 13th Century in Western Europe. As all ideas, including bad ones, they evolved and shifted. Soon enough, the idea of companies being traded as stock transformed into a colossal infrastructure of stock trading – wrapping together the fate of companies worldwide in a single nice (and rather messy) bundle. No matter how much traders claim to have control over their stock, it is technically impossible. The stock market allows traders absolutely no control, only influence over how they manage stocks.
It all comes down to what economists have done to our world. A harsh truth to face, but there’s proof of it everywhere we look, from the your current bank statement to MMORPG’s. It’s even more devastating to realize how game developers – through their work in MMORPG’s – have done a better job of handling an economy than a real world economist. Now, how can society co-exist (instead of suffering) with its economy once again? As humans, we are not perfect and we should avoid striving for perfection (reserved only for MMORPG’s and gaming as a whole). Therefore, as humans, we should hit that restart button as hard as we can. Laws burned and loopholes filled up with concrete. The concept of speculation, crushed forever. The end of the stock market and the birth of a Grand Stock Exchange, where real human stock traders can directly trade at their hearts’ desire – without any direct or indirect AI interfering. It is but a wish, a dream of a reality that might bring the world back on track.
Just as video killed the Radio star,
MMORPG’s killed the Economist.
Are we willing to bring him back?
Old eyes have grown tired
of the society sun
Old eyes wont pick up
the phone to hear our words
when the old eyes
make their sweet surrender
we’re the new blood
the world’s waiting for us
Our restless lives seem so out of place
but sometimes we feel we’re the only ones down to earth
and everybody is anywhere else
but here
We have no promised land to look for,
we end up finding treasures
inside us.
We hate the same way we love
but we can’t love the same people we hate.
We fear what can become our inner battles
yet we hope for another person’s victory.
Old eyes will always be on top of us
“for our own sake”
Insisting to change our ways
and fade into the crowd
If we haven’t learned how to wear masks
of the common and old
our blood is new and it will forever be –
Then
Why should we let them take away the identity
That a whole teenage life was spent to build?
The world expects from us
the new blood
to dream
and
wake
to
remember and
ease the pain
to
feel, to mourn, to plea
and break
the molds
to
live, die and
resuscitate
… in the same world…
now
rediscovered.
Jonathan stared with gloomy eyes at the office clock on his cubicle.
Tic Toc.
His life was indeed, enclosed, like a cubicle. And so was everyone else’s. To him, humanity was capable of just so much - and not more. Not because it wasn’t possible. Throughout his relatively short life, Jonathan had encountered hundreds, maybe thousands individuals with raw, polished potential… individuals that had auras of success and glory around them. But those auras did not reflect reality. They were just auras. And those individuals were just humans. Human beings – in a competitive struggle to succeed and life happy – enclose themselves against each other. Pushing to achieve the “edge”. Following a massive domino logic, this results in equally massive creation of limits and boundaries; a infrastructure of barriers that hold down progress to the passing of decades, so that people have more time to compete against themselves. More time to rush ahead, in an attempt to reach glory. More time to give more time for those who follow. Yet the time lived, is no more than time spent.
Tic Toc.
Jonathan worked at an office building, one of those, which are extremely close to other types of office buildings. Backbones of steel and skins of concrete, these relentless structures stand surrounded by land of black asphalt. One or two trees also stand, yet with the sole purpose of masquerading a vile concept of seclusion. The excruciating heat outside did not bother those residing within the office building. Pampered with what the board considered amenities, workers like Jonathan concluded that the situation wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Their bodies were enslaved to the structure, to the cubicle, to the enclosure. And they were rewarded with just enough to keep coming back, year after year. Workers like Jonathan were served false hope every morning, every payday, just enough to keep heads raised and spirits mellow. A sea of small stations forced into an even smaller space. A sea with no shores, with no life within… just the methodical beating of the waves.
Jonathan took one last gaze at the clock before getting back to the stacks of paperwork.
Tic Toc.
scourge the days
seconds’ a waste
we still have a chance
against the wave
it will come
eventually
when bones will break
and stillness will embrace
what, why,
where, when.
time ticks,
beating us down
It’s why we live
It’s why we die
To conquer the wave
To destroy time
Never to hear it tick again.
The inviting warmth came from his own body, his body had answered back with damp sweat, all night long. His heart ticked faster than the old-fashioned clock sitting on his nightstand. The door remained closed, as he left it the night before. Everything else seemed to be in place. He felt weak and heavy, like he had been thrown into a fire pit and then smashed numb with a hammer. Although the ceiling fan rotated at a moderate speed, Lawrence barely could feel the air pushing against his forehead and body. A strange scent still lingered among his sheets. He had been bed stricken with fever for the third consecutive day. Lawrence made a mental note, wash blankets. But there was some pestering memory that he couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many mental notes he made. He had dreamt of being Jonathan. Again.
Jonathan was no stranger at all. Lawrence had met Jonathan once, right after their high school days were over. Those truly were times of glory and self-destruction… alcohol, girls and lavish parties around the pretense of celebrating graduation. His memory had been pierced –many times – by the cold and unforgiving blackouts. Whenever he reached out his subconscious for details, he encountered a thick, clouded wall of uncertainty. Yet he always remembered meeting Jonathan. A queer young man – heavy weight gossips had always included false details about his unknown life. Rumors had carried Jonathan’s fake fame throughout every single social circle possible. To believe rumors or not, Lawrence would always care less. Meeting Jonathan, though, was really a product of perfectly weaved strings of destiny. Jonathan saved his life. That was something Lawrence could never afford to care less about.
It was a beach party. Or a ranch close to the ocean. It surely the last party celebrating graduation, thus the extravaganza and overwhelming amount of delicious toxic beverages. The sun had barely kissed the horizon, still giving enough light to make the final preparations for the main event hours later. The party had not even begun, yet Lawrence was already close to passing out. His friends had deserted him, in search for attractive women, not repulsive drunkards. Lawrence made his way to the beach. After ten excruciatingly long minutes of walking, Lawrence finally reached the shore. Lawrence took a few steps, leaving deep footprints on the blackened sand, fumbled and that was the end of his weak line of consciousness.
Until Jonathan woke him up with a bucketful of seawater.
