Player 1

Chapter 3 Level 1(1)
life is so troubled,

only games,

It gives people the courage to live.

—Chapter 91, Paragraph 1 of Anola's Almanac

0001
There was a burst of gunfire from the building next door, followed by indistinct cries and screams, and then all was quiet again.

Shootouts are not uncommon here, but I was still woken up.Knowing that I might not be able to fall asleep again, I decided to play some classic arcade games to pass the hours before sunrise. "Little Bee", "Defender", "Asteroid", these games have been antiques in museums long before I was born.But in the eyes of hunters like us, they are not old low-resolution gadgets, but sacred objects and pillars of temples. I am in awe of them, from the bottom of my heart.

I'm huddled in a sleeping bag in the corner of the small utility room of the prefab, squeezed in the gap between the wall and the dryer.My aunt didn't welcome me running into the hall across the way because it belonged to her.In fact, I'd rather be in the utility room, it's warm and somewhat personal, and the signal isn't too bad.Also, the room smelled of laundry detergent and softener, while the rest of the trailer stinks of cat urine and trash.

Most of the time I squatted in my den, but these nights the temperature dropped below freezing, so, as much as I hated my aunt, it was better to come and live than to freeze to death.

There are 15 people living in this prefabricated house, and my aunt sleeps in the smallest of the three bedrooms.The Depps lived in the second bedroom next to hers, and the Millers occupied the master bedroom at the end of the hall. There were six of them, and they were big rent-payers.Our room is not as crowded as the others in the building.It's twice the size of those rooms, and there's plenty of room for everyone.

I pull out my notebook.It was big and heavy and almost a decade old.After finding it in a trash can behind an abandoned store by the highway, I restored and reinstalled its almost stone-age operating system, in other words, I brought it back to life.Judging from the current point of view, this old machine is not as slow as a snail, but it is still okay for me.This laptop has become my portable library, game console, home theater, and it's filled with old books, movies, episodes, songs, and just about every twentieth-century video game.

I opened up the emulator and chose 2084, one of my favorite games, simple and crazy.The whole game system tests instinct and reaction.Yeah, playing old games always clears my mind and relaxes me.Every time I encounter those troublesome and difficult things in life, I will type the option of "Player 1" on the keyboard, then forget about those annoying things, and devote myself to the battle on the screen middle.In these low-pixel two-dimensional worlds, life is very simple: there is only one person and one machine left in the world, use the left hand to control the direction, and the right hand to aim and shoot, as long as you try your best to survive.

A few hours passed quietly amid waves of rushing.Enemies come in all shapes and sizes, from simple spheres to twisted brains.In order to protect the last human family, I threw myself into this endless battle.In the end, however, the finger cramp disrupted my rhythm.Of course, this way, I was bombarded with the remaining life in a few minutes, and then the four most annoying words appeared on the screen: Game over.

I turned off the emulator and started rummaging through my movie library.For the past five years, I've downloaded every single movie, TV show, and cartoon mentioned in the Anola Almanac.Of course, I can't read them all.No one can see it all unless it takes decades.

I started playing "The Birth of a Family," an '80s sitcom set in Ohio that revolves around the day-to-day lives of a middle-class family.It's one of Halliday's favourites, and I think looking at it can be helpful in searching.In fact, I've been kind of hooked on this show lately - I've re-watched the 180 episodes several times and still keep it up.

Sitting alone in the dark watching the video in the notebook, I always bring myself into that warm and cozy family.Almost every trouble a character encounters in the film can be solved in half an hour (sometimes it takes an hour, which is two episodes, but that is quite rare).

Real life is so different from the show, and maybe that's why I like Birth of a Family so much.My parents were very young when they gave birth to me, and they met in the stacked building where I grew up.I don't remember my dad because he was shot and killed instantly while robbing the grocery store while I was a baby.The only thing I know about him is that he likes manga.I found a couple of his flash drives in a storage box with full sets of Spider-Man, X-Men and Green Lantern.Mom said he also named me "Wade Voight" because he thought it sounded like the real name of a superhero, like Peter Parker or Clark Kent.Knowing all this, I figured he must be a really cool guy who died a bit of a sucker.

My mother, Lotta, raised me alone.We lived in a tiny RV on the other side of the stack.She has two full-time Oasis jobs, one as a telemarketer and the other as a pimp in an online brothel.She used to make me wear earplugs at night, lest those nasty hacker swear words come through the thin partition and stain my young heart.However, the sound isolation effect of the earbuds is not very good, so I used to watch movies to solve the problem, of course, the volume must be turned up to the maximum.

I got into Oasis early on.My mom helped me create my first character when I was just able to wear a mask and haptic gloves.Then she went on to work, leaving me alone to explore a whole new world, a world completely different from what I had known before.

It could almost be said that I was brought up by the interactive educational program of "Oasis", which is free, easy to use and accessible to all children.I spent most of my childhood in a virtual community called "Sesame Street", where besides puppets who would sing with me, there were all kinds of people who taught me how to walk, count, read, write and share with others. Interactive games.After mastering these initial skills, I soon discovered that "Oasis" is actually a huge public library, where even a penniless child like me can see, hear, and touch , Play almost every book, every film and television drama, every song, every piece of art and every game in the world.Those knowledge, art, and all entertainment items of human civilization are included in it.Knowing this information has been a mixed blessing for me, though.

And so I discovered the truth.

Maybe your experience is different than mine, but honestly, for me, growing up as a human being on a 21st century planet is crazy.

Because, no one has ever told me how bad the environment around me is.In fact, those adults are simply doing the opposite.Of course, I trusted them since I was a kid.Uh, I mean, oh my god, I didn't even have a half-grown brain, how could I tell if the grownups were farting on me?Fortunately, when I grew up, I gradually discovered that adults are a bunch of liars who don't write drafts. From the moment I left the womb, lies have always run through my life.

It was like a revelation.

Foreshadows my future sensitivity and paranoia.

With the continuous exploration of the big library of "Oasis", the ugly truth gradually unfolded before my eyes.The facts have been waiting for me in the vast sea of ​​books, the writings of countless artists, scientists, philosophers and poets - many of them long dead - so that I can begin to understand the situation.I'm not just talking about the individual situation, or the situation of some people, but what the public calls "the human condition."

The truth is not so pretty.

I wish someone would come and tell me as soon as I could understand:

"That's the reality, Wade. You're a thing called a 'human', a very intelligent animal. Like every other species on this planet, we all evolved from some single-celled species hundreds of millions of years ago. Biological evolution. This process is called evolution, and you will learn more about it later. But you have to believe that it is evolution that made us what we are. I am not talking about speculation, there are countless buried The fossils under the rocks will testify. As for the stories you've heard, including the one about us being created by supernatural beings living in the sky - or God - it's all bullshit. God is nothing more than people say It's just a millennia old myth that God didn't create man, man created God, like Santa Claus and Easter Bunny."

"By the way, and... There is no such thing as Santa Claus and Bunny Bunny in the world. Those are also nonsense. Sorry kid, you have to figure it out."

"Perhaps you've wondered what happened in the world before you were born. Well, that's not easy to put into words. Because things get more and more interesting as we humans come along. We After knowing how to grow crops and raise animals, the hunting time was gradually reduced, and the tribe became stronger and stronger, and finally swept the entire planet like an epidemic virus. After that, for land, resources and false gods, human beings began to fight one after another Fighting wars, we finally united our various tribes into a 'global civilization'. But, to be honest, it's not a serious organization or civilization. We still wage wars. But we also learn How to do research and develop technology. As a kind of hairless orangutan, we have indeed created a lot of amazing things: computers, medicines, lasers, microwave ovens, artificial hearts, and atomic bombs. We even sent humans to the moon, And then we brought them back. We also created the Internet, which almost eliminated the barriers to information exchange. Cool, right?"

"But this is also the beginning of trouble. Our global civilization is like a behemoth, requiring huge energy to maintain. We obtain energy by burning fossils. But before you were born, humans used up half of the fossil energy, and now it is almost We're running out. We call this a global energy crisis, and it's been going on for a while. It's a big deal. Humanity is going backwards because we don't have enough energy to keep this civilization going."

"In addition, the burning of fossil energy has also brought side effects, such as rising temperatures and environmental damage. You see, polar glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, the climate is becoming more and more abnormal, animals and plants are extinct, and there are countless displacements , The victims who are starved of food. And for the remaining resources, human beings are still fighting endlessly.”

"Above all, child, it means life will be harder than it was before. Those good days were over before you were born. You were born in dark times, and the future looks set to only get worse. Human civilization is going backwards, some even say it is dying."

"You're probably thinking, what's going to happen to you. The answer is simple, because what happens to you happens to everyone. You're going to die. We're all going to die. That's it."

"What happens when you die? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But the evidence shows that nothing happens, you just die. Your brain stops working, and you can't ask any annoying questions anymore Lah. Stories you heard? To a place called heaven? A place where there is no pain and death and one can live a happy life forever? It's all bullshit. Like those God stories. There is no proof that heaven ever existed. Yes We made it up and it was nothing but a hopeful fantasy."

"The rest of your life will be spent in the state of knowing that you are mortal and will disappear forever."

"sorry."

Well, on reflection, maybe telling a babbling child that he was born into a world of chaos, misery, and depravity isn't a good thing.It took me a few years to gradually unravel the truth, and I felt like I was jumping off a building, let alone someone who was suddenly fed all this information.Good thing I still have Oasis, which keeps me sane.It is my playground, my preschool, my paradise.

The happiest memory of my childhood is closely connected with the oasis.When my mom is down, we'll log in together to play games or go on some virtual adventures.But at night, she has to force me to quit the game, because I don't want to go back to the disgusting real world.

I never complained about it to my mom, who, like all of us, was a victim of fate and cruel circumstances, and belonged to the generation that felt it most.I feel sorry for her more than any other feelings.When she was born, this planet was considered beautiful, but since then it has been continuously sliding into the abyss.She was permanently depressed, and only drugs could temporarily lift her up.Of course, this ultimately led to her death.When I was eight, she took a shot of something on the back of her hand and collapsed on our ratty pullout couch and never woke up.When she left, she was still listening to an old MP3 that I fixed last year and gave her as a Christmas present.

After that I had to move to my aunt Alice's house.Alice is not a philanthropist or a qualified guardian. She stayed with me purely to get the extra monthly relief food from the government.So I had to forage for food on my own most of the time.Usually this isn't a problem as I'm pretty gifted when it comes to fixing old computers and broken consoles.I pulled those old machines out of the garbage, repaired them, and sold them to pawnshops or traded them for meal tickets.My income far exceeds the imagination of my neighbors, and filling my stomach is just a trivial matter.

For a year and a half after my mother died, I was in a state of despair and self-pity.Later, I kept reminding myself that everything should look in the right direction. Regardless of whether I was an orphan or not, I at least had a better life than most children in Africa.And Asia, well, North America too.I also have a ceiling above my head, food in my belly to digest, and I even have The Oasis.Life isn't that bad.But despite such self-comfort, the great loneliness has not diminished in the slightest.

Halliday's Easter egg contest, I think, saved my life.I suddenly discovered a dream worth chasing.Over the past five years, this game has given me purpose, a worthwhile task, and a reason to get out of bed in the morning.From the moment I started hunting for Easter eggs, the future was not so bleak.

Halfway through the fourth episode, the door of the utility room was suddenly opened, and Aunt Alice walked in.She looked like a harpy in a dressing gown carrying a basket of dirty laundry, malnourished or not.She seemed more awake than usual, which was not a good sign, because she was easier to deal with when she was high.

My aunt gave me a sideways glance as she always did before she started stuffing the washing machine, but suddenly, her expression changed drastically.She looked at me more closely.When she realized that I was holding the notebook, her eyes widened.I quickly closed the book and stuffed it into my backpack, but I knew it was too late.

"Hand it over, Wade," she held out her hand, "I can use it to pay our rent."

"No," I cried, drawing back, "don't do it, Aunt Alice. I'm going to use it to school."

"You need to be grateful!" she snapped. "Everyone here pays rent. I've had enough of you vampire!"

"You took all my meal tickets. That's way more than my rent."

(End of this chapter)