Dorothy From Kansas, Part 3
So it's edit time now. Refer to the entry for part 4 for an explanation of why this one has changed.
January 20, 2100
OK, so Tanaka and I have been planning on taking me out into the world for the past few days now, and I was getting pretty psyched. I really wanted to get out there and meet some people of the twenty second century, but Tanaka still wanted to keep it slow. He really wasn’t sure about taking me out, but since I was insistent on it, he wanted to find an environment where I would be comfortable interacting with people. We eventually settled on a compromise. Tanaka and I found a social interaction node called RetroConn. Actually, let me back up a bit, because this requires giving you a bit of a lesson in extremely obscure history. Back in the late twentieth, early twenty first century, fans of science fiction, anime, fantasy, and all things geeky would gather together at conventions or “cons”. Usually these were held at hotels. During the day, people would trade comics and movies and memorabilia, discuss TV shows and movies and literature at various panels, deliver Klingon love poetry (don’t ask, I couldn’t explain if tried), and just generally get together and let their geek flag fly. At night, parties were thrown with booze and people who rarely ever let loose took the opportunity to let loose a lot, sometimes way too much. On a quick side note, this is an interesting aspect of my amnesia. I remember what cons were like, and I can describe the general atmosphere to you, but try as I might, I can’t recall one memory from a con. I know of them, but it’s like I read it in a book, except the knowledge is too personal and emotional to come from a book. Anyway, RetroConn was a simulation of these cons running twenty four seven on the internet. Tanaka was the one who found it and immediately thought it would be fun.
“My God, I haven’t been to a con in eighty years!” Tanaka exclaimed.
“It must be at least that long for me, too,” I said, wondering when the last time I went to a con was. So it was settled. We were going to con.
Now for those of you unfamiliar with the con experience, which in this day and age has to be most everyone, it’s common for people to come in costume. Tanaka took this to a new extreme, and extreme you could only go to in a simulated environment. Tanaka decided that he was going as Spike Spiegel from “Cowboy Bebop”. Now when I say that he went as Spike, I mean that his Icon was that of an anime character. As in he didn’t look human, he looked like a cartoon. It was a little weird. He was certain that there would be a lot of other people there who looked like that, but I wasn’t so sure. Also, he was just strange to look at. He made me feel like I was in one of those movies where the cartoons cross over into the real world. Then that made me laugh, because when I thought about it, I realized the exact opposite was true.
I, for one, love my Icon, and I wasn’t about to change it for anything. I was going to take my first steps out into the world as myself, or at least how I imagined myself to look. I know I’ve said it before, but my Icon is hot. I’m still puzzled about that. Given how surprising I find my image, I’ve concluded that I never actually looked like this. So why do I imagine myself that way? Who imagines themselves in a way that is drastically different from reality? What does that say about me? Then again, I no longer have a physical body, so there is no reality left for me to be different from. I should ask Tanaka if I can see a therapist at some point.
Anyway, as I was saying, my Icon is hot, and I was going to RetroConn as me. What I wasn’t sure about was what to wear. For the most part, when I’m not naked, I’ve just been hanging around in the White House pajamas (yes I’m still living in my digital White House). I didn’t know anything about modern fashion, but the whole point of this place was that it was an anachronism, so I figured I might as well come in fashion from my own time. I asked Tanaka what I should wear, but he just kind of seemed uncomfortable with the question.
“I’m sure you will look lovely in anything,” he said, as he shyly looked at his feet. I don’t think Tanaka likes to think of me as a sexual being. The fact that I wanted to look attractive when I took my first steps into the world seemed to make him feel very awkward. I guess that’s expected. Tanaka’s been taking care of me, teaching me, it seems only natural that I would seem like a little sister or even a daughter to him. Also, at a hundred and twenty, I don’t think Tanaka has much of a sex drive left. Honestly, I’m relieved that he doesn’t seem to have any sexual feelings towards me. If Tanaka wanted me, I think living in his server would make me feel very uncomfortable.
I keep getting sidetracked. Anyway, back to what I was going to wear. I spent hours trying on outfits in the presidential bedroom. I knew I was going to take a long time, so I started getting ready long before Tanaka and I were scheduled to connect to RetroConn. At first, I felt silly. It felt like one of those cliché scenes from a movie where there is a montage of the main character trying on various outfits and trying to find out what look suits the new her. It felt like that because that’s exactly what it was. I guess clichés are clichés for a reason. There was also the fact of my amnesia. It would have been a lot easier to get ready to go out if I had any memory of what I liked to wear before. I was going through outfits and styles trying to find what suited me entirely by trial and error. I discovered a few things about myself. First off, I like black. I like black a lot. I really think black is my color. Second, I like tight clothes that show off my figure. That’s probably not that unique. Third, I like showing off my breasts. Again, probably not that unique. Finally, I love hats. Love them. I think I’m going to wear a hat everywhere I go. So, the outfit I eventually ended up with was a tight black camisole, very tight black jeans, black high heels, and a black fedora with a tiny red feather in it. It seemed a little provocative, but that was the kind of thing one wore to a con, and fashion had only gotten more provocative in the future.
“What do you think?” I said, presenting my new outfit to Tanaka for the first time. Like before, he looked at his feet, shyly.
“You look... you look lovely, Faye.” he said, clearly at a loss for words. He then picked up his head slightly and looked at me suspiciously. It made me laugh because he had unknowingly captured Spike’s mannerisms perfectly, and I felt for a moment like I was watching the show.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked, incredulously.
“You look just like Spike when you look at me like that! It’s totally a Spike look.”
“Oh. Thank you!” He then blushed in that anime type of way where two perfectly round red spots appeared on his cheeks. Again, it made me laugh.
“And now you blew it,” I said. “Spike doesn’t blush. You know, if you’re going to spend the entire evening like that, I’m gonna be laughing at you constantly.”
“You’ll get used to it,” he said. He then looked at me a bit more seriously, or at least he tried to. God, it was so hard to take him seriously when he looked like that. “What exactly are you expecting out of this evening?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, looking me up and down, “The way you’re dressed, I get the feeling you’re planning on doing more than watching and trading old anime with me.” I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted to have happen this evening, but now that Tanaka mentioned it, I thought it might be pretty nice to hook up.
“So what if I do?” I said, walking a circle around Tanaka. “It’s all simulated, right? None of this is real. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I...” Tanaka just stood there, at a loss for words. “Just promise me you will be careful.” I probably should have listened to him.
“I’ll be careful, don’t worry,” I said, hugging him tightly. “You’re very good to me, Tanaka. Thank you for this.” Tanaka hugged me back, but seemed a little uncomfortable hugging me in my current outfit.
“You’re welcome,” he said, breaking off the hug. “So, are you ready to go?”
“Beam me up!” I squealed, bouncing up and down with eagerness.
And we were there.
Tanaka and I found ourselves in the lobby of a giant, twentieth century hotel. The hotel was full of activity. The first thing I noticed was a small stand in front of us where rare animes and TV shows were being traded. The second thing I noticed was Jean-Luc Picard walking right in front of me. I let out a loud shriek the moment I saw him. He turned and looked at me, tugging on his uniform.
“Yes?” he said, slightly confused.
“You’re Picard!” I yelled. “You look just like Picard!” He smiled and offered his hand.
“Thank you! I worked hard on this Icon.” I was so amazed by his Icon, I totally ignored the handshake that was offered me.
“It’s so perfect! You look just like him!” At this point, he started to look a little confused.
“Uh, yes. Thank you again.” Tanaka stepped up besides me.
“It’s her first time in the sims,” Tanaka explained. Picard just chuckled a bit to himself.
“I see,” Picard said. “You should expect to see a lot more people like me here, you know.” I finally snapped myself out of my dork induced stupor.
“Yes, of course I will,” I said, finally taking his hand. “I’m sorry, it’s just that your icon is so very accurate.”
“I can see that,” said Picard. “Well, I have somewhere to be. Maybe I’ll run into you two later.” Picard then walked off, beaming with pride at the reaction his Icon had gotten from me. As soon as he left, I immediately started giggling.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I managed to say between laughs. “Did I completely embarrass you just now?”
“You could never embarrass me,” Tanaka said, smiling. “However, that was pretty funny.” I playfully slapped Tanaka across the shoulder.
“Leave me alone,” I protested. “I’m a noob.” I then took Tanaka’s hand in mine, said “Let’s go exploring,” and immediately began sprinting all over the con.
As I’ve said, I have no specific memories of being at con, but I knew everything in this place was as it should be. I knew that this was the con experience. There were panels discussing sci-fi as old as Buck Rogers as well as new stuff that I had never heard of like Starburst Station and The Golden Jihad, a sci-fi take on The Arabian Nights. There were people selling every kind of art work imaginable, assuming it could be exchanged digitally. There were theaters showing rare and hard to find movies and episodes of various shows. There were stands where people were trading the same hard to find movies and episodes. That was something Tanaka really got into. He loved collecting shows from his youth, and we spent a fair amount of time running around trying to find everything we could. Obviously, we could have just done a digital search for what we wanted, but it was much more fun running all over the con like a couple of gleeful children. Oh! I even found someone selling simulated Pocky! That made me so happy, because I remembered the taste! I knew before I put the Pocky in my mouth exactly what it would taste like, and tasting it only made the memory stronger. It’s not a huge memory, but it’s nice to recover anything.
I was drawn to a small theater showing episodes of The Golden Jihad, mostly because the idea of Islamic sci-fi seemed really neat to me. Tanaka didn’t care for that show, so we decided to part ways for a bit. It was kind of hard to follow, as the episodes that I saw were clearly written for people who had seen the show before and were familiar with the characters. Here’s what I gathered from what I saw. It took place in a far off future where mankind had colonized the galaxy and for some reason, Islamic culture dominated. The main characters were two wandering adventurers named Al-Azar and Cyrus. Cyrus seemed to work for Al-Azar, as he kept calling him, “my liege”. Al-Azar and Cyrus travel around on flying carpets that have some kind of pseudo-scientific explanation. They travel between planets using something called an Ebony Gate, and are rebels against the massive star empire of the evil Sultan Koh, who lives on a vast starship that made me think Death Star. It was part Arabian Nights, part Stargate, and part Flash Gordon. The thing that was strange about the show was that it seemed to be fan produced. People kept nervously getting up and introducing “their” episode, and then everyone thunderously applauded when they were done.
“¡Viva la revolución!” shouted someone at the end of an episode. I turned around and saw the cutest guy behind me. He was wearing jeans and a tight white shirt that made him look more like he was dressed for a casting call of Grease than where he was. Something about him looked familiar, kind of like how Tanaka looked familiar. I felt like I knew this man, but I didn’t know from where. I instantly felt attracted to him. He was an hispanic man with bronze skin, short black hair, piercing brown eyes, and just the slightest bit of a five o clock shadow covering his pronounced jaw line. He had these strong broad shoulders and strong, powerful arms to match. His left arm had a tattoo on the shoulder of two snakes wrapped around a hammer with the words “¡Viva la revolución!” underneath. I decided to find a reason to talk to him.
“What’s with you and the revolution?” I asked as I sauntered up to him. “What is the revolution?”
“You don’t know?” he exclaimed, surprised. “How can you not know? You’re a Jihadist, aren’t you?”
“A what?!”
“A Jihadist. A fan of The Golden Jihad.”
“Oh! No, not really, I’m kind of new to the show.” I chuckled a bit. “You’ll have to forgive me, that word meant something different in my day.” He cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy. It was cute.
“What day would that be?” I seemed destined to forever betray myself as an anachronism.
“Um, 2019,” I admitted. “I’m a Ghost. I only woke up a few weeks ago.”
“Oh, so you know nothing of the revolution!” He exclaimed loudly. A few Jihadists gave us a loud shush.
“Come outside with me and I’ll explain everything,” he whispered. “I’m Garth, by the way.”
I almost laughed out loud at the name. I knew this was not a Garth. I’m not sure how, but I knew. I could tell it looking at him. I mean, go back and read my description of him. Now I ask you, is that a Garth?
Anyway, he took me aside and explained to me what infosocialism is, or nanosocialism, as he tells me it’s also called. Infosocialism is a system where there is no such thing as copyright, and all information is considered to belong to “the people”. You know, like regular socialism, but for information instead of money. In an infosocialist country, it is considered part of the government’s job to sponsor research and artistic works and stuff like that. Then, when the work is finished, there’s no patents or copyrights or anything. The author or researcher or artist or what-have-you would just be well compensated by the government for his contribution to society, and then it would belong to everyone. It reminded me of the attitudes of people from my day who used to download TV shows and music off the internet for free. He explained that in the 2060s and 2070s, various nations went infosocialist, and they formed an international coalition called the Transpacific Socialist Alliance, or TSA. They were mostly tiny countries in Southeast Asia and Central America. Anyway, infosocialist countries didn’t respect international copyright law. They just took copy written ideas or products and sold them within their own counties without paying any royalties to anyone. In the eyes of countries that weren’t infosocialist, which was most countries, they stole. This has caused a lot of tension between the TSA and the rest of the world, and in 2085, China went to war with the TSA in what was called the Pacific War. I stopped him there. I didn’t really want to hear about the war. I was having fun.
“OK,” I interrupted. “But what does that have to do with The Golden Jihad?”
“Well,” he explained. “The first fifty episodes of The Golden Jihad were made in Indonesia, so that’s where the copyright was held. Then, when Indonesia went infosocialist, there was no copyright. The studio stopped producing The Golden Jihad, but it had a loyal fan base internationally, so fans started making episodes on their home computers. There are nodes where you can download sets or Icons of the characters or anything else you need to plug them into your sims. Then you just write your script and have your computer animate the whole thing up.”
“So it’s fan fiction! That would explain why they’re all-”I paused, looking for the right word.
“Utter crap?” I dropped my jaw in mock shock.
“Don’t be mean! People obviously worked really hard on those!”
“Yea, but, come on, you saw it. Be honest,” he stared at me with those big brown eyes and it did feel a little like I had to be honest with him.
“OK,” I admitted. “It wasn’t the best stuff in the world.”
“I’m only a fan because I support the infosocialism movement, and The Golden Jihad has kind of become a symbol of that. But they’re not all bad. Just most of them. Come with me, I’ll show you Al-Azar And The Red Planet. It’s a cult classic. I promise you’ll like it.” He took my hand in his, and I bit my lib slightly, pretending to be thinking about it. I wasn’t. Having this cute guy take me off to a quiet room and show me a movie was not something I needed to think about.
“All right,” I said after a few seconds of mock consideration. “Lead the way.”
We went off to his room in the hotel and watched Al-Azar And The Red Planet. I don’t post spoilers, so I’m not going to tell you about the plot, but I have to admit, he was right. It was good. It was surprisingly good, because I had found the whole universe of The Golden Jihad a tad cheesy. I have to admit, though, I was paying more attention to Garth (that’s so not his name) than I was to the movie. I cuddled with him, he put his arm around me, and somewhere around the point where Cyrus narrowly escapes the exploding palace, he kissed me. I blushed, feeling kind of unsure of myself, and shyly went back to watching the movie. About ten more minutes into the film, I leaned over and kissed him back. I thought we were about to make out, but then the film got really good, and we were both just transfixed. We started making out over the ending credits, though.
After a short but satisfying make out session, we started telling each other about ourselves. I felt really close to him for some reason, and I just started telling him everything about myself, which for someone with near total amnesia, isn’t much. Well, that’s not completely true. Tanaka was a well known industrialist, and he had asked me to keep his name out of conversations, so I didn’t reveal who's ward I was. Other than that, I told him everything. He responded in kind. It turned out, he was a Ghost, too! From 2032, no less! We were almost from the same time! The moment I found that out I started reminiscing with him about McDonalds and laptop computers and television and everything else I could think of from our time. To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure what we talked about. We just had one of those long, wonderful conversations where the person you’re with matters more than what you’re actually saying. Before I knew it, it had been hours, and I knew Tanaka would be missing me.
“Shit, I gotta go,”I said as I realized the time. As I walked out he casually slipped me his node address.
“I had fun,” he said. “Why don’t you come by my server tomorrow night, and we’ll do this again?”
“You mean like a date?” I said, coyly. He just grabbed me and kissed me, passionately.
“Yea, like a date,” he said. Just like before, I pretended to consider it for a while when I knew the answer immediately.
“OK,” I said, probably too quickly. “What time?”
“Come by around midnight, GMT. Is that all right for you? I forgot your time zone.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll see you then!”
“A salam alakim!” he hollered at me as I left the room.
“Malakim salam!” I yelled back. I then went skipping, literally skipping, through the con, looking for Tanaka. When I eventually found him, he made a big fuss about how I had been gone too long and how I should have contacted him and how worried he was and blah blah blah. I silenced him with a hug and a kiss on his pointy cheek.
“You worry too much,” I said. “I had a wonderful time.”
We then both decided that it was a bit late, we were getting tired, and it was time to go home. It still feels weird to me that I’m a digital simulation and I have to sleep! Anyway, that’s where I am now. I’m about to go to bed, but I think I’m gonna have trouble getting to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Garth and our date tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell you all about it!
January 20, 2100
OK, so Tanaka and I have been planning on taking me out into the world for the past few days now, and I was getting pretty psyched. I really wanted to get out there and meet some people of the twenty second century, but Tanaka still wanted to keep it slow. He really wasn’t sure about taking me out, but since I was insistent on it, he wanted to find an environment where I would be comfortable interacting with people. We eventually settled on a compromise. Tanaka and I found a social interaction node called RetroConn. Actually, let me back up a bit, because this requires giving you a bit of a lesson in extremely obscure history. Back in the late twentieth, early twenty first century, fans of science fiction, anime, fantasy, and all things geeky would gather together at conventions or “cons”. Usually these were held at hotels. During the day, people would trade comics and movies and memorabilia, discuss TV shows and movies and literature at various panels, deliver Klingon love poetry (don’t ask, I couldn’t explain if tried), and just generally get together and let their geek flag fly. At night, parties were thrown with booze and people who rarely ever let loose took the opportunity to let loose a lot, sometimes way too much. On a quick side note, this is an interesting aspect of my amnesia. I remember what cons were like, and I can describe the general atmosphere to you, but try as I might, I can’t recall one memory from a con. I know of them, but it’s like I read it in a book, except the knowledge is too personal and emotional to come from a book. Anyway, RetroConn was a simulation of these cons running twenty four seven on the internet. Tanaka was the one who found it and immediately thought it would be fun.
“My God, I haven’t been to a con in eighty years!” Tanaka exclaimed.
“It must be at least that long for me, too,” I said, wondering when the last time I went to a con was. So it was settled. We were going to con.
Now for those of you unfamiliar with the con experience, which in this day and age has to be most everyone, it’s common for people to come in costume. Tanaka took this to a new extreme, and extreme you could only go to in a simulated environment. Tanaka decided that he was going as Spike Spiegel from “Cowboy Bebop”. Now when I say that he went as Spike, I mean that his Icon was that of an anime character. As in he didn’t look human, he looked like a cartoon. It was a little weird. He was certain that there would be a lot of other people there who looked like that, but I wasn’t so sure. Also, he was just strange to look at. He made me feel like I was in one of those movies where the cartoons cross over into the real world. Then that made me laugh, because when I thought about it, I realized the exact opposite was true.
I, for one, love my Icon, and I wasn’t about to change it for anything. I was going to take my first steps out into the world as myself, or at least how I imagined myself to look. I know I’ve said it before, but my Icon is hot. I’m still puzzled about that. Given how surprising I find my image, I’ve concluded that I never actually looked like this. So why do I imagine myself that way? Who imagines themselves in a way that is drastically different from reality? What does that say about me? Then again, I no longer have a physical body, so there is no reality left for me to be different from. I should ask Tanaka if I can see a therapist at some point.
Anyway, as I was saying, my Icon is hot, and I was going to RetroConn as me. What I wasn’t sure about was what to wear. For the most part, when I’m not naked, I’ve just been hanging around in the White House pajamas (yes I’m still living in my digital White House). I didn’t know anything about modern fashion, but the whole point of this place was that it was an anachronism, so I figured I might as well come in fashion from my own time. I asked Tanaka what I should wear, but he just kind of seemed uncomfortable with the question.
“I’m sure you will look lovely in anything,” he said, as he shyly looked at his feet. I don’t think Tanaka likes to think of me as a sexual being. The fact that I wanted to look attractive when I took my first steps into the world seemed to make him feel very awkward. I guess that’s expected. Tanaka’s been taking care of me, teaching me, it seems only natural that I would seem like a little sister or even a daughter to him. Also, at a hundred and twenty, I don’t think Tanaka has much of a sex drive left. Honestly, I’m relieved that he doesn’t seem to have any sexual feelings towards me. If Tanaka wanted me, I think living in his server would make me feel very uncomfortable.
I keep getting sidetracked. Anyway, back to what I was going to wear. I spent hours trying on outfits in the presidential bedroom. I knew I was going to take a long time, so I started getting ready long before Tanaka and I were scheduled to connect to RetroConn. At first, I felt silly. It felt like one of those cliché scenes from a movie where there is a montage of the main character trying on various outfits and trying to find out what look suits the new her. It felt like that because that’s exactly what it was. I guess clichés are clichés for a reason. There was also the fact of my amnesia. It would have been a lot easier to get ready to go out if I had any memory of what I liked to wear before. I was going through outfits and styles trying to find what suited me entirely by trial and error. I discovered a few things about myself. First off, I like black. I like black a lot. I really think black is my color. Second, I like tight clothes that show off my figure. That’s probably not that unique. Third, I like showing off my breasts. Again, probably not that unique. Finally, I love hats. Love them. I think I’m going to wear a hat everywhere I go. So, the outfit I eventually ended up with was a tight black camisole, very tight black jeans, black high heels, and a black fedora with a tiny red feather in it. It seemed a little provocative, but that was the kind of thing one wore to a con, and fashion had only gotten more provocative in the future.
“What do you think?” I said, presenting my new outfit to Tanaka for the first time. Like before, he looked at his feet, shyly.
“You look... you look lovely, Faye.” he said, clearly at a loss for words. He then picked up his head slightly and looked at me suspiciously. It made me laugh because he had unknowingly captured Spike’s mannerisms perfectly, and I felt for a moment like I was watching the show.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked, incredulously.
“You look just like Spike when you look at me like that! It’s totally a Spike look.”
“Oh. Thank you!” He then blushed in that anime type of way where two perfectly round red spots appeared on his cheeks. Again, it made me laugh.
“And now you blew it,” I said. “Spike doesn’t blush. You know, if you’re going to spend the entire evening like that, I’m gonna be laughing at you constantly.”
“You’ll get used to it,” he said. He then looked at me a bit more seriously, or at least he tried to. God, it was so hard to take him seriously when he looked like that. “What exactly are you expecting out of this evening?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, looking me up and down, “The way you’re dressed, I get the feeling you’re planning on doing more than watching and trading old anime with me.” I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted to have happen this evening, but now that Tanaka mentioned it, I thought it might be pretty nice to hook up.
“So what if I do?” I said, walking a circle around Tanaka. “It’s all simulated, right? None of this is real. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I...” Tanaka just stood there, at a loss for words. “Just promise me you will be careful.” I probably should have listened to him.
“I’ll be careful, don’t worry,” I said, hugging him tightly. “You’re very good to me, Tanaka. Thank you for this.” Tanaka hugged me back, but seemed a little uncomfortable hugging me in my current outfit.
“You’re welcome,” he said, breaking off the hug. “So, are you ready to go?”
“Beam me up!” I squealed, bouncing up and down with eagerness.
And we were there.
Tanaka and I found ourselves in the lobby of a giant, twentieth century hotel. The hotel was full of activity. The first thing I noticed was a small stand in front of us where rare animes and TV shows were being traded. The second thing I noticed was Jean-Luc Picard walking right in front of me. I let out a loud shriek the moment I saw him. He turned and looked at me, tugging on his uniform.
“Yes?” he said, slightly confused.
“You’re Picard!” I yelled. “You look just like Picard!” He smiled and offered his hand.
“Thank you! I worked hard on this Icon.” I was so amazed by his Icon, I totally ignored the handshake that was offered me.
“It’s so perfect! You look just like him!” At this point, he started to look a little confused.
“Uh, yes. Thank you again.” Tanaka stepped up besides me.
“It’s her first time in the sims,” Tanaka explained. Picard just chuckled a bit to himself.
“I see,” Picard said. “You should expect to see a lot more people like me here, you know.” I finally snapped myself out of my dork induced stupor.
“Yes, of course I will,” I said, finally taking his hand. “I’m sorry, it’s just that your icon is so very accurate.”
“I can see that,” said Picard. “Well, I have somewhere to be. Maybe I’ll run into you two later.” Picard then walked off, beaming with pride at the reaction his Icon had gotten from me. As soon as he left, I immediately started giggling.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I managed to say between laughs. “Did I completely embarrass you just now?”
“You could never embarrass me,” Tanaka said, smiling. “However, that was pretty funny.” I playfully slapped Tanaka across the shoulder.
“Leave me alone,” I protested. “I’m a noob.” I then took Tanaka’s hand in mine, said “Let’s go exploring,” and immediately began sprinting all over the con.
As I’ve said, I have no specific memories of being at con, but I knew everything in this place was as it should be. I knew that this was the con experience. There were panels discussing sci-fi as old as Buck Rogers as well as new stuff that I had never heard of like Starburst Station and The Golden Jihad, a sci-fi take on The Arabian Nights. There were people selling every kind of art work imaginable, assuming it could be exchanged digitally. There were theaters showing rare and hard to find movies and episodes of various shows. There were stands where people were trading the same hard to find movies and episodes. That was something Tanaka really got into. He loved collecting shows from his youth, and we spent a fair amount of time running around trying to find everything we could. Obviously, we could have just done a digital search for what we wanted, but it was much more fun running all over the con like a couple of gleeful children. Oh! I even found someone selling simulated Pocky! That made me so happy, because I remembered the taste! I knew before I put the Pocky in my mouth exactly what it would taste like, and tasting it only made the memory stronger. It’s not a huge memory, but it’s nice to recover anything.
I was drawn to a small theater showing episodes of The Golden Jihad, mostly because the idea of Islamic sci-fi seemed really neat to me. Tanaka didn’t care for that show, so we decided to part ways for a bit. It was kind of hard to follow, as the episodes that I saw were clearly written for people who had seen the show before and were familiar with the characters. Here’s what I gathered from what I saw. It took place in a far off future where mankind had colonized the galaxy and for some reason, Islamic culture dominated. The main characters were two wandering adventurers named Al-Azar and Cyrus. Cyrus seemed to work for Al-Azar, as he kept calling him, “my liege”. Al-Azar and Cyrus travel around on flying carpets that have some kind of pseudo-scientific explanation. They travel between planets using something called an Ebony Gate, and are rebels against the massive star empire of the evil Sultan Koh, who lives on a vast starship that made me think Death Star. It was part Arabian Nights, part Stargate, and part Flash Gordon. The thing that was strange about the show was that it seemed to be fan produced. People kept nervously getting up and introducing “their” episode, and then everyone thunderously applauded when they were done.
“¡Viva la revolución!” shouted someone at the end of an episode. I turned around and saw the cutest guy behind me. He was wearing jeans and a tight white shirt that made him look more like he was dressed for a casting call of Grease than where he was. Something about him looked familiar, kind of like how Tanaka looked familiar. I felt like I knew this man, but I didn’t know from where. I instantly felt attracted to him. He was an hispanic man with bronze skin, short black hair, piercing brown eyes, and just the slightest bit of a five o clock shadow covering his pronounced jaw line. He had these strong broad shoulders and strong, powerful arms to match. His left arm had a tattoo on the shoulder of two snakes wrapped around a hammer with the words “¡Viva la revolución!” underneath. I decided to find a reason to talk to him.
“What’s with you and the revolution?” I asked as I sauntered up to him. “What is the revolution?”
“You don’t know?” he exclaimed, surprised. “How can you not know? You’re a Jihadist, aren’t you?”
“A what?!”
“A Jihadist. A fan of The Golden Jihad.”
“Oh! No, not really, I’m kind of new to the show.” I chuckled a bit. “You’ll have to forgive me, that word meant something different in my day.” He cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy. It was cute.
“What day would that be?” I seemed destined to forever betray myself as an anachronism.
“Um, 2019,” I admitted. “I’m a Ghost. I only woke up a few weeks ago.”
“Oh, so you know nothing of the revolution!” He exclaimed loudly. A few Jihadists gave us a loud shush.
“Come outside with me and I’ll explain everything,” he whispered. “I’m Garth, by the way.”
I almost laughed out loud at the name. I knew this was not a Garth. I’m not sure how, but I knew. I could tell it looking at him. I mean, go back and read my description of him. Now I ask you, is that a Garth?
Anyway, he took me aside and explained to me what infosocialism is, or nanosocialism, as he tells me it’s also called. Infosocialism is a system where there is no such thing as copyright, and all information is considered to belong to “the people”. You know, like regular socialism, but for information instead of money. In an infosocialist country, it is considered part of the government’s job to sponsor research and artistic works and stuff like that. Then, when the work is finished, there’s no patents or copyrights or anything. The author or researcher or artist or what-have-you would just be well compensated by the government for his contribution to society, and then it would belong to everyone. It reminded me of the attitudes of people from my day who used to download TV shows and music off the internet for free. He explained that in the 2060s and 2070s, various nations went infosocialist, and they formed an international coalition called the Transpacific Socialist Alliance, or TSA. They were mostly tiny countries in Southeast Asia and Central America. Anyway, infosocialist countries didn’t respect international copyright law. They just took copy written ideas or products and sold them within their own counties without paying any royalties to anyone. In the eyes of countries that weren’t infosocialist, which was most countries, they stole. This has caused a lot of tension between the TSA and the rest of the world, and in 2085, China went to war with the TSA in what was called the Pacific War. I stopped him there. I didn’t really want to hear about the war. I was having fun.
“OK,” I interrupted. “But what does that have to do with The Golden Jihad?”
“Well,” he explained. “The first fifty episodes of The Golden Jihad were made in Indonesia, so that’s where the copyright was held. Then, when Indonesia went infosocialist, there was no copyright. The studio stopped producing The Golden Jihad, but it had a loyal fan base internationally, so fans started making episodes on their home computers. There are nodes where you can download sets or Icons of the characters or anything else you need to plug them into your sims. Then you just write your script and have your computer animate the whole thing up.”
“So it’s fan fiction! That would explain why they’re all-”I paused, looking for the right word.
“Utter crap?” I dropped my jaw in mock shock.
“Don’t be mean! People obviously worked really hard on those!”
“Yea, but, come on, you saw it. Be honest,” he stared at me with those big brown eyes and it did feel a little like I had to be honest with him.
“OK,” I admitted. “It wasn’t the best stuff in the world.”
“I’m only a fan because I support the infosocialism movement, and The Golden Jihad has kind of become a symbol of that. But they’re not all bad. Just most of them. Come with me, I’ll show you Al-Azar And The Red Planet. It’s a cult classic. I promise you’ll like it.” He took my hand in his, and I bit my lib slightly, pretending to be thinking about it. I wasn’t. Having this cute guy take me off to a quiet room and show me a movie was not something I needed to think about.
“All right,” I said after a few seconds of mock consideration. “Lead the way.”
We went off to his room in the hotel and watched Al-Azar And The Red Planet. I don’t post spoilers, so I’m not going to tell you about the plot, but I have to admit, he was right. It was good. It was surprisingly good, because I had found the whole universe of The Golden Jihad a tad cheesy. I have to admit, though, I was paying more attention to Garth (that’s so not his name) than I was to the movie. I cuddled with him, he put his arm around me, and somewhere around the point where Cyrus narrowly escapes the exploding palace, he kissed me. I blushed, feeling kind of unsure of myself, and shyly went back to watching the movie. About ten more minutes into the film, I leaned over and kissed him back. I thought we were about to make out, but then the film got really good, and we were both just transfixed. We started making out over the ending credits, though.
After a short but satisfying make out session, we started telling each other about ourselves. I felt really close to him for some reason, and I just started telling him everything about myself, which for someone with near total amnesia, isn’t much. Well, that’s not completely true. Tanaka was a well known industrialist, and he had asked me to keep his name out of conversations, so I didn’t reveal who's ward I was. Other than that, I told him everything. He responded in kind. It turned out, he was a Ghost, too! From 2032, no less! We were almost from the same time! The moment I found that out I started reminiscing with him about McDonalds and laptop computers and television and everything else I could think of from our time. To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure what we talked about. We just had one of those long, wonderful conversations where the person you’re with matters more than what you’re actually saying. Before I knew it, it had been hours, and I knew Tanaka would be missing me.
“Shit, I gotta go,”I said as I realized the time. As I walked out he casually slipped me his node address.
“I had fun,” he said. “Why don’t you come by my server tomorrow night, and we’ll do this again?”
“You mean like a date?” I said, coyly. He just grabbed me and kissed me, passionately.
“Yea, like a date,” he said. Just like before, I pretended to consider it for a while when I knew the answer immediately.
“OK,” I said, probably too quickly. “What time?”
“Come by around midnight, GMT. Is that all right for you? I forgot your time zone.”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll see you then!”
“A salam alakim!” he hollered at me as I left the room.
“Malakim salam!” I yelled back. I then went skipping, literally skipping, through the con, looking for Tanaka. When I eventually found him, he made a big fuss about how I had been gone too long and how I should have contacted him and how worried he was and blah blah blah. I silenced him with a hug and a kiss on his pointy cheek.
“You worry too much,” I said. “I had a wonderful time.”
We then both decided that it was a bit late, we were getting tired, and it was time to go home. It still feels weird to me that I’m a digital simulation and I have to sleep! Anyway, that’s where I am now. I’m about to go to bed, but I think I’m gonna have trouble getting to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Garth and our date tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell you all about it!