There’s a saying that goes around in the player circles of World of Eden: You never know victory until you know death.
The most successful players are the ones who have died hundreds, thousands of times in WOE. Not because they are unskilled or even masochistic, but because to get really good at something, you have to fail the first couple of hundred times.
That’s a common fact of life. Practice makes progress, not perfection. And my twelve year old self knew better than anyone what the cost of perfection is.
For me, it was my dad’s death that was the ultimate cost.
I should rephrase.
The ultimate failure.
I saw my dad die on national television when I was in sixth grade, and I’ve never stopped feeling like a failure since.
-
The bell rings.
I lift my head from my desk and drowsily glance at my watch. 12pm. Time for lunch.
Packing up my backpack, I quickly put my barely filled notebook deep into my bag and stand up, swiping a sip from my water bottle. I weave my way through the desks, making my way to the door.
“Hey Buffy!”
I turn around and stifle an inward groan.
I forgot Adam was in my AP Physics class. And when I mean forget, I mean I fold this annoying inconvenient fact into a metaphysical piece of space and stuff it into the “Irrelevant” box in my mind palace. Adam usually sits with the “smart” jocks in the front of the room, while I’m hidden in the back corner of the classroom. I don’t pay much attention in the class, mostly staring at my laptop screen the whole time as Mr. Paxton is professing his undying love for quantum computing and other wonders of the universe. I don’t go to class to learn, I go to class to show up.
It's a universal truth of life that showing up is the key to being successful.
Too bad my dad never took note of this particular maxim.
When I was eight years old, I built a mini robot that could talk and also served as a web camera. I looked up some APIs that used satellite imagery to depict 3d projections of whichever place on the map you wanted to locate. Tell my bot a latitude and longitude and he’ll be able to show you a 3d map of the location in real time.
I entered my bot, that I affectionately nicknamed “Aspie”, into my school science fair. Day of the science fair, I won first place. Day of the science fair, my dad said he would show up to see me present. He never did and I was stuck in the back of my mom’s car with Aspie and a trophy that wouldn’t fit in my backpack, wordless.
My dad never failed to disappoint me.
My mom always made excuses for him. Saying he’s too busy with his “space gig” in California, analyzing weather patterns in mars or whichever planet he was busy spying on. It was like he didn’t live in this world, he was too busy with other worlds to notice me.
We used to live in the bay area when I was in elementary school but after the “incident” my mom finally had enough and she packed her bags and moved my brother and me to nyc. Leaving my dad was the best decision she ever made, she said, but I still hear her crying at night in her bed.
We all miss him. My mom buries herself in work to avoid thinking about him, Peter avoids coming home after basketball practice and just crashes at his friends’ places until 12am. Sometimes when I’m still awake at the brink of dawn, I hear him walking up the stairs to his bedroom.
None of us really spend any time together. We eat breakfast on mornings, but then the whole day’s either school or work or extracurricular activities.
Peter’s a little less jaded than me but even he says life’s a rat race that never finishes. He’s way more laid back than me but he’s still hyper competitive when it comes to sports and girls and school.
He and Adam were pretty close when we were kids, when all three of us hanged out together. Playing Halo in the living room on the couch. Eating tacos on the rooftop while looking at the sunset. Coasting the concrete streets on our skateboards. Playing basketball in parks with the guys. Going to free concerts during summers.
We even contemplated making a band together. Peter on drums, me on guitar, and Adam as vocalist. It never happened, but that doesn’t mean it never will.
Relationships ebb and flow, dip and rise again, like a sinusoidal wave. It’s never a perfect high, never a permanent low.
Right now?
It’s at a low.
I force a smile on my face, avoiding Adam’s direct gaze. It’s hard to make eye contact with someone you used to know really well but now feels like a stranger. Like there’s this void between us that can’t be travailed and renders our story a chaos because a chapter or two are missing.
My dad would have known what to do. Surmounting black holes in space and in conversation was more his thing, not mine.
“Hey Adam. What’s up?”
“Nothing much! How’s your internship going?”
Ah. The Internship. I was trying to avoid thinking about what happened yesterday at work, but thanks Adam for bringing it up.
After the fight in Zion and I blacked out, I woke up in Exodus’ lab to find Luke and Mahmed still in their pods. I was the only one who was ejected so I waited a couple of minutes before deciding to go back in. I turned on my headset, fastened the visor, and tried entering the game.
No go. There was a block and I couldn’t see the action.
Luke exited soon after though. We both couldn’t go back in and we waited for Mahmed to come out. We tried manually ejecting him through the main control. We waited over half an hour for him, shaking him, tapping on his head, pulling his arms.
After midnight, Luke and I both decided to go home. Figured Mahmed would eventually leave.
I force a smile on my face, avoiding Adam’s direct gaze.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Nothing much, just hanging in there. How’s college applications going?”
Seriously Adam? You’ve known that I was meant for Columbia and Columbia was meant for me since the dawn of the ages.
Unlike us, Columbia and I are close like –
(tries not to make an obscene gesture with my hands)
Anyway, ignoring my inner monologue.
“They’re good. I worked on my essays during the summer. Where are you applying?”
“That’s great! I’m still working on mine. I’m not applying anywhere early decision but have a bunch of colleges I’m applying to regular cycle.”
Shit. I need a back up plan just in case I don’t get into Columbia. Adam has a way of triggering my anxieties when I’m feeling confident and bumptious. He always needs to take me down a notch. ALWAYS.
As if. My mom’s a freaking professor there, Adam, do I need to say more?
Anyway, I really need to cut this conversation off short.
“Cool. So I need to get to my next class, see you around?”
“Wait. I wanted to talk to you about the party my friend’s hosting on Friday. You know James Ruben?”
I try not to roll my eyes. There’s always a party someone or other is hosting. I’ve only ever been to Xander’s parties in his gigantic ass mansion, as I stay clear from the “popular” kids at my school. Xander’s weird enough to be my friend, but the others?
“Yeah I know him. Captain of robotics team. And the swim team. And the basketball team.”
And his family’s white and rich and he’s probably going to attend Harvard as a legacy.
Can I say not interested?
Yeah, not interested.
“Think I’ll pass, I’m busy this weekend. Have fun though”.
I turn to leave but then Adam says,
“There’s going to be a robot there. At the party. Like, you know, Baymax?”
I freeze.
Did he say a robot’s attending a high school party?
“I’m serious. James made some robot for this robotics competition and he’s going to be demoing him-it at his party.”
“Demoing it?”
I’m listening. Tell me more.
“Yeah, and some other members of the robotics team are going to be bringing their ‘projects’ to the party as well.” Adam makes air quotes.
I’m trying not to be attracted to him, but I’m failing. Robots turn me on like no other.
“So I was thinking you’d be interested since you’re always programming something and you used to be on the robotics team?”
Yeah, used to. Before that asshole stole my code and submitted my work to this state fair and actually won second place.
Eff you James Ruben. I hold grudges.
“Yeah I think I’ll go. I have something I might like to bring. Text me the deets!”
I wink at Adam and turn to leave. Suppressing a grin, I grip my pen and resist stabbing it in my palm.
James Ruben’s going down. Everyone knows I’m programming queen and robotics is my domain. I may not have many friends, but I do have a robot or two who can masquerade as my friends.
Whipping out my phone, I type a short text to Chuck and Damien.
“Guys, there’s a party at James’ on Friday. Wanna be my plus-2?”
I get an immediate response,
“Hell yeah.”
“Count me in.”
Check and check.
And I still have a secret weapon.
Which is going to blow everyone’s mind.
This is going to be the best party of the year.
-
Before I tell you more about “this secret weapon”, let me give you some background info.
I joined the robotics team my freshman year. There was no programming club and what would be the point of that anyway, right? Our robotics team has won national competitions, and I wanted to be one of the best of the best. So I carried my laptop and my ego to the robotics lab and officially became a Robo.
Not to be mistaken with the state-of-the art AI-powered Robotex vacuum cleaner that sells for a whopping $899, tax not included.
Which we have a patent for. Not even kidding. Robotex was our robotics’ team invention.
I immersed myself in Robo-culture. I reveled in our projects, I learned so much from being around so many bright people that every day I felt myself getting smarter. I made friends, with guys, with girls, with robots.
Going Robo was the best thing that ever happened to me, I remember thinking at the end of my sophomore year when our team won the state fair for inventing a Baymax-clone.
Yes, Baymax. From Big Hero 6. So many before us tried to make that fantasy into a reality for years and years, but never succeeded.
We did it. It took us the majority of the year but we created a robot that could diagnose a patient through a full-body-scan, and provide not only a diagnosis but a treatment plan. All in 5 minutes.
That’s the reality of the world we live in today. What can high school students do when not distracted by social media?
A lot actually.
I thought I was going to stay a Robo for all of high school.
But something happened.
It changed the way I thought about myself. The world. People. Life.
The incident occurred on social media. On NewMe, a social network my school was using, I posted a picture I was posing with the Robotics Team, with Adam who joined after me, and James and all the other guys. There was one other Asian girl on the team who I was pretty good friends with, but she was holding the camera and wasn’t in the picture.
I was wearing a ponytail, my glasses, my arm around Adam’s and James’ backs, everyone was smiling, James was holding the trophy.
My profile blew up.
I got hundreds of hate comments. From girls I didn’t even know. Calling me dyke, slut, ugly, nerd, tomboy, snob. Girls ranting at me for thinking I could bag 2 hot “popular” boys when “you’re so ugly do you really think you’re hot enough for adam and james”, “go kill yourself bitch because you’re beneath us and you don’t deserve adam” and “think you have friends you fugly introvert stop showing off”
and the comments went on.
James commented saying “lol you think I like buffy? I don’t even see her as a girl.”
And on.
Things went to a standstill when I got a private message from Adam.
“Hey Buffy, can you take this photo down? A lot of girls are thinking I’m interested in you when we’ve been friends since kids. I don’t want the negative attention to affect your studies. Hope you’re ok.”
I broke down crying that night alone in my room. I sobbed and thought of my dad and if I’ll ever see him again and my mom and how proud she was when I won that trophy and how proud I was and how absolutely idiotic I was for ever thinking adam would ever like me, that way, the way I liked him, that way.
I deleted my photo. And my NewMe profile. I dropped out of the robotics team. Stopped talking to Adam and any of the other friends I made.
People mostly ignored me in school, because I walked really fast and wore a hoodie and was a loner. No one really cared about me, no one wanted to get to know me, no one cared about my accomplishments.
In school, I was no one.
I focused on my studies as usual. I ignored everyone and just hit the books.
And did a lot of thinking.
I never really thought about whether I was an introvert or an extrovert. I talked a lot sometimes and liked hanging out with my friends, I liked meeting new people and getting to know them, but I also liked being by myself and reading and listening to music and playing video games. Or so my profile said.
Something that shaped the way I viewed people was what my dad told me when I was five. That everyone is worth getting to know, everyone has something to offer the world and others, to think positively before negatively. To be open minded before anything.
And I approached people with that mindset.
I had over 3000 friends on NewMe. Most people knew me from classes, teams, extracurricular activities.
But that night, when Adam messaged me?
I felt I had no friends.
And I knew I only had one.
The truth is, Xander’s not my friend. I just pay him money to draw art for me.
And Charles and Damien aren’t real people, they’re bots I made.
And?
That night was the first night in a long time when I prayed to God again.
I couldn’t hear Him anymore. I haven’t read the Bible in ages, haven’t gone to church, haven’t done anything Christian.
But being Christian isn’t just something you take on like an internship or a job. It isn’t an identity you can shed and unshed.
The truth was, God was always with me since the day I was born and baptized. He never let go of me even when I hated him and cursed at him and tried so hard to get rid of Him in my life.
I cried so hard that night, knowing I sinned for caring more about others’ opinions of me than God’s view of me, for letting the world take God away from me just because I was so sad and mad and bitter.
When the whole world hated me, God loved me. When the whole world tried to take me down and there was no one by my side, God was still there.
To fight for my life meant to fight for God and to fight for God meant to fight for life, and to get up again after falling, to rise after having fallen?
I gave up the world, because the world didn’t love me.
But God loved me. I knew He did.
He never let me go.
And Friday night, I will show Him that I never had either.
-
It’s sunset and I’m only just heading home from my last class of the day when Xan texts me.
“Are you going to the party on Friday night at James?”
I submit a thumbs up. He has unerring timing.
“What are you going to wear?”
I roll my eyes. Ever the fashion-forward fashionista with a closet the size of his favorite fashion city, Milan, Xan only has clothes on his mind. Always.
His parents own their own fashion company that has branches in Europe, and they deliver couture items for Fall Fashion Week every year.
Xan’s walked in it, and he pressured me to go this year to watch him on the runway.
I want to decline, but he’s my favorite employee, so I might check it out.
I respond back,
“Just my regular jeans and shirt.”
I get an immediate ping.
“No.”
“You are going to come to my house right now and pick out an outfit that matches the occasion.”
Occasion? It’s a party with robots? Since when are robots fashion-conscious?
That argument wouldn’t matter to Xan, so I sigh and mumble whatever before sending him an affirmation.
Xan’s house is a 15-minute walk to Tribeca so I just hop on my board and ride the streets. The sky is colored reddish purple, covered by skyscrapers and street signs. No pigeons to be found in this area.
I avoid the cars, and arrive at Xan’s place. A luxury apartment townhouse located in the heart of Tribeca.
I press on the keypad, and Xan buzzes me in.
“Come to my closet.”
I inwardly roll my eyes. That’s how big his closet is, because who tells someone to go to their closet as if he was an executive of his own walk-in-fashion-closet-company.
I’m feeling a little excited though, because Xan’s closet is huge. He designs clothes as well as models them, and his clothes are actually easy on the eyes and wearable.
I walk in and Xan’s twirling on his office chair, scrolling on his projector screen of outfits, scrolling . I see a ballroom gown and a tulle skirt. I shudder silently. Not a good sign.
I plop down on a chair next to him, holding my backpack protectively against my chest as I watch him scroll through the outfits.
“Definitely no dresses, and definitely no tulle.”
Xan turns to me and smirks, holding up his wine cork as greeting.
“Hey princess. And no worries, I’ve got something better in mind.”
He gets up and walks to his mirror. It covers the span of the wall and I can see our reflections in it. He presses on it and it slides open.
A utopia appears. Rows of shoes revolve on a staircase surrounded by rows of clothing on hangers.
Xan’s Utopia. I would expect that to be the name of his closet, as it is like Xan to name insentient items as a means of collecting them and owning them under his own label. I silently judge the offensive fashion in front of me and inwardly cross my fingers that Xan will pick the least conspicuous outfit.
Because there’s a lot of… showy pieces.
Think, cotillion gowns and pink tuxes.
As if reading my mind, Xan says,
“No pink, Buffy. And I’ve got just the thing.”
He rummages through the hangers and picks out a hanger covered in opaque plastic.
He hands it to me and I uncover it, and it’s everything I expected it not to be.
A simple black halter top and cigarette black pants, made of a really soft material that I can’t guess at.
It’s not bad, but falls short of Xan’s level of drama and overachieving idealism.
Xan takes a pair of shoes from the showcase and hands it to me. Still looking at the outfit, I take the shoes and immediately gasp.
The shoes are amazing. They’re like ankle boots but with a slight edge. They’re silver and on the bottom I see indentations.
Wide eyed, I look up at Xan.
“These have blades?”
Xan smirks and says,
“Yup.”
Then these must be NexGear. NexGear shoes are a fortune to make and an even greater fortune to buy. The great thing about these shoes is that you can skate on them, levitate, climb walls, and speed up escalators.
Saves time.
No but seriously these shoes are amazing. I put them on and they snap on, adhering to my feet. It doesn’t even feel like I’m wearing shoes. I take a step and the buckles snap into place.
“They come with these.”
Xan hands me a pair of studs, which don’t require piercings (which is good because I believe in positive body image).
“They have voice recognition so if you say a single word, the shoes will adjust their setting.”
I say,
“Sail.”
The soles of my shoes change, and I start gliding through the room. It’s like speed skating with the wind in my feet.
I can feel eternity lying at my feet. With these shoes, the possibilities are limitless.
I’m transcending, bitches.
A thought comes at me, and I say a word without hesitating.
“Climb.”
I glide towards Xan’s wall and now I’m walking up the walls. Gliding on them, I walk to the ceiling, and hang upside down.
Now I’m ascending. Like angels are lifting me up. I don’t know how this is possible due to gravity, but with these, I can fly.
Next step, I’m going to Zion.
Xan groans and swipes his hand through his perfectly coiffed hair.
“You have a death wish?”
“Hop.”
And I hop down to the floor gracefully.
“Try on the clothes.”
He points to the built in changing room of his walk in closet. It looks like one of those portable bathrooms that were really popular on the outdoor concert scene when Coachella was still a thing. Coachella is now defunct, concerts have evolved to never-seen before heights.
But more on that later.
I toss on the clothes. They fit perfectly, since Xan knows every metric about me. I look in the mirror.
Should I gasp?
Wow, Buffy, you look amazing!
I walk out the changing room and give a twirl to Xan.
He claps and says,
“Knew it.”
I feel kinda self conscious with Xan staring at me, but then I remember he’s an asexual android.
Which isn’t fair, because I wish I were an android too, they don’t have to deal with sentient shit drama of everyday high school life.
Yeah anyway.
“try this on too.”
He pulls out a black blazer with silver lining and hands it to me.
I put it on and check myself out in the mirror.
Sweet. Just gave this outfit an upgrade. Also fits the socioeconomically elevated theme of the party I’m going to.
“Perfecto.”
Xan gives a thumbs up.
This party’s going to be awesome.
I can feel it.
And so can my shoes.
-
It’s Friday, and the party’s at 7.
Now that I have an outfit put together, courtesy of Xan, I spent the whole week working on my bot. His name is BB. Hope no one catches the Star Wars reference, because I don’t want to be sued for copyright violation.
Just like me, he’s levitatable, rollable, glideable, skateable, and can float in the air.
Don’t tell Xan, but I reverse engineered the shoes he gave me and figured out the algorithms that manufacture the weightless possibilities that are given to the wearer.
I programmed BB so that he follows me everywhere without my having to hold onto him 24/7. I believe in being independent, BB, and you should too.
But at the same time?
Never let me go, BB.
