Sparks, The Digital Companion

“Tell us what you did to get away from it all? Or what you did for a distraction when it all seemed too much to handle?”
-Massimo

 
>Because of the way events… erm… unfolded after the road trip
>Glasses and i didn’t meet face to face for a month.
>I avoided her mostly, when school started up again, saw her passing in the hallways and took a side route, avoiding eye contact and ducking my head.
>She noticed, and i’m sure she realized what i was doing, and why i was doing it.
>Sometimes when she got the thinking cap on too tight, she lost sight of everyone around her, feelings, emotions and the chaos she wrought.
>Even if her end goals were for the best; she ended up hurting the ones she was trying to help.
>I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that i’d almost made her a mother to my child, and the complete distrust i had for her after that.
>There’s nothing
>I repeat nothing in this world that’ll make you rethink your choices in a woman than her telling you she’s missed a period, or a pill, or taken a day-after “Just to be Safe”.
>It means there’s important decisions that she’s keeping from you, and keeping you out of the loop of, and that makes you the vulnerable one. The one hoping she’s not going to hurt you.
>And she had hurt me, and Raven dearly.
>If glasses and i didn’t meet face to face for a month.
>Raven and i didn’t say more than a sentence or two to one another in a week.
>And those weeks continued for half a year.
>Neither of us officially saying “It was over”
>But my dearest childhood friend, and who i had thought up to this point was the love of my life
>She’d distanced herself, under that oh-so-awful pretense
>Those heartwrenching words
>”I need time to think”

>In that first month i slowly spiraled downwards
>I’d lost two best friends, and without them to fill the gaps in my life i drifted aimlessly.
>Lost weight, appetite gone, restless through the nights; I spent hours and hours, until three or four in the morning when i had to wake up for school at seven.
>Tossing, turning, and eventually giving up, and turning to my computer
>The internet and it’s warm distracting glow, the expanse of the web for comfort until my eyes were heavy and daylight was nearly breaking.
>4chan was one place i ended up sure, along with a myriad of other forums and niche sites.
>I sought them for a blissful diversion, when others couldn’t help.
>Gadget, my official new “Best Friend” helped immensely.

>She filled my weekly hug quota, shoved me out the door frequently enough to ensure i was getting my vitamin D, and when she was in the mood, lewd was a welcome distraction.
>But it was obvious that’s all it was, it wasn’t a solution, it didn’t make things better.
>Gadget was quietly wise beyond her years, but…she wasn’t the best with words, and couldn’t pull me loose from my emotions, from beating myself up.
>All she managed was to slow it, until i quietly resigned myself to my room and immersed myself in my last vice.
>Video Games

>I ended up playing the time consuming ones. RPGs, and then quickly MMOs.
>Thousands of hours of playtime and distraction, online guilds, and members.
>I ended up on WoW, or i ended up putting more time into it than i had before, joined a guild, started gearing myself and soon my thoughts were more about the game than they were of school and the friends I found myself stepping ever so slowly away from.
>That went on, the expansion had been released (Burning Crusade) and i fervently worked towards flying, and then an epic flying mount.
>Gibberish that means nothing to those of you who never played, but everything to those of us who know the joy of riding your brand new netherdrake for the first time.
>Somewhere along the way, a heroic i think in tempest keep.
>That’s where i met “Sparks”
>A gnome mage, male with fiery green hair.
>Well the character was male, they had just joined my guild under the pretense of gearing up for raiding and we were tasked with running them through some difficult dungeons for great loot.
>Sparks, very quickly revealed themselves to be female IRL
>Supposedly lived in Wyoming, had absolutely nothing to do besides school and MMOs, and “Hated” boys.
>So freckles’ even more redneck cousin or something.
>I didn’t care, we didn’t seem to group up often, if ever, and i never went out of my way to talk to her.
>She went on mic ever so often, a staticy mess she claimed was a 5$ mic from walmart. It sounded terrible but it worked.
>Sure maybe 20% of the guild tried to get on “Her” good side, and 5% tried to hit on “Her” but i wasn’t there.
>That continued, a week and a half maybe.
>Before i get told after a piss poor performance in a raid, that i’m not well enough geared and need to go back to farming.
>):
>Also i was dying too much and wasting seeds.
>Then i get thrown back into the bracket with Sparks, and we end up groupmates by necessity.

>She surprisingly wasn’t a bitch
>Not as i expected as we grouped more and more often
>Passed on loot i needed that “She” could have easily taken, helped me out when i needed another player for an instance and was generally a pretty cool person.
>Me, the idiot as always
>I ignored the shit out of her, treated her like i would freckles in the same situation.
>Treated her like a boy, or like i didn’t even care that she was nice to me.
>If i wanted people to be nice to me after all, i could just piss around some of the girls IRL that were becoming increasingly more and more worried about me.

>Not raven, not glasses. But gadget, blondie and even aubrey were trying to stage interventions left and right. Invite me to all kinds of things to pull me out of my shell.
>I ignored them too.
>My parents sent me to a psychiatrist
>I spent all the first session trying to talk to her, and she kept latching on to little things
>Little tiny insignificant things, and telling me to reconsider them, or analyze how those went wrong.
>I didn’t go back for a second session, if i wanted someone to nitpick my life i could just piss off plenty of people at school.
>Sparks didn’t become a friend
>Even though from the moment i logged on, to the moment i logged off, i was always in some kind of group with her.
>Even early morning, when it must have been five, or six her time. When i was up doing fuck all grinding reagents or components for recipes.
>She joined me, silently in whatever vent (voice chat program) channel i was sitting in alone, or whatever
>There was the occasional whispered question, or comment.
>But we didn’t talk, and we didn’t bond, because frankly i didn’t even care about her.
>No matter the interest she was placing in me, that i was one of the few guildmembers her age
>(Wow was populated by old married couples in their 30s/40s, no shit probably 30%+ of the userbase was females that sounded like they just broke out of prison, or offered to bake you cookies and send them across the country to the general alarm of your parents).
>WoW was facebook for nerds before social media existed.
>You logged on, chatted with your guild, talked shit on vent, killed things, and logged off.
>So i logged on, talked shit with my guild, got shit talked back, ignored sparks even though she probably had some kind of misplaced interest in me or morbid curiosity in my life. Helped her get whatever instance we needed for the day, raided with my guild (We cleared the shit out of those raids yo) and grinded quietly till daybreak with sparks.
>Then fell asleep for a couple hours, woke up, went to school, slept through my classes, came home and did it all again.

>I was lonely i guess, depressed without words.
>Built myself a quiet prison and worked diligently to decorate the inside so i’d forget where i was.
>I’d say something sappy like “Sparks was always there for me” but it wasn’t really like that
>IT was just someone quiet that kept me silent company.
>No different than having nobody there
>Except for the knowledge that someone real, living and breathing was there awake with you.
>Two is the loneliest number…
>So that quiet relationship continued
>I helped a guild member out, and they helped me
>I always thought it was an unspoken agreement
>That we weren’t friends
>Until one day, in a dungeon another guildmember commented
>”So you and sparks?” He spoke on voice.
>”You’re always together, let me get the scoop? Best friends? You two planning to meet up anytime soon or…?”
>He was teasing, digging for more shit to fling at me
>That’s how guilds worked, you beat the shit out of one another, punching bags for emotions and we threw more crap at one another than monkeys
>That’s probably why we were so close to beating all the raids out at the time.
>Me
>I’m an asshole, so instead of lying
>Instead of saving that poor girl’s feelings, i told the truth
>”We don’t even know one another, we’re just on at the same time and it’s convenient”
>Guildie told me that was bullshit
>that we were in voice chat till all hours of the night, and we must be best buds by now.
>And i told him we never talked, and he was welcome to sit in there with us
>Last of all, i said we weren’t friends.

>And he did, two nights
>and we didn’t say a word to one another, just quietly grouped up and went on our merry way.
>Not so merry on sparks’ part, i could tell i’d broken her heart
>Or something similar, i doubt she loved me, i doubt she cared at all.
>That seemed to be my specialty, so i gave zero fucks, really
>I cared about as much as getting her character equipped
>Handing off the materials she needed to raid the next day, and whatever else we were doing.
>Sometime later, when we were alone again
>He mic lit up, a rare question
>This time, instead of about the game, or a monster we had to kill, it was about us.
>Expected, really
>”Why aren’t we friends?”
>I’m sure this question had been eating away at her, her self esteem and probably personal confidence for days.
>So you know me
>I went in for the kill
>”I don’t have friends, and because i don’t care about you”
>Our conversation in text, purple whispers.
>She said “That’s ok”
>and i knew she didn’t understand, i had to add emphasis
>I wanted to hurt her, because that’s the way i am
>I hurt, and i bring everyone else down with me to make myself feel worse.
>Ruin relationships and burn bridges
>That’s me
>I spice things up with an “At all” implying i care even less than caring less.
>Fucking sparks though
>More compassionate than i was, she just responded simply “It’s ok, i care about what happens to you”
>and then she had the audacity to ask me what was wrong.
>What in my life was WRONG
>So i told her

>That became the new norm, her silent, me bitching about my own life
>Things that went wrong, paths i shouldn’t have gone down, and people who ruined it for me.
>She never spoke
>And i just blurted everything
>If anything it didn’t make me feel better as much as it didn’t make me feel worse
>And someone listening that didn’t matter in the least, that was kinda nice
>Like a shrink that didn’t tell you to “Examine yourself” every ten minutes
>I fucking hated that.
>So sparks listened to me bitch
>And we beat WoW
>well, beat the raids anyway, Illidan was the end-boss at the time, fought through tanking the fire elementals in puddles of flame and dodging his laser beam eyes.
>Three months after the road-trip i’d geared up, joined a guild and helped them beat the stupid fucking game.
>And that was when Sparks finally said something, that night really
>As we were up late, quietly wondering what the point of playing was anymore, besides loot.
>Sparks brought up my friends, the ones i was ignoring
>the ones i said i didn’t have
>And she said that maybe
>Just maybe, they were trying to help
>”Trying to make it all better”

 

>Well that was it for me
>Not any moment of revelation or anything, i just suddenly felt as if sparks wasn’t worth trusting
>As if those simple words, although anyone could have said them. Made her dangerous.
>A tingling sense on the back of my neck.
>So for the first time that night
>I took interest in sparks
>I sent her a smiley face
>And started a conversation, and my worries grew
>I’d not looked for a friend in her, specially not one that wasn’t just going to quietly listen
>My selfish requirements broken
>Because sparks didn’t talk, shouldn’t talk.
>Maybe because i never really talked back, or started a conversation, or kept one going.
>Because i ignored sparks, imagining she might just go away
>And leave me to wallow alone, even though we ended up together
>Every night
>I sent her another smiley face
>this one different, a web page, an old site i’d found years ago.
>A personalized link, and anytime someone clicks on it you get an email in your inbox.
>They just see a smiley face.
>But you get to see their IP address, browser, internet provider, operating system and a million other tidbits your computer gives away for free.
>I plugged that into a finder, a rough locator of the nearest node.
>Los Angeles
>It ends up she was lying, maybe all along about being from bumfuck nowhere wyoming
>sure nodes are inaccurate, but they’re give or take twenty miles.
>This girl was in my city
>worse i might have even known her, un…
>I took that guess
>Those words she said to me, about making it better.
>Trying to help
>One girl loved to say that didn’t she.

>I called her out
>”FUCK YOU GLASSES!”
>Somewhere around 2:00 AM, i sent that message.
>Furious, ready to log out any moment and never come back.
>2:02: I got a single word reply from sparks
>”Wait!”
>Not “what?!” or “Who?”
>but an admission of guilt
>I waited, 2:03, 2:04, 2:05
>Tears in my eyes, vision clouding up i sat there
>Staring at the blurring screen, waiting for anything to make it better
>Until i realized, quickly and harshly that i’d felt better
>For the first time in months, i had been smiling, the novice distraction with sparks and the guild.
>And that was gone now
>That barrier that kept me from sinking lower, ripped from underneath my ankles, and i tumbled
>Logged out, and never looked back.
>Closed out of the messages she sent me, and ignored her entirely.
>Didn’t go to school that entire week
>Feigned sick, lay in bed, staring at the ceiling
>Gadget, long past her ability to cheer me up, showed up a few times to offer hugs, but i was depressing her too
>and hurting her seeing me like this, so eventually i told my parents to send her away if she showed up again.
>Blondie made it through once, arguing she hadn’t seen me in weeks to my distressed mother.
>And she went away in tears, after i’d snapped at her like a selfish turtle hiding in my shell.
>I heard from a guildmate that sparks still logged on
>Every night that week, and sat in our channel. Alone.
>waiting quietly for me to show up, to reappear for our nightly routine.
>And i never did.

>There should be some kind of moral to that story. Some kind of quiet lesson we should all learn. But there’s not.
>Not really, life doesn’t seem to have those for me.
>Instead it’s just the realization that Glasses
>Glasses had joined the game, leveled, joined the guild and followed me.
>Quietly, never once revealing herself, or scheming, or planning.
>Never once did she visibly influence events, or try to manipulate people behind the scenes.
>She’d just watched, and realized i didn’t need a friend.
>I had plenty of friends, and i just shoved them away, to hide in a corner alone.
>So glasses, all she did was follow me
>Keep me silent company, make sure that no matter what.
>That no matter how silent she was, or how little we truly interacted as “Friends”
>She took a burden just by being there, and that was what i needed.
>She made sure. I wasn’t left to suffer through my feelings alone.

>I was friends with sparks long before i was friends with glasses again
>contacted her out of the blue one day
>And asked if she wanted to play a game
>We set into a new MMO, and after that another, and another.
>Always different roles, and places, and systems, but we grouped and played together.
>If there’s a F2P mmo you can name (and some subscription based).
>If there’s a coop RPG game you’ve seen for PC
>Sparks and i played it together, up to all hours of the morning killing slimes, bears or skeletons.
>Questing, adventuring, dungeoneering and gathering loot. Oohing and Ahhing as story plots became clear.
>Digital companions.
>Then ignored one another, as our alter egos took shape during the day, classes, and hallways of not existing.
>Before arriving home and starting it all over again.
>No plans, simply letting fate play out the way it wanted, and that i think is when i liked her best.

 

 

Hint: I lied, the actual question asked was “When has glasses been a bro the most? Like, the episode you would remember as the time when she has been a bro at maximum levels. I want to remember her for the awesome girl she was, and not for the false manipulative bitch she became during this story.”
-Massimo

But that would have given it away!