Fan Fiction ❯ The Goggles! They Do Nothing! ❯ The Goggles! They Do Nothing! ( One-Shot )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

It was her. Darkbloom, in the flesh.

Michael K, as he was known in the Other, couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t an identical avatar, an impersonator trying to leech off of Darkbloom’s fame and accomplishments. Of course, sometimes the accolades they got were merely accidental-- a newbie stumbling on with a vaguely similar avatar and picking a random name, or going for the same settings with a different name. Fans would inevitably shower the newbie with favours: credits for Arcadia, a new premium, countless avatar or base customizations, or even Real money. Inevitably, they would find out that this was another Darkbloom, and the flames would begin.

So, it could be an identical avatar, intentional or accidental. But Michael K knew it was the real thing, instinctively. He had her avatar near memorized from all of the premiums he’d seen her in. Dark red hair, flowing down to a centimetre below her shoulder blades. A simple black dress, leaving her arms bare but flowing down to her ankles. Simple black sandals unobtrusively completed her clothes. All the black contrasted well with her pale, but not Vampiric, skin. And her face-- thin pink lips, a smooth nose, and small blue eyes. It was against the style at the time, emphasizing superhuman proportions, but Darkbloom had single-handedly changed the style.

Michael K had been a fan since her first free, the typical but stylish action-fictional Pitch Black. There had been at least two dozen released by the same name, but if you said Pitch Black nowadays, it meant the Darkbloom one. After a couple more stand-alones, there was a community dedicated to her, though it was small. Michael K remembered them as good days. Darkbloom herself would even pop in every once in a while to answer questions. And he was there. He was a true fan.

Her first series, the fantasy drama Sword’s Requiem was what really launched her career as a creator. Delivered in ten concise parts, it was both exhilarating and touching. Darkbloom was the new, up-and-coming creator, already being compared to established talents like Oyuki or classic creators like Umbra-- not that she wasn’t better than either of those hacks, of course.

And then she had got a premium deal with Satar, a small studio that had pretty much broke the budget to outbid the big names. Some of her fans deserted, calling her a sell-out. Michael K didn’t see the problem, as premiums were always released as frees after a year ago-- and besides, they didn’t cost that much, not for Darkbloom. Others doubted Darkbloom could pull off the next major project, the quirky comedy Asinine Rationalizations, which was a drastic shift in genre. But Michael K defended her, and was richly rewarded when further work was as good as expected.

Now on her third series, doing one of the most prolific serials in the Other, and still putting out the occasional stand-alone, Darkbloom was no longer a rising star, she was a star period. And Michael K had seen it all. Somehow, it made him feel like he was responsible.

He had almost memorized her history. He could recite her biography off by heart. But when he saw her, or someone he was damned sure was her, he couldn’t strike a conversation.

It wouldn’t be long now before the mob moved in, all asking questions and showering gifts on the famous user. He had his chance to talk to her now.

I love what you’ve done! Can I get an autograph? Too fannish.

Hey Darkbloom, I haven’t seen you in forever! How’s it going? Too casual. She probably still wouldn’t remember him, Fan #9, after years of stardom.

Darkbloom, I’m loving your run on Dragon Blade, but I was wondering if you’re planning to bring back Alenia. Too professional.

Maybe he just shouldn’t bother Darkbloom. She likely had fans swarming like flies over her all the time. She wouldn’t brush him off, being far too kind, but it would be an annoyance. Michael K would do anything so as not to bother her.

And really, who was he to approach Darkbloom? He was Michael K, a veteran of the hardcore Darkbloom fans, and to some extent creations fans in general, who had never actually put much out. He had done several fanworks which had moderate success, but as fanworks, they got ignored. He had put out one free seven months ago, styled heavily after Sword’s Requiem, but it had flopped. Even his avatar was unassuming, a short man in a business suit, stooped over comically. It got people to laugh, but it would never become famous.

Before he could decide whether or not to approach Darkbloom, a buzzer went off, dousing the Victorian-styled streets of this area of the Other into a red haze. Damn. His break was over.

~~

Michael removed the goggles from his eyes, letting the familiar spots slowly recede from his vision. He stripped off the gloves and removed the mental plug, fully removing himself from the Other and entering the mundane world, now popularly known as the Real.

Around him, his co-workers were starting to plug out as well. This was technically a lunch break, but the access machines were only freed up now, and everyone knew they could eat lunch while they worked anyway. Most, like Michael, found it more valuable to get their fix of the Other. Not that there wasn’t anything to enjoy in the Real, or anything wrong with it, but one needed to balance their time between the two worlds.

Michael worked for a small-town newspaper, covering business. He wanted to cover entertainment, and contributed the odd creation review, but they still wouldn’t place him where he wanted to be. Supposedly he was too good at his present job to be transferred. They would have risked getting someone less skilled at altering the press releases by a word or two.

Kim walked by, flashing a smile at him. The young woman was a columnist, and a damn good one-- her freewheeling prose and popular opinions made her one of the newspaper’s cornerstones. That Michael was outranked by someone ten years his junior didn’t trouble him at all. After all, he spent most of his free time in the Other, and in the Other age, nationality, and sex were all immaterial.

It was almost like a perfect world, he thought. Even its flaws were its benefits. Sure, one couldn’t eat or sleep in the Other, and few held jobs entirely on the Other. There were always the Lost, but they were more a source of mockery than anything. But because one couldn’t subsist in the Other, it became an arena only for the mind, where the world’s people went to create art or socialize, leaving behind the brutality of the Real. Civilization had survived for millennia without the Other, and if it disappeared tomorrow, bar turmoil it would continue all the same.

What made the Other so enjoyable was that it was unnecessary.

Realizing that he had got distracted, Michael headed back towards his cubicle, with Kim walking back with him. Due to alphabetical ordering, they worked next to each other (her Johnson to his Kristoff) and had quickly became friends. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit envious of her rising star when compared to his faintly shining one, but he tried not to think about it too much.

“So, what were you doing in the Other?” Kim asked.

“Oh, the usual,” Michael shrugged off. “Posting in the community, taking in a bit of news, hanging around. How about you?”

“Catching up on my serials. I know you’re a big Darkbloom fan, what did you think of the latest Dragon Blade?” They moved into their cubicles, but Kim quickly brought up a video link on the workstation.

Michael smiled. “Great. I can’t wait for the duel between Arris and Gregory.”“Yeah, it was mostly a build-up episode.”“You always take things so negatively.”“I’m just trying to look at it from the creator’s point of view!”After a bit more argument, the two reluctantly returned to their work. He and Kim discussed the Other often, but curiously enough, she still hadn’t told him her username.

* * *

Closing time. Kim shut down her workstation, checking her newscentre only briefly to see that the new Justice Squad was up. Good. She liked the campy supers serial. Probably more than her own.

She said goodbye to Michael as she left, and he wished her a good night. She probably looked at him for a second too long. Kim liked Michael, and wanted to go out with him sometime, but she didn’t know how she would manage it-- after all, he was older, and seemed so unapproachable. All of her relationships seemed to end up in smoke anyway, so she wasn’t exactly keen to get back to the soap opera story.

Indeed, Kim had always been very distant to people, having some bad experiences with family and friends herself. It was why she lived alone, and spent all her nights either taking in creations, exploring some obscure corner of the Other with no intent to stay, or doing some creations of her own. It was why she, as Darkbloom, was such an aloof and mysterious celebrity.

Kim took the train home. She didn’t have the salary to afford the bullet train on a regular basis, so she was used to the rapid turns and frequent stops of the commuter pack. Michael walked, despite the air being clogged and the distance long. It was one of the quaint oddities about him she was beginning to fall in love with.

When she got home, Kim heated up some ramen, then sat on her couch, eating it while the news scrolled by on a flatscreen. She decided not to think about her plots for a moment. Absently, Kim noted that despite having the dual salary of a high-profile columnist and a popular premium creator, her apartment was still decorated cheaply, and her only luxury was a high-speed access point and a small server to put the Darkbloom archives on.

After finishing her small dinner, Kim entered the Other, and became Darkbloom.

~~

The Satar editor was a quiet environs, still at premium quality but rarely visited by anyone but Darkbloom, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sometimes, when she was working, she would fall into a kind of trance where all the ideas would become so vibrant and fresh in her head she would have to work on them, and like a possessed shaman, her work would spill from her, but at the same time be the best she was capable of. Darkbloom sometimes worked like that for days on end.

She supposed that was what it was like to become on of the Lost, those who forgone the Real entirely, sleeping in purchased environs and hooked up to life support. Their physical existence was miserable, but they no longer cared about that. Darkbloom wouldn’t be able to do that-- it took an awful lot of financial manoeuvring, and the ability to accept the Other as wholly real-- but the few Lost she had met seemed incredibly happy.

Shaking the thought out of her head, Darkbloom turned back towards what she was working on, the next Dragon Blade. She was stuck-- she just couldn’t get the duel to work right. Oh sure, her codes to make the images of Arris and Gregory move worked as expected, but it just didn’t feel right to her. Not to mention that she had forgotten Gregory’s companions when scripting the scene yesterday, and now had to write them in.

If there was one thing Darkbloom hated about working on a serial, it was that it took up all of her time. Maybe if she didn’t have a job she would get around to doing that idea for a stand-alone that had been bouncing around in her head for a while, but she still wanted to have a steady supply of income in case everyone realized that she wasn’t very good at all.

A serial had to come out once a week, and could only end in cancellation-- at best, the heroes walked off into the sunset and the next generation took over next week. It was addictive, yet maddening, to create for.

Seeing as how her mind kept going off on tangents anyway, Darkbloom shut down the generator and decided to go and roam. She punched in the co-ordinates for Arcadia and found herself instantly transported there. Darkbloom had yet to overcome the mental jet lag every time that happened.

Arcadia was the most popular of the game environs, and it was at any time home to millions of user avatars, bustling back and forth. They overlapped each other, forming a sea of colour that an outsider couldn’t make out any single person in. It was the only way to manage a destination this popular.

Still, Darkbloom was a people watcher, not a true gamer. Half of her characters were inspired by people that she knew, but that didn’t know her. So she went to the lesser-known corners of Arcadia, where people from all walks of life could be found, but without the overlap that blurred them into faceless customers.

So here she was, in a replica Starbucks, from the early 21rst century. Nobody felt much nostalgia for that period, as it placed more focus on functionality than atmosphere. Which meant that this sector, established by one of the few enthusiasts, was usually half-empty, and Darkbloom could watch people uninhibited. Until the swarm of fans started, but that usually didn’t happen for at least fifteen minutes here.

Or maybe sooner. She saw him staring at her, with disbelief, and with resignation practised for the near future by signing a phantom autograph.

And then she saw the User ID, existing in the same space as him, but clearly readable. Michael K. Michael. Oh.

Darkbloom tried to keep her demeanour under control. Kim knew Michael, but Darkbloom didn’t know Michael K. They were parallel yet opposite relationships. And he undoubtedly had a different view of her in his mind than he did the great Darkbloom. For the first time in a while, her black dress felt like a large man’s suit on her childish form.

She concocted a scheme, like a plot of one of those romantic comedies she never liked. She would romance Michael as Darkbloom, and if she found it worth it to open up, bridge the gap between the Real and the Other. In her haste to form a narrative, he became her perfect man-- gentle, witty, and handsome; traits which had some basis in reality but were wildly exaggerated. Certainly his hunchbacked avatar wasn’t beautiful. But it wasn’t really that which she saw.

Darkbloom strode up to Michael K, surprising him. He had, she realized, been trying to formulate a way to start a conversation. And she faced a similar problem, for once digging within and finding no words.

They found their voices at the exact same moment.