In Minecraft: a Visual Horror Story
For J. Burden
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.
—Bishop Samuel Horsley
1.1.1
[{Neuronal Qlture#23A789^}: Data Read: Loading…{Finalizing}]; Daniel completed his server. It was approximately 2AM in the real world, although it remained dawn in his. The sun arose through his modded curtain with the haze about it that belonged to the texture pack which his little brother had recommended for him to install in order to increase his processing speed. Another of its key features was transforming some of the birds in Minecraft into bluetits as well as red birds. His sister, Cara, did not involve herself whatsoever in this process. Her business entailed running a Discord server by the name of “CD.Dollhouse” that concentrated on geostrategic affairs; although she would later move onto printing “the specimen” in middle age. Images of the three siblings were included in the visual data of the server’s texture pack. And, as Daniel listened to The Larping Tombstone’s animated adaptation of Hatsune Miku’s song “Looping the Rooms” whilst drinking [in moderation] a lot of wine, he placed a yellow flower on his sister’s grave. The wolf that he had named after her—KARAONE—followed him with a custom-made pink collar and a wagging tail with a ring. Recursively, he drank red wine and decided to stockpile wood in the fire of his own fireplace, keeping alive the real world flames, before returning to his laptop and deciding to exploit the local LAN on a separate computer to the best of his ability. The first time he played Minecraft was when he was around thirteen-years-old. At that time, he had wanted, perhaps more than anything, to have been born as the dragon Smaug from the original cover of The Hobbit rather than remain a human being at all. And if eating people was necessary to attain that dream, well, of course he would do it. He turned on the screen. The text on it said that his world was generating. A vein rippled.
1.1.2
At midnight again, he killed the chicken using lava and ate what remained. He had grown accustomed to murdering his favourite birds in this way, and cows too. He could not bear the taste of rotten meat. Yet all sorts of other viands he would consume. His camp was on the edge of a settlement filled with villagers. He did not beat or kill them, just in case their golem emerged and killed him in turn. This was hardcore mode, after all. He didn’t want to waste any of his progress. He crafted an iron sword to replace his previous one but nearly punched his keyboard to think that he had already committed to going to sleep that night at the same time as he did so in real life. He would not have the opportunity to mine iron until earlier that morning. His avatar strode vituperatively across a grassland with a few red roses sticking out of it in order to proceed to the lake of deep blue. He stood there and thought. There was a certain way of playing this game whereby all the trees became but reserves for fuel. And such reserves for fuel would eventually be transformed into tools. And stone would be mined, and iron, redstone, gold, etc. Diamond. He would go to hell with an armoury. He would slay ghasts that shrieked at him, very often, like his sister. He would attain all the ender orbs that he required and pass through a discovered portal in the bottom of the world. He would shoot orbs. He would kill a frightening dragon. The end credits of his life would pass over his face like when the name Daniel did when he was called it in the morning at the hospital.
1.1.3
There was another way to play the game that she had discovered. It relied on scattering flowers randomly whilst entering into a dissociative state. She would create spirals under the pink-tree’d latest biome whose name she had unfortunately recently forgotten. This manner of playing the game principally relied upon chanting a few sentences in “real life” all the while managing to prevent too much involvement. Hence neither wolves nor ocelots would be named. Hence her brother would not be named. Not long after, the entire world came to resemble a series of black snakes at the bottom of a sinkhole. Or rather it was revealed as itself. All else was decoration for the snakes as they chanted at themselves through “sentient” humans. Yes, and the sinkhole was golden; it was an inhuman ruin. It had golem.
There were incomprehensible tribesmen down there. In her dreams, yes, she was initiated into a divine order that prefaced itself by suggesting that the question mark brick corresponded to “the specimen’s” head in real life, and that by [touching it] she could find her way out, which was also back to herself. In the morning, the sun was a white brick and her eyes, too, were proud white bricks. She beheld the biome of grassland stretch before the house that grandfather had built seventy-years-ago and concerned herself with the reality of burying the poultry from the night before because, only then, would she ever return to her computer screen without a guilty conscience or the idea of a family. Then she decided to take a break and play Minecraft, the game from her childhood where she used to enjoy nothing less than going about with a flint-and-steel and setting on fire whatever sculptures of angels Daniel built with wool and had dreamt, stupidly, nostalgic before his time, that he could keep from her. That was before the other brother died.
1.2.1
[{Neuronal Qlture#23A790^}]
I remember, back when I was fifteen, seeing some text written in sand outside an empty pyramid on Daniel’s server.
It said:
“IRECALLWHENIFELLINLOVEFORTHEFIRSTTIMEANDTHENNOTHINGHAPPENEDANDSHEWENTOFFTODUBAITOMARRYSOMEFUCKINSAUDIANDIWASLEFTALONEWITHMYSELFDRINKINGTWOGLASSESOFWINEAT2AMWHILSTFACEDWITHAYOUTUBEIMAGEOFREZEFROMTHEANIMECHAINSAWMANINFRONTOFASNOWYVILLAGESCENEFROMREALLIFETHECAPTIONWASSHESNOTCOMINGBACKANDIBELIEVEDIT.”
I think I went to bed afterwards. But not before I petted my wolf Bill several times. Too good of a boy for his own good.
1.3.1
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“What I’m talking about?”
“Just go over it again. I’m a bit slow.”
“So the hypothetical is: what if I told you that there’s a way of committing suicide in reverse?”
“…Is this a secure number?”
“Duh.”
“M’kay: Suzie what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Like imagine having a sword made from ender crystals that you can slice open the inner side of your wrist with but, like, instead of it making you bleed out or whatever, what actually happens is that you get back all your, I don’t know, childhood vitality back…with the upside that you become really cruel.”
“Why is that an upside?”
“…If you could see my face then you would completely understand the face I’m making.”
“Are you regretting it again?”
“—What!?”
“You sound like you’re dissatisfied with it and, like now, because I’m the only one who you can be yourself around, now you’re coming to me, buddy, to your evil Nazi friend, and you’re telling me all about how you regret having your cock chopped off due to the fact that you’re so sterile and sad. And no, I’m not sorry.”
“This isn’t even what we’re supposed to be talking about.”
“…are you crying?”
“–Have you ever listening to a remix of the song Looping The Rooms?”
“Dude, I do not even know the original.”
“There’s a cute anime girl who’s grey with nice f—”
“Freak.”
“Okay sorry, and she’s in these rooms from the backrooms creepypasta, and there’s some visuals taken from Kane Pixels in the remixed version of the song by The Larping Tombstone—and,”
“So you are miserable because you trooned out after Vanya left you?”
“—AND: Kuru showed up in the background of it.”
“…you what? Like from the schoolyard.”
“And then she made out with me, literally climbed over me to get to me. I felt so desired.”
“Okay. That actually is noteworthy—”
“Seeee?”
“—I still hate the fact you pretend you’re a fuckin’ girl.”
“Sorry sorry sorry.”
“You could’ve just been some Hitlerist freak. That would’ve been healthier…”
“Ok, I am sorry—”
“—[zzzzzzzzik] I’m coming over to yours right now, anyway.”
“You think she’s gonna come back?”
“Curt, you fucking retard, she is obviously gonna come back. Get Daniel to bring me cigs and wine.”
“…we’re not on speaking terms and it’s unlikely…”
“You ARE on speaking terms, obviously, Suzie.”
“I’ll…have a word.”
Curt hung up the call and put on his Cyn button: she had vomit yellow crosses in her eyes that he wished, as a female, he had been born with, as well as several very sharp teeth, the brainless voice of an android, also those. He thought of Kuru crawling through his screen.
1.2.2
[*—lick…]
[*—click]
1.4
In order to build the nether portal you will need:{Neuronal Qlture#23A79 (see“Ironies”, 2029)1^}
—I…sup-pose: 14x obsidian blocks
1x flint-and-steel
Arrange the obsidian blocks into an oblong shape leaving a space of six blocks, arranged in two columns of three, in the middle. This is necessary because the nether portal is designed with player height in mind: which, of course, is two blocks. So it is a bit aesthetic. Meanwhile, the process of refining obsidian blocks is something that we have described already. And so it will be useful, now, to describe the realm that we are getting access to, which is called The Nether. There, you will find zombie pigmen, ghasts, blazes (in the more recent updates, which distort “The Text”). And there are Nether Forts. As an aside: there are numerous comparisons to be made between the reading of Minecraft Alpha and reading the original Hebrew Bible, or the Aleph, in comparison with something as vulgar as the King James, or even the Wycliffe Bible. For if it is so that there is a set of laws which are embedded in the structure of the world, then they must be written down somewhere and communicated to the player. This is so true to life that we see it as an essential part of our work as a strategy guides.
1.3.2
[Davey_Matt76 joined server.]
[Wendigooner joined server.]
[“Davey_Matt76 set his name to “Dave”; Wendigooner set their name to “Curt”]
Dave: this is dope as shit.
Curt: Yeah.
Dave: I sent you a discord link but here is
Dave: <https://discord.com/invite/cpuzenlesszonezigger7678888>…wat???
Curt: Because it’s so late here, I know you cancelled about coming over because of her…but?
Dave: We both know that you’d love it if you felt your character’s pain because then you’d have access to her fuckin pussy, dude. That’z why your avatars’ Zelda or Cyn or whatever.
Curt: I don’t think that it’s that vulgar for me.
Dave: no?
Curt: i dont like the idea of even having a body or ever allowing anyone to touch anything. i don’t even like using words very much because of how material they are. And, sorry, I know you hateme talking like this: I get spiteful whenever i am too physically present whatsoever.
[Dave got blown up by Curt.]
Dave: FUCKINN CU@NT
Curt: uh-oh ;)
Dave: Just ccclick the discord, bitch. and then we’ll talk about kuru/yrmom or whatever you wanna call her.
Curt: ok. Let’s do it.
Dave: love you mate.
Curt: ….?
Dave: wahtsupp
Curt: ok, I wuv you too.
Dave:…fuckin shit heel you are
Curt: lmfao
[Curt got blown up Dave.]
1.1.4
Cara was alerted of KARAONE’s death (not Daniel’s wolf; her hamster, the one that he had brought her) by the buzzing behind the television in the kitchen, which was surrounded by approximately six bottles of wine. She could not tell how many in the dark. At this period in her life, as was her habit, her cat-eared headphones slunk around her neck like a dog collar. The noise of the Evil Twins theme from Crash Bandicoot that she had slowed to perfection resonated in her ears even after she removed them. She felt that there were pixels in her ears. Having discussed the status of Transnistria with a contact in an invite-only Roblox world set on a decent replica of Sputnik, she accepted 700 ACT for the promotion of all of her contact’s worlds in the private chats of the YouTubers for whom she edited. When the time came to go upstairs and inevitably remove the roasted little corpse with a peg on her nose, she was in the mood to drink some of the wine their mother had saved them. A vein rippled in what of the “specimen” then existed. Resultantly, when she crawled up the stairs, her legs having fallen asleep and she possessing a morbid sense of humour; and she saw a little fizz from behind the smoke at the back of the TV, she sighed very heavily. And then she decided it would be for the best to remove the pink dinosaur mug that she had made in childhood from the side of the shelf and crack open another bottle. She would pour one out for the hamster after a long days work. Time flew by. She poured it in and intentionally spilled a little on the broken Nintendo Wii controller under her feet that had long ago been acquired in childhood. Wine on the Wii. She thought of this and groaned delightfully. It was a funny
combination. The controllers had always had a tendency to stain from the sweat of the little children who played with them. Boys put snot on them without knowing, loaded bogies under the off button: the red one, she seemed to recall, at the top right of the controller. It had been years. Wine stained the “Wiimote”. She giggled and said this to herself and she picked it up and looked at it. The wine-stained Wiimote—the WineMote!; it suggested an alcoholic who had genuinely lived in the CaucAsian Future that the Nintendo Wii had aesthetically always promised. Of course: no one had gotten that future. No one dwelled in the luxury of it, however alcoholic. Half-Chinese children occurred not in eugenic laboratries but in the despairing fetishes of North European men who had never been loved. No future. Zero futurism. No, no. Zero. Zetta times by zero is zero. There was only this. She heard a sound that could have been a scream. The TV was cooking KARAONE. And there was that too to think about. Cara, herself, smelt Daniel rising up from his own basement. His eyes too were white. His shadow fell upon her as the hamster boiled; it smelled like roast turkey on a delightful Christmas. His breath was full of television smoke. He pressed his face into hers and she saw the yellowish sweat on his forehead and saw that his veins were bulging and he was getting murderous and that his frontal lobe might as well have been roasted through his eyes. Yes, that Boomer stare. And he said: ‘in Minecraft—I have forgotten how to tame horses…Help.’
1.5
[{Neuronal Qlture#23A792^}]
The long, long road over the grasslands and up into the forest—who trod it into being first of all? Man, the first that came here. There was no path before he came. Afterward, some beast or other, following the faint tracks over marsh and moorland, wearing them deeper; after these again some Lapp gained scent of the path, and took that way from field to field, looking to his reindeer. Thus was made the road through the great Almenning—the common tracts without an owner; no-man’s-land.
Bill lowered the book from his face and returned to the survival mode game he had started on his computer in order to connect with his son. Knut Hamsun would have loved Minecraft. Or, perhaps, he would have despised it for mimicking his work? Bill wondered at this. For like life itself the game had no story. He emerged—he, in the game—from nothing. He did not have a name. There were simply a few hillocks at first. He was not “Adam”. God had not appointed him a helpmate. Nor had God tasked him with naming the beasts of the earth; that power of naming being an extension, he considered, of the creator’s divine power to create life whatsoever. The world was ridiculous at first. Everything was a cube: a singular cube. His crafting bench was a cube. A block of carved wood was a cube; and, bizarrely, once you had cut down a block from a tree, the wood would carve itself. You would not have to carve it into a set of correctly fitting planks. Beyond that, it went without saying that you had to punch trees to get the wood out of them; you were, in this state, some form of Neanderthal in a blue t-shirt? And you were expressionless. You could not say words, merely moan when you were injured. And when you punched a tree in order to extract a block from it, the tree would not collapse. It would simply float in the middle of the air. There was no explanation; there never was. The game did not insist on itself. There was the law of the game and you were expected to dwell in accordance with it. Furthermore, it was according to this law that no other human being would ever appear in his Minecraft world. There were settlings of a primitive race of villagers. Yet they were not human. No one like him ever appeared to exist, although, of course, Bill imagined that once in a while he encountered someone like him in the far distance, likewise punching invisible holes in trees. At this thought, Bill had gone upstairs in order to speak with his son, and he had said, ‘Gregor, is it so that in the Minecraft game it is your mission to try and leave the world? There are no people. Our hero must be lonely.’ To which, in shameless, corpulent German the young lad had just said: ‘…nein.’
Bill did not want to bother correcting him on his reluctance to employ English. Such overcorrection was why his excellent grades were failing after all!! And they had already argued all too much about that. In the meantime, it had turned night on Bill’s computer and when he waded over to it he confronted the distant glow of a torch. Then another torch. As best as he could manage, he opened the section of the guide book that Gregor had purchased for him and crafted, first, a wooden pickaxe, before going and digging into the lumps in the ground, and taking three or four blocks of cobblestone. Next, he crafted a stone sword. He had not the wool for a bed yet, and so he decided that he must defend himself. He looked up. The torches in the distance were still moving, but they were moving slower. He felt a strange twitching crawl up into the corners of his mouth. It was nothing. He swung his sword and walked on. The sun had fully set behind him; Gregor was silent upstairs. And so was their part of the village. He recollected that he had seen very few people that afternoon. But that was typical. He lurched forward into the growing dark with his implement. He whistled, and it worked? He had never known how to before. He turned behind him and noticed that there were several trees whose tops floated off the ground inexplicably. He gripped his blade and blinked. Then he turned back. Before him there was the light of no glowing screen. It belonged to the torches and those who swung them hypnotically in his face. They recited; finished his book for him now that he would not read ever again.
1.2.3
A:…From back in the day, I remember seeing “that group” online…That’s all.
Q:///?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: ////////?
A: You wouldn’t remember it either. But back in the day it was even worse than it is now.
Q:///?
A: I know what I saw. That’s all. As for “our habits”, which I suppose you’re really asking about[<><><><>«»<><><><><><>«><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>]
…they were bad, haha. Real bad. –Do you remember Blue Whale? The “so-called” "suicide cult. Q: <>: A: The moral of the story is that kids will do things to themselves, eh— won’t they? They’ll carve blue whale symbols into their arms using pen-knives. They will. Yeah, that’s it…just so long as they get noticed for it. That’s why the two girls went out and murdered their friend and said that it was the Slendyman that did it. Same thing as this. Nothing more, insofar as I’m concerned. Q: ////////LP@https://discord.com/invite/cpuzenlesszonezigger7678888? A: How the fuck did you get that? Q:……….////-- A: You shouldn’t have access to that. Q:///------------::::N A: I guess you do…This is confidential right? For the article? Remember: you did sign my NDA. Q: ///… ? A: ok, well then, I guess I’m gonna reluctantly spill the beans on it. You can cover the coffee in exchange. Q: ////…. A: You’re welcome. It all started when the founder was approached by the spectre of a female with cigarettes in her hair and little Japanese eyes. It would have happened in a school playground of some kind. The build took ages. Q:……..///// “”—? A: …duh? I said “the build” for a reason. He met her on an empty server when the dude was like only eleven-years-old. Q: ////--//// ////--////{}’’’’’@@@? A: Exactly right. She appeared to him in-game after he got back from selling weed at the park. There was a girl that night—because he was up way too late. Not really a girl, it was a woman. And she was in this big dark hoodie. There was something wrong with her mouth. Like a broken jaw, I dunno. I’m talking IRL. And then, like, he decided to build the park down to the microdetail. He copied the symbols that kids had drawn on the different rides: one on the swings, one on the roundabout, etcetera. And then he applied them to his structure as well. But of course it’s fuckin’ Minecraft so you’re only two blocks high and like the slide is seven hundred, and the woman would have been like 160 blocks—so that’s a juggernaut towering over him with a Japanese clown face and piercings and so on shoooo-ved up into her happy little mouth. And then, in game, this time he met the woman. And then his life was changed forever. Everything gradually impinged on the game. The guy started to refer to his classmates by their usernames and then some of them went missing and then plenty of them started to call themselves by those usernames. Told their parents that they simply didn’t have last names anymore. And that they hated having something that “got in the way”. In other words, any lingering connection to their families, I guess. But that’s what the little faggots said. Q: ……../////? A: It’s a buncha retarded bullshit insofar as I’m concerned. The short of it is that she was a paedophile. Q: /////….---££££;;::::--00à??”£**((()))___KMA>>>????////////////////…[Z_lda or Cyn o*r whatever]? A: What the fuck are you even saying, dude?
1.3.3
*For many years,
*neither Davey nor Wendigooner had been in that world.
*They had received it on a scratched drive outside their school from Daniel
*in order to try out the modpacks for pornography that he had advertised, as
*well as the world serving, via local server (they initially lived in the two
parts of a semi-detached Maidenhead house facing the Sainsbury’s) ****to manage the
spice trade which their mutual friend Russell had already commenced in the older
year of the sixth form. Daniel did not tell them from where he received the drive, but both had assumed that Cara was responsible; because no one else mattered. *******************
She did not rest easy in her body but drew over herself from time to time with blue pens until, drilling a LAMETM deeply enough into herself, she began to inscribe tattoo after tattoo. She enjoyed being on the internet and whenever Daniel permitted her to be seen, she told others of her irrefutable contempt for humanity. Her only solace had been animals. Rats. But that faded. When the world faded in, Wendigooner changed her nicknamed to “Suzie” to Davey_Matt76’s infinite grief. The spawn point was the same as it had always been. A long corridor of Minecraft paintings that were modded to be textured with the faces of their schoolyard enemies stretched an in-game kilometre as the backlighting of redstone bricks secured the old friends of this hall with comfort and joy. An archangel was carved on the ceiling with six wings and a heterochromatic gaze (one eye red: one blue). Davey changed his name to “Nazi Dave” and clicked his knuckles whilst he still had them.
He ran all the way down the corridor towards the image of the stab wound in Cara’s arm which she had received from a Korean girl with a pair of scissors back when she still attended Catholic school. Opposite her picture was the unforgettable image of Daniel with a fox mask over his face and a bag of spice in his hands. Between these was the door to the world itself. To dead childhood.
[{Neuronal Qlture#23A789—nearingnearingnearing.^}]
Suzie followed, having collected a diamond hammer from a chest, and having re-skinned herself to resemble the tomboy heroine from Toby Fox’s Deltarune. She felt her butt itch in her seat as though something grew there. His head filled with hormones; he did not feel “he” had a head/ Whatever.
They ran through desert temple after desert temple [Daniel’s seed had found desertion normative], until reaching the grey outline of “the area” where they had planned their first spice trade on behalf of Russell. The animatronics awaited like collapsing circus floats; Cara had created a mod for large human figures that could be remodelled and reposed with the Gravity Gun mod, à la Gmod, whilst doubtless working on keeping the “neuroculture” frozen which was her brother’s primary duty [[in the present tense; now: not then::everyone recorded but the siblings are………]]: not that anyone but Cara understood it. From agonising thought Suzie could feel dragonic teeth sharpen. Something ripped and bled in her shorts.[ t h e v e I n r I p p l e df o r t h e p e n u l t I m a t e t I m e] Nazi Dave called out to Cara and felt his lungs stifle with something like brick. He grabbed his arms, not…where was I again?
1.1.5
Daniel consulted the inadequate definition which the Science Magazine provided, whilst—of course!—smoking a long Chinese cigarette over the chilled bed which he referred to, cretinous as a self-diagnosed autistic, as his “crafting bench”: recalling, intermittently, that the youngsters had learnt to refer to memetic substructures the which they dismissed as aspects of “Brimstone”. He smoked weed and wanted to kill himself. And so, now, he supposed, he was a Brimstoner. The “pun” did not at all help; and so he put on a prosaically modified version of Noelle’s lake theme where she, like, takes you into the water in order to “PROGRESS” and you are almost certainly merged into her corpse and join her, transfigured, on the other side of the lake from the overworld. 2026 was years ago.
A clump of human brain cells can play the classic computer game Doom. While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms.
In 2021, the Australian company Cortical Labs used its neuron-powered computer chips to play Pong. The chips consisted of clumps of more than 800,000 living brain cells grown on top of microelectrode arrays that can both send and receive electrical signals. Researchers had to carefully train the chips to control the paddles on either side of the screen.
1.6
[[WORLD_LOADED]].
1.3.4
[{Neuronal Qlture#23A789—nearingnearingnearing.^}]
The Japanese woman in the playground was 67” tall and had a few little stitches over her massive eyes. Her gown had a few sewn faces on it; they belonged to no one in particular, not worth mentioning. Suzie ‘s [ ] were coming in and Nazi Dave had a massive swastika staining into his kneecaps, his shoulders. Badly, they hurt.
{The latter is difficult to explain in a truly “three-dimensional” context.} When they spoke, they reached for distant pale hands that were changed, gradually, to claws. Then limpid nodes over the course of that “in-game” night. She lurched before them like a sun going down so to swallow that they covered their non-mouths and shrieked into themselves such ripe code that Grug0r’s_Chozenlmfao woke up and realised this was life now.
‘What the fuck is going on!’—Suzie.
Dave was panting into his tattooed hands; and he held Suzie, and he kissed her forehead: he held him very close to his chest, and was disgusted, and yet did not relent, and he said to himself these words, and then he said them to Suzie: ‘I am so sorry about what happened to you and what happened to me and who we are and what’s happened, so help me god, I want to kill who is responsible and I want to die; I wish we knew our parents, my god, and not those awful caretakers; oh MY god.’ And Suzie gripped her diamond hammer and swung it at the Japanese woman who reached for their [ ], but it did not help, and they felt themselves initiated—as Grug0r’s_Chozenlmfao was. Into a new world. Two torches lit. The Japanese mouth opened into an inter-space that accumulated with misunderstood characters that drew vertical whenever anyone tried to run away. Their bodies impacted against the bark softener of the playground floor as though, once again, they were nine-years-old.
Lastly a vein rippled in my headz.
2.0
Dear Daniel,
I have finished printing the neurocolonial brain.
Based on the data you have accumulated online, it is now working; it resembles, not a brain at all, but a kind of grey muddled puddle of sludge. It is an octopus horrified at its own existence.
However many victims of car crashes and self-mutilation as you have found on a semi-personal basis have programme: that is what it is. And for that I am proud of you. It is interesting to see what precisely they are building, how their chat logs cannot but reference us. One of these days I swear that I will not anymore cut either of my arms. It was incredibly stupid of me to begin with. And now I am doing it in my thirties.
And so: let me remind you on a different topic: Happy 40th!
You made it; although I don’t expect you ever wished to. Everything will get easier.
There is a video that I remember watching with you about a young man [his username was “kuri”] that reminded me of, I admit, part of ourselves. He was visiting his dead gf’s Minecraft world. I remember when he put the little torches around the pink wool on the outside of her in-game grave and how the ocelots were moaning and how the leaves of the tree behind him came in during some (then) more recent update and how he put all sorts of flowers outside the grave and wrote “HERE LIES…” and then he wrote her name. She was Polish. He also said ‘oh my god’ shortly after and I remember crying a little bit, Dan, when I heard that, into my slightly too long sleeves. Sometimes I wonder if the components of the brain are all as sentient. Or if one rules over them. And if they are not I hope they nevertheless enjoy being in the game that enabled us to enjoy our childhood so very much more than we actually did.
All the best for your birthday,
Love,
Your “half”-sister,
Kaori
[;)]
p.s: I found this old painting by C^YDE: I thought you would like it. It reminded me of when we used to play together.