The Last Time
The Last Time
Julianne Aguilar
The last time I saw you, we were killing lizards on the Full Moon Fields. “I have to go,” you said. “I have work in the morning.”
The last time I saw you, it was 2AM and I was drinking coffee. “I should be writing a paper right now.”
“Stay in school,” you said.
The last time I saw you, there was an aurora in the sky that reminded me of an LA Gear light-up shoe. We were killing lizards hoping they would drop a rare crystal.
“We got like no crystals.”
“Yeah, we can try again tomorrow.”
Tomorrow.
“I’m so close to leveling up, 30 more mins?”
“Nah,” you said, “I was late to work today. Can’t be late tomorrow.”
The last time I saw you, we were talking about work. We were killing lizards and there was an aurora in the sky. I hadn’t started my art history paper yet.
Your blond hair and pale skin and golden armor were gleaming softly beneath the aurora. The sword we had gotten you the week before had a blue blade and struck enemies twice each hit. We were talking about getting me the same sword next week. You were my friend. You were my guild partner. You were a female human with blond hair and green eyes, and I never knew your real name or saw your real face or heard your real voice.
“Ok kid,” you said. “Write your paper. See u tomorrow.”
“Night.”
You logged off, just like you had a thousand times before.
I finished my coffee. The paper, on post-Colonial Cuban art, was supposed to be at least six pages, but I only managed four. Two weeks later, I got a B+. By then I had sent you a thousand DMs, and all of them went unread.
I went back to the Full Moon Fields and waited for you there. I went to Fulcrum Beach and waited there, too. I went to our favorite place to look for Quetzal feathers and waited, but a Sylvan Wolf chased me away. I asked around our guild if anyone had heard from you, but no one had. I asked if anyone knew your real name, and no one did. I asked if anyone had ever emailed you, and they said, Bro, chill.
By then, we had been friends for two years, seven months, fourteen days and eighteen hours. That was my in-game time: the total amount of days I’d played up until that point. Since I’d met you my very first day, it was also the stopwatch for our friendship.
When we met, I had been recently dumped, and I was trying to find a fulfilling hobby to replace her. Instead I found the game. After I logged on for the first time, I joined a random chat and asked how to equip weapons. You answered, “Lol, where u at? I’ll come help u.”
I thought the “u” was funny—it reminded me of my mom’s text messages. But then you appeared, tall and blond and wearing red armor, and you were beautiful. You showed me how to equip a dagger and how to kill the monsters that would get me the most experience. Then you said, “Add me to ur friends list and u can ask me questions anytime.”
I told you about my ex. I told you about school, about how I was thinking of switching my major. I told you about my parents’ divorce.
You told me you lived in the northeast. You told me what you liked to order at Taco Bell (7-layer burrito with potatoes and Lava Sauce, to make it 9-layer). You told me you were single. You told me you had a job, but you wouldn’t tell me what it was.
You wouldn’t tell me your real name, even after I told you mine.
And despite that, I felt that I knew you. Not you-you, and not game-you, either, but some mix of the two, all the parts of you that I filled in with my imagination. I once asked you if you wanted to get married, in-game. We could have. There were rings, and everything.
“Lol,” you said.
The last time I saw you, I had one black dagger and one gold. We were killing lizards because I was trying to collect rare crystals to turn them into magic rings, to raise my charisma and intelligence. In real life, I had plenty of the latter and none of the former. But you couldn’t know that.
The last time I saw you, I was drinking coffee and smoking weed and thinking about Wifredo Lam, a Cuban artist, and there was an aurora in the sky that reminded me of shoes from the 90s, and I was depressed but I didn’t realize it.
I loved that game. I loved it so crushingly that the love turned into a little piece of lead in my heart that weighed me down for years after I logged off for the last time. It was an easy decision: I had to move on. I finished school. I got a job doing data entry for a big insurance company. I wrote you a DM about it: how boring it was, how I’d finally gotten the blue sword with my new guild, how I was saving up to buy a car. But you’d become a ghost.
The first time I went to New York, my first time in the Northeast, I thought that anyone on the street could have been you. Anyone on the subway could have been you. Anyone in the bar at 4 AM could have been you.
We could have met eyes, and I never would have known. You were real: you knew my name, my city, my school. You knew the names of my real life friends. You knew my face. You could be looking at my Instagram right now. You could be checking in on me a couple times a year. You could be reading my overwrought captions late at night, when you can’t sleep. You might have something of me that I can’t have of you.
The last time I saw myself was this morning, in the mirror. I have a car now. I have a different job, a better one. I have a cat. I have a small but cherished circle of real-life friends. I haven’t logged into the game in ten years. But sometimes I’ll come across a song from the soundtrack on YouTube and I’ll remember every beat and then, before I realize it’s happening, I’m crying, remembering that place, unable to comprehend that it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. I was never really there. I have seen you, I have never seen you, you were there, you weren’t there.
I need to let you go; so, go.
I’m sending a message in a bottle, except the message is a caption and the bottle is Instagram. I’m making a joke only you would understand, something about lizards and crystals and dragons that have swallowed swords whole. I’m posting it late at night, because I can’t sleep again. If you’re reading this, I type, then, hello.
The last time I saw you was twelve years ago. I will never see you again, because your game data has been purged.
That’s the internet. That’s life.
I’m standing again on the Full Moon Fields. But this time, I’m all alone. Everyone else has already left: no one plays this old game anymore, so the company that runs it is shutting its servers down. I’ve logged on for the first time in a decade because I need to see this world again before it disappears forever. I can’t explain it; I just need to know that it is real.
I look at the aurora one last time. There should be ghosts in this world, but there aren’t. It looks like rain on the horizon. The sun has set for the last time.
I kneel, and type ‘/logout.’
In thirty seconds, I will disappear.
There’s water boiling in the kitchen; the kettle whistles behind me.
Twenty seconds. It begins to rain.
Ten. I turn off the flame.
One.
I disappear.
It’s tomorrow, finally. Let’s go exploring!
The last time I saw you, it was 2AM and I was drinking coffee. “I should be writing a paper right now.”
“Stay in school,” you said.
The last time I saw you, there was an aurora in the sky that reminded me of an LA Gear light-up shoe. We were killing lizards hoping they would drop a rare crystal.
“We got like no crystals.”
“Yeah, we can try again tomorrow.”
Tomorrow.
“I’m so close to leveling up, 30 more mins?”
“Nah,” you said, “I was late to work today. Can’t be late tomorrow.”
The last time I saw you, we were talking about work. We were killing lizards and there was an aurora in the sky. I hadn’t started my art history paper yet.
Your blond hair and pale skin and golden armor were gleaming softly beneath the aurora. The sword we had gotten you the week before had a blue blade and struck enemies twice each hit. We were talking about getting me the same sword next week. You were my friend. You were my guild partner. You were a female human with blond hair and green eyes, and I never knew your real name or saw your real face or heard your real voice.
“Ok kid,” you said. “Write your paper. See u tomorrow.”
“Night.”
You logged off, just like you had a thousand times before.
I finished my coffee. The paper, on post-Colonial Cuban art, was supposed to be at least six pages, but I only managed four. Two weeks later, I got a B+. By then I had sent you a thousand DMs, and all of them went unread.
I went back to the Full Moon Fields and waited for you there. I went to Fulcrum Beach and waited there, too. I went to our favorite place to look for Quetzal feathers and waited, but a Sylvan Wolf chased me away. I asked around our guild if anyone had heard from you, but no one had. I asked if anyone knew your real name, and no one did. I asked if anyone had ever emailed you, and they said, Bro, chill.
By then, we had been friends for two years, seven months, fourteen days and eighteen hours. That was my in-game time: the total amount of days I’d played up until that point. Since I’d met you my very first day, it was also the stopwatch for our friendship.
When we met, I had been recently dumped, and I was trying to find a fulfilling hobby to replace her. Instead I found the game. After I logged on for the first time, I joined a random chat and asked how to equip weapons. You answered, “Lol, where u at? I’ll come help u.”
I thought the “u” was funny—it reminded me of my mom’s text messages. But then you appeared, tall and blond and wearing red armor, and you were beautiful. You showed me how to equip a dagger and how to kill the monsters that would get me the most experience. Then you said, “Add me to ur friends list and u can ask me questions anytime.”
I told you about my ex. I told you about school, about how I was thinking of switching my major. I told you about my parents’ divorce.
You told me you lived in the northeast. You told me what you liked to order at Taco Bell (7-layer burrito with potatoes and Lava Sauce, to make it 9-layer). You told me you were single. You told me you had a job, but you wouldn’t tell me what it was.
You wouldn’t tell me your real name, even after I told you mine.
And despite that, I felt that I knew you. Not you-you, and not game-you, either, but some mix of the two, all the parts of you that I filled in with my imagination. I once asked you if you wanted to get married, in-game. We could have. There were rings, and everything.
“Lol,” you said.
The last time I saw you, I had one black dagger and one gold. We were killing lizards because I was trying to collect rare crystals to turn them into magic rings, to raise my charisma and intelligence. In real life, I had plenty of the latter and none of the former. But you couldn’t know that.
The last time I saw you, I was drinking coffee and smoking weed and thinking about Wifredo Lam, a Cuban artist, and there was an aurora in the sky that reminded me of shoes from the 90s, and I was depressed but I didn’t realize it.
I loved that game. I loved it so crushingly that the love turned into a little piece of lead in my heart that weighed me down for years after I logged off for the last time. It was an easy decision: I had to move on. I finished school. I got a job doing data entry for a big insurance company. I wrote you a DM about it: how boring it was, how I’d finally gotten the blue sword with my new guild, how I was saving up to buy a car. But you’d become a ghost.
The first time I went to New York, my first time in the Northeast, I thought that anyone on the street could have been you. Anyone on the subway could have been you. Anyone in the bar at 4 AM could have been you.
We could have met eyes, and I never would have known. You were real: you knew my name, my city, my school. You knew the names of my real life friends. You knew my face. You could be looking at my Instagram right now. You could be checking in on me a couple times a year. You could be reading my overwrought captions late at night, when you can’t sleep. You might have something of me that I can’t have of you.
The last time I saw myself was this morning, in the mirror. I have a car now. I have a different job, a better one. I have a cat. I have a small but cherished circle of real-life friends. I haven’t logged into the game in ten years. But sometimes I’ll come across a song from the soundtrack on YouTube and I’ll remember every beat and then, before I realize it’s happening, I’m crying, remembering that place, unable to comprehend that it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. I was never really there. I have seen you, I have never seen you, you were there, you weren’t there.
I need to let you go; so, go.
I’m sending a message in a bottle, except the message is a caption and the bottle is Instagram. I’m making a joke only you would understand, something about lizards and crystals and dragons that have swallowed swords whole. I’m posting it late at night, because I can’t sleep again. If you’re reading this, I type, then, hello.
The last time I saw you was twelve years ago. I will never see you again, because your game data has been purged.
That’s the internet. That’s life.
I’m standing again on the Full Moon Fields. But this time, I’m all alone. Everyone else has already left: no one plays this old game anymore, so the company that runs it is shutting its servers down. I’ve logged on for the first time in a decade because I need to see this world again before it disappears forever. I can’t explain it; I just need to know that it is real.
I look at the aurora one last time. There should be ghosts in this world, but there aren’t. It looks like rain on the horizon. The sun has set for the last time.
I kneel, and type ‘/logout.’
In thirty seconds, I will disappear.
There’s water boiling in the kitchen; the kettle whistles behind me.
Twenty seconds. It begins to rain.
Ten. I turn off the flame.
One.
I disappear.
It’s tomorrow, finally. Let’s go exploring!