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Magic Markers, I gotta fight against getting my nose all up in there.) After watching my mom type “attack Tiffany with pipe” and having the game tell her back, “Tiffany yells, ‘ow!’,” I knew I was hooked on video games for life.
    As my brother and I grew up, we played any PC computer game we could trick our parents into buying us. It was the primary hobby we used to fill our many, MANY free hours between geisha lessons.
    “We need this program called Math Blaster to help us learn better, Mom. Oh, and those four other games under it, too. Don’t look too close!”
    In an amazing stroke of Cancerian fate, right after the ballet class Satan-worshiping situation, I stumbled upon a video game series called Ultima. Besides pretty much being one of the seminal Role-Playing Game series of ALL TIME (don’t argue with me about this, you’re wrong), this is a video game that literally changed my life.
    What set this series apart from other indecipherably pixilated games of the early ’90s was the way you created your character. At the beginning of the game, a fortune-teller asks you several multiple-choice questions like:
    “A girl is to be killed for stealing bread from a dying woman. What do you do?”
A) Let them kill her; she deserved it.
B) Demand that she be freed; her crime is understandable.
C) Offer to take the punishment instead. She’s hot.
(Okay, that wasn’t one of the real questions.)

    Depending on the way you answered, your avatar (the character you played; don’t worry: I’ll hold your hand through the nerd lingo) started the game differently. Your decisions influenced who you were in the world; your morals shaped what Virtues (like Honesty and Courage) you were aligned with. Let me simplify: As a kid, this video game SAW INTO MY SOUL. It defined me, then projected me into a world where I could be a virtual hero version of myself. I could walk around alone, without my mom warning me there were molesters waiting to kidnap me on every corner. I could go shopping and steal things and kill monsters! Oh, and I could name my avatar AFTER MYSELF! Screw astrology, I was in love!!!!!
    I played the games in the Ultima series for HOURS and HOURS a day, month after month. I decided it checked the box for many subjects in my homeschooled curriculum, like computer science, literature, and PE (for the eye-hand coordination). The only thing my mom ever said about it was, “I’m glad you’re concentrating on something, kids!”
    I became completely immersed in the world, channeling my avatar’s ruling Virtue of “Compassion” everywhere in the 16-bit realm. And deep down, all I wanted IN THE WORLD was to talk to other people about it. Discuss how bitchin’ the graphics were. How awesome the lore was. And Holy crap, this game allows you to BAKE VIRTUAL BREAD! I NEEDED to share this joy with other humans! But the girls at ballet had no clue what a computer was (Megan’s stupid mom probably thought that technology was the work of Satan), and my brother was . . . my brother. I mean, brothers are practically subhuman, right? No, I needed real live people who loved this Ultima game who were not living in my house with me! Where could I find them?!
    Hmmmm . . .
    [  Technology-ships  ]
BONG-BOOP-BOOP-BEEP-BEEP-BOOP-BOOP-BEEP
PLAP PLEEP PLWAAAAAAANG SCREEEEWAAAAAA
KLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESHWAAAANG GLAW CEGLAW
SSCHHEHEHHEHEHHHHHHHHHHWHHHHHHHHH

    Just approximating that sound in type makes me recall joy, like other kids getting excited over the creepy tinkle of an ice cream truck. In my childhood world, the sound of a modem dialing up to connect with another computer was the sound of freedom.
    I’m probably a member of the oldest generation that grew up with the idea that you can connect with other people using a computer. My grandfather worked for the military, where he headed the nuclear physics laboratory at the US Missile Command for twenty years, so he was probably sending groovy