The Legend of the Lone Tonto
by SealWyf, HSM editor?
It was after the White River massacre that the Lone Ranger decided to retire. He broke the news to Tonto over breakfast.
I stared at the screen and contemplated the next sentence. How would Tonto react? With disbelief? With anger? With half-conscious relief that his long subservience was over? All of the above, simultaneously or in stages?
Before I had quite parsed it out, a system notification slid onto the screen:
Uncle_Walrus has arrived
That’s odd, I thought. I hadn’t invited him. I pushed back the laptop and turned to watch the familiar portly silhouette materialize on the damp cobblestones outside Carla’s Coffee Shop.
“Hullo, Vlad,” I called as my kinsman waddled into the cosy Home café where I do most of my writing these days. “What’s up?”
“Did you get my present?”
“The Lockwood Gift Machine thing? I think I did — at least it said I had received a new item. But nothing showed up in the Rewards list.”
“That’s because it’s not in the database,” Vlad said cryptically. He nodded toward the laptop. “More HSM stuff?”
“Sort of. Terra’s shutting down the magazine. She suggested we all write resignation letters.”
Vlad picked up the laptop and peered at the screen. (Myopia is common in the walrus branch of the selkie tribe.) “So the Lone Ranger quits. And Tonto takes over fighting crime in the old West?”
“Something like that, I guess. It’s about how he has to learn to stop being a sidekick.”
“So you’re thinking of taking over the vacant Editor-In-Chief position.”
I did the “No way!” emote. “Short answer, ‘No’,” I said. “Long answer, ‘Hell, no!’ I don’t have enough spare time to run the Magazine.”
Vlad settled into a chair at the Game Mechanics active-item table. The pixels creaked beneath his weight. “Time’s just an excuse, punkin. You have as much of that stuff as anyone else, including the redoubtable Terra. You just have different priorities.”
“Otherwise known as a day job and a four-hour-per-day commute.”
“As I said, different priorities. But the truth is, Tonto can’t become the Lone Ranger. He’ll always be a sidekick, because that’s the only role he knows. He may try being a hero, but eventually he’ll find another charismatic role-model to serve. It’s the only way he can be happy.”
Ouch, I thought. Vlad knows me too well. But then, he should. I created him.
“So, punkin — when are you going to check out your present?”
“Where do I look? Wardrobe? Furniture? Personal spaces?”
“Try Inventory.” Vlad was chuckling, his vast Victorian moustache twitching.
I hit Start and pulled up the Inventory screen. Sure enough, there was a new item at the top of the list, marked with a star, and displaying a seal’s face.
“A new Companion?”
“Try it out.” Vlad was quivering with suppressed laughter now. I wondered if it was a new custom emote.
I loaded the item. Nothing happened.
“Check your R1 menu.”
I did. There, below Dance, was a new choice: “Special”. I highlighted it and hit X. And my avatar began to melt.
Vlad was melting too, his Drey Noir tweeds dissolving into short brown fur as his moustache coarsened into bristles. A few seconds later, my Paris Classic Rug was mostly covered by a very large walrus.
And I was now a Sea Lion.
“Cool!” I barked. “Lockwood nails it again!”
“Lockwood had nothing to do with it,” Vlad rumbled. “I just hijacked the Gift Machine as a delivery service. This is genuine p-space software.”
“Wow,” I said. Then I tipped back my head and aargled, clapping my flippers. “This is brilliant!”
“Of course it is,” Vlad said modestly. “So, punkin — let’s go exploring. What’s the best beach in Home?”
“That would be Granzella. Glittering Sands.”
“You lead, I’ll follow.”
We shifted back to human form to make the trip. I put on a bathing suit. Vlad remained in his habitual tweeds. I was just as glad — figures like his were never meant to be seen in a Speedo.
Soon we arrived at the beach and threaded through the crowd of avatars. “Wanna join my fam?” one called. Another shouted, “wer u frum? age?” I ignored them. Four years in Home helps you do that. The calls of the seagulls blended with the gentle rustle of the waves and the crunch of sand underfoot. Home had never felt so intense, so utterly real.
Vlad and I had reached the water. The “Swim” prompt appeared. Could I could shape-shift while swimming? I wondered. But before I could experiment, my avatar began to change.
“It’s controlled by AI,” Vlad said. “Artificial Imagination.”
“Cool,” I replied. It came out as a bark. I was already a seal.
And Vlad was in his walrus form. If the other avatars saw us, they gave no sign. They probably thought we were part of the scenery, like the dolphins leaping on the distant blue horizon. We began to swim, heading out past the rocks where avatars danced in costumes from a dozen fever-dreams and hallucinations.
When we reached the normal swimming limits, Vlad dived, and I followed. The undersea world was perfectly rendered, with schools of fish and coral reefs. I spotted a sunken pirate ship. We cruised through a drowned Greek temple.
“I can’t believe Granzella put all this in,” I typed. “That’s a huge amount of memory to spend, where nobody but glitchers will ever see it.”
Vlad’s word-balloon popped up. “What makes you think Granzella made this?”
“It’s their space.”
“Punkin, we left their space when we passed the dolphins.”
That wasn’t typed. I heard it in my mind. And when I typed, I heard my own thoughts being broadcast. It was like speaking underwater.
“So where are we?” I had to ask, but I already suspected the answer. This was p-space software, after all. It had taken us to its own world, where reality becomes a fluid waking dream. A school of iridescent fish flashed by, but the underwater world was already dissolving. The streams of rising bubbles were glowing. We were floating among the stars.
They surrounded us on all sides, in a three-dimensional vortex like a helical tunnel. Far away, I could see the flat, glowing rectangle of my TV screen. And, beyond it, my couch, now empty. And my controller, fallen to the floor.
“We’re really here, aren’t we, Vlad?”
The walrus gave an affirmative rumble.
“Can I stay here?”
“Do you have anywhere better to go?”
I realized I did not. With the Magazine closing, I felt orphaned and bereft — Tonto without the Lone Ranger. Some of my real-world friends might miss me, but they would get over it. Better to cut my losses, and sail on into the unknown.
“I think I have an ending to the story,” I said. “Tonto hid the silver bullets and the mask in the secret cave, and moved back to the reservation, to help his own struggling people. When the Lone Ranger finally returned, he had to find another assistant.”
“Maybe,” said Vlad. “I like that ending. But you aren’t Tonto, punkin, any more than you are the Lone Ranger.” He angled his dive toward the center of a spinning galaxy. “You’re not a leader. But you’re not a sidekick either. You’re a selkie.”
I glided beside him, our flippers almost touching. “And sooner or later, selkies they find their hidden skins. They turn back into seals. They leave the land behind, and swim away.”
“Finding their own path,” said Vlad’s voice. The walrus was transparent now, expanding and fading into a diffuse cloud of light. “Carving out their own strange, solitary destiny…”
He was gone. As I sailed on alone, I whispered to the stars:
“…in the wilderness of waves, in the vast and trackless pastures of the sea.”
March 31st, 2013 by SealWyf_ | 6 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer, who has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is obsessed with creating new aesthetic experiences in PlayStation Home.
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I love the way you handled this Seal. The story is great! Happy April Fools Day! See you at the next meeting, if not before.
Fantastic story Seal, loved it!
Thanks, ted. Vlad the selkie walrus has been part of my inner world for a few decades now. He even has his own Facebook page!
Tonto had too much class to be just a sidekick. Jest like you’se guys. Carry on.
I wanna be a silkie (van Vogt), not a selkie.
D:< <— does this work. We shall see, eh?
What space is in the first picture?
That’s Carla’s Coffee Shop.