SWORDQUEST: THE FUTURE
SPECIAL EPISODE #002600
I still remember the sweetness of the summer breeze in the trees, it was the summer of 1982…
TRON, the first feature film to incorporate computer generated-imagery was just about hit silver screens across the province, Reece’s Pieces were suddenly all the rage courtesy of a certain Spielberg-fueled Extraterrestrial marketing machine and everywhere you turned conversations were thick with the buzz of the latest technological entertainment.
My friends, Tommy Norton and Jenny McAfee had just unpackaged their brand new Atari 2600 Video Computer System. A joint 6th grade graduation present they had gifted themselves courtesy of many after school walks spent together harvesting empty beer bottles and cans from the town’s many muddy ditches.
As they carefully hooked up the console’s r/f switch to the little screws of the antenna input on the back of their Cabinet TV, little did they know they were about to embark on a journey far beyond their wildest imaginations:
Tommy, with his spiked hair and thick-rimmed glasses, was so excited that he hardly noticed that the cartridge he had just inserted into the console bore a strange holographic sticker labeled "SwordQuest: The Future © 2024", as opposed to "Combat" and "Pac-Man" advertised as being included with the Console on the silvery Atari-branded box.
Jenny, her wrists adorned with neon plastic bangle bracelets and a Sony Walkman clipped to her belt, watched eagerly as the screen flickered to life with pixelated brilliance.
The game began with a burst of electronic fanfare! Suddenly the best friends since Kindergarten suddenly found themselves occupying the shoes of brave adventurers in a distant future.
The holo-graphics, unlike anything they had seen before, shimmered with hues of teal and magenta, transporting them to an otherworldly realm of futuristic cities and floating platforms.
As they marvelled at thousands of levels filled with digital dragons and pixelated puzzles, Tommy and Jenny stumbled upon the anomaly which triggered their initial journey.
A time and relative dimensions in space glitch in the T.A.R.D.I.S. kernel of the game box had whisked them away from their 1980s living room and into the heart of SwordQuest's digital universe.
The 1980’s besties now found themselves standing in a neon-lit cityscape, skyscrapers towering above them like digital monoliths. Jenny gasped in awe, her eyes reflecting the luminescent glow of virtual billboards advertising hovercars and cybernetic enhancements. Tommy, ever the tech enthusiast, recognized symbols on the walls, such as “BAD WOLF”, which were obvious geeky references to an underground practice known as Blue Boxing and a nod to early phreaking culture.
As their adventure unfolded they met NPCs also known as non-playable characters with recursive dialog trees of inside jokes and geeky references.
Eventually a recognizable pattern emerged with repeated mentions of a legendary artifact that could unlock the secrets of the game's universe; a small toy plastic whistle which was mysteriously embossed “Bo’Sun.”
Occasionally the dapper digital spirit of John Draper, the infamous hacker once known as Captain Crunch, would appear as a holographic sprite guide sporting a beardiful avatar dispensing clues regarding treasures beyond imagining and warnings about the dangers lurking ahead in every digital shadow.
“End the dread
Find ye abundance of bread
Follow Ariadne’s thread
Feed your head
To reach Level #2600
Hear what I said...”
Together, Tommy and Jenny navigated through mazes of code and battled rogue AI programs from throughout ancient geek history such as THE MCP, SHODAN, MISS MINUTES, QUEEG 500, HAL 9000, SKYNET, CLU 2, AM, GLaDOS and other various code-based guardians of incomprehensible digital treasures.
Victorious together they uncovered secrets hidden within lines of encrypted text and solved puzzles that required knowledge of both esoteric 1980s pop culture and bleeding-edge technology from 2024.
In their quest to reach level #2600, they encountered code bending adversaries such as the Plague, Megabyte, Hexidecimal all the while navigating deadly dungeons of nullified data, their Atari 2600 joysticks pulsating with every jump and dash across the digital adventure lands.
At long last, after overcoming countless challenges and embracing a synergetic fusion of past and future technologies, Tommy and Jenny breached the fabled level #2600.
Finally, the Legendary Bo’Sun Whistle as within their grasp!
The fabled network spanning artifact glowed with a mesmerizing light as it began to emit an eerie 2600Hz tone signalling the culmination of their journey and the restoration of a harmony reached via their 1980s gaming prowess combining with the advanced AI powering SwordQuest: The Future.
As they bid farewell to the digital realms of the future and returned to their 1980s reality, Tommy and Jenny knew they had experienced something extraordinary.
Now more than just a gaming console, their investment had become a portal to a future where technology and imagination intertwined in ways they could never have imagined.
"Hey! Are you grid warriors watching your time!?" Jenny's Mom teasingly called upstairs.
How was it just 7:30 already?
Tommy and Jenny looked at each, smiled and shrugged the way best friends who had just shared an awesome, yet inexplicable adventure together often do.
Time to watch another serialized episode of Doctor Who, courtesy of a TV antenna with repurposed directional rotor, a university PBS network station that was just across the border in Michigan and good old fashion British science fiction.
With hearts full of nostalgia and minds buzzing with possibilities, Tommy and Jenny switched off their Atari 2600. Now not just a state-of-the-art 1980’s gaming device, but also a functioning paradox-free digital time machine that transported them to their future, which turned out to be our today.
A liminal world where the lines between actuality and virtuality blur into unforgettable adventures.
I wonder what mysteries level #5200 will contain…?
NEVER THE END...
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