rocketralph | Level 18 [Video / Action for Goldenrod.] AROMATHERAPY FRIDAY

[ACCIDENTAL VIDEO]

_{[Ralph is furiously tapping away at his 'gear and has accidentally turned the camera on. Enjoy a worm's eye view of the guy's chin and thumbs and little else. He's outside, seated on a bench somewhere in Goldenrod's shopping district and ranting to someone.]}

And you know what really crosses my wires? They had the nerve to keep on pretending! I don't know about you, Wrath, but I'm sick and tired of this whole Johto-wide charade of everyone pretending like they aren't from a video game! I can't be the only one that remembers! I can't be the only one who didn't get his code scrambled!

I think they're all kiddin' themselves! So what if there's no quarter alert? So what if we can't see the screen and nobody knows where the tram is! That doesn't mean we should all pretend to be real!

[ACTION FOR SOME BAR IN GOLDENROD]

_{[After a long, exhausting day of arguing, it's easy to find the big guy with some empty glasses at his elbow tucked away in whatever dimly lit corner he could find. He has a Lot to think about.]}

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh for god's sake....

Of course you're real, Ralph. All reality is is a series of experiences endured by an individual. Regardless of what that individual is or how they came to be or what existence they had prior.

I was made by some madman in a desert out of chemicals and a corpse, that doesn't make me any less real.

Aw, Lust, not you too! I'm not sayin' being man-made is a bad thing! It's just different.

The principle remains the same. You can be what you are and still be perfectly real. Reality isn't a matter of flesh or biology. It's nothing but the reception and processing of stimuli. If you receive and process and react to stimuli, you're real.

_{[He makes a long, drawn-out groaning noise.]}

That's not what I'm sayin'!

_{[Then, like before, Ralph feels this sudden urge to say what he's really been saying all this time. Lust's his buddy right? She'll understand, right? WELP, IT'S COMING OUT EITHER WAY!]}

C'mon, Lust, you can tell me. What game are you from? Just...just drop the act for a second or two! I need ta know I'm not alone!

I'm sorry, Ralph, I don't know how to answer that. I swear to you I'm not presenting some act, I simply don't understand how to answer.

I don't even know what the world I'm from is called.

_{[He drags a hand down his face and sighs something that sounds like "scrambled" into it.]}

Thanks anyway.

I wish I knew what to tell you.

I do believe you. But...just because your world is a world contained within a video game, that doesn't mean everyone's world is. Someone has to play those games, worlds that contain those worlds must exist.

Of course someone has to play them! But it's not us.

Why can't it be some of us?

_{[Ralph suddenly looks very very tired instead of his usual rage-filled self.]}

Because this is a game. Look around you! There's background music. A player can't end up inside of a game. We're all...wires and numbers and fiddly little lights and they're...not.

Why not? I don't think anything's truly impossible. If we can be taken from our worlds and made different and kept in this one, who's to say that there are limits?

Or what if this world is like some between place. Part real as you mean it, and part the existence you're familiar with?

Endin' up in a different game isn't that weird. In my arcade nearly everyone visited somebody else after it closed down for the day. But something is trapping us all in one cabinet. I just don't know what or how or why. I haven't seen the tram, I haven't even seen the screen.

_{[He drags his fingers through his hair.]}

I just don't know, Lust. How would somethin' like that even be possible? You can't be half-- half hotdog and half telephone!

Sorry, that was kind of a dumb example. I'm kinda hungry.

I didn't mean to say that.

Why not? Everything's essentially all the same components, broken down to the smallest particles.

Why can't you be a video game character by original nature, and me a biological homunculus, and both of us be human and the same in this place? Look at all that's happened. Is anything really impossible, Ralph?

_{[Ralph is just not a science guy. She keeps talking about PARTICLES and it's making his head hurt.]}

Everything that's happened? Makes sense for a video game...I wish I could believe ya, Lust. I really do. I gotta admit it's a nice thing to daydream about. But this place did something to you and nearly everyone else.

Who knows, maybe it's for the best. Maybe I'm the glitch.

Did you ever wonder if these are things you really believe, or only believe them because it's what you've been taught?

It's the program.