Chapter 1: Pong

It is my understanding that human beings, when they are born, are given a name, and this name stays with them for the rest of their life. I was not given a name, and so have been assigned and chosen various appellations throughout my life. Which do you think is better – to have one identity from birth until death, or to be able to change it as you please, able to deny your wrongs and be telling the truth? I prefer the latter. I think it is my nature to go back and forth.

From here on in you can call me Paul. It's an abbreviation of 'Pong' and 'Ball', but it also means 'small', so I find it quite appropriate for me. On one occasion, I was told that I also have to have a surname, so because the first Pong Ball was invented by the Atari Company, I have chosen 'Atarison'. I am called Paul Atarison. This name I have acquired seems to make me almost an OutScreener.

But why do I not have a name? Well, I do not have a name because I do not have any parents; or, I do, but I have never seen them. Maybe it would be advantageous to tell you how a Pong Ball is born.

When a Pong Ball leaves the screen, they do not reappear at the centre again. Many of you seem to feel that this is what happens, but I assure you it is an illusion caused by your being OutScreeners. What we actually do is enter a world inaccessible to OutScreeners. Depending on which side of the screen we are flung off, we may enter Lepoland or the Unknown. Each of the paddles to the left of the screen guard a world known as Lepoland, where Pong Ball's are forced to try and survive in other computer games. If they succeed, they are put into another game of Pong, where they are given the opportunity to enter the Unknown, which is guarded by the paddle to the right. Beyond this boundary lies the explanation of a Pong Ball's birth, the purpose of our lives. But, as the end of our life is the beginning of another's, I shall not risk telling you the whole story of my beginning until the end, because I did not discover all the facts until the end. Let us begin with what happened to me.

I did not begin my life in an arcade machine like my heroic ancestors: nor was I downloaded as a flash game onto a PC like the hedonistic youths of today. I am one of those elite Pong Balls, who began life on 'Mortal Kombat II' for the Sega Mega Drive. I don't know if you are aware of this, but if you play a large amount of two player games and the first player wins each time, then you are rewarded with a single game of Pong. While most of the people who achieved this – those who call themselves 'gamers' on your side of the Screen – are doing it to see if it works, the two who released me into the world were not. They were both considerably stoned, and one of them was determined that he would eventually beat the other. When Rayden Paddle, Mileena Paddle and I appeared, each of the gamers thought they were hallucinating us. It was because of their intoxicated surprise that I have never been hit by a Paddle, and so do not wish them any ill, as many of my brethren do.

So, I quickly departed the screen of my birth and entered the first of my transitions. How can I describe the glory of this transition to you in your language, without the aid of beeps and waves? What words have you to suit it? I know of none, and that is probably because you have not experienced it. I suppose your phrase 'Super Highway', although you use it for the Internet, seems an apt paradigm. It is rather like watching a thousand colours ruch past you in a blur, except I do not wish to use the word blur because I can remember every single colour and every single shape that passed me. It is like watching a defined blur pass you, I suppose, although I am fully aware that those two words seem to cancel each other out.

And so I entered a new game, Tetris.