Chapter 3: Donkey Kong
Of course, I reappeared in another game of Pong. This time it was on an arcade machine. There was a different type of music for me to listen to there, one of what i now understand to be overlapping layers of dialogue and frustrated monologue, but one that I believed at the time was something I would learn to interpret. Eventually, I did learn to interpret it, as you know. Most Pong Balls, however, do not learn it. It was also the first time I saw more than two people in front of me. You would probably find it difficult to concentrate on fifty people at the same time, but I have no difficulty in doing so. If I wished, I could describe every intricate detail of the multicoloured bag on the shoulder of a girl at the counter. I could describe every hair of her abundant locks. I could describe the backs of five boys dressed in slightly different shades of black gathered round one machine that was visible to me in the gap between his arm and his torso. If there were a painter dedicated enough, I believe he could recreate the exact picture in my memory.
You may have noticed that I did not reappear in another Pong game in Mortal Kombat II. We Pong Balls are born travellers, and where we were born has little relevance to how we develop. Despite the location of my birthscreen, I have never returned to such a place, and spent most of this half of my childhood in arcade machines, watching sweaty teenagers battle for their dignity in amusement halls. To have been in non-existence until another Mortal Kombat II Pong Ball game became available would have been like experiencing death. Non-existence in the world of the Screen is equivalent to death. If you have ever destroyed a computer game, I do not think I can forgive you. If you have an old games machine gathering dust in the attic, or the basement, or wherever you have left it, root it out again and play it. You will not believe how well it will play, the Screeners will be so happy to have resurfaced into existence that they will be the liveliest people you have ever seen.
I'm still proud I came from Mortal Kombat II though, still proud of my relative individuality in a world of particularly similar Pong Balls, still what you, the people of the OutScreen, would probably call patriotic.
The game did not last very long. I was young and uneducated, ignorant of any need but that of survival. I knew nothing of which side of the screen I should bid for, but, knowing that I had been in a similar place before, and that I would not die, I drifted off to the left. There, the paddle attempted to intercept my path. I merely screamed:
'I will die unless you stop me from exploding!'
This made him laugh. Indeed, such an unlikely proposition made him laugh so much that it rendered him unable to move. I could only thank the gentle historian block for inadvertently helping me.
Another game that involved falling was to be my next stop in Lepoland. I was encased in a barrel at the top of the screen in the original Donkey Kong. It was my first encounter with the Princess, Mario and Donkey Kong. I was not present for donkey kong's bending of red girders, nor the small piece of music in the background when the words 'How high can you get?' appeared beneath an angry, and more orangey donkey kong. It was only as the first stage of the first level began that I appeared on the screen, when the action was about to take place. I was placed in a barrel in the top left corner.
It would be interesting to hear from you, the OutScreeners, whether you think the orange and yellow barrels that Donkey Kong throws are the same as those which are stacked two two by two in the top left corner. From your perspective, it does not appear to be so. This is, I think, because you, the OutScreeners, were not made by somebody it was possible to see, and so have no context to understand the crazy transitions that occur which we are so aware of. How can I explain it to you? If there is a path that you frequently walk down, there may have been one occasion when you noticed your surroundings and were surprised how quickly you had progressed since the last time you noticed them. There is a glitch in your system, like there is in ours. The two differences between what i have described to you and what it is like for us are that we have a reasonable knowledge of when to expect it, and it is also painful. I must stress that although your early programmers were trying hard to make existence comfortable for us, they failed to realise that they should have had sympathy with us. We do not like being jerked around in such a way, anymore then you would falling asleep in bed and then waking up standing in a queue. Fortunately, you have got a lot better at making our continuity seamless, and out lives have developed from awkward hellish pain, into something that I could only describe as reasonable and functional, until now it is almost luxurious. Some of the younger Screeners would not know good programming if they were made by it, (and the probably were,) but I truly appreciate the miraculous speed of your advances.
To the game. The barrel I was within this time did not think it too painful, but rather said he had a little bit of an itch inside him, and i told him:
'I will die unless you stop me from falling!'
All the other stationary barrels looked at him as though they were his words. He tried to suggest it was not him, and so they looked up at the Princess, but she was too busy acting the drama queen and trying to be a damsel in distress for Mario, and then they looked at Donkey Kong, but he was too busy growling, and they knew it could be neither of them.
'I didn't say that guys.'
'Have you got a bug, Ralph?' said the bottom-right barrel.
'No, but I do have a funny feeling in my stomach, like its just about to explode. I will die unless you stop me from exploding! I didn't say that guys, i mean, i know it came from me, but i swear i didn't say that.'
The bottom-right barrel, who had shown the most pity for my barrel's state was the first to be thrown down after the navy and sky blue striped barrel that was thrown toward the running Mario.
'Ralph,' said the bottom left barrel, 'I think you may have one of those things that the people of the OutScreen keep talking about, what's it called, it's like a split something...'
'It's not called "split" anything, its called "schizophrenia".'
'Schizophrenia! Schizophrenia!' I shouted, because there was no equivalent 'word' in the world of the Screeners, and though i had witnessed OutScreener dialects before, it was as alien to me as if you were to hear one of your closest friends begin to start talking like the wind, or putting on an accent for the gentle rustling of a tree.
Suddenly, the barrel I inhabited was thrown down, and I was clattered and banged inside without much care because the barrel did not know that I was even in the game. We rolled across the descending girder and down ladders, and when it came to a point where the barrel seemed to wish to roll down a ladder that Mario was climbing up, I put a stop to it by pushing him beyond, and thereby saving Mario and myself, which, upon reflection, i can deem an almost heroic act.
I rolled passed the burning can of oil and out of the barrel, into the next game.
