Story (6) - Contact

After the door opened and Karl began hearing their voices things were much better. He found out that his host Zee's real name was Ben. Everyone also began calling him Karl, which was close enough to his avatar (Kast) that it proved easy to remember.

Ben lived in what Karl would've described as Jewtopia. The inside of the outwardly run-down home was immaculate. Clean carpets, giant landscape pictures of Jerusalem and scenes from all over Israel, a minora, and a nice selection of books on Yiddish, to Zen-Judaism to Israeli history to books with Hebrew titles. As for Ben himself, he was perfectly average, brown curly hair, glasses, probably 17-18, and a Ramones t-shirt. Ben was the most normal of the crowd though, and wasn't alone in this Hebrew home, three others had already arrived.

The second person whose hand Karl shook was that of Gord, 'Corporal Gordon James'. Looking at him Karl didn't think he belonged in the scene, but after a little while, Karl began to imagine that there never was a place on Earth where Gord would seem to fit in. Immediately he recognized the voice of the group's Ogre Shaman, always very easily excitable and optimistic, but Karl probably imagined he was a 20-something who lived in his parents basement like most of his other online friends. On the contrary, Gord was a unique character. He found out that day over their initial ice-breaking group beers that Gord had been a soldier specializing in communications during Desert Storm. Though the closest he actually came to the action was when a bomb went off beside the office he was working in. He was the first to call in the medical team and secured the area - which is where he got his rank of Corporal. Karl thought it was kind of silly that he took so much pride in such an arbitrary event, but realized he shouldn't say anything. More interesting than this pseudo-glory story, Karl found what Gord left out to be more informative. It seems that after Gord saw the civilian who died from the bomb on the road and did his duty that day, he requested to leave and received an honorable discharge. Since then he had worked in renovations with some friends of his fathers, all the while becoming more and more addicted to EQ - like the rest of them. Gord hardly looked like a 'war hero' at 6 feet, 40 years of age, and some 300 pounds, he looked more like an out of shape, balding, ex-professional wrestler. Aside from this seemingly adult exterior and life, there was something child-like in his excitement and talk about anything from the most trivial aspects of 'the game' to boring details on how long it took him to drive to Fredericksburg from Ohio.

The two other people were Asian and very quiet. When they didn't say anything beyond 'hi' Karl wondered if there was issues. As it turns out, they weren't members of the guild and when Ben looked at them it he appeared to be quite pleased with himself. The girl was probably 20ish and the boy looked like he was 18. Ben explained that they worked for Sony in Japan and had since been fired from their jobs as GMs and game programmers. They saw our guild's messageboard online and that we were planning on starting a new server, and they thought that they could possibly rebuild some form of the game with their knowledge and maybe make some money charging the other near-suicidal EQ addicts who had been desperate for any return to Norrath possible.

While Ben seemed to think this was perfect and that it would save him alot of time programming, Karl felt uneasy about it (as did Gord), there just seemed something wrong with the guy. There was no way, Karl thought, that he could have been a GM, he was still a kid.

Aside from the awkward vibe that "Duong" gave him (Karl desperately held back laughter after hearing his name, and Ben suggested they just call him Dewey), there was a much more real problem they had to deal with. Dewey spoke a bit of broken English, but the girl spoke none. She sat very quietly on the couch drinking some tea and looking suspiciously from one face to the next.

It all seemed very odd to Karl. It wasn't like he expected. So far, no work had gone into rebuilding the game, as Ben had his SATs to write and very little time as it was approaching the end of the school year. Gord had been staying in his truck like Karl and been planning a way to turn Ben's barn into 'HQ' (headquarters) for them. This all seemed much more normal and easier to understand than the Asian couple sitting together speaking in a hushed language as Dewey probably informed her of who the newcomer was.

There were so many questions left, but Karl felt peaceful as they sat down for dinner that Anna had made them. He wondered what Ben's (fairly young) Mom thought about all these weird visitors. Obviously she was ok with it, and she seemed to enjoy cooking for them and cleaning. Anna seemed very interested in Karl and asked him questions all about himself and his family. She even talked to him about Spinoza a bit, after finding out he himself was a budding philosophe. Apparently she was a writer of some sort, and her husband had been a photographer from Israel. Once she had referred to her husband using the perfect tense Karl realized he must have died and began imagining all the middle eastern violence he'd seen on TV (only to find out later that it was a car accident).

As the 4 north americans chatted away and the 2 asians sat silently (at least they were smiling now) Karl was in for the last surprise of the day. Before they got up from Dinner, Anna raised her hands and extended them towards Ben and Gord on either side of her. Ben took one and after much hesitation Gord took the other. Eventually they were all holding hands, and Anna closed her eyes and said a prayer. It seemed fairly normal to Karl, excepting the few references to 'Adonai' and 'Shalom' for the strangers at the table. When they finished Karl out of instinct crossed himself as did the asian girl. Karl, ever the Canadian, worried that he might've often Anna and Ben, but they didn't seem bothered or even to notice at all. But intrigued by this connection both Karl and the girl now were staring at each other in wonder. It was as if suddenly they had discovered they were long lost relatives, that indeed they might've spoken the same language after all, in at least some way.

***

Gord lit a cigar outside as he and Karl sat on lawnchairs and looked at the stars. After a few minutes Ben's vicious dalmation stopped barking long enough for Gord and Karl to have a great chat about Winston Churchill, and then a long and serious discussion about how long it would be till they could log on again. Gord had some great plans for the barn, and indeed had already bought a bunch of supplies for the job. They agreed to join financial forces (Karl was oddly glad that Gord didn't have much more than he did) and Anna said if they fixed up the old barn, they could stay there as long as they wanted.

Once again as night set in, Karl crawled into his truck and turned on some music on his laptop. As Schubert played him to sleep Karl decidedly put out of his mind all the strange people he had met in the day and all the strange things he'd learned. Eventually he drifted off to sleep.