Fresh

A Friday afternoon. One of those hot, lazy Fridays when half the people are on vacation, out of town, and the other half organizes their lives in the most pleasant way possible. Kids would run around the playground or gather in small groups, looking at their smartphones, adults would celebrate the end of workweek. Young people were getting ready to go out with their friends to get wasted, to make out with their dates, to enter the night that held an unspoken promise. Most of them, anyway — not her.

The apartment was brightly lit with blinds wide open, and smell of mint hovered in the air. A bedroom, living room, small kitchen, bathroom, and a hallway. Every surface so clean it almost sparkled with a soft sound of synthwave coming from somewhere in the background. Most likely from from the speakers set on a large table that was set with a screen, mouse and keyboard, a pair of mint scented candles, and a small cup of blueberries. On one of the walls, there was a framed, almost life-size poster of Jordan B. Peterson, overlooking the room with his sharp and fatherly gaze. Clean your room, bucko, and she most definitely has.

On the screen, there was a forum page with topics talking about different pirate WoW servers. What used to be an odd, obscure niche reserved for kids from countries where 12 € wasn’t exactly pocket change slowly grew into a scene full of professionally ran projects (with paid employees) and a growing playerbase of tens of thousands. No one expected it to happen a decade ago, but there it was, and the competition was fierce.

At least half the topics on that day revolved around a new server just about to release. The majority was excited, and whoever dared to disagree with the obvious fact that the new, fresh server is going to be amazing, that it’s going to blow up the competition and attract thousands of players, was quickly dealt with. Those unable to appreciate the new fresh would soon learn of their wrongthink, leave their boring, subpar servers, and join the others.

Of course, nothing could ever compare to the greatest server that ever existed, Nostalrix. A project that redefined the meaning of a pirate server but was now, sadly, long gone. It was only with Nostalrix when the existence of the pirate scene entered the public conscience and for a good reason: the quality, the scripting, the absence of bugs, the stability the server offered was above anything pirate community could even dream of. There were even rumors that Nostalrix was superior to the actual retail, classic WoW made available by Blizzard.

However, only a few months after its release, the server was put offline, and the staff mysteriously disappeared. Some speculated that Blizzard hired a group of Russian hackers, known to specialize in that sort of thing, led by a man named “Kaer”, to hack the Nostalrix servers. Some implied that the Russians were also responsible for the team’s sudden disappearance as “Kaer” was known to be ruthless and without morals, interested only in cold, hard cash.

Others argued that the team was paid off by Blizzard when the company realized how superior Nostalrix was to their original game. After being paid the hush money, the staff was likely employed by Blizzard as well, the theory went, and the fact that Blizzard was now working on their own vanilla servers, scheduled to be released at a time unknown, only seemed to confirm it.

Whatever the case, one thing was certain: nothing could ever replace Nostalrix. The memories of the experience, in minds of its players, were frozen in time, unable to be sullied by trolls and shills, and in a sense, forever fresh. They would keep its memory alive and defend it forever, and like quality wine, the server only seemed to get better as time passed. It continued to loom over the private scene, quietly judging, like a portrait of a dead child in a family household, all the other children never being as well behaved, as hard working, as successful as the deceased child was, and would surely have been if the tragedy had not struck.

She played with her hair, lost in thought, then realized that the new fresh server is releasing in just a few hours. The afternoon started turning into an evening, the kids still played outside, adults were relaxing, teenagers would stand in lines to buy the evening’s supply of store brand beer. She put her hair in a pony tail and got to work, almost ready for the new fresh. It’s going to be so great, it’s going to be the one, this time for real — she could feel it, and everyone else felt it, too. No one dared to say it out loud, but maybe … it might even be as good as Nostalrix was.

Night slowly descended upon the town.

Bright light. Dark room.

A sound of mechanical drums, accompanied by nothing but a repetitive synth pattern, was coming out of speakers near the computer screen, its glow being the only light source in the entire apartment.

Bright light. Dark room.

She brushed her hair aside, now tangled and greasy, and gave another look to the screen. She didn’t have to, she knew exactly what was on it: a few Excel spreadsheets, loosely organized, but full of detail.

The one opened was titled “the new NEW f r e s h” and listed the server’s population numbers: Horde, Alliance, total. The initial entries were weekly, but they soon started to multiply from two a week to at least one entry a day. The numbers looked good: the server started with just over five thousand people on the launch day and kept at the same level for weeks. It then dropped to between 4.500 to just below four thousand and more or less stayed there until the end of the table where the amount of players, on one weekday night, was 3459.

Most of the table was devoid of comments, but there were a few near the end. One of them said, “server dying?”, and the other one, “probably just holidays, actually getting lots of new players”. Next one said, “not again”, and the next, “lol ded”, followed by the final one at the 3459 mark saying, “DED KEK”.

All window blinds were tightly shut, the floor was covered with trash and dirty clothes, empty yogurt cartons stacked high in one of the corners. Some tightly packed trash bags sat in the middle of the room, waiting to be taken out, and the smell, the smell was something she’d gotten used to and didn’t even register and any more. Jordan B. Peterson was still on the wall, giving her a judgmental gaze every time she looked at him. She’d gotten good at avoiding it.

It hadn’t taken much effort anyway since all that mattered, her entire life, or at least the relevant part of it, happened on the screen. Back in summer, she’d been positive that the new server will be the one, that it’ll have the population, the community, the gameplay to rival Nostalrix. The server had failed, but with another new fresh already on the horizon, she hadn’t been worrying all that much. It had been only when that one started failing too, dipping below 4K online on regular basis, that she’d realized the other upcoming server, the new fresh, is her final hope.

Walls near the bed were covered with printouts of tables, detailing their population over time. She’d been starting at them for hours, half asleep, when her body hadn’t allowed her to sit any more, protesting the abuse, the incessant sitting, horrible posture, absence of movement. On one of the walls, there was a large sign, smeared with a mixture of feces and menstrual blood, spelling, “F R E S H”.

Sharp ringing. Won’t stop. Sound of men. Knocking, trying the door handle. More knocking, more voices, loud sounds, banging, cracking. They’re in. People talking, now standing around her, someone opening all the windows, so bright.

She was found in her bed, clutching the official Nostalrix teacup, now sold out and a valuable collector’s item. They had to pry it from her hands to prepare her to be transported to a hospital for the initial assessment.

…

…

…

Don’t worry, though, the story has a happy ending. It did take a long time, and she doesn’t like to talk about it, but she’s fine now — and happily playing on Retro WoW.