The Fishing Path

“So it’s been that long since anyone here has seen a new face?” I ask incredulously, carefully stepping over the washed out gaps and crags in the dirt path that leads into town. “Sorry if this is out of turn, but you don’t seem old enough to remember fifty years ago.”

The man, who I learned was named Elias, shifts his sack full of fishing gear to his other shoulder. I can tell he’s chewing on a thought, so I let the silence sit with us for a few long moments as we walk.

The foliage around us is familiar and foreign all at once. Ferns that are far too large to be ferns take root at the bases of pines that are leaking electric blue sap. Every once in a while we work together to lift a frond from the path so we can pass by. Sparrows, finches, and chickadees flitter from branch to branch around us, and although they seem fairly standard at a glance there’s an otherworldly shimmer in their feathers that almost tickles my eyes when I see them in my peripheral vision, or when the sunlight hits their wings just right.

Speaking of the sun, there appears to be a chunk missing from it. Although we’re walking away from the sunset and into the woods, when I turn back I can see a circular void in its right hemisphere, like a perpetual partial eclipse.

Finally Elias breaks his silence. “What I mean is that… It has been fifty seasons since anyone new has joined this world.”

“That’s a very specific way to phrase that” I note.

“That’s because the seasons here don’t work the same as you’d expect them to.” He puts a lot of emphasis on the word you, making it feel playfully condescending. He doesn’t seem to want to address the mystery of joining the world at all, instead focusing on how daily life functions. “Days here are still around your standard 24 hours, but it takes nearly four times the amount of days to get through any given season.”

I blink and nod, soaking in the new logic but not quite understanding. Does that mean every season lasts a year?

He continues his speech with slightly less confidence than before. “We’re still not entirely sure how aging works, but we know it’s slower than it should be. For people at least. But all the plants and animals grow and ripen at your normal rate.” There was no emphasis on the word your this time around. “Makes it simpler to farm and to fish.”

“So… your village is a farming village then?” I try not to let my slight anxiety shine through. Farming is the opposite of my knowledge base. Like I said before, I can't even keep a plastic plant alive.

He beams with pride “Best quality meats in the Southern Province! My role here is, um, slightly different than the others. I specialize in farming fish. I also make sure the nearby rivers and lakes stay healthy and populated. I’m more of a steward than a farmer.”

So that’s what he was doing all the way out here by himself. However…

“You didn’t bring back any fish though? Bad catch today?”

He puffs out his chest with no small amount of ego, even more than a moment ago. “That’s right! I was releasing some of my farmed fish into the wild to diversify the population. I also caught a few wild ones in my net to check on their general health. Sometimes I’ll add vitamins or medicine to the water if they need it.”

“No shit? And that works?”

“Appears to. You should come out with me once you reach Level 2 if you’d like.”

“Thanks Elias. That sounds really fun.” I nod politely, not entirely sure why I’m playing along so nicely with my hallucination.

We continue down the path as we chitchat about various fish and the water quality until we’re interrupted by a loud snap and a thud. Elias’ fishing satchel slouches pitifully on the ground, its strap snapped in half.

“Ah dang it. I thought I had another few weeks left in that old thing’s durability. Damn. Will you help me unpack all these supplies and carry them back? It isn’t too far to town now.” Elias sighs heavily in disappointment and then complains under his breath. “I really needed this to last a while longer.”

An idea sparkles in my brain, as I think back to modding the character creation screen. “Hey Elias, what’s that satchel called? Does it have a name by any chance?”

Elias tilted his head ever so slightly to the side as he offered up a questioning “I think it's just an Old Fishing Sack?”

“Got it. Hang on juuuuuust a second while I check somethiiiiing…” I wave to him to sit down and get comfy, and I visualize the keyboard again.

Pa-ping! It pops into existence in front of me once more and I settle into some searching with a few satisfying clicks and clacks of the mechanical keys.

“Hey Noa, sorry, what is that?”

“Oh you mean this keyboard? You’ve never seen one before?”

He shakes his head no emphatically. I guess he did say it’s been fifty years since anyone’s been here. That predates the modern idea of a gaming keyboard or game programming. At least in the capacity we’re talking about here. Even more so if this guy got here before the fifty years.

“I think it can help you out. Watch this. See I’m going to pull up this screen.” I hit the tilde key in hopes that this game has cheats implemented in the same way that all my games did. “Check it out, this is how you can change certain things. You can use this panel here. It’s called the developer panel.” At the bottom of my field of vision sits a black popup window with white monospace text, indicating some standard debugging tools available - ghost mode, teleport to waypoint, skip dialogue and more.

Elias pivots his head around in search of what’s right in front of him. “I don’t see any extra panels. Usually they only pop up when we’re trading or leveling up…” he trails off awkwardly, clearly hoping for me to give him a hint

“Oh, uh, well it’s right here.” Maybe I’m the only one who can see this interface...? “Just... trust me.”

I fidget around for a while, not seeing what I’m looking for. “Actually can you pass me the bag?”

He obliges, and as I hold it in my lap I press CTRL + I to try and bring up the Inspector Panel. In most game engines you can examine and edit the properties of specific items in this method instead of looking for specific scripts or cheats, which may not even do what you want anyway.

And there it is! I’m able to see Elias’ Old Fishing Sack and all of its properties. Looks like it doesn’t have all that many parameters... just an item limit, a durability slider, and a third blank integer input that I don’t recognize named DimSKU. “Hey Elias, you said it’s the durability that’s decayed right?”

“Hm? Um, yes. Why?”

“Watch this.”

I take the Durability slider and shove it all the way to the right, taking it from 0 to 120, a fair bit over what should have been the maximum. As I do, a gentle yellow glow, speckled with hexagonal tessellations, starts to spread over the broken and worn areas of the satchel, pulling and reweaving the broken threads and tired fibers.

Elias seems grateful and full of awe, but his face is turning whiter with each passing moment and his eye is beginning to twitch. “My god, it took our best craftsman eight years to learn to repair twenty damage at a time. How did you learn this?”

I shrug and shove the sack back into his arms with no great fanfare. “It feels like second nature.”

He’s still balking in the road so I push on Elias’ back to motivate him further down the path to town. As he protests, begs for more information, and hypothesizes about my origins we slowly see the silhouettes of several short houses and barns come into view. The hollow sun finishes its descent behind us, revealing a carpet of yellow and purple stars gleaming above what I can assume will be our resting place for the evening.

It’s been several hours since I’ve meaningfully thought about the real world. It’s been nice.