“There she is! So retro-cool,” Colin swooned as he and Arthur leaned in to study a small yet bulky suitcase-style computer from the early 80s, its dull phosphorus screen displaying a text adventure while its happy late-40s owner proudly stood by the table. “This portable workhorse was totally underappreciated in computing history.”

           “Ah, to be a government employee with one of these…” Arthur added. “Walking down some beige hallway in a fancy gray suit, lugging an Osborn under warm lights…”

           “Guys, we can’t stop and stare at every computer in this place,” muttered Wes, he and Jared behind them and not as enthusiastic. “It’s been hours, yet we’re not even half-way done. And did we have to…” he yawned, “get here when the doors opened?”

           Jared groaned. “We could move at a more reasonable pace if you just didn’t bring up the tech specs for each machine. We’re really impressed that you know about so many chipsets and sound cards, but could we at least get to the 90s hardware?”

           Colin and Arthur both sighed and grumbled, but did cut their gawking a little short and got back to walking with their friends in the large convention hall, next to Royal Valley’s airport. Old physical games and peripherals were on sale, and over a hundred vintage computers were on display across the space. Hard drive clicks and MIDI sounds filled the room, and while the event couldn’t bring in crowds like an anime or gaming expo, it was still as busy as King Arcade on a weekday.

           “C’mon, Wes, I thought you still liked this stuff,” Colin said. “Then again… I guess I do remember now that you two only ever went to the first SiliCon with us.”

           “Yeah, it was an annual thing with you and Arty. It’s cool and I can nerd out a bit, too, but there’s nothing here that screams ‘come back next year’ to me.”

           Arthur argued, “I get that you’re both programmers and more interested in the newest and best production software instead of old clunky apps, but you have to admit, just the fact that passionate people can keep machines that are coming up on five decades in age running like they’re new is kind of… Well, it’s special, right?”

           Wes smiled a little as they walked. “Yeah, I know. I do appreciate their hard work and conviction. I love seeing things preserved, but maybe when it’s only computers, the focus is too narrow to keep me fascinated? I think I wanna see all of the past preserved somehow. Hell, maybe it is, and we just need a time machine to visit that big museum.”

           “Okay, sure,” Colin lightly scoffed. “But we live in a time where all we can do is drag the past out of our attics and closets to put on display, so enjoy what we got.”

           “Don’t get me wrong, Colin—I just like getting a chance to spend some time with my old buds, no matter what we’re doing. If you think I’m grumpy… to be fair, I did spend all day here just last month with my daughter at the Lego convention.”

           Arthur suggested, “All right, let’s find something Wes would be interested—”

           “Ah—now we’re talking!” Wes interrupted and rushed up to another table the instant he could see its display. “Yo, Jared—they got all the classics running!”

           The other three walked over to an array of six monitors, each displaying playable PC games from the 80s and early 90s. Everything from IBMs and an Apple II, to a classic monochrome Macintosh and the first machines that could run Windows showed off well-known titles, and this thrilled Wes as much as could be expected.

           “SimCity 2000, Doom II, Worms, Keen… J, let’s chill here while Colin and Arty go around geeking out about their circuit boards. We know game design is the real art form.”

           “And this isn’t geeking out?” Jared replied. “I’ve played these a hundred times.”

           Wes’ phone pinged, and he said as he took it out of his pocket to check it, “Sure, but here we could attract and impress a crowd with our… Uh… The hell is this…?”

           “Wes, what’s up?” Colin asked him. “Text from Sadie? Kid get in trouble?”

           “No, it’s… I don’t know what to make of it.” He showed the others the message.

           Arthur read off the text as he and Colin scanned it a few times, “Wes, SOS. This is Jason. Open safe at work. Get thing. Instructions at Millie’s. First summer Saturday, at 6 PM, 1998. DTE. HURRY.” He stood up straight again and scratched his chin. “Colin. I’m not alone in suddenly but vaguely remembering that one time Jason Connor got us to try sending a text message into the future, right? Didn’t your dad help us with that?”

           Colin closed his eyes, concentrated, and murmured, “Mmm… Yeah, I do sort of recall that. He never showed us what he wrote… What did he write? What happened back in 1998? If this is some inside joke, I don’t get it. Maybe it’s a riddle? Weird.”

           The four stood by the vintage computers for a moment, pondering, until Jared spoke up, “I don’t think I was there for it, but I guess it’s an interesting little blast from the past. Not interesting enough to leave here to check Wes’ wall safe though, I take it.”

           Wes, Colin, and Arthur glanced at the machines, and then stared at each other.

           “If this turns out to be nothing, we can still go back to the convention before closing, right?” Arthur wondered as soon as the four of them were off the elevator.

           “Sure,” Wes replied and took out his company key. “It’s not like I’m expecting to find some mystical thing in my wall safe that has ‘open in an emergency,’ on it… but the fact that Jason Connor somehow knew I’d have one at all is… eerie. And is the reason I couldn’t just shrug off the text. I mean, how many people have a safe at work?”

           “Maybe he thought you’d grow up to be a banker?” Colin said half-heartedly.

           “Well, whatever this is about, it’s still a good excuse to finally show you two RV Indie, where the magic happens,” Jared remarked as Wes unlocked the door.

           “I’ve seen the pictures, but…” Colin paused and they stepped into the large open space, where he and Arthur took in the sight of an impressive game development office. “These are nice digs. I can’t believe you guys scored an entire floor at Victory Plaza.”

           “How many do you employ?” Arthur questioned. “And do you pay Brian well?”

           “About forty, and yes,” Wes answered. “Don’t forget, this all started in Jared’s garage a few years after college. Us, Brian, and three to five others who came and went. We poured our hearts into that first game. Long nights that continued into the garage of the first house I had with Sadie, all while I kept working a crappy IT job to pay the bills. Years roll on, Warren surprises us, and then when he turns three… we finally publish.”

           “Wes nearly had a heart attack when he saw the first month’s digital sales,” Jared continued the tale with a wide grin. “I could be humble, but I definitely think my minor in advertising and social media presence helped a lot. After Suburban Kingdom went viral, we kept that momentum going, skipping the buy-a-vacant-lot-on-the-outskirts part and jumping right to getting a lease in the heart of Royal Valley. And look at us now.”

           “It’s a success story, no doubt, but, Wes… is your heart still in it?” Colin asked.

           Looking at framed video game memorabilia as he pushed at his personal office’s glass door, Wes sighed, “It is. But I’m in that phase where I’ve made all the stories I always wanted to, and now I’m in the doldrums while I try to find inspiration and new ideas. Or wait for some to come to me. It’s not exactly writer’s block… More like mud.”

           Colin got close to one glass box in particular. “Is that… your old Super Nintendo in there? Some good memories in that plastic. Something will come to you, Wes.”

           “Heh. Who knows? Texts from the past… Could be a game there, somewhere.”

           They went into the office, where Arthur and Colin toured Wes’ mini-museum. Toys and iconic media were immortalized in glass cubes and frames on the walls, and the window offered a view of the theme park in the distance. Wes went to his wall safe, hesitated, and then instead showed off his desk’s photo of the entire gang in July, 1996.

           “Jason was an enigma,” he said. “Comes out of nowhere, brightens up our lives, and then he’s gone, barely leaving any evidence that he was here. Arty, you took so many photos of us, and yet I’ve scoured through our albums, Googled him, and… nothing.”

           “I don’t know, man,” he replied. “He always seemed to avoid the camera. But some people can still just disappear from the story, even in this connected world.”

           “Wes, I’ve played all your games so far,” Colin added. “You haven’t made one about us, yet, but there are so many plot points, items, bits of scenery, and dialogue in them and their everyday neighborhood, Earthbound-inspired environments that I connect with, it’s like I revisit the past when I explore them. As if it is our lives you’re sharing.”

           Wes shrugged. “They say to write what you know. And I’m passionate about our childhoods. Games provide a deeper, more interactive experience than movies or books. As long as you throw in some proven tropes, good dialogue, art, and reward system, you can convey a memory or feeling better than the authors of other media forms do. I want to invite players of all ages to get a taste of what we knew, and I want to get better at it.”

           Jared smirked. “He gets so philosophical about this stuff. I just like to make funny characters, and minigames you actually want to play. Wes!” he snapped, “quit keeping us in suspense! We all admire your ego and vision, but open the damn safe already.”

           Now mentally prepared, Wes did so by tapping “030485” into the keypad above the etched words, “ONLY OPEN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.”

           It buzzed and a latch unlocked, and he first reminded the others, “I don’t know why I forgot what I put in here. But I trust whatever reason I had to scratch that in. If this is just a joke…” He opened the safe—to find only a piece of scrap paper inside. As his friends looked at him curiously, he took it and read, “Do you need a second chance? Find it in your storage unit. Visit Narnia with Lucy. Millie knows the rest. Be careful.”

           “Now we got riddles?” Jared muttered. “I hate riddles… But it does make for a good second layer of security, for this… thing the text mentions. Where’s your unit?”

           Wes grumbled. “By the airport. Where we just came from. Fine. Back to the car.”

           At about four in the afternoon, Wes drove past the convention hall with his three friends, who were enjoying the luxuries of his quiet new Lucid Air sedan. As a passenger jet came in for a landing beyond the expo, Sadie’s face appeared on the car touch screen.

           “Hey, hon,” Wes said after answering. “We just left the event. What’s up?”

           “Wes, I talked to both Lex and your sister a few minutes ago,” Sadie’s voice came through the speakers. “They’re not sure where Jace and Laurie are. I’m not worried, yet, but they aren’t responding to texts. Do you know if they had any plans today?”

           “Oh… No, but I’m sure it’s nothing. You know how teens can be. Did you get in touch with the other kids or their parents? They’re probably at one of their houses.”

           “They better be. It’s just that this kind of radio silence is unusual for them. I’ll try Chad and Toby first, since they’re the… you know, rebellious ones. What time are you going to be home? I’m making a pot roast for everyone, but I’d still like an estimate.”

           “Sounds good, Said’,” Colin piped from the front seat.

           “Hopefully you’ll get to try some, Colin; Warren’s gotten voracious recently.”

           “I’m gonna show them the office, but we should be home by six,” Wes replied.

           “Okay, Wes. And if you bought an old computer today that would sit around the house, you might as well go ahead and stow it away at the studio instead. Love you.”

           Once she had hung up, Wes exhaled, “She does not like me adding more nostalgia stuff to the home, if you couldn’t tell. I hate lying to her, but I don’t even know how to explain what we’re doing right now. Well, here we are. Almost a third home of mine.”

           “We saw the futon in your office,” Arthur said as Wes pulled into a large storage site’s parking lot and took a key out of a compartment. “You get enough sleep?”

           “A few months out of the year, when we don’t have some self-imposed deadline. Tch. If Luce makes me go into protective uncle mode and scour Desert Tree for Jace…”

           “We were sometimes running around the neighborhood past go-home time for hours,” Jared reminded. “Now we freak out if a text goes unanswered for a minute.”

           “When Jake’s old enough to start wandering the old streets and blocks, you’ll get it, J,” Wes said and locked his car. “The long, slow days of kid time don’t mesh with the hours-feel-like-minutes lives of adults who feed on a constant stream of updates.”

           The four entered the climate-controlled building and traversed a concrete, sterile hallway of orange rolling shutters that sealed away hundreds of time capsules.

           Wes opened his padlock, near the entrance, and pulled up the shutters to reveal a ten-by-ten space—on the larger side for units. The guys stood for a moment in stunned silence before joining him and filling up the narrow walkway between shelves that were overstuffed yet organized; loaded with old toys, tech, and everything in between.

           “Wow, Wes,” Colin said, his eyes taking in the colors and shapes. “It almost looks like your childhood room in here. Is that… your Virtual Boy? Your M&M dispenser… Oh, your Creepy Crawlies oven. This place is really unlocking memories.”

           “Jesus, bud, you ever think about getting rid of some of this stuff?” Jared asked.

           “I have,” Wes assured him. “I only got the walking space cleared out last year. I had more at the house, but Sadie made me unload a bunch of it. It’s… okay, though. It’s easier when she makes the decisions for me. I’m not a hoarder; I just don’t like getting rid of my old things. She actually does want me to keep quite a bit, as well. Plus, I can write some of this unit off as a business expense, since I come here for motivation or references for game items and their pixel art. A lot of toys are in these bins.”