A creative non-fiction piece.
I can’t remember the first time we played Halo together, and I can’t remember the last. But I think the last time we ever played together was probably the last time it felt like he was my brother; before time would turn what we had into just the shell of a memory, into a husk of something that was real once.
Years later, after our old video games have collected dust in boxes, all I can piece together are fragments of the brother I used to know, sealed in a time-capsule where ‘multiplayer’ meant more than just having an extra team-mate.
Halo: Combat Evolved was the first and only game you’d get if you bought an Xbox around the early 2000s. Scenes of my childhood are littered with memories of watching my older brother play for hours, mesmerised by his ability to take on any enemy and make it look easy.
Making the transition from watching him play to being his team-mate, felt like the most natural progression there could be.
Maybe it was in the way I felt safe when he’d assist my escape from the swarms of monsters coming toward us, or it was in the hours where our focused silence was occasionally broken with laughter; I don’t know what part of being his team-mate I loved the most, but I do know how it feels to have lost him to time, and our growing differences.
When we pass by each other from time to time, his eyes look to the ceiling, and mine look to the floor, and the wall that separates our rooms feels so much thicker than it should be.
We were fused together by a fear of the outside world and a love for a virtual one. We didn’t need to talk about it— I can only really recall one conversation about anything even remotely emotional — we just let ourselves get lost in a world of blue-beaming guns and super-soldiers and the feeling of finally winning something.
It didn’t really matter that the world he protected me in was virtual. But perhaps the narrative I subscribe to of the brother I used to know, was written in rose-colored glasses; because the past is just a story we tell ourselves, and perhaps in my blinding nostalgia I’d forgotten all the times he’d probably left me behind amongst the swarms.
I don’t know if I hold on to the memories of the days where we’d sit indoors for hours, playing this one game, because I grieve the loss of him. He’s still around. He still exists – but the brother who I loved was gone years ago.
Maybe I hold on, because I want to remember a time when the biggest issue at hand, was facing a horde of aliens in a fake galaxy with my brother at my side.
But there are days when the main screen of the game beams alive, and the Halo theme that plays brings all the nostalgia flowing back, that I wish I’d had my teammate with me to take on our virtual world together.
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