The Fractal Hall Journal

From the memoirs of Ieuan “\/4LL3yB01″ Thomas; poet, raconteur, and Gold-medalist in the Halo IX Capture The Flag event at the 2020 Olympics.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the Spa shop on the corner. I can never remember if we had sixteen systems linked in the Christmas LAN party when I was fifteen, or fifteen linked when I was sixteen, or whether by that point we looked old enough to get into one of the big clubs in Cardiff with IDs run off on Jack Richards’ uncle’s laser printer.

All the Christmases run down towards the Darkshore, because we didn’t have school in the morning so we could really concentrate on leveling up our Night Elves.

It was raining. It was always raining at Christmas, except for that one time when everything froze and Dad had to take Mrs Gregory to hospital after she slipped outside the Station Inn. Mam always had that grim look on that face whenever someone brought it up.

Times were hard, but we never went without. Not a Christmas went buy where we children didn’t have food from M&S, or at the very least Tesco Finest, while Mam and Dad made due with Value brands. The season could be tough, especially for the working men. I remember one Boxing Day where Dad was nowhere to be found, and when I asked Mam about it she said he’d been called out because the Council’s servers had been buggered again.

“The budget’s been tight, bach,” she said to me. “He had to go into work. Those poor souls have had to make do with Google Maps ever since they took satnav off the gritters.”

My brother Dai would always take me to Blackwood high street in the evenings of the school holidays. We’d sit there, lit up by the warm blue glow of the neon tubes he’d installed under the chassis. We’d watch as the multi-coloured cars would drive up and down in endless procession, occasionally pausing in the Asda car park. Dai’s eyes would mist over with sadness, the deep cerulean Subaru Impreza WRX forever beyond his grasp. I missed the nuance of his melancholy, as I was trying to read his old Uncanny X-Mens by the tiny light cast by his dashboard dials. Mam disapproved, of course, believing she’d forever lost her eldest son once his father had let him install a spoiler on the Punto.

Always on Christmas night there was music. Dai would roll his eyes as Dad put on his Springsteen records and dance around with Mam. My brother could bear it for perhaps half an hour before sneaking upstairs to a crafty fag and happy hardcore on the iPod. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the Blossom Hill (three bottles for a tenner), sang a song with words I couldn’t follow; and then everybody laughed and Mam ushered me quickly out of the room and off to bed.

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the unending drizzle, I could see the flashing colours that covered the houses of all the people who tried to out-do each other with ever more elaborate Christmas light dioramas. I turned the monitor on, slumped into my favourite chair. I typed some words into the password field, and then I logged in.