537 IN FALLOUT

FALLOUT 537

I geek out over this game; the show is cool too. One of my favorite movies is The Road Warrior, and this game borrows heavily from that movie. I bought Fallout 3 during my stay in Montana for $10 on sale. Best $10 I ever spent. I played the game endlessly, and when I had beaten it multiple times, I started modding it—adding to it, taking away from it, adding my own textures, and eventually scripting many aspects of the game to align more closely with my own vision of what it needed. In all, I spent nearly seven years, on and off, modding it.

When the time came to make room on my computer for work-related files, I ended up deleting a lot of files I thought were unnecessary. Among them were the files needed to run the game. When I tried to play it, the game shut down before even reaching the main screen.

I freaked out, feeling a twinge of panic, and spent the next two hours searching online for a solution but found nothing. In despair, I walked away from my computer and headed to the bathroom. I stood by the mirror, thinking about all the time I had lost. Then I remembered one of the first instances of modding the game: I had spent hours on it, saved my progress, and entered Megaton, only to see a character I had marked as sick now walking around the main area using his sneaking animation. I remembered how I had laughed at the unexpected sight of that character among the others. As I stood facing the mirror, a flood of memories of the fun I had modding the game and all the discoveries and neat additions I made came rushing back. This memory made me burst out laughing. All that time I spent—each minute modding, playing, and testing—filled me with joy, and I couldn’t contain that feeling. I was overwhelmed by the happiness these memories brought me and felt elated at having experienced it all in the first place.

The files were lost, but the memories and the fun I had could never be taken away. That realization more than made up for the sense of loss I initially felt.

Several years later, during a Fallout game update, I gave it another shot, and all of my files were restored. I could jump in and play the game as I had modded it. I tried it a few times and felt happy to see all the additions I had made; all the time I had spent was there once again.

A seemingly trivial instance, but one that helped me realize that the true value lies in the journey, not the destination. Even if the final result is lost, the journey cannot be taken away. That lives forever.

as for the picture, just a serendipitous instance of my number. as seen on tV.

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