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“Well so he ate a special fruit that lets him stretch like that, so there are these things called Devil Fruits, and if a person eats them they get special like, kind of superpowers, but it comes at a cost – they’re “cursed” by the sea, and they can’t swim anymore. And like that’s not really that big of a drawback on paper, but all of the major characters are either pirates or in the navy so they Are on the water a lot. And like he spins off of the idea that the sea actively hates people with these powers so you can get like, weapons made out of stones that are infused with the energy of the sea or whatever, and touching devil fruit users (that’s what they call the people who eat devil fruits) with those weapons negates their powers, so that’s kind of an escalation of the can’t swim thing, which ultimately isn’t that big of a drawback once everyone is flying around and shooting beams at each other like a dragon ball z character basically or whatever.”

“Oh so that’s why he’s stretchy I guess. Well now I know. Thanks.”

Geordie had a lot of conversations that tended to go this way. There was a part of him that could feel that he was going on too long about something, he could sense the attention and interest of his conversation partner(s) vanishing before his very eyes. He knew he should probably pull up short and let the conversation be a conversation. But something in him wouldn’t let that happen. Every thought needed to be completed verbally, beginning to end. All context was required, all logical follow-up questions, whether or not they would be asked, should be addressed in the initial brief summary, at least in passing.

Sometimes when Geordie caught himself going on like this, he found himself appearing in his own mind as a precocious 10-year-old, monologuing about dinosaurs or athletes or models of tractor while whatever adult was nearby pretended badly to listen. These visions caused him intense shame, made him feel like someone who didn’t belong in the society of normal people. They didn’t cause him to stop.

Sometime a few years previous, Geordie encountered the term “hyperfixation” on twitter, and it had immediately entered his vocabulary. It was the experience of discovering there was a word for an experience one had always considered private, personal, embarrassing, and alienating. Geordie’s hyperfixations, whether they feel under the clinical categorization defined by that word or not, came on suddenly, totally devoured him, and then after some indeterminate period of obsession (fixation) that could range from weeks to a year or two, it would fade away until he gave up on chasing a high that no longer existed, and let the object of his former interest drop from his life.

In between hyperfixations Geordie could enjoy something like a normal life. He managed to read books, watch movies, and play video games, sometimes all in the same day. He enjoyed a wide variety of interests, and was able to take a little pleasure in each one without it crowding out all the others. But eventually something always drew him in and swallowed him up. Lately it was Pseudofang.

Pseudofang was a mostly forgotten tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) that had enjoyed niche popularity in the mid-80’s. It was a game of paranormal investigators staving off impending madness as they researched a psychic conspiracy originating in higher dimensions of existence. It took elements from games like Call of Cthulhu and brought them to a setting more focused on paranoia, conspiracy theories, and transcendental awakenings rather than ancient old ones, dark cults, and the end of the world. It was a fuzzy genre space that didn’t have mainstream appeal and couldn’t really distinguish itself in the market from other modern day horror ttrpgs. The publishers managed to release a core ruleset, two expansion books, and a handful of adventures before folding. The license was in limbo these days – a couple of different publishers claimed to have acquired it and the legal conflict between them meant it had never been revived or expanded, despite occasional indications it might have enough appeal as a strange artifact to merit a reprinting, at least digitally.

Geordie couldn’t get enough of it. He’d tracked down pdf’s of every published edition on archive dot org and had been reading them religiously. He would flip through the pages on his tablet at night just looking at the illustrations when he was too tired to read anymore. These books were packed with so many interesting ideas that were if anything more relevant than ever. Instead of an ancient evil that would brush humanity off the earth with a twitch of its sleeping limb, this game thought of their ancient old ones as higher dimensional beings, creatures that took an active role in the existence of humanity. Not because they cared about humans, or because they wanted human society to achieve some goal, but rather human minds performed some function for these beings. Something in their dimension used human action or even perhaps human brain function as the gears in their intricate machinery. Being lower dimensional beings the detectives couldn’t really hope to get more than a glimpse at the machines humanity was a part of, or the roles any individual gear might play – but it was the game masters job to speculate more broadly on what the machines might be for, and how human action might operate within those systems. It really seemed like a deviously challenging task to come up with a secret purpose that was strange and inhuman enough to not be predictable or quotidian, but also just intelligible enough to be disconcerting, even frightening. It seemed to Geordie it would be incredibly satisfying to get the balance just right.

One of the main problems with the game was the kind of thing that often happened in these 80’s ttrpgs – though the premise might be strange and unreal, promising transcendental journeys and hard boiled investigations into unknown realms, ultimately the rpg mechanics at the time leant themselves primarily to simulating combat. The game seemed to yearn for the narrative heavy mechanics of the modern era, that would sweep away all the fiddly tactical dice and miniatures maneuvering and allow the players to focus on the elusive extradimensional conspiracies at work. Then again, Geordie also couldn’t help but be drawn to the fiddly tactical calculations. There was something about tables of stat calculations and ability modifiers that seemed to transport him to a different world, a different time.

One thing led to another, and Geordie found himself trying to track down contact information for the primary credited author of the main PseudoFang source book, Bob Romero. Geordie had, over the years, developed relationships with a few different niche website editors who would happily toss him a few bucks for a freelance piece whenever his current hyperfixation drew him towards a sphere covered by their website. This time it was a retro rpg site for enthusiasts – with the way the Old School RPG market was growing, a piece dragging some forgotten piece of 80’s weirdness into the light was exactly the kind of thing that would be a hit with the site’s small but devoted audience of niche superfans. Romero had been a prolific writer for a number of big TTRPG companies in the early 80’s working on a variety of sci-fi, horror, and yes even that fantasy company that produced a game with the initials D and D. PseudoFang seemed to have been his big passion project that he was finally able to make after years of being a top writer for hire in the industry. It flopped, and he vanished off the face of the earth (at least, if the face of the earth was the TTRPG industry, which it really wasn’t). Having left the industry so long ago, he was a hard man to find – Geordie scoured old magazines and published work for any clue, until eventually he tracked down an old archived TTRPG forum from the early 90s. In amongst the posts, he eventually found a discussion of PseudoFang, including comments from one poster who claimed to have worked for the publisher. He mentioned that Romero had been so disillusioned by the failure of his passion project that he had left the industry to return to his original career as a technical writer and had ended up editing a magazine called Plant Dynamics, focusing on the manufacturing industry.

He was able to find bundles of scanned copies of Plant Dynamics online surprisingly easily – someone with a very different hyperfixation seemed to think it was very important that Plant Dynamics was archived for posterity. There he was. Bob Romero. He’d edited the magazine from the late 80’s through to 2006, after which it wasn’t clear what he’d gone on to do. Geordie took a shot and sent an email to a contact address Romero had given as editor that didn’t seem to be a magazine or company address. In the email, Geordie gave his background, his interest in PseudoFang, and his desire to do an interview. The interview would give some perspective on Romero’s history and interests as a writer in the tabletop space, his thoughts on the industry at the time (and now if he had any), and especially on PseudoFang itself, the development of the game, why he made it, if he felt it was more relevant today, and how he felt about it all these years later. He offered to conduct the interview by email, by phone, or in person if he still lived in the American North-East.

The next evening, Geordie received a strange phone call. In fairness all phone calls were strange and even a little unnerving for Geordie, especially ones that hadn’t been scheduled ahead of time. It’s a peculiar quirk of generational change that a basic means of communication, central to the lives of multiple previous generations, had become unsettling and anxiety inducing to those raised on instantaneous text-based communication. When you picked up that receiver anyone could be on the other end. On the other end of the phone line someone said “Geordie Mackey?”

Geordie answered, “Yes?”

The response wasn’t exactly words, but it wasn’t static or growling or breathing or any other mechanical noise or human non-speech vocalization. It had syllables, almost. Trying to hold the memory of exactly what the sound had been was like trying to hold onto a dream in the light of day. It evaporated into mist. After the strange thing not unlike speech, the person on the phone said “If you still want to talk to me tomorrow you can call me at this number between 7:15 and 8:30 PM.” There was a beep as the person hung up the call, and then nothing.




Geordie found himself sitting in a strange chair. It was on a platform, elevated a couple of feet above a slate floor that seemed seamless and extended into the dark depths of a vast and high-ceilinged room. The chair was something between a dentist’s patient chair and a throne. It was gilded and ornamented with strange designs, but was also padded and reclined slightly. Directly in front of him, a few meters away, was a great mirror, several times taller than the throne on which he sat. In the mirror he saw himself, and saw that the chair he was sitting in was the connection port of a great machine, into which his head was currently plugged.

Upon his head sat a large glass helmet, from which extended pipes and hoses of all different materials, makes, lengths, diameters, and contortions. The transparent ones all seemed to be transporting a red fluid, too translucent and viscous to be blood. The hoses and pipes exited the helmet and plugged into various ports along a great humming and clicking edifice, black metal covered in buttons, lights, and sensors of all sorts. Little radar dishes emerged from it at regular intervals, poking out of the great beast, spinning around a few times, and then disappearing from whence they came, like the bird of a cuckoo clock after it’s sounded the hour. Above where the hoses and pipes entered the machine, larger pipes emerged. They were thick and riveted, like chimneys or smokestacks, steam valves along their length releasing periodic bursts of reddish smog to keep the pressure from popping the rivets out of their holes. These larger pipes reached up into the blackness beyond which the mirror did not show.

Without sign or warning there was suddenly a tall thin figure standing in front of the throne, clad in a black cloak of some strange material that seemed impossibly smooth yet also reflected no light. It reached out with a long paper white limb ending in four stubby fingers with sharp nails. The nails were grasping a shiny, flat, rectangular object, like a large metallic playing card. As the object drew closer and close to his face, Geordie tried to pull away but found he was utterly frozen. His body seemed very far away, and unimaginably heavy. He could not move, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t even blink. He couldn’t move his eyes to focus them on the object that was drawing ever closer, or the alien hand that held it. Unfocused in his periphery, he could make out gaps in the object, it had small rectangular holes in it, and there seemed to be a pattern of lines connecting them. He felt the thing touch his forehead – it was sharp, metallic, and very warm, almost hot. Strangely after the thing made contact with his forehead, the hand continued moving towards him. He couldn’t feel the object pushing against his forehead – he felt no pain as he realized that the thing must be sliding inside of his head. He felt the sharp edge of the being’s claw touch his forehead, followed by the smooth circle of its fingertip. He still felt the gentle pressure on his skin when he woke up. Geordie waited by the phone all day for 7:15 to come and when it finally came he wasn’t even sure he wanted to call. Ultimately he did. The phone hit four arduous rings with no answer. After each one Geordie nearly hung up. Finally, part way through the fifth ring, there was a click and a hello. “Mister Bob Romero?” Geordie asked hesitantly.

“Wasn’t sure that I’d hear from you.” Came the voice from down line. It was the same man as the night before, no question.

“Can you tell me what happened to me last night?” Geordie asked.

“Sounds like you must’ve had quite the dream.” There was a pause, and a sharp exhalation on the other end of the line, like the other man had taken and released a great puff of smoke. “All I can say is I gave you a little peek at the other side. What they’re using you for. What you’re powering.”

“You’re serious.” Geordie didn’t know what to say. He’d expected some kind of gag about hypnosis, the power of suggestion, audio tones inducing hallucinations – not this. “You believe we’re in the matrix or something? You dosed me with the red pill last night via phone?”

“No.” Came the voice from down the line. “This world is real enough. This isn’t a simulation. It’s just not all there is. Whatever you saw last night, think of it like a metaphor for what’s happening to us in realms above.” “Like in the game.” Geordie said with a start.

“Like in the game.” The voice on the phone repeated. “I triggered you opening your “eye” on that plane, the perception we have that normally lies dormant. Of course our brains can’t parse what things are actually like up there, so it parses the information it receives in the closest familiar analogues it can conjure. Everyone sees things differently – different brains. What you saw might not have happened in a literal sense – but it was your brain’s best approximation of the information it was receiving.”

“How did you do that to me… open my “eye” or whatever - how do you know how to do that?”

“Geordie… you might as well ask where PseudoFang came from – I guess that’s what you were originally going to ask me anyway. I don’t know. My eye opened on its own one day. I don’t know how or why. Was I born with it? Did they open it for me for their own reasons? I don’t know. But knowing how to open the eyes of others is one of the things I picked up in my nightly journeys to that place.”

“You go there every night when you sleep?” Geordie was frozen for a moment. “And the game was you trying to get the message out! To wake everyone up! Surely you’ve woken up other people before too, your collaborators. So there must be an underground resistance! And they suppressed it somehow, they made the game fail!”

“There’s no resistance Geordie. There’s nothing. I wake there every night, but you won’t. You might go again, maybe one or two more nights, but it won’t last. No one ever does, no one but me. Yes you’re right, I tried, and yes you’re right, I woke up others. Did They make the game fail? I doubt it – it didn’t require the intervention of extra-dimensional intelligence for a weird ttrpg to fail in the mid-80’s. It was amazing we published the number of books we did before the wheels fell off. Thinking you’re an interdimensional freedom fighter doesn’t make you good at navigating the publishing market of a niche hobby.”

“What do you mean it won’t last for me?”

“Geordie, do you ever wonder where your interests come from? Your fascinations I mean, the ones where you feel like you’re almost compelled to fill your every waking moment up with them? I looked you up online, you’re pretty prolific – a writer on any number of minor hobbyist blogs, but never two at the same time – you seem to spend some time with one and then move on to another, in no predictable pattern. Do you feel like you’re choosing which of these interests will be your next fascination?”

Geordie was silent for a moment, and then he said, “No.”

“I thought not. Right now you’re consumed by PseudoFang. For whatever reason it is the thing you can’t get out of your head, the itch you can’t scratch. At least that’s how you felt yesterday. Maybe today you still feel that way. Tomorrow it won’t feel like that. The day after, thinking about PseudoFang, writing about it, will start to feel exhausting. You’ll feel like you’re forcing yourself to care about something after the spark has faded. Where before it energized you, it will begin to drain your energy. It will feel like a burden, and you will resent it, and something else will catch your attention. Maybe you’ll pick up a book, or a movie, or a video game. Maybe some new art style will cry out to you as the most interesting thing you’ve ever seen.”

“What are you saying?”

“Geordie, have you ever thought about what would happen if your obsessive interest was drawn to something you didn’t want it to rest on? Is that possible? Do you want to be interested in everything you find yourself drawn to? Does your desire and your will drive your interests, or is there some other source?”

Geordie held the phone receiver up to his ear and said nothing. His heart was racing. He was sweating heavily. The receiver seemed to weigh a ton. His vision had gone unfocused, and he was looking at nothing in particular, thinking only of Romero’s words.

There was a chuckle from down the line, touched not by malice, but a sort of wistful resignation. The voice on the phone said, “Good night Geordie. I look forward to hearing from you again, but I don’t expect it.” This was followed by a click as the connection was severed.

The next day Geordie tried to work on his PseudoFang piece but the nba preseason had started and he found he couldn’t resist putting a game on in the background (there were some promising young players debuting) – he didn’t end up getting much writing done.

The End