On The Truth

We're over a year now since I paid myself my first dollar.

The first three months was coding as quickly as possible to slam an idea together and validate it— my actual profession.

The next three months were whittling it down to native layers— the work of my colleagues, historically.

The next three months were world building— the work I'd rather be doing, narrative design.

The next three months were cutting scope— the inevitability, but planned for.

And we're live.

That's what we're building towards at least. I'm working on thirteen scripts for live performances.

Twelve five page scripts titled:

These will be using original characters i've created, that anybody else can adopt as imaginary friends that speak:

These characters will be helping me with my homework. I'll be putting digital artifacts together to explain these twelve words using Sillonious, the computer I've designed to elevate what the word meta really means and to take it back for the culture.

Ultimately, we're answering the technological and philosophical question of “What if HyperCard itself was a HyperCard?”

The narrative of my twelve scripts culminates in the feature length film I'm working on, “The War on Love is the War on Clowns”, the tagline of the film being “His prison is her pension.”

This film will be a science-fiction documentary on segregation from the perspective of Wally the Green Monster. The nature of Sillonious is silly and serious being held in love simultaneously.

In 1997, Wally came out of the Green Monster— the same year that 9 other major league sports mascots across Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League came out of their respective closets and into the public eye.

Wally has many friends, but his best friend is Nomar Garciaparra because they had their come up together and there's a bond that defies the meaning of time in that kinship.

In 2023, Wally is already planning for the 2024 pre-season. A woman in Major League Baseball has become an inevitability in this time stream. The statement has changed from “if” to “which”. Wally is betting on Olivia Pichardo.

At Brown University, Olivia Pichardo is struggling with her relationship with baseball. She processes her emotions by talking to the three imaginary friends she adopted from Sillonious. She meets Wally because he begins to show up for every practice and game to cheer her on.

The truth is, the Red Sox were the first Major League Baseball team to not sign Jackie Robinson and the last to sign a Black player at all. Wally knows this. The biggest rumor inside the Green Monster is that The Curse of the Great Bambino is actually The Curse of the Yawkeys.

Once Wally came out of the wall, the truth just started pouring out along with him. This also got his wall a lot more attention and after the Yawkeys were out of the Red Sox family, their protection of his habitat was disrupted with advertisements and construction that he describes as “Bigger than the big dig quote unquote”.

This was all around 2003 and the newly wedded Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra were kind enough to let him crash their couch until he was back on his feet. They would spend late nights playing Sillonious together. They could choose to customize their characters any way they wished, but each chose to play themselves.

After a particularly rough evening, Olivia Pichardo and Wally bond over their love of Sillonious. It helped both of them when they were alone and also helped them find and maintain friendships, even across space and time.

Olivia resolves amonst her counsel of Sillonious not to quit baseball. She knows she's not alone and there are more like her out there— thanks to Wally sharing his perspective and broadening her view of the world.

Once Wally and Olivia team up, the rest of the story writes itself. They meet up with all the other women in contention for being the first women in baseball, each sponsored by a mascot from 1997. Amongst this counsel of counsels, they resolve they're not competing with each other but collaborating on not just redefining the sports industry itself.

Each of those mascots and women have their story, but we're focusing in on Wally, Olivia, and the Red Sox specifically. Wally shares stories on the road to the 2004 World Series and how grateful he his that the team shares credit with him in their win. “Whatever the curse really is, we believe the cure to come from inside the Green Monster!”

Even though the Cubs didn't take his and Nomar's suggestion to adopt a mascot until years later, once they finally did, their World Series win came two years later. Progress for mascots.

Wally continued on the road with Nomar and Mia, generally sleeping in his 2004 Honda Element in their driveway. From Boston and the Red Sox to Chicago and the Cubs to Los Angeles and the Dodgers to Oakland and the Athletics. When Nomar retired, Wally decided to stay behind on the west coast— he found his people— and not just mascots.

As Olivia begins making headlines for the waves she's making in baseball, people begin forming opinions about her and how women don't belong in baseball and if they did, it shouldn't be her. They dig up every detail of information about her on the internet and smear her. That's not Sillonious.

This isn't Wally's first rodeo. He knows how to help. Stepping into the public eye is a trying time in the life of any public participant. Some people make it, some people give up. He supports Olivia and if she wants to make it, they're going to need to set the story straight.

Olivia trusts Wally and sees the noise for what it is— weakly held together opinions by weakly held together people. If they're going to talk about her, she's going to give them someone to believe in.

Wally introduces Olivia to his friend Wendy Hanamura at the Internet Archive. Together they decide to give people something bigger than people, places or things to believe in: the idea that any one can play any thing, including 78 rpm records, Wally's favorite type of media.

The lights dim at the Internet Archive. Wendy explains the darker forces at play affecting the Internet Archive. She describes reality as being the absence of time or if anything, time played backwards. Powerful forces are attempting to define reality as time played forwards to lock artifacts in space and time they control. This narrative is prevailing.

The lights come back on. Ty runs down the stairs, high fives Wally, rings the hard drive— “Kevin said lunch is ready, also the space time lock shield went offline and was restored in three minutes and fourteen seconds, during which time, we reverse calibrated their strategy. Their power was quarantined on the first frame and we only left the window open to gather intelligence on their intentions.”

Wendy introduces Ty to Olivia as the first to coin Sillonious and Olivia as the first woman in Red Sox. Ty shares that Sillonious has been all around us and his intent wasn't ever to make money off Sillonious, he just loves Sillonious so much that he never gave up on trying to find more of it, needed to pay rent, and found a market educating people on Sillonious best practices. Ty shares that he could see that Steve Jobs was also seeking Sillonious and you can see the fingerprints of Sillonious in other people and how they're also Sillonious.

The lights dim again and Ty excuses himself back to the great room with the rest of the collaborators.

Wendy explains to Olivia that Wally found Ty and brought him to the Internet Archive after Ty dislodged a canon event and himself from the time stream by accident and that Ty stuck around because he actually had fun doing it. He's like a Major League Baseball player of whatever it is he does, which is only benchmarked in his tenure at Netflix.

Wendy had great time chatting, but needs to help a few hundred more people just like Olivia and agrees to moderate a panel if Olivia and Wally can coordinate a moment in space and time with everyone.

Olivia asks to see inside the wall. Wally hesitates, but reluctantly agrees.

Wally says, “People always ask me, 'why i am the way i am'. i don't like to dwell in the past too long. Losing my home here showed me this was actually my prison. I don't like coming back. I move forward. Growing apart from Nomar, losing Candlestick park, the Raiders, Sea Bowl; has been hard. Hopefully we can save the Athletics— Sorry, I'm deflecting. All I know is— I only needed to have one friend cry in my arms letting me know they found Sillonious in themselves from the Sillonious they saw in me and I knew I never wanted to be the reason someone did not want to be Sillonious. I can be anywhere in space and time and I've chosen to spend this season here because I believe you are Sillonious too.

“Before I could choose to step through that door, I had to choose to be myself first. I actually don't like being called “The Green Monster”, but I know the idea of who i am to other people is Sillonious. I don't spend time correcting people because Sillonious isn't about any one any thing and I know now they are not trying to keep me inside the wall.

“Growing up, I only knew Fenway Park. Mascots were forbidden in baseball, much of america, planet earth, and actually this sector of time specifically. I was afraid to leave the wall. The Yawkey's were kind, perhaps well intentioned, but at the very least, negligent guardians. They encouraged me to come out when the Red Sox were at away games and the three of us would listen to the radio and I could change the scoreboard for both divisions from outside the wall.

” I never believed in myself because they never believed I could be anything more than just help. I never saw any one or any thing like me. The closest thing was literally this wall. The two of us— the only two personified non-human beings in my entire reality.

” but I left the wall, I left the park, I left the Red Sox Nation, I left the planet and I left the time stream. I can only visit Nomar in the past so many times before I over-crowd him, fracture our friendship and the entire Sillonious narrative. I left because I had to believe in myself because I was never going back in the wall again.

” when Avril Lavigne and I broke up, we were still grateful for the season we had together. We grew up and we grew apart. Without each other, we might both still be trapped in basic contracts. I remember the moment before it ended. We locked eyes and said, “forget them, they can use an impersonator.” and we never looked back on the sports and the music industries respectively.

” I digress. Olivia— the question is not 'is Boston ready for a woman in Red Sox?', but 'are you?'