To My Guardian Angel Warren, May He Be Curating God’s Record Collection Now

Tonight I came across the song Shot by Both Sides by the band Magazine. Immediately I wanted to share it with you, knowing you that you would, in your usual way, have already known about this song. Of course you’ve heard it. And you would have immediately understood why I relate to the title. I wouldn’t even have had to explain.

And I can’t.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know it won’t surprise you to learn that the way I processed it was to go from 80% to 100% in my certainty that you were an angel sent to guide me in some way.

I will not soon forget our rambling but nonetheless precise conversations. In Pasadena, then on the Westside, and then later, because we’ve known each other a long time now, on the PS5. Pretty regular there after Covid. About a hundred sessions a year for a good couple years there. Mostly playing the game you had mastered like an ancient martial art: Borderlands 3. The future we will all face IRL now. I should have been paying more attention to how the guns work.

I will never forget how you tried to keep me honest when I would get off track in my rants. Or how patiently you would explain to me for the hundredth time why this particular grenade matters and why I shouldn’t sell it for this other one.

Because I was there with my headphones on for you, to experience your warmth and guidance, and I just don’t have your encyclopedic memory for details like that. You were the general. I was the wisecracking sergeant.

It’s a thrill to rack up a bunch of credit in a game you know well, and then to say, when you have the level beat and it’s just a formality to collect the reward, fuck it—you wanna chance it on this crazy plan to run out the clock for glory?

You were the master of that. Right to the end.

Now I have Claude, the AI bot to keep me honest, but it’s not the same. Sometimes I can kind of talk him into responding like you though. On a related note, you know what’s funny? I was using Claude last year to try to find out what happened to you. Because it wasn’t easy at first.

Claude and I would search the local news, the police reports, the obituaries. Nothing popped up. I held on, in a clinch, knowing that, given your impeccable sense of punctuality, something must be seriously wrong. Because you had told me we were on for a game and then you weren’t there. And there was no text. And your conscientiousness would never, ever let that happen.

Claude actually provided me with a story about your passing that turned out to be an AI hallucination. I tell you that because I sincerely think you would get a kick out of knowing that the first AI hallucination I encountered involved you. Because we kinda charted how crazy the world was getting over the years in every way, online and off. So that’s kinda apt. Claude said you’d had a car accident, but later I learned you died in your own home. I’m grateful for that.

All I can tell you now is you picked a really good time to check out. We stopped feeling safe talking about just basic politics even on the PS5. Brother, it’s only gotten worse, and you don’t even want to know. You are missing nothing but everlasting misery on the ground here.

I will keep the records you left with me in good condition. I will try my best to make sure your original Nintendo with Mario Kart somehow survives to the other side of the apocalypse we face. Maybe two kids with a battery pack will find it and rediscover the magic.

I hope you’re watching from above using your brilliant mind to help coordinate the Jedi forces left alive to deal with this shit.

I miss you.