Searching for Pop II

This will probably be one of the oddest essays I've ever written due to the disparate elements I'm trying to bring together. Bear with me, it'll be worth it. Promise. If you're a fan of my stories you'll remember how I attempted to find my father on the Intrepid on a sojourn to New York in early 2009. Being halfway sane I certainly wasn't looking for him in the literal sense. After all, he'd been dead for seven years. Rather, I was looking for whispers. Ephemera. A hint of who he was or at least something that might strike an emotional chord. For the better part I think I succeeded but since that pilgrimage I haven't thought about it much. Now don't get me wrong, I think about him all the time but not like that day I spent on the Intrepid.
Now, not to change the subject or anything but... I'm now a gamer. Yes, a gamer. Video games. The kind that pimply-faced geeks play while well into their thirties living in their parent's basement. Not in a million years would I have dreamed that I would be gaming online. Really. If you'd told me five years ago I would one day own a Sony Playstation 3 and that I'd be staying up into the wee hours playing Call Of Duty, World At War I would have told you that you were completely daft. I would have said that I'm not the type to be playing a first-person shooter game, that I'm much more inclined to play computer games like Myst and Riven which were popular back in the 1990's. I loved those games. So realistic, so surreal, and the game was one of exploration and discovery which would culminate in figuring out an immense mystery. This suited my mentality and since I'm a bit of a culture snob I honestly couldn't see myself playing shoot-em-ups with teenagers. I spent days trying to figure out the puzzles and mysteries of Myst and Riven. One day I showed Pop what Myst was all about. Mind you, back in 1997 I was using a 13 inch Toshiba laptop but even still the images were brilliantly realistic and breathtaking. We walked around in the virtual environments and I mentioned to Pop how cool this would look on a bigger computer screen. He immediately shot back "Imagine this taking up the whole wall!" How prescient he was back in 1997. I'm now playing games on a 50 inch high definition screen that comes very close to Pop's prediction way back in the 1990's.
Call Of Duty, World At War is a first-person shooter game set among the ruins of Europe and the South Pacific during WWII. A player can take the guise of either a German, Russian, Japanese or American soldier depending on the theater of combat. One scenario is called Downfall and is set in the massive town square of East Berlin. Another is called Breach and takes place in the shadow of The Brandenburg Gate. One of the Pacific scenarios takes place on Makin Atoll and another, the subject of this essay unfolds on a small island fortified as a military base. It's simply called Battery and I may have caught a glimpse of Pop in this strangely surrealistic place. The "battery" in question is beat to hell. It has been attacked and nearly destroyed by the American fleet. Gun turrets are twisted and askew while Japanese cruisers lie halfway sunken and burning nearby. This particular environment was an add-on so after I purchased this "map" I ventured in by myself to explore. I felt that this was the prudent thing to do rather than get thrown in during the heat of battle as a favor to my eventual team mates who would join me in a rousing game of Team Death Match. On the American side of this base is a platform which looks out to sea. "Pop, is that you?" It had never crossed my mind to look for him here in this virtual environment. To my right sits a Japanese cruiser and it's heavily damaged and sinking. I look out to sea and swear I can see the Intrepid surging deeper into the Sea Of Japan. She'd made quick work of this little outpost and had places to go. But I'm sure he was here too. I'd just missed him.