Blue Cosmos Claw Machine. Blue Cosmos Claw Machine. Blue Cosmos Claw Machine. The story of the Blue Cosmos Claw Machine does not begin with this piece of paper nor does it end when this ink dries. That is not to suggest that the story of the Blue Cosmos Claw Machine is infinite, omnipotent or omniscient. Like all Claw Machines – it requires power (110V). It requires an updated billing address and method of payment. It requires a real estate lease, general liability insurance and a bare minimum of daily sanitary upkeep. In short, the story I am about to tell simply could not exist without the vast and complex system and processes that allow for the Blue Cosmos Claw Machine – and all Claw Machine arcades – to exist in the first place.
It was shortly after midnight on an unseasonably warm winter night in the supposedly bustling port city of Kaohsiung. My wife and I had just shared our fourth meal of the day – an unremarkable American-style hamburger and over-hydrated Japanese seaweed salad, unceremoniously paired with a French wine of dubious Chinese origin and a large Taiwan Beer draft. At the time, we were newlyweds on our honeymoon, newlyweds who still shared every meal, every drink, and every snack bite for bite and gulp for gulp. As evidenced in our marriage vows, bite-for-bite formed a bedrock of our relationship: in our ten years of dating, we had never ordered the same meal and, compared to our friends, we ate twice as many recipes and four times as many ingredients in a given calendar year. I am not proud to admit it, but we could not help but look down on those who ordered the same meal at the same time at the same restaurant – “we’ll have two tagliatelle fatte, please” – the thought disgusted us – it made us lose our appetite, if you will.
It was shortly after midnight in the supposedly bustling port city of Kaohsiung. I know because my wife asked me “what time is it?” and I – an American raised on the “imperial system” – originally named for the British crown but officially deserted in the 1995 by the British democracy – looked at watch, a Seiko 200m chronograph and for the first time in the fifteen years that watch had been on my wrist, realized just how absurdly waterproof it really was. “It’s 12:05” I responded as we made our way out of the bar-sturant.
“It sure doesn’t look like it,” she replied, and she was right. It was the Saturday before New Year’s Eve, and we had expected the downtown of the supposedly bustling port city of Kaohsiung to be crammed with night markets and choked with traffic. Instead, the city was emptied of pedestrians, scooters, cars, trucks, and public transit. There were no cats, dogs, bugs, or birds—only the occasional garage door left half-open, an elderly family member hanging wet laundry, and a fluorescent-soaked mechanic endlessly ratcheting something too small to belong to anything other than a scooter.
With no sidewalk traffic ahead of us and no footsteps behind us, the city opened like one of the private parks that litter the streets of Edinburgh. Yes, from the way my wife swung my hand back and forth in pace with our footsteps, I could tell that it reminded her exactly of one the Scottish parks, guarded under lock, shrub and wrought iron – accessible only to the landed gentry with a key or foolish lovers like us, who had simply hopped the fence. We drifted toward the Love Pier, ducked into a convenience store minutes before closing, and bought a bottle of 58% Kaoliang liquor to sip if and when the mood struck.
As we turned the corner on Yingxiong Road and got our first glimpse of shimmering, technicolor Kaohsiung harbor, the mood struck and we cracked the threaded crown cap. Kaoling – according to our Taiwanese friend – was the type of bottle it took a whole army barrack to share. I took a sip and then she took a sip and then I took a gulp and she took a gulp and it tasted exactly like what it was – fermented sorghum – and then I saw it – directly across the street from us – the bright blue lights “Blue Cosmos Claw Machine.”
No sooner had I seen the “Blue Cosmos Claw Machine” than I heard it. From across the street, the warped 8-bit music leaked out – a humid cacophony rising from a hundred humidity-drenched computer chips. The horrible noise attacked my ears like a swarm of mosquitos each humming a different note, a different tone, with some notes that were melody and others that were just rhythm. Think of your favorite band (if all the musicians were mosquitos).
My wife looked at me and made the international hand gesture – two wiggling downward-facing fingers contracting at the joints – translation: “let’s cross the street.”So we grabbed each other’s hands – in the name of safety? – and crossed the street.
“Fingers really look like miniature legs, if you think about it,” I said as we walked into the arcade’s atrium.
The first claw machine had toilet paper.
We stopped, stared and ventured further.
The second claw machine had laundry detergent.
“This can’t be real,” I said.
The third: bottles of Windex.
The fourth: bleach jugs.
“Do you think people…” she began to ask.
“No way… there’s just no way. I mean, I don’t even think that claw could lift…”
By this point, we were deeper in the arcade than we had intended and the machines had multiplied – anime figurines, dildos, off-brand electronics, gaming consoles – and surrounded us so that we could no longer view the street. The claw machines – the only light source – saturated everything with their eerie blue glow – it was a blue that looked like the horizon of a sky without clouds – not the middle where the blue was a bit lighter, but the horizon, where the blue looked a little bit thicker, like a second coat of blue paint. I looked at my blue wife and my blue wrist with my blue watch when suddenly a flash of headlights shone into the arcade and just as soon turned off.
We listened as the high heels clunk towards us. I motioned at my wife to follow me back to the street, but soon found ourselves stuck in what could best be described as a residential claw machine cul-de-sac – the kind where everyone has kids and one house has a basketball hoop that is missing the net and the painted-on-square (what is that thing called anyway?) – the kind of cul-de-sac you can’t live on in dangerous countries where robbers follow you home from the bank, from Starbucks, from picking up your kids from an international school in the middle of a financial crisis – anyways, we couldn’t quite get out to the street view in time, so I made the international sign – five upwards fingers and a palm – and pulsed it twice, slowly – “hang on, let’s wait” – and walked over to the one claw machine with a pane of glass in the back instead of a mirror. The glass pane opened out to a mirror – and eventually, between reflections of laundry detergent and toilet paper, I spotted the outcroppings of an outfit – the torso of a tight, form-fitting blue silk kimono – a blue pillbox hat that looked straight out of the flapper era – and a presumably silver (it was blue) bracelet with several keys on them. With her was the top of a head – dark brown or black – but really blue hair – “I guess if you think about it, if humans were mountains, our hair would be the snow-capped peaks,” I said to myself – but this peak was clearly a hill – a baby mountain – a child that couldn’t even see the prizes inside the machines.
“Look Yokiko – this key is #14 – this is the one that opens all of the machines. It was delivered just like this from the manufacturer – if you lose it – you can simply order a standard #14 from the Comet Arcade Unlimited catalog. This key opens all the machine – and you see – when the PRIZE has been won,” she unlocked the case stuffed with blue mystery prizes wrapped in bubble wrap and took out a bubble-wrapped prize – of a bit different dimension – this one a round column unlike some of the more rectilinear boxes in the display case.
“And you see Yokiko – these prizes come from the shrine up at Yu Shan – they carry with them the powers of the ONE that grant the claw prize winner true omnipotency – real omniscience – forever omnipresence. All the claw prize winner has to do is believe in themselves.” And just like that the blue glove dropped it into the machine and locked it up. I saw the glove retreat and darted my way out of the cul-de-sac and forwards the location I had seen reflected in a mirror and a mirror and by the time I made it to the street – I saw two doors slam on a Mercedes Benz S-class and move away slowly into the night sky.
My wife and I could not believe it. We made a plan. I would walk through the claw maze until my fragmented torso was exactly where the kimono had been – this was the only way we could be sure it was the right machine. Once we found the right machine, I broke our big bills into coins and then we got to work. There were about 12 cylindrical mystery prizes – some at the top and others at the bottom. The lower ones required the more rectilinear boxes to be removed first and before long we had a small pile of prizes stacked. We broke another big bill and then yet another. The Kaoling was slowly but surely disappearing, but for whatever reason, it seemed as if the more we drank the better we were at the claw machine. Maybe that was the secret? The claw moves with the sluggish incoordination of a drunk. Finally, we had cleared all of the cylindrical prizes. We piled them all into our tote bag and made our way to the street. Outside the sun was rising but everything was orange (the absence of blue).We made it to the hotel as they were opening up the breakfast buffet but went straight to the room and laid out all the prizes on the table. I don’t remember falling asleep that night, or what thoughts raced through my head, drunk and certain that tomorrow I would wake up as a God.
The next day we woke up at sunrise. There was an empty bottle of Kaoling and thirteen cylindrical wrapped prizes on the table, as well as some rectilinear ones.
“Do you remember what that lady said last night?” My wife asked.
“Yeah she said whoever gets the prize from the shrine at Yu Shan carries with them the powers of the ONE – omniscience, omnipotent, and omnipresence – all they have to do is believe in themselves.” I responded.
“Yeah that sounds about right. She also said all you have to do is believe.”
“So how do you wanna share it?” I asked.
“I didn’t really think about that.”
“Maybe you can go first? And then I can try it next?”
“Does it work like that?”
“I don’t know but like… I don’t really want to be forever without you.”
“But you would be omnipotent – so like you could make me forever with you too?”
“I don’t know but the breakfast buffet is probably closing soon – maybe we think about this over breakfast?”
“How much money did you spend?”
“Whatever bills we had – so like…”
“$4000 TWD?”
“Did we get scammed?”
“No, I think we just have to believe”