So about 16 years ago I lost disc 5 for Baldur's Gate. As some of you may know Baldur's Gate came in one of those stupid cardboard CD sleeves and if stored upright the discs could fall out. Well, it was kept in a filing cabinet, but never turned up through thorough searches. Ultimately i played through BG2 a year later with never having beaten BG1 and eventually bought a compilation around 2008 to finally play through it.

Yesterday I started cleaning out some old boxes and found some old sheet music books. Thinking nothing of them I placed 'em on top of a DVD shelf. I figured my mom would want that stuff so that was the easiest spot to put 'em out of the way at the time. A few hours later I bump it with something I was moving and send the sheet music flying. I clean 'em up and head to bed shortly afterwards. As I look down and to my left there is Baldur's Gate Disc 5 staring me in the face in pristine condition. All I can figure is years ago that sheet music went into that filing cabinet briefly and then came out of it with the disc.

Now where the hell did discs 1-4 go....

Same place as all the worlds missing left socks and remote controls.

You will know in another 16 years.

I wish I could find some of the games I lost over the years. Somewhere, sometime, I lost the fantastic DUNE (the first one), one my favourite games from my childhood, and one of those things that made me the sci-fi, space opera loving nerd I am. I didn't even know there was a DUNE book, or movie back then. The game blew my mind with that fantastic, alien world, that epic conflict, all those great characters... but eventually the box ended up in a closet, and since then... just... disappeared. I have no idea how or when I lost.

There are also the games some friends borrowed from me, and never gave it back. I lost Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne that way. I found the key for W3 at least on the manual, so I can get it back on Battle.net, but not Frozen Throne. Another friend borrowed Medal of Honor: Allied Assault from me, and I never got it back (at least not in working condition). Ah well, such collateral losses are to be expected. I don't think anyone can have friends and never lose anything in a similiar way.

After some little shit kid borrowed Double Dragon years ago and never returned it we never let anyone borrow jack shit since. When we told his mom he tried ripping the label off to hide it and the game never ran right again without trying 30 times to seat it right. Learned a valuable lesson on trust and how most people treat other people's shit.

Eaten by mini black holes.

Sit down on a chair and put your naked feet in a bowl with water.
Make a black cat sit down on your lap and keep it there.
Grab the disc 5 of Baldur´s Gate and put it against your forehead, close your eyes and focus...

....prepare for the truth.

I swear up and down that I was never given a hard cover copy of David Co's Rules of Ascension but a friend of mine swears up and down that I have it. I have the faintest memory of maybe getting it but like so many memories it looks like another memory I have of receiving something else and I actually have that. If I have it it's in a box with other books, but that box has alluded me through several searches and I have concluded that I probably never got it, but we'll see. Fate has a way of making a liar out of me. I'm borrowing the Thin Blue Line for years now, same friend is borrowing Pumpkin Scissors for the same amount.

In the past, I've let a friend borrow Warcraft 2 from me and I never saw it again. In the past, I also let a friend borrow Fallout 2 from me and the CD was returned with 1000 scratches and sticky. After that, I stopped letting friends borrow games from me. I tell them, I have a no letting friends borrow games policy. Friends come and go. Video games are forever.

I was in the middle of playing Star Trek TNG - A Final Unity and set the disk somewhere without putting back in the box (since I was in the middle of playing it), and never saw it for years until I moved.

When I found it, I thought I made a point of remembering where I put it, but after the move, it disappeared again. Technically, this is the longest incomplete game on my backlog.

...Like a reoccurring dream lost again after a few minutes of consciousness.