My nephew, Michael, died on 22 May 2019. He was 15 years old.
He loved his family, tractors, lorries, tanks, spaceships and video games (mostly about tractors, lorries, tanks and spaceships), and confronted every challenge in his short, difficult life with a resolute will that earned him much love and respect. Online in his favourite game, Elite Dangerous by Frontier Developments, he was known as CMDR Michael Holyland.
In Michael’s last week of life, thanks to the Elite Dangerous player community, a whole network of new friends sprang up in our darkest hour and made things more bearable with a magnificent display of empathy, kindness and creativity. I know it was Michael’s wish to celebrate the generosity he was shown, so I’ve written this account of how Frontier and friends made the intolerable last days of a 15-year-old boy infinitely better.
On 14 May, I stood in Michael’s room in Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge, trying to process the inevitability of his death.
At that moment, he was perched on his hospital bed playing a racing game on his Xbox, squinting at the screen obscured by his swollen face. There was nothing anybody could do for him; after almost six years of debilitating illness, all medical treatments had been exhausted or were no longer viable. We watched helplessly as this isolated, disabled and lonely autistic teenager unknowingly faced his final days.
It's heartbreaking watching my nephew squinting at the screen as he strives to achieve his #EliteDangerous goals, knowing that he'll likely never achieve them. I'm thankful that it's there as a coping mechanism though, at least while he's still capable. pic.twitter.com/wpwHxd1CQq
— Mat Westhorpe (@Freebooted) May 14, 2019
In an act of despondence, I sent a tweet, which started something bittersweet and amazing.
Elite Dangerous had become a vital component of Michael’s care package. It is an online spaceship simulator set in a 1:1 scale approximation of the Milky Way galaxy, giving each player the freedom to explore its vast, austere beauty. It could be quite tranquil and very time consuming. Michael revelled in it. For us, it was a lifeline: I spent time with Michael in the game world as he tried to escape the suffering of the real one.
It wasn’t long before I was contacted by Paige Harvey, a community manager at Frontier Developments. Paige had seen my tweet and wanted to do something to lift Michael’s spirits. She told me that she was scouring the office for “goodies to send”. At this point, I hadn’t made the gravity of Michael’s circumstances clear on Twitter; Michael was pretty internet savvy and we decided to keep his terminal state from him to spare him avoidable emotional distress. Upon learning that Michael had only a few days to live, Paige moved things up a gear.
The next day, she and her colleague Sally Morgan-Moore visited Michael on the Addenbrooke’s oncology ward and, as promised, brought a bag of swag including a poster signed by many members of the Elite Dangerous team. They were absolutely brilliant with Michael, who could be quite abrupt and challenging at times. I had not seen him this elated for some time. Michael’s Dad, Karl, got the gifts framed and mounted on his wall.
The outpouring of empathy and support continued from all quarters. Scores of fellow Elite Dangerous players sent their best wishes; authors Drew Wagar, Kate Russell and their publisher Dan Grubb of Fantastic Books Publishing all got in touch; David Braben, creator of the Elite series , tweeted his best wishes.
Facebook groups, Twitter and a post on the Elite forum (carefully tended by moderator TJ, to whom I owe many thanks for his diligence and diplomacy) were filled with other Elite players (CMDRs) clamouring to take Michael on excursions to the far side of the galaxy, to crew up and go to war, or to run rescue missions. CMDR Picard discovered a new Earth-like world, named it Michael’s Rest and offered to take Michael there.
Michael loved the attention. It was difficult to decide how much to share with him; his autism and experience of the last five years meant that his social tolerances were poor, so we tried to discourage too much contact with strangers on the internet. But the overwhelming kindness of this video game community was such a powerful, positive thing that it would have been a shame to keep Michael from it.
The whole experience had Michael brimming with new found energy. He would spend hours either playing Elite or tinkering with ship designs in the companion site Coriolis.io. His buoyant mood helped him walk from the oncology ward down to the food concourse, a feat he hadn’t managed for weeks.
Michael had requested a visit to Frontier Studios on the other side of Cambridge, but his doctor advised against leaving hospital. Michael soon deteriorated again, his facial swelling becoming so severe that it was difficult for him to open his eyes at all. Frustratingly, his one available form of escapism was now under threat. While nurses and Michael’s mum, Laura, did what they could to reduce his swollen eye tissue, Michael refused to give up and still managed to peer at the screen and tinker with his ship loadouts.
On Saturday morning, three days after Paige and Sally’s visit, Frontier’s Zac Antonaci (one of the most vocal and entertaining viewers of Michael’s Twitch streams) made a ludicrously ambitious suggestion: what if we could organise enough people to create a short story, set in the world of Elite, where Michael was the hero, something he could listen to and enjoy when he had difficulties with his vision?
At first I declined Zac’s offer, feeling that it would take more time than Michael had. But then Michael recovered enough to start making a hilariously overblown list of requests for his Elite account. He was now pushing for a Tony Stark-style tower on a moon orbiting the planet named for him.
That Sunday, Drew Wagar wrote a brilliant 7,000-word script in a single day. By Monday, Zac had conscripted three professional voice actors to record the story: Richard Reed, Jay Britton and Amelia Tyler (who drove six hours in a day to get to the studio and back). On Tuesday, audio engineer Joe Hogan put it all together and by that evening, Zac and Paige were back at the hospital playing Michael an exceptional piece of bespoke Elite audio fiction, preceded by a personal message from David Braben.
Listening to it with Michael was an epic, bittersweet experience. There were nods to how he had faced his medical challenges, and the more obvious references made him beam with pride and happiness.
The next day was Wednesday, the day Michael died.
We were playing Elite together online. Michael and I had been preparing to broadcast an expedition to obtain special “Guardian” modules for my ships and were joined by a couple of new friends, CMDR UselessED and CMDR Eid LeWeise. Suddenly, Michael coughed and started to become distressed on comms. I cut the stream, made my apologies and headed for hospital.
By the time I got there, he had been sedated and wasn’t expected to recover consciousness. His mum, dad and I took turns to sit with him and hold his hand. While I was with him, I played his Elite audio story again. Some of Drew’s words hit much harder the second time: “bravery, courage, unbowed in the face of overwhelming odds”.
He took his last breath peacefully a few hours later.
Michael’s end was unjust and tragic, but the heroic kindness of a video game community filled his last week of life with unexpected happiness. On behalf of Michael and his family, I want to offer my eternal gratitude to everyone who contributed, from the players who stood ready to meet Michael online or took the time to send him an “o7” salute, to the Frontier staff and associates who gave so much of their time, compassion and creative energy. You make the world – and the internet – a better place.
This article was republished with permission from Westhorpe.net. Michael’s family is fundraising for the Sick Children’s Trust, Cancer Research UK and CLIC Sargent for Children with Cancer.
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