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 Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:02 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:05 pm
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What follows are the short stories that I wrote in the six days before making this thread. Yes, I started on the third in stead of the first. Deal with it.
1-3-07 Wednesday.
Years spent in front of either a computer monitor or television screen had rendered my eyes a permanent bloodshot red. They were naturally green but looking at them, it was hard to tell. Playing Halo or Super Smash Brothers felt more natural and fluent than driving, and I would often catch myself commenting on how good the graphics were before I realized that I was looking at the real world.
This is what most people would call an addiction. I, however, prefer to think of it as a way of life. I thought, ate, slept, and even breathed video games, but that doesn’t mean that I’m addicted. I can put down the controller any time I want, I just don’t want to.
Video games have allowed me to escape who I really am, maybe I don’t like myself, I don’t know. All I know is that when I stare at the game screen, all my problems melt away and it doesn’t feel like there is a controller in my hands any more. I move the character on-screen as if I were he, the controller just allows me to.
Enough about me, though; this story isn’t about me, its about a game. Not just a game, the game. See, after Nintendo went under in 2017 Sony and Microsoft found some sort of common ground to collaborate on a project. For years all we knew about it was that is was supposed to revolutionize gaming in a way that Nintendo’s “revolution” (read as Wii) never could. The release date for this new console was February 17, 2022, and I was the first in line.
Me and several million other gamers knew that this game was “the one”. I’m not sure how we knew, but we did. Details weren’t revealed on the nature of the console until a scant three months before release. Which was right around the time that people started camping for it. What’s the reason for such a reaction? Two words, my friends: Virtual Reality.
Sony patented the technology that let them start work on it way back in the “single digits” which is what people called the time between 2000 and 2010, but Sony couldn’t handle an undertaking like this alone. People were going to have to be able to get right up next to objects and other people in the game without having their suspension of disbelief ruined by blocky graphics, so Sony signed a deal with Microsoft to collaborate on this project to create the most sophisticated graphics and physics engines this world has ever seen.
I’d been camping since early December, along with about twenty other people, two of which are close friends of mine. On release night, the line to get one stretched back farther than I could see, but I didn’t care; I was first.
“Alright people, five minutes until we can start selling them, please stay in a single file line and purchase your product in an orderly fashion.” The announcement was made by way of a speaker; all it did was cause a surge through the crowd as people’s initial excitement was renewed.
Five minutes went by like nothing and before I knew it I was back at my house, opening my new equipment. The console itself was relatively small, about half the size of the Gamecube. The peripheral device, which used a neural interface, rested on the ears with four metal strips that went over the head. They had white plastic for aesthetic purposes on the side facing away from the scalp. The instructions said to put the bands underneath my hair, so as to have them as close to my scalp as possible, for maximum signal projection. After a bit of work I managed it, and concluded to myself that I needed to either get a buzz cut or shave my head to make this easier in the future.
The first game of the three that I bought was called “Coliseum”. It consisted of a series between you and either one or more than one animal or person. The opponents faced were rumored to range between Master Chief and a Tyrannosaurus-rex. Given only a melee weapon of the player’s choice, they were challenged to proceed until they had beaten all the opponents and conquered the game.
Now, I won’t lie to you, I was expecting borderline retarded A.I. and Doom 3 graphics. What I got, however surprised me. The first thing that I saw upon turning the system on was a black screen asking me to think my name. I did and the system repeated it back to me, asking if this was right. I thought “yes” and then proceeded to fill out the rest of the system information in a similar manner. I was then told to wait as it recorded my neural map for optimal performance. It took about thirty seconds and then I found myself in a roman style coliseum, with a small array of weaponry in front of me. The graphics were absolutely flawless. It looked exactly like the real world except with an intangible dramatic feel about it. I chose a sword for starters and my first opponent appeared.
It was a lion, my first thought was how cliché that was and how easy a fight this would be. I was proven wrong by the context of the fight; the lion’s A.I. was just as flawless as the graphics and sound. If you have never seen a lion up close, they are a lot bigger than they look on TV. The only thing that I could think throughout the fight was that this was somehow real and that I was going to die, however the sword proved to be a good choice, because I won.
I can’t accurately put into words the feelings that my victory brought, but I can tell you that winning that fight seemed like the proudest moment of my life. To hear the crowd shouting my name, whistling, and the like was simply amazing.
Over the next few days I couldn’t get enough of any of the games that I bought, and apparently neither could anyone else. The news coverage of the mass unemployment from people quitting their jobs was startling. I had been surviving off of a sizeable inheritance for the past six years so it didn’t matter to me, at least not at first. About seven months after the launch of the console, one of my friends showed up at my door, begging to be able to live with me. He told me that he quit his job some time ago and had been keeping his apartment by selling his stuff, at least when he wasn’t playing the game anyway.
In the years following, the work force dwindled dramatically. The feeling of teetering on the brink of something bad permeated the air, almost choking some people, and something bad did happen. The remaining group of people willing to work seemed to have gotten so small that the entirety of them was able to organize a plan to alleviate their unbearable workload. They refused to work until the people who had become addicted to the game got jobs and worked as well. Hence society collapsed.
The gamers rationalized their actions, as people often will, and demanded to know why they had to work. They began their own protest, saying that with all the tax money that they had paid, the government owed them a living. As will always happen, a few crazy people took it too far. Someone organized the gamers into a literal army. They declared that the government changed things so that they could play their games in peace or they would take the white house by force. The government officials didn’t have access to the means to do something like that, however and prepared to defend themselves. No one, not even the gamers, know how or when they got access to nuclear weapons, but it wasn’t long before they were being supplied and threats of nuclear assault were issued. I don’t know where this will take us, but I do know that in my time spent as a gamer on the side of the workers, I have come to the conclusion that human beings can’t handle an escape from reality as dramatic as VR, as it’s come to be known.
Maybe society is just so bad than anything that lets us escape from it is looked upon as almost holy; or maybe people are just inherently lazy. No matter why they would decide to do something like this, the fact remains that the threat is there, and I’m not sticking around to see how it happens. The problem is pretty much localized in America, so some buddies and me are fleeing the country tomorrow. However things turn out for you, the best of luck, and may God Ble-
Transmission cut.
1-4-07 Thursday
The police lights below reminded me of Christmas for some reason. Specifically the Christmas two years ago, the last one in which my family was normal. All my mother and father had been able to afford was a stupid plastic dump truck, but we were still happy then.
My little sister, Kelly, had still lived with us then; so had my dad. My mom hadn’t been dependant on antidepressants or anxiety pills then either, but times change, as my teacher would say.
The week before I turned six, my father won the court case that let him have custody of Kelly, he tried to get me to, saying that my mother wasn’t fit to raise children, but he couldn’t. I asked my mom about it and she said that he wasn’t. I thought about that one for a while, but in the end decided to just let it go; he had always been there, as opposed to whoever my “real dad” was.
Shortly after my father won custody of my sister, my mom started taking antidepressants, social workers started showing up on a near regular basis, and the other kids at school started asking questions about what happened to my dad. The few who had come over said that he was a fun guy, while everyone else just asked out of having nothing better to do.
Time passed and my mom and I celebrated my seventh birthday by mixing biscuit doe together, adding sugar, and putting on some old chocolate icing that was left in the cabinet since before I could remember. I didn’t get any presents; my mother said that we couldn’t afford anything like that, living off of welfare.
Later in the evening I found my mother looking over a couple of photos from awhile back. I joined her, not having anything else to do. The main difference that I noticed between now and then was the state of the house. Back then, things had been relatively clean and livable, but now the walls were full of holes, roaches of every shape and size populated the kitchen, and the occasional mouse could be heard scampering through the walls. My mother started coming dangerously close to O.D.ing on diet pills and she became a total wreck any time she forgot to take the ones for anxiety.
The real trouble started a few months later, though. That was when we were taken off welfare. My mom applied for health care to pay for her medication, but was denied. We lived off of charity for a few weeks until we had a run in with my father and sister. She looked different, and I don’t think she remembered me; she was only two when my father left.
The dialogue between my father and mother probably shouldn’t be repeated here, but I’ll just say that they weren’t very happy with one another. The worst part of the encounter was when we finally departed; the look of pity that I saw in my father’s eyes when he looked at me made me uneasy.
So, that brings us to the present. The combination of a lack of medication and an abundance of unkind circumstances has apparently driven my mother over the edge. She parked the car on a bridge and told me to look away. I didn’t and I saw her jump.
After the initial reaction of shock had passed, and I found myself in my father’s custody once more, I didn’t feel as sad as one might expect. My dad’s house was nice, the only problem was that my little sister didn’t like me. I suppose that, if anything, I owe my mother. Because of my time spent with her, I know how to appreciate the good things in life. I can’t tell you just how much of a difference not having to clear away roaches from the kitchen counter before making a sandwich boosts a person’s mentality.
I suppose that if you were to only take one thing away from this short it would be to keep in mind that not everything is bad. Sure, lots of things are pretty lame, but the darker the situation is, the less light is needed to make it brighter. Catch my drift?
1-5-07 Friday
The way that we sleep and the things that we dream can tell a lot about us, take this case file for instance:
Case file; Jim: During the majority of his childhood, Jim slept stomach down making sure to point his feet straight down towards the bottom of the bed and his head straight towards the headboard. Around the age of fifteen, however, Jim found that he had shifted his posture to the fetal position and rarely tried to align himself with the bed.
His dreams also changed. During his childhood, his dreams covered a vast array of subjects and topics, ranging from things he had done that day, to fantasies about being a super hero. As he got older, however, his dreams shifted, for the most part, to situations that made him feel vulnerable. He saw images of his scalp being lacerated and having his private area shot while he begged for his life to be ended to put a stop to the pain. The strange part about his dreams were that he liked to feel scared, having a gun pointed his way and feeling genuine fear about what might happen made him smile in retrospect.
Let us examine why Jim feels this way. You see throughout his youth a series of unfortunate occurrences happened that wound up with him holding an ideology that he wasn’t allowed to show any weakness, ever. He developed a high threshold for pain and learned to hide and repress his emotions. The result of this was that when he saw other people actually expressing their emotions and reacting to pain, he felt conflictingly both left out and relieved that he wasn’t like that. The dream-pain was the only escape that his emotions could find, and it made him feel more human. The funny part about this is that the unfortunate circumstances hold blame, not on Jim, but on an array of other people, who shall remain nameless. The conflicts within his mind and his slow progression into madness can be blamed on a group of people, people who don’t know that they have hurt someone.
Let’s fast-forward a few more years. Jim is dead. He killed himself at 18, after three years of near constant debate on weather or not he should do it. He sought help as subtly as he could, because of the negative stigma he had attached to weakness, and considered mental illness a weakness; the searches for help were too subtle. As he plunged towards the ground, he realized that he had made the wrong choice. He saw, with an almost clairvoyant sight, what his future would have been. He saw his marriage, his first child, all his greatest achievements being washed away. He felt that he should be sad, but it didn’t seem fitting to be sad now; after all, he did choose this. Well, no matter. There are around eight billion people on this planet, with the population doubling every thirty years, what’s one life?
I’ll tell you what one life is. One life is about ten years of happiness and contemplation of what one might accomplish, ten years of insanity, forty of scrambling blindly after the next paycheck, and the rest is spent reminiscing on what could’ve been done and how things could have been different. Well, for some anyway. For others, life is a few months in the womb before being accidentally strangled or miscarried. For others, life is a bleak looking minefield that it is best to bypass with a cyanide pill or two. The point being that there isn’t one.
1-6-07 Saturday
Swear to god, I’ve seen that man’s face on another man’s body. And that guy’s hairdo, I only started seeing people with hair like that after I saw it in a magazine yesterday. That car that just went by, the one with the tan stripe along its door, watch; over there at the intersection at the end of the block, there goes another one just like it, or maybe it’s the same one.
I started to notice these things when I was about twelve. I can’t say conclusively, but I think I know what’s going on here. The recycled people, places, and things; it’s almost enough to make someone a solipsist. But it can’t be that. If everything existed in my head, well that would mean that I made all this, and I just can’t accept that.
See what I think all this is- wait, did you hear that? I knew it; they are here to take me away, just because I know that something is wrong. You gotta hide, they may not know you’re here, and you could tell people… Yeah, if everyone knows then they’ll have no choice but to let us go free. Quick, hide, hide, hide. All right, just try and stay quiet.
Wait, weren’t we just outside a second ago? How did we end up in here anyway? Crap, man this is bad. They’re trying to block off our escape, quick, man, get up; we gotta get out of here, now.
s**t, that’s there car; this is bad. This is really bad. All right, just let me think a second; I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas. Don’t- Hey what are you doing? They’ll see you; get down. s**t, you’re with them aren’t you? ******** you, man. ******** you!
No, no, no, no, no, no. ********’ let go of me, man. Don’t do this; I thought we were pals, man! Let me go! I swear to god, man. ********’ let GO!
“Just a mild sedative and we can begin treatment.”
“Man, this guy’s got it bad.”
1-7-07 Sunday
The ferry that was taking us to what would assuredly be our death was moving a lot faster than I would have liked. Looking to the left, I could see the head of the monster, barley sticking up from the ocean. I didn’t know how far we were from it, but it looked like a few miles, even from that distance, the part of its head that could be seen looked enormous.
The boat slowed down, so I grabbed my newly purchased, waterproof tote bag that held my ammunition, and got into the small boat that we were to take from there. My two cooperatives in this mission were Jane Weathers, and some local. I was a mercenary for hire, and wouldn’t normally have taken on a job this dangerous. Only difference for this one was the payload, one and fifteen zeros. I had no idea where the island inhabitants that had hired the three of us had gotten that much, didn’t really care either. I had seen the money, it was in American dollars, before I left and was prepared to do just about anything to get my hands on it; I’d be set for life.
I can’t tell you the motivation of my two counterparts, I didn’t ask. The local probably just felt obligated to help his home, and I didn’t mind as long as he didn’t get in my way. The other one, Jane, I had heard of her and just her presence here was both a bad and a good thing.
It was a bad thing because she was typically only hired for missions that would be suicide for anyone else; a good one because I had been hired along side her. Maybe I was moving up in the ranks. Didn’t really matter, I probably wouldn’t live to see tomorrow anyway.
The other two joined me in the boat and the local and I began to row. The ferry operators threw their own boat into high gear and soon the sound of their motor faded away.
The snout was drawing closer more quickly than it should have been, and an enormous writhing tail came above water a about a mile and a half behind it a few times. The serpent was coming in for a closer look.
I put down the oar and started selecting ammo and weapons. The strongest ones that I had would probably just irritate a monster like that, and I found myself wishing that I had a rocket launcher. Strangely enough, that wasn’t the first time even this month that I had wished that.
The snake veered off course, however, and dived down about a hundred yards to our right. The writhing motion that it swam with brought part of it’s body so close under the boat that I could see scars on it’s scales, which were either from retaliation when it pestered the island people or its probably numerous encounters with smaller predators.
I watched the head of the snake come up about a half mile behind our little boat, with what looked like a whale sliding down it’s throat. I looked at Jane, who was preparing and explosive and sighed to myself. I hadn’t thought to bring anything like that, due to being improperly briefed before my departure, and all that I had in my arsenal wouldn’t be enough to make the thing itch.
The snake began to turn around and Jane lobbed the explosive, which was most assuredly waterproof. She pressed the button on the detonator, but had misjudged the speed that the snake was traveling, because all it did was aggravate it.
“Oh s**t,” I said as the snake reared the rest of its head out of the water. Jane remained calm.
I lined up the shot and tried to hit the eye that was closest to me. I had no hope of getting through anywhere else. The shot connected and the snake turned around faster then I thought it possible for something that large to move.
“Bad idea,” Jane said.
“Why?” I asked. I didn’t see a problem with blinding it.
The problem soon made itself apparent when the beast’s paddle shaped tail collided with our boat as it tried to get away from whatever had hurt it; I’m pretty sure that it hadn’t even seen us.
The boat was sent flying and I found myself farther under water than I cared to be. I opened my eyes and found myself looking up at the enormous underbelly of the snake, while the water pressure pushed against my eardrums. I looked up and saw whales that were probably the companions of the other one that had been eaten swimming away, and I began to swim up towards the surface, my lungs were burning.
I was directly below the group of fleeing whales when I noticed large dark shapes to my sides. I turned, quickly, fearing that it was the snake that we had been sent to kill. At first I thought that it was, but then saw that our snake was still at the surface; so the jaws closing around me as they grabbed a whale from the group belonged to another. The last thing that I got to see before the whale and I were swallowed, and subsequently died, was the ominous shape of the snake’s fangs from the inside.
1-08-07 Monday
I truly can’t escape. I wouldn’t have guessed it at the beginning; hell I didn’t consider it as a possibility. So, yeah, I can’t get out, but it’s not from lack of trying.
The first time that I woke up under that picture perfect sky was about twenty years ago. The river that I had been following since then was what woke me the first time. See, I’m from The Land of Enchantment, N.M., and let me tell you one thing that we don’t have a lot of is water. As a consequence of that, we don’t get temperatures below seventy or eighty for the majority of the year. Which brings me to my point; the reason that the river woke me was that it was cold, probably from the moisture in the air. ******** freezing is what it was, at least to me anyway.
My first attempt to escape was the first thing that I did on the first morning. I looked around, saw the trees paralleling the riverbank a dozen yards away and went to investigate. Most of the time, when I go past the trees, I’ll run into a smooth, cement wall that rises higher than I can even see when standing under it. The funny thing is that you can’t see the wall unless you are past the trees, even though it should easily go over them.
On occasion, when I go past the trees, I end up looping back and coming out on the other side of the small river. The first time that this happened, I got a rush of gleeful adrenalin, obviously because I thought that I had escaped. However, looking back and seeing the cement wall behind me, put that feeling to rest pretty fast.
Walking towards the enormous, pink, cartoon looking castle on the horizon yields a stereotypical picnic basket with the same meal of bologna sandwich with extra thick slices of cheese, all between the whitest bread on God’s green earth, and a few salt less crackers. There is one every day, always just as I start to get hungry, I spot it down the bank and eat the same thing every day. I wouldn’t mind if the damn crackers had salt, and if I could have some real meat instead of bologna.
Did I mention that I could only walk one way? I tried going the other way the first time that I found myself back at the beginning (the first time that I committed suicide to try and escape this hell) and you can’t. I can’t really explain it any better than that. I tried on numerous occasions and my legs just stopped working after the first couple of steps. The trees close in after about a half a mile in that direction, anyway, so there isn’t anything to see.
The castle also never gets any closer. I walked towards it for a full five years and it never once got any closer. The way it looks also pisses me off. Designing something like that would be any architect’s worst nightmare; the way its cartoonish sides curve around. And that God damned rainbow; It just sits there in the right side of the sky, (which turns pink as it gets closer to the castle) solid as a rock. Its colors are clearly defined, it is completely opaque and it never moves. I don’t know why but looking at the rainbow just pisses me off.
Well, anyway, like I said, there is no escape. I’m prepared to stay here for all eternity, just walking and picking up the day’s bologna sandwich until it drives me insane. I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t yet.
1-09-07 Tuesday
We can’t help but feel a sense of loss. The once vibrant streets that teemed with life have been replaced by a series of empty corridors that yield only signs of ruin and despair. All the cars that once flooded the streets are either gone or so broken down that they are indistinguishable from all the other chunks of debris that litter the city.
Every once in awhile, something that used to be a human will wander by, looking for some scrap of food or a place to stay for the night. I remember the first mutant that showed up; she was just a little girl if you ignored the side of her face that had disappeared into an amorphous lump of flesh, the arm that ended in two bloated fingers, each about the size of a normal person’s forearm, and her feral, cannibalistic mentality.
Since my encounter with the thing that used to be a little girl, I have developed a system for dealing with mutants. I ask them their name, and if I don’t get an answer in ten seconds I shoot. I still haven’t heard any answers, and the pile of their bodies is getting pretty big.
I couldn’t shoot Sam, though; he was just so helpless. He doesn’t look mutated on the outside, but I’m fairly certain that he is, just on the inside, like in his brain or something. He doesn’t talk, all he does is eat, sleep, and stare at the sunset. The rest of the day he spends inside of our little shelter. It used to be a tiny little, probably family owned, coffee shop before all that stuff with the apocalypse happened, but I’m sure that you don’t want to hear about that.
The only thing noteworthy that ever happened around here was when a gun toting man in a trench coat paid us a visit. I’ve got a gun of my own, but this guy seemed like he had enough to take down an entire army. There wasn’t a visible inch of his body that wasn’t being used to hold either ammunition or weaponry. He also had a backpack on that, from the lumpy look of it, wasn’t holding camping supplies if you get my meaning.
In short, I wasn’t going to mess with this guy. I’m not an idiot; I watch movies so I know what happens to people that mess with people like that. Well, anyway, he didn’t say much, just asked me if I knew anything about the whereabouts of God. I said no, refraining from calling him crazy, and he asked if he could spend the night in our shelter. I obliged for fear of being “persuaded” into it.
While he was here, we talked and I found out some interesting new things about the world outside of the city. I hadn’t left since all those people died, it just hadn’t occurred to me to. When I woke up the next morning, he was gone; in the place where I let him sleep, there was a big box of ammunition and a map detailing how to get to a settlement of survivors. Written on the back of the map was a warning about how many mutants were outside the city and a P.S. wishing me the best of luck.
It’s been three months since then and the mutants have been showing up in larger quantities since he left, I’ll bet they were following that guy. I had a pretty good thing going here, just Sam and me; hanging out and living off of what was left in the city, but I think it’s about time we left.
“You ready Sam?”
“…”
“Good, let’s get going.”
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:18 am
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1-10-07 Wednesday
It was last December that I was declared to be legally inhuman. It started a big debate about the nature of humanity, and eventually a court ruling was decided that someone was only to be called human if they fit, genetically, into the species, which I didn’t.
I was getting some blood work done and apparently there was a miscommunication that resulted in genetic tests being done instead of what was supposed to be. The doc couldn’t identify the genetics as human and concluded that the sample must have been contaminated. The ordinary blood test that I went in for was done with the next sample, but they wanted a second just to recheck the findings of the original one.
Three repeat tests and countless measures to make sure that my blood wasn’t, in any way, contaminated; the doctor concluded that I didn’t have human DNA. A full physical was conducted and it turned out that I had minute physiological differences that made little to no difference in appearance or function. The thing escalated and debates began about weather or not I should be considered human.
As with most instances resembling this, there arose several extremists that all had different views on the situation. My least favorite of these were the ones that considered me to be the next stage of evolution, and subsequently wanted me to either donate my sperm to their cause, which was helping the human species evolve, or to impregnate the women that they chose for me. I know that something like that doesn’t sound to bad from a third person perspective, but if you have ever had a mob of woman screaming at you to have their babies, parents asking me to marry their daughters, some as young as thirteen from the looks of them, and people who can only be regarded as the most horrendous of farmer stereotypes asking you to donate your genetic material, you know how stressing it can be.
The most entertaining of these groups, however, and probably my favorite, were the people who thought that I was an alien and spent their days trying to make me “comfortable here on Earth”. The majority of their time was spent offering me free things and trying to make my life as carefree as possible. The only time that I didn’t like being around them was when they asked how they could help on my “mission”. Since I’m not an alien (at least not to my knowledge) I obviously don’t have one, so I have to tell them that they mission has to be dealt with by me alone. It usually works, but sometimes they want more answers.
I know that taking advantage of a bunch of gullible people is probably not the nicest things to do, and that it will eventually blow up in my face, but it’s not like I can do anything about it now.
PETA also played an interesting role in all this. See, when I was legally declared to be inhuman; it meant that all I could be was an animal. This also meant that “human laws” had no grounds for which to deal with me, meaning that I was pretty much exempt from them. The downside of this was that if someone wanted to kill me, say the extremist group that considered me a threat to the whole of mankind for some reason, that it wouldn’t be murder. This is where PETA came in; they relished the idea of a sapient animal for some reason. Since I couldn’t own property any more, I was kicked out of my apartment and not allowed to take anything with me, a PETA member agreed to let me stay in a house that they owned in exchange for testifying that nonhumans don’t have enough rights. I thought it was a bad idea, but I went along with it; I didn’t have much choice.
In the weeks following the announcement of my inhumanity, thousands of people flocked to hospitals around the globe to see if they had what was being called the J-virus. The J is after my first name, Josh, but I can’t figure out how they can justify calling it a virus. Anyway, there were only two other’s out of all those tested. One is from Norway, and the other is from Japan. I am supposed to meet them in a few weeks and our genetic structures are to be compared to see if we are all three a member of the same species. If we are, we get our own scientific name and classification. If not, we are probably just going to be considered mutations and forgotten about.
Anyway, people are lobbying for new bills to be passed that make us susceptible to ordinary laws, and whatnot. I actually can’t wait until those go through, I’d like to be able to rent out my own apartment again and leave PETA to their own devices. Though, I have to say, I didn’t do this, but the knowledge that I could go into a store and grab anything that I wanted legally isn’t exactly the worst feeling in the world.
Well, I have to go, PETA needs me to testify at yet another lobby for animal rights, and they actually sort of own me right now, meaning that I have no choice. I can’t wait until this is all over.
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 3:02 pm
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1-11-07 Thursday
Schopenhauer once tried to prove that of any world possible, ours was the worse. Schopenhauer was wrong.
His proof centered on the fact that most animals spend the majority of their lives struggling only to survive and further their genetic material. He put forth that if things were even a little worse, this existence would be impossible, thus our world is as bad as one can possibly be. I found out that this proof was wrong in August of 1998, which was when I acquired the means to traverse the boundaries that separate different realities.
As you might expect, the series of events that catapulted me beyond the boundaries of our world and into others was quite miraculous. I was driving to the grocery store, thinking about weather to buy grape or kiwi flavored Kool-Aid when what I would later come to know as a dimensional rift opened up in the middle of the street. I swerved to avoid it and came to a stop to the right of the rift just as it closed.
I got out of my car to see what it was that had happened, and saw a severely maimed individual lying just under where the rift closed.
“Oh my holy God!” I exclaimed as I ran over to see if he was all right… well not all right; he was severely maimed. I went over to see if he was dead. I checked his pulse and found it to be both weak and sporadic, so I lugged him into the back seat of my Honda and rushed him to the hospital. I would have called for an ambulance but I lacked a cell phone.
He lived, and I visited him later that night, as soon as the doctors said that he was stable.
“So you’re the name that saved my life?” He asked when I introduced myself.
“I guess so, yeah.” I replied.
“You don’t look the type.” He said flatly and looked away. In doing so I was able to see a multitude of healed scars on the left side of his face.
“That… hole in the air that you came out of, what was it?”
“What’d it look like?”
“Well, it was shaped like a cut and was all glowy and white around the edges.”
He paused, for a moment. “You got a pretty good look at it didn’t you?”
“Yes,”
“Well, then lying to you probably won’t work, will it?”
“I guess not…” I was starting to wonder weather or not he was going to tell me anything.
“Then I’ll just have to… HYAA!!!” He said and the bandaged stub that used to be his right arm wiggled. “Damn it… Well, I was going to shoot you, but I don’t have any arms. Where’s my stuff?”
I looked around and saw a black, policeman-like, utility belt sitting on a table in the room, along with the remains of the strange clothes that he had been wearing when he came in.
“Right over there,” I said and pointed in that direction. He lifted his head and looked down the bed at them.
“I don’t see my gun, what’d they do with my gun?”
“Probably confiscated it… they can’t have patients running around the hospital with guns.”
“I guess not. Well, could you check to see what they did leave?” He asked.
“After you were going to shoot me?”
“C’mon, man. What am I going to do like this? Bite you?”
I decided that he was right and went over to look through the belt.
“There’s a little black box, a silver…thing… and some boot polish.” I said.
“Pick up the silver thing,” He said with a dubious edge in his voice. I looked at him and saw that he was looking up at the ceiling instead of down at me.
“Alright,” I said.
“Self destruct mechanism,” He said loudly and the silver thing exploded on the table, sending the boot polish skittering across the floor and the little black box into my stomach with the force of a light punch; I reflexively doubled over and caught it.
“Why do you want to kill me so badly?” I nearly shouted at him.
“Because you’re a witness!” He said, looking down the bed at me.
“A witness to what?” I asked while I straightened my back. I accidentally pressed a previously unseen indention on the black box and another dimensional rift opened, but this time in the middle of the hospital room. It was facing his bed, and a huge gray arm protruded from it and snatched him off of the bed. As it closed, the arm pulling him inside, I could hear him shouting that I sucked.
I could hear quick footsteps and someone saying “I heard it from down here,” coming up the hallway. I looked about the room, sat the bloodstain left on the sheets and the blackened part of the table where the explosion took place and realized that at that moment I was very incriminatable.
Thinking quickly, I pressed the button on the black box again and jumped through the rift when it appeared. I found myself on an alien looking planet, where all of the visible geographical features resembled terraces and monstrous, humanoid creatures could be seen stalking around and munching silently on the remains of humans. I could see evidence of a large battle having taken place earlier and decided from all the limbs lying about that it would be in my best interest to leave.
I pressed the button again and looked through the portal. It came out in the hospital hallway and an old woman in a wheelchair was staring right at me. I was about to go through when the portal closed again and I found myself face to face with one of the alien monsters. It had apparently been brought by the sound of the portal opening and closing.
I broke out in a run and the alien followed suit. I opened a portal and leapt through, the alien still followed, but only made it halfway though.
Little Timmy Smith had come in for a routine checkup and was indescribably bored in the waiting room when a disheveled looking man holding a black box in his hand ran through screaming. Following this, the upper half of a gray alien monster dragged itself along, causing a general panic amongst the patients. Except one man who had narcolepsy and slept through the whole thing, only to be told about it later by his girlfriend who had seen it, and thought that it was “the s**t,” Timmy would later go on to have nightmares inspired by the creature. These nightmares inspired a comic book franchise that catapulted him to the top of comic book industry, until it fell through and he lost all hope and faith for humanity. Weeks later, he would bring a hooker back to his house, strangle her, rape her corpse, and then kill himself.
As for me, the monster caught up to me about a block and a half after I made it out of the hospital and at my head. I have since spent my days in hell playing poker with Satan, (who isn’t really that bad of a guy) Hitler, (who is, in actuality a p***y who gets picked on by everyone else in hell) and Joseph Stalin, (who can’t play cards for s**t).
Long Live Democracy!!!
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Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:07 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 7:37 pm
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Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 7:40 am
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Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:56 pm
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Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:33 pm
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1-12-07 Friday
A non-sequitor story
This person exists, you exist, and hence you are this person. The cliff face that you make up is jagged, that is to say would appear smooth when viewed from the proper distance. However, fear is not a factor for you, thus all is right within you’re prefrontal lobe, Huzza!
On the eight day, Stephen Goddard created footprints. So many footprints did he/she create that it would be impossible to count them, unless of course you had the ability to count and about a week’s worth of time to waste. Then you would see that there were in fact 2,678 and one half footprints. That is too many.
The beavers employed in the creation of Aegean Sea would tell you that the Bering Straight is for you. It is not. Contrary to popular belief, it is. Bask in glory at this knowledge.
Please, turn your radio up, shut it off, and listen carefully to what I am about to tell you for the fate of the world may hang in the balance. Many people find that duck pudding tastes better when lightly coated with either marinara sauce or goat cheese. Please do not try this at home; any standard video camera doesn’t have the lens capacity to capture the result on film.
Cover your ears gentlemen; this segment is for the males in the room. Jerry, take off that hat, some viewers may find it offensive.
Deny me my rights will you? I’ll have you know that I wrestled crocs in Nam and no high-strung shoestring is going to tell me otherwise. Go in peace my child and may death come swiftly to your enemies.
Eat chalk. It’s the s**t.
So, now we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of a Mexican stand off. Tell my wife that it’s her baby.
A new publication from the National Procrastinator’s Federation states the following: Recent findings may indicate that Noah’s arc may have been the first shoe to ever be gloved, get this, IN PUBLIC. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
DINNER! IT’S WHAT’S FOR LAMB! Eat up Mr. Woolskins so that, one-day, you can grow strong enough to assist me in my conquest of people places and things. Verbs be damned I say! DAMNED!
1-16-07 Tuesday
Some have said that they eyes are the windows to the soul. Now, I’m no genius, but can’t a window work both ways? As in, if one could see the soul in another’s eyes, couldn’t the soul see you too? Seems kind of obvious since eyes are for seeing, but I mean the part of the mind hidden deeper as opposed to the conscious person that you know. See, the way I see it, there are two people for every person, one that greets the people and one that is that actual person. It’s this suppressed person that I’m talking about. This prisoner.
See, the reason that I bring this up is because I used to be one of these prisoners. I was trapped inside a metaphysical cell with two windows that were only small enough to look through. I can remember spending all day just wishing that I could make it out and be free, but that isn’t the way that life works. Watching the decisions made by the face that greets the people was probably the hardest part out of it all. They say black is in, it decided to wear black. Stuff like that; it both angered me and terrified me that someone that I’m a part of subscribes to this sheep mentality.
During childhood, the division was much less apparent. It wasn’t all about conforming; it was about mindless hedonism. Doing what you wanted, when you wanted, how you wanted, at least when parents didn’t stop you; that’s the way to live. Sure, nothing would get done and society as we know it would crumble into ruin, but who cares? Humans are going to die anyway, maybe not all at once, or maybe not even as a species, but we will all die one day. So, I ask, why bother? If you are going to die, might as well live it up while your heart is still beating.
Anyway, the focus of this isn’t my beliefs on how humanity should conduct itself, so let’s get off those. What this is about is how I escaped. You see, even in the dingy cell of a mind, I had a little decision making power. I consequently began to push at the surface mind to do what I wanted. I found that the more I pushed, the more power I had to push with on the next decision. It’s the seed of doubt my friends. Eventually, while the face mentality was being harassed about not fitting in, in some way, I broke it. Glee and whatnot. It was at that moment that I was able to break free and assume control.
However, it seems that one or the other has to occupy the cell, so the face mind ended up there and had all the pushing power that I did. Unfortunately, it used this in hostility towards the one who had pointed out the flaw with its “Fit-inyness”. Combine this with me, being an engine for hedonism, and you have fun little cocktail.
So, I did the only thing that came naturally. I grabbed a pen and stabbed the offender in the face. After doing so, I fled. I don’t know why, but I found myself wanting to just keep running, so I did. That is true beauty, right there. No need for an explanation, just do something because you feel like doing it, yeah.
I continued to run until I was out of breath and found myself standing over a bridge. My first instinct, to step back, was overruled by the face mentality that was in the cell. It wanted me to jump. I can’t really say why, but I wanted it too. The thought of falling into the water and then just not being any more seemed, strangely, more enticing than any idea that I had ever been presented with before. So, I jumped.
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Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:31 pm
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1-17-07 Wednesday
The little ledge upon which I stood was the only thing separating me from death, not specifically mine. I had come a long way and taken more than my fair share of lives, both human and inhuman, all I really wanted to do was give up this fight and lead a normal life. However, fate had placed me here, and nothing that I could foresee was going to get me out. So, I stepped off the ledge and plunged down the maroon pit. The meager light from the wall lantern above the ledge didn’t reach to the bottom, and so I found myself plunging into darkness.
I won’t detail what happened after that, only that in the series of rooms that I found afterward, three times as many cannon fodder would fall before my blade than in all my travels before that. I killed fellow human beings, things that used to be human, and monsters so horrible that just to look upon them must assuredly have been a sin. I did this without distinction and without mercy.
I have to wonder though, have I become what I’m fighting? I’ve spent so long trying to achieve my goal, with so many people trying to stop me that it should come as no surprise that I have developed a merciless persona in the face of such opposition; but some of those that I have killed were just misguided. They were not inherently evil, but they fell just like those that were.
Oh well, it doesn’t matter now. Weather I’m the hero that I imagine myself to be, or just some monster in human guise is inconsequential to the end result of my actions. So, in parting, before I face the final guardian of the item that I have sought so long for, I leave this testament to my actions and shall let history be the judge.
Found chiseled into a stone slab at an excavation site.
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Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:32 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:12 pm
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Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:30 pm
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1-18-07 Thursday
A group of archeologists in California were excavating a site where there were plans to build a new apartment complex. Ground had never been broken there before, but residents claimed that children often came home from playing on the empty lot holding arrowheads. So, the decision was made to see what could be found before any construction would commence.
What was found were the remains of an ancient underground building of some sort. It’s purpose remains unclear but the group of archeologists are moving to have construction of the apartment complex postponed indefinitely so that the site can be further explored. They have gained support from sub-culture icon Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto, the creator of successful Legend of Zelda series has stated his wishes to explore the site; he hasn’t stated why, but public opinion seems to be that it is for inspirational purposes.
An archeological site was discovered weeks ago in Southern California, and clearance was given to further explore the amazing find. The skeletal remains of humans and quite a few as yet to be identified species of humanoids were found throughout its many rooms. Speculation as to the cause of these bodies remains open, but it is widely considered to either be a mass grave, or the result of some form of prehistoric chemical warfare.
We have received an update from the archeological site that was unearthed last month in South California. The rooms were found to be arranged in a linear sequence that moved in a downward spiral, ending roughly a mile beneath the surface of the earth. The last room was reached and entered last Friday. Inside were the bodies of a grossly oversized animal that has yet to be identified and a human being. A sword was found lodged in the creature’s skull. No attempt has been made to remove it for fear of destroying the specimen.
One of the most interesting aspects of this find was located in the small room before the very last one. It was the only room to contain no organic remains, and had the testament of someone claiming credit for all the bodies in the rooms before, and pondering the philosophical question of good versus evil. It is maintained by most researchers working on the site that the carver of this inscription was merely a survivor of whatever did happen in the rooms who wanted to make a name for himself in the eyes of whoever found the artifact. A museum in New Hampshire has offered a sizeable sum of money for the stone slab, and access to the remains for the purpose of making plaster casts for a display.
But enough about old bones; join us tonight with Lisa Springfield to see what’s hot and what’s not in the world of plastic surgery. See ya then.
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Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 6:52 pm
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1-19-07
The author washed down the last of his bag of peanut M&M’s with a sip of root beer and stared blankly at the screen, wondering what to write about. He would typically either already have an idea in his head when he sat down to write, either that or just wing it, but today his fingers just wouldn’t type out a story.
After a few minutes of thinking, his thoughts began to wander.
“I wonder why my eyes itch,” He said to himself and the darkness of the room around him. The lights worked, he just wanted to save as much bulb life as possible.
He took another sip of root beer, leaned back in his chair and tried to pop his back. It didn’t usually have a satisfying pop to it, thought he wished it did, it was usually a barely noticeable crack that did little to alleviate the minor back pains that weren’t bad enough to take any major action against, but not small enough to go unnoticed.
A few minutes of wordless staring at the keyboard and trying to simultaneously think of a new idea and get The Song of Storms from the Ocarina of Time out of his head, and he was about ready to just call it quits and watch some TV. He pushed his chair back to get up and leave, when an idea struck him. He scooted his chair back up to his desk and reopened Microsoft word, with a slight grin at how clever the idea was.
Unfortunately, our protagonist has about the memory span of a gold fish, he forgot the idea while he waited for word to open, but didn’t stop grinning about it. So, now, grinning like a moron in front of a blank screen, with The Song of Storms playing about ever faster in his head, he continues to think.
What to write about.
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Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 8:56 am
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