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vovan
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Well, I had this idea: what would happen to a world if someone were to reload it, like using the reload cheat in Civ3? Here's my vision through one man's eyes. Criticize.
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It was a bright sunny morning. The fluffy white clouds were running merrily across the sky, undergoing curious metamorphoses from the slim and fast jets into the large round pillows. The birds were singing on the trees, and their voices made the people down on the streets smile. Some of them smiled, that is. Others just kept up an altogether industrious appearance, as they chatted away on their cell phones. Men in black suits, and men in gray suits, and men in brown suits – they all hurried to work, as the city was waking up. Through the window on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper, the all looked tiny and insignificant. Almost like bugs. Little ants, hurrying to perform their little tasks.
I like watching them, I really do. It makes me think about things. I look through the window from my desk and think about their lives. There’s one screaming into his phone something about selling the stocks, and urging the person on the other end of the virtual wire to hurry up. Well, that’s what I imagine he’s screaming. I can’t really hear from here. Nor can I really see. The man is too far down there. It’s just that his posture seems to hint he is talking on the phone. And his movements seem rather jerky for simply walking. There! He almost got hit by a cab crossing the avenue; too busy talking on the phone to notice anything around him – an important man, who is probably moving millions of dollars around right about now. So important and yet so fragile. Should he have stepped off the sidewalk a second earlier, he would now be resting on the hot yellow metal of the cab’s car; his briefcase, laying open on the asphalt next to him, with the papers flying around in the wind; the driver cursing. Yes, and the person he was talking to would try to call him back and would only get to eternal beep of the answering machine in response.
There’s another one. Hmmm, I like her. Dressed all business-like, in a maroon-colored jacket and a short black skirt; her long blonde hair collected into an intricate hairdress. I see every morning right about this time, and I like to think how she…
- Morning, James!
- Hey, Paul, – it was one of the few people I could call a “friend” without stretching the meaning of the word too far, - How goes it?
- Ah, just fine. Staring through the window again, I see, instead of doing something… shall I say, productive?
- Indeed. Quite a view. – God, I hate his grin! It just looks so stupid on his face. There is always something made up in it. Every twitch of his muscle, every bit of his face, every bit of his laugh – it all lets you know – he is laughing at you, not with you.
- Pfft, never really understood why. I’ll leave you to it then.
Yes, you just roll along. Although… I never did quite understand why, either. I can just spend the whole day here, staring through that window, and never really do anything productive until the boss comes by, and threatens to throw me out that window if I don’t finish the project in another week. And yet, that threat never bothers me much. I keep up the appearance of busy activity for some quarter of an hour, and then revert back to staring through that window. Yes, there is something tantalizing about it, the mob down there.
Any well, let’s call it lunch time.
***
But James! Do you even realize what this means!? It’s the end of the world, I tell you! The Germans have just this morning crossed our border, and are probably marching towards this city as we speak! How can you just keep on eating like that? You aren’t even listening are you? Oh sure, you are! What did I just say? … Okay, okay, maybe you are listening, it just seemed like your mind was wandering somewhere else. But any way, I don’t understand why you are so calm. The Germans have never been defeated. Their military might is unstoppable. They will crush us like bugs! We are doomed!
***
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep
Damn alarm clock. I just had a dream, too, that, for once, I actually wanted to see through. I wasn’t sitting in that office any more. Instead, I was walking through the streets of the city. I knew boss would kill me when I got back to work, but I didn’t care. I just marched on, and on, and it wasn’t aimless roaming either. I was going somewhere. I had a goal. Only… I never got to see what it was… Which is quite sad if you think about it. I often wish I had a goal. I wish I didn’t just mindlessly get up in the morning and go to work. I might as well be an automaton, the way I am now… Sometimes I just wish I could reload my life, and start from scratch. I would surely have found some goal then. Or at least if it wasn’t for the alarm clock… Well, it is all lost now. Might as well take a shower.
James extended his arm and flicked the switch of the lamp on the night table beside his bed, but the sound of the switch was the only effect he was able to produce. No light came on. He flicked the switch a couple more times, just to make sure – to no effect. The man grunted, sat up in the bed, and put his feet on the cold floor concrete floor – he gave up on the carpet a long time ago – it wasn’t so apparent on the bare floor without even the minimalist parquet that it hadn’t been cleaned for a long time – he put his feet down on the cold floor, and grabbed the clock from the table. It was off. Must have accidentally unplugged it just now when turning the alarm off, James figured. He opened up the little drawer of the night table, and took out his watch. Both the long and the short arms of the watch were pointing at the number 12. Midnight. James shook the watch violently, and then put it up to his ear. It wasn’t ticking. Stupid piece of ****, he thought, now thoroughly annoyed, and firm in the belief that the day is going to suck again.
The man got up from his bed, and headed towards the bathroom. The morning sun was shining through the small window, but that didn’t cheer him up any. He slowly took off the clothes, stepped into the shower, and closed the door behind him. James twisted the handles, but instead of water, a strange hissing sound came out of the faucet. He gave the thing a few hits, as if to shake the water loose, but that only produced a tiny droplet of rusty liquid. Cursing, the man got out of the shower, grabbed his clothes and headed back out to the bedroom. He yanked the door of the closet open, and it fell off. The screws just slipped out of the wooden frame, and the door fell to the floor with a loud bang. The shower had already been over the top for James, so he didn’t care enough any more to even curse. He just melancholically looked into the closet and grabbed the first thing that caught his eye. It was a gray suit. Not surprisingly, either, for the entire closet contained only that – gray suits; the cursed employer enforced strict dress code.
James pulled on the pants, and the shirt hastily, and opened up the drawer of the night table again, this time looking for a pair of cuff links. None jumped into the hand right away, and James had to rummage through the drawer for a while. Finally, he got one! Now, to find a match… That proved to be tricky however – no match was to be found in the drawer. By the time James was confident he had looked through the whole thing, he had three cuff links in his hand, but none of them matched. This time around, though, the man didn’t even curse. He just smiled in a strange kind of fashion, dropped the links, turned around on his heals, and, forgetting the jacket on the bed, left the room.
This is ridiculous. I knew this day would be terrible, just knew it the moment I woke up. But for it to be so mindnumbingly ugly… I had not expected that. I mean seriously, what the hell? Nothing has yet gone right. There’s no electricity, no water. Maybe the Germans have finally gotten here, and I didn’t notice? Well, that would provide a nice diversion from the everyday… Bah! I forgot the car keys. James turned around at his porch and headed back for the bedroom. Yeah, a war. Then I would finally have a purpose in life. I would go to war and kill some of them Germans. But then, I guess I couldn’t… Following orders isn’t for me… Heh, I’d just rather stare through a window into a street, than follow orders. James picked up the keys from the night table with some relief – at least they weren’t lost yet. If the war came to us, I’d just kill people on my own. That’s right. I wouldn’t follow anybody’s orders. I’d just get into my car, and plow right into a crowd of enemy soldiers! Their blood would stain my windshield, and their screams would be better entertainment than any radio could ever provide! And then, when my car is so beat up it can’t move any more, I’d get out of it with a victorious expression on my face, and they would shoot me. I would die. But I will have left a trace on the world. A bigger trace than I ever could from that office up there. Yes! Death. Destruction. Car. Key! Ingition!! Turn!!!
Silence…
James slid down the seat, and hit his head against the steering wheel a few times, almost weeping in his breakdown. The horn didn’t sound. He put the seat back in almost horizontal position, laid back, and reached with his hand towards the back seat to grab a can of beer. As it opened, the warm contents came out with a hissing sound and spilled over, on the man’s unbuttoned shirt, and on the seats, and the carpet of the car. James didn’t care. He sat up and put the can to his mouth. The warm liquid touched his lips, but he didn’t feel it go down his throat. James made big gulps, but not a drop of beer came down to his stomach. Confused, he looked at the can and shook at. It was empty. The man opened the window and threw the can out of it, hitting a cat that was sitting in the shade of the car. He than grabbed another can. He opened it with a violent motion, and sure enough, there it was, warm beer pouring out of the can, over his fingers, and onto the seats of the car. Yet, as he moved the can to his lips, it suddenly became light, and he realized it was once again empty! Now, James was beginning to get anxious. He looked out of the window of the car to take another look at that cat, and his jaw dropped. Sure enough, there the cat was, napping in the shade of the car, yet… One could see the asphalt through the cat. It was translucent. And it was visibly fading away. After a few seconds, one could only see the cat’s tail, and then that disappeared as well. Shocked, James put his hands on the steering wheel, and gripped it as hard as he could – so hard that it hurt his fingers; but as he glanced over his hands, he saw that they were beginning to fade away as well. There it was. He could now see vaguely the leather covering of the steering wheel through them… And then they were almost as transparent as glass, and then…
Darkness…
***
But James! Do you even realize what this means!? It’s the end of the world, I tell you! The government ha this morning signed a Non-Agression Act with the Germans in exchange for a lifetime supply of oil! They will squeeze us dry of it! How can you just keep on eating like that? You aren’t even listening are you? Oh sure, you are! I don’t understand why you are so calm. Oil is our only natural resource, and we used to have a monopoly on it! Now the Germans have it, too! And they will squeeze every last drop from us! Our military is hereby eliminated! We can’t fight anyone! We are doomed!
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~The End~
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Well, I am not sure how well the thing turned out... I kinda got carried away there. I was going to revise the story a few times, but the stories that I end up revising usually never see the light of these forums, so I figured I'd post it right away, before I deem it unworthy.  So, yeah, criticism would be welcome, as well as suggestions for improvement, alternate endings/events, and whatever other input you may come up with.
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09-05-2004 07:02
I don't know. I really have to say I miss having a happy ending. It's a bit depressing or something with that guy in the car. I think better would have been a less everyday event like a wedding perhaps or I don't know cause its very late now and I'm half asleep so I'm not sure what I'm saying. Maybe better is having a slightly unusual event coupled with the 'reload' occurance like a bank robbery, multiple car crash pileup or other high stress situation which gets even more out of hand and weird with the reload action. To make the disappearing happy or whatever, the disappearing part could save someone from a coming bad occurance with the relatively much less bad disappearance effect. Well, on the good side, it is good to see some lateral thinking going on though instead of the usual civilization formula. I guess I mean it is on the right track and just needs some more oomph to get it heated up some.
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