“3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197...”
Count
Count*
It seems CJ
will not be coming over this weekend. But also I made good progress
on my book. Also because he was coming over I wrote stories ahead of
time which means that I will work on my book more readily. Though I
may jump into my Writers of the Future story. I scrapped the first
possibly entry for this quarter.
Anyway onto the
flash fiction!
Happy
Endings in Peril
The tension was
killing Sarah. Her brother had reached the final boss battle in the
video game he had been playing over the week. This was it. It all
came to this. If he lost this there would be no happy ending. If the
thought crossed your mind that he could just try again the game was a
rental. His tries were limited. The game is a rental and they
returned it tomorrow. Her older brother wouldn't rent the same game
twice so Sarah wouldn't see the happy ending if he failed. Looking up
the ending on the Internet? The year is 1997 videos of game endings
on the Internet weren't something that the girl could have. They
didn't have Internet at all.
With a book or
a movie you were guaranteed a happy ending. Their family rented a
game every week instead of buying them. Renting may have let Sarah
see many stories, but it also see many stories never be completed,
and so she never saw the happy ending. It made her fear the villains
even more. Not just the ones that stopped her brother Gregory at the
end of the week. Every villain delayed them, even the common
monsters. Which one will add enough seconds to stop the hero from
saving everyone? She never knew. For her movies never got as tense.
She knew the hero would win. But in games, the world could possibly
never be saved.
The parents of
Sarah and her brother Gregory enjoyed that fact it kept the two kids
together and pretty undisruptive so they rented the games for them.
Sarah was six and for her to talk with her brothers about the games
instead of running around was a blessing as far as the parents were
concerned. They never rented the same game twice for the kids because
it didn't make sense. The kids should always get a new toy each week
right?
The hero of the
game was a noble, pixelated hero. Graphics weren't the best back
then, the strained artists had their own form of paint. The man
tasked with saving the world from an evil wizard had blonde hair(at
least that's what the game called it, but because the game system had
limited colors to display it the hair was a bright lemon yellow). His
skin only had one tone of color and an outline around his body. The
developers recycled the color of the leaves of the trees to be the
color of his eyes as well.
His armor held
a few shades of gray but his big, blue shield obscured it. The
armored boots of the knight could always been and they held an
incredibly dark shade of gray. Probably an attempt by the developers
to show shadow. Like many action heroes in games of his style he
could jump about three times his height when the player pushed the
proper button. With a different button the knight would swing an
obnoxiously huge sword in the direction he was facing.
The scene was
the evil wizard's chamber. Sunday night. Tomorrow was school. Zero
extra lives. Five hit points left, all represented by little shields
at the top side of the screen. The wizard filled his chamber with
floating brick platforms for some reason with lava far below. The
game developers made their wizard wear only a black cloak and have
sinister yellow eyes. Maybe it was to make make him menacing. Maybe
it was to save time.
After a simple text
box appeared with the message, “Here you shall meet your
DOOMMMMM!!!” the evil wizard began to attack. The wizard's
first unfair advantage came from the fact that he could fly. That
meant the lava meant nothing to him as he zoomed around. He also
didn't use a simple sword to attack. An ugly, blue, zombie-like hand
would emerge from his cloak and he would toss a fire ball at the
hero. The fireball would follow the hero and change its course
mid-air. It would travel a set distance, then move again. After
moving a set number of times it would vanish.
“This isn't
too bad.” Gregory said while moving the character between platforms
and slashing at the wizard. They were plenty big. Gregory was good at
games and figured out the wizard chased you then threw a fireball to
chase you. Lure him to high platform then jump to a lower platform
and leap up to a higher platform. Just run the wizard in circles. “I
can keep this up until he drops.” And then like all jinxes then
wizard started throwing two fireballs. “Now that might be a
problem.” Sarah's brother almost got hit but maintained his full
hit point count of five and found a new way to maneuver around the
wizard.
“Oh come on!”
After enough slashes with the sword the wizard started flinging three
fire balls. Gregory just started running from the fireballs. “Crud!”
He got hit by one. “Double crud!” He got slammed by another.
Three hit points left. Last life. School day tomorrow. Parents
returned the game before they got back. Always.
Sarah always
mentally expanded on the stories in the games. Making the worlds
deeper and more emotionally involving to her. She engaged herself. It
was the way she spent time with her brother. It did tear her heart
out when she lost a happy ending. But she got one, no matter how
basic, it felt very rewarding. All those people she expanded upon
survived. She wanted the hero to win so badly here. Why if he lost
the wizard would enslave them all. All those people she imagined up
in the fictional kingdom would be slaves forever. She wondered if
that's why people peek to the ending of the book, to see if the
ending is one they want to get attached to.
Blam! Another
hit. Down to two hit points. More and more dodging. But eventually
Gregory smiled. “Ha! I figured it out! I know exactly how the
fireballs work along with how he flies around too! I can totally take
him out!” Gregory kept slashing and hacking at the wizard with
confidence. Then after many more slashes in a new style the wizard
threw two blue zombie hands into the air like he was cheering for a
touchdown and multiple lighting bolts came down from above. One hit
point.
“No!”
Gregory really wondered how the game was expecting him to figure out
where that was coming from. Was there some signifier where the
lighting bolts were going to hit. Or was it going to be one of those
games where you had to get hit enough to figure it out and you just
memorized where they appeared. He didn't have that choice.
He just rushed
at the boss and slashed away. He hoped he would get lucky. He did and
the wizard flashed white and burst into flame. Though emerging from
his body came a black-greenish ball. It floated to the top of the
screen and a text box appeared.
“You have
done well to have destroyed my body brave night. But can you handle
my more powerful second form, my SOUL!?”
As soon as the
text box disappeared the soul started shooting homing fireballs and
even more lighting bolts starting appearing. No warning like how the
wizard's body would show its hands would appear. With only one hit
point Sarah's brother lost the game. With no extra lives he was
booted back to the start of the wizard's castle level. He didn't have
enough time to complete it before they had to go to bed for school on
Monday.
So the people
were enslaved by the evil wizard until sixteen years later. Sixteen
years later Sarah was reminded of the game and looked up a video of
the game's ending on the Internet. When she saw the ending time
rewound in a way and the people weren't enslaved anymore and the
happy ending was revived. At first looking the game up was a passing
thought, but when she felt the satisfaction of seeing the wizard
defeated, even if by some random player who decided to post his
victory and ending on the Internet, she didn't realize how much those
endings meant to her. For the next several weeks whenever she could
she spent her time rewinding time and retrieving all of those lost
happy endings.
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