"I love you Sloth, and you’re gonna stay with me, I’m gonna take care of you."

"Awwww, Chuuuuunk, I love you too."

My leg jerks, and I crack open my eyes. I roll over and see that my friend was just finishing up The Goonies. He had a pile of Slim Jim wrappers lying next to him. God those were gross. The clock said it was 7:00, so he must have stayed up all night. I went to bed at 2 – right around the time I got killed for the 6th time in a row by that fucking AWP. I mean, I love it and everything, but only when I use it. Anyway, there’s only so much CounterStrike2 one can take before the bed is more tempting than the next knife kill.

My friend turns around and sees me awake.

"Hey man, you missed The Goonies."

"I’ve seen it a hundred times dude. Why didn’t you watch Tron 2?"

"I did. I watched it before The Goonies."

"Any good?" I rolled my legs off the bed and sat there blinking, trying to get my contacts moistened up enough to be able to see. I have to stop sleeping in those things. Probably get eye cancer or something.

"It was ok, they did the motorcycle thing again, that was the coolest part."

"Awesome." I surveyed my room with an odd sense of urgency, something right on the tip of my brain. My friend sitting on a mass of pillows watching TV next to my bed, console games strewn across the floor. My computer glowing on the other side of my bed, the menu for CounterStrike2 still up. What was I forgetting? I laid back down, and looked up at my ceiling, and there it was. The StarCraft 2 poster that came with World of Warcraft, tacked to my ceiling. The date at the bottom of the poster said Summer, 2005. Of course, it was now December, 2005, but you know Blizzard. Today was the day. The day I had waited for so long. None of the other games mattered now, the Doom3 engine powered FPS’s, the TFC2 or CS2, or WoW, or the waning WC3. None of it compared to SC2. I didn’t get in the Beta, but the screenshots and info on the game surpassed anything I could have hoped for. It was the best looking game I’d ever seen. Marines with little lights on their shoulders that lit up at night, glistening slimy zerglings, zealots whose blades cast a bluish glow on the terrain around them. It was perfection.

And today was the day it came out. I had my copy reserved at EB, and I remembered that we had planned to go there at 8:00 and pick it up.

"Holy shit dude, StarCraft 2!", I screamed when my split second daydream was over.

His response was simply to jump up with wide eyes and squeal. Apparently he had forgotten about it for a few hours, too. It wasn’t like we hadn’t been thinking about it every 6 seconds for the last 2 years, though. I quickly got up and poured some contact solution in my eyes, and stuck my head under the faucet to get it wet. I lather up some face soap, and rub it in as I watch my friend dig under the pillows for his t-shirt.

I heard a loud thump as my friend managed to fall down trying to put his pants on. I finished up in the bathroom and slipped into some jeans and a shirt.

"You ready? We gotta go if we’re gonna get there by 8.", I asked my friend who was digging around in his bag.

"Yah, I gotta get my wallet." He found it and bounded out the door with me, skipping like a 5^th grade girl to my car. We got in and pulled out of my driveway. Just a few blocks from my apartment we saw some blue lights flashing; looked like an accident. As we got closer, I saw that it was one of my neighbors. He had been talking incessantly about getting a new Mustang for weeks, and there he was, with the car. Brand new, right off the lot, and smashed to crap. Apparently someone had just pulled out in front of him. Man, that had to suck. He was just staring at it blankly. Didn’t look like he was hurt, though, so we just drove past, headed for the mall.

As we turned into the parking lot, I started to get that feeling. You know, like when you went to see Lord of the Rings at the theatre? Something you’ve waited for so long that actually not having to wish for it anymore hurts. I could tell my friend was feeling the same way, he was smiling madly. We walked in the front entrance, and had to strain not to just all out run to EB. We got there right as it was opening, and we were the first in the store. There were about 20 other people there for SC2 as well, and we all exchanged exclamations about how this was indeed the day to end all days. I saw the display stand full of SC2s and grabbed one to check out the box art. It looked fantastic, even though I still hated those little boxes. I read on the back, and it proclaimed in the large StarCraft font:

Damn straight. I want you to take me, StarCraft 2, take me and ravish my social life.

I went to the counter and told the guy my name and my friend’s name, paid, and was handed my two copies of StarCraft. This was it. This was it. I kept telling myself over and over.

This time, we did run back to the car.

We peeled out of the parking lot at breakneck speed, determined to get dibs on all the coolass names on B.Net. The scenery flew by, my eyes constantly darting down to the box in my lap. About halfway home, the music on the radio suddenly stopped. It was a special news bulletin. I listened to it, and slowly stopped the car. Slowly pulled over onto the side of the road. Slowly lost myself in complete, utter, confusion.

"I repeat, New York City has been flattened by a nuclear blast. The Pentagon is due to make a statement within the next 10 minutes. All areas are being evacuated. Manhatten is gone, the whole city is gone, oh my God I can’t believe this. Wait, the White House has just released a statement declaring this an act of terrorism. Oh my God…"

The announcer’s voice trembled. He was on the verge of tears. I realized that I felt completely numb. How else could I react? I looked around, and saw that cars had stopped everywhere, people were standing on the side of the street, just staring at the ground, listening to radios, watching TVs in stores. The whole world seemed to have stopped. A penetrating silence slammed into my eardrums.  I remembered how I felt on September 11^th, how I simply couldn’t believe it, and how the 2 year "War on Terrorism" fizzled to us declaring occupancy of half the middle east. We never did go into Iraq, and we never did come through with our nuclear threats. And now this. The one thing we never thought would happen. The announcer continued to relay the facts as they came in. A constant stream of statistics and numbers that hammered the reality into me more and more. I knew that I still couldn’t believe it. I had to see it.

I blinked my eyes and looked over at my friend. He was just looking straight ahead. I pulled back onto the road and continued  home. We passed the Mustang wreck; they were all standing next to the tow-truck, listening to the radio. My neighbor’s blank stare at the Mustang must have had much more meaning now. It all happened so fast.

We got home and ran upstairs to my apartment. I  turned on the TV.

Reality sometimes surpasses your darkest imaginations.

The image on the screen was a of vast, blackened, skeleton of a city. Everything was gone for miles and miles. Smoke everywhere. Everything gone. A little bar on the screen said the death toll was in the millions. This had to have been at least a 25 megaton blast. New York is 309 square miles, and from what I saw, a good chunk of that was in the complete destruction zone. That means this was no suitcase nuke. This was big, very, very big.

It hit me like a brick. This was the kind of stuff you honestly think has less of a chance of happening than you winning the lottery.

My friend sat down on my bed, and just stared at the StarCraft 2 box. I looked at it, again. Every feeling inside me was different now. Everything had changed. Again. We thought life was different after September 11^th, but that was nothing in comparison to what this will be. What would we do? What kind of inevitable massacre would result from this? I wondered when we’d start launching missiles. I wondered when the world would start to die. My computer faded from my mind, the forums I visited faded. NoHunters faded. Play-fucking-Station 3 faded. I couldn’t understand my emotions, I just knew that the pain I felt in realizing that I had lost so much in so little time, without anything actually happening to me, hurt too much for me to stand. It just didn’t make sense.

Would I ever post on BattleReports again? Would I ever join another B.Net game called gay/ass? Would I ever look back and regret spending so much time anticipating  StarCraft 2?

I only knew one thing for sure.

Nothing would be the same.

Mr.Mediocre

Drop Me a Line.