""Checkmate," i said, "I just blew the @#$% out of your sorry-ass king."
-excerpt from "The Fate of Jamellan"
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| COWABUNGA! | | | Author: | | | IP: | 196.orlaXXXX | | Date: | 05/17/02 06:05 | | Game Type: | Other | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 8, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for Omen: 8.0000 |  |
Listen to my story.
This may be our only chance at having a life.
I was sitting in my room, surfing the net, listening to "Youth of the Nation", watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live (neither live nor on Saturday night), playing a game of MarioKart: Super Circuit on my GBA, eating taco soup (like chili only better), talking to my friend Suzy long-distance on the phone, and pondering the eternal question of why Apple Jacks don't taste like apples, all simultaneously, when I fell off my chair.
If I were capable of explaining to you how I was transported to the center of the Milky Way in that instant, I would tell you. And I will, being that I AM capable of this. It was a dream. Or rather...
...A premonition.
I opened my eyes to find myself stading on a large black, recatangular platform, surrounded by thousands of millions of stars. Recalling my days at the boy scouts, I remembered that "the first thing you should do when you find yourself in an unfamiliar location is to secure some food." Seeing, however, that there was nothing thus far other than a big black flat thingy in the midst of a cluster of the pebbles of the universe, I decided to pull a "Squall" and just start walking in one random direction, despite the boy scout warning that says you should "always stay where you are if you're lost so someone can find you."
Clearly Squall Leonheart never joined the boy scouts.
Few antisocials do.
Besides, they never think to look for you at the center of the galaxy. Anyway, I kept walking until some twenty-five miles later when I reached the edge. Then I decided that, since the chances of locating my home planet--let alone getting there without a spaceship--were slim to none, I figured what the heck and jumped off the edge swan-dive style, screaming "COWABUNGA!!"
The thrill of leaping into oblivion was really thrilling the first hour or so, but after that it became pretty clear that I wouldn't land on anything anytime soon. (Upon this point, I was beginning to wonder what happened to those people like Mario and Sonic the hedgehog who fell into bottomless pits all the time. You'd think they'd stop and hit the center of the Earth, but the universe was big, and I can see it being a pretty long drop. Centuries--at least--would pass before the bottom, unless they used some orbital loop for their fall, in which they could fall as long as the center of gravity didn't implode or something inconvenient like that. But my point is, what if all the videogame characters fell down the same pit eventually, and formed a free-falling community? Imagine: stores, homes, schools, an entire culture soaring through time and space, founded by a plumber and hedgehog who decided to procreate!) To pass the time, I did a few things that anyone would do if they had the house to themselves for the weekend but ironically could find nothing to do:
I played "I spy", which got boring fast since I was the only player and there was only white stars with black space
--5 minutes;
I played MarioKart on my game boy, which kept me happy until the stupid batteries died (longlasting my arse!)--
15 hours;
I took a nap--
5 hours;
I formed a democracy with my alter-egos, Ominous Voice elected Supreme Court Judge, and Edward as the head of the House of Congress, and I as the Emperor of course--
4 hours (plus an extra 45 seconds for the inauguration ceremony).
Already I had formed a government! Take THAT, Sonic and Mario!
At this point a full day, 5 minutes, and 45 seconds had gone by since the plunge began, and as life is with politics, I wan't getting entertained any faster. After all, my population was one. Or three, whatever. I began to notice that for being in a vacuum, I was sure breathing well. And as you recall, according to the creator of the Simpsons, "In space, no one can hear you sneeze."
This created a mobius strip in my mind, trying to determine why I could breathe in space, until I realized the only conceivable explanation.
I'm dreaming, and high on crack.
I shook my head and awoke in my room, covered in cold taco soup, a phone that has the loud beep indicating to hang up because no one was on, a game boy with dead batteries, a computer and television both threatening to burst into flames, all the while the paradigm of the misleading name of Apple Jacks still looming over my head as if to mock me. I don't do drugs*, so how could such a dream come to be? It was obvious that the extreme multitasking from the start had thrown my brain into some sort of mental-overdrive, thus triggering my little "cowabunga" adventure when I was knocked unconscious by falling out of the chair.
My parents hadn't checked on me in--according to my watch--just over a day. Sounded right. But despite the smell of spilt tacos and burning electronics, I was glad to be home. Such an event couldn't be simply a coincidence, but an omen from God, teaching a valuable lesson:
Be kind to your digital comrades in the TV screen, for there is something every video game character might experience that is worse than death...a lifetime of plummeting through the void of the universe, with just about squat to do other than count the shiny little points in the sky. No one--NO ONE--deserves that kind of punishment, people. Heed my word.
Besides, no one wants to think about mating rituals between hedgehogs and plumbers. That's just wrong.
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