Endgame

by submission
February 5th, 2007

Author : Jeff Deignan

Stop me if you’ve heard this one- No, that’s not it. Let’s just say I’ve been busy.

Ok, talking hand, got that part.

Burly men giving chase, got that too. Not liking that; would enjoy it more if they were women and less burly.

Save the girl, working on that part.

It’s an abandoned warehouse. Typical. Stereotypical. Someone must’ve worked to set this one up, with boxes and piles of paper left as no self-respecting company would have. My leg sings a song of stitches, which I’ll likely be needing quite a few of after this job. The hand’s told me that the necks are the key: slice the jugular or decapitate and I will be minus one pursuer. Rock on.

The refuse littering the ground yields a sturdy pipe with a twisted end. Improvised weapon, thy name be Excalibur, and I shalt wield thee with all my earthly might. One of the burly ones catches up to me, and swinging this Excalibur is not as easy as I thought. I skewer the bastard right between his collarbone and where the throat. The blood loss, interesting if only for the green color, mesmerized me for a moment. I’d never seen blood spout like that.

Oh! He had friends right behind. Running now.

More stereotypes- the girl trips, the bad guy picks her up, and I’m in a vantage point to see and not be seen. I raise Excalibur and strike, again and again.

Put a check in that damn box, man- girl saved.

The pursuers are gone, for the most part, bleeding to death or transported back to their own time through the loss of their necklaces. The talking hand tells me that I need to influence the shape of human history over the next few centuries, and of course the grand revelation-

“You won’t mind much; you are only a robot, after all.”

I jack out of the game in a right fit. Stupid ending, you ask me- but I have to admit that I liked the fighting. The scars, which last only because I have certain settings on, certain illegal settings, look great. Got a real heroic one, straight through the eyebrow and down onto the chin. That scar came from Dracula himself, but Lord knows scars don’t matter these days- who but sees them but yourself?

It’s a strange form of self-destruction I’m in, but I like it. The games are better, especially since there are so few of us left anyway. No one has time to interact these days; we’re all too busy organizing our personal fantasies and downfalls. Humanity has solved all the problems now, even boredom. Man writes his own life- new kind of autobiography, you get me?

Me- I go through old movies, letting mankind’s past efforts blow past me. When I do, it feels like I’m really there, really living in a world with six billion people, living with disease and injury.

Next- Trojan war sounds good, and D-Day right after.

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