Scratch

Yeah lolol^^
After I got the idea for this she wanted to roleplay it and made some changes to the character, RPG-wise

ProgrammingFreak wrote:

Wicki, galaxyyyyyboxxx.

?!?!?!!?????

?????

luiysia wrote:

Wickimen wrote:

luiysia wrote:

Maybe edit it so it doesn't seem like an error?

How so?

You could say "He was around fifteen, an unattainable mature age it seemed to all the Usuals who had forgotten they had once been older."

Ohh. I thought you meant the sentence itself, not the grammar
Thanks for pointing that out 
However, I am not 100% sure that sentence is actually in the revised version, I'll check

Yes
That's just chapter 1

Many updates
Chp 1 edited heavily, made some changes that may require a reread if you care
New Chp 2 complete except it's not edited yet
The beginning of Chp 3
I decided to use this for Camp NaNoWriMo


13
    White fills the sky slowly, a cold, dense cream washing over the horizon of Echoes Park and hanging low atop the dulled brick buildings that line Windsor Avenue. Impossibly close. One pale face peers uncertainly out from a fifth-story window of number twelve, his soft brown hair and light eyes barely visible from behind icy glass. He looks about six or seven years old, and is the sole spectator of the still and quiet snow-dusted avenue. The snow lies on the sidewalks like an untouched velvet blanket. It fell just last night, and nobody stepped on it yet. No lights are on. It is a village asleep. But they will wake soon. That thought will reverberate through them all, a silent earthquake: Today. It’s happening today.

    It seemed to Will that that number, 13, had followed him around like a curse for bad luck for almost two hundred years. It was said, of course, that there was no need for any sort of fear anymore, but the old superstitions never did seem to fade. Everyone had a number; that was the way of things; it was not as though this were exclusive to him. Nobody in town could ask for a new one. Numbers were just so much simpler and more structured than cumbersome names. Changing them would only become confusing. He himself was not actually called Will, but 13, if anybody besides Eyre talked to him. Names were not forbidden, but discouraged, so he kept his own borrowed name, William, hidden. He had to keep many things hidden, including his pale blue eyes, an unlucky and unwanted defect, under the brim of an old gray flat cap.
    Will adjusted this once-tweed cap as he lingered apart from a group of people, who stood across the alleyway. The morning was rainy and dark, and the only light was a waxy orange glow cast from the streetlights, spilled down over the wet cobblestone pavement. Arcade, read the dull flickering red letters on the sign of the dingy brick building, alongside the number 10 in faint yellow. Even in the heavy torrents of rain, none of the group waiting outside left. They jabbered incessantly and waited together to be let inside.
    To the casual observer, it would seem that this group was a jumble of cultures, their clothing an assortment of coats and shoes of all kinds. People wore Victorian top hats, t-shirts, battered sneakers and vintage blazers all at once. But if one looked closer, they would see only young faces with noses and foreheads curved in the same way, vapid brown eyes of the same shape and expression, the same pale complexions, the same brown hair of a common length, and the same accents. For everybody was exactly alike.
    In the distance the Clock chimed six times, signifying that it was at last six o’clock. The doors to the Arcade opened, allowing the group to shove their way inside building number ten, laughing and exchanging conversation with increasing rapidity.
    When they had all disappeared into the Arcade, Will was joined by a girl whose hair and eyes were concealed by an aviator’s cap and goggles.
     “Hello, Eyre.”
     “Hi, Will.” She wiped away the fog and rainwater smearing her goggles.  “Let’s go, then.”
    The library was a considerable distance away, along the line where the road met the railing separating the city from endless ocean. The walk through the 1—100 sector of town always did bother Will. Besides the Arcade and the dilapidated little library, there was not much to see: only the Cinema, where movies—two-hour long thrilling slaughter fests—were shown occasionally; a few small, deserted buildings that might have been in use before the disaster; fields of wheat; the ugly factories; the clock tower; and the apartments where the inhabitants of the sector all lived in their own separate rooms. There were five sectors in all, and each had an apartment building for exactly one hundred people.
    Those apartments, especially, he hated: the neat pale-cream cube blocks with floral-patterned curtains and green lawn outside. Normal apartments, it appeared, but the glass window panes were never dirty, and the curtains hung as stiffly as rods. The lawn was cut painfully short and was untouched—it had none of the familiar worn places where shoes often tread, no muddy gaps.
    And he hated them. He thought of a little blue house with white trim, overgrown grass and weather-beaten muddy boots out on the porch. He had always left a saucer of milk outside on that porch, for the stray cat with charcoal-gray fur and bright lemon-colored eyes. A funny half-smile flitted over his face. Thumbs, he had called her, because of the extra toe on each paw…
    He jolted suddenly, realizing he had remembered something, but at once the rest of the memory dissolved and he was left staring at the sunken library in front of him.
    They pushed through the doors and walked in, their wet shoes clicking on the old hardwood floor. Water dripping from the slick surface of Eyre’s brown leather bomber jacket collected in a puddle on the ground. When they had first picked the lock to the library, they always locked the doors on their way out, and had to unlock it every day when they returned, but that had grown tiresome. No one ever entered the library, so no one would become suspicious that the doors were always unlocked.
    Inside, the library smelled strongly of dust and old paper. It was hard to believe that less than two centuries ago, many people had gone to libraries almost as frequently as they did.
    Those books were the only window they had into how life used to be, before the disaster. Recalling his own memories was to Will like recalling the vaguest memories of someone else’s life. He could not remember anything past the age of eleven, or if he had once been older than he was now. His recollections even then were very limited. Books were important; their names and knowledge came from books; but a book did not live forever, and Will and Eyre were careful to preserve them.
    All of the books were needed. Will liked Shakespeare’s writing, and Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s, but they read them all. Sometimes they helped Will remember things from the time before the disaster. Strange, alien-sounding words, phrases, descriptions of both the familiar and unfamiliar somehow connected in his mind. He had never in his current memory, for example, smelled cigarette smoke, but the term stirred something in his brain and allowed the ghost of a burning sensation to enter his nostrils. While reading a thick little brown volume by Jack London, another, more pleasant smell resurfaced: pine trees. It was associated with what he supposed was a happy day, a day mentioned in several books—a day called Christmas.
    Even the dictionary and encyclopedia had to be carefully perused. Though they were considerably duller than most of the books, they contained by far the most knowledge. At the moment, Eyre was poring over a copy of the dictionary, and commented aloud every so often about strange words starting with the letter q. She had unfastened her aviator cap, and her close-cropped hair stuck up in all directions like a bright red porcupine. Anybody could plainly see that her eyes were green.
    Will didn’t bother to warn her about being more careful. There were no interface surveillance screens in this particular building, and besides them, nobody had entered the library for two centuries. And why should they? Next to the Arcade, with all of its gleaming, brilliant golden light inside, a library was nothing. The Arcade was a paradise, full of incredible games to play all day with no work or school to care about. The library, apart from being highly undesirable, was also forbidden, for the people’s own safety. Books were dangerous; they could cause anxiety and worse, said the Administration. They could cause untold billions of problems. Stay away from the books. The Usuals were perfectly happy to comply.
    Being Unusuals, as was the popular term (accompanied by an obligatory look of distaste), Will and Eyre were not allowed in the Arcade. In the beginning, when it didn’t matter very much, they used to sneak in anyway. With hats and sunglasses, they could pass for being Usual while wearing hats and sunglasses—the genetic alteration had worked on them for the most part, freezing them at about eleven or twelve years old forever, but leaving their eyes and hair the same.
    Then a third Unusual—16—with whom they did not associate, had been caught and turned into the Sovereign’s Administration. He was never seen again.
    After that, Will and Eyre did not return to the Arcade.
    They did not know where the other Unusuals went while the others stayed in the Arcade for hours. There had been at least fifty to begin with, but they had all gradually vanished throughout the years. Unusuals had been turned in for the crime of a different eye color, without violating any other rule. Will and Eyre had gone unnoticed by the carefree Usual people, who did not know or care why the two of them no longer visited the Arcade. 13 and 29 were not missed.
    Will found it funny that even after all these years, everyone remembered everybody else’s number. He knew that before, people must have remembered others’ names, which, said the Administration, was very confusing. Some people had the same names. Names were dull and used; a number was unique and only applied to you.
    That was true in some respect, thought Will, but somehow names were better and different in a way he could not explain. The characters and authors of books never had numbers instead of names.
    He settled himself into a musty, sloped chair with a copy of Macbeth and began to read, as he had dozens of times before. The words were magic in that old library. He was limited to the physical, emotional and mental capacity of an eleven-year-old, and stumbled over a few gnarled and complicated sentences, but soon was swept up in the play. Macbeth always sent welcome chills up his spine. He scarcely minded the most confusing parts; the story caught him within its pages like only the best authors’ words could do. It allowed him to forget, for the time being, that the Sovereign had ever existed.
     “Quid pro quo,” Eyre called out abruptly.
     “Interesting,” said Will, though he felt a slight stab of frustration with her for interrupting Macbeth. “What’s it mean?”
     “‘One thing in return for another.’ Cool.”
     “Yeah…,” he said absentmindedly. Try as he might, he couldn’t quite return to Macbeth after that. Instead, he focused on the windows. Pale light was seeping through the shutters, though the rain was still bucketing down. Eyre extinguished the candle she had been reading by and shoved the remaining stub of wax deep into the pocket of her coat.
     “It’ll be eight o’clock soon. We should go.”
     “All right.” Will closed his book and returned it to its proper place, a lonely shelf reserved for the few paperback copies of Shakespeare’s works. He had done this perhaps thousands of unaccounted-for times, but this time he accidentally pushed the book against the back panel too hard and too far. It caved in and revealed a hollow dark space behind.
    He froze. “Eyre?”
     “Yes?” she said, glancing up.
     “Come look at this.” He pushed on the panel with his hand. It fell down. Lying down inside were stacks of booklets—big flat glossy covers stapled over paper. They were like magazines but too big, like picture books but too thin. He pulled a few from one stack.
     “What’s Beethoven?”
     “I don’t know,” Eyre said, stepping closer to better examine the booklets.
    Will gingerly lifted a whole stack of them and flipped through one. He was greeted by the inviting rustle of crackly yellow pages and rising dust. The pages were covered with interesting titles, lines and odd symbols.
     “Liszt,” said Eyre, reading aloud from the books. “Chopin. Mozart.”
    The words struck him as familiar. He didn’t completely recognize them, but they felt comfortable rolling off his tongue, as though he had said them before. Will thumbed through more pages. Once, Eyre had found a drawer full of maps, but they hadn’t discovered anything new for several years. The booklets were an exciting find. He scrutinized the pages and had a sudden mental image of long fingers—his own?—flying across black-and-white keys. Disjointed soft sounds floated through his mind. They were part of the same song, but he only remembered bits and pieces.
    He became conscious it was called “piano.”
     “It’s sheet music.”
    Eyre’s eyes lit up. She seemed to understand. “Really? I don’t know any music notes,” she said with regret.
     “I… think I know a few,” Will said hesitantly. He placed a finger on one line, tracing the notes and humming as he went along. The notes came to him with shocking ease, and he was amazed he had not remembered them before. He was able to figure out what the song may have sounded like—almost, almost—but it was not enough, he would need a piano just to come close.
     “Hey, what’s that?” Eyre’s hand in its black woolen glove blocked Will’s view of the page. He brushed it away to see faint pencil annotations in the margins.
     “It looks like someone owned it and wrote notes,” he said. There were tangled masses of cursive in which the person had jotted things like, “Always get that part wrong” or “Dec 7, practice this piece for recital.”
     “Oh,” said Eyre, clearly disappointed, but Will was fascinated. He leaned against the wall and searched for every penciled word, every dog-eared page, every strawberry jelly thumbprint.  It bore the marks of ownership, and somehow he liked this. Eyre, chin propped in hand, watched him for a moment, picked up the dictionary, then grew quickly uninterested and turned to the children’s section of the library for something more entertaining.
    Upon the eight faint chimes of the Clock, Eyre hastily stuck the book back on the shelf, jamming her aviator cap and goggles back on, and Will brought the sheet music with him. The lunch pavilion was near the center of town, just under the Clock Tower, and all of the five sectors joined there to eat.
    The gatekeeper stopped them as they went into the pavilion for breakfast. “Hang on, what’s that?” he asked, gesturing to the booklets half-hidden under Will’s coat. Will tensed, then slowly brought them out, knowing that to deny it would be worse.
     “Just something from the apartments,” Eyre said shortly, looking up at him. They weren’t about to admit their visits to the library after two centuries of keeping the secret.
    The gatekeeper, being part of the Administration, was about fifteen, much older than the general population. His blank brown eyes tinged on puzzlement. “I don’t think those are supposed to be here, are they?”
     “I thought we could bring anything to the pavilion,” Will said, staring at the ground so that his eyes weren’t noticed. Eyre’s were obscured enough by the goggles.
     “That is true, but…” The gatekeeper shrugged. “The Administration wouldn’t like it. Hand them over. We’ll take them back to the apartment ourselves after inspection—if they deem it necessary.”
    Will knew better than to argue. He handed over the sheet music, not liking to see them passed into the gatekeeper’s hands.
     “What was that about?” Eyre wondered aloud, taking a tray of pizza and soda as she walked. The Administration had set up factories that produced these things, which they ate for all three meals of the day. Will often thought wistfully of hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream melting softly on his tongue, things he remembered from before. None of the Usuals seemed to mind the lack of variety.
     “No clue,” he answered, picking up a tray for himself.
    They walked together to an unoccupied, squat pinkish-red bench. The canopy had been raised over the intricate maze of tables to protect everyone from the miserable weather. The pounding rain became only a dim mechanical clacking on the awning. The pavilion was much nicer-looking on dry evenings, when prisms of light caught by the shafts between the benches fell abruptly onto the reddish ground.
    When afternoon came, it was still slate-gray and dreary. It was only raining lightly then and the ocean just beyond the railing was no longer swaying as dangerously. After lunch, a group of Usuals were milling around outside the library.
     “What’re they doing?” Will said, frowning. “Why aren’t they in the Arcade?”
     “I don’t know…”
    They walked up the crumbling steps, glancing uneasily at the Usuals, and tried to open the door. It was locked.
     “What’re you doing?” one of the Usual boys demanded. “Don’t you know that’s a demolition site?”
     “A demolition site?” Will repeated, not fully grasping.
     “It’s been on the Arcade interface bulletin since after breakfast,” the boy said.
     “Has it?” Will asked bleakly.
     “Well, yeah. Where’ve you been? And who are you, anyway? I don’t think I’ve seen you at the Arcade.”
    Will didn’t respond. He and Eyre exchanged glances.
     “What did the bulletin say?” Eyre asked.
     “I don’t remember. It’s gonna get wrecked sometime today though. They already took the books.”
    Will’s mind raced. Took the books? Had the books been burned, or just been moved away? It was impossible to tell with the Administration. Two hundred years and they had left the library untouched. But now…
    He studied the moss growing through the cracks in the bricks. “Anything else?” he asked quietly.
    The Usuals had no helpful answers. Instead they peppered Will and Eyre with inquiries concerning how they felt about the new shooter game’s graphics. They both carefully avoided directly answering these questions, and kept polite smiles pasted to their faces the whole time. Finally, the Usuals became tired of the lack of violent demolition, and trailed back into the Arcade looking disappointed.
    Will and Eyre looked at the library, so old and weary. It had always been bound to happen, they knew, but they never really expected that it would happen so suddenly. They didn’t say anything to each other, simply sat on the front steps and waited over the long hours as it grew dark and a tangerine moon shrouded in dark storm clouds rose over the lonely last town on Earth.
    The team from the Administration came close to midnight, their white uniforms and white van appearing ghostly in the dark, and advised Will and Eyre to go back to their apartments. Instead they stood far away on the street, knowing that it was impossible to burn to death, but asphyxiation was another matter.
    First the Administration team crushed the empty library with a wrecking ball, reducing it to a jagged mess that looked in the lack of light to be a dead beast hunched over, wooden stakes haphazardly protruding from its carcass. They tried to set fire to it, to let bright playful tendrils of flames leap over it and consume it hungrily, but the rain had left it damp. It smoldered there, slowly being charred beyond recognition. Will and Eyre watched the whole time, to the very last minute, until the library, building number 13, was simply a pile of blacked bricks and ash.

67
    This day begins with a different sky, a different window. Fierce blazing blue paints the sky early, broken by clouds of milk and cotton. He looks through the grimy window, eyes darting up and down the street, and surreptitiously closes the brittle, yellow shutters before going back inside the house. He breathes out a small sigh of relief—no smoke, no flame. The town is safe.
    It is one of the last towns left in the country.

    The next day dawned with a raging storm, the ocean pitching and rolling. Will woke up late, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling as he listened to the rain’s fingers drumming on the corrugated tin roof over the balcony. He had roused himself at the customary time just two hours ago, before realizing there was no purpose in doing so anymore. He lay still for a moment, reflecting. Then he pulled himself from bed and crossed his apartment to the opposite wall in a few easy strides. He shaded his eyes under the cap and peered down at the street.
    He felt certain nobody was down there, but it was hard to detect movement in the rushing rain, hard to spot a person’s shadow creeping up the sidewalk. He pulled instinctively away from the glass upon sighting a sudden movement, until he saw it was merely a discarded plastic bag, drifting, drifting, lazily tumbling in the wind.
    Will relaxed and sat back down on the bed. Judging from the fact that she wasn’t hammering on his door, Eyre hadn’t bothered to rise early, either. They had slept through breakfast.
    He tried to fall back to sleep again, but whenever he did, he saw the library up in cruel white flames behind the cool darkness of his eyelids. He turned restlessly, his fingers slipping over the edge of the bed. He didn’t feel remotely tired anymore, but he didn’t want to be awake, didn’t want to think or do anything at all. His jaw settled down on his teeth like a dead weight.
    After a while, he gave up, and, pulling his cap securely so that the brim hid his eyes from view, walked out into the hallway. Ten doors to the right, take a right turn, six more doors; he had made the trip so many times he didn’t even have to look up to see the bronze 29 of the door he knocked on.
    Nobody answered.
     “Eyre?” Will asked, softly. He cleared his throat and glanced around, wondering if the Administration had the interfaces’ cameras on in the hallway this morning. They claimed the interface video screens were always on, “for safety,” but Will wasn’t completely convinced that this was true. He hesitated, looking at the friendly blue glow of the interface screen, then firmly rapped on the door and said, loudly, “Are you in there, 29?”
    Eyre did not open the door.
    She’s just gone out somewhere, he told himself. While I was sleeping she went out somewhere.
    That had to be it. Eyre always wanted to go places—she never stopped moving; even when standing still her feet tapped, her fingers jerked up and down in nervous rhythm. Maybe she had gone to the fields, a place she felt a kind of affection for that Will never understood. She liked walking through the cold mud and pushing past the dry, brittle wheat. Perhaps she was looking for somewhere besides the library for them to spend their days in. That was all.
    But he wondered. He anxiously rubbed the topmost brass button of his navy blue coat, something he did so often that the design of a leaf had long since worn away.
     “Eyre.” He dared to say this name above a whisper, trying to open the door. A person wasn’t usually arrested for having a name. He could risk this.
    Again there was only the unresponsive rattle of the doorknob. After that he only felt his own pulse on the metal.
    Will’s hand fell from the knob and he shrugged, tilting the overlarge coat on his shoulders so that it fit straighter. He peered at the interface out of the corner of his peripheral vision. If Eyre wasn’t there to look at the bulletin for him, he couldn’t look directly into the interface screen, because if what the Administration team said was true, doing so would be plastering his eye color all over the video screens, and ultimately turning himself in to the Sovereign. He didn’t know whether there was some sort of eternal jail he would be taken to—he had never seen one in town—or he would be taken to see the Sovereign himself. This seemed unlikely. Perhaps they would simply burn, drown or suffocate him. It was plausible that he would be killed in some way, and as far as he was aware, those were the only three ways that could be achieved without the cell regeneration all of inhabitants of the town had.
    He realized he was rubbing the button between his fingers again. Maybe, he speculated, they stabbed Unusuals repeatedly in the heart or brain. That might work, as well, if they did it so quickly the cells had no time to grow back. A sick feeling crept over him. Don’t think about that.
    What he had wanted to do was check the bulletin and see why the library had been scheduled for demolition. There had to be some sort of reason.
     “Eyre, I’m going now,” said Will, speaking, he felt, to the unmoving door. He paused. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
    He went out. The rain came in heavy sheets slanted by gusts of wind, and there was nowhere to go, but he made the walk through the 1—100 sector as though it were any other trip to the library.
    They really had done a good job of clearing away any evidence of the place, Will thought, standing on the bare, flat square of muddy earth where the 13 building had once stood. You would never have known any building had ever stood there, save for the abrupt break in the grass, but that was something time would smooth over in due course. The building numbers, if you wanted to take the walk, now went straight from a surveillance station, 12, to a factory, 14, but this, too, would be fixed later. They might build a smaller structure there, if only to mark the correct number.
    Will kneeled for a moment, sifting through the mire, but when he came to the lunch pavilion half an hour later he had only cold, numb fingers to show for it.
    He looked for Eyre, but was too tired and drenched to think much of the fact that he didn’t see her anywhere. In their massive coats, everyone looked like the same bulky figure, and he couldn’t pick out a pair of aviator’s goggles among the crowd’s beanies, sunglasses, jacket hoods and head scarves. Eventually he gave up and seated himself between two complete strangers. He knew everyone else identified friends by the clothes they wore, and the two Usuals paused a moment, trying to recognize him. He made no movement to acknowledge them.
     “Oh, hey, 67!” one said at last. It took him a moment to realize they were speaking to him.
     “Hey, 67,” said the other, sounding relieved, “how’s it going?”
     “Fine,” said Will. “It’s going fine.” Correcting them would only make them realize that he was not a regular at the Arcade, which would lead to wearisome questions.
     “That Zombapocalypse game,” said the first. “Did you beat it yet?”
     “Nearly,” Will replied vaguely.
    His companions launched into a heated discussion about whether Zombapocalypse or Zombapocalypse II was the better game. Over the course of it, Will learned several things; their numbers: 45 and 93, and, owing to the fact that they were both from the 1—100 sector, Usuals only generally befriended people who attended the same Arcade. 45 and 93 turned occasionally to Will for opinions, to which he responded indistinctly. The two of them did not seem to notice this, or the fact that he avoided eye contact with them. They were engrossed in their conversation.
     “So, 67,” said 45, for whom Will was already harboring some annoyance and dislike, “what do you say?”
     “About what?” he answered.
    45 and 93 laughed as though this were very funny. “The library getting crushed, man, what’d you think?” 93 said.
     “I thought it was stupid,” 45 interjected. “Those guys waited out there for hours, and no one ever showed up and did nothing, did they? They wasted time they could’ve been playing that 3D Prison Escape game. They’ve got new weapons in that one with extra attack points. Dude, you can get poison blades now.”
     “Oh,” said Will. “Oh yeah.”
     “It would’ve been cool to see. I heard two morons stayed up ’til midnight just to see it.”
     “Really? Who said that?”
     “I don’t know. 30 maybe. Well, anyway, I guess they did see it after all.”
     “Did they think it was worth it? Like, the wait? I bet it wasn’t. Bet most games have better fire graphics than real fires.”
     “Yeah, bet they do, but still, like…”
    Will busied himself with eating his pizza. The food made him think a little more clearly, and he started to wonder why Eyre hadn’t come found him. Maybe she was still up in her room.
    A third Usual, a girl numbered 72, joined them in the thick of a new discussion, about pro games. Will, despite himself, was curious about what “pro games” were.
     “Once I beat Zombapocalypse III,” said 72. “Then I’ll have enough points to play the fourth one. It’ll be the tenth pro game I’ve won.”
     “Wait—hold on—so you’ve already got about….” 45 hesitated.
     “About 4,999,999,000 points,” confirmed 72 with a touch of pride. “Add 217 to that to be more specific.”
     “You’ve got serious skills,” said 93 in an awed voice.
     “She’s just better than you,” returned 45, “which isn’t hard to beat.”
     “How ’bout you, 67?” 93 said, addressing Will. “How many points you got now?”
    Will had finished both pizza and soda and couldn’t use a full mouth as an excuse not to answer. He thought a moment, then settled on, “Uh…I have around what 72 has, more or less.”
     “No way!” said 93, impressed. “Then you got, like, four thousand points since last week! What’d you do, beat Plague Survival with a perfect score like eight times? How’d you get in the hours? You been staying up way late?”
     “I’ve done that nine times,” said 45 airily. “It’s no big deal. You’ve just got to, uh…”
     “Focus on stealth and defending ranks rather than attacking ones,” said 72, nodding. The ocean-blue feather in her top hat, which was a violent shade of purple, bobbed up and down when she did.
     “That’s what I was going to say,” said 45, defensively.
     “Anyway,” said 72. “It’ll kind of suck, though, ’cause Zombapocalypse IV will cost me all five billion points I’ve been working up, but…”
    The others nodded their agreement. Will stared at her. Five billion points to play one game? He couldn’t imagine how long it would take—but then, he realized, the Usuals had all the time in the world to earn Arcade points. He shifted his eyes slightly upward. The rain kept drumming down. A tiny tear in the cover made the occasional raindrop splash onto the table. He wondered if anyone else noticed.
     “That game,” said 93, “will be totally worth it. Man, I wish I’d played more rounds of Toxic Waste while it was still out. I could’ve, too. It rocked.”
     “In fact,” answered 45, “it did not. It had lousy graphics and it was way too sensitive to movement. I, like, breathed and it would move my player seven inches.”
    93 tilted his head under the hood of his bright yellow rain slicker back and forth, considering. “I don’t think it was so bad. I liked it,” he stated mildly.
    45 rolled his eyes, evidently disappointed that 93 wasn’t going to argue, and turned to Will. “Well, then. So, 67—you seem like you’ve improved your gaming a lot since last week, to get four thousand points in seven days,” he said, smirking. “Why don’t we have a match, then?”
     “What?” Will tore his gaze from the spindly black hands ticking slowly over the face of the Clock. He wasn’t entirely sure what a match was. The Arcade must have changed in the years since he had last been there. He assumed it was when two people played against each other. His heart sank—he would be identified as 13, not 67, and he was sure he only had about six hundred points on his account. “Oh, I—I’m not going to the Arcade this afternoon.”
    At first the Usuals only looked incredulous, as though this possibility had never occurred to them. Then 45 smirked. “That’s it then, isn’t it? You were planning not to go to the Arcade, of course. It’s not like you just don’t want me to win.”
     “That’s right,” Will said, feeling it was safer to agree with 45. He could not help the sarcasm that crept into his voice, however, when he added, “I wouldn’t want to be unprepared to have a match with you.”
    93 and 72 laughed.
     “What, do you think you’re funny all of the sudden?”
    Will scraped his plastic fork against the bottom of the empty tray. 93 and 72 were looking at him expectantly. “Maybe,” he answered at last. “Why, do you think so?”
    45 scowled. Will couldn’t look him directly in the face, but he knew. He stood up to go.
     “I have something to take care of,” he murmured. “I’ll see you around.”
     “Bye,” two voices responded cheerfully, carelessly. 45 ignored him.
    Will wove his way through the tables and came halfway to the apartment buildings, when he abruptly changed direction. He went, instead, to the wheat fields.
     “Eyre!”
    His voice barely carried over the wind. The name drifted over the rustling field and died softly a few feet away. “Eyre! Are you there?” he shouted, advancing through the tall wheat. Despite his struggles, his words refused to cut through the wind. He kept walking, kept pushing through the wheat and calling. After a while, he gave up. He skipped dinner that day and stayed in his apartment, feeling vaguely nauseous.
    Eyre can’t be gone. She’s not gone. I just keep missing her. He told this lie to himself over and over. Perhaps that would make it real.
    She isn’t gone.   
    He repeated this to himself for five days.

    On the sixth day he started to panic. He had visited the field several times over the week, had even used his own key on Eyre’s door—despite committing a minor infraction of the rules—and had found the room empty. He had looked everywhere in the first sector.
    He hadn’t slept, and dark circles shadowed his eyes. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and town sat in shadow. It was early morning, on that sixth day, when he made his decision.
    “I’ve got to go now,” he told 93 and 72, whom he had developed a kind of feeling of friendship for, despite himself. Each morning he joined them in line at the Arcade, and each morning he refused to come in with them.
    “But, dude, you’re always late showing up and then when we’re at the Arcade you act like you don’t know what you’re talking about,” 93 said, frowning. “What’s up?”
    “I…nothing,” Will said automatically. He knew he shouldn’t, but he felt slightly disappointed that they couldn’t tell the difference between him and 67. 72 had mentioned something once, had remarked, “I’d thought your hat was red, not gray,” but in the end they accepted that they were the same person. It was 67 and not Will they were friends with, he knew—or felt he should know. They were blind to any differences. They met with Will at mealtimes and 67 at the Arcade, and never raised any doubts until now. He almost wanted them to recognize him as a different, separate friend, but that would never do.
    To his mixed relief and regret, 72 and 93 nodded, trusting him completely. They’re more robots than humans, he found himself thinking. He forced a smile. “See you in a bit.”
    “You’re missing out,” 72 called after him as he went. “If you’re the first one to play Prison Escape today, you get extra lock-pick tools. We’re gonna have a contest to see who does it. It’s gonna be really fun.”
    He didn’t turn. He just kept walking.
    He crossed the border into sector two and searched vacated buildings until lunchtime. The entire sector was empty of people, and he hesitated.
    He kept going, calling Eyre’s name.
    There were coffeehouses with yellow peeling paint. There were collapsing old skeletal buildings with wind whispering in the eaves. There were apartments, there were the factories, and there was the Arcade.
    Eyre was nowhere in any of these. Will stopped and took a breath, leaning against the railing. The sea was calm. It hadn’t rained for days. Maybe soon, he thought bitterly, it would start raining again, constantly, and the tumultuous ocean would swallow the island whole, so that it would join the rest of the silent decaying world below the water’s surface.
    The Clock chimed again. He ignored it. The second sector began to bustle with activity again, and he slipped unnoticed over the sector limits, into sector three.
    The third sector was slimmer, but with the same amount of people, busier. Luckily, the crowd thinned out gradually as Will continued his search, emptying itself of all people in sight. He visited an empty, crumbling shop that probably hadn’t been used for centuries. He went in and found cracked, empty frames slanted on the walls, and furniture draped hastily with scratchy linens. He approached the sheet-covered tables cautiously, as though a lion’s cage might be beneath the cover, but it was always just a plain wood table when he peered below. Nobody and nothing hiding below.
    In the fourth sector he began to feel hunger gnawing at him, having skipped breakfast. It was now lunchtime. He thought briefly of going back to the first and largest sector, to the pavilion, but tried to put the idea out of his mind. Doing that wouldn’t help Eyre, wherever she was.
    What if she’s at the lunch pavilion today? Will asked himself. He knew it wasn’t true. Eyre had been missing from there for days. Why would she turn up today of all days?
    She might, and then you’ll have been wasting your time.
    Not true, not true, not true. He’d have to plow on.
    So he kept going, kept looking. He was ravenous and starting to feel faint. I’ll have to stop, he decided. Maybe she really is there.
    Feeling guilty, but too hungry to stop himself, he went as quickly as he could. The intricate iron gates barred him, and he nodded hastily at the gatekeeper, his eyes trained on the ground. “I’m late.”
    “Number?”
    “13.”
    “Okay. Go in.”
    Will grabbed a styrofoam plate with two slices of pizza and a soda can, and sprinted over to the regular table, where 93 and 72 always met him. The words were already forming in his mouth. Sorry that I’m late. I had something to take care of. So, how’d that game go?
    He loved talking to them, being friends with people other than Eyre after such a long time.
    But something stopped him dead in his tracks.
    A boy sat in his normal place at the table, a red cap similar to Will’s set on top of nondescript brown hair. He was talking to them, laughing.
    “Then I got the Healing Spell—totally destroyed that gang of warlocks…”
    “That was great—”
    “Love that game!”
    “Love that game!”
    It started to rain again, lightly. Will blinked, shifting his grip on the plate. He put out his tongue briefly to taste the bitter, dull gray. Then he settled his lunch down at an unoccupied table.
    Eyre was nowhere in sight.
8
    He touches the ivory keys uncertainly. “Are you sure I can have it?” he asks quietly. They assure him yes—of course, yes—why couldn’t he? They smile, and he copies the expression, flat as paper on his face. He isn’t comforted, but he sits down at the stool to please them. It legs tremble as he settles himself down. His fingers come to meet the keys and a soft murmur resonates from the dusty wood. He smiles this time, and looks up. They’re exchanging glances, but they stop when they notice he’s looked up. He can tell they are trying to be happy for his sake, because he is safe for now.

    Will’s fingers twitched nervously as he put the old sunglasses on and slowly removed his cap. The sunglasses he had acquired from the cardboard shoebox hidden under his bed, crammed full of useless rubble, advertisements and faded Arcade tickets. They were slightly bent out of shape, their frames and lenses dusty. He rubbed them clean on the sleeve of his shirt and let out a slow breath.
    He’d promised himself never to use those glasses again, after 16’s disappearance, but Eyre had been gone eight days—he had to do something. So long ago that the memory was the barest etch in his mind, he had received these glasses from the Administration. Everyone had. They were meant to dim the brightness of the Arcade, where the lights became blinding at times. It would have been handy to wear the glasses all the time, instead of a hat, but wearing hats was usual and wearing sunglasses even on foggy, overcast days was suspicious. He didn’t want to attract attention.

I could link you to a file that you could then print out
But then, that'd be a waste of ink
Nevermind
I don't like to read a lot of text on screens either
It gives me a headache

eReaders like Kindle and Nook are cool because if you get the cover that feels like a book, it feels like you're holding one, and the lighting isn't hard on your eyes
It's like reading a page :OOO

Last edited by Wickimen (2012-04-11 19:01:34)

Lol XD
Yes, the leather book cover thing
And that post was weirdly worded
It won't hurt your eyes whether or not you have the cover
But the cover just makes it feel more natural to hold or something

Yes indeed
you mean "universe" cube.

I did indeed
Uhok

So copy/paste and print out then I dunno what else there is to do
No I did. Unless it was a reference to something. Then I didn't

Last edited by Wickimen (2012-04-13 20:08:31)

Here's some critique:
The plot seems a bit overly pessimistic. I realize it is the main conflict but a world where not only is Big Brother watching you, but also, you look exactly the same as everyone else, are a child forever, and all media is gone?

And the other thing is, if all artistic media is gone, shouldn't video games be kicked out too? It seems a bit biased. If they are using video games to control the masses, why shouldn't they use hypnotizing music or propaganda television? if they want to abandon all of it, surely video games would no longer be common either.

And you portrayal of "The Usuals" (especially in their dialogue) is extremely unrealistic and stereotypical. Nobody talks like that, no matter how addicted they are to every video game they can find. Besides, not every video game in existence is a shooter about zombies or a jailbreak.