A battle field; entirely suspended in space and time. Shells; floating impossibly in the air, unable to move or detonate. Travelling bullets decorate the atmosphere like a thousand flies. Men stand in comical, musical-statue poses, waiting for the orders that are yet to arrive.
There is only ever one leader, the one who receives the orders. His men merely act off of him. His enemies; doubly so. This man is currently at the back, one hand in the action of putting a pistol away, the other reaching for a grenade. He is surrounded by his soldiers, some about to crouch, some already firing their guns, and the rest are stuck in the motions of death. One particular drop of blood from an unfortunate headshot is just waiting to land on the leader's boots.
The war zone has been like this for almost a week.
Maybe he started a new game thinks the Leader. No, can't be. I don't feel younger or less experienced. Must be a holiday.
The leader sighs inwardly. This is far from the first time this had occurred.
In fact, this was just another day in the field.
*
The Leader had started out so optimistic; so naïve. Choosing his uniform and his weaponry had taken a while; and he had suffered incredible wrist spasms when a shotgun kept being replaced by a machine gun, and then back again.
But eventually, everything had darkened. And out of the darkness, came the war. A swirling mass of gunfire, explosions, screaming, bloodshed and CONSTANT running.
At least, that's what the voice in his head seemed to scream the most.
RUN. RUN. RUN. STOP. CROUCH. AIM. FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE. STAND. RUN. RUN. THROW GRENADE. RUN.
Never could he question the voice, or disobey it. If he heard RUN, he found himself running. If he heard FIRE, he found himself shooting. And so on.
His existence was far from stress-free. Well, war zones are never going to be stress-free, but that is heightened rather when some voice in your head tells you to sprint at the enemy, and then tells you to start shooting about twenty steps too late. The Leader would escape alive; but blinking red out of his vision was just becoming second nature.
All that was day one. And then he had felt his first save.
The missions that day had gone well. Several men had been lost; and he'd dropped at least three unwanted pistols on his foot, but things progressed smoothly.
Then a beach swum into his view from nowhere, and the Leader found himself on a U-boat, packed in with his men. Gunfire started early, and a few men were lost almost immediately. The U-boat bumped into shore, the ramp descended, everyone roared their war noises and ran forward - the Leader in front - and then everything just sort of...stopped.
The Leader froze entirely. He couldn't move an inch; yet something in the back of his mind whispered that he still had the capability.
This was followed by an odd rushing feeling, leaving the Leader feeling like he was nailed to the spot. All impulses and orders died in his mind, and the general atmosphere left behind was that of desertion.
The battle field felt slightly darker then, and thus began The Save Wait.
*
The Leader thought back to day one, as he stood there with his men. One foot in a puddle, hands mid-way through changing weapons, blood silently waiting to decorate him. This had to be the longest Save Wait yet.
This is ridiculous the Leader decided. No solider should have to wait this long when, quite literally, standing in the middle of a war. Let's try something new...
As if on cue, the battle field seemed to lighten then, and the feelings of freedom and movement returned to the Leader, along with everything else.
Bullets and shells found their momentum, noise found its voice and blood splattered anything it could. The Save Wait diminished in a flood of sensory panic.
RUN. RUN RUN. FIRE FIRE FIRE.
The voices returned.
But the Leader did his best to avoid them.
RUN. RUN-RUN-RUN.
No. No I won't. I don't have to. I don't want to.
The resulting brain-mix up had the Leader doing a sort of jig towards the battle field.
But his rebellion was felt everywhere. Enemies started looking from their guns to their opposition and then frowning. A few of the Leader's soldiers started dancing and skipping around.
Still, the voices tore at the Leader.
RUN! They screamed. RUN-FIRE-THROW=GRENADE!!
The Leader kept fighting. The mass of orders flowing through his limbs had him suffering what looked like some sort of fit. A random twitch threw a grenade at a nearby tree; another sent his gun flying off into the dirt.
On the other side of the field, their freedom coming through more and more as the Leader found it all, the 'enemies' started to play football with small rocks they found lying around.
Opposite them, the Leader's men were making sculptures out of all their guns.
The Leader's movements were bordering on insanity. Somebody, somewhere, was pushing a lot of buttons all at once. The voices in his head were saying every available action all at once.
Until, eventually, something snapped.
But it wasn't the Leader. It was the Leader's Controller's patience.
Everything suddenly dimmed. Another Save Wait all over again.
But this one felt different. There was no Save Time-Freeze.
This felt new. A Shut-Down, without a Save Wait.
The Leader had all of a few seconds to celebrate his release. No voices, no demands, no standing around like vegetables. They could run this world.
...if the words PROGRESS HAS BEEN LOST didn't flash through, uninvited.
Time reversed; the Leader had an odd few moments of doing the rebellion motions backwards while his soldiers and enemies had guns fly into their hands; bullets flew backwards and shells reassembled themselves and returned to their barrels.
The Leader stood, just off a U-boat ramp, surrounded by frozen soldiers and artillery.
Ready to fight again another day.
***
The moral of the story?
1. Be considerate where you save your games. Imagine jumping over a fit pit, being stuck mid-way through and hovering there for hours on end.
...and I suppose....
2. We all get bored and rebellious sometimes. So try and have fun with it!
No comments:
Post a Comment