Into The Abyss
“Authorial Intention”
I was listening to a Song
Inspired, I began to
Type the story formed in front of me
An egomaniac, workaholic
With money
To spare
He doesn’t know what he’s
Doing only got where he is by knowing the right people
What goes around comes around
He gets what he deserves I felt
Like the character in my story
I wanted more time
At the end
For him to regret, for him
To develop
But his time was short
He
Wasn’t a nice guy, but he had regrets
He didn’t
“Deserve to die”
I was trying to go over the latest version of the software, but I kept thinking about the hot piece of ass I had seen on the street last night. Her hair was the white blond only natural for girls under the age of seven and her “little black dress” was just long enough not to give me a heart attack. I couldn’t stop thinking about the asshole she had decided to intertwine her carefully French tipped hand with. He was wearing a face of utmost arrogance and was obviously narcissistic: the size of his pecks told me that he had very little time to do anything but bench press small cars. Clearly she would have benefited from an individual with, well, a Black AmEx.
Suddenly I was jarred out of my musings about whether or not her tits were fake. The “you’ve got mail” icon was flashing in my System Tray. I had received my daily update from our software testers: apparently the Playcenter wouldn’t rip a CD. In my job I did little else but insure that my programmers were on the right track and were doing their jobs effectively and efficiently. I had gone to Harvard to network, and network I had. I was a general Business Administration major, not a goddamn Computer Science major. It was not in my job description to correct the problem, nor was it necessary that I needed to know how. It was my job to know whom to blame, and this time it was the Software Engineers.
Who’s fault could this be? Who was the head Software Engineer that I had assigned to insure that the Creative Playcenter 3 software would run smoothly with Windows ME?
I pressed the little blinking red button on the intercom and shouted “Lebrouski! Get your fat ass in here pronto!”
A small, young, yet balding man entered my office, “Uhhh, yes boss?”
“What is this shit? How the hell did you manage to fuck everything up already? How?” Lebrouski was a very nervous man, and I knew it was not productive to get him upset, but he had set us back a whole fucking week!
“I I I thought I uhhhh did everything fine, Boss. I d d debugged it several t t times before I sent it off to...” He forced out.
“So you checked for Syntax errors! What about Logic errors? Did you even run the program at all? This is full of bugs! You would have been equally as useful if you had just told the programmers to write it in binary!” I had never been able to understand or memorize all those goddamn 0’s and 1’s. How the hell is somebody supposed to remember what the hell 0110 0010 means anyway?
“Sssorry Bossss, I must ha ha have missed a a bug. I will make sure it gets f f fixed.”
“Without overtime!”
“Without o o overtime…” he sadly replied. He left the office slowly, without turning his back to me. What a lazy slob, god how he annoyed me. If he wasn’t the best programmer I had ever seen, I would have fired him long ago.
I sighed and went back to my computer. I decided the only way in which to get my mind off this stressful situation was to play Command and Conquer, Tiberan Sun. I logged online and quickly found three other people to play against. I allied myself with NOD, and chose dark blue as my color. As I had been to first to join I chose the scenario: ‘Tundra’, most money possible and a redeployable MCV . I changed my name to ‘Bulldog’ and I was just about to press ‘ready’ when a fellow player, ‘Jetblack’ IMd me: “Bulldog: can I request ‘Tundra’?
To spite him, I changed the scenario to ‘Tiberium City’ and pressed start.
Forty-five minutes later it was just ‘Jetblack’ and I. I guess I had really pissed him off because he was playing like a god. I decided that the only way to win would be in an all out attack. I set up a basic military strategy; first I’d take the destroyers out around his base, near the back. When he was distracted with the chaos they would bring, I would send in several engineers, which would promptly take over his barracks, missile defense system, then, finally, his MCV. That would be the end of him. I would bring in several Stealth Tanks to back up the engineers, and a Tanya. I was in the process of constructing my fourth Stealth
Tank when I heard something outside, some kind of rumbling. I looked out the window frantically to see what it could be, but I couldn’t see a goddamn thing. As I turned back to my screen, I saw about twenty brilliantly orange Mammoth Mk2 tanks coming in from all sides. I desperately tried to get my men out, but it was too late. I subsequently tried to salvage my MCV. I redeployed it and as it gradually made it’s way to the core of my base, I gathered my infantry and vehicles in a tight circle around the exterior. I was desperately trying to fight a passageway through the foe to pull my MCV out of what was left of my base and escape to the mountains. The Mammoths would not be able to follow.
I felt the rumbling again, it was quiet at first but it was getting louder. When the windows began to shake, I glanced out at them. I saw a massive commercial plane make an extremely close pass by my building – it was really fucking close. As I turned my head back to my computer screen I saw a little popup window that read ‘atom bomb approaching’.
“Goddamn it!” I yelled as the atom bomb hit my MCV and what was left of my base and the opposition’s men turned into a big flaming ball of fire. It was a suicide mission. The Mammoths were used to distract me from the obvious evidence of the atom bomb, and to keep all my men in one place; had I realized I simply would have moved my MCV out of its path.
The constant rumbling was now loud enough to blow out my eardrums, and as I finally turned around to see what the hell had happened to the plane, I saw the same enormous plane with it’s head aimed straight toward my corner office. In my peripheral vision, I had enough time to see Lebrouski stand up in his cubicle and yell “In your face you fucking asshole! Kiss my ass Bulldog!” and suddenly I was floating. It’s strange what goes through your head in this situation. I had spent my life working at a job I detested so that I could chase down shit that I didn’t need and wasn’t important. I was not my Armani suit, I was not my 2007 beamer parked in the VIP spot, and I was not my double tall, fat free no whip latte. And then my second was over and my eyes and ears exploded out of my head and I could think no more.
Writing Journal
The implications are that people can relate to your story easier because they already have the background information. The story is already naturally more powerful, though dually more cliché. You don’t have to spend so much time focusing on the exterior details and can instead focus on developing a good piece. I read fantasy and thus the point really isn’t to attach the plot to real world events. As a reader you can determine how reliable the depictions in literature is based on how close the actual writer is/was to the actual event. Of course you’d believe everything one said if one had actually experienced the event. I’d say that I would believe a first person account over any other: I generally don’t trust 3rd person accounts nearly as much because of the fact that I have been led astray by many texts. Unfortunately I missed the writings on the walls of the Museo. I chose to write about this particular event because I was actually alive during it and I’d say that I understood it and the context surrounding it the best.
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3 comments:
Well, first of all, I found this story quite interesting given the subject matter. We didn't see too much of how the character lost everything because it was only a moment of time, and life flashed before his eyes. The story, though, had great character development that really made a character one could hate, yet still sympathize with their situation. I liked the parallels between the videogame and the action outside.
I thought your poem told a little too much about the story and the character and could have been a lot more subtle. I also thought that your description of the video game battle went on for a little too long and leaves some readers whom are unfamiliar with videogames to be confused.
I really liked the way this story was constructed. Right off the bat the main character is portrayed as someone you wouldn’t sympathize with, someone you wouldn’t like. It feels like you’re satirizing executive administrators who don’t know what they’re doing, just who to blame. It was done in a very funny way, and I thought the way the events outside paralleled the events in the video game was a nice touch. I think my favorite part is when Lebrouski wins the game. It’s such a vivid moment, I can just picture it happening.
The quotes around phrases that weren’t speech in the beginning were a little distracting. I don’t think they’re really necessary, and you’d probably be fine to take them out. Sometimes the main character’s thoughts sound a little stilted, I know I don’t think in complete, grammatically correct sentences, and I think it’s strange that he does. I think you could incorporate the events outside a little better; even if he’s not looking at them, the rumble is still there. Otherwise, good job. It was a funny story and I liked it.
PS – I added lots of commas in my comments just for you, Kristina.
Hi Kristina,
I thought that your piece did a great job of showing the narrator’s character. The many expletives you use definitely convey the narrator’s voice, and I was surprised at how well you pulled off a man’s perspective (or what I think of as some men’s perspectives, I guess). I also enjoyed the moments of humor in your writing. For example, you use hyperbole when describing the woman’s companion: “the size of his pecks told me that he had very little time to do anything but *bench press small cars.*” Finally, I thought your ending was effective. It’s always tricky to depict the death of a narrator when writing in first person, but you accomplished it well.
There were some typos (i.e. “insure” should be “ensure,” “Who’s” should be “whose,” and there are a couple of places where “it’s” should be “its”). Also, although I thought the parallels between the video game and reality were interesting, they could be even more pronounced and also changed to cater to a larger, more universal group of readers. The details of the game lost my focus and interest because I am not familiar with that video game and so I didn’t really understand what you were writing about. Finally, I liked the end when he’s contemplating his life, and I wish it could have been expanded so readers could see more depth to his personality. I felt like the end was when the narrator gained an important dimension to his character; maybe you could have added this sooner in the piece.
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