"the illusion is failing" I thought to myself.
Then I thought of a nice and strange potential short story 50k words whatever and I didn't lol but I should have because it's no longer november, hope nanowrimo was ok for those who did it.
//Logitech drumsticks are ok and it is ok that they exist.
Anyway, I am not one that tells stories
but there is this guy and he is quite good at being alive and often eats food and drinks drinks.
//oh that's actually hilarious i can't believe i wrote that that's gold, also i hate the word hilarious it doesn't feel right
okay anyway. one day his world is figuratively turned inside out. normally when you dream things you lack conciousness and rational/coherant/logical thought and it's more like a linear movie. But one day, completely randomly, he has a different kind of dream. One where he is conscious and able to think. it feels overwhelmingly surreal but it isn’t much of a dream. He finds himself in an orange room. Imagine a 1x1x1 cube. Now paint the inside orange and step inside. It’s just a plain orange room. Stop using your imagination. No special lighting. No lighting at all. It’s just an ordinary orange room. Nothing special. The only noteworthy thing is that there is a serrated dagger next to the guy. And on one of the walls there is a picture of an arm. And there is a dagger – that dagger- buried in the arm. No wound, no blood, nothing scary. Just a dagger inside an arm, you know?
And the only other thing in the dream is a voice. You know surround sound? Imagine surround sound where it actually is surround sound that echoes from all 6 sides of the cube. The voice introduces itself as virifer* and tells the dude and talks to the guy for a while. He is quite confused and finds the dream unorthodox and the lack of dragons disappointing. srs.
The voice tells him that today is the 1/12/12 and in one week he is going to end up in a fight with a guy approximately 1.43x his size and someone is going to be hospitalised.
The voice also explains to him how the dream works. He is in the orange room until he wakes up. 7h56m remaining until he wakes up. Unfortunately, the truth is he will get quite bored of being in an orange room with a dagger and a picture of an arm with a dagger in it for 8 hours. It also sucks that your sense of time becomes warped when nothing is happening and there is no time keeping device in the room.
There is a way to stop the dream and return to normal sleep. If he takes the dagger and places it inside his arm like in the picture, the dream will end shortly afterwards. There will be no physical pain. There will be no violent gushings of blood. Nothing to be afraid of. Just a dagger inside an arm, yo.
A side effect of ending the dream like this is that his arms will become strong. Strong enough to lift cars. Well, just one car at a time. No, not toy cars. Real cars. Small cars, though. Don't try lifting a 4WD you might kill yourself.
Of course the voice admits that this power will be both a blessing and a curse because if you run around lifting cars and [stuff] people are going to be like "wat da [hell]?" and you'll get all of this attention, and even though you want to be recognised, this is not the fame you want.
Our protagonist doesn't like this at all. He opts to not stab himself in the arm. He questions the voice some more, asking why this dream exists and the voice is all like "not telling, lol!". He still tries to piece everything together but comes to no understanding.
Then the voice is like "by the way, I can hear your thoughts. This is my dream, not yours. No, I'm not lying about anything. You've gathered by now that taking the strength buff or not will determine whether it's you or the person 1.43x your size that will be hospitalised. It's really your choice. And it's going to happen. I can bet your life on it. Also it was amusing when you imagined being a superhero with your powers. There is no room for those kind of heroes in the real world. But if it's any consolation, if you place the dagger in your arm, you will still be my superhero."
"well, !@#$" the protagonist thinks to himself.
"yup" says the voice.
the protagonist gets bored of looking at the walls and poking the corners of the room. general descriptions of boredom. he is trying not to look at the picture or the dagger because it is unsettling. but is pretty hard when they are the only things in the room.
"how long left?" he asks.
"7h43m"
"[screw] everything"
he starts looking at the dagger because it is intricate and has patterns and [stuff]. he starts looking at the picture and starts thinking "well this is just a dream anyway so it won't hurt me at all if i just do it"
"took your time coming to that realisation dude"
he doesn't want this. he never asked for this. he doesn't want to have superhuman strength.
anyway i am going to stop writing this, the guy eventually puts the dagger in his arm and it doesn't hurt and there is no blood or anything it just slides right in and it feels a bit tingly and he slowly loses consciousness and when he wakes up he goes to the bathroom and turns on the tap but accidentally breaks it in a comical and cliched fashion and water sprays everywhere and funtimes. narration of other real life events which are strange because of the strength. unfortunately, an enchantment prevents him from telling anyone about the orange room. his friends and family are quite confused and he is sad.
and then he is strong and [stuff] and he is disturbed and tries to hide his strength and in a week he accidently gets into a fight with a dude who is like "wtf that guy thinks he's strong he's not strong i'm strong and i'm also drunk and for some people quarrel brings on sleep[latinreference]". Protagonist accidentally hits the guy a bit too hard. He is hospitalised and dies shortly afterwards.
then there is the orange room: round 2. the guy is pretty distressed because murdering is pretty bad. The voice tells him that if he puts the dagger in his other arm he will be able to have control over his strength. but there is a side effect of intense pain if he subdues his strength for too long. he has to whack things really hard and use his power if he wants to get rid of it. he asks the voice why he can't tell people about the orange room and the voice is like "just cos"
more things happen. the 8h in the orange room is mental torture.
every week the voice foretells the future and there is a new superpower. he just has to 'harm' himself in different ways. Every time he doesn't want to do it even more, and it takes longer and longer for him to give in. But he is still unable to endure nothingness for more than 3 hours. Every time the imaginary pain from stabbing himself gets a bit worse. What starts out as a small tingling turns into that feeling when you slam a car door on your finger and beyond. more bad things happen because bad things happen when you can't control power and when people investigate he gives the impression of guilt because he is unable to tell them the truth.
eventually the voice is like "dude i'm out of superpowers to give you, so from now on every time you visit the orange room there will be no dagger or picture, just the orange room. there is no challenge and you can leave the orange room whenver you want. you can just stay and chat with me if you want to, though. but this time there is one last challenge which will give you super cognative strength. dagger in the head. in a week bad things will happen either to you or to everyone you know and love. Although it is arguable that if something bad happens to you, that is also bad to everyone you know and love. And if something bad happens to everyone you know and love, that is also bad for you. So I guess in a week soemthing bad will happen to both you and everyone you know and love, just in potentially different ways. if you take the dagger you'll be able to choose the better path"
by now the protagonist hates everything because everything sucks. struggles with himself and the voice and everything. when he gives in he wakes up and understands everything. like, everything. everything that he has ever read in a textbook, even if he forgot it, he now remembers and understands it. everything he has ever thought, he remembers and thinks about how his thoughts and perceptions of life has changed over the course of his life and why and what does this mean about his existence and existence in general. he thinks about things that are accepted as scientific truth and laughs a bit because they're so off. he could explain how things really work but he can't be bothered because there is actually no point in helping anyone or anything.
he understands that, if the voice's prophecy is true, which it almost definitely is since it has never been wrong before or lied about anything he has ever asked it, then the only way to guarantee physical safety for everyone he knows and loves is to guarantee something bad to happen to him (logically: the voice says something bad will happen to him OR them. so if he guarantees something bad for himself, it definitely won't happen to them). He decides that he has one week left to live. he is ok with this. life is pretty stupid anyway. [freak]ing voice ruining everything. Never told him why, either. jerk.
He moves from his unspecified country of inhabitance to some other unspecified country without telling anyone because he really doesn't want to deal with any emotions or explanations. cool things happen and he does cool things because he knows everything. He gets some people to build him an orange room where he will live. After a week he wakes up in his own orange room and for some magical reason there is a that dagger next to him except now it's in real life and he is quite sure it's real life because he put a door and there is sunlight coming through the window because he is a better room designer than the voice.
and there are better ways this story could be told but that is first and only plot draft at least i wrote it down because if i didn't it would be gone in a few days like all neglected inspiration and hope.
something something something probably more things to say
oh, virifer. the voice's name which i didn't actually use. latin lesson. we have these things called "coni-fers" which literally mean "cone bearers". and there is "agri-cola" which means "field dweller". coni-cola probably means "cone dweller" and agri-fer probably means "field bearer", neither of which make sense. luci-fer means "light bearer" which is an ironic description as i don't think lucifer was good at bearing light. lucifer is named like that because people hoped that if they named him that, he would be like that. like how there is a sea called the "calm sea" or something like that which is never calm but people called it that because they wanted it to be calm. i am not untired enough to explain things.
viri-fer is an interesting compound word because the genetive "viri" can be derived both from the word "virus" which means "venom/poison" or
"vir" which means "man" but i actually thought it meant "strength" when i named the voice, turns out i was wrong.
but if we pretend that vir does mean strength, virifer carries the double meaning of "strength bearer" and "poison bearer" which is fitting in its role in the story.
the word for strength that i got confused with was "vis" which doesn't actually have a genetive so there is no "strength bearer" unless i use a synonym.
not explained:
coni+fer = coni (genetive) + fer (which means bear, bear as in carry)
i am too tired i'm going to stop zzzzz
also i have been to places and done things and stuff and not played as much starcraft as i should or real life things like i actually should and whatever
there is this thing flying at incredible velocities in my room and bashing into walls and it is annoying and weird and the sudden sounds it makes are unsettling
2 comments:
dude that's a pretty cool story, how did you come up with it
i want to read that story
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