June 8, 2016
It was the end of class and I uncharacteristically stood up to give a rant about feeling cheated for not getting an advertised result. “It’s not about the quality” I argued but “being gamed”. I exited the classroom and looked at my watch to find out that it was now 14:00 and I had been talking for the last 15 minutes straight. I walked over to the bulletin board on the other side of the room which had “global” schedule posted. Everyone’s schedule fit into one of several templates represented by differently colored pins on a card. I was moving from the white timeslot into the yellow. The person next to me asked themselves, “so I’m green, huh?” before walking away.
I walked into the unlit classroom when a student asked if I had downloaded the “reference sheets”. It wasn’t even the first day of class yet and he expected me to have my materials ready. I sat down at a table to the right when he started to messily eat a large bowl of jelly. I asked for my spoon back but quickly withdrew my request afterwards. A teacher walked into the room just to watch over the students as our actual instructor hadn’t shown up yet.
Someone was playing a version of Cookie Clicker on the their computer so I sat down and pulled out my own laptop. I launched an online four-player rogue-like fighting game. The players controlled green, cyan, magenta, and white stick-figures. I queued up for a game and by the time that I thought about cancelling, as I was afraid of not having enough time before class started, the long loading screen had already popped up. While I was waiting, I had to reconfigure all of the controls because for some reason they were bound for a controller instead of keyboard.
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We walked into the unlit classroom in the middle of the night when a tweeting sound came from the plastic horn standing by one of the desks. “Does this mean we have to go?” someone asked. I told them that I didn’t think so before someone appeared in the doorway to tell us that the entire building had to be evacuated. “Everyone is leaving!” he yelled before ushering us out of the room.
The sky was red as we were informed that someone had set the entire street on fire. Someone was coming for us. I quickly ran up the airplane staircase.
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I was now living in a pool in front of a shopping mall. I had small fins fused to my sides and could breathe underwater where they stored the missiles. I came out of the water and walked into an elevator going nowhere with someone to share intel. We only exchanged a few words and the doors opened again. “After you” I offered, but he refused to step out first so I went ahead. “What are you doing?” someone else asked while I was making my way out of the glass doors. “Talking to someone” I said before diving back into the pool.
I tried going through the multiple underwater corridors and hallways in search of other rooms that may hold more information about the weapons in stock. I eventually landed myself in a large living space that seemed to be empty. While I was walking around, someone greeted me so I said a “Hello” back right before testing a locked door. I thought they wouldn’t see but they immediately asked “Why did you do that?” from the floor above. I stayed silent and pretended it didn’t happen before the door opened from the other side and three people came walking out. Of the three people, one of them asked for my LINE and said that we should hang out and go to a bar someday.