Danger
Alarm rouses. I fall out of bed. Head full of moss and foam. Need coffee. Must go downstairs. But to do that means facing the giant spider. It lurks in the dark. The webs it casts across the rooms are the same webs that tangle my mind. I take the baseball bat. It clears the webs and kills the spider. I head down the stairs swinging and I don't stop until I have the coffee machine bubbling. Then I can relax for a moment.
In the car. Heading to work. Bright sun is like a deadly raygun shooting into my eyes. Must take the highway. But the open road is constantly fought over by the savage goblins. They zip and zoom this way and that in their smoke-belching kitbashed armored vehicles, shooting anything they can find at each other - rockets, catapults, it doesn't matter - vying for dominance of the only territory they care about. I swerve and take city streets around the places where the fighting seems to be at its worst.
Office looms. I duck and roll through the lobby, staying low, staying hidden from the robot warriors that patrol. They will shoot meatbags on sight. They take no prisoners. They don't appear to have added any new cameras to the stairwell or hallways (I am no fool, I won't take the elevator) so I can get to my cube pretty quickly. There's one warden droid right by our floor, but I wait and eventually he wanders off. Sign in time.
Lunch. My cow-orkers. The only ones I trust. They know what we're up against. Whatever it is today. Where are we going? Oh, greek? Man, I'm not sure I'm up for the hydra today, or the chimera. Can't we just do barbecue? I think I can handle the firedrake. No? Okay, let me get my flamethrower.
Talk to my mother in the evening, but is it really her? She hasn't used her key phrases yet, the conclusive identifier words, but I don't hear any telltale giveaways either. No distinctive hiss or hum to identify sound manipulation. No weird inconsistencies in grammar or vocabulary. It's probably her. It's probably her. It's okay.
To bed. Toss and turn and eventually fall asleep. Plagued by nightmares, lost and running in a terrible, awful world where nothing ever appears to be dangerous, where you don't know if you're going to be ambushed or not. Expectations are everything. Is danger just around the next corner or not? How can anyone function without knowing? I try and I try to awaken but I cannot. I am trapped in this place where everything just is.
------
For consideration: learn to walk while looking over your shoulder because the ninjas are *right there*
In the car. Heading to work. Bright sun is like a deadly raygun shooting into my eyes. Must take the highway. But the open road is constantly fought over by the savage goblins. They zip and zoom this way and that in their smoke-belching kitbashed armored vehicles, shooting anything they can find at each other - rockets, catapults, it doesn't matter - vying for dominance of the only territory they care about. I swerve and take city streets around the places where the fighting seems to be at its worst.
Office looms. I duck and roll through the lobby, staying low, staying hidden from the robot warriors that patrol. They will shoot meatbags on sight. They take no prisoners. They don't appear to have added any new cameras to the stairwell or hallways (I am no fool, I won't take the elevator) so I can get to my cube pretty quickly. There's one warden droid right by our floor, but I wait and eventually he wanders off. Sign in time.
Lunch. My cow-orkers. The only ones I trust. They know what we're up against. Whatever it is today. Where are we going? Oh, greek? Man, I'm not sure I'm up for the hydra today, or the chimera. Can't we just do barbecue? I think I can handle the firedrake. No? Okay, let me get my flamethrower.
Talk to my mother in the evening, but is it really her? She hasn't used her key phrases yet, the conclusive identifier words, but I don't hear any telltale giveaways either. No distinctive hiss or hum to identify sound manipulation. No weird inconsistencies in grammar or vocabulary. It's probably her. It's probably her. It's okay.
To bed. Toss and turn and eventually fall asleep. Plagued by nightmares, lost and running in a terrible, awful world where nothing ever appears to be dangerous, where you don't know if you're going to be ambushed or not. Expectations are everything. Is danger just around the next corner or not? How can anyone function without knowing? I try and I try to awaken but I cannot. I am trapped in this place where everything just is.
------
For consideration: learn to walk while looking over your shoulder because the ninjas are *right there*