PT 3 (revisited): The World
Title: An Ending
Story Type: Project Tarot Original
Word Count: 1018
Summary: Loss is undeniable. Even when it doesn't make much sense.
Notes: Why is it that when called upon to write about a world, my first instinct is end it? Anyway, to make up for the unexpected hiatus from PT, I'm uploading the first one I missed, The World, before I do The High Priestess. Also, sorry for the radio silence. It's been...a difficult couple of weeks.
The World
The day the world ended was the day I reached level 89.
And I know that's not a major accomplishment, kind of embarrassing actually. Most people reach level 100 in less time than it took me to get this far, but what can I say? I've always been the type to stop and admire the scenery.
The news hit us about fifteen minutes after the fact. A view window popped up, and we all got to see it. We watched the dust cloud billowing up, watched our one-time home turn gray and featureless underneath it. We couldn't see the trees snapping or the seas turning to mud, but we could imagine it.
And that was it for the old girl. She'd given us a hell of a run, and after she finally got rid of us she actually thrived for a good, long time. Odds were, she'd do it again in a few thousand years or so. She's resiliant like that. But for now, well. For now the planetary database had reclassified her.
Terra Prime. Uninhabitable.
And I'll admit, I felt a little empty. Even though I never set foot on Earth, and even though she'd been limping on her last legs for a good few generations by now. And generations had gotten pretty long since we last stomped around on her continents and splashed around in her oceans.
I pulled up my own viewscreen and peeked in at my body. I was of the optimal weight for my height, so no trouble there. Hair had grown on my limbs, groin, and face since I saw myself last. I eyed it critically. I didn't like it. The face stuff, especially. I looked in the mirror and toyed with a few shapes and patterns before deciding I was better off clean shaven.
Heh. Clean shaven. No more baby-face. I referenced my physical self again and added a couple of years to my facial features, for verisimilitude. I still looked very little like myself, but I didn't have to. So who cared?
DING!
[I hear you upped. Congrats. Took you long enough.]
I smirked. [Good morning to you, too, Jace. You saw the footage, right?]
DING!
[Yeah. Mom and Dad are going to a candlelight vigil on Sphere 1. I think I'd rather join you in Game.]
I looked up the Game bulletin board. [They're doing a memorial quest. Says they've had it written for a few years now, ever since she got the diagnosis.]
DING!
[Well then let's do it.]
I nodded and got my game face on. That is to say, I put on my helmet and re-arranged my spells to accomodate the ones I just earned by levelling up.
The quest turned out to be a hollow victory kind of story. There was this woman who was really important, and the aim was to rescue her from this evil guy who wanted to use her power to make himself stronger. Which is all pretty basic, of course, except the woman was round and smiling and gave us all these incredible hugs. She had this long, brown hair and these brilliant green eyes, and she just looked and sounded and acted so...
It was like questing with my mom. Like questing with humanity's mom.
And in the end of it, in the final confrontation, she has to go and walk into her own death, head up and shoulders squared, to keep the bad guy from ever getting what she had, which, it turned out, was the power to create life from nothing. Like, she could grow a tree on bare stone, or whole fields of wheat on barren scrubland. Pure, endless magical energy. The kind that could create a world. Or destroy it.
And then she goes and kills herself! And you can't do anything but watch because if you move from your position the complicated framework of the spell cage will collapse and the bad guy will get free before she can finish him off along with her.
"Quest For Gaia" went on to win a bunch of awards. I got two new levels from playing it, and a few extremely powerful items that I always felt like crap for using afterward.
I never saw Earth first hand. Never saw, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted anything that wasn't programmed inside of the virtu-spheres. I've never lived a single second inside of my own, physical body, but right at the moment when Gaia walked into the shadow gate? I don't think I ever felt more human.
We all moved on, of course. Lived our lives within the spheres. And I grew up, took some physio training and served my two years aboard the ship. It took a couple of months to get used to the weight and limitations of my body, and at the end of it I was glad to slip back into my pod and rejoin the virtual world, with some new friends, with a more reality-compliant face since I'd lived in that skin long enough to grow attached to my real appearance. But there was still this emptiness inside of me. Inside of all of us.
When humanity left Earth, they'd screwed her over pretty badly, and it was too late for the lessons they'd learned to make a difference in their lifetime, so they took to the stars on generational ships, all of humanity locked up in life support pods while their minds roamed freely over a virtual plane. And in that time, we were travellers. Refugees, maybe. Looking for a new home.
But the day the world ended, we became something else. Orphans, I guess. Only it happened after we'd grown up and moved away, and so we didn't know quite what that meant. We didn't need the Earth anymore, not to survive, but maybe some part of us would always associate Earth with a fundamental part of what it meant to be human.
And what did that make us, now that we had no origin left?
I guess...lost.
Story Type: Project Tarot Original
Word Count: 1018
Summary: Loss is undeniable. Even when it doesn't make much sense.
Notes: Why is it that when called upon to write about a world, my first instinct is end it? Anyway, to make up for the unexpected hiatus from PT, I'm uploading the first one I missed, The World, before I do The High Priestess. Also, sorry for the radio silence. It's been...a difficult couple of weeks.
The World
The day the world ended was the day I reached level 89.
And I know that's not a major accomplishment, kind of embarrassing actually. Most people reach level 100 in less time than it took me to get this far, but what can I say? I've always been the type to stop and admire the scenery.
The news hit us about fifteen minutes after the fact. A view window popped up, and we all got to see it. We watched the dust cloud billowing up, watched our one-time home turn gray and featureless underneath it. We couldn't see the trees snapping or the seas turning to mud, but we could imagine it.
And that was it for the old girl. She'd given us a hell of a run, and after she finally got rid of us she actually thrived for a good, long time. Odds were, she'd do it again in a few thousand years or so. She's resiliant like that. But for now, well. For now the planetary database had reclassified her.
Terra Prime. Uninhabitable.
And I'll admit, I felt a little empty. Even though I never set foot on Earth, and even though she'd been limping on her last legs for a good few generations by now. And generations had gotten pretty long since we last stomped around on her continents and splashed around in her oceans.
I pulled up my own viewscreen and peeked in at my body. I was of the optimal weight for my height, so no trouble there. Hair had grown on my limbs, groin, and face since I saw myself last. I eyed it critically. I didn't like it. The face stuff, especially. I looked in the mirror and toyed with a few shapes and patterns before deciding I was better off clean shaven.
Heh. Clean shaven. No more baby-face. I referenced my physical self again and added a couple of years to my facial features, for verisimilitude. I still looked very little like myself, but I didn't have to. So who cared?
DING!
[I hear you upped. Congrats. Took you long enough.]
I smirked. [Good morning to you, too, Jace. You saw the footage, right?]
DING!
[Yeah. Mom and Dad are going to a candlelight vigil on Sphere 1. I think I'd rather join you in Game.]
I looked up the Game bulletin board. [They're doing a memorial quest. Says they've had it written for a few years now, ever since she got the diagnosis.]
DING!
[Well then let's do it.]
I nodded and got my game face on. That is to say, I put on my helmet and re-arranged my spells to accomodate the ones I just earned by levelling up.
The quest turned out to be a hollow victory kind of story. There was this woman who was really important, and the aim was to rescue her from this evil guy who wanted to use her power to make himself stronger. Which is all pretty basic, of course, except the woman was round and smiling and gave us all these incredible hugs. She had this long, brown hair and these brilliant green eyes, and she just looked and sounded and acted so...
It was like questing with my mom. Like questing with humanity's mom.
And in the end of it, in the final confrontation, she has to go and walk into her own death, head up and shoulders squared, to keep the bad guy from ever getting what she had, which, it turned out, was the power to create life from nothing. Like, she could grow a tree on bare stone, or whole fields of wheat on barren scrubland. Pure, endless magical energy. The kind that could create a world. Or destroy it.
And then she goes and kills herself! And you can't do anything but watch because if you move from your position the complicated framework of the spell cage will collapse and the bad guy will get free before she can finish him off along with her.
"Quest For Gaia" went on to win a bunch of awards. I got two new levels from playing it, and a few extremely powerful items that I always felt like crap for using afterward.
I never saw Earth first hand. Never saw, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted anything that wasn't programmed inside of the virtu-spheres. I've never lived a single second inside of my own, physical body, but right at the moment when Gaia walked into the shadow gate? I don't think I ever felt more human.
We all moved on, of course. Lived our lives within the spheres. And I grew up, took some physio training and served my two years aboard the ship. It took a couple of months to get used to the weight and limitations of my body, and at the end of it I was glad to slip back into my pod and rejoin the virtual world, with some new friends, with a more reality-compliant face since I'd lived in that skin long enough to grow attached to my real appearance. But there was still this emptiness inside of me. Inside of all of us.
When humanity left Earth, they'd screwed her over pretty badly, and it was too late for the lessons they'd learned to make a difference in their lifetime, so they took to the stars on generational ships, all of humanity locked up in life support pods while their minds roamed freely over a virtual plane. And in that time, we were travellers. Refugees, maybe. Looking for a new home.
But the day the world ended, we became something else. Orphans, I guess. Only it happened after we'd grown up and moved away, and so we didn't know quite what that meant. We didn't need the Earth anymore, not to survive, but maybe some part of us would always associate Earth with a fundamental part of what it meant to be human.
And what did that make us, now that we had no origin left?
I guess...lost.