Piracy [Fictional Story By Meh]
Posted by: MOD-SAN
Date: 2006-08-17 00:13:20
"Jess, what are you doing on there?" they would ask. They didn't care, and as long as they didn't care, I didn't care. So, "whatever" was always my reply. And "whatever", it was. I did whatever came on an impulse. And my impulse that one day was to download that program. The program… that would change the way I looked at the Internet forever.
You see… I would spend all day downloading things. Movies, shows, games, I didn't care. All these things were stored neatly on discs or on one of my many hard drives. These things, I might touch one time. All I really cared about was collecting them. Illegal? Hah. I laughed at that word.
But back to the program. It was just yesterday that I was searching for some random thing or other. Suddenly, in capital letters, came on the screen the words,"NEW SOFTWARE! THREE DIMENSIONAL COMPUTER INTERACTION SIMULATION, BETA VERSION." Now of course, I was wise to viruses, but then again, I had the best virus protection around. So I went for it.
Hastily, I clicked on the file. "Come on, come on," I muttered as I watched the progress bar move along. Finally, it was complete. "Yes!" I cried, and opened the file. Then, something happened. It was as if the glass disappeared from my monitor, leaving the data itself there, with no barrier between me and it. For a moment, I took in the high resolution, thinking this was the full effect of the program. However, I noticed the things on the screen seemed more… tangible; it was as if I could… touch…
I slowly brought my hand to the screen, and spread my fingers over it. It was a sensation similar to water, with a mild buzz throughout. I pushed on it, nothing stopping me from going furthur. Finally, I forced my hand through the screen, then my entire arm, until I no longer felt the sensation, instead, felt thin air; slightly windy. I snatched my arm back out, and opened and closed my fingers. There was nothing wrong with me; my hand and arm were still normal. Dare I take the next step? I must be insane.
I brought my face to the monitor and stuck my head inside. I felt a tingling sensation all throughout my scalp. And I could see nothing but green. I brought my hands, then my arms, inside; suddenly, as if I was forced, I was pushed on through the monitor. I fell a short distance then landed with a thud on my rear. I began to look around and what I saw astounded me? Surely this couldn't be the world inside my computer?
I stood up and turned around a few times. All around me, white faced ASCII characters, much like cartoon characters, danced. Streams of bright light, which I assumed was data, zipped back and forth, and I could hear the chatter of people typing. Text strings floated in the air about me, and I grabbed one, and read it. "HI HOW ARE U?", it said. I assumed it was a message meant for someone else.
This area reminded me of a long and wide, green hallway. As I began to wander this fantastical world, I noticed popular pictures that I had seen posted on the internet stream past, like paper blowing in the wind. Eventually the typing chatter ceased and began to fade into familiar sounds from online games; gunshots from shooters; twinkling of magical spells from RPGs. Little orbs began to follow me and out of curiosity, I picked one up, and saw a movie in it that I had recently downloaded.
The green began to fade to black, and all sounds ceased, except for a near-silent, pylon-like humming. Then the windows began to pop up. Many of them; it reminded me of the ads I constantly blocked. A particularly large window popped up, and it had a pixellized, black and white face on it. "WHY ARE YOU HERE?" it seemed to ask in a monotonous voice. The sound echoed in my ears. I was afraid now. Afraid I had done something wrong, as if I had trespassed into the wrong neighborhood.
"I– I don't know," I told it,"I guess I just wanted to see the other side." "THIS IS SIMPLY WITHIN YOUR WORLD, CHILD. ANOTHER LAND. TO SEE THE TRUE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR WORLD WOULD BE MUCH DIFFERENT." This intrigued me. "Other side of my world? What do you mean?" I questioned. "THE PARALLEL WORLDS, CHILD. YOU MAY SEE THEM IF YOU WISH. IS THAT WHAT YOU SEEK?" Finally, my curiosity had gotten the best of me. "Yes!" I said,"yes, it is." "VERY WELL," it said,"ACCESS GRANTED."
The large window, as well as the rest of them, left as if some huge cursor had clicked exit. In their place came up a DOS window the size of a large TV. It began to fill up with text,"C://parallax/tesseract/world58064390670595327589.exe……LOADING…….", followed by a strain of characters that my eyes couldn't keep up with. Finally, a familiar media player that I used popped up, only much larger than the one on my computer screen at home. It began to play. And this is what I saw…