Dampened by misty drizzle, Howard navigated through the
university campus. The paths and lawns were flooded with eddying students
shored in by brick and concrete architecture. In a proud, central attitude
stood the university Students Union building: its experimental curves, deep
nooks and twisted towers had won it many awards in proportion with its want
of beauty.
Gallie and Greg were chatting in front of the Students Union
entrance. Howard dived for cover behind a shrub. Greg's laughter rose above
the ubiquitous hubbub and clatter, carrying across the divide like artillery
fire. The company parted. Alone, Gallie made for the Students Union. Howard,
chuffed at this development, hastily pursued. In the entrance of the Union
building he had newspapers thrust into his face by students wearing bedraggled
beards and woolly hats.
'
Social Worker! Social Worker!' they
chorused gruffly.
Further into the lobby, clean-shaven students dispersed
pamphlets advertising gigs and political activist demonstrations. Looking
up from the leaflets he winced. Gallie was nowhere to be seen. Everywhere
were students huddled in chatty groups or swarming frenetically like ants
in a congested nest. He glimpsed her disappearing down some stairs and torpedoed
after her, clumsily shoving his way through the crowd. She emerged through
double doors into a corridor.
'Hi Gallie!' he gasped.
She jumped. 'Ohhhh, its
you Howard!'
'Yes, I was casually walking down the stairs and
voila!
I saw you!'
Gallie frowned good-naturedly. 'You seem soooo out of breath!
Have you been running?'
'No! It's just a spot of asthma,' he lied, trying unsuccessfully
to suppress his panting.
'You have asthma? Oooh gosh! You poor thing!' Her brow furrowed
with grief. 'Do you not have an inhaler with you?'
'An
inhaler? Erm, no - I took a couple of aspirin.
Works every time. See, it's getting better already!'
'
Aspirin?' said Gallie bewilderedly. 'I didn't know
aspirin is a cure for-'
'Not
many people do know many things Gallie,' he
interrupted hastily. 'Anyway, I was just popping in for some grub. Care to
join me for a spot of lunch?' He rubbed his belly.
She assented. Howard smirked involuntary with nervous excitement.
They entered a bar: through the crowds he spotted a neon pizza sign over the
far side of the room.
'Ahhh, I'm supposed to be on a diet,' lamented Gallie, 'but
what the hell!'
They made their way over to the pizza queue. The bar was
vast and in all around were gathered students: most were standing; others
were clustered around tables. Most were conducting animated conversations.
At one end of the bar male students played arcade games, trivia and fruit
machines. Others were drinking beer. Women gossiped in huddled groups or
curled up with their knees hugged to their chests engrossed in books and notepads.
Many students were wolfing down fast food and coffee. The new-fangled CD
jukebox with an electronic interface was in perpetual activity. '
Whatever
happened to the heroes?' pondered
The Stranglers.
At a table in a quieter corner of the bar a tall man sipped
liquor. He wore a black waistcoat over a denim shirt and jeans. A girl,
whose head was shaven aside from a small tuft of hair above her forehead,
was saying something to him. Howard's attention was drawn to him because his
hair, which was straight and of shoulder length, was as white as chalk. The
man's physiognomy was more shocking. On the surface his features were young
and handsome. Yet his face was sallow. Hollows could be perceived below his
cheekbones. His countenance was crafted into an unlifting mask of contemplative,
malicious loathing. His pale grey eyes glistened with acidic misanthropy.
'Seen somebody you know?' asked Gallie.
'No, just someone over there.'
'Ohhh, the guy with the white hair? Everybody knows him.
He's
weird! Greg says he's been barred from a lot of pubs. For fighting.'
'He's not banned from here? Doesn't the University expel
him?'
Gallie shrugged. 'I know! But they won't! His
dad makes really big donations to the government
or something like that. His name's Drijk, but,'
(her voice softened further) 'when they're sure
they're out of his earshot - no one would ever
dare call it to his face, they call him
Drac;
you know, as in
Bram Stoker, because
his teeth are really pointy, or something like
that.'
'He looks like a pint of
Guinness with that hair,'
said Howard, hoping to impress.
They laughed uneasily. Howard sensed the shifty-looking
student in front of them was eavesdropping. Howard looked at him quizzically.
The student shuffled on his feet uncomfortably, abandoned his place in the
queue and made straight for Drijk's table.
'What course do you do?' He already knew the answer.
'Oh, sociology,' she murmured.
'What's up? Surely Sociology isn't
that bad is it?
Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost.'
Howard turned towards Drijk.
'Don't look!' whispered Gallie.
Drijk was waving away the student that had left Howard's
queue. Then, unmoving as a gravestone, he gazed down at his clasped, long-fingered
hands.
He looked up.
Before Howard knew what was happening Drijk held his eye.
Plasmas of malevolence flashed through the space connecting them. Howard
snatched his gaze away and shuddered. With an inflated action, he gazed in
the directions of other people, desperately hoping to dupe Drijk into thinking
he had not been fixating on him in particular.
'Can I take your order?' chirped a lady in an apron from
behind the pizza counter. Having ordered, Howard and Gallie found a table
and sat down on a comfortable upholstered bench. By the time he dared look
again, neither Drijk nor the shaven-headed girl were anywhere to be seen.
'I've a sneaky feeling,' said Gallie with a heavy sigh,
'that Drijk knows we laughed at him.'
'Oh, sod him! I couldn't give a flying toss!' shrugged
Howard, once again struggling to affect the mask of nonchalance.
'Greg reckons that Drijk's
very good at every major
martial art fighting thingy,' sighed Gallie. 'He also says that Drijk takes
no notice of those moral codes that go with the fightin+g thingies, you know,
the ones about only hitting folk out of self defence. He likes to break people's
noses and other bits.'
'Marvellous!' muttered Howard, feeling his stomach contract.
'I spend half a day in this stinking campus and the friendly neighbourhood
psychopathic killing machine has it in for me.'
Gallie laughed edgily. 'You shouldn't be soooo careless
when there are psychos around!'
'So my impending death is funny? That's it! I'm a dead man,
swimming with the fishes! I never did want to come to this bloody uni in
the first place.'
'Ah well, he'll be cross with
me too,' said Gallie
as if offering a consolation.
'He won't touch
you. You're a girl.'
'Hmmmm. You won't catch me walking around all alone at nights.'
The pizza lady shouted out that the order was ready. Howard
retrieved their pizzas.
'This may be my last meal,' grumbled Howard.
They nibbled half-heartedly at the rubbery pizza. Yellow
grease dripped onto the white paper plates. He inspected her sweet face. The
vexing question of Gallie's fancy for him tangoed with the vexing question
of Drijk's hatred for him: the prospect of engaging in sublime sex vied with
the prospect of being subjected to foul violence for the focus of his mind.
'Ahhh, I've got three big essays to do by Monday, I haven't
even started them yet!' Gallie sighed.
'Really, What are they about?'
'Oh, we've got to write about it being good to have socialist
attitudes in capitalist market-based communities, that sort of thing. I was
meant to hand it in last week.'
'Perhaps you should give them an IOU.'
As he watched Gallie depart for a lecture his mind switched
into self-preservation mode. His imagination replayed his encounter with Drijk
and mulled over the implications. Being in danger, he was in no mood for course
work: he would just have to skive off the afternoon laboratory session. He
sipped coffee from a styrofoam cup and fretted at leisure.
***
*****
***
Howard bought more coffee and wandered into a room that
branched from the main bar. He was thrilled to behold a battalion of arcade
game machines. They hurled out fabulous sprite-fest imageries and burbled
electronic clamour with fizzy energy and seduction. He recognised a favourite:
Death From Above. It was engaged. A burly Eskimo clad in a snug,
furry sealskin overcoat was currently hunched over this machine. The Eskimo
growled an expletive, thumped the console, turned and left with disgust writ
large on his face. Leaping to the machine, Howard balanced on the bar stool
and fed a few coins into the slot. As the coins ker-chunked satisfyingly into
the bowels of the machine, it acknowledged its paying guest with hyperactive
welcoming images and blaring noise.
He leaned forward and slapped the 'start' button with an
adversarial flourish.
Death From Aboveboasted high definition
sprite graphics, bigger monsters and more complex
strategies than any game of its ilk he had seen...
Swoosh... Blam! Blam! Blam! He blasted
and bombed his way through his foes. Exploding
beasts peppered the screen only to be replaced
by faster, more deadly critters. But as the
squadrons of aliens multiplied, so he collected
power-ups to enhance his own ship's laser weaponry
and missile systems. Thus he was able to create
increasing havoc. Through the reflection in
the glass he saw an admiring crowd was gathering.
Even the Eskimo had returned. He redoubled his
concentration.
Yet another new level: grand monsters now swarmed in kamikaze
style into his pumping laser beams. The audience burgeoned as he mercilessly
ripped through level after level. The game thundered to its climax. He began
to make mistakes. He missed a power-up that would have granted him a bonus
life. His fuel was low. He destroyed the final waves of attacking aliens
but he had taken too many hits. His shields were badly damaged.
He entered the Boss World.
A titanic dragon roared and breathed fire at him. He knew
where to position his ship and, anticipating infernal salvoes, dodged them.
His mind worked so frenziedly that the screen seemed to slow to a crawl. He
pummelled his foe with wrath, inflicting furious damage. The dragon morphed
from gold to blue to red. Its rage was in vain. It emitted a final roar and
disintegrated into blinding fire. Chunks of flesh few across the screen. He
rescued a princess and made good his escape. The Boss World exploded. He
was the hero of the hour.
He offered the bonus game to the Eskimo and marched purposefully
away, being too embarrassed to bask in the glorious rays of the victory sequence
that exalted him. Heroes had bigger fish to fry. Besides, he had seen it all
before. It featured a huge-eyed maiden with an animated mouth that badly
lip-synched her undying gratitude to her liberator.
'My lord! You alone destroyed the planet Xoogax and rescued
me! You alone saved my people, from the evil Ztorxks. You alone are a great
warrior and you alone will be worshiped forever, my Lord!'
This monologue had a clipped, computer-roughened
edge to it that managed to sound bizarrely horny.
He left the bar and climbed the stairs. His
inward smile was assaulted with every step back
to reality.
 | | | | |
| From: |
isolani | Subject: | 2001-04-20 14:46:02 |
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| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-04-20 15:07:59 |
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| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-04-20 19:02:51 |
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| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-04-20 19:03:34 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2001-04-25 02:04:43 |
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| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2001-04-25 02:07:09 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2001-04-25 02:08:31 |
| | | | |
| From: |
isolani | Subject: | 2001-04-25 18:40:42 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole (sorry) | Subject: | 2001-04-27 17:07:07 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole (sorry) | Subject: | 2001-04-27 17:11:16 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole (sorry) | Subject: | 2001-04-27 17:58:46 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole (sorry) | Subject: | 2001-04-27 18:00:19 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Hsingi | Subject: | 2001-11-24 05:51:37 |
| | | | |
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