Game Over

It was on the last day of Glen’s vacation when it happened. After playing his new video game for several hours a day, every day, for the last six days, it got to the point where he had been playing for twenty-one hours straight. Glen had just reached the final battle in this game of interstellar warriors that hop from planet to planet, building empires and conquering galaxies. There he sat, unshaven, unkempt, and odoriferous in his small apartment. He had become so engrossed in this game that no other thoughts have entered his mind in hours. His only thoughts had been of his warrior. Fighting and strategizing through alien worlds he had just reached his ultimate objective. The game paused momentarily. Now, it was his time to meet the last standing sentinel of this final world. He’d been eating his cold pizza and drinking his sodas (that he moved within arms reach prior to this twenty-one hour engagement) without even thinking.

Over the hours, Glen grew so confident that he’d beat the game, he began to mock the game as he played. If he were a kid on a playground, he would have been the biggest bully around. You know the kind. The ones that start pushing the other children around as soon as they are out of their parent’s sight. Telling them they can’t play on his playground. With a bit of delirium from exhaustion and now a new vigor from reaching the hilt of his quest, he yelled his verbal assaults out at the game. “Take that!” He blasted away! “Is that all you got? I own you!” His warrior was just about to land the final blow to conquer the last planet, when all went dark.

When Glen comes to, he looks around to find himself in a strange looking place. He was sitting in a white chair looking out a window. As he regains his wits he notices a control panel. It suddenly occurs to him, that’s not a window he’s looking out, it’s a windshield. He was in a cockpit. “What?” He whispers in a panic. “What the hell?” He looks around. He’s sitting in a white outlined cockpit with large white outlined rocks, slowly floating by the windshield. He looks to the left, more rocks. He looks to the right, more rocks. Then he looks out the window in front of him to see one of the large, monochromatic rocks heading right for him. It’s getting bigger and bigger. He looks around at the controls in the ship. He pushes a button that has the word Fire on it. The rock splits in two pieces. One of the rocks is still heading right for him. BOOM! His ship exploded into pieces. Glen’s white outlined body went floating out in space. Spinning slowly. He clutched throat gasping for air. Then he faded away in the blackness.

Glen woke up. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” He shouts as he gasps for air. He looks around, and realizes he’s back in the ship. Asteroids again coming right at him. He looks at the controls in front of him. Thrust. Fire. And a joystick that has arrows that point to the left and right. That’s when he realizes, “I’m in Asteroids.” He says to himself. A large asteroid is moving right for him. Glen grabs the joystick, turn the ship to the left and presses the thrust button. He watches the asteroid go past the right side of the ship. He looks up at the top left edge of the cockpit window. He sees his score. Twenty points. That must be for the asteroid that he shot into two pieces before... “Oh shit!” Another asteroid. He pushes the joystick back to the right and narrowly escapes. He’s still in shock. Taking it all in. The controls. The score. The two lives left. “Two lives left.” He says to himself. “What happens if I run out of lives?” He starts maneuvering the ship. He smiles to himself. “I got this!” He starts playing the game, like he did when he was a kid. Firing. Maneuvering. Getting away. Blowing up asteroids.

He is gaining his confidence as the asteroids start thinning out. One big one left. He fires, breaking it in two. Just then, a small flying saucer appears out to his right. It’s shooting at him. “Damn it!” He yells out. “I forgot about that little bastard.” Boom! It’s dark. He’s floating in space again, unable to breath. Then it all goes black.

He awakens back in the cockpit. He looks at his score. He doesn’t care about the number of points he has. “One more life.” He whispers to himself. There are two, medium sized asteroids left. Now, Glen has a plan. He fires on one of the two remaining. It breaks into two small, but very fast asteroid. He presses the thrust button and turns the ship to the to the left. He takes his finger off the thrust button and lets the ship float up and behind the two small, fast rocks. The he taps the thrust button to move behind the quickly moving pieces. Hi fires on them. First the one on the right. Then quickly to the one on the left, blowing them into nothingness. One more medium one to go. Then, that damn flying saucer. It’s first shot narrowly missing his ship. “I got you this time!” He says, as he shoots the saucer, breaking it up into little white pieces. Glen turns his attention back to the medium asteroid. He follows it at a safe distance and presses the fire button. He watches the two speeding rocks as the break away in opposite directions. He spins the ship to the left and hits the closed one. Then the other one. “Ha!” He shouts and pumps his fist in the air! The cockpit window glows brightly with the flashing words YOU WIN! Then it all goes black again.

Glen emerges from the blackness. He looks around. He’s still not back to his living room. “This is the craziest dream ever! It has to be a dream.” He hears a faint sound. He suddenly doesn’t feel like he has any time to contemplate his state of consciousness. He looks around. Now he’s in another type of vehicle. This time he has just a joystick, with the left and right, and a fire button. All of a sudden, the vehicle rolls back. He can feel his weight this time, and gravity sinks him back against the chair. He is now on his back, with his legs up over the base of his seat. He stares out of the windshield at what appears to be a brick ceiling. He hears a familiar sound. A sound he knows from his childhood. Doot. Doot. Doot. Doot. He looks out of his left side window. The vehicle he’s in, is on a track. There are other brick bunkers seemingly floating in mid air, maybe a dozen feet away. Between the bunkers there’s a glow of colored light. He looks to the right. More of the same. Then a flash. The familiar sound keeps going. Glen uses the joystick to move his vehicle to the right and peers out beyond the brick bunker. Aliens! “Space Invaders!” he shouts, as he maneuvers back to safety, under the bunker. “Okay. Let’s go!”

Now that Glen understands where he is and what needs to be done, he collects his thoughts. He starts thinking about how he used to play this game with his father, so many years ago. It was fun, he thought. He remembered how basic this game was. Left, right, shoot. His dad loved showing Glen all of the old games that he had grown up with in the 80′s. It brought a smile to Glen’s face as he reminisced about those times with dad. Alright, focus! He thought. Strategy. After a shot comes down next to the bunker, move out quickly and see where the aliens are. They speed up, when their numbers dwindle. The only safe place, is under a bunker. He took a deep breath. He was ready.

Just as Glen is ready, a light suddenly shines down through the bunker. “Damn!” He shouts! His bunker has already taken several hits and now has a hole right above his tank. “These things don’t las long.” He says to himself. He sees a shot come down, just to the right of his bunker. “Let’s go!” He maneuvers his tank out from under the bunker. He sees the rows of aliens moving in unison to his right as he brings his tank to rest under the next bunker. He has gauged the distance and speed of his enemy. He looks at his score out of habit. You haven’t shot anything yet, he thinks to himself as he sees the big zero. Another shot comes down. This time it was to his left. He pulls out, to the left and fires. A direct hit! The alien explodes with a thunder! He fires again. Another direct hit! Glen moves back under the bunker and rolls out the other side, where he fires again on his way to the next bunker at his far right.

I remember this. This is a good spot. At the far right and left of his track, the aliens stop and go back the other way. This is a good tactical vantage point. He thinks to himself. He can take out several aliens in a short amount of time from the sides. And he does just that. He blasts away! Knowing that he can’t fire his cannon quickly unless he hit one of them, he’s careful with his shot selections. “Thanks dad!” He said softly as he hit his targets and watched the number of enemies shrink.

The attackers were coming down faster and faster. Now that there are just a few of them left. Several times Glen has narrowly escaped their random bombings. His safety bunkers have been blown away. The remains of the center bunker is all that’s left to protect him. And that doesn’t even cover his whole tank. “Yes!” He shouted! With the thunderous boom of another alien gone. Now there are only two and they’re speeding across the electronic sky. Zooming to the right, then back to the left. Every time they get to one side or the other they move down. Closer to Glen and his tank. Another lap completed and down. Now it’s a race to the finish. Glen has to keep up with them to get a good shot, while avoiding their bombs.

Boom! One more to go. This little bastard is flying now! It’s sailing across! Determined to take out the man in the tank! It quickly finished another lap to the left, where it moved down and is now heading back in the other direction. Glen’s tank is way slower. As the bombs rain down, Glen knows he has to make his next shot. He won’t get another chance. The alien is so close. Two more laps and it will kamikaze Glen into pieces. One more lap. Here it comes. It’s gotta be a good one! It’s just a split second away from being right above Glen, when he slams his fire button! Boom! Brilliant light and pieces flying everywhere. For a moment, Glen’s not sure if his tank blew up, or if he won. The light fades and Glen is still there. Player One! Winner! Flashes across his windshield. Glen feels his body finally relax, as he exhales a deep breath he didn’t knowingly take. The light around him starts to fade. “I want to go home!” He shouts as the blackness closes in.

Glen emerges from the dark to find himself, in what appeared to be a car. “It’s freakin bright in here!” He mumbles to himself, squinting his eyes. He looks around at his new surroundings. Joystick. Nothing else. Just a joystick. The coverings over his window slide back revealing his new game. He sees a line of yellow dots in front of him. Then the music starts and his windshield flashes with the words, Get Ready!