I had no clue what I had gotten myself into. It may sound cliche, but that was simply the reality of my life. All I wanted was a new video game to play, nothing else. I had gotten tired of having to pay 60 dollars for games that never fully captured my interest, so I had no choice but to go where most others never went.
I drove over to a small store with a beat up “Video Games For Sale” sign out front. The building itself looked like it was abandoned, almost haunted. However, this was the last place I could go to, as I had been to every other video game store in the city. I walked in and I was immediately greeted by an old man who looked more like a zombie than a human. “Hello, young lad,” the man said. “For what would you like to purchase in this humble shop of mine?”
“Oh, I was looking for a new and exciting video game to play,” I answered. “Oh, well I have the perfect game for you then, good sir,” the man excitedly replied. The man then handed me a box that read “The Game Of Our Lives”. It was just white with the black text reading that, nothing else. “As legend states, this game contains unthinkable power that no man should have access to, but as I am a generous man, I will give you your game for 20 dollars,” the man told me. I handed him a 20 dollar bill and I left the store with my new game. As I drove away, though, the store was gone and instead a Burger King stood in the place where the store once was.
Of course, I booted up the game as soon as I got home. Once I began playing the game, I noticed that the setting looked just like my city but with more outdated graphics. However, I didn’t question that, because I got the game for 20 dollars. I decided to drive my car in the game to the bank in order to rob it, just so I could find some way to get some money in the game. Once I was done with that, though, I got a text message from my friend who works at the city’s bank. It read, “Somebody just drove over here and robbed the bank of a ton of money. Apparently, he ran over a bunch of people as well driving to the bank.”
“Huh, that’s strange,” I thought to myself. What just happened in the video game somehow happened in real life, but I didn’t care much after that. Instead, I simply continued to play the game. I had amassed more money than I could ever imagine, all while causing an unthinkable level of chaos in the seemingly fictional world of my video game. Buildings were vandalized by graffiti that read “I love video games” amongst other self-centered messages, businesses were shut down as a result of their money getting stolen, and more people had been run over by my character’s car. However, the actions of my character in the game were the least of my concerns, because my character had gotten money in this game, unlike the real world version of myself. It seemed like I had finally figured out my dream, where I could just get money and have fun in a world without rules.
In the game, I had got enough money to acquire the one thing I had always wanted the most: a red motorcycle with orange flames on the side of it. I didn’t even need to live in my apartment anymore, and instead, I could drive around on my motorcycle. After hours of having fun on my motorcycle, I decided to go and get funding for upgrading my motorcycle, so it could go faster than ever before. To do that, I went into a clothing store and stole all the money in the cash register, before driving out of the store and right back onto the streets of the town. Right as I had done that, my controller’s batteries had died. Since I had no other batteries in my apartment, I had to drive over to the convenience store not too far from my place to get more batteries.
As I drove to the store, however, I realized that something was different. The city was practically destroyed, for lack of a better way of phrasing things. Multiple businesses had signs out front saying they went out of business, and every building that still had an operating business was vandalized beyond recognition. I had no clue what was going on, until I saw someone ride out of a vandalized clothing store with multiple bags of money in hand. The realization hit, as I recalled that stealing a ton of money from a clothing store that I had also spray painted earlier was the last thing I did in the game prior to my controller’s batteries dying. What I had figured out was that my new video game wasn’t an ordinary video game, but rather one where everything I did in the game happened to the real world.
Once I got my batteries, I came back to the apartment, knowing all the damage I had done to this world. I had ruined so many people’s lives, all so I could have fun playing a video game. I felt like a monster, and rightfully so. The fate of the entire world was in my hands, and I could have easily destroyed it all just so I could fulfill my personal fantasy of being richer than anyone could ever imagine.
I had zero choice now that I knew what this twisted game was. I had to destroy the video game, no matter what it took. I took the disc of the video game and I drove to the forest, where nobody could see what I was about to do. I pulled out a hammer and a lighter, and I promptly broke the disc of the video game and lit it on fire so there could be nothing left of it. As soon as I left the forest, I knew that this would be the end of the story. The game was destroyed, which meant that I could do no more damage to this world by playing. However, things don’t always go the way that we want them to. Sometimes, even the most perfect plan can go wrong in ways we never imagined.
