Submission Event 3
So… I don’t like silence, and it kinda feels that everyone is gone all of the sudden, so I want to talk a bit about something. I got bored a bit (of course) and I began to read Homestuck for real, unlike a couple of days ago when I stopped after the first 10 pages or so. I am currently on Page 253 and so far the story has been personally ingenious as they have literal implemented the topic of data structure as their superpowers. I am a university student in my second year, with a programming course (though I forget stuff faster than I learn them), and it really feels awkwardly funny to see the main characters use data structure to store their items. I have yet to encounter Dave Strider as the character, but I did see his username early on in the Pesterchum. I gotta say, Pesterchum is really inefficient unless it is used by a handful of people, considering the system show all past chatlogs and when they changed their statuses. Then comes the fact that the statuses are a undoubtedly “unorthodox”, but then again I guess it is fine as long as not too many people use the software since it would mean that only the handful users would be used with them, thereby not bothering those who never know about it. --anyhow, back to the main point, I am currently on Page 253 and as anyone who has read it before would know… this thing KEEPS DRAGGING ON AND ON AND ON! Goddamn, how much time can you possibly waste in a sandbox world!? I am currently on 253/56. This derailing has 56+ pages worth or story that is apparently not related to the main story!? I once clicked a link to the cool thing that cheese (I think) can’t use despite it being a cool gif, but even that was already on Page 3000+. You are telling me that there are already 3000+ pages in Homestuck, and yet you add MORE sidetracking pages onto the pages!? Bloody hell, what the heck am I reading!? What’s also odd about this is that some of the interesting stuff (such as the black goo) ARE only mentioned in the sidetrack pages! The fact that I am a completionist isn’t helping either, and I really want to progress the story, but I also want to check EVERYTHING, but I also don’t want to listen to the quarrel between the storyteller and the damn blue clown thing (forgot its name already). It was at this point that I see how much I have written, and now I am thinking that I might as well participate in the event thing that lasts only four hours. I have asked cheese whether stories are also allowed (since I once made a 11k+ characters long mini-story) but it has been already 30+ minutes by the time I am writing this sentence, so I doubt he will respond in time. --geez, it has already been 30+ minutes since I wrote my last post. Where the heck is everyone? It’s almost as if they are busy IRL at the perfect time when this event is happening. …either that, or they are doing the same as me, writing their own wallpost. I am still kinda skeptical about being the wallpost thing since the limit to this event is not only the 4 hours time limit, but essentially also the character limit that discourse can handle. I googled up how it works and… I think that discourse simply doesn’t have a limit. --oh cheese finally responded. …welp, I think that “doing whatever I want” would include the 11k+ characters story into this piece of wallpost, so I guess I will just make a separate spoiler for that. Hooray, less work! --but I am still not satisfied. As I said before, I believe that this event is flawed. Since it is unknown what the character limit is, I will just have to assume that everyone can just write stuff up like I am doing right now, but I still think that the event is strange. You get points based on the amount of characters in our posts, but despite having been told in P#1782 that the player with the most points would receive “a prize relevant to the game”, I think that the reward will just be cancelled just like how D1’s event was cancelled because of Modeshifter’s passive, which lingers on even after his death. It was later explained that the first event was doomed to fail anyways, but… it really feels unsatisfying. Especially since I (would like to believe that I) caused cheese to make the second event by asking him whether I am allowed to vote in the other thread as well or not. It really was a shame that Appel & Wazza didn’t win. I didn’t and still don’t really care about the tactics. Their conversation was the only one with teddy bears and hugs involved. How could you not vote for that!? I swear you guys are really biased towards tactical votes. It really feels like politics, and I HATE politics. --anyhow back on track, I believe that this third event should have a limit of points we can achieve or otherwise there could be that one guy that spends an hour or two writing the longest wallpost that he can write because he has nothing better to do. Honestly, I would be surprised if that guy isn’t me, but that’s not really the point right now. The point is that if our points are based on the amount of characters in our submissions, then it would clearly be unfair. There would always be someone who clearly has thousands of characters more than the other, and I don’t like that kind of unfairness. I did think of a way to solve this mess, which is done by dividing the number of characters by a thousand or so, but even that would still be unfair in case someone is thousands of characters ahead compared to the other. So then I thought of another way to fix this, but uh… if I were to write that answer down, then I am afraid that cheese might have some funny ideas and use it for real. The idea I have is inspired by one of my favorite games, and it will 100% make everyone’s submissions “somewhat equal”, but it will not DEFINITELY not be fair either. With the solution I have in mind, someone who has written less than a hundred characters might win against someone who has written thousands of characters, so uh… yeah. No. I am NOT going to reveal it in this post. Yes, I am that petty. Heck, I am the petty player who betrayed Leafia in the end, and I STILL have no regrets of doing that! …okay, maybe I do have some regrets considering it was a role with four abilities of which none are negative, BUT COME ON! Could you really blame me for thinking that every town has a negative passive!? I have one, KyoDaz has one, mathmods and Modeshifter have one… How could I know that she had been telling the truth!? KyoDaz can BS his way out and tell everyone that “he has meta reads on her” and whatnot, but did you all even remember how Leafia died? She got HAMMERED. I was the one who betrayed and killed her, but I couldn’t have done so without FOUR OTHER VOTERS. You can trashtalk me all you want, about how you guys don’t like me, but THAT IS JUST FAVORITISM, ISN’T IT!? “Oh hey, I don’t like this guy. He pushed me to do this once. I don’t know what else he did, but I don’t think he did anything important.” “Oh really now? What a coincidence, I think that this guy is full of BS as well!” “…do you two have any proof of it though?” “Your way of talking is THE undeniable proof that you are scum!” Like, what the actual ****? Are you guys ********? I know that I have an anti-town meta, but at the very least I am still someone who checks for arguments when it comes to pushing for people, and holy **** do you guys sound dumb. --gah, you guys wouldn’t listen to me anyways, since “everything I say is just fake”, right? Why the hell do you think that I didn’t fight back when ash4fun suddenly pops up with that BS fakeclaim? It’s because -just like how I predicted that 4x4 will vote me without a second thought- I KNOW that I HAVE to be Today’s lynch. Because no matter what I do, no matter what I say, you guys will just deny them. To make matters worse, I have the ****** role that limits my reach, and cannot be proven because it’s a support ability. Then comes the fact that nobody is talking about the future D3, and then there are the matters about Kyo’s weird agenda of “lynch Cent, but let Cent vote Zone”. Ugh bloody hell, I should just talk about something else at this point, since nobody has said anything in the past 90 minutes or so. …actually, I have had it. I will just submit this… whatever this is, since it’s probably enough to be at least third place. Hopefully my story is also counted along with this submission though, considering that that story is literally bigger than this wallpost that I currently have. …actually, I will just add the wallpost inside the wallpost. This way they should at least not be counted as two separate wallposts. …or something.
Dystopian Story
An empty bottle got flung towards my face. I took a step to the side and heard the bottle shatter into pieces of shards. The man who threw the empty bottle slammed the door right in front of my nose and shouted: “GET OUT! I WANT NOTHING FROM YOU AND YOUR TRASH PRODUCTS!”
That man was the twenty-seventh customer today. Out of those twenty-seven meatheads, only four were willing to buy my products. It seems that today is no good either. Even after wandering around these slums for months, I still have yet to find some gullible sheep.
I started walking to the distribution center when I started coughing. Dark smog covers Theta City, making us gradually forget the radiance of the sun. Due to the overabundant number of factories in Theta City, most of its residents were forced to wear gas masks whenever they want to go outside. The only people who didn’t wear the masks were only those who could not afford to buy one; the ones from the slums; my customers.
Even though I am wearing a gas mask, its quality is honestly just garbage. But even this garbage was better than inhaling death directly from the rotten air.
As an outdoor seller, my job is rather quite demanding of me. Walk, offer, get denied, repeat. The products I am selling are nowhere near the dark territory, but it is exactly because they are not illegal that people were not interested enough to buy them.
An outdated memory card, kitchen knives, silver watches, holo-dices and some DD batteries. A bundle of niche items that few would need in their already poor lives.
In the end, the higher-ups are to blame for everything wrong in this rotten dumpster. Even though the world has been united for decades, the only thing they did was widen the gap between the rich and the poor, and then they just had to destroy the world on top of that.
At present, the only part of the world where you can see green leaves are within ‘the popular cities’ such as Alpha City and Gamma City. Theta City is small compared to those megalomaniac cities, so nobody would actually pay attention to this side of the world. Even so, with the way things are going right now, it is evident that the current state of the world is worse than that of two centuries ago.
Beta City is a good example of a collapsed city. Everyone in that city threw away their morals and lived their lives in corruption. It only took them one month before everyone died from the STD, liver failures, and overdose. I even heard that the place was nuked by Delta City. Given Delta City’s reputation of being a bunch of paranoids, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if they actually did annihilate Beta City to the ground.
When I finally reached the distribution center, I gave the female receptionist the receipts of the day and she in turn sent two points over to my phone. In the past, I had complained how two points were not enough for me to survive and yet there I was, selling garbage products on a daily basis to have enough meal to live.
I stepped on the escalators upstairs and exchanged one of my points immediately. The faster I get out of this facility, the fewer eyes there were to glare at me. The meal of the week is canned fish soup. Despite me hating my job, I cannot deny that there are some bright sides of this job. Fish are usually expensive on the market, but all meals from the distribution center are fresh and fair.
The one and only reason the facility are still running is because the higher-ups support our current system. How else could anyone explain the innumerable amount of security cameras, the super soldiers working on this facility, and the high-quality meals that are replenished every week?
I walked at my own pace towards my apartment, giving the bigger half of my attention to the plastic bag filled with my dinner. These canned foods were not for my family; they were for me. My parents had already died when I was born, and I did not have any siblings. I never liked to have any pets, and I kept distance with my acquaintances, calling them only when they owe me some favors.
Removing my gas mask and taking a deep breath was the first thing I did after entering my room, followed by taking a nice shower. The fact that I managed to hire an apartment with free air purifiers and bathroom is still something that bothers my mind every now and then. The apartment itself was also built very recently. Only two weeks ago, in fact. I suspect that the higher-ups had something to do with this arrangement due to my past actions, but… I decided to ignore the matter.
The only reason I didn’t bother delving in too deep on this matter is because I want to keep breathing without something covering my face …and the showers. Definitely the showers as well. Even though the water was not edible, they were clean enough to rinse my body from the city’s stench, and I could even clean my clothes!
Drying them was a problem though. Sunlight had not been an option for years, and laundromats were definitely a path to suicide with my current financial situation. So, I decided to dry my clothes by hanging them on a rope inside my room. As my room was usually warm all the time, this impromptu solution of mine was surprisingly not bad.
After taking a shower, I counted the canned soups. After confirming that none of them had been stolen, I opened one of them, put it on a bowl, and heated it up using the microwave. Thinking about it, my life did not change much from the past. There are no ‘true friends’ I could rely on anymore, but there is also nobody that could literally stab my rear either. If I add the fact that I am still able to live day by day with a slight bit of luxury despite getting junk thrown at me and sometimes pestered by my customers, then I think that I might even be happier now than I when I had to steal food from the distribution center.
The microwave pinged, indicating that my dinner was ready. I took a sip of my soup as I looked outside from my window. From where I stand, I could see nothing but the smog. It was evening, but the only sources of light were the street lamps that were not broken. Beneath those poles, I could see skinny children without their parents. Children whom I once fought for.
Theta City is dying, and nobody will ever save us. Words of grace are lies spouted by those in charge. The distribution center is either a botched attempt of salvation, or a city-scale game of life. We are just pawns waiting for our time to end, but even so… I had once decided to give up changing this society, so I will accept this reality and continue living this life until the moment I perish.
Dust is dancing in the air, and my ears are ringing. I think that a nearby room has been destroyed by the explosion. To think that I would be a victim of an explosion just when I was about to clean the dishes… rather, I can’t believe that anyone would attack Theta City using explosives. Had it been Delta City or Eta City, then they might be more common, but the residents of Theta City are mostly composed of the poor; not many people could afford buying or making explosives, and even if they are one of the 5% who could, then they shouldn’t have a reason to attack the slums.
I stand up and opened the door to the main hall. Fire was spreading through the apartment through the carpet. It appears that the room opposite to mine is the victim of this attack. I don’t know much about my neighbors, but I don’t remember anyone living in there… Was it a random attack then?
Bizarre thoughts started filling up my mind. The first possibility that first appeared was: “The higher-ups have finally lost it and started to destroy the slums for entertainment.” But in doing so, they would attract attention from other cities. After Beta City’s incident, the leaders of this world had spent all their resources to tackle down all crimes world-wide, and they were VERY thorough about it.
Having said that, what the leader of this continent actually did was focus on maintaining 12 of the 23 cities. With Beta City gone, their goal was to ‘purify’ half of the continent and maintaining it, while giving multiple healthcare facilities as ‘apology’ to the remaining 11 cities. The distribution center is an example of such facilities, with the other popular facilities being the public hospital, public school, public bank, and the underground prison.
If the higher-ups of Theta City were to suddenly go rogue, then the higher-ups of other cities will most certainly find out about it and punish them severely. Considering the pros and cons, the first possibility couldn’t have been the case.
The second possibility was that this is a terrorist attack. I had suspicions that this apartment was built on behalf of this city’s higher-ups, so this building represents themselves in a way. If the terrorists also think like I do, then they would have left the vicinity by now.
There is a third possibility, which is similar to the second possibility, but the odds of that happening is nil. The last time I saw ‘them’ was when they were sent to the underground prison.
As I was thinking about the possibilities, I look towards the room of my neighbor. The door had been blasted, and I can see the outside through the breached wall. The night is dark despite the street lamps, and the toxic air is flowing through. I didn’t take my gas mask with me, but I could see someone entering the room as clear as day despite the smog outside.
I recognize that person very well. My eyes widen the longer I look at the figure of the terrorist. No, she isn’t a terrorist. She is a rebel.
“Well, well, well! If it isn’t our lovely traitor Rose!”
Her red hair matches with the flames burning the room. She had cut her long hair short, but it is still beautiful as ever. Her once innocent smile is now filled with hatred towards me. I step back out of reflex; she has an assault rifle on her hand.
“How have you been? Are you eating well? Do you enjoy life now that you have cast your past… cast US aside!?”
I slammed the door shut and fell on the ground flat. Rain of bullets penetrated through the wooden door for a while before it stopped. I didn’t move. It took no longer than two seconds before the second volley was fired. It’s a tactic that I had taught her.
After the second volley, I ran towards my bed, took my gas mask, and exited through the window. My room is located on the first floor (EU) of the apartment, so I landed without having to break any bones. I hastily wore my gas mask and ran towards the streets.
How did she escape the underground prison? Although not comparable to the best prison in this continent, that place is still a prison not everyone could escape from. It has double the security compared to the distribution center, and the whole prison is encased in three meters thick lead walls. The air vents are too small for even a child to fit, and the connection to the sewers is only accessible from the outside. Plumbers would groan from the latter as it meant more work for them when they have to fix the pipes, but this shows just how secure the underground prison is.
I kept running and running, and even though I didn’t hear anyone chasing after me anymore, I kept running until I reach my destination.
…wow. This story really feels out of place compared to all the moody **** that I wrote up above.
Oh well. It was written around November last year, but I am undoubtedly the author of the story, so it should be fine anyways.
@clonedcheese
Here is my submission. I… don’t even know what the bloody hell I wrote, and I don’t even know what it is about. If I have to cheese my way out of this by forcing a topic, then it will be: “Zone’s thoughts of the past 100 minutes --or something like that.”
–oh wow, it actually has ~20k characters. Nice.
