It's not really a new story. It's one of my older and unfinished ones, Anachronism, told in a slightly different way. I was looking back at it, and the plot is good, writing and excitement level, not so much, but I really wanted to improve on it and start it again, so here it is, now called the Zelda tapes (you will see why in the chapter, if you haven't already guessed.

Hope you like it.

The Zelda Tapes

May 25th, 2011 AF

Zelda was frustrated.

Twenty minutes of searching her room for her purple flash-drive had turned it into a trashcan. Bed covers were on the carpet, once neatly-folded clothes lay crumpled in mounds, desk drawers and baskets were open, books lay carelessly face down on their spines.

And she still couldn't find that damn flash drive.

Said flash drive in question had an entire English research paper on the Legendary Composer Brothers that was due tomorrow. Zelda, like the OCD student she was, had finished most of the paper at school, during Study Hall about two days ago, but only remembered today that the bibliography was unfinished.

Of course, it figured that all the sources were on the flash drive with her paper, and hell was going to freeze over before she drove back to the library to document all of her sources, find all of her information, and write the entire paper in one night.

So if she didn't find the flash drive, she was screwed. Or in for a really unpleasant night.

As Impa, her nursemaid, might've said, "How typical." Zelda, for being such an obsessive person, was scatterbrained and easily forgot smaller details, her car keys, and her cellphone, as Impa had often had the pleasure of dealing with.

Speaking of Impa…

"Impa, have you seen my flash drive anywhere?" Zelda called down to the kitchen, where Impa was currently making dinner.

"Check your room."

Zelda looked around at the mess. "I already did!"

"Clean up the mess you've made and check it again. You probably missed it by going too fast."

Well, it was worth a shot. Impa had a mind like a steel trap; nothing escaped it, but little came back out of it either, save for her occasional bouts of wisdom. It was almost scary how well Impa knew her.

Still, Zelda wasn't too keen to start cleaning either…

Maybe if she retraced her steps back one more time…The last time she definitely remembered having it was in the school's computer lab. Had she taken it out of the computer? Yes, she remembered (or was she making it up?) stuffing it into the back pocket of her purse. No, it wasn't her purse, she was wearing a messenger bag that day; it was her messenger bag, she put it in the back pocket of her messenger bag!

But she had already looked there…Well, it couldn't hurt searching it one more time.

Unceremoniously, she took her messenger bag by the bottom and dumped out its contents onto her bed. Out fell some scraps of paper, chap-stick, a pink pass-to-class, a bag of cereal, some pencils, pens, and

"My jump-drive!" Zelda squealed excitedly. She reached for it and sent her bag tumbling to the floor, where it landed with an audible "clunk!"

"Huh? What was that?"

Zelda picked the bag up from the floor, immediately feeling a slight weight. There was something else in the bag, even after she dumped everything out. She felt around the inside, but there was nothing in the main pocket of the bag, just a small bulge on the side. She zipped open the inner side pocket.

Inside was a tape.

It was just a regular, black cassette tape, no bigger than her camera. Good Lord! She hadn't seen one of those things around since she was 6 and the old Indigo-go's were on MTV. Practically the only places you could get cassettes now were online and the sketchy little music stores in the Sheikah Quarter, which for other reasons (drugs), she usually avoided. She didn't even think that they had any cassette tapes in their home- if they did, they were somewhere untouched and collecting dust up in the attic.

So what was this doing in her purse?

She took it out. On the back, there was a yellow post-it note on the back written in her handwriting.

"DO NOT THROW THIS AWAY!

You need to listen to this.

Ask Impa about the Walkman. She'll know where it is.

It will change your life…" Zelda read.

There was a big gaping hole in her brain. Try as she might, she couldn't remember anybody giving her a tape or making one herself. Zelda was beginning to freak out, not that she believed in conspiracies, but it seemed like her life had suddenly become a Christopher Nolan thriller. Next thing she knew, she was going get abducted gang members or wake up in the morning in a random back alley with a bloody knife in her hand.

Maybe it was time to lay off the Quentin Tarantino movies…

Still, she stared pensively at the tape and the note on the back. What could be so important that she would call it life-changing? Then again, did she really want to know? Like a mental warning sign, the phrase "Curiosity killed the cat" popped into her brain.

But it never said just how tempting curiosity could be…

And whatever it was, just how bad could it be?

"Hey Impa," she called down. "Do you know where our Walkman is?"

The Walkman was upstairs in the attic, leaning against the side of some old, porcelain, antique lamp and covered in a layer of cobwebs and dust.

Zelda blew once, put the tape in, and pressed play.

May 12, Year 2011 AF

Crackle, Crackle

I don't have a lot of time to say this, but if you have stumbled upon this tape, please, I beg you, DO NOT STOP OR TAKE IT OUT. What you are about to listen to will no doubt be one of the most bizarre and impossible things you have ever heard, but on my honor as 3 day Kokiri scout and if that doesn't convince you, on the honor of mom's grave, I swear, as my name is Zelda Adala Nohansen D'Hyrule Harkinian, that I have told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Chuckles…You know, I still can't remember what movie that's from…

But all joking aside, this is a serious matter. If you are Zelda, or myself, so to say, chances are that the last couple months or so have been almost completely erased from your brain and you have no recollection of what has happened to you in the last 6 months. If by some miraculous chance the Sages and Impa are wrong, and you remember everything, feel free to ignore this tape and chuck it into the wastebasket first chance you get. Or listen to it, and reminisce about all the awkward and near-death situations you had. Hopefully, you or I'm still alive by this point to relive them.

If you're ready to listen, I'll start.

Deep breath.

So I'll start off with the basics. Basically, on Halloween last year, at the All Hallow's Eve Bash at Kakariko graveyard, you discovered the last remnants of an ancient and secret power that had been around to protect Hyrule since the beginning of time. Unfortunately, you finding that ancient power unleashed a wide host of shadow monsters and creatures hell-bent on destroying you and getting some power within you that you thought only existed in fairy tales. But wait, it gets better! It turns out that that golden power was the last link between Old, Pre-World Hyrule and New Hyrule and by unleashing it, so to speak, you connected the two separate worlds and timelines together, which never should have happened and threatened to compress all time together and destroy both worlds.

I know, it sounds peachy keen, but one good thing did come out of it. By some strange magic flute, a boy from Old Hyrule came and saved you and we've been working together ever since to turn things back to normal. In order to save both Hyrules though, we've had to find all seven mythical sages and Master Sword to defeat a millennium old evil sorcerer who has the last piece of the golden power and has apparently been beating and been beaten by our ancestors for all those millennia and now completely hates our guts and wants us to rot…permanently…

According to the sages, once we battle Ganondorf, the evil sorcerer, and reunite the golden power, we will use it to split apart the Hyrules and change time so that they never meet and never will meet again. In the process of us happening to save the world, we will forget each other completely and it will be as if we had never met, never existed…

There are two reasons why I am making these tapes.

The first, and foremost, according to the Sages, and pretty much the only reason why they're letting me spend precious training time making these, is to inform myself of the events of the past 6 months or so, so just in case some weird discrepancy happens you will make the right choices in order to avoid something like this ever happening again.

The second is the real reason that I've created these tapes. They might not even be necessary, in case we fail and the world really does end, what good are memories then? But in the wild chance that we actually do end up saving the world, I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget the heat of using Din's Fire, magic, for the very first time or the rush of joy when we went skateboarding in the Graveyard or the tangy taste of water from an Old Hyrule country well. I don't want to forget all the people, places, and memories that have become especially precious to me in last couple of months: the White Tomb, Kokiri Forest, Kakariko Graveyard, Raruu, Impa, Saria, Malon, Ruto, Midna, Nabooru, Darunia, Aryll, Shad, Ashei, and…Link.

Pain leaked into the voice. They have made me a better person, and it's not fair that I'll never remember them again…I just can't forget about them, about Link…I just can't.

I don't want to forget.

Don't get me wrong though, it wasn't just sunshine and rainbows. I saw death and cruelty and some things, some creatures so disgusting, so perverse, that they should not have existed in the first place. Sometimes I still wake up screaming in the middle of the night, because I can still smell the blood, see it pool out of his body, hear him laughing maniacally in my ear…and then it all disappears. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I had never existed and this would've never happened, especially to Link.

So now I give you a choice. I know you, or I know myself well enough to know that you have listened to this tape so far, if only out of curiosity, but hopefully because you feel that in spite of the life you're living and always have lived, there's just something missing…

Even with that explanation you probably have no idea what's going on right now, and who can blame you? This whole thing is screwy, hysterical laughter, look at this, I'm making a video tape for myself and it doesn't even begin to explain a millionth of it.

But I swear that everything I say has happened and is as real as the nose on my face, and if you want to remember exactly who you are and what you have done, what you have accomplished, flip the tape over and press play. I'll be honest, if you, I have forgotten, I want you to listen. But, despite what the Sages want me to do, I won't force you listen to this. How can I? Right now, I'm probably just like some weird voice in your head, not even up to conscience level. You can walk away from this tape, forget that you ever listened to it, and continue living your normal, mostly carefree existence. Or you can flip this tape over and press play and listen to this story, with all the glory, adventure, and heartbreak it brings. But if you listen, chances are, nothing will change, but you will know everything you have lost. Everything. I'm not the nicest person in the world, but I wouldn't want to wish that on anybody.

So I'm giving you something I didn't have too much of.

Free choice.

Pause

Static

Whatever you choose, don't say that I didn't warn you.

Pause

Click!

END OF TAPE 1

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