"Rrrriiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnggggg!" Joe groaned and woke up. His alarm clock was
always loud and annoying, but this time it had seemed to go on forever! He
mentally sighed. It was going to be one of those days.
He made himself a cup of coffe, then left for work. His car seemed a bit
sluggish getting out of the driveway, but when he turned onto the freeway,
everyone's car seemed to be crawling along. Joe was used to the rush hour
jams, but this was ridiculous!
When he arrived at his office, he braced himself for boredom and turned on
his computer. It took forever getting the thing started up, but that was no
surprise. He opened up his accounting program and started working.
He had started into his daily routine, and had been working for about an
hour, when his boss stepped into the room.
"Joe." She said slowly. She seemed to be having a hard time forming her
lips around the words. "I. Neeed. Yoouu. Too. Woork. Oon. Aa. Proojeect.
Foor. Mee."
"Are you okay?" Joe asked, concerned. "You're talking awfully slowly
today."
"Whaat? Yoouu. Neeed. Too. Taalk. Slooweer. Aaree. Yoouu. Oon. Tooo. Muuch.
Cooffeee. Oor. Soomeethiing? Ii. Caan't. Uundeerstaand. Aa. Thiing.
Yoouu'ree. Saayiing."
Joe frowned. If she wanted to play games, he had more important things to
do. He turned back to the computer and kept working.
About three long hours later, he grinned, and hopped up out of his chair.
Lunch Break! He walked across the street to his favorite restaurant, Mama
Zoni, a family operated italian place. He loved to look at the walls,
always covered with such colorful drawings and photos. He stepped in and
paused. Something wasn't quite right. The walls seemed blurred and pale.
The colors seemed to have turned pastel overnight. He shook his head to
clear it. The walls remained the same. He attributed it to a cold, and
found a table. When the waitress came to take his order, he looked into her
face and gasped. The strange phenominon that had occured the the wall had
taken effect on her as well. Her face looked like a picasso painting on
prozac. Horrified, he ran outside. Minutes afterwards, the waitress slowly
began to take on a confused expression.
Joe hurried out of the restaurant intending to find a doctor. Everywhere he
looked, the colors had gone drab and faded. The sizes were not quite right.
He had the curious sensation of looking into a grainy photograph, or a
computer graphic blown way out of proportion. A homeless person approached
him.
"Qwerty? Poiuyt! Asdf mht qsc!"
Joe nervously backed off, and found himself against a wall that had not
been there that morning. He looked around hysterically, now only finding
gray blobs that slightly resembled figures. He screamed. No-one answered.
Words appeared in the sky in bloodred fiery letters. Being the only things
with color or focus, Joe stared at them, hoping for some clue as to what
was going on. One by one they appeared, as if being typed my some ghastly
giant hand.
ERROR DETECTED.
PLEASE WAIT.
ABORTING UNIVERSE.
Joe suddenly found himself engulfed in total darkness, with something heavy
sitting on his lap. "Hey! What kind of a prank is this? Is this thing a
computer? Where am I? Could somebody turn on a friggin' light?"
* * * *
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the
light, that it was good: and God separated the light from the Darkness."
Reverend Hammon closed the bible with a SNAP, ending the sermon, and waking
up the few children that had been sleeping. The crowd shuffled out of the
church wearily. Hammon rubbed his eyes. Was it just him or was everything
going slower than usual that day?