Red strolled calmly toward the brightly ornamented machine. Cool on the outside but on the inside a torrent struck his mind and guts. The very depths of his mind churned away and slowly his consciousness became nothing but a warm, amorphous pile of wax, but his face was as stone.
He inserted his quarter then pulled the string and collected it in his hand. The machine became his enemy henceforth and offered only one challenge. He kindly obliged the machine, knowing full well what this challenge was and knowing he was nothing less than ready.
The bright colors of the background flickered and danced. The arrows flew by in rapid succession and in tight formation. His worn shoes hovered merely an inch above the lighted platform as they commuted from one square to another. On the screen a point counter reeled uncontrollably as a red, curled bar pulsed with his own heartbeat.
All this and more Red imagined at the speed of thought as he honed his senses, made sharp his mind of wax, and made steel his guts of gelatin. The machine made ready as well, going black for a brief moment of meditation before it revealed its game face.
Bright yellows and purples and reds and oranges and greens washed the blackness away; deep bass and shrill upper tones filled a quiet room with an insubstantial noise. But what no one heard or saw at this point was the very hand of God reaching into the electronic chaos and twirling His finger.
Red elevated his feet from the platform and was set in the rhythm of the challenge when suddenly the game stuttered and jumped one frame back in time.
His eyes widened and all synapses fired in his brain. His stomach twisted and his heart seized momentarily. His joints became rubber and his arms and legs failed him as he fell toward the concrete floor. His expression on his flight to the ground was one of sheer terror as he heard the familiar, electronic tune mock his failure and announce to the rest of the world its triumph.
The hard concrete struck squarely on the back of Red's head. There was an instant of pain followed by blackness. He awoke in a hospital bed in a nondescript hospital room. Above him, the newscasters droned away on TV and his mouth stung with thirst. Weakly, he called for a nurse as he reached for the call button. But there was no response from his arm. He attempted to move anything and nothing obeyed. He was bound by the adamantine chains of paralysis and his eyes swelled with tears of sadness, anger, and hopelessness. His thoughts were overwhelmed by an abstract collection of strong emotions and he wept into the lonely night.
