Wednesday, March 08, 2017

I've recently reacquainted myself with my love of writing (note again I say I have no skill whatsoever, but it's still a hobby and something I enjoy and I'm all for exercising anything that makes you happy).  With this recovered past time of mine, I have gone looking for inspiration to write things, and have come across a subreddit that I enjoy (I won't attempt to explain reddit to anyone here, either you know about reddit or don't.  It is what it is).  The subreddit is /r/WritingPrompts and the concept is that a user will create a writing prompt and people will pick a prompt and write a short story or something like that.

The one I picked was a contest that was being held by this subreddit that involves writing the first chapter of a novel, no major edits or anything like that.  Just sit think up a topic and write the first chapter to a book.

Here is my entry (note the chapter had to be between 2000 to 5000 words... I opted to be on the shorter side).


Why was it me?  Why did I even sign up for it in the first place?  I guess when you are told that you have a one in ten million chance to be given superpowers you just take it.  But I really wish I hadn’t.  How did I get to this point in my life…?
               My name is Chris, and I live a fairly normal life.  I have a boring job at a software company, you’ve never heard of the company, but it’s probably been watching you for years now.  For the most part I keep to myself, I walk down the streets with my ear-buds in, engaging with no-one and just going about my life.  That is of course until tomorrow… tomorrow will change all of that.
               Bzzz BzzzMy alarm screeches in my ear indicating that it’s time to start the day.  I slap the snooze button and go back to sleep for the generous nine minutes of time that my alarm clock affords me.  What would seem only like seconds later BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ the alarm is screaming at me to wake up and start the day.  No damn you.  I don’t want to get up and do anything yet!  I relinquish control to the alarm and turn it off, stumbling out of bed and walk my way to the kitchen and the ever present, always needed, coffee pot.  I begin the process of making coffee when BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ BOOOOM a loud crash goes off in my room.  Ugh.  I must have left my phone on vibrate and near the end of the night stand.  I’ll deal with that later.  While the coffee maker begins to percolate I do my usual morning ritual of a visit to the bathroom, a quick wash of my face and then putting my glasses on (the most important part of the ritual… well at least if I want to see).
               On the way back to the coffee pot I grab my phone and see what it was that caused my phone to vibrate right off of the night stand.
               “Come on down to 5th and Main for a chance to win!” greeted my eyes as I unlocked my phone.
               There is no number.  Where did this text even come from?  I wonder what is at 5th and Main street?  I thought to myself as I poured myself a cup of coffee, went into the fridge and poured a little half and half into the coffee.  Watching the swirls of light brown that dance through the dark nightscape that is my coffee cup always makes me happy in the morning.  Taking my first sip of coffee I bring up a map on my phone to determine what, if anything is at 5th and Main street.  Hmm… looks like nothing.  Just a big blank patch of green, well I guess maybe it’s a park?  Odd.  I’ve never really been to this part of town… I wonder if I could skip out on work and go?
               BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ the phone vibrated in my hand, scaring me a little to where I almost lost a drop of coffee. 
               “Come on down to 5th and Main for a chance to win.  5pm at the tent.  1 in 10,000,000 chance to win big!”
               Okay this is getting weird.  Still no number, just an “Unavailable” up top.  This seems way too much like a scam, not something that I would ever consider doing.  But at the same time I’ve been bored.  In a rut of sorts.  Maybe this would be just enough out of the ordinary for me to get out of this rut and continue forward.  Okay.  5th and Main Street is maybe 45 minutes from the office, I’ll leave a little early and find good parking and see what this is all about.  Also 1 in 10,000,000 that doesn’t seem like great odds…?  I put my phone down, finish the last sips of coffee and head towards the shower (another integral part of my morning rituals).
               I get out of the shower and begin to towel myself off and walk into the closet to decide what I am wearing.  Luckily for me it’s always pretty easy.  A pair of Khaki pants and a black shirt with the company I work for emblem emblazoned on it.  Having no need for choice when getting ready in the morning is a much nicer option than having to decide something different every day and trying not to repeat… or worse yet, trying to make an impression.  Simple and easy I put on my normal uniform and pick a pair of black dress shoes with a pair of multi-colored argyle socks (not everything can be boring… right?).
               I dress quickly and head back to the kitchen for one more cup of coffee before I leave.  The second cup always has more half and half a two teaspoons of sugar.  The first cup is to wake me up, the second cup is to give me energy enough to actually leave my flat.  On the way out I grab my keys and a plain grey hoodie and head out the door.  My morning routine followed to a T I’m happy and walk to the car and get in and drive off to the office.
               My office is fairly close to my flat.  I don’t much care for being stuck in traffic (and I live in a city where traffic is a major concern) so my morning commute is all of five minutes.  I park and walk into the office, saying “Hi” to the security guard, whose name I still have yet to remember, I’m bad with names…
               My desk is hidden in the back of the office.  I prefer this, it means that nobody can really come by my desk and bother me with a bunch of questions or things that I may have to fix.  I like my job, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that most days I’d prefer it if I didn’t have to deal with anybody to get it done.  I pass by Bob and Jim two of my coworkers desks on the way to my desk.
               “Hey Chris… did you get a weird text this morning?” Bob asked.
               “Weird.  Yeah I did.  Did yours have a number associated with it?” I replied
               “None” said Jim.
               “I’m actually thinking about checking it out after work.  I mean why not?” I stated.
               “Yeah… I’m torn.  It just seems so sketchy, and even stranger that we all got the same texts” Bob brought up.
               “Meh.  I’ll drive by it, if it looks really bad then I’ll skip out and text you guys” I said as I walked off and back to my desk.
               Work that day was uneventful, a few fires that I had to put out and a few calls that I had to make for support reasons.  All in all it was a good day at work, any day that I only have to talk to a few people is a good day, and this day was one of those.  Around 4:10 in the afternoon I grabbed my grey hoodie and worked my way back to my car.  On a typical day I’d be home by 4:15, but today I opted to follow the instructions of the strange text and worked my way down to 5th and Main, in the middle of downtown. 
               I turned on a local talk radio/news show for the drive downtown, you know the one, it’s a lot of talking heads with really calming voices who tell you all about the wars in whatever countries are currently in the midst of battle and interspaces fluff pieces about pets or fashion in the middle as a palate cleanser after hearing about far-away atrocities.  One piece did catch my ear though, it was a local interlude (where the local news caster comes on to interrupt the national radio news host) and it was talking about the weird texts.  It appears that everyone in the city had gotten a similar text to the one that I had received early that morning.  They too had no idea where the text originated from or what was happening at 5th and Main, in fact one of their reporters was at 5th and Main during the news story and there was nothing there, nor were there any signs of a tent or whatever the text said be there.
               Once the local news story was over the national news picked back up with a story about the text as well.  Oh it looks like we are going to be on the news, I love it when our city is in the national spotlight, we live in such a huge city and nobody knows about us!
               “It seems that the same text was sent out to every cellphone number in all of the major cities of the United States, all of them talking about a chance to win citing a 5th street in each town and some major intersection that occurs with it” the radio announcer said.  “Reports from each site indicate that nothing is currently there”.
               So it’s not just us?  It’s everyone in the United States who is getting this same text and all of them are on a 5th street?  That’s crazy.  This things just gets weirder and weirder as more reports come in.  Now I feel like I have to go.
               Traffic was a beast getting into downtown that day.  It would appear that since everyone got the text it looks like a good portion of the cities populace were headed that way.  I exited the freeway and took a few surface streets that I knew as a side route (at least a popular map/traffic app on my phone told me about this route… I’ve never actually taken it before).  The traffic caused me to get to 4th and Main around 4:55, a little later than I wanted but still enough time to get out there and investigate.  Oddly enough despite all of the traffic I had no problems parking at a local garage on 4th street, a block from where the text told everyone to go.
               I get out of the car and begin the walk to 5th street where it intersects with Main, there are tons of people on the street all of us heading in the same direction.  Not a single one of us has any idea why we are going to this intersection or what any of us may win.  Some people are comparing the texts that they received and they were identical.  A person asked me about the texts and I just told them that I know about as much as they no… nothing.  News helicopters hovered overhead trying to make out what was happening and news vans littered the streets trying to do the same thing.  Still nothing showed up at the intersection.
               I made it to 5th and Main and there was a massive crowd waiting to see what was going to happen, I slowly worked my way up the front (I can sidle through a crowd pretty well, and still be relatively unseen), or at least what I thought was the front.  There was nothing at 5th and Main yet.  I checked my phone and blinked back the time, 4:59:30.  Thirty seconds until 5.  Where is this tent that the texts were saying was supposed to be here?
               25
               I really wish I knew what was going on.  This suspense is killing me.
               20
               Okay.  It’s almost 5.  Why is there nothing here except the other people who wanted to check this out after they go the text?
               10
               5
               4
               3
               2
               1
               0
               At 5:00PM on the dot a single small white tent appeared out of nowhere.  A man who appeared to be in his late 40s with peppered hair and a long white lab coat was in the tent.
               “Welcome everyone.  I appreciate all of you who have come to find out what the contest is all about.  Please before I explain anything I must insist on no photography, please put your cellphones and cameras, if you have them, away.  This contest is meant for you to live in the moment and not live via a tiny screen!” the man started with a gravelly deep voice.  “I know you are all wondering why you are here and what this contest is.  Why the odds are 1 in 10,000,000, and what possibly it could mean to win ‘Big’”
               Yes.  Finally some answers.  I put my cellphone away and listen in closer to what the man in the lab coat is saying.
               “You all now have a chance.  All of you here are in the contest.  All of the people in the other cities with my colleagues are in the contest.  We thank all of you for this.”  The man explained.  “On to the crux of the contest.  One of you, or one of your peers in another city will win a special invitation back to our labs.  We are InGene and we’ve made a vaccine that will give one of you superpowers”.

               “We are giving away the chance for you to become a superhero”.