The Daily Dime: Game Over

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GAME OVER

The words flash in big 48 point words in white on a blue screen.

GAME OVER

Cliff stares at the screen in disbelief. His brother, Roddy, is standing behind him.

“Cliff, what the fuck did you do?” Roddy asks slapping his brother in the back of the head.

“Hell if I know!”

“What happens next?”

“I guess we just wait.” The pair stare anxiously at the monitor for several minutes, neither breathing, neither moving, their atoms motionless.

Finally, the blinking text blinks for an extra second, and the words are replaced with more words.

YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE INTERNET. CONGRATULATIONS.

“You broke the Internet!” Roddy shouted half amused.

“I didn't think the Internet had an end,” Cliff chuckled to himself. “So, what do I get?” Cliff asked out loud. The pair stare at the screen for another little bit. The text begins to flicker, and the old text is replaced with new text.

WE AT THE INTERNET HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED YOUR EXPERIENCE. HAVE A NICE REALITY.

“What kind of shit is that?” Roddy spits at the screen.

“Why are you cussing?” Cliff asks turning to get a look at his brother. “You're always cussing, and it's ridiculous. I know words are hard, but try to use some other ones.

“'Words are hard.' Yeah, that coming from a guy who didn't even go to college. Bitch.” As the percussive sound of the mild grade curse exits Roddy's mouth, the brothers hear a tight cracking sound, as though one too many ice skaters on a frozen pond. They both stop and listen. They hear a slow creaking continue to expand. “What was that?” Roddy asks.

“I don't know.” Cliff turns back around in his chair and gasps. He points at the monitor, “Look!”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Again, I don't know.”

“Well dammit, get some fuckin' answers! A crack in a screen can't just expand off of the monitor and into empty air, dumbass!”

“You're so angry.” Cliff reaches forward to touch the crack that seems to be hovering in midair, an extension of the jagged line on the computer monitor, but he can't. “Roddy, I can't touch it.”

“What do you mean you can't touch it? It's right fuckin' there, y'douchebag!” Roddy leans forward to touch it. “Holy hell! You're right! How is this happening? It's like, 6 inches away, but I can't touch it!”

Another shouting crack causes the brothers to freeze as they notice cracks start to spider web away from the central crack, and the aching creak complain louder.

“Do you feel that? There's a breeze,” observes Roddy.

“Not a breeze, it's a vacuum. These cracks are sucking in air,” replies Cliff, moving his hand over where the surface of the cracks should be.

“Let me see something here,” Roddy says, removing the monitor from the desktop. Somehow the cracks are not moved, though the monitor is no longer there. The creak is still audible as the brothers can observe the cracks slowly, almost imperceptibly so, growing.

“Holy fuck,” whispers Cliff.

“You eat with that mouth?” asks Roddy.

“No, but I kiss your mom with this mouth,” says Cliff. Roddy doesn't acknowledge, but touches the wall behind where the monitor was only to find that he can touch the wall, nothing more. “Get a crowbar,” he says.

Minutes later, the two brothers are tearing at the wall with hammer and crowbar, tearing dry wall and studs out of the way. They work at a feverish pace, maddened by the cracks, and had the wall dismantled within the hour. They stared in disbelief. On the far wall of the bedroom whose wall they'd just demolished stood the cracks, unaltered, and still slowly growing. Cliff runs forward, hopping the bed, and putting his hands and face against the wall.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouts. “I still can't touch the cracks!”

“And they don't shrink,” Roddy whispers in exhausted disbelief.

“It's because they're growing, you shitcamel!”

“No, their perspective isn't altered. Come back to the far wall where I am.” Cliff got up and walked backward, slowly. He walked passed the bed, and through the hole in the wall, and through to the opposite wall next to his brother. The cracks seemed to get bigger in their refusal to get smaller.

“What are we going to do?” Cliff asks.

“I don't know. I didn't think the Internet had an end,” Says Roddy.

Cliff sits down on the floor, his head in his palm listening to the complaining creak in the air. Roddy is staring straight ahead, though looking at nothing.

A third loud snap grabs the brother's attention. They both leap to attention as they notice a fragment caught in between the spider web panel's seem to fly away into a black oblivion. The vacuum suction seems to increase as a noticeable breeze passes over them, kicking up dust and loose paper. They watch as small loose items (a shirt, a pop can on a table, a small stack of papers) get sucked into the triangular hole mounted on the wall farthest from them.

A fourth snap sounds, and they watch as the hole doubles and two more pieces are sucked in. The breeze becomes a howling whisper as more things get sucked into the black hole. Bigger things. Shoes, pillows, a box with miscellaneous computer parts.

A fifth, sixth, and seventh snap sounds, and the brothers are forced to brace themselves against the growing suction. The snaps start coming in machine gun succession, and the brothers are loosing their ground. The brothers loose their grip and get pulled into a hole the size of the wall they knocked down. Each brother swears they can hear the other swear as they get pulled in, but neither can be sure they heard anything above the roar of the vacuum.

The cracks continue to expand, and the vacuum continues to pull things in stripping the room of its contents, and the house of its room. It continues to suck.

As the vacuum seems to reach its zenith, it's as though an explosion has occurred in reverse. In a flurry, the walls are reconstructed, and all the pieces of the house restored to their proper position, the monitor being the last item to be restored, and finally, the hole seals itself up. The room looks entirely undisturbed, as though two brothers hadn't mistakenly reached the end of the Internet, and in their madness, torn their rooms apart. You can't tell that reality had cracked, and in its increasing improbability, consumed all the matter confined by consciousness. In fact, you can't tell that two brothers had ever existed so great is the calm in the room.

The monitor on the desk lights up, and the web browser opens. It's a simple blue page with large white letters that read:

PLAY THE GAME

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holy crap that was long.