When someone smacks you with a pillow, you don't shoot them. You don't stab them with a knife. You don't tackle them to the ground. You don't tie them up with your boot laces.
You smack them right back, as hard as you can, with a pillow of your own.
It's human nature, and no amount of tech can remove the simple childlike joy of a pillow fight.
Are we (aiways), who ported our brains to a hybrid organic and digital state, still human?
It's the question of the century. It's the root of Ashfield's Law of Authenticity, the pursuit of value in being human.
Well, let me tell you this. Countless research papers would later cite this Awesometacular Pillow Fight on Itokawa at Stellar Dreams as proof that we are still very much human - or at least still very much value the pursuit of humanity.
I turned to face my attacker, an aiways who had chosen to look like a younger man in his early 20s, with short black hair and a bit of stubble. He clearly couldn't grow a full beard. He had acne on his left cheek, a very nice touch of authenticity. He was about to tackle me, and he was followed by three others, and then the swarm of bodies that were accumulating behind them.
I was already haunched over from his blow to the back of my head, so I used that as momentum to wind up. I pummeled him with a mighty swing of my pillow. My adrenaline had kicked in, and my blow resulted in a satisfying thwack, followed my a grunt as the boy-man fell backwards into the others behind him, and my pillow burst fabulously.
That was when everyone seemed to grab pillows. I took the pillow from boy-man after smacking him and turned toward the far exit. My sleep grenade had cleared a little path. I moved toward that, my pillow at the ready, whacking one, two, three people with precise blows to the face.
My bounty had climbed to $4.2M qcoins, but no one seemed to remember that. All they could think about was hitting their neighbor with a pillow. I don't know where all the pillows came from. I mean, Stellar Dreams of course, but the crowd must have raided the back room storage area because the pillow bins in the store display areas certainly couldn't supply hundreds of people with pillows on their own.
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The room started to fill with floating feathers and composite dust particles from all the pillows ripping apart as people bashed each other. Laughter filled the room. I didn't need a smoke bomb. It didn't take long to make it hard to see, hard to distinguish who was who. I just needed to dodge large incoming pillows and head toward the exit.
"Yahhhhhh!" I head someone yell, jumping off the mattress with a pillow over their heads. They landed in a group of people and spun in a circle, trying to hit everyone around them. They spun a few times, landing only a couple of blows, before they fell to the ground dizzy and laughing.
I held my pillow in front of me, held firmly in both hands, and I rammed forward, shoving people left and right.
Behind me, the fight raged on, all cursing, laughter, and feathers.
When I reached the far end and finally got into the hallway, my jaw dropped. Somehow the pillow fight had made its way into the surrounding corridors. Seriously, where had all these pillows come from?
No one paid me any attention now. As long as I continued flailing away with my pillow, I was just another joyful participant in the pillow battle.
I caught my breath for a moment and took in the scene. The flashing orange lights and the floating feathers and particles added to the apocalyptic thoughts running through my head. If this was the end of the world, what a glorious end it would be.
A man across the hallway didn't have a pillow, so he took off his shirt and started swinging it at people, screaming. Others started to follow suit, removing jackets, sweaters, and whatever they could find.
"Cheater!" a woman screamed.
I saw a dash of short blond hair as she ran through an opening and dropped the shirtless man with a blow to the head. Four more people quickly surrounded him, slamming pillows on him. He screamed and flung his arms about, finally succumbing to an uncontrollable fit of laughter and coughing.
The people with pillows started to gang up on the people without pillows, who were trying to tear the pillows away. This tug of war only sent more particles flying into the air.
I was grateful for my breathing mask. Coughing, screams, and laughter abounded. I spotted another store in the far corner. I fluffed my pillow and headed out again, bashing my way down the hallway.
Itokawans would dream about this for years to come. They even started a pillow fighting sport and tournament, appropriately named the Pillow Fighting League (PFL) with specific rules, sponsored by Stellar Dreams, the official maker of the Standard Galactic Pillow. For tournaments, the white pillows were stuffed with feathers and composite dyed red to simulate blood. The tournament was similar to a boxing match, with points awarded over rounds to determine a winner.
The Pillow Fighting League was a pleasant alternative to the Death Match Association (DMA), which as you might expect was a hardcore and bloody sport where people literally fought to the death, reanimated by their corporate sponsors to fight again and again and again.
But I digress.
A scream that sounded suspiciously like the high-pitched neigh of a horse caught my attention, and I knew that the Thrusters had found me.