“A profession I’d like to try”. That’s what he said.

Yeung-Sung tried to keep his phone steady in his hand. It danced in front of his eyes while he lumbered down the hill by the Joint Wick. His balance, he managed to make out, read 24 minims. Have I spent that much already? Hmm…what would I like to try?

He stumbled down streets filled with the faint red glow and buzz of the colony’s streetlamps. They guided his way, and he followed as best and in as straight a line as he could. In between the lamps, pockets of darkness fell like sheets of snow, yet at the same time, the alcohol, lining his stomach in a hot film, warmed him. His hands were exposed to the chilly night, however, so Yeung-Sung soon put his phone away in favour of rubbing them feverishly, continuing to put most of his focus into not faltering down the incline.

He was soon down on the other side of the hill; at the main square of the colony.

I’d like, I’d like…

Running his hand through moist petals, he paused. He knelt and felt around in the earth for the bumpy part of the plot where he had planted his sprout. Anxiously, he crumbled onto all fours, looking and looking until he found it. Then, heaving with relief -and from the cold air- he rolled over onto his back. He stayed there for a while, enjoying the sensations of nature; touching the leaves; hearing the rustle of the yew’s branches; smelling that intensely brown-green smell of petrichor. He found a flat boulder to sit on, once feeling his back was too wet to be comfortable. Finally, he spread his limbs out, utterly relaxed, with his eyes shut like he was sunbathing.

He got up from what felt like a single wink of rest, and with his eyes adjusted to the night, smiled. Above him, a black sky was dented by stars. Yeung-Sung slid off the boulder, ruffling the grass beneath. He suddenly had this odd image of space as a greenhouse, a masterwork of stained glass, a cage around the world. And he felt rage. He felt the sudden urge to grow huge and smash his way through that atmosphere, to bloody the world with rampant life. He didn’t understand why until, frowning, he looked back down at the town surrounding home. The buildings tired, asleep, not a brick out of place. Fake.

I like real things. Living things, organic, biological things that, once created, breathe and grow and fly and…and ultimately die, I suppose. It isn’t something that needs to be optimised, it certainly can’t be fixed.

He burrowed into his pocket and once again took out his phone. He took a long, breezy, sigh and took a step back onto the smooth, flat sidewalk. I don’t want to create fake things.

Yeung-Sung followed the left fork fiercely. He marched, his body and mind in rigid accompaniment. He didn’t feel groggy and his beating chest kept him warm. He was a stubborn child. Blindly recalling his way back home after running away. He passed the models in the fashion shop window, the café, the ominous community centre concealed in the distance. Striding past them, he felt only a single sigh of relief as his attention was drawn to the phone.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Holding no hope, he stabbed out the word after word into Airgead.

SEED

TREE

LEAF

The screen shook at each suggestion. [Try Again; Remember to pick a craftable item]

He was quickly running out of things he knew how to spell, and had to start guessing aimlessly, laughing at the suggestions the autocorrect came up with. [Did you mean; Roof-Architecture?] Yeung-Sung knew that he could harvest raw materials if he wanted to; different stones; woods; metals; plants, but that idea did not appeal to him. And besides, he didn’t care for the idea that his efforts would be used to construct another pointless sword or helmet by another coloner. If the AI could allow him to conjure up a sickle just for the tutorial, then there had to be more complexity in the general game. There must be something I can do and enjoy.

Frustrated, he looked up to rethink, and found himself in the midst of a thicker blanket of darkness than before. The winding estates and their ghost homes were winding around him. The only colour he could distinguish was the red brick of the street walls, with the occasional open gap. But which one is the right entrance? Keeping his phone lit and out in front, he quickened his step. IN this quivering run, he crossed from one far-flung streetlamp to another. His neck-hair prickled at the bumpy heads of houses over the walls. flitting by the sides of his vision. He ran. He struggled with the strain of keeping his arm straight out, wobbling like a dislodged headlight. It illuminated only a tiny globule of light around him, and so he was sure that he had missed several entrances in his blind spots.

Reaching a corner, past a garden mound leading up to a cottage, he saw his apartment building with a fragment of the rooms still with their lights on. Lining up with that was a cul-de-sac blocked by a half-sized gate. Relaxing, Yeung-Sung swung the creaky thing aside and went back to his phone, thinking about how the odd apartments looked like some half-carved monolith -with the fleshy red banana wood for an interior.

Prompted by his own body, he suddenly had the idea to try and enter in food. He licked his lips and thought for a moment. In the privacy of the phone light, he sniffed a laugh out of his nose and typed out SALAD. Almost drowned out by his phone soft clicking as he typed it out, a noise caught Yeung-Sung’s attention. What was that? A cough, a laugh? Was it just an echo? No. He directed his phone out to behind a side of a house. Something flickered, fading just out of sight. Trying to hide itself?

He broke into a run. Heading straight towards the apartment lights, locking his phone. He took no risks, clenching his body even as he forced himself to lurch each foot forward, letting only little breaths huff out of his nose. He didn’t look back. He didn’t consider that he was overreacting.

Thankfully, he was closer than he thought. Beyond the estate lay a wide field, a lone caretaker of a lamp swaying its light between its length. Just before clearing the last house, Yeung-Sung allowed himself a full breath -and his guts tugged him down. He felt the beer re-froth, felt it careen up his throat. Clutching at his sides, he staggered and felt around with his hands. He regained his balance with his hands pressed against the stone pores of one the final house’s wall. He flared his being and expelled it.

It came out as hot slush which splattered like all along the wall, its momentum bouncing it across into the garden. Yeung-Sung scraped his hands white and left the wall. Shivering now, he looked down to his feet, trying to at least not get the filth on his shoes. He hugged himself, tried to holdfast against this torrential feeling of emptiness, when he took a second step and a metal bar smashed into the back of his head.