I cleared the scenario. I could still remember what I saw when I did.
[You have unlocked the "First Kill" achievement!]
[You have earned 100 coins!]
[You have earned 100 coins!]
[You have earned 100 coins!]
[You have earned 100 coins!]
[You have earned 100 coins!]
[You have earned 100 coins!]
[Due to killing non-resistant organisms, the number of coins you obtained has been halved.]
[You have unlocked the "Decimator" achievement!]
System Notifications hammered my vision, shattering my perception of reality once again. It was real. Completely real.
[You have a total of 350 coins.]
Once I received the payout from the end of the First Scenario, I should have a healthy amount of 650 coins. Nothing to exclaim about, but nothing to scoff at. An admirable amount, to say the least.
Now it was time for preparations. In any real-life survival scenario, hunkering down and taking stock is the best option. But these were System survival scenarios, which prioritized one thing: entertainment. What is the core aspect of entertainment? Constant speed and rushing dopamine hits. There will be no lulls, nothing as "boring" as hunkering down and staying safe. That isn't what they wanted.
It means I couldn't stay here. I have to keep going.
I turned around to go back inside, but something gave me pause. It was a noise - a scraping sound, like rubber on gritty concrete. The type of sound a soled foot would make. A footstep...
I remember now. I was so lost in thinking about the scenarios, I forgot about my real-life situation... and how it'd look with the Scenario System.
(That homeless bastard!)
I wheeled around to my left, and in the third townhouse unit, I saw him - a homeless man.
(You.)
Rage and resentment begin to boil within me. It came so suddenly, I almost surprised myself.
Living in the East Side shows you a variety of people - individuals so wacky or downright horrible, you're surprised they exist in real life. Abusive parents who are children themselves, children who are off the wall, and weak adults who can't do anything about it all.
Don't forget the people who're aiding and abetting this slew of behavior with their own.
(Such as crappy neighbors who take care of their homeless, drugged-out children.)
That was the problem I faced as an East Side resident. No matter how normal I wanted my life to be, it'd be ruined by the people around me. They were the Vandals to my Rome.
One such vandal was the man staring at me right now, a haggard, disgusting, homeless man.
"You," I growled out loud.
***
I may or may not hate the homeless. I know, I know, it's wrong to hate people for their circumstances, or to generalize, but let me make some counterarguments and give a few explanations.
First, I live in Washington. We're not as bad as California, but Washington and Oregon mimic their Silicon Valley bullshit and wealth disparity. It's our economic and social bread and butter. We create the problems, then splash bright colors and happy words on everything to trick the populace into feeling better, like they're doing something.
Nah, the West Coast breeds poor people and homeless fuckers like yeast.
If the East Coast is old school, the West Coast are the annoying new kids on the block with their new toys.
Honestly, being poor isn't too bad at times. Just hang out with your friends, go to their house, and share the Xbox controller. Gather the wealth you have and share it with your friends and family.
But - and they're always a but - that wealth disparity breeds something else. They're people who are discontent and disillusioned. It wears them down. It's like dying of thirst while seeing countless people have pools of water. Some people... their minds just break.
They turn into the Defeated. That's what I call them. The ones who just lay down and wait to die, never wanting more for themselves. Content to go to food banks and wander, obstructing the lives of others with their unruly presence.
I learned that there are two types of homeless people - the ones who hate their current circumstances, who'd do anything to get out of it. Give them programs and support, and they'll be back on their feet in a few months and become a regular citizen once again - with a side dish of trauma, though.
Then there's the latter. There's... something about them I can't understand. Their behavior is childish and impaired like they never grew up. They're absolutely crazy, stuck in their own worlds where they're the victim and everyone else is the enemy. Sometimes they try to masquerade with normalcy, but their pathetic lives are too evident for people to accept them. They stick out like a societal sore thumb.
Sometimes they take drugs - whatever new shit that's being peddled in the city streets. Sometimes they don't need it because their minds are already screwed up as it is. Sometimes I feel bad for them and wish that we had better mental health facilities.
"What are you looking at, n*gga?"
I grip my knife.
(Sometimes I'd wish they'd all just die.)
This is the East Side. Getting called the n-word or any slur is child's play. Shit doesn't piss me off. It's the people who think they have the right to say it.
This homeless guy? He's the latter version of homeless people, one of the Defeated. He's also Southeast Asian and somewhere in his forties, but he's still a failure. His old mother, that old crone, lets him muck around in the neighborhood even though property management has told him to piss off several times before. She feeds him, and allows him to sleep on her porch - he's more of an animal than a human.
He's also a creep and a criminal with multiple charges on his record, possession of drugs being one of them. My mom got so scared of the guy, she looked him up and found out.
It's no wonder that the guy's mother keeps him at bay.
(If only she was strong enough to cut him off completely.)
She isn't a victim though. Every time the police were called on her criminal son, she'd speak her mother tongue - some Southeast Asian language - and pretend she didn't speak a lick of English to the cops.
Which is another lie. I remember being an angry little kid; it pissed me off that my neighborhood had to deal with a creepy homeless dude. The number of times I had to stop playing with my friends and go back inside because of this guy wandering about - something inside of me sparked with rage back then.
So, I threw a rock at her house, which was pretty stupid since her unit is connected to mine. I ran away before anyone saw me and silently dove into my house, but would you believe it? She walked around for a few minutes, yelling, "Who threw that rock?!" in accented English.
(So, a drug addict, a rule-breaker, and a parasite. What a beautiful trifecta.)
The rage... it's boiling inside of me. This entire rant inside of my head took so long to articulate, but the real-time it took up was a few seconds. Relativity once again. How funny.
(Calm. Be calm. Remember all the times mom told us to control our anger and breath out and-)
I break. Something inside of me snaps.
"Brave words, fuckwad. So, are you gonna do anything about it, or will you just crawl away like the fucking worm you are?"
The homeless guy grows visibly angry, but there's something mixed in with his expression - confusion. Hesitation and shock, masked with indignation. I keep on going.
"I'm staring at you, you piece of nobody shit."
The anger is spooling out. I'm trying to control it, but it's rushing out of a dam, bringing all the constructs to rubble. Once I get too angry, I'll lose coherency and will become a blubbering, seething mess. I hate being in that losing state.
He's cowering. It makes sense. This guy usually keeps to himself and whatever dumb homeless project he has, like tricking out his shopping cart with garbage. He only gets bold whenever he's on-
(-drugs.)
He's on drugs right now. Holy shit. Did he get mentally incapacitated right before the System Introduction?
(How can I use this to my advantage? Would he be easier to kill?)
Wait... what am I thinking?
(What a sociopathic thought. Plus, that might not be true.)
The brain and body have natural inhibitors that make a person protect themselves from danger. Drugs throw that out of wack. Ironically, he can be more dangerous now.
(I need to de-escalate.)
Another lesson from my mom, and something I learned from studying the military. Only enter a conflict you are confident to engage in; if not, disengage immediately and reassess.
(I can't kill a guy in the same clothes I slept in.)
A simple tee and shorts aren't my battle armor. I had more than this. I kept this guy in my line of sight, and we had a Mexican stand-off with our eyes. I walked sideways, keeping my chest facing his direction.
I learned that your body should be square to your opponent in a fight. Face them directly.
He began muttering things in an inebriated stupor as I finally reached my front door. I clenched my knife in a death grip, using my elbow to hit the doorknob and open the portal into my house.
My mother screamed my name once again. Finally, inside, I quickly shut the door and locked it. A weak barrier from the outside. Once you use coins to level up your strength, doors and barriers become nothing but a suggestion instead of an actual deterrent.
"Mom, he's out there," I shouted up the stairs.
She would instantly know what I meant. I felt bad for my mother. That monster outside was nothing to me, but to her, he was an object of fear. My mother had numerous run-ins with horrible men before.
(But I can't let her fear contaminate me.)
If need be, I'll kill him. I steeled my heart, but I don't know, I was-
(Shaking? Why am I shaking?)
Wasn't this the perfect chance? The scenarios - the Star Stream System - completely rewrites all of the rules and laws that our modern world tried so desperately to create and enforce.
(We just got reset.)
It would be gradual, but our morality and justice would be eroded until we returned to the feudal days of kings and dictators. Insular communities would rise from the remnants of society.
Crime, hate crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, every conceivable affront would now breed like bacteria in a Petri dish, spreading and infecting our world like a sickness.
(No one is going to protect me.)
I could no longer call 911. My mother can't get a restraining order like she used to. There will be no judge or jury because they're all dead right now, or being killed off in the First Scenario. If not then, they'd die later on, or become husks of what they used to be. Old justice is being killed off right now.
Our old systems are being replaced by the only system that matters now: the Star Stream.
(Nothing stops that homeless man from breaking into my house and killing me...)
Killing me, raping my mother, and having a hedonistic, masturbatory drug spree with himself. No police will be called, no one will respond to the 911 message, and no one will come to my house and sweep it for potential suspects. There will be no more arrests.
Fear assailed my heart. Heart-pounding, reality-shattering fear began to rise through my body and mind, but as soon as it was about to reach its apex, it faded.
(Huh?)
Where did it go? My body grew hot and cold all of a sudden, but cooled off and normalized. I felt normal again. What is this?
(Oh... I get it now.)
If anyone can hurt me, I can do the same. The old world is dead, and so are the consequences. All of the malice that the world has to offer, I can perpetuate as well and do it tenfold.
(I can do anything I want.)
For some reason, giddiness rose like shiny bubbles in my mind. My brain ran wild.
I imagine the sound of cracking bones, and flesh breaking under the impacts of a heavy object. I could hear the cries of agony mixed with grunts and the sucking of breath. Hands... hands are reaching out to me, but not to stop me, no one can stop me, the hands are trying to protect themselves, the main body, but I shatter the arms and the bones and then I hit the face and-
"-n!!"
I am once again taken out of my stupor. I could barely register my name being called. My mother, once again. This time, I'm grateful. I can't afford to get lost in fantasies.
"What are you doing?" She asks.
I turn to look. She's at the top of the stairwell that leads to the front door. She's staring down at me and I see her face... I don't like the expression it has. It's quizzical, slightly bewildered, but also...
(Filled with disappointment.)
Some type of disdain. I can't place it or decipher it, but I understand that expression.
(My mother doesn't understand me right now.)
And she won't bother to. Right now, I'm a foreign object in her orbit, one that she either has to scold or repress in order to return me to a malleable state that she can direct. The rage I felt towards the homeless man is aimed at her now.
My voice drops an octave. My tone is harder, heavier.
"I need to get to my room, Mom."
She doesn't attempt to move.
(Are you dense?) I think angrily.
I regret the thought as soon as it forms, but my anger is burning hot right now, and I'm practically stomping up the stairs, never taking my eyes off of her. Before I even get halfway, she moves back into her room.
(Finally.)
I'll need to grab everything that I have. I reach the top of the stairwell and look into my room. Everything that I own is in there. I'll need to thoroughly prepare.