The next global conflict will last approximately nine minutes and forty-three seconds

[ciphermitarai]

<!--and now, for what all of Unalaska High School has prophesized for years to come, eyes behind backs behind mouths spewing black ink-->

Ready?
GO!
[A08] Nathaniel Larson — START

Nate Larson was born anew in Cyber Reality, and even so he couldn't escape the vitriol of life. So this, then, was violence.

He couldn't quite help but to gamify it at first. That would save the shock for later, all of the shock of living through everything he had just seen—it was a game with no stakes; this much he could convince himself for the moment in service of movement. Stage one is denial, but the fear still remained, a legacy in that he would not mourn himself: what he would mourn was proving the people right. That this, ultimately, was the sort of person he was destined to be, someone so consumed by blood and hate that they lose themselves. And really, at one point, he did want to prove them wrong.

The gunshot still sang a melody in his mind. In all of his wild despair and panic, even as he cowered, a bit of his rage was liberated, dissipating into the air. Nate wasn't one to moralize about himself. No, if Nate wanted it, that didn't mean it was right, but it was right-er than everything else. This was the way in which he would put it.

Nate denied not the situation but his own fear. This was a game. That was all that this was. That's all that this was. Never mind the fact that he'd never graduated to "real shooters", anyway.

Oh, what would his mom think? What would his mom think of this nascent desire to play into the hands of such a violent game? What of his friends, the few that could be called such a thing? But Nate knew, ultimately, that calling it nascent would be far too generous, make him far too good of a person to have deserved any suffering here or otherwise. Because this would get shut down, he could just hold out until them, white-knuckling against the cold floor.

There was a bag, there. Only then did his eyes focus enough underneath the lens of his dark glasses to lock onto those. He wondered if the power-on icon he'd selected was still there. He wondered if there was anything to prophesize his fate instead of give way to this cold and uncertain future. He reached his hand into the curious abyss, still not feeling entirely himself even within Cyber. He felt like he was fading until his hand curled around something cold and hard.

Tiny ass pistol.
What the fuck?
Was this a joke?
This was the opposite of Nate's playstyle! Oh, he was so fucked.

The sense of opportunity afforded to him, the little sense of possible superiority, floated away, leaving only remnants of hope for survival. Calm only because in shock he felt nothing, he slowly rose to his feet, too stuck within his own head to register the virtual reality around him.

How was he going to die?

How was he going to die?

How was he going to keel over and scream into his own cupped hands?

One of those questions, at least, could be answered in the East Wing's first floor laboratory on the first day of hell.

Nate Larson continued in 54NITY.mp3.