Fat - Judy Albietz

Peter jerked his head up to squint at the screen. It was 4:30 a.m. and the game was still running—and killing—all by itself. Hmmm….looks like the game has gone into a loop. He wondered how long he had been asleep, with his face plastered on a page of the open magazine which was being used as a napkin. Brushing off the hard flakes of cheesy tomato sauce from the left side of his face, Peter stood up and stretched. He patted his skinny middle with both hands and thought about eating. Reaching across his desk for one of the remaining slices of pizza, Peter ripped off a slice, folded it and stuffed it into his mouth. The fat which had once dripped from the cheese had now seriously congealed the pizza slices onto the box. It was impossible to tell the difference between that hard once-oily substance and the cardboard it was glued on. There was still one slice left for lunch.

As he ate his rubbery breakfast, Peter studied the screen. The game hadn’t been looping. It had moved up levels independent of his input. Peter looked at his log and saw that he must have fallen asleep at level 23. He saw at the bottom of the scoreboard that another log had been created with no name. That was impossible since he had designed the game in single-player mode only. Flipping to that other log, Peter was hit with the first stages of uneasiness when he saw that “No Name” had moved to level 141, score: 4,512 dead monkeys. The game action in front of him was actually being played by No Name, according to the timer records.

Time to re-boot. First Peter tried to re-start the game. No response. The game just moved to a new level—now level 142, score: 4,544 monkeys killed. Peter decided it was time to shut down the computer and re-start. That didn’t work either. The computer didn’t respond to any of Peter’s commands and the on/off switch was frozen. Still chewing, Peter yelled, “You leave me no choice. I’m pulling the plug.”