Tag Archives: the cave

January 15, 2018 · 11:12 pm

Welcome to the Cave

I felt small as I glanced at the cave’s 10 foot tall entrance. I felt like a guppy about to be swallowed by a bigger fish’s mouth. Then the goosebumps broke out.

I inched forward as if I was wading through knee-high levels of snow. I nearly peed myself as I entered the cave and bumped into a set of teeth. My heart was about to burst, and my mouth hung open as I turned to notice the teeth were only a jagged set of rocks. I sighed, chuckled and moved forward with a smile on my face. Nothing was going to stop me from getting to the bottom of this place.

Just then I heard a lightning strike in the cave. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, I tripped over myself and fell face first into the dust. When I got up, I brushed the dirt off my face and shoulder, and I could see clearly now. A tiny pebble had fallen and the echo had frightened me into thinking I had heard lightning. I laughed at myself, “Imagine! A grown man afraid of a falling pebble. Get it together Adam.”

I came to what looked like the end of the cave. I glanced beneath me and saw a sort of ladder built into the crumbly mud with rotten wooden panels. I held my head high and then I started down below.

There was a constant dripping sound in the distance as I took each step. Each drop of water became a loud thud that caused the veins in my neck and head to bulge and my eyes to blink. To make matters worse, each wooden panel creaked as I moved. The dripping and creaking became something like an unsettling song that played in my head as I descended. I told myself that the song was precisely that, just something in my head. The cave was getting to me.

And that’s when the cave got under my skin. I nicked my finger on a rusty, ragged nail sticking out of a panel. I ignored the pain, the adrenaline pushing me forward, as I skipped one or two dilapidated panels. I reached the bottom of the cave. There was no more light.

I found myself at the beginning of a long, mud hallway, and now the dripping was as loud as thunder. As I moved through the hallway, I found the source of this sound: it was a tiny sink. I washed the cut on my finger and dried it with a nearby towel. I noticed mounds of dirty laundry all around the sink, and I gulped.

I turned the corner and saw a massive black rectangle, in landscape mode, that resembled the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As I squinted, I thought images were flickering on it. And I could have sworn there were hands moving behind the rectangle. In the foreground, no one could have missed the brown and bear-like couch.

Suddenly, a head popped up from the couch and turned around to face me. I stood deathly still as sweat ran down my cheek. I looked the other way, screwed up my face and closed my eyes. My face wore an expression: brace for impact.

“Hey dude,” said the head, “I’ve been playing video games all day. Care to join me?”

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June 15, 2014 · 10:19 am

A Warning from the Future

Some mysterious person sent me this strange email, and I thought you should read it.

I bring grave news from the future. In the year 2032 new video game technology will reduce all of humanity to brain-dead zombies. No one will resist it. Nothing can prevent this future.

People will bask in the warm glow of this technology all day and everyday. They will treat the screen like a helpless baby and never take their eyes off it. These poor zombies will see their eyes sink back into their heads until they look like prehistoric cavemen.

Don’t blame us; the technology was very impressive. It dwarfed any of the current virtual reality products that you know about. In fact, we marveled at how this new tech made the virtual world indistinguishable from reality. Games and life became the same thing. The lines were blurred.

After the blurry lines, it was a short descent into madness for the human race. It was also a short descent down into the Earth’s caves. In the caves, we sat in front of screens all day and played video games until we couldn’t see straight. Some people tried to escape, but few made it. No one could avert their eyes from the shiny allure of the screen.

I too fell victim to this technology. I sat in a cave for days, as if someone had crazy glued me to the seat, and watched images flicker on the screen. My future seemed bleak. The cave had swallowed me up.

One day a wise woman named Sophia broke into the cave. No one seemed to notice her except me. I moved away from the screen, which I had never done before and talked to her.

“You still have some life in you,” she said. As she looked at my pale face, she spoke again, “You might still know the truth when you see it.”

She grabbed me by the arm and took me to a long ladder behind the screen. Light bathed the glittering ladder. But where was the light coming from?

As we climbed the ladder in a plodding fashion, I saw a crouched person behind the screen. He was flipping switches to control every game we played. He controlled us like puppets all along. My face and hands burned with such a fiery rage that I almost melted the wooden ladder with my anger.

When outside, the sun shone so bright it almost blinded me. My muscles were still too weak to move. It hurt but I was free.

I finally saw the source of the light: a huge golden orb that shone in the sky. The orb represented the good that I had traded in for the coldness of the cave.

“Now you know the truth,” said the old woman, “they deceived you.”

And now you know the truth too. Beware the technology of 2032.

Meh! I thought the email was a spammy scare tactic. I deleted it.

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