8 New World? (1/2)
A voice echoed in my dreamlike state.
”How strong is your will to live?”
I opened my eyes as the light dissipated from existence. A high pitched ringing noise resonated within my head. I was lying down on my bed looking straight up at the ceiling. As I became fully conscious, I realized that I had a small headache.
*What happened last night? I'm not hungover, am I?*
I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand and scolded myself.
*What are you doing... the last of the exams are today!*
I was still wrapped up in the comfort of my blanket, and my body refused to leave its warmth. I knew that if I got up, I'd be hit with a blast of cold air from my poorly ventilated room. But now was no time to sit around. Finals were important, after all. I couldn't just go about failing my cla.s.ses. With the energy of a thousand suns, I pushed my back off of the mattress until I was sitting upright. My headache intensified.
*Just gotta get some water...*
I stretched over to my nightstand where I normally kept my metal water bottle. And thank goodness it was there. After quickly downing the contents of the container into my mouth, my headache eased slightly. As my groggy brain stabilized, I noticed that I hadn't changed out of what clothes I was wearing yesterday.
*You lazy f.u.c.k... you somehow made it to your own room, but couldn't spare the extra effort to get these last bits of clothes off of yourself before hopping into bed... disgusting.*
Berating myself, I walked over to check on what was really important. My computer. And the chess match from yesterday. Or was it two days ago? Not bothering to remember petty details like that, I hastily opened the replay. My opponent was... someone, but that wasn't the important part. What was important was that I had lost miserably. There couldn't be that many people that I knew personally that could beat me so easily. One of them was the president of the school chess club, and my friend...
...
*Huh? Why can't I remember his name? What's going on?*
I couldn't remember the name of my best friend. Or was he my friend at all? Who was he? All I remember was what he vaguely looked like. Maybe some of the color palettes that you could use to paint a picture of him, but that was it... I must have really hit my head on something if I was drunk.
*Come to think of it, my chess match was supposed to be against Jeanna, wasn't it? When is this from?*
I checked the date on the file.
1/1/1970. The beginning of Unix time.
*That's really odd... did I factory reset my computer a few days ago?*
I checked the current date on the bottom right corner of the screen. 1/3/1970.
*So the game was not yesterday's, but the day before... ahh, I must've seriously gone all out yesterday, then. I don't remember a thing.*
As I glanced at the bottom right of the monitor, I realized something else.
*No WiFi?*
I clicked on the icon. But it revealed nothing.
*No internet connections available?*
This was really strange. Even if the router in our own home was going haywire, the computer should at least pick up the surrounding signals from neighboring houses. But that wasn't the case here. There was radio silence.
*Well, the internal WiFi card might be busted... whatever, I really don't want to check on that right now.*
It was already past seven o clock. Less than an hour before school. This time, I really *had* nearly overslept. Maybe I should've been grateful for my parents waking me up a little early the past couple of days.
I put on some new clothes, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and headed towards the door leading out the hallway all under three minutes.
Once I closed the door behind me, I immediately noticed a few differences in the hallway alone.
First, the painting with only the us, the Xu children, as kids. This photo clearly had to be doctored, because I'd never seen it before.
*Or maybe it was a second take that went well?*
Jeanna and I were identical to the one I previously knew - she still had the confident smile and gesture to go along with it, and I was but a small child looking clueless as always. The difference was with the twins. Rather than looking away from each other contemptuously, they were instead grinning at the camera like they seriously meant it. A perfect pose for the picture. Seeing both of them like that was slightly unnerving. They always had some sort of argument going on, so how could they fabricate this genuine sort of smile right away?