When Chris woke up, he realized he was stuck in a maze.

He was in a small chamber, with four exits, and in the dim light, he could see that corridors stretched off and made abrupt turns off into the distance.

He tried to remember how he had gotten here, but his hazy memory gave no answer. In fact, other than his name — Chris — he could remember little else. There were giant, gaping holes where his life should be. It was obvious that he had a past, that he was someone, but the specific details escaped him.

His head throbbed dully and his muscles ached, but after a time, he was able to pull himself up off the floor and to his feet. He walked unsteadily over to the nearby wall to get a closer look.

The wall was made of stone, with no joints or seams to betray its construction method. It was completely smooth and featureless. There was light coming from somewhere, but Chris could not locate any obvious source.

All of these words — wall, stone, light — came easily into Chris’ mind, but beyond that his memory was a complete void.

He decided to explore. He picked a corridor and set off. The hallway was fashioned out of the same featureless stone as the room he had woken up in, and he followed it a short distance before he was presented with a crossroads — another corridor intersected the one he was traveling down. Peering to the right and left revealed more of the same — more halls and more intersections. Chris decided to go for a while, always taking the right hand corridor.

Time went by. It could have been a few minutes, it could have been a few days — the sameness of the corridors and the consistency of the light gave no hint of the passage of time. Chris arrived in a small chamber. It appeared to be the same one he had left, but he had no way to know for sure. For the first time, Chris glanced down at himself. He was wearing a loose fitting white shirt, and a pair of baggy pants. Shirt. Pants. That’s what these things are called, Chris thought to himself. These are clothes, and I don’t know who or where I am. He sighed audibly.

He reached into the pockets of his pants and found a small, wadded up piece of cloth, which gave him an idea. He set the cloth in the center of the room, and set out once again, always taking the right-hand passageway. After another interval of time, he came upon a small chamber. In the center of the chamber was the piece of cloth.

He began other patterns – always take the left-hand passage, left-right-left, left-left-right – and the result was always the same. After some indeterminate period of time, he ended up back in the same chamber, with the same small piece of cloth sitting in the middle. Tired and exasperated, he picked up the cloth and shoved it back into his pants pocket. He lay back against the wall, his eyes heavy with sleep.

When Chris woke up, he realized he was stuck in a maze.

Jane sent me this:

Click for bigger. I have no words.

Dave, Rachel, Jane and I built a large part of Jacob’s new room today!  All that’s left is finishing the door, drywall, mudding, patching, texturing, painting, and trim.  Wow, that’s a lot left.

Here are some pics of the progress we made:

View all of the photos!

So, I have 8 days to write a 5,000 word short story.  That’s the equivalent of about 10 of my “Tiny Fictions”.  In that same time, I’m going to be starting constuction on the loft.

It’s possible I may miss my goal for one short story a month.  We’ll see. I actually have an idea and the basic outline of a story in my head, I just need to get started and get words on paper (so to speak).

We’ll see…

The final game design walkthrough thing for SYWTBK has been posted. Enjoy!

Jeff was playing the most important game.

It was a game of chess, and the stakes were very high — the highest, in fact.

He was playing for his life.  His opponent:  none other than the Grim Reaper himself.

It was Jeff’s move.  He fidgeted nervously, and patted down his pockets.  He found an almost empty pack of cigarrettes and fished one out and placed in between his dry lips.  He searched for a moment more and silently cursed his forgetfulness as he remembered leaving his lighter sitting on his bedside table.

“Got a light?” he said hopefully to the being sitting across the table.

Death answered with a silent stare, his hollow eye sockets betraying no hint that The Reaper had even heard Jeff.

Jeff spat out the cigarette and returned to the game.  Trying to decide between moving his rook and his bishop, his thoughts drifted back to earlier in the day, before all this happened.  Time seemed to move very slowly, like every second was a year.

Jeff was a typical twenty-something do-nothing slacker.  He had a job changing back-up tapes in a giant data center, and the rest of his time was split between parties, bars and sleep, not necessarily in that order.  Jeff had spent the night working, as usually, then slept most of the day. He was walking to meet his friends at his favorite pool hall, when he had been dragged into an alley, stabbed and his wallet stolen.  He lay bleeding in the dark, and had seen Death approach.  The Grim Reaper was seven feet tall and carried an honest-to-goodness scythe, honed to a sickening sharpness.  Jeff remembered seeing “The Seventh Seal” back in a film appreciation class and with his last breath, challenged Death to a game of chess.  The next thing Jeff knew, he was in a windowless room, sitting across a richly-appointed chessboard from the Grim Reaper.

Death made a gesture, which brought Jeff out of his reprieve and back to the moment.  His hand was hovering over his bishop, and apparently had been for some time.  The Grim Reaper was making that “get on with it” hand gesture, which in any other circumstances would have been hilarious to Jeff, but for some reason, with his life on the line, wasn’t.  Jeff finally committed to the bishop, and nervously moved it to take The Reaper’s knight.

Jeff thought he perceived something.  Something about the move seemed to have unnerved Death, if such a thing was possible.  If The Reaper had a beard hanging from its fleshless skull, Jeff could have imagined the being stroking it just then.  After a moment’s hesitation, which seemed to last forever, Death took Jeff’s bishop with his queen.

Examining the board, Jeff knew he had won, and looked up up at death with a giant grin.  Jeff could see The Reaper examining the board, and after a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Death reached out a bony finger and gently tipped his king over.  Jeff heard a rush of wind, and the room and The Grim Reaper faded away, leaving Jeff standing in a dusty ruin.  Jeff gaped and looked around, but he knew the truth, almost immediately.

The game had, in fact, taken an eternity, and he was utterly alone in the wasteland that was once his city.

Jeff sat down in the dust and began to cry.

Walter Wiggensbottom had a giant, shaggy, white beard.  He was extremely proud of it — “It’s taken me forty years to grow this thing!” he would tell his friends.  Walter also had a giant problem.  For the last five years, he had only been able to find work as Santa.  Walter hated playing Santa, but did it reluctantly in order to pay the bills until his retirement kicked in.  At 62 years old, he still had four more years until his social security kicked in, and Walter hadn’t been lucky.  He had worked for a small manufacturing company his entire working life but they had gone out of business six years ago and taken his pension with them.

Walter was very, very good at playing Santa.  The kids all truly believed, and even though Walter was a reluctant Santa, he took his work seriously and played the part well.

Until the day he met little Jimmy Sandborne.  Little Jimmy was the kind of kid who made rotten kids look like little angels.  He was nine years old, and most of his family secretly hoped he would get in some serious trouble with the law so they wouldn’t have to deal with him any more.  At nine, he already amassed an impressive resume of thievery, arson and vandalism.  He also had a smile that could melt an iceburg and a rogue’s charm — he got away with everything he did.

It was the 18th of December when Walter and little Jimmy met. Walter was once again filling his role as Santa at a local mall, and Jimmy had berated his tired mother to take him shopping until she finally gave in.  Jimmy got what Jimmy wanted.  As soon as Jimmy spotted Walter, Jimmy knew who his latest victim would be.

“Mommy, I want a picture with Santa!” he demanded.  His mother nodded mutely and walked over to the booth where Walter was stationed and paid the $10.00 for a picture.

Jimmy slowly approached Walter and slid into his lap, his best smile in place.

“Ho Ho Ho little man!” Walter started his normal schtick, “what would you like for Christmas this year?”

Jimmy looked around to make sure no one was watching, then threw himself on the ground and started screaming bloody murder.  Walter stood up in a panic.  Jimmy was shouting “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” over and over.  Jimmy’s mother came over reluctantly.

“What’s wrong Jimmy?” she asked.

“Santa touched me in my private parts!” he screamed, pointing at Walter.  Walter was dumbfounded.

“I certainly did not! I would never!” he protested.  Jimmy’s mother picked up the screaming boy, who by this point had started gyrating violently.

“I know you didn’t” she said, “he does this all the time.”  She apologized and dragged the screaming youth away.

The very next day, Walter shaved his beard.

The first official screenshot from So You Want To Be King.  This the the world map, with randomly generated terrain, and roads connecting all of the cities.  The capitol city is highlighted with blue, the player’s city is highlighted with yellow.

Jason the Physicist knew it was going to be an interesting evening when the alien walked into his bar.  Jason had dealt with his share of odd an interesting events (like the time he helped the folks at CERN save the world from a tiny black hole they’d accidentally created, or that wacky time-travel incident back in college), but he had never actually seen an extra-terrestrial.  The alien slapped a tentacle on the bar.

“Whiskey”, it said, sounding very much like Stephen Hawking.  Jason peered around for the source of the word, and finally settled on a small black box on the creature’s belt.  The box looked like it had been put together from parts obtained at Radio Shack.  In fact, upon closer examination, Jason saw the tellate cirle R logo in raised platic on the front of the box, next to a small speaker whose wires disappared into the innards of the box.

Jason looked at the alien closely, trying to decide which appendage he should address as the alien’s face, and settled on a likley lump of green tissue that had a small fissure that might be the creature’s mouth.

“Well or call?” Jason asked, completly serious.

“Canadian Club,” the alien replied, “and you can call me, for lack of a better word, Max”.  The words came out of the small voice box with a methodical, almost dream-like slowness.

Jason nodded and fetched Max’s drink.  When he returned, Max wrapped one of its smaller tentacles around the glass and raised it to the fissure, which opened to reveal row after row of fearsome teeth.  The alien dumped the contents of the glass down this ghastly gullet.

“So, what brings you to town?” Jason asked, and immediatly realized that the alien must get that line all the time.

“Actually, my band needs a bass player, and I was hoping you’d be interested.” Max replied, as if such requests were the most normal thing on Earth (or any other planet).  In addition to owning the bar, Jason was also a fearsome bass player, although it had been years since he’d played in a band — running the bar took too much of his time.

Jason thought carefully, and then replied “What instrument do you play in the band?”

“I’m the singer.” the alien replied. Jason could swear the ends of the creatures “mouth” turned up in a grin.

Jason blinked, and thought for another  moment and asked “Of all of the bass players on Earth, why me?”.

“There aren’t many physicists on the planet who can rock like you do, we’re all big fans” the alien replied.  The Hawking-like tones produced by the black box added a serious tone to the creatures utterings. “and we are also in need of your abilities as one of the foremost physicists on the planet.  We have a particular problem that we need help solving”.

Jason thought of the last time he had to use his abilities as a physicist, when the Earth was on the verge of getting sucked into itself, and what a pain in the ass that whole adventure turned out to be.  He thought for a long moment and finally replied.

“I don’t believe in aliens, and it’s closing time.” he said.

Max looked stunned (or at least Jason imagined that he did), and after a time, turned and made his way out of Jason’s bar.

Jason locked up for the night and began turning chairs on top of tables.

I created a page to track my goals for this year:

Goals for 2009

I haven’t done great on the goals I posted late last year, but I did make some progress.  I did publish 4 pieces of Tiny Fiction, which is better than none. I also spend some time working on WGTA, but decided to just start over because I wanted to change a lot of stuff under the hood.  I also started yet another game, SYWTBK. Sometimes, my ADD can be really annoying.

Ah well, I’ll do better in 2009!