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Rated: ASR · Short Story · Dark · #1675469
A short story criticizing modern abuse of technology, specifically PCs and the internet.
A small, pale kid, about eleven years old is sitting in front of a computer in a dark, barren room, the only light emitted by the flickering computer screen. Silently, the child clicks through hundreds of pictures of hundreds of different people.
This one has a long angular face, long black hair with black clothes. Click. This one has mid-length hair in his eyes, wearing a t-shirt, skinny jeans and eyeliner. Click. This one has a Victorian-Era suit embellished with gears. Click. This one has short, spiked hair, a casual button-up shirt and distressed jeans. Click. This one has fake neon hair, platform boots and crazy goggles. Click. This one has modest, side-swept hair and a professional-looking suit.
The child no longer resembles his youthful self though. His t-shirt is stained and stretched across his grossly overweight body.  His hair begins falling out in tufts, drifting to the cold cement floor around his hulking shape.
Hunched over in front of the monitor, pictures flit by at an ever-increasing speed, until they become blurs. Abruptly, the pictures stop, displaying an old man, the mouth sunk in, dark circles under the blood-shot eyes staring from the photo. The man’s frail and withered left hand is raised, reaching towards the sky. The aged child raises his hand to mimic it, his knobby hand resembling the picture. His eyes are sunken and his mouth a small slit in his wrinkled, sagging face. Satisfied, he lowers his hand and continues flipping through the photos. With each click, he ages still more.
Finally, with one last shuddering breathe, his head falls onto the keyboard. A series of error tones are heard as his now lifeless form presses numerous keys. He continues to decay and his body becomes a dried husk. The eye sockets are deep and hollow. His body becomes nothing more than a skeleton, and then crumbles completely to dust in between the ever-present keys of the keyboard. During all of this, the screen still flickers and glows brightly.
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