Sci-Fi+Story+ICS16DO2

Title: **Game Over**
 * Sci-Fi Short Story**

It is the summertime. You are at home deciding what video game to play. You recently received an Xbox One, so you bought some Call of Duty (COD) games to play. Your friend calls you on Skype and asks, "Hey, what game do you want to play? Do you want to play COD: Ghosts, Extinction (go to paragraph 2) or COD: Black Ops 3, Zombies (go to paragraph 3)?"

"OK, I'll just play Ghosts," you say. He agrees. You both put the game in. You close the curtains because you like it dark. You turn up the volume on the headphones. A few hours later, you hear him screaming over the headset. "AAARRGGGHH!!!! REAL ALIENS!?" "Oww! Would you stop screaming!?" You turn down the volume on the headset. "Of course there are aliens. We're playing Extinction." Your friend disconnects from the call, and then you see a phrase on the top of the screen saying, //"Player: xXHackerzRuleXx has disconnected//.//"// "Aww man (sarcastically)...now only I can get the rewards. Oh well." As you continue to play, you realize that your brother is trying to talk to you. You take off your headphones and listen. Your 7 year-old brother asks you to play. "No, you can't play. I already started the game. If you join now, then I have to restart the whole game." Even if you let him join, he would have to play split-screen mode, and no one likes to do that. He starts "crying" and heads downstairs, and you continue to play. About an hour later, you hear him scream, "AAAAHHHHHH!!! ALIENS!!! Help me!!" Would you like to go see what's happening downstairs (paragraph 4) or would you like to keep playing the game (paragraph 5 and 6)?

"OK, I'll just play BO3." you say. He says OK. You both put the game in. As you are both playing, you hear an unusual growl on the headset, and you hear someone pounding on your front door, at the same time. "Hey, who's at the front door?" You then hear on the headset, "AHHHHH!! I should've bought the zombie survival guide!!!" The call abruptly disconnects, then you see a phrase pop up on the screen, //Player: xXHackerzRuleXx has disconnected//. You then hear the same groans at your house like you did on the headset. You hear your brother scream, "AAAAHHHHH!! Zombies!?!? Ow! Why did you bite me..." A few minutes later, you see your brother, but...different. His skin now has a slight green texture to it, and his eyes are gray, instead of their natural hazel color. "Oh my gosh, what happened to you? You look like a zombie!" He then starts to sprint straight at you, and in those few seconds, you then realize that he is a zombie. You start to panic, but you take too long to think of an idea, and he's standing in front of you. He bites your arm, and you scream in pain. Then, for some reason, he leaves. As the pain starts to ease, you start to panic even more. You have so many questions. Why did he leave? How did he become a zombie? Why aren't I a zombie yet? You suddenly become dizzy. Your vision is starting to fail you. You stop to think, but your thinking stops. You groan, then you fall to the ground. You've died, but you're still alive. You run down the stairs. You then go outside to join the apocalypse. As you are running toward a survivor, a truck slams into your body. You feel no pain, and your limbs are everywhere. Game Over.

You go downstairs, thinking //why do you always have to scream about imaginary characters all the// //time?// You head to your backyard, because that is where he usually plays. Instead of seeing the very green grass, you see a huge crater, and a transparent huge green beam coming from up above. Your brother is in it. //Uh-oh.// You start running away, and you run into an alien. You run the other way, but then it shoots you in the back. It watches you as your body slowly disintegrates into thin air. Game Over.

You continue to play Extinction, thinking, //Why does he always have to scream all the time about his imagination? He's only thinking and playing around.// About 2 hours later, you beat the game. "Yes! I finally beat Extinction. All those YouTube Walkthroughs have worked. I need to tell someone about it." You go downstairs to tell your brother, because if you're good at anything, he praises it. You go to your backyard because that is where he usually plays. Instead of finding that green grass, you find a huge crater in your backyard. "What happened here?" You then go to the front yard of your house. About half of the houses on your street are on fire. The streets seem eerily quiet, other than the crackling of the burning houses. You start to panic. Questions start running through your head. Why are these houses on fire? What should I do about this? You go back to your room, trying to convince yourself that this is all just a dream. Then the real aliens came. All the skill you had in the game didn't really help in real life. Instead of abducting you like all the other humans, they used a Wave Gun and shot you. Game Over. (paragraph 6).

Years later, a different alien comes up to your dead corpse. He looks into your past to see if you've done any good in your life. It sees that you didn't, but that you had a lot of potential in your life. It gives you a second chance to redeem yourself by using the Turboencabulator, as he revives and time travels you back in time to where you have a second chance (paragraph 1).