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To Be or Not To Be

Page 20

by Ryan North


  THE END

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  This shouldn’t surprise you, but surprise! They’re too big to fit. Limbs sticking out of the pot, lifeless eyes staring at you accusingly, etc. You begin to cannibalistically consume the remains of your ex-girlfriend’s father when the door opens. You turn to face whoever’s at the door, Polonius’s left arm hanging from your mouth by the fingers.

  Congratulations! It’s hard to look guiltier than this!

  A little while later, Claudius puts you to death for your crime. You notice how it didn’t take him very long between “deciding something needs to be done” and “doing it,” which MAYBE is a lesson you could learn for next time?

  Hah hah, listen to me: “next time.” There’s no next time! You’re totally dead!!

  THE END

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  You whistle and sit yourself down on the floor in the middle of the room. That seems a little awkward, so you stretch out on your side, your arm supporting your head and your other arm resting on your hips. There! Nobody could be more casual than you!

  The door opens and who should enter but Corambis, Polonius’s twin brother! You recognize him from the royal courts.

  “I unlocked the door, so you can leave no—” he begins, but then he trips over the twine, stumbling into you. He trips over you and into the curtain, pulling it off its rod. You turn around just in time to see the curtain-encumbered body of Corambis fall out the window. You get up and look out the window and see Corambis’s body smushed into the ground. It’s actually hard to tell where Corambis ends and the ground begins. It’s probably the grossest thing you’ve ever seen.

  Turning around, you see Claudius standing at the entrance to the room. “Whatcha looking at?” he says. In the next few seconds he will look out the window, see what you did, and put you to death himself by shoving you out the window. In the seconds before he does that, you have time to do one thing though. You decide to answer his question.

  “Um, nothing?” you say.

  Anyway, a few seconds later he puts you to death and you die from overdosing on falling from a great height onto hard ground!

  THE END

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  You jump out of the window, holding onto your hot air balloons, and escape to freedom!

  So here’s the thing: these balloons have enough lift to carry you and then some, which means when you grab hold of all your hot air balloons and jump out the window, your jump keeps going higher and higher. Before you realize what’s happening, you’re extremely high above the ground and gaining altitude steadily.

  You can let go of one balloon in order to reduce your lift, but if you reduce it too much, you’ll start falling at an ever-accelerating pace and hit the ground too fast. On the other hand, you can’t hold on to these balloons forever. Eventually you’ll slip and let go of all of them, in which case you’ll be dead for sure. But maybe you’ll be over water at that point and survive? Somehow?

  » Hold on to balloons as long as you can «

  » Let go of the smallest balloon and hope for a soft landing «

  * * *

  * * *

  Okay, you eat the stew.

  You know, this would’ve been a really good stew if someone hadn’t put human flesh in it. Even if it had been removed later, it’s still gonna be a stew that had human in it. That’s gross. The stew is gross.

  You get caught eating gross stew and it’s obvious you’re the murderer and you get killed; your last words are “Owie ouch, I’m serious, ouch.”

  If only you hadn’t chosen to kill Polonius for no reason or, failing that, had chosen to kill Polonius for no reason and disposed of the body in a clever way! Oh well. As they say, if wishes were horses, we’d all be horses!

  Your final score is irrelevant: you ate a person and that’s so gross that I kinda don’t want to have anything to do with you any longer,

  THE END.

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  When you are out of turns, the door opens and who should enter but Corambis, Polonius’s twin brother! You recognize him from the royal courts.

  “I unlocked the door, so you can leave no—” he begins, but then he trips over the twine, stumbling into the body parts you’ve left in the middle of the room. Incredibly, they do function as intended, and his leg is instantly tangled in your bolas. He trips over the body parts, falling to the ground. On the ground he gets a good look at what’s happened in this room and he begins to scream and also vomit everywhere.

  This is turning into a difficult day. It turns into a much more difficult day after you get killed for those awful, awful things you did to Polonius!

  Nobody even likes your bolas!

  THE END

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  You grab hold of your chair with both hands and hold on tight as your ship shudders around you. Outside, in space, blaster fire from the Deltron ship comes within a few degrees Kelvin of lighting your ship’s hull on fire.

  “Return fire!” you order. “Give them everything we’ve got!”

  Your first officer unleashes a torrent of energy and hardware at the Deltron ship, enough to destroy just about any ship in your fleet.

  It barely scratches the Deltron hull.

  You’re running out of options, Captain. What do you do?

  » Ramming speed! «

  » Evasive manoeuvres! «

  » Engage...the Omega Protocol! «

  * * *

  * * *

  “But, Captain!” shouts your first officer. “The Omega Protocol is untested! We don’t know what effects it’ll have on the space-time continuum!”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” you bark. “It’s that or die. Do you want to die today, Commander?”

  “I guess not,” she shrugs.

  “Then I suggest you engage the Protocol, Commander.”

  Your first officer presses a few buttons on her keypad. “Omega Protocol engaging...in 30 seconds,” comes the voice of your ship’s computer, broadcast across every deck.

  “Best case scenario, we survive — barely,” you mutter to yourself. Your first officer allows herself a small smile.

  “Worst case scenario,” she says, “the space-time continuum is torn a new one, which has all sorts of unexpected effects. We could find ourselves somewhere else in our galaxy — or outside of it. Theoretical models suggest there may be some matter substitution, but it might not be the entire ship that’s affected. It may be localized to certain rooms, certain objects. We may just find that certain pages of our books have been substituted with pages from other books, drawn from all over time and space. Who knows, maybe even our Automatically Recorded Dramatic Ship’s Logs in Second-Person Prose Format would be included! And while that would affect our entire library, only a comparatively small handful of books across the universe would get our pages in exchange. That’d localize the effects to only a few publications. Most planets actually wouldn’t be affected at all.”

  “That’d be cool,” you say. “Having our logs swapped out to another world like that. Maybe we could learn from the pages we got in exchange.”

  “But it’d be pretty confusing,” says your first officer.

  “It would still be pretty neat though, wouldn’t it? To be a person who comes across one of these books and has no idea that this ‘printing error’ is actually a recording of the brave actions taken by a valiant crew thousands of light-years away, fighting for their lives in some unknown, distant war?” you begin, and then your computer engages the Omega Protocol, and everything goes white.

  THE END

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  You decide you want Hamlet to be on the other side of the door, open it, and...Hamlet really is at the door! That’s so
freaky! How’d — how’d you do that?

  Hamlet steps into your room. You haven’t seen each other for a while; it’s so great to see him. You run up and throw your arms around him and you kiss. It’s just like old times.

  But the moment passes, and when you look at his face you can see concern written all over it. He’s troubled by something.

  » Ask him what’s troubling him «

  » Wait for him to tell you «

  * * *

  * * *

  You wait, doing nothing, and he pulls away from you and holds you at arm’s-length.

  “Listen,” he says, and then he begins unbuttoning his jacket, taking his garters off, and — oh gosh, yes, he’s actually doing it. He’s fouling his stockings.

  “What’s wrong, Hamlet?” you ask in alarm. What you say next sounds like the obvious question, but you ask it anyway. “Why are you fouling your stockings?”

  Instead of answering, he grabs you by the wrist. You come to the entirely obvious conclusion that he’s not acting like himself. This conclusion is reinforced in the next few moments, when he moves his other hand to his forehead as if he might faint, but instead of fainting, he stares at you intensely.

  “Hamlet, I don’t know why you’re doing thi—” you begin, and he sighs really loudly. It’s the most intense sigh you’ve ever heard. It’s actually — kind of impressive?

  “Look, if you’ll just talk to me we can w—” you begin, and he sighs again, so loudly that it literally drowns out your words.

  “Fine, weirdo, let’s play the wrist-holding game. Yayyyyy.” You meet his eyes, and he sighs one of those ultimate sighs again, then gets up and leaves in what can only be described as “the creepiest way possible,” walking with his head wrenched over his shoulder so he can watch you even as he crabwalks out the door.

  Well, that was weird.

  » Maybe he’s sick? You decide to check in with your dad, because as annoying as he is, he does have some experience in these matters. «

  » Follow Hamlet and ask him what’s wrong; maybe you can help him sort things out «

  * * *

  * * *

  You go see your dad.

  “Hey Dad, is Hamlet sick?” you ask, knocking on the door as you open it.

  Polonius isn’t there. Instead in his room you find an oversized yet crude papier-mâché Hamlet head and a note labelled “THREE-STEP PLAN TO REPLACING HAMLET.”

  Let’s take a look at that note, shall we?

  It reads:

  “STEP ONE: MAKE HAMLET DISGUISE.” There’s a checkmark next to this one.

  “STEP TWO: HIDE BEHIND CURTAIN AND THEN JUMP OUT AT HAMLET, SO HE GETS SO SCARED THAT HE DIES.” There’s no checkmark next to this one. That’s a relief.

  “STEP THREE: DISPOSE OF BODY, WEAR HAMLET DISGUISE, TAKE OVER HIS LIFE.”

  Hah hah, WOW THIS IS CREEPY. Turns out your dad is crazy, I guess! And with Hamlet sighing his way through insanity, that’s pretty much the two most important men in your life gone bonkers. The only ones left are Brother Laertes and King Claudius, and you don’t really like those two guys that much anyway!

  Well Ophelia, you basically have two choices here. You can pretend you didn’t see this note, go to Hamlet’s room, and ask him what’s going on. Or you can say “screw these guys” and go on vacation, and someone else can deal with this, or if not these two can just dang well figure it out on their own.

  You’ve got the money, Ophelia, and you’ve wanted to get away for a while!

  » Go ask Hamlet what his friggin’ deal is «

  » Go on vacation «

  * * *

  * * *

  A few hours later, you’re on a boat for England. YEP. IT’S THAT EASY TO MAKE A VACATION HAPPEN. IN FACT I’M KINDA SURPRISED YOU’RE NOT READING THIS BOOK ON A REAL-LIFE VACATION, UNLESS YOU ARE, IN WHICH CASE I AM STILL KINDA SURPRISED, BUT IT IS A PLEASANT SURPRISE, SO YAY YOU.

  “Later haters!” you shout as you wave from the deck of the ship down to the pier below. Nobody’s there to see you off though.

  “Wooooo!” you yell to the empty pier.

  The trip itself takes awhile (wind-powered boats: not the fastest mode of transportation) and is pretty uneventful. But the good news is that when you arrive, you’ve happened to catch England’s annual two weeks of nice weather! There are all sorts of hunky guys here too, which is fun because you’re pretty sure you kinda just broke up with Hamlet, because as soon as he started acting crazy you split town. After hanging around your hotel for a few days, you’ve made small talk with three people who seem to be non-duds. There’s:

  - Antonio Tony, the mysterious and sexy tourist,

  - Cleopatra Slim, the friendly, adventurous explorer, and

  - Brother Pat, the religious guy who drinks a lot, oh man

  So! Who do you want to hang out with tonight? You have the next few weeks to talk to your chosen person, and if you choose the right dialogue option, you may even get them to fall in love with you!

  THAT’S RIGHT: this is a dating simulator and you’re just going to sit here and keep reading this book as you get to know a bunch of imaginary people and pretend you’re trying to date them.

  Are you ready??

  You take a deep breath and decide to chat up...

  » Antonio Tony «

  » Cleopatra Slim «

  » Brother Pat «

  * * *

  * * *

  You knock on Cleopatra’s door. She answers, wearing a very snappy dress.

  “Hi Cleopatra,” you say, but she interrupts you.

  “Please Ophelia, call me Cleo. And come in,” she says, gesturing to her hotel room.

  Ophelia, the room is GORGEOUS. Whoever she is, Cleo must have tons of money! Is it her own? Are her parents supporting her somehow? You resolve to find out.

  You walk into the room, and Cleo softly clicks the door closed behind her.

  “So, Ophelia!” she says, turning to face you. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  She’s kinda stunning. For a second, you forget what you were going to say, but then you remember:

  » “Cleo, I’m bored.” «

  » “Cleo, you wanna go get dinner? I hate dining alone.” «

  » “Cleo, I could use a friend. Things are a bit crazy back home.” «

  * * *

  * * *

  Cleo laughs. “You came down to invite me to dinner personally, Ophelia? That’s adorable. Of course I’ll join you. I’ve already eaten, but I’ll get some drinks while you eat — I know the perfect place a few doors down from here.”

  It sounds really nice. But before you can say so, a huge explosion rocks the hotel! Debris showers into the room, knocking Cleo unconscious. Looks like dinner will have to wait: you’re under attack!

  BY TERRORISTS!!

  Hah hah, screw this dating thing: you have three terrorists to kill!!

  » Run down to the site of the explosion «

  * * *

  * * *

  You decide to stick around! You make your way back to the hotel and offer your services to the local authorities. They are wary until you reveal that you’ve already tracked down and killed the terrorists responsible for the hotel attack, at which point they’re impressed (the terrorists were carrying notes admitting their guilt so the authorities know you aren’t just a regular murderer) (this is really lucky; good thing I thought to put that detail in your story, huh??).

  After the bodies are carried away, you excuse yourself and return to the hotel lobby, where you convince a still-shocked hotel clerk to extend your stay by another six months. “And I may be staying longer after that too,” you say. “Although the terrorists responsible for this attack are taken care of, they weren’t operating alone.”

  “Okay,” says the clerk.

  “There’s a whole terrorist organization here that needs to be brought to justice as quickly — and as painfully — as possible,” you say, and Ophelia, that’s exactly what you do.


  I don’t want to spoil it all for you, but there’s this one point down the line where you’re basejumping off a cliff down to the rocks below, and you pull back your arms to reveal a gliding suit you’ve invented, and you swoop down using that suit and crash horizontally into some terrorists so hard that you literally tear them a new one (where “one” is “a gaping wound in their chests”) (you put pointy spears on your hands, that’s part of the gliding suit).

 

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