Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 02:30:44 -0700
From: Qualin
Subject: SRU: Attempt at Story
OK.. I thought I'd just jump in and attempt to write something in the SRU
Universe. Please flame me if you think this story sucks. :-)
I'm also experimenting with descriptions here, so I must apologize if there's
some spam in this story.
I must also apologize if I get somewhat overly technical in the story...
I've tried to simplify things down a little bit.
---
It was raining outside. The sun was nowhere in sight. I had to pick up
a couple of parts from Radio Shack because all the electronics supply stores
were closed.
I cursed to myself, "Damn overprices pieces of ..."
Walking outside, umbrella in hand, I walked over to my car and turned
the key. The engine brumed to life and I drove to the mall.
The mall was mostly empty. Closing time was in about an hour and not
very many people were out in this dreary miserable day. Fortunately, that meant
no bloody lineups.
I walked into the Radio Shack store.
"What may I help you with?", the clerk happily asked me. He was a
teen. Zit-covered and probably still in grade 10 or 11.
I felt like taunting him a little bit.
"Yes. I need a 2N2059 transistor, a 5"x11" project box, some jumbo red
LED's, a meter, 2 PIN Diodes and a Triac rated at 250 volts.", I replied.
The boy behind the counter nearly filled his pants. Yea, another Radio
Shack cronie. Don't know a bloody thing about electronics.
"Urm, Lemme look for you.", he gasped out.
I didn't feel like looking for all this crap myself. Let the cronie do
all the work. It wasn't long before the kid brought in the manager and they
were looking together.
The manager was an immensely fat guy. Red suspenders holding up his
large trousers. The dress shirt didn't help to hide his large belly either.
"Urm. That Triac you wanted. Is a 10 amp max rating good enough?"
FINALLY! Someone who knows a thing or two about electronics! I nodded
my head. The manager acknowledged my nod and proceeded to look for my stuff.
The store wasn't all that busy so they found my stuff quickly.
The kid punched up the stuff on the terminal.
"That'll be $36.46 including tax.", he cheerfully responded.
I grumbled to myself about the prices once more. I could have probably
picked 'em up somewhere else for $15 less.
I reached into my pocket and handed him two 20's. In a flash, he had my
change and I walked out of the store with my little Radio Shack bag.
I exited the store rather quickly. The annoying little store chime
seemed to spite me as I left the building.
I was walking towards the end of the mall when I noticed a shop that I
swear hadn't been there before. My memory told me that what used to be in that
place was just a regular solid brick wall. "Spells R' Us" the large sign said,
in a wierd Roman font.
"This is interesting. I never saw this shop here before. I wonder what
they sell? Hrm. I have about another 20 minutes until the mall closes. A little
bit of spare time on my hands. No big deal.", I thought to myself.
The old wooden door creaked open and the almost familiar jangling of
bells greeted my ears. Nobody was at the counter.
The shop was filled full of odd items. Old pictures, little statuettes,
some little trinkets from gosh knows where, even an ancient Victrola!
"This guy must deal in antiques or something.", I thought.
An old raggled man walked up to the counter and greeted me.
"Looking for anything in particular, Bud?", he asked me.
"No I'm just..", I paused. Wait a second. I didn't tell him my name.
Heh, well it was a lucky guess. I've had it happen to me a couple of times with
people who insist on calling everyone 'Bud' anyway. I didn't think about it.
"No. I'm just browsing.", I replied.
The old man sat down at a stool and watched me. I felt somewhat
uncomfortable with him there. "What, this old man thinks I'm going to rip him
off or something? I'm better than that.", I thought.
"I notice you are into electronics, eh?", the old man asked.
"Yea. I fiddle around with them a lot. I build projects I see in
magazines for the heck of it. It's fun I guess."
"I might have something you might be interested in. You see, I dabble
a bit in the electron magic myself!", he cackled.
Electron Magic? Meh. I suppose you could call it that. A somewhat
unorthidox way of putting it.
The old man dove inbehind the counter and pulled out a small box. He
opened it and inside was an anti-static bag. Inside was a 14-Pin DIP Microchip.
I looked intently at it. He grinned, "It's a special cache chip for your
computer. It will make it run nearly 200 percent faster than what you have now!"
,he cackled once more. "It's a replacment to the cache already in your system."
Wait a minute. Nothing runs faster than cache chips..
"How?", I asked him.
"Well, let's just say that.. it's magic.", he grinned.
"How much?"
"For you, I have a special today on this. $4.49 and that includes tax."
Hrm. That would get rid of the change in my wallet. I was suspicous
about the price. The old man behind the counter saw my expression. He grumbled
to himself. Something about prices.
"I know what you are thinking young man. Maybe I should be asking $44.99
for this chip. Well, you see, I don't deal much in computers anymore and I have
some leftover parts. I don't need them. They just take up space anyway."
The explanation seemed logical enough, but I was still suspicious.
He stopped me once more as I was about to exit the shop, "Just remember
to use that chip carefully! One wrong thought and POOF!", he gestured with his
arms in a circling gesture.
I wondered what that meant.. How does one use a chip carefully?
I paid him my money and walked home with the little bag inside the
larger Radio Shack bag. I nearly broke the speed limit coming home. I could
hardly contain my excitment. I couldn't wait to try out that chip.
What's the worst this chip could do anyway?
I arrived home and ran downstairs to rip apart my Pentium. I put on my
anti-static strap and looked closely at the chip.
"SYSTEMS INTEGRATION N3682 - 2 Mb SRAM", the chip said. Wow! A 2 Meg
cache chip! I thought that nobody even made these things!
I plugged it into the cache socket, threw my computer back together and
flipped on the power switch.
The familiar Microsoft screens came up. The familiar greeting sound
played and then the computer froze. The screen went blank and the across the
screen in big letters, my monitor said, "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE TODAY?"
I gasped. Man, I didn't know that Microsoft had changed thier slogan.
More to the point, I've never even seen this screen before. Odd.
I stared at the screen for a minute and joked out loud, "Well, I would
like to be a weredragon."
BAM! The monitor screen blinked and I felt a force like someone had
punched me in the gut with a pneumatic sledgehammer.
I flew back off my chair and felt my whole body ache. Talons ripped out
of my hands as I screamed in pain and shock, "OH MY GOD! WHAT'S HAPPENING!!"
The computer screen booted to the standard Windows95 screen that I had
spent hours tweaking and configuring, but at this particular moment, that wasn't
what I was concentrating on.
Scales formed over my skin. Blue ones. Beautiful! My face pushed
forward into a snout. Horns grew from my head. My body made awefull creaking
and groaning sounds as it reconfigured itself to my new shape. I felt a
sharp pang of pain above my buttocks and almost instantly I had a tail. My
legs changed,
my arms changed to something which seemed quite inhuman.
The entire transformation had taken about an hour. I looked at the
clock and gasped. It didn't seem like an hour. Maybe 15 minutes tops. I looked
down at my new 4-fingered hands.
Gasping once more, I realized that something really bizzare was going
on to me. (No Duff!) Examining my new body, I played around with it all little.
Looking at my new digigrade legs and feet. Three toes on each foot ending in
a large black talon.
I attempted to sit up on the chair facing my desk, but this body was
too awkward to sit like a humans anymore.
I clicked the "Start" button and exited Windows. I hit the red reset
button and rebooted the computer.
The familiar sounds and screens came up and then that dreded screen
came up again. "What do you want to be today?"
I grumphed out the words, "Eye vvvaammmk too bee hoooman again!", I
yelled into the Microphone.
A warning screen popped up.
"WARNING: Cannot return user to previously used form. Auto choosing
another form. Please reboot.
As if on cue, and hour later I was human again. The computer finished
it's boot up and I gasped at the computer. I must have stared at it for about
3 hours. I couldn't believe it. Anything I could ever want to be and it's
sitting in front of my computer.
Then I noticed myself in the mirror. I wasn't Bud anymore. I looked more
like a Paul or Tim, but not Bud. I nearly panicked. It hit me. I couldn't
return myself to my regular shape. No matter what. I had to become someone else.
Wether that someone else was human or not.
What a waste. I spent 30 minutes as a weredragon so I could throw my
old life away. I'd never be able to come to work at my old job. I'd lost all
my family. They wouldn't recognize me. If I told them about this, they'd call
the cops and I'd end up in a nuthouse.
The price that I had paid was much more than $4.49. I had made the
choice to give up my entire life.
I thought frantically, OK.. I can sell myself everything I own. The
house, car. Will people get suspicious?
I became paranoid. The cops will suspect something. Bud goes missing,
only to have someone else who is completely different walk in and take
everything he owns. I had to ditch everything and move on. I had lost my job,
my family and now I'd have to get rid of everything I own also.
I knew that there would be people on the 'net who would kill for this
chip, but how much is giving up everything you have worth?
-- END --
I must apologize once more if I have made the Wizard too nice this time. Usually
in the SRU stories I've read, the wizard is quite nasty to people. I thought
just one story about the wizard being nice for a change wouldn't hurt. :)
/-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------\
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