Tales From The Backlog

Imagine. You are resting in bed comfortable after a 9 hour video game session. Your palms are sweaty, knees a little bit numb, and dad’s zucchini was left in the kitchen. You are snuggled in, about to be drifted off into autosave mode, when suddenly you get a notification.

It has begun…

You hear a loud explosion from outside. People are screaming and yelling as the streets start to flood. Your house apartment shelter place starts to shake as you grab clothes and head outside. There are fires everywhere, children crying because they can’t find their parents, confused boomers who don’t understand the set up for this joke. A man bumps into you. He is out of breath and has not taken a shower in days. 

“Run,” he says. “You are not safe here. No one is safe, unless they don’t have access to basically a modern day computer that has over 8MB of RAM, a high resolution graphics card that can easily run Skyrim at the highest possible settings, a processor strong enough to handle two games of Train Simulator playing at the same time with The Sims running in the background, a hyperdecateragigameagbyte hard drive to hold one copy of The Witcher 4, and a stable internet connection to call someone on Mars a noob in 1.256th of a second.” 

The pocket on his pants start to smoke and instantly burst into flames. His screams of agony ring in your ear, or maybe that was him saying he left his computer on. His power bill was going to be high as Snoop Dog this month.

As you make your way down the street, you can see bodies lying on the ground. One person was torn in half; a green tag was left hanging on them, 50% off. More glowing green tags could be seen on other bodies, appealing in a way to grab your attention to them and nothing else. You pick up the pace to keep running as you start to feel the tremors increase in frequency. Among the screams of panic, you also pick up the faint sound of a chorus.

“Are you ready for a miracle?”

Suddenly from behind a building that is conveniently in place, he appears. Gabe Newell.

Gabe towers over all. He has no equal. A true backlogger’s nightmare. Gabe’s eyes start to glow green as he shoots lasers out of them and obliterates a bystander; leaving behind a copy of Portal 2. People start to run again. He takes a step and raises his hand. Green lightning shoots out from his fingertips to install shocking lightning deals of death to all who get hit. He then proceeds to multiply into thousands of mini-Newells with ridiculous speed for someone his stature. The mini-Newells begin tackling people and ripping off their legs to get to their wallet. They took everything from cash, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Paypal, Viemo, Bitcoin, gift cards, and even those fake coins you get a museums that you paid more to make than its actual worth.

As hard as you tried, you could not escape this hell. Three of the mini-Newells tackle you from behind and pin you to the ground. They force you to keep your head up and your eyes open, as another one came over a put a monitor in front of you. It is your Steam library. Unable to move you are forced to lay there and watch as the number of games available rise exponentially.

So many games. When are you going to get the time to play all of them? It’s too many games. They will be on your backlog forever. Your backlog will never end at this point.

The demi-angelic chorus of the Newells sing around you as tears roll down your face. No amount of time in this world would be enough to finish all of these games. Your vision begins to fade as more Newells being to cover you. You can’t see, but you can still breath; as if they all left you for dead.

You regain conscious. How long have you been out. As the vision returns to your eyes, all that greets you is ruin. Buildings have collapsed, fires all around, bodies hitting the floor. You notice that you are chained up with two other people beside you. One is dead and the other is fading in and out. The only thing that you can see nearby makes you question your sanity. Are you dead? Is this all a dream? What does this mean?

In front of you, lies three crowbars….

Happy Halloween!

DanamesX