Celica Burke had some concerns.
As a general rule, she didn’t pay much attention to the goings-on of her older brother. As far as she was concerned, she had her life and he had his, and that was an important distinction, an unspoken treaty that would make their shared lives under the same roof tolerable until they moved out. Boundaries were an essential part of siblinghood.
Of course, Isaac wasn’t the sort of brother to take much notice of personal boundaries.
At this point, she was used to him cornering her at breakfast to try and convince her of the right way to eat a bowl of cornflakes, or sending her a five-page thesis on why a salsa-and-humus sandwich was categorically the same as a PB&J.
That’s why this two-week long period of silence unnerved her. It felt like that moment in a horror movie where the killer suddenly vanishes, and everyone starts to breathe easy again and plot their escape. You know at some point the killer will pop up again like a deranged jack-in-a-box and start stabbing everyone, but the anticipation becomes worse than the killer’s eventually appearance.
That’s why when Isaac suddenly burst into her room without knocking, she was almost relieved.
Almost.
Sighing, she minimized her mixing software and turned to face her brother.
In response, he shoved a messy sketch into her hands, showing what appeared to be a headless humanoid creature with a long, flowered tail.
“Hey sis, would a race of plant people wear clothes?” he blurted out, providing no prior context.
“Um… what?” was the only response Celica could utter, removing her neon cat-ear headphones.
“Well, like, since they’re plants, they’d be reproducing using pollen, which would be emitted from stamen in the male plant folk, and absorbed by the pistils in the female plant folk” Isaac elaborated, waving his hands in a misguided attempt to make his question clearer. “So, seeing as these would be located in the flower-ish part on the tail, they wouldn’t really have anything to cover on their main body, see?!”
Isaac slapped the wrinkled scrap of paper in his sister’s hand. “So in that light, would they even bother wearing clothes?”
What kind of brother asks his little sister questions like these?! Celica silently retorted in the back of her mind. Then, sighing with resignation, she studied the nightmarishly distorted pencil sketch in her hands.
What even is this drawing? she bit back a question, looking over the paper before returning it to her expectantly waiting brother.
“Well, even if there was nothing to cover, don’t forget clothes have other uses” Celica responded, curling a lock of hair around her finger pensively. “It seems likely they’d wear clothing anyway for protection, warmth, and distinction. Not only that, but if the…um…stamen and pistils are located on the end of their tail-thing, wouldn’t they wear covering over that, if anything?” she responded, turning back to her screen.
Starting to work on her composition again, Celica suddenly realized that Isaac had not left yet. Turning around, she was surprised to see him beaming at her with a look of buddha-like enlightenment on his face.
“I understand all things” he grandiosely declared, mussing her hair in a decidedly unwelcome manner. “You’re the best, sis!” he called over his shoulder, running back into his room and slamming the door.
“Seriously, what the heck?” Celica muttered to herself, rising to close her door, which he had neglected to shut after him.
But that was only the beginning of the madness.
The following night, Celica decided to sneak into the basement for a midnight ice cream, the perfect closer to a six-hour binge of true-crime dramas. However, upon opening the freezer room door and flicking on the lights, who did she see but her brother Isaac, curled up in a fetal position next to an empty container of ice cream.
That better not be my ice cream she thought to herself, kicking her brother in the ribs.
In response, Isaac muttered something unintelligible.
“You alive, bro?” she questioned, kicking a little harder.
“Celica…” he groaned, rolling onto his back. “I can’t think of any more fantasy races.”
“Oh for the love of…” Celica started, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just make a race with extra elbows and knees or something!”
Isaac’s eyes widened, and he shot up suddenly.
“Genius, Celica, genius!” he exclaimed, stumbling to his feet and dashing past her, tripping up the stairs to his room.
Shrugging, Celica turned to her original goal.
Wouldn’t you know it, that was my ice cream, she noted grimly, picking up the empty container. I swear I’m gonna paint his toenails while he sleeps or something.
Of course, Celica would come to regret providing her brother with advice. As if some grand floodgate had broken, now the questions came in an unquenchable barrage. Questions about new ideas for RPG-style classes, how many identifiable shades of hair there were in anime, whether Oceania counted as a continent, and various other bizarre enquiries now flooded Celica on the daily.
If she left her room, there was a questionnaire taped to her door. When she went to breakfast, he was lurking in the pantry with an obscure request. Even late at night, she couldn’t escape the texts and emails he sent her way, forcing her to turn her phone off before bed.
And then, right when Celica was starting to browse sales on axes, tarps, and quicklime, the nightmare was over.
She had just finished seeing their parents off for their vacation to New Brunswick, and upon returning up to her room, she was surprised to see her brother’s door open. Dreading what might be awaiting her, Celica boldly approached the entryway.
Somehow, it was worse than she expected.
Sheets of paper in various degrees of wrinkled were spread like a snowfall around every flat surface, while open binders lay scattered amidst the drifts of paper like rocky outcroppings in the field of white. Sketches hung from his walls, the empty top bunk of his bed was lined with reference books of diametrically unrelated subjects, and even his ceiling was plastered with a map of some fictional country, pins and notes stuck in at every interval.
And there, in the eye of the hurricane of paper was her brother, fast asleep at his keyboard with a contented smile on his face. Gingerly sneaking into his room across the drifts of notes, she moved his mouse to deactivate the screensaver on his monitor, but all that showed on his screen was a text document with an impressive page count, the current one reading simply “The End”.
The End? I certainly hope so she thought to herself, turning to leave. Then, something caught her eye.
On her brother’s bed, next to his personal Macroware Alpha Centauri 2000 was an odd, distinctly obsolete-looking N-LiFe of a brand and model that was unfamiliar to her.
Well, how he spends his money is up to him she shrugged, returning to her room.
*******
“Today’s the day!” Isaac exclaimed, spraying toast crumbs all over his little sister.
“What day?” she asked, angrily wiping her face. “You finally hit puberty?”
“That was years ago, sis!” Isaac laughed, undaunted. “No, today it’s finally finished!”
“My patience with you, you mean” she shot back, pouring herself a glass of milk.
“Laugh all you want, but today will be written in history books!” Isaac asserted, striking a valiant pose. “Today is the day I hack the world!”
"Who’s laughing? The only thing getting hacked today is you, if you don’t stop barging into my room without knocking” she returned, hefting a bread knife testily.
“A prophet is never accepted in his home town” Isaac sighed, shrugging and striking a theatrical pose. "Don’t worry, even ignorant Philistines like you will soon see the glory of my work.”
“If you were anyone else, I’d be checking you into a mental ward right about now” Celica quipped, grabbing her plate and glass and heading up to her room. “However, since it’s you, I know that this is basically par for the course. Go take a shower and wash your face, it’ll clear your head.”
“To think a member of the unenlightened masses was living in my own home!” Isaac held a hand to his face dramatically. “Insanity is just a term “normal” people branded on those whose thoughts they couldn’t comprehend! The failure is on their end, not mine! Don’t worry, I’ll soon show you that insanity and innovation have more in common with each other than the first couple letters!”
Seeing that his sister had long left the room, he ended his soliloquy and sat back down to his breakfast, his good humor not diminished in the slightest.
*******
That evening, Isaac first checked to make sure his sister was occupied in her room before entering his own, shutting the door behind him.
Its days like this where I wish my door had a lock he mused to himself, the irony of his words lost on him as he stuffed a blanket under the crack at the bottom of his door for peace of mind.
Bending down, he picked up his latest addition to his collection of binders, flipping through the sheets of paper within it.
“I guess I should have this open while I hack BRYZ, just in case I forget anything” he half-muttered to himself, setting himself down on his chair and laying the binder on his lap.
The next few hours passed slowly, as Isaac double and triple-checked his preparations.
“Let’s see here;” Isaac muttered, marking off a hastily-written checklist. “My four VPNs so I can’t be tracked… Check. My Lynx Cryovision N-LiFe… Check. My world-design binder… Check. The digital coordinates of the old IP I found?”
Isaac rummaged through his pockets, procuring an equally messy scrawl of three poly-digit numbers, paperclipping it to his binder. “Check. The drawings I got my sister to make… Check” Isaac pulled out a pad of paper with a variety of pencil, ink, and digital sketches and flipped through it. “Pictures are a key aid in helping me visualize this all!” he explained, looking into an imaginary camera.
Glancing back at his watch, he sighed and got up, stretching and walking over to his bed. “15 minutes ‘till midnight” he stated, lying down and placing the binder and sketchbook next to him, as he slipped the N-LiFe over his head.
Inhaling and exhaling deeply, he blinked slowly a couple times, as he sunk into the covers. “No time for sleep, I need my wits about me for this one.” Isaac quickly rubbed his eyes, the reality of what he was about to attempt dawning on him. Glancing at his watch, he counted down the minutes.
“Two minutes to go. I wonder if it’ll all fail. Not like I really lost much besides my time… and my chance at that one pre-order… but if I fail the first time, who’s to say I can’t try again? I’ll need to get another Cryovision though, and that was pretty expensive... I hope my brother doesn’t find out I used his credit card.”
“One and a half minutes to go. I wonder what my friends will say. Heck, I wonder what my family will say. My parents would kill me if they found out…but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I can’t really see how they could find out. I covered my tracks perfectly… right?”
“One minute to go. What am I doing again? Right, hacking into the BRYZ universe, and creating an RPG game in an obscure corner of it for me and my friends straight out of my imagination…pure genius! No sane person could ever think up something like this!”
“30 seconds to go. Calm down. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Man, I’m such an idiot. What do I think I’m doing?”
“15 seconds to go. Clear my mind… clear my mind… prepare to establish mental link…”
“10 seconds to go. Haha, I’ll laugh if this fails. Or will I be mad? Depressed? Argh, no time for this!”
“5 seconds to go. Commencing mental link.”
“4 seconds. Verifying BRYZ account.”
“3 seconds. Accessing BRYZ servers.”
“2 seconds. Initializing sensual override.”
“1 second. Preparing visuals.”
“MIDNIGHT! It’s showtime!”
ns18.225.34.193da2
