If he was caught it would mean hours of non-stop working in the mines or torture, maybe even death. So Dexter did his best to stay silent and not move while the guard walked past with the torch. He had to get his message to General Yevgeny Navalny of the imperial army. The torch, which was in the guard's left hand while Dexter was only to the guard's left hidden behind a thin layer of stonewall, kept the guard's eyes near blind to much else behind the light that it created that cold fall night. It was almost like the guard wanted it to touch his face, like a kiss to the eye. The crack that seemed very loud to Dexter did not even seem to reach the guard's ears. The thin stonewall was filled with holes and covered with patches of green and gray moss. The holes in the wall allowed Dexter to hear and see why? The guard was slightly humming to himself while the torch was also making the snapping and cracking noises that Dexter would hear from a regular fireplace. The tree branch underneath fortunately made no other noises and the guard's men soon walked onward. Dexter let out an audible breath out in relief only to hold his breath again in fear due to how loud the sound was. When nothing happened he continued walking along the wall, opposite the way the guardsmen came from. Milletin town was asleep with only the guardsmen enforcing the curfew walking about. The large army outside its walls, barely even fences, seemed way to big to occupy the small town, however, it was its location, mill, and tin mines that made it valuable for the war effort. Milletin was located at a crossroads that was just after the Rubikhan river on the way to the capital. A capital that was about to be under siege by a general turned traitor.

The wind turned frosty as Dexter exited Milletin and reached the Rubikhan river downstream from the where last bits of General's Triunvo's army was crossing the river towards Milletin. He squinted and looked for areas of the river that shallow. The river was deeper and faster here due to the steepness of the hill. He looked again and again, and then turned to look back. Maybe life would not be that bad under

General Triunvo. Emperor Triunvo. He sat down and looked away from the dark river toward the town. He still felt like the black abyss of the river had dark eyes under the water watching him while .

Early that day when the general Triunvo had crossed the river first, he had promised that life in the empire was going to be better for everyone after he drained the swamp and hung all the traitors. Alice, Donald, and Mick all believed him. Even Dexter did, until that a few hours later when the hangings started. Mick complained after the first two, which was an older married couple charged with disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct. Mick was the third. "Questioning the peace" was the charge painted on the wooden board that hung from his neck. There were ten more hangings, and one beheading before there was a pause for the night. However, there were three more deaths during the hangings when some people bolted for the river after seeing Mick pass on. Each had three arrows in their backs before they reached further then 10 meters. From his spot that night, Dexter could still see the bodies handing from the trees and crosses erected along the road. The trees were limited in the area, so the army had quickly made crosses to handle the needed hangings. Each cross would hang three people, the army had already made and filled two during the day. There were four newly made ones since the pause for the night started and the army was still making more. More deaths to come. Dexter turned back to the water. He had never crossed the river before in his life, and the only time he had ever entered the water was seven years ago when he almost drowned after playing a dumb contest with Mick, and Donald.

"Take the message to General Yevgeny Navalny, he is stationed in Millingville across the Cherrywood mountains and three rivers. He is the nation's only hope. His army is the only one close enough and large enough to fight General Triunvo's army before it is too late." These words, his mother's from just two hours before repeated over and over in his head. Dexter caught himself saying them out loud. He walked to the river's edge. He could do it, he knew the basics of swimming, as much as he could learn never having actually been trained in the water. Also, he should still be tall enough for his feet to reach the bottom of the river if he stood tall. After the river, it was mostly a straight line past the mountains.

He put his left foot up to enter the water and was dead before it touched back down. The arrow went through his heart and just barely went through the skin on the other side. His small corpse fall into the river and went downstream where it would later meetup with a few more. Alice's would follow shortly after resisting the "affections" of an officer and cutting his throat.

Across the river Lieutenant Roger Baron commanded himself and laughed at his good shot. It was the third one that night for himself. He was proud of his work that was helping make the Vespuccion empire great and glorious again.

Three days later, on Enera 6th, the capitol fall after less than a day of siege, and the next day a new emperor was crowned.

There is little point, why should I get out of bed? It...It is not likely will change anything. It is not that I hate myself, it just that I am bored of life. The only thing that I still feel is the irritation I feel when I have to go to work. Work that pays very little. Books, movies, and games all feel like chores; chores that repeat daily that never really change anything. I had a faith that I left behind, but while I feel like it was the right thing for me to do, I have nothing really to replace it with; nothing besides work. A job where they will probably look for someone to replace me the day they find out that I die. I have siblings, many siblings that I left far away. Should I contact them? They have not contacted me. I don't want to be a hassle to them. A thorn in their side. I was never pretty or handsome, and now I losing the little youth I had. I like sleep, but I can't sleep at night till nearly 4am the next day. During the days I work I look forward to weekends, but during the weekends I rot in my room. Sometimes I don't get out of bed until 1:00pm, and then work from 3:00pm to 11:00pm. I wish that I had a purpose. During school, I had a purpose with grades to show how I was doing. Learning had an end goal. Little did I know that the goal was a prison in disguise. A trap that holds people for many years that was getting bigger and longer year by year.

I want to do so many things with my life. Write, draw, learn poetry, create worlds with ghosts, gods, and heroes. But those feel beyond my power, whether it is because of lack of time or will, I don't know. Did my parent's ever feel this lost when they were my age? Do they feel it now? Did having me, help them resolve it? Was it their faith that helped them resolve it? Does faith act like what drugs and sports, and drink does for some people? There are just almost as many faiths and religions as there are drinks and drugs on the market.

What if my parents' faith, the one I left, is right? What if there is eternal life after the life? What if it is not as perfect as some think it is? What if it is just this feeling of loss for days without end?

What if God created us to relieve himself of the very same feeling of loss, this pain?

Should I hope it did the trick?

It was at that point that Adam realized he was not really a human or a robot. He was a human mind stuck in a robot body at the bottom of the ocean more than one hundred years after he was born in Colorado Springs in the year 1996. The note explained everything even though he already knew must of it. Not only was he this odd mix of dead body, human mind, and robot parts, but he was a redundant copy. It was odd to think that, at least in his mind's memory, it was only a few days ago that he went into that doctor's office and got the scan. The note continued, this time with new info: 'Kathy and I will continue down to the deep ocean and fix the issues, but you are free to continue to do whatever you want. I'm so sorry about this, I thought that Kathy was going to simply move my mind from old body to another. I didn't even think of the possibility that she would simple copy my soul. Once again I am sorry. The door is open now, and I got to go. You should wake up some time soon. God bless"

God bless? Soul? Soon? It clearly took a lot longer for Adam to wake up than a few hours like the other Adam thought it would. There were barnacles growing on the sides of the paper. There was no clock in the under water station, but for all Adam know it would have been another hundred years since he went to sleep.

The window was also crusted all over with other colorful barnacles. When he looked out, he could just barely see the cliff down to the Marianna trench. That was Kathy and the other Adam would have gone done. It looked remarkably different than when he had looked last time. According to his memory that last look only occurred about five minutes ago, but it probably was more then a hundred years ago. The elevator down was gone, and the cliff actually seemed to be a lot closer than he remembered. It most have eroded away. There was also two skeletons of whales picked clear of all flesh. These also had barnacles growing on them.

God bless. What did that mean. Adam, the original human Adam, had grown up without any faith. According to his mother their were catholic because she had been baptized in the faith when she was a kid. But he could not remember ever going to any type of church service as he was growing up. During high school, he considered himself agnostic, it seemed like a nice middle ground. Anyways, what kind of God would allow stuff like this to happen.

What was he to God?

What was God to him?

He had pictured God as an older man with a white bread that went down to his belly bottom. The stereotypical view, but God was his neighbor. This was actually his neighbor. At this time, some two hundred years after Adam was born, when Adam thought of God, it was the physical appearance of a particular older neighbor that he had growing up. There was a wart, or just a very ugly mole on his left nose and he was missing his middle finger on his right hand. He almost always wearing a red bathrobe when Adam saw him. This was a neighbor that Adam and his mom lived by for must likely around five years. He could remember seeing the old guy when he left the house going to school. God, he could not actually remember the neighbor's name, stayed on his front porch reading the morning newspaper and smoking a pipe. It was the newspaper when Adam went to school, but that would be switched to a crime novel, or a novel about world war 3,2, or 1 when Adam got home from school.

When Human Adam got home.

God the neighbor and Human Adam were dead. Dead and gone for years. If there was a heaven, was Human Adam there? Or was he trapped because his soul was still partly on earth.

The whale bones still had crabs crawling over it. Was there anything left for them? Surely all the good stuff was gone already.

He left the window with a robotic sigh. His metal feet clicking on the brittle metal floor. All this for a brain scan.

The other chamber was flooded, he could only see a tiny bit from the door's small circular window set in middle of the door. Would his human eyes have been able to see anything that he was seeing. It seemed about noon to Adam, but maybe it was actually darker than that. He had no idea how he would figure that out. A shark went by the window. He considered opening the door and letting the ocean rush in. He would survive. He had done it before only a hundred years ago. That had been one of the first clues that he was no longer human. He walked back over to the deckchair. The chair made a rusty squeal when he sat down. Luckily it did not break. It made another scream as he leaned the chair back it and put his metal feet on the desk. The screens were mostly black besides some saying that there was a power shortage. It was a miracle that they were still on. His feet shifted and pressed the one of the closer computer screens. Something yellow fell from the back of the screen and yet the floor without any noise. There chair screamed again as he picked up the yellow paper. It was corporate office paper that someone, one of the long died techs, colored bright yellow on the back. It was completely yellow with nothing drawn. It was just full of color. Actually no, there were words. In small blue ink in one of the corners it said" I miss the sun!!" there were a few extra exclamation points and a sad face.

He did.. He did miss the sun

He got up and walked over to the door again where he has seen the shark swim by. He did miss the sun. He missed it and he was going to see it again. The other Adam went off the cliff. This Adam, Adam #3 would do the opposite. He would see the sun. He opened his face, and put the yellow paper in so that it would be safe and dry. He closed his face. He did not know the specifics, maybe he might be able to ride a whale, but he was going to see the sun again. Even if he had to walk the whole ocean floor till he reached land. He already had done some ocean floor walking before, no problem. He smashed the glass window in the door and the ocean rushed in.

He needed to know what to do with his life, at the moment it felt like his life was pointless. His father told him this often, often while his pointless father was watching an old rerun of a old and out dated sitcom. There was certainly a lot of jokes that would not be allowed on modern TV. That was probably why John, Mike's father, liked the old reruns. Mike did not want to watch TV and he still felt bad for breaking his Sisters old toy teapot. Also, the breaking of the tea pot occurred two whole days ago, Mike also started noticing how his mom talked different.

That night, two days ago, John had been yelled at because of the teapot incident and it was during that episode that Mike was told that he needed to find out what he was going to do with his life. He was also told that he was on his way to being a lazy no good that relayed solely on the work of others to get through life. Seemed a bit harsh, and still did, but it did get Mike thinking about what he wanted to do with his life.

Normally, Mike would not think about something that his drunk of a father said a few days ago, particularly when he was four beers deep and slurring his words. This is instance, however, was different. There was probably nothing different about his father , that night, in fact, his father was probably more irritated about Sarah yelling then intent on teaching Mike a lesson. Sarah was been screaming for what seemed like an eternity. However, his friend, also named John, told him the next day about what his older sister had said about the voice Mike's mom used when speaking to John, the father. The part that was made Mike remember was the part about the voice being liked by weak men. Did that mean that Mike's father was a weak man? He certainly should not asked his father that, that would certainly be a way to get a good whipping.

That night, the night Sarah was stilling screaming and Mike was being yelled at by his father, his father had asked Mike if he wanted to do anything with life and become a good man, a man with a 50 hour work week and a lovely house, or his wanted to be a loser and live on the streets. Mike certainly did not want to be a loser, but he also did not want to a weak man. How could Mike's father be a weak man? He benched a lot a lot of weight when ever he went to the gym, his favorite place besides the bar.

That was what Mike and told John, the friend John, after being told that about weak men. John said that physically strength was not what was meant by the weak men cartegory.

"Well then," Mike asked, "what did your sister mean?"

"I don't know"

The bus arrived then.

That was what was odd to John when he stayed at his friend's Mike's house. Mikes mom talked different to Mike's Dad.

It was a simply Friday night evening and the two friends were staying in Mike's basement playing videogames. The game of choice that evening was the standard children's racing game that they had grown up playing. Shells, balloons, and bombs. Lightening power-ups were the worst, unless John got to use it on Mike. The basement was mostly one large room with three small room shot offs that want to other rooms. The one nearest to the stairs opened to a storage room where the family kept their large amount of food storage and washing and drying machines. The storage room also connected to a laundry chute. This chute went all the way up to the top floor of the house and sometimes Mike and John would play a game where they would try to race the laundry down to the basement from the top floor. They never would win, but it was fun, except for the injuries that was caused by the running into the walls as they would race down the stairs. There were a few times where these games ended with holes in the walls. Like last week when Mike's elbow rammed into the wall after descending the first set of stairs. Mike's was fine, the wall needed stitches and some French plaster.

That had been one on of the times that Mike's mom, her name might have might have been Mary, John didn't know her name because she had always been Mis Jillion. Anyway, that had been, the elbow in wall, had been one of the times that Mike's mom yelled like a demon. That was Mick described it, and later how John described it to his older sister. The thing is, she did have a point, Mike's arm could have been broken and the wall cost money and time to be fixed. However, the thing is, the screaming and yelling was not the odd thing. It was the sudden switch that she did when she went from yelling at Mike and John, to the sweet childish high-pitched way that she asked how Mike's Dad's day at work was.

The yelling this time was because John, Mike, and Mike's younger sister, Sarah, thought it would be cool to see if Sarah's New China teapot would really bounce after falling from the laundry chute. It didn't. It smashed, and now Sarah was crying. Thus, Mike's mom was yelling.

It was during second lunch that the yelling was taking place when Mike's Dad came into the kitchen while Mike's mom was both yelling at Mike and trying to calm Sarah down. Mr. Jillion said "Hello beauty", kissed her on the cheek and then opened the fridge to grab a beer.

"Hello handsome", she said in the high pitched voice. "How was your day?

"Good", he mumbled before opening a can of beer and draining it. He then grabbed two more cans from the fridge before shutting it. "I will back in after the game", he said before walking away towards his "man-cave".

Later, when John was talking with his sister, she mentioned that she knew exactly what he was talking about. Miss. Jillion was speaking with her Fundie Baby Voice when she spoke to her husband, and then was using her regular voice when she was talking/yelling at Mike and John. She paused her computer game to look at John. "It really is a thing, look it up. It something that weak men like and something that some women in power use to appear non-threatening. I use it sometimes when I want some guy to do something for me,"

The writer just looked at the screen in front of him. The white electric paper on the screen was blank waiting for him to write something. Anything. He was not a good writer, in fact he would not even call himself a writer yet. He did have another job, one that actually paid the bills. It was a job he did not like, that was soul draining, but ,again, it paid the bills. Besides most people had a job that they did not like, he was not unique. Also, the people that liked their jobs also probably didn't, they just lied to themselves while sub-consciously hating their jobs.

No, he did not want to write to buy his bills. He wanted to write to create worlds, to creates gods. It was like what his mom said about D&D. The DM is GOD! Except, in this case, it the writer was God, or was supposed to be. God probably would have an easier time typing out the story without the frequent misspellings. It was not he was bad at spelling, while not entirely that, but it was like his fingers moved on their own when he was typing and random letters and keyboard symbols as he was working on typing a word. This meant that his writing took a lot longer than he wanted it to, and he had to stop every now and then to back up and delate what he had written so that the words on the page looked a like actual writing.

Of course, that was when he had an idea of what to write, or had the time. The writer was supposed to be the God of the world of the story that he was writing, but right now the created world only consisted of an empty white room with bucket of glue. Why glue? He did not know. Maybe it was evil glue.

I need to stay quiet

Why?

It is late,

but I live alone.

I do have neighbors, but I live alone

I need to play less

Why?

It is bad.

It is bad, to play too long.

Say's who?

The people, the older people.

The hypocrites?

Burn those books

Why?

Those books are bad

They contain evil things,

things like drugs, sex.

Does not the world already contain these things?

Why are the mere words evil?

One must not touch the knife?

Why?

It is sharp,

it will cut.

Is that not its purpose?

I shall use care, but I will use it.

The raven was with the family before the baby. By about ten months before the baby boy's birth. The father found the injured bird among the bushes in the backyard of his small home. At first, the father did nothing with the bird. He had work to do. However, at the end of the day when the father found the injured bird at the same small spot where it was the beginning of the day, he took it home to take care of it. He did have to make sure that the cat, Lucy, did not eat the little bird up. So the cat was kicked out doors while the baby raven was cared for.

It did not take long before the raven was feeling better, only around five days, and then the cat was let back into the small home and the raven was put outside to take flight and fly away. Except, the raven never left. It did fly around, testing its newly healed wings, but it always stayed around the house and the nearby trees. The small family, only two members before baby was born, three if you count the cat, lived in a small town nearby a major road. The father taught at the small school, while the wife taught in another school further down the road. It was a farming community, and the houses were very far apart. So the raven did have a lot of area that it could fly around, and a lot of corn and other raven foods available. It just decided to stay near the small house and the two large trees. It also enjoyed stealing food from the cat and trying out the cat's food.

It also started to bring gifts. These gifts mostly consisted of shiny things like pieces of glass, bits of metal, and sometimes small stones and sticks.

It was when the baby was born that it first brought money. It was only a small silver coin, but the interesting bit was that it dropped it right onto the baby's stomach. The baby was asleep, so it did not notice. However, the mother did. She had only turned away from the sleeping kid for a few small moments to like at the book she was trying to read. She was terrified that the bird was going to hurt the baby. She was right next to the bird and baby, but she did not make a move and stayed as still as she possible could because she did not wanted to startle the bird.

The bird did not hurt the baby boy, whose first name was Arthur, the father taught literature. Instead, after it dropped the small silver coin, it watched the baby. Turning its head side to side as it watched. At one point it backed up when the baby yawned. After what felt like ages to the mother, the big black bird flew away. But it only landed nearby on one of the branches of the tree, where it only continued to watch.

From then on, the baby and the raven were always together. When either parent drive with the baby, they always noticed that the raven was following them. At one point, it followed them into a large grocery store keeping to the the high ceilings of the store. It must not have liked that, because it only did that once. Afterwards, it would stay near the entrance's of buildings until the family came back out and then it

followed them home. The raven still brought gifts, but it was always to the baby. At first was the regular things as before, but after seeing the mother get rid of the small stones and pieces of glass a few times it switched to bigger sticks, paper money, and small flowers.

Soon the baby and raven started playing together and the mother allowed the bird into the house as another pet, now the raven was too big for the cat to be a threat, but unfortunately this was a friendship that would last only short time.

The day it did end was when the mother was by herself at the park with the raven, the cat, and the baby. So not truly alone. The mother was reading another novel, this one being another murder mystery with the baby sleeping right next to her. Then the mother needed to pee.

She looked around and there was a small bathroom. She also could see no one else in the park. She very quietly got up, making sure not wake the cat or the baby, who was a very light sleepy. She did think about taking the baby with her, but she knew that it was a nasty public bathroom, and there was no one else in park. Besides, it was only going to be a quick pee. So she left the baby and went to the bathroom. However, there was some else there at the park.

While he had no real contact with her for years, the guy that had been stalking the mother had always thought of her as his property. He hated the father, having been a classmate with both of them, and at this point in the story he felt like his time had come. When the mother went into the bathroom, he got out of his hiding place and ran over to get the baby. He gave little thought on what he would do with the baby once he had it, he just wanted a bit of the mother for his own. It was his kicking of the cat and the following screams of Lucy that made the mother realize she made a mistake.

She got a glimpse of the evil man, as she ran out of the bathroom. He was running towards a large black truck that had been hidden out of sight from the mother. He was carrying the baby in its car seat with his right hand. Not evening noticing the screams of the baby or the number of times that the car seat hit the ground. It was heavier than he anticipated. The mother gave chase, running faster then she had before, which was pretty darn fast, she had been on her high school's and college's track team. But the man had too much of a head start. She only had time to read the license plate has it drive off.

However, this is where the hero of the story appears. It is still not known how, but somehow the raven was in the car with the man and the baby. The car was just exiting the park when it started going crazy. It made several circle in the empty street before running into a tree. The mother ran to the truck already talking with the police. To her relief the baby was fine. The driver, who was later identified but whose name is not important to the story, was died. Later both the parents were told that the driver's eyes had been bitten out.

Sadly the raven died that day as well, however, the family did make a proper grave for the raven outside the house where their buried the raven. It reads "Here lays Merlin guardian angel of Arthur."

The kid played his move, the compute automatically played its next piece, a black pawn. He played without thinking, it did no good. He was not playing to win. He was just doing it to do something with his hands, and eyes. This was a common activity for him. He playing chess at home after work, it was what smart people did. Except smart people won. He played without thought and lost, a lot. It didn't really matter to him. Each time the computer won, he just restarted and played another one. He did not know why, but it helped him when he got into one his dark moody moods. Which happened a lot. Before work, after work, and during his days off.

He had done a lot with his life educationally, he had graduated with a master's degree. He had scholarships during college and did well in his studies, but that did not seem to help at all. He was still working a job that did not even require a four-year degree. It was a dead end job, not to think bad of the people working the same job that were a lot older than him, but he did not want to be in the same job when he was their age. However, he did not really want any job. He could not think of any job that he would find personally fulfilling.

So he played chess. Played and died while he listened to steamed music. Sometimes he played against the very week computer that was made for beginners. He would always win against that computer.

However, that easy to beat computer has a purpose, to make so that beginner players could learn the ropes of chess. The other computer also had a purpose, to kill most chess players dreams of becoming grandmasters.

What was his purpose?

Growing up his purpose was chosen for him by the faith that he grow up in. Then his purpose was to do well in college and get his degree. Now he had the degree, a super fancy degree, and he felt like it was a worthless piece of paper in his hands. Though it might be important in order to work at a different yet similar soul-selling dead end job. However, the kid felt that a career would not really give him a purpose, and he lost his faith during his college years. Maybe if he did something else when he was younger instead of college it might be better, but he could not go back and change the past. He had to live what had been done. He also had strong suspicion he would be feeling the same now even if those changes were made.

He probably would wish that he did go to college.

He took after his father in pursuing education, his dad had a PhD. and like his father before him, he was fascinated by most of the things that he studied in college, but the internship he did afterwards was just too slow. He needed something that kept him busy, which currently was fulfilled by his dead end job. It also paid the bills. His father's purpose was met by a unique church and meeting the kid's mother. The kids they had give him even more purpose.

Agnostic.

That is what he considered himself now, separate from the faith that helped his father, but he felt like an undereducated agonistic. He even needed help from spell check to properly write agnostic. His older faith had religious texts, maybe he should seek the lost purpose in the sacred books of agnosticism. Were there such books?

He saw money for its worth as a tool; Life was made a lot easier with money, but he could not see himself living life for the sol purpose of getting more money. Or just seeking pleasures, even if playing videogames all day was good in the moment, he always felt like he had wasted entire day's time. He also studied public health, so drinking, smoking, and most drugs were out.

Love might be a good purpose, but the kid never really had much in that area. He did not look sightly, and had a health condition that made him consider himself as less than ideal. It did not help that the few dates he went on, less than he could count on a single hand, was with women that were part of his older faith, the faith that he is no longer a part of and that he had concerns with when the dates were actually occurring.

And he was getting old. The game was nearing the end, and he did not even know how to win it.

Mike knew something was off the moment that Peter walked into their apartment. He was glossy eyed and staring at nothing in particular as he took his coat and new hiking boots off. He had brought those boots a few weeks ago when he was looking for new shoes and decided on hiking boots just in case he decided to actually start hiking. After all, there was reason that hiking boots could not be regular walking boots.

Mike paused the cop show, partly to see what was wrong, but also because the living room area of the apartment was so small that Peter was blocking the view of the tv just by walking in. "Hey, you all right?", said Mike

It took a moment for Peter to respond, and even then it was not really answer to the question. "I don't know if I will ever see her again.?

"Who?"

"The love of my life," said Peter. He let out a big sigh that turned into a large yawn. He had been having trouble sleeping. He always had trouble sleeping, and the sleeping meds from the doctor did not seem to be working as well as he hoped.

"I didn't know that you had a girlfriend"

"I don't, I saw her at work. I helped her get her medications. It was love at first sight." At this remark, he let out another sigh and finally took off his second boot. He had been idly twisting the shoelaces of the boot while he had half-way off his foot.

"I don't think that actually exists, anyway," said Mike as he moved to one side of the couch so that Peter could seat on the other side. He left the badly written cop show on pause. "Anyway, What was her name? How did she look?"

"I don't think I should tell you, I am not even sure if that breaks HIPPA." Peter said this as he let out another yawn. His stomach also rumbled, he normally would be eating right now. That was his schedule. Come home from work at the pharmacy, eat, and then videogames. "She was slightly tan, maybe partly Hispanic, with beautiful dark blond hair and silver earrings. I think she was taller than me too."

"Annnnd," Mike said. "Did you ask her out? Did you get her number?"

"No" Peter paused. "All I could do was ask her was if she went UPC. She does, and she is a sophomore sociology student. I didn't want to be a creep. Besides I never really had a girl friend. And she is like seven years younger then me. My youngest sister would kill me for acting like Leo. Besides, what would she want with a loser like me?

"Fair point"

There was a brief awkward silence, then Mike started the show again. Peter watched for few minutes before slipping into his room. After a few moments, there was some type sad music that started coming from Peter's room. Mike couldn't place the song, but it stopped shortly after when Peter's wireless headphones took the music from the computer's speakers.

Later, there was Chinese food dropped off at the front door.