Part 16

Well, I felt guilty, promising an update today and not delivering. Or yesterday, since it is after midnight here. Well anyway, I was working on the next update and thought to myself, why don't I just post what I've got written? And so here it is. I assure you that despite the lack of SimCity 2000 gameplay, the following is canon for the thread.

I stared out into that nothingness. And nothingness is what it was. There was absolutely no light, sound, or even smell coming from over the edge. The closer I got to the edge, the more the sounds and smells around me seem to dull, as if the blackness was sucking them in. I looked to the left. The edge stretched in that direction as far as the eye could see, one perfectly straight border with the blackness. I looked to the right; the earth made a corner and continued behind me, completely straight and unbroken.

This wasn't a pit of some kind. This was the end of the world. As I stood there, staring into the abyss, a part of my brain wondered if it would stare back. It did not. It was nothing, after all.

"So," I thought to myself, "this is it, then. Proof that this place isn't real, or isn't of the Earth." There could be no rationalizing, no explaining it away as an elaborate joke. I was someplace otherworldly, and I was trapped here.

So what now? I couldn't get home, no matter what I tried. I didn't even know if I had a home to go back to. Now that I had seen the edge of the world, nothing was sure anymore. For all I knew I had been here for hundreds of years. For all I knew this was all that remained of the world I once knew. I could be the only survivor left. Or I could be dead. Was I in Hell?

The hopelessness of my situation crashed down onto my shoulders like a ton of bricks. I sagged to the ground, tears streaming down my cheeks. With what little strength I had I pounded at the ground in a futile display of petulance.

I didn't want this!
I didn't want to be here!
This wasn't fair!

I don't know how long I sat there, sobbing like a child. I'm not ashamed to admit that it was probably for some time. Well, I am rather ashamed of the sobbing, but I believe in retrospect it can be understood. And then finally, I realized something.

What was the thing that made this place so horrible? After all, I hadn't been tortured or anything. I wasn't being chased by zombies or monsters or even other people, unless you counted the convicts who tried to sneak onto my property. No, it was the powerlessness. The fact that I was stuck here, and that I didn't and would not ever know for what reason I had been brought to this place.

Being powerless made this place Hell.

I wiped my face with my sleeve, mostly succeeding in smudging more dirt on it. This was Hell? Well, to hell with them! Whoever they were. They obviously wanted to keep me here; the car, the airplane, and now this nothingness? They just wanted me to give up and go back to running this city, to sit back and accept the fact that I was powerless. They thought I would be too scared to do anything else.

I was going to prove them wrong. Because by pushing me into this corner, they had made a grievous error. Now, I had nothing left to lose. And everything to gain by proving them wrong.

I stood up. I didn't know what was going on, or where I was, but quite frankly none of that mattered now. I was obviously never going to find the answers. I looked to the north, and in my mind's eye saw through the trees to City Name. Their home. Whoever they were.

: To hell with all of you.

And I stepped off the Edge.

Right before I posted I decided that I should probably include SOMETHING related to the game in this post, if it was going to be an "official story" post. So I searched around the Internet and dug up some SimCity 2000 related insanity!

SimCity 2000 music, starring Jim!

And apparently Hurricane Katrina really stimulated the SimCity 2000 online community:




Update Sunday, with story and gameplay! I promise!