The day the games stopped

[10.02.01] » by Dark Moogle

---

"Your fortune for today is..."

Reeve- Cait Sith, rather- awaited the signal to continue. It didn't come.

Moments passed while the people in the room kept their positions, expecting the signal to come. It didn't. Eventually, someone turned on the large TV screen in the corner. Before long, the entire rest of the Planet's populace (Which was, in fact, rather small) was in the Gold Saucer, every one of them staring upwards at the massive screen.

The constant, joyous music of the casino had stopped; the balloons had stopped flying, the children had stopped laughing. An eerie silence had descended over a building that was normally in a perpetual state of good humor.

Someone had hung a flag up next to the television. It was red and white striped, with fifty stars dotting a blue background in the corner. It wasn't something you'd have expected to see upon turning on your Playstation, but there it was anyway.

Reeve shook his head. It was one thing to destroy an entire virtual city, killing tens of thousands of people in a few seconds of FMV... The people who programmed it knew it wasn't real. What kind of person went out on a mission to kill himself and thousands of others, KNOWING it was real? He checked his watch camera; Cait Sith stood on the opposite side, keeping an eye out for the gamer's return.

A few people broke into tears, and Sephiroth was struck with inspiration at just that moment. Just how could a virtual being with almost no programming past what he was told to say and react cry? In fact, how could any of them be comprehending what they were seeing? He realized with a start that, technically, he shouldn't even be able to be thinking.

What had happened to give them all the mental capacities of real people...?

Hours passed while they watched the horror unfold. They understood it well enough; some had even realized how it was different from one of them dying, and were in the process of explaining that to the rest.

Reeve's watch lit up with a start; he was coming back! In a flash, everyone had disappeared, back to their rightful places.

The man who'd stayed home sick from his job at the World Trade Center didn't know about their bursts of intelligence, their awareness of what had happened, or even that anything other than the running and dancing of a few generic characters on the screen had occured while he was on the phone. What he did know was that there was an American flag hanging in the lobby of the Gold Saucer.