There does not appear to be any copyright restrictions, and indeed a search on the internet reveals that several bloggers have posted and reposted the article, originally written in the 1950′s. So without further ado…

The Night I Met Einstein – by Jerome Weidman

When I was a very young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York philanthropist. After dinner our hostess led us to an enormous drawing room. Other guests were pouring in, and my eyes beheld two unnerving sights: servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, neat rows; and up front, leaning against the wall, were musical instruments. Apparently I was in for an evening of Chamber music.

I use the phrase “in for” because music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf. Only with great effort can I carry the simplest tune, and serious music was to me no more than an arrangement of noises. So I did what I always did when trapped: I sat down and when the music started I fixed my face in what I hoped was an expression of intelligent appreciation, closed my ears from the inside and submerged myself in my own completely irrelevant thoughts.

After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe to unplug my ears. At once I heard a gentle but surprisingly penetrating voice on my right.

“You are fond of Bach?” the voice said.

I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world, with the renowned shock of untidy white hair and the ever-present pipe between the teeth. I was sitting next to Albert Einstein.

“Well,” I said uncomfortably, and hesitated. I had been asked a casual question. All I had to do was be I equally casual in my reply. But I could see from the look in my neighbor’s extraordinary eyes that their owner was not merely going through the perfunctory duties of elementary politeness. Regardless of what value I placed on my part in the verbal exchange, to this man his part in it mattered very much. Above all, I could feel that this was a man to whom you did not tell a lie, however small.

“I don’t know anything about Bach,” I said awkwardly. “I’ve never heard any of his music.”

A look of perplexed astonishment washed across Einstein’s mobile face.

“You have never heard Bach?”

He made it sound as though I had said I’d never taken a bath.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to like Bach,” I replied hastily. “It’s just that I’m tone deaf, or almost tone deaf, and I’ve never really heard anybody’s music.”

A look of concern came into the old man’s face. “Please,” he said abruptly, “You will come with me?”

He stood up and took my arm. I stood up. As he led me across that crowded room I kept my embarrassed glance fixed on the carpet. A rising murmur of puzzled speculation followed us out into the hall. Einstein paid no attention to it.

Resolutely he led me upstairs. He obviously knew the house well. On the floor above he opened the door into a book-lined study, drew me in and shut the door.

“Now,” he said with a small, troubled smile. “You will tell me, please, how long you have felt this way about music?”

“All my life,” I said, feeling awful. “I wish you would go back downstairs and listen, Dr. Einstein. The fact that I don’t enjoy it doesn’t matter.”

He shook his head and scowled, as though I had introduced an irrelevance.

“Tell me, please,” he said. “Is there any kind of music that you do like?”

“Well,” I answered, “I like songs that have words, and the kind of music where I can follow the tune.”

He smiled and nodded, obviously pleased. “You can give me an example, perhaps?”

“Well,” I ventured, “almost anything by Bing Crosby.”

He nodded again, briskly. “Good!”

He went to a corner of the room, opened a phonograph and started pulling out records. I watched him uneasily. At last he beamed. “Ah!” he said.

He put the record on and in a moment the study was filled with the relaxed, lilting strains of Bing Crosby’s “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” Einstein beamed at me and kept time with the stem of his pipe. After three or four phrases he stopped the phonograph.

“Now,” he said. “Will you tell me, please, what you have just heard?”

The simplest answer seemed to be to sing the lines. I did just that, trying desperately to stay on tune and keep my voice from cracking. The expression on Einstein’s face was like the sunrise.

“You see!” he cried with delight when I finished. “You do have an ear!”

I mumbled something about this being one of my favorite songs, something I had heard hundreds of times, so that it didn’t really prove anything.

“Nonsense!” said Einstein. “It proves everything! Do you remember your first arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contact with numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in, say, long division or fractions. Could you have done so?”

“No, of course not.”

“Precisely!” Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipestem. “It would have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. You would have closed your mind to long division and fractions. As a result, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it is possible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of long division and fractions.”

The pipestem went up and out in another wave.

“But on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. He would start you with elementary things – then, when you had acquired skill with the simplest problems, he would lead you up to long division and to fractions.”

“So it is with music.” Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. “This simple, charming little song is like simple addition or subtraction. You have mastered it. Now we go on to something more complicated.”

He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of John McCormack singing “The Trumpeter” filled the room. After a few lines Einstein stopped the record.

“So!” he said. “You will sing that back to me, please?”

I did – with a good deal of self-consciousness but with, for me, a surprising degree of accuracy. Einstein stared at me with a look on his face that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of my father as he listened to me deliver the valedictory address at my high school graduation.

“Excellent!” Einstein remarked when I finished. “Wonderful! Now this!”

“This” proved to be Caruso in what was to me a completely unrecognizable fragment from “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Nevertheless, I managed to reproduce an approximation of the sounds the famous tenor had made. Einstein beamed his approval.

Caruso was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake my feeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I had been thrown by chance, was completely preoccupied by what we were doing, as though I were his sole concern.

We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I was instructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note, Einstein’s mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attain what seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for he suddenly turned off the phonograph.

“Now, young man,” he said, putting his arm through mine. “We are ready for Bach!”

As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the players were tuning up for a new selection. Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuring pat on the knee.

“Just allow yourself to listen,” he whispered. “That is all.”

It wasn’t really all, of course. Without the effort he had just poured out for a total stranger I would never have heard, as I did that night for the first time in my life, Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.” I have heard it many times since. I don’t think I shall ever tire of it. Because I never listen to it alone. I am sitting beside a small, round man with a shock of untidy white hair, a dead pipe clamped between his teeth, and eyes that contain in their extraordinary warmth all the wonder of the world.

When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that of the others.

Suddenly our hostess confronted us. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Einstein,” she said with an icy glare at me, “that you missed so much of the performance.”

Einstein and I came hastily to our feet. “I am sorry, too,” he said. “My young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatest activity of which man is capable.”

She looked puzzled. “Really?” she said. “And what is that?”

Einstein smiled and put his arm across my shoulders. And he uttered ten words that – for at least one person who is in his endless debt – are his epitaph:

“Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty.”

First off, don’t disregard these books as “children’s books” just because they were written for YA. It helps to know about the biography of the author to figure out where she’s coming from and why she writes the way she does. Her father was in the Air Force, served in Vietnam, and wanted his kids to know about war and the history behind certain battles and whether or not the battles or war was justified. Judging from her interviews it seems her father taught them this at an age most people would think is too young for kids to learn about war. Probably because he wanted them to ask questions and to really THINK about what what war is and when it could be justified.

So it makes sense that she would try putting the same weight to her YA books, because she wants young readers to THINK and to ask questions. But enough of that.

I think that a big part of why I like the entire series is that some of the answers to questions like “Did Katniss really want the Hunger Games to continue?” are sprinkled throughout all three books. To find them you just have to ask the right questions about what the characters are saying or thinking. So what WAS Katniss thinking when she voted “YES” for a final Hunger Games? How can I know she was really coming up with a plan to kill Coin and not just thinking of revenge?

After her final vote Katniss thinks “This is the moment then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me.”

To find out just how alike they are would imply that Katniss knows Haymitch and knows herself. So who is Haymitch? And when did Katniss find out who he is? The answer to that is written in Book 2. After watching Haymitch in the Quarter Quell. Katniss: “I think I finally know who Haymitch is. And I’m beginning to know ‘who I am’”.

So can WE the readers find out who Haymitch really is by reviewing the same scenes that Katniss saw for his Quarter Quell? Surely we can at least figure out a few true statements about his personality right? Lets see:

1. In his interview with Caesar Haymitch says the games will still be “one hundred percent as stupid as usual.” So he hates the Hunger Games. Thinks they are stupid.

2. When he first enters the arena he, like the other tributes are awed by the beauty of the place. But he scowls and quickly takes off for the Cornucopia before the other tributes even move. Its because what he sees is too good to be true. Its seems artificial. He’s not fooled by first appearances. He distrusts first appearances – especially when they come from the Capitol (i.e. from Authority).

3. He keeps going deeper into the woods because he’s convinced the arena can’t go on forever. And when he gets to the cliff he’s not convinced that its the end. And he skirts the edge of the cliff “as if trying to figure something out”.
So he’s not content to play by the rules, he doesn’t want to play the game the way its meant to be played, he’s just trying to find a way out of this stupid game.

So if Katniss knows this, and if in the last book she wants to find out just how alike they are, she’s basically saying she

1. Hates the Hunger Games. Knows Haymitch must hate the Hunger Games too. So Haymitch would have thought she’d say “No.” But she didn’t – which means either she’s different from him, or she’s trying to ask him something. He KNOWS they are very much alike. So it can’t just be about what at first glance is Katniss wanting to get revenge. Its not about what seems to be revenge as a first appearance.

2. What first appearance is it then? That this will be the final end-all be-all of the Hunger Games? It goes back to distrusting first appearances from Authority, i.e. Coin. Who at this point hasn’t really shown a lot of mercy if you think about it. She was willing to kill the tributes captured by the Capitol (i.e. Peeta and Annie) just because they happened to be captured by the wrong side.

At first appearance Coin is telling them that this will appease the masses who want vengeance on the Capital citizens. If only the rest of her cabinet were there to provide different viewpoints. Wait. Her cabinet isn’t there. They’ve always been there. At every single meeting where Coin has to make a significant decision. Coin and her people. Plutarch. Always chiming in with different points of view before Coin decides. Why aren’t they here now to give us the different points of view before WE decide?

Coin appearing by herself and telling us these things is artificial. Its too good to be true. It can’t be that easy if the masses really wanted revenge instead of being so tired by war that they just want peace. If Coin is willing to sacrifice kids now, who’s to say she won’t sacrifice kids again. And again. And again.

3. It can’t just be about voting “yes” or “no” and that’s it. Those can’t be the only rules. Coin appeared by herself. She can make up whatever vote count she wants. There must be some other way to play the game. There must be another way out. If Coin truly didn’t tell anyone else about a final Hunger Games….

So now, if Haymitch is really like Katniss then he’d have figured this out. So if Haymitch votes “No” then that means Haymitch knows something that Katniss doesn’t – and he doesn’t think Coin should die. But if he votes “Yes” then he’s saying that she should go ahead with her plan.

“I’m with the Mockingjay,” he says.

Finally, doesn’t anyone else think its quite the coincidence that Peeta’s hand was there to keep her from biting on the suicide pill? That’s because its not coincidence. Either he knew – or Haymitch knew and told him to stick very close to Katniss and watch her.

Whew. I never thought a YA book series would make me think so much. I think I need to read something lighter now. Like Starship Troopers .

I tried to recall the last time that this had happened and I was able to narrow it down to two other books that had affected me this way. Hit me so much that the memory of the books have stayed with me long after I had read them, and such that I would re-read them again and again during various points of my life. One was Fahrenheit 451. The other was Ender’s Game. And it struck me that the thing those two books in common was that they shifted my worldview.

I remember reading Fahrenheit 451 sometime in high school, amazed at the technology that was being forecast. Back then we didn’t have anything like floor to ceiling TVs, cars that went so fast that everything was a blur, or interactive TV shows where we could be part of the story. Yes, the beginnings of what we would today call reality shows was in that book. Oh, and a seemingly endless war that curiously doesn’t affect us at home much. Forgot about that one. Then another thing hit me after reading it. How our collective consciousness and societal standards could be altered by something as simple as removing a few offending pages from a book here, then a couple more there. Banning some books altogether because they offended the sensibilities of others. It blew my mind. And even more so when I figured out that the burning of books wasn’t the problem. That was just a final step of a society that had long ago stopped valuing the thinking and intellectual digestion of books in favor of simple stories on the TV.

Of course, I didn’t grasp all this in one reading. But that was the first book I can remember that didn’t let me go and literally forced me to keep coming back to it. To read it again and again, think about it when I wasn’t reading it, and to apply it to what I was seeing in the real world. Time and again I would remember its general themes and see them played out at various points in my life.

Such as the time I saw my first girlfriend watch TV in the common room of our community dorm. How her face grew slack and I had to call her name at least twice to snap her out of it. After seeing that I resolved to check myself mentally and always kept a part of my self apart when watching TV.

Or the first time I read about flexible displays and how someday they could be so cheap that one could plaster them along walls just like wallpaper and instantly have a giant TV wall. I remember flashing back to the book and thinking, ‘All you have to do is make a room with 3 TV walls and we’d be there’.

And of course, every single time I read about a school banning Huckleberry Finn or Harry Potter or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all in the name of decency and protection. Or, in more recent years, reading about politicians trying to pass laws against video games, or restricting what they can or can’t be about.

In truth though it has been a while since I thought about Fahrenheit 451. I think, for a long time I’ve been just like Guy Montag. Good at my job, happy at my work and not questioning my role in life. Ironic then that just like Guy it took an odd young girl to shake my worldview yet again. Only for me it wasn’t Clarisse McClellan, it was Katniss Everdeen.

Iremember the first time I played a game of B-17 Queen of the Skies. I named my bomber, put my own name as the pilot, and populated the rest of the 10 man crew with famous actor names like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. I flew 5 missions in the first sitting and kept records on which crewman scored hits on German fighters and prayed to the dice gods to be kind as my crew tried to get through 25 missions in one piece.

I think my first bomber got blown up on her 6th mission. And from then on I was hooked. Unfortunately the game itself was a little cumbersome for me. It had 6 charts filled with different tables that one had to use to figure out how many enemy fighters were attacking, how many the bomber could drive off, and if the enemy fighter got through, how many hits he scored on the bomber, where, and what damage those hits did. It was a little too much for me to handle. And so the game got put away for a while as I found computer games to simulate those bombing runs, like 50 Mission Crush, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, B-17.

Fast forward to now. I found an open source software engine called Vassal, which lets users create digital modules of their favorite boardgames and play them on their computer. The only thing missing was the rulebook, which you were supposed to have if you owned the game anyway.

Turns out someone created a module for B-17. And a very good one too. It helped streamline a lot of the bookeeping, which let me get straight to the fun part of the game, rolling for enemy fighters, telling my gunners which ones to shoot, and seeing my B-17 through her next mission.

This past week too I discovered that others who loved playing B-17 had formed online virtual bombing squadrons, where we could participate on the same mission, flying to the same target, and collectively see how our bombers were doing as a whole. So I decided to join one. And that’s how I found myself in the 281st Bomb Group, 151st Bomb Squadron, flying the B-17 Maid’n America. I just finished my first mission and already we’ve lost two crewman who suffered serious injuries. I wonder what the target will be next week.

To whit, the MMO part of the game means its massively multiplayer and online. Which is to say you could see anywhere from 1 to 100 or more people playing online at the same time as you; playing the same game as you. To translate that into game terms lets say you’re playing a Republic Trooper and you see that in the distance there is someone who needs your help and will give you a mission. In MMOs its known as a quest-giver. You run closer and see a cluster of several other troopers all talking to the same quest-giver and getting the same quest. It breaks the illusion somewhat that the game is supposed to center around YOUR character and how YOU are destined for glory in the Star Wars universe.

Still, this Star Wars MMO does manage to keep the illusion by giving you the quest in a cutscene, complete with spoken dialogue and star wars music. Every time you get a new quest, you get your own personalized scene – starring your character, the quest-giver, and maybe a couple of extras. And all the dialogue is spoken, no walls of text to read. Even your character speaks when you choose his or her response. The voice acting is well done and they even keep Star Wars style alien speech when you talk to alien races, such as the Rodians (like Greedo, who Han shot first).

Another MMO convention revolves around the types of quests themselves. The two most common ones being “Kill 10 X” or “Fedex” quests. “Kill 10 X” quests involve some hapless quest-giver, who wants you to get rids of pests/aliens by killing X of them (10,20,100). Star Wars at least manages to keep most of these as purely optional, assigning them as “bonus” quests when you wind up killing your first “X”.

Fedex quests are when the quest-giver asks you to pick up “object A” from “Location B” and bring it back to him. Or “bring Object A” to “Cousin B”, or some other variation. Even here Star Wars tries to liven up what would normally be a mundane Fedex delivery into something more interesting. As an example:

As a smuggler I was asked by a Republic officer to find a stolen box of medicine which was being used to heal wounded Republic troops and bring it back to him. I tracked the medicine to someone who confessed to stealing the medicine, but was using it to heal children who were war refugees. But, some terrorist types stole it from her, and she asked that I bring it back to help the children. So, after killing the terrorists and getting the medicine, I now have a choice. I can give it back to the officer, to help the troops, or bring it back to the alien, to help the kids. My choice will affect whether I step closer to the dark side, or to the light side of the force.

There is also the multiplayer aspect of the game. You can group with other players and all go on the same quests together. Or fight against other players in some of the player versus player portions of the game. I didn’t get a chance to do any of that, as I was engrossed in trying to progress through my character’s storyline as quickly as possible.

Is it worth getting? Well, lets just say I played it as much as I could in the 48 hours given to me by the beta test. And I miss playing it now.

A friend of mine tried to explain it to me thus: Its a contest of wills. You and your skills against another player and his. And if you win you get to keep playing. So I tried it. I wasn’t very good for the first few times I played it. I didn’t know any of the moves. And I died quite a lot.

Then I picked the only girl in the roster list – Chun-Li. She was fast, agile, and had one of the simplest special moves: Keep hitting the kick button to unleash her multiple kicks. And because she was so fast, and the game still so new, I discovered that I could cause my opponent to crouch and block my quick attacks, allowing Chun-Li to close in and throw them. I started to like Street Fighter, and by extension, fighting games. I started loving Chun-Li when I realized she wasn’t the first choice of a lot of people I played against. And in a twisted sort of way it felt better that I was beating them with a girl. I was like, yeah dude, you lost even though I was just using Chun-Li.

Thus started my preference for playing the female characters in fighting games. Sonya in Mortal Kombat. Sarah Bryant in Virtua Fighter. Sophitia in Soul Caliber, Nakoruru in Samurai Shodown. They all had the same qualities in common with Chun-Li. They were quick, agile, had simple special moves, and it felt good winning with them. The girls kicked major ass and that was a good thing in my book.

And that preference has even gone beyond fighting games to role-playing and online games. Even though most times the gender choice is purely cosmetic I still choose the XX chromosome. Maybe its because female characters are easier on the eyes. Maybe because I like strong female characters who can take care of themselves. Or maybe I’m just paying back a debt to a character who kept me playing in the arcades and turned me on to fighting games. Thanks Chun-Li.

‘I was sniping from a building. A tank spotted me so I crawled back into hide, which didn’t really matter since he just took the building down from under me’

And my personal favorite, which I have yet to experience:

‘I was playing as assault. I got into a big firefight in the middle of the Seine Crossing map. Bullets were flying all over the place, rockets and grenades exploding everywhere, and I was laying there in the middle with my rifle popping off anyone who stuck their head around the corner and dropping my healing kit often.
A grenade lands behind me and I don’t even notice it. When it explodes I die, but I am rapidly revived by a friendly medic. I look around carefully and decide that I am safe to accept the revival. When I do, I realize that I can’t move!
I panic. I can shoot, I can look around. I’m not stuck in the terrain. Why can’t I stand up? Why can’t I crawl forward? That’s when I figure out what is going on — there is a tree on top of me! When the grenade went off it knocked the tree over and it fell on top of me, pinning me to the ground. I was a sitting duck!
It didn’t take long for an enemy to kill me then’

Then there are the vehicles. My personal favorite is the attack helicopter. I’ve gotten pretty good with it, especially in the pilot’s seat. At least in co-op anyway. Two things make a good chopper pilot in BF3, in my opinion. First, a pilot has to be able to find enemies – either to run away from them or attack them. Second, the pilot has to line up for a stable attack run, to give the gunner the best possible chance at shooting his targets.

Second personal favorite has got to be the tank. There’s just something awesome about being in a huge armored tank, with a canon that can blow holes in walls and level entire buildings. And even if you’re not the driver/main gunner you can still fire the other machine gun from within the safety of the tank. So no more sniper shots on the exposed MG gunner.

Anyway, EA reports it sold 5 million copies of BF3 in the first week. Lets see if the momentum holds when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 comes out next week.

One of the side effects of moving is that you really get to see how much crap you have. Its all there, out in the open, waiting for you to pack up into boxes, move to the new place, and then unpack in such a way that you don’t have to look at how much crap you have again. In the midst of unpacking at the new house I realized that I have a metric crap ton of games! Not just that, but I also have a metric crap ton of game manuals!

I ended up doing triage on the game manuals and documentation, deciding what to throw away and what to keep. It kind of went like this: manuals that are mostly full of “how to play” and “these are the controls” got thrown away. Manuals with fluff such as the Battletech “Guide to the Mech Universe” or Homeworld’s ‘History of Our Race’ got kept. I don’t know when I’ll have time to read them, but damn, someone took the time to put words to paper and flesh out the fictional game world. At the very least there should be things in there that would make great story ideas when I decide to seriously sit down and write something.

Speaking of game manuals, they sure don’t make them like they used to nowadays. Case in point – the Battlefield 3 manual. Its a tri-fold flyer that really only explains how to download the game from the internet or install if from the DVD. That’s it. Want to know what the controls are? Launch the game and configure the bindings. Want to know how to fly the helicopter and plane? Go to youtube and watch some instructional videos posted by other players. Want to know how to configure your mic to use VOIP in game? Go to the forums and find out that the PC version doesn’t really have it enabled yet. Sheesh! At least this makes it easy when deciding whether to throw away the manual or not.

Till next time. Play long, Play often!

Yunghsin and I played the part of the humans against Scott and Yungchong as the zombie masterminds. Funny enough I got two girls and Yungshin got two guys in a random pick of the human characters. Here’s how it went down:

No one knows how it all started. When the dead started rising, filled with a terrible hunger for the living. One thing they did know, it had something to do with the ungodly experiments done inside the old Stark Manor house. It seemed that was where all the zombies were headed. The human survivors knew that if enough zombies got in there then it would be the end of the town, and possibly the human race.

Sheriff Johnson was inside the manor house when he heard the moaning outside. Jenny, the farmer’s daughter was at the farmhouse when she heard the moans. Johnny, the high school jock, was in the gym, while Sally his high school sweetheart was in the school hall when they heard it too. The zombies were coming.

It seemed that almost everyone was able to find guns the moment they stopped to search the buildings nearby. Sally found a revolver. Lucky for her, since that was the only gun she was able to handle. Jenny found one as well at the farmhouse. Probably one of many that her daddy kept stashed around ‘just in case’. Sheriff Johnson, well, he was sheriff so of course he had a revolver.

Only Johnny was unable to find a gun. Or any weapon for that matter. His two tries came up with ammo and more ammo. “Oh for the love of!” he cried. “How am I supposed to shoot these without a damn gun!?”

Sheriff Johnson shouted to the others as he saw them come out of the buildings. “Shoot the zombies!” Don’t let them get to the manor house!” And shoot them they did. The sheriff shot one down. Jenny too, then Sally. A loud wailing erupted from the barn. Zombies had started shuffling in there and taken it over. The good news, at least some of the horde was trapped in there. The bad news, not enough were, and the humans weren’t able to use the barn again.

Johnny continued searching for weapons. He found a flare gun, which he used to shoot a flare at one of the zombies. “Headshot!” he cried as the zed’s head exploded. Then he frowned as more zombies took its place and threw away the flare gun, since it was only good for one use.

Jenny had strayed too close to one of the zombies, who, sensing living flesh, turned away from the manor house and came toward here. “Back off, Z” she said, fending it away. She managed to land a roundhouse kick to the head, twisting it off and sending the zombie back to the grave.

Still, the zombies kept coming. Five had now entered the manor, and more still were shuffling slowly to join them. Sunrise seemed a very long way away. And the humans’ luck was changing. It started with Jenny. Her first kills had turned into 3 straight missed shots. Her fourth attempt also missed and with it came the ‘click’ of an empty barrel. ‘Hellfire!’ she exclaimed, throwing the weapon away. Sally then took a bead on a zombie just outside the manor’s south wall. She too, whiffed, and discovered her weapon empty. And finally old Sheriff Johnson missed and was out of ammo. Johnny for his part was at wits end. He had dynamite, but nothing to light it with, ammo, but nothing to shoot with, and a pitchfork. The pitchfork was good for keeping zombies away but not much for killing with.

Then the Sheriff got hit. Lucky for him it wasn’t an infected bite, but it was a wound all the same. Two more like that and he would be a goner. He was able to find another revolver though, and put it to good use putting one more zombie out of its misery.

Things were desperate with 6 zombies in the house and three more just outside the walls. Unless something happened, the humans would face their last night on earth on the next turn. So Sally decided to sacrifice herself by getting close enough to three zombies that they turned towards her. Two came at her through the window on the south manor wall and a third just outside it went towards her as well. At that point she snapped and her whole being shook with heroic rage. Unfortunately the zombies had an unholy rage of their own and met her with equal ferocity. Sally went down without taking even a single zombie down with her. And worst of all, she soon came back up. Sally had been zombified!

That was the end of the town of Grover Gulch. The zombies (and zombie players) had won.

Two days before Thanksgiving and there’s not much to be thankful for these days. Zombies have taken over the city and who knows how far the contagion has spread. I’m holed up on the roof of an office building with three other guys, none of whom are in my age bracket. I guess I am thankful that we’re on the west coast. I can still get by on this hoodie jacket. If I was in Vermont during the Outbreak I’d be freezing my ass off right now.

Oh, and I am glad that fear of the zombies and our own survival instincts kept the guys from thinking of me as companionship. God knows I’ve seen many horror movies where the girl hooks up with a guy only to get blasted, burned or bullet-holed to death. Besides, I can’t even imagine doing that without taking a shower first. Blech, I’m filthy.

A chopper did a low-flyby here just now. Its loudspeaker said any survivors have to make their way to Mercy Hospital if they want to get rescued. I can see the hospital from here. Its only a few blocks, normally a nice 15 minute walk. But with the zombies and who knows what else it will be the the longest run of my life.

Wish me luck. And if you’re reading this I hope to god you’re human.

Zoey