Sburb Time

Act 1 - part 4

Your name is Robert and you are currently crammed in a garage surrounded by plants. Your age does not matter but you are only a few years older than your wife. You have spent all morning brining these plants inside to protect them from the storm and now they are everywhere. Numerous flowers, weeds, herbs and vegetables are scattered throughout the garage in pots. You're kind of in heaven.

Gardening is your absolute most favourite activity and hobby. You have studied for years in horticulture and earned a degree in landscaping. You love to plant and grow trees as well as shear them or cut them down to use the wood for architectural purposes. You spend almost every day, all day, in the garden doing something or other.

You dedicate your life to your family and will do anything to protect and care for them. The best way to do that, in your opinion, is to feed them delicious vegetables to keep their bodies healthy. At every dinnertime meal you make sure that everyone has at least half of their plate occupied by vegetables. Carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, snow peas, you name it and it will be on their plates.

You decide that your first course of action should be to clean up this mess a little, then you will install your version of Sburb and start playing. Starting with nearby objects, you pick up your high tech hedge trimmer and put it in your strife deck. Or, in other words, you set the hedge trimmer as your strife specibus. It now shows up as trimmrkind. You also pick up your favourite plant from the garden- a dragon snapper- and secure it safely in your sylladex. You know your plants will be safe in here anyway but you want to be sure that this one remains unharmed. For some reason, this plant has always appealed to you more than the rest. If anyone tells the other flowers, you will hunt them down with this monster of a garden tool in your strife specibus.

A few opened bags of mulch are occupying the space by the door to the house, blocking your entrance. So, you put them in your sylladex and hope to use them later. Perhaps when this storm passes, you'll be able to plant a few more trees. For now, you have a game to install.

You take your boots off before entering the house. Karen would be most unhappy if you tracked mud into the front hallway. You're still quite wet from the rain so you dash to the laundry to get a towel to wrap around yourself. You then throw the towel in your sylladex. You pass the kids' rooms on the way to the study and see one eating milo (no surprise there) and one asleep. So much for "hurry up and install the game." Oh well, you think to yourself, you'll download it anyway.

You sit down on a black office chair in your study and gaze out the window.

It's. Still. Raining.

You were kind of hoping that the rain would've died down by now. Alas, the weather gods have not been keen to answer your prayers. It'll be a while before your backyard is dry enough to start gardening again without drowning the plants in mud.

You take the game disc out from under the desk where you stored it before and insert it into the computer. A Spirographic object begins flashing in the middle of the screen with a loading bar beneath it. Obviously, you'll have to wait a bit to start playing. In the meantime, you'll let Jacob know that you're downloading the game. You open another tab on the computer and bring up your messages. Jacob is currently online, good.

Message: Jacob

Robert: son, you ready to play a game or what?
Jacob: you mean you downloaded it?
Robert: well, it's downloading now.
Jacob: awesome!
Jacob: I would inform Kira but she ain't waking up anytime soon.
Jacob: ugh.
Jacob: goddamn useless sometimes.
Robert: you shouldn't say these things about your sister behind her back.
Robert: I'm pretty sure she has a knife in her room somewhere.
Jacob: oh well, she's asleep anyway.
Robert: I'd better see if your mother is ready to begin or not.
Jacob: ok, catcha later.
Robert: bye.

You close the chat file and check the loading process. Still got a while to go, the bar has only gone a fifth of its journey. You'd better check on your wife, maybe she's done with her meditation for the day. Oh, look at that, she's messaging you now!

Message: Karen

Karen: hey Robby!
Robert: hello darling :)
Karen: have you downloaded the game yet?
Robert: actually, it's loading now.
Karen: oh good! I'll pass the message on to Jacob.
Robert: there's no need, I already did.
Robert: apparently Kira's asleep though...
Karen: well, she did plan on going outside today.
Karen : I guess that didn't happen.
Karen: I had a similar urge to fall asleep myself earlier.
Robert: I don't think I'll be falling asleep, I've had an eventful morning.
Karen: oh yeah, did you get all your plants inside?
Robert: yes I did!
Karen: that's a relief.
Robert: yeah, the shed got flooded but at least all the plants got in the garage before any major damage was done.
Karen: so our garage is full of plants?
Robert: pretty much.
Karen: oh, joy.

Ding. Oh good, the game has loaded! You click "play" and the screen opens picture of Karen's room. In fact, she is sitting on her bed meditating right now! Better not disturb her.

You zoom out and suddenly you can see the whole house! Every room has two walls that you can see and the other two are transparent so you can see inside the room. You zoom into Kira's room and experimentally click on her. She shudders a bit and flashes red but nothing else happens. You click something else, the dog. He growls and backs away from the cursor on the screen. Perhaps clicking something inanimate will provide different outcomes.

You click on a pineapple statue sitting on her windowsill and it begins moving with your mouse. You click it again and it drops on the floor. You may need to practise with these tools before you start doing what you're supposed to.

You zoom out again and enter Jacob's room. He is still eating milo. Seriously, how many tins does that child consume a day? You click the empty tin in his hand and throw it out the open window, he has had quite enough. Jacob flips his middle finger up at the sky, directly where you would be looking at him from. You will scold him for it later. A fresh tin materialises in his lap and he begins feasting again. You move your mouse to repeat the process but he lashes out and kicks the cursor. You aren't even sure that is possible, but you can't see your cursor anymore. Even after shaking the mouse around the cursor won't appear on the screen!

You hear a whistle from the next room: Jacob's room. You look at him on the monitor and he waves his hand above his head. Oh for gods sake! He has the cursor....

You shake the mouse around and sure enough, his hand goes with it. He lets go of the cursor and continues to eat milo on his bed. His attitude is beginning to get on your nerve but right now, you have other things to deal with.

A couple of buttons are flashing at the top of your monitor. You click one of them and it opens an inventory. You can now select a number of highly advanced machinery to deploy in the house, not that you know what any of that means. You select one that says "alchemizer" then click the floor in the top left corner of the lounge room. It makes a loud thud and the house shudders a little. Looking back at the monitor, Karen gets up off the bed and hurries to the lounge room. She sees the alchemizer and shakes her head. You'd better go explain to her what's going on.

As you leave the study, Jacob tails you on the way to the lounge room.
"What exactly was that?" He asks as you pass the laundry.
You shrug your shoulders. "I have no idea."

Karen circles the alchemizer with a puzzled expression when you enter. Upon seeing you, she raises an eyebrow.
"What's this thing?" She asks, "and why is it in the lounge room?"
You look back and forth at your wife and son. They both want an answer, but you can't give them one because you don't even know what's going on. 

"Come to the study," you tell them, "maybe you can make better sense of this yourselves."