Consoulia Chronicles: Booting Up [~ read description]

Chapter 2: Siblings

His eyes scanned the various titles on the bookshelf, narrowing his line of vision to easily choose what case he was going to fish from this vast collection of plastic, colorful boxes. They were all decorated in wildly unique box-art that consisted of character designs and stylized titles customized to give a taste of what potential players would be getting themselves into. 

"Aha!" He pinched a small plastic case from the tightly packed row of alphabetically ordered packages. "It took me days, but I finally got what I wanted." The young man enthusiastically announced. "Check it out, sis, Mugsy 3D. Pretty neat, huh?" 

"After all this time, Zander? It's such a horrible game," She rolled her eyes. "Why would you want to play something like that?" 

Zander rolled his eyes in kind; here she was again with that same disapproving look each time they set foot in this place. He almost had to stop counting how many times he had to explain himself. 

"For the last time, Clover," he sighed. "Preservation's everything, aaand gaming culture is nothing without bad video games. Sometimes you have to experience bad ones to boost your appreciation for the good ones. It's what I call being sensible." 

Her expression was unmoving.  "It's called wasting your money. Why not spend your money on something actually worth your time? Like a stealth game where you have to use a box for stealth or play that one game where you control electricity after your city gets blown up?"

She looked over at another shelf crowded with machines. Machines that could play almost any game, young and old, big and small; it all made her heart sing. "Better yet, we could get something that could play more modern games. My potato of a PC can't be upgraded with you spending our money like this."

"Well, I'm so sorry my job at the factory only lets us buy food and barely afford our bills," Zander spat, exasperated. "How's the streaming business doing, hm?" 

 Clover was taken aback; her streams only garnered about a hundred viewers on average. There were donations, but the money inevitably went to making up the difference Zander's paycheck couldn't pay. "At least it's a safety net. We'd save even more money if you didn't keep dropping money on fossilized failures." 

"Fossilized Failures is a good name for a channel about reviewing old games." Zander didn't know if that idea had been taken or not, but smirked as Clover grew further infuriated with her brother. They ultimately left empty handed. 

On their way home, their car came to a stop behind the bumper of another. It wouldn't be long until Zander would roll down his window and lean out of it to get a view of what was ahead of them. This allowed him to see a back up that seemed to stretch for almost a mile. "I knew we should've gone the other way. 

A silence followed between the both of them; an amalgam of apprehension hung in the air like a dense fog. Clover took a deep breath and reached towards the radio in an attempt to find answers in her distracted mind. That was, until the sounds of a little girl's screaming pierced the air from a distance. 

Within a shadowy alley flooded with the pungent odor of discarded restaurant food and excrement, a dumpster's collection of trash bags shuddered and rustled; one fell out, then three more, the muffled grunting of a little girl now unhindered by garbage bags. 

She nearly gagged at the smell of this new world, and would've returned to her unconscious state had she been unable to navigate the digital interface in her eyesight. She inadvertently came across a condensed status report; she hadn't eaten in a week and her internal battery was drained at almost forty percent. Bruised and hungry, she climbed out of the dumpster and hit the ground, adding a new bruise and scratches to her arms. "Ow." 

Her once flowery dress was torn here and there from the fall, also suffering burns from entering earth's orbit. Had she not had an airplane wing, a flock of birds, and some hanging laundry to slow her fall, she surely would've died. She thought back to her grandmother and to her world as she got up, but she stumbled. Her knee was broken, but her pain receptors malfunctioned as she wouldn't have known unless she had attempted to walk at all. 

"The screaming came from down here, man, I know it." 

"Clover, if we end up getting shot, I hope to kick your ass in the next life." The rustling of trash bags could be heard. "Yo, you hear that?"

"Yeah, I know I heard someone scream down here. Hello?" Clover called out.

"It could've been a rat or some kids playing a prank, sis. It's not too late to turn back." When they came upon a dumpster whose trash bags were spilling out of it, she ran ahead. "Oh, and I'm the impulsive one for my buying habits?" Zander sighed. He watched as his sister put her ear against the dumpster. "You've lost your damn mind." 

She put him out of her mind and listened closely, hearing a squeak and a sniffle from inside. "Shut up and help me, there's someone in here." Clover admonished as she started to climb the dumpster. "Hey, it's okay, we're here to help you."

Zander could only watch as a trash bag shuffled and nearly fell on his head. The head of a little girl had popped up, fear in her eyes. "Please don't hurt me! I-I'll do anything!" Before Clover could reassure her, she had fainted. With her hearing out of focus, the last thing she heard was a plea to come back.