It was 13 o'clock on a typical day when the sky turned blue.

     Mallory didn't even have to open his eyes to know something was
wrong. When the sky turns blue, you can feel it down to your core... the
air feels thick around you, harder to breathe than usual. Sounds are
muffled and dull, and your stereo hearing gets slapped back down to
mono. In short, it feels unreal.

     For some reason, it had been happening around 13 o'clock more often
than not. He wasn't sure why; maybe it was because he was on break
during those hours. A full morning in classes, a full afternoon of
plowing fields... he needed this little lunchtime break. It was his time
to flop down on the nearest grassy hill, put on his headphones, and
listen to the streams over the integrated (but quite low bandwidth and
tinny sounding) RealNet audio receiver. He could tune out his world, and
tune into others...

     He turned down the volume, because he knew what was coming next.

     "MALLORY HEISENBERG!" a loud voice almost echoed through the
acoustic cotton wads in the air.

     "Over here, Dad!" Mallory called back, sitting up. He quickly
packed away his headphones into his school sack, before his father could
spot them. "We're running in safety mode again, huh?"

     The man in peasant farmer's clothes (you can tell from the amount
of dirt and color tones ranging the spectrum from brown and green)
jogged to a halt, glancing up at the sky with a frown of displeasure.
"Blue Sky of Death. Third time this week," he reminded him. "Third time,
Mallory. We really should call in a technician tonight to fix the
blasted thing once and for all. Something can't be right if it's
crashing this often..."

     "C'mon, Dad! They charge an arm and a leg, why should we pay 'em
through the nose? I can handle it just fine," Mallory said, smiling to
try to cheer his father up. "Although, if you'd like to cut down on my
chores a bit in payment...?"

     The elder farmer crossed his arms, giving his boy a flat look. No
words.

     "Yeah, yeah, but it was worth a try," Mallory said, hiking his sack
up over one shoulder.

     The windmill was quite a ways away, but there wasn't a rush. Safety
mode would last at least a day before anything else went wrong; the
glossy brochures had said so, complete with language like 'Money Back
Guarantee!'. Mallory knew the way, and walked on past the planting
fields, past the farmers and his classmates at work in the fields. Past
the classroom building, past the church, even past his own house... to
the tallest structure in the land.

     Not that he needed to climb to the top of the windmill. The engine
was, in fact, kept in the basement.

     Mallory studied the instrument panel. All the blinking red warning
lights, the pop-up images projected on the cheap liquid display pane
above the machine. He read the complicated error code. He scratched his
chin.

     "This may take awhile," he said.

     "Awhile?" his father asked. "You're usually done with it pretty
quickly..."

     Mallory shrugged, trying to look noncommittal. "It varies, Dad. Six
of one, half a dozen of another. You should probably go tell the Council
this can be fixed... they're likely running around like chickens with
their heads cut off as usual. I'll join you when I finish, I promise!"

     With a nod, the elder Heisenberg walked up the stairs, closing the
basement door behind him.

     The boy looked up, and listened for the departing footsteps. Thud,
thud, thud... thud.... quiet.

     He sat down and waited a few minutes. Picked at some wax that had
been building in his ear lately.

     Once enough time had passed, he walked up to the complicated piece
of reality technology, and repaired it via a good swift kick to the
metal casing.

     The lights on the machine went out.

     The lights on the machine clicked back on.

     Reality asserted itself. Faint, stereoscopic sounds could be heard.
Colors felt less muted. The air was musty and old, but he was
technically in the basement of a windmill.

     Better this cheap trick than to worry him with how I REALLY fix the
engine each time it crashes, Mallory thought to himself for the dozenth
time. He shut down the engine's display panel to reduce load on the
windmill's power generators, walked back up the stairs, and headed back
to his favorite grassy hillside. Back to the old grind.

     Things were shaping up to be another typical day in Mallory's
life... classes, relaxation, reality crashes, reality reboots, chores,
watching the network, bed. Nineteen years to date in this loop. Day in,
day out, same old same old, the usual, the tried and true, staying the
course...

     He'd read once on the network about how people sailed across worlds
with oceans, in vehicles built to harness the power of the wind. There
would be spots in the middle of an ocean where no wind blew and the
waves were calm... doldrums, they were called. Places where everything
just sort of sits there until you die of boredom and/or hunger, with no
wind to aid your escape.

     To carry the metaphor too far (which he had an uncanny habit of
doing even in his own mind) he was hungry for something other than the
boredom of this world, and even the perpetual wind which drove the
windmill wasn't enough to blow him to new ports of call. He'd need
tornado-like winds, winds that tore up trees by the root and dumped them
in parts unknown. Unfortunately, tornadoes never popped up on Gr�nwald,
metaphorical or literal -- it had been specifically designed to avoid
dangerous weather, cultured to avoid dangerous situations. Even the rain
was scheduled. This reality, this world, his home had been specifically
designed to tick along at a nice and predictable pace. Nothing out of
the ordinary could happen here.

     As he pondered such tornados, walking along to rejoin his life
already in progress, a house fell on him.




...

   ...Want more?

How about fanart, music, encyclopedia... oh, and the story itself?
Drafts posted in-progress with frequent updates...

     http://pixelscapes.com/unrealestate

           Reality shall be determined by the last one standing.

-2f
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