Fraction

The Missing Pages - Page 1

As I sat on my chair at the peak of the titanic mound of stone and ice and wrote, "As I sat on my chair at the peak of the titanic mound of stone and ice..." A gust of wind blew away a sheet. For seven years, I had stayed here... Never before had the winds of fate dared to meddle in my affairs... But we are all prisoners of fate... Even me... It was sad. Entire universes, destined to never be born... Entire sentences just lost to the deep abyss that awaits all unwritten words, all unspoken sounds and all unexpressed feelings... The abyss of the forgotten...

I do not know how many more pages will fly away now, dragging their words - my words - into the Abyss of the Forgotten. In my sadness, I dropped my pen for an instant.
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I do not know what I am writing now. Dots. So many dots put together to form a line. Lines, twisted and turned to form symbols. Light, floating into your eyes like mist on a winter evening... The winter of my despair. I never liked the cold. It would always beat upon me like a merciless slave driver...

Crushing my already pathetic lungs into a pulp. I hate the Cold. Yet, I was foolish enough to defiantly place myself atop this mountain, mocking the Cold with my ignorant and arrogant stance, sitting down carelessly and writing my story for your enjoyment as well as my own... Never suspecting that She was waiting for the right opportunity to blow away my joy when I least expected it... And when it was most crucial to my story...

An entire chapter. Lost. Gone. No hope of return.

At that moment, I wanted something... Anything... To bring back the flames in my heart that boiled the blood pounding through my arteries... To push that blood into my pen... So that I could be fearless once more. I wanted my pen to work again so that I could guard against the cold steel of the sword that was labouring to pierce me.

In my desperation, I wrote "Adam 40 appeared next to me."

Adam 40 appeared next to me. "Damn it, not again..." He said, "What is it this time? Did your friends call you names? They're idiots. Did yet another cute girl reject you? She's a bitch. Did you lose another pvp match? That game is stupid anyway. What is it, man, what is it?! We can't afford to mess around like this! Get back to the main story immediately!"

"It's not any of that..." I said as I wrote, "I... The sheets... I... The truth is... My computer broke down. At this point, it is unclear whether it is the RAM that was damaged... Or worse, the hard disk... If it is the latter, all the data in my computer is gone... Including the word document containing the chapters of Fraction."

"Is that all?" Adam 40 replied, "That's nothing to cry over! Just get it fixed and restore your backup."

"I... Don't have a backup."

"YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!!! WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU NOT MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR FILES??!!!"

"I have no excuses. I am an idiot. My computer worked perfectly for seven years. I was foolish enough to take it for granted... And now, I'm paying for it."

"Don't 'I am an idiot' me! Do you have any idea about how much fan backlash there's gonna be if you don't continue publishing new chapters?!"

"Fans? What fans?"

"Well, there are at least three people who regularly read Fraction... And at least one of them will shoot you dead if you just stop like this."

"I guess..."

"Take out your phone and start typing! Right now! I- wait, if your computer is trashed, that means you're already using your phone. Well, stop typing this crap and start typing the next chapter! Don't cry over spilt milk! So what if you lost a chapter?! Isaac Newton lost so much more data in a fire accident! Did he give up?! No sir! He sat and rewrote everything from memory!"

"But I'm not Isaac Newton!"

"Right! What's your point?"

"I, uh... I guess I don't have to be Isaac Newton. I remember most of the chapter... I guess I can retype it..."

"That's the spirit!"

"But I can't do that now. College work beckons. This will be all for now."

With my spirits thus restored, I now look ahead into the future... Planning out my next chapter... And the chapter after that... And the many, many more chapters after that.