Hell's Glitch (initial draft)

I_K 1.2 Gaming For Money

Chapter 2

I couldn't get back to sleep the previous night so I instead stayed up exercising and planning. After finishing a paltry set of 500 situps with a matching set of pushups, I toweled the sweat off my body, caught my breath and lifted myself into my chair. I wheeled over to my desk and grabbed a pen before sliding my notepad in front of me. I tapped my techband, lifted my wrist to my face, and said "calendar" in a clear firm voice. The screen showed today's screen.

"Month," I told it.

I browsed through the month's entries to see if I had anything big coming up that I'd forgotten about. There was nothing. I had no job or social obligations, not like I had any friends. I left them back at the academy, back when I was whole.

I erased a few entries, frivolous and wasteful pastimes like visits to the gun range and purchasing a few games that were releasing this month. Last night reminded me that I didn't have time or money for leisure. I couldn't spend time picking up new games. I had to master old ones and break them past the point thought possible. At this point it was all I was good for when it came to making money. The little money I get from the government as a disabled vet is only enough to pay a quarter of our bills, while Tina takes care of the rest with the money she makes as an RN. It leaves little left for those small comforts that make our lives at least bearable or, god forbid, savings.

I wouldn't mind any of that, but Tina already sacrifices so much for me. I can't allow her to be miserable as well, so I use my only useful skill to occasionally buy her nice things. I also buy myself the occasional new game so that I don't rot in this chair.

I repeatedly tapped my techband, scrolling through page after page of search engine results of competitions for fighters, shooters, and RTS's. I was only good at one fighter, but no one was pouring money into a six year old Killer Kombat game, so I narrowed my search by disqualifying all fighters.

I was good at a handful of shooters, but could only compete in the top tiers in Soldier's Honor and Zurgon: Rise of the Wolfkrieg. I actually won some money in both for placing top ten, taking third and fifth place respectively in those games. While I liked RTS's, only Soldier's Honor: Campaigns and Feudal: Lords of the Sun held my interest. I won fifty dollars one time, taking the top spot in Feudal in a local tourney, but stopped there due to the heavy time investment needed to take the top spot in the pros.

I was going at this all wrong. I already knew where the money was, not the biggest prizes, but prizes that would keep guaranteed food on our table. I eliminated RTS and FPS from my search as well, which left me with a few pages of single player games competitions. I smiled, now in my element as that delightful word slipped through my lips.

"Speedruns."

It was a small but glorious list of paid competitions for platformers, hack n' slashes, RPGs, puzzle games, beat 'em ups, and all manner of retro games in the various genres. I even saw one of the Death Planes, a twenty year old classic that aged like fine wine. I nearly clicked it on reflex, which is completely understandable as I'd made some good money previously running the game, but honestly this current competition wasn't even paying one hundred dollars.

Finally, I found a game I'd been playing a lot of lately and it was paying a nice amount. I tapped it to get the description and saw they were paying one thousand dollars to the top runner, two hundred fifty to second place, and one hundred to third. Judging from the rules, it looked to be a guaranteed thousand for me. I'd been practicing some runs in it since I got the game three months ago.

All day I'd wondered why our van was still parked in the driveway. I couldn't find Tina anywhere in the house so she'd obviously left out without it, but why? She told me she was at work when I texted her, so I waited until she got off for the reasons for why she didn't take the van.

She returned a little later and explained that the van had been hit in last night's attack, along with some other cars in the neighborhood. Tina explained that the van had been grounded when she tried to take it out this morning. We inspected it and found a part that needed to be replaced. It had been blown apart by a stray bullet.

Great! Another expense. We needed the van to get around, Tina to work, and me to my competitions, but to pay for the repairs meant to miss a month of mortgage payment. We'd have to risk it. I needed to win the money now, so we'd have to consider this an investment. I couldn't let this shake me. I had a lot of prep to do for this tournament. I had an idea in mind after watching other recent speedruns of History's Mightiest Kingdom XV, but I'd need a lot of practice just to see if it worked.