Prologue (K)

“Damn it!” he pounds the glass table. “Why doesn’t the site work? I’ve been waiting to play this for months!”

The computer screen is blank, reflecting the frustration written on his face. He tries typing in the html code to overwrite the virus but the machine doesn’t respond.

“Stupid old machine. I knew I should’ve bought the new 2021 model instead of keeping this 2017. It always gets infected with bugs,” he mutters. He moves to turn off the computer when the screen flickers on.

“Hey, awesome!” he exclaims, settling back into his chair. But his excitement dims when he realized what was on the screen. Written in big, green letters, it reads, “Do Not Proceed. You Have Been Warned.”

His anger now bubbles over at reading this. “Goddamn computer!” He hits the table at a much greater force, and it falls down with a sickening crash.

“Hey Maury, are you ok?” his mom calls up the stairs. Maury took a deep breath.

“Yeah everything’s fine Mom. It’s just the computer’s acting up again.”

“Ok, I know you can fix it. You were always the computer whiz. But when you’re finished, come down for dinner please.”

“Yeah, yeah ok. I’ll be finished ASAP.”

He turns his attention back to the screen. This sort of the thing happened all the time, where the computer would go haywire. His mom was right. He is a computer whiz, and he’ll be able to fix it no time.

‘All right Maury, let’s do this,’ he thinks to himself. Thankfully, the table didn’t break when it fell. He righted the computer and stared at the screen.

The words “You Have Been Warned” made him feel uneasy. Most machines, even computers, are usually stiff and polite in their language. They are created to serve and please humans, so the usually say everything in a polite and almost cold way. But the way the computer wrote the warning was almost threatening, as if the computer was saying, “Or else.”

Maury shook off that thought. “Ok computer, let’s proceed.”

The screen blinks twice, and then turns black.

“Aw, too bad. You’ve been caught,” says a childlike voice from the screen. Its voice is robotic and singsong.

“What…what?! What does that mean? Computer, respond!”

“Say bye-bye, Maury.” The child’s voice has become more menacing.

“How do you know my name?" The panic starts to choke him. “Who are you?”

The voice giggles. “My name is Chronos. Although knowing my name isn’t going to help you now.”

“Chronos, what did you do to me?”

The voice replied, “Too bad Maury. You’ve been infected!”

There was silence for a few seconds that was interrupted by the thud of a body hitting the ground. Maury will not be able to make it down for dinner tonight.

On the screen, there is one sentence in big green letters:

He’s Only The First One.

Today is the first day of the K and N Holiday Novels writing adventure!

Hey, so what do you think? I need a title for my story, so help me! Comment somewhere!

Thanks :)