FictionPress.com - let the words flow| FictionPress.com - let the words flow |
| Home Just In Communities Forums Beta Readers Dictionary Search | Login Register Extras |
A Ten Year Old Triggerman
Sept 16 05
Oh my God.
I am sitting here in the reading room of the San Rafael Public Library, reading the first few pages of the introduction to The Unquiet Ghost by Adam Hochschild, and they're talking about how everyone was being shot for no reason, and there's this boy sitting at the computer in the corner and I looked up and he was shooting at an animated version of someone who looked incredibly like Judge Judy. And oh my God, I cannot believe this pixelated bloodshed! He just put a bomb in Madonna's head and blew her up! And there goes a kung fu guy and a snack bar tender and he just slashed open someone's face with a knife!!! This kid looks like he must be about... not older than nine or ten, for sure. This is horrid, it's ghastly! It's murder! It's something called “Assassin”--oh God, no wonder the world is this way—if you can murder Judge Judy and Madonna on a library computer—this is the worst thing I've ever seen. If a child does not hesitate to assassinate a digital pop star, would the adult hesitate to kill a live one? Does that boy ever stop and think of the loss of life—okay, digital life—okay, not life at all, but—it makes me ill. The boy's father just sat down at the computer—I hoped he would catch him at it and say something—but no. The kid's name is Elliot. I can't believe it. that was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. That kid. Elliot. Looking all innocent and young and making little explosion noises with his mouth as he shot at Judge Judy's car. I guess... I guess age is no measure of innocence. How awful.
Something is completely wrong with this world. And yet something is completely right. Love, for instance. Love is right and good and the opposite of a nine year old torturing someone with a digital screwdriver.
