Classic Game Room the Novel: So Long and... Teaser (Patreon)

Hmmm....

It was a rainy Pennsylvania night when Mark Bussler opened a mysterious email with no subject from a sender named “Edit-Station 1.”

“Now what?” He thought to himself as he dubiously clicked it to preview what was inside. 99% of the time, an email from a goofy sender address was spam or some other nonsense from one of his dormant social media accounts.

….Replace my broken break key and plug me in. Then hold the “rub” key and press “break” at the same time. Unplug me, and see what happens…

Mark stared at the screen with a bewildered expression for a few moments before chuckling. “This one is pretty clever.” he thought to himself. Few people would have paid close enough attention to the Classic Game Room shows to realize that the old computer terminal that served as the Edit-Station 1 character was old enough to have both “rub” and “break” keys.

He looked closely at the sender address, which identified the email as having been sent from “Edit-Station1@classicgameroom.com”, not an actual email account. 

“Clever indeed!”

He filed it away in the “CGR Show Contacts” Outlook folder and sat back in his squeaky, leather office chair. It occurred to him that this was the first time in a year that he dropped an email into that particular folder, once reserved for press contacts and video game media outlets in his former life – that of a professional video game reviewer.

The hour grew late, and Mark closed the Photoshop files that he had been working on earlier and put his computer to sleep. Sometimes he liked to do mundane Photoshop print work late at night to wind down, but the promise of Edit-Station 1 emailing him was a little bit too exciting, and he refused to think of It anymore that evening.

Mark slept well, which is a good thing because tomorrow would be really weird.

----------------------------

The next day started like any other weekday, filled with screaming kids, barking dogs, and domestic bliss.  After the usual morning routine, when the house eventually grew quiet, Mark poured his second cup of coffee and sat down with his laptop at the kitchen table to start the day’s business.

Though many people still knew him as the producer and sarcastic host of a long-running Internet video game review show called Classic Game Room, in reality, in real life, in 2021, he ran a publishing company and spent most of his time analyzing data, sending emails, designing covers, and working on print manuscripts.

The publishing business was the complete opposite of the entertainment industry. Slow, methodical, quiet, and completely unexciting.  Just the way he liked it.

Like so many great things, his once exciting video production career came to an end as Internet video content moved from edited shows to live streaming, influencer culture garbage, endless speculation commentary, manufactured drama, and the quest to accumulate followers at all cost. He was happy to be out but occasionally missed the shenanigans and opportunities to drink beer on camera and shout about Atari 2600.

Business emailed awaited, and Mark had forgotten all about the mysterious message from the night before when he opened Outlook and saw another one from the same sender.

“What the hell?” He muttered to himself.

….Replace my broken break key and plug me in. Then hold the “rub” key and press “break” at the same time. Unplug me, and see what happens…

“I’ll have to block that in spam filter.” He marked it as spam and deleted it only to hear the computer’s irritating ding, which altered a new message, the exact same email.

….Replace my broken break key and plug me in. Then hold the “rub” key and press “break” at the same time. Unplug me, and see what happens…

Mark Bussler did that trademark Mark Bussler thing where he sat back in his kitchen chair with a heavy sigh and stroked his five-o’clock shadow. Even though it was 8 am, there’s no sense in shaving when working from home in a pandemic in a job where you never speak to anyone except the elderly dog asleep by the door.

“This is just too weird, and I really don’t have time for it.”

Mark closed Outlook and looked down at Stella, his valiant aging pooch who once enthralled the Internet as Viral Dog. Now in her twilight years, wearing a doggie diaper, Stella didn’t even open her eyes. She was sound asleep, which was her default mode these days after the morning's raucous barking at nothing.

He .......

.... continued

Copyright 2021 Inecom, LLC by Mark Bussler