The front door slammed shut, a percussive end to the domestic crisis. Pete Woody was gone, his truck keys safely in his pocket, on his way to a weekend of fishing and masculine contemplation. The house, which had been filled with the tense with his stomping and fury, was now blessedly quiet. Chris stood in the living room, a feeling of smug satisfaction washing over him.
Pete got into his truck, still grumbling under his breath about being late. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 10:45 AM. He was supposed to meet his friends at the lake at eleven.
Damn it. I'm never going to hear the end of this. Carl's going to say I was probably still in my pajamas.
He was never going to make it on time. He jammed the key in the ignition, the engine of the old Ford roaring to life with a familiar rumble. He backed out of the driveway a little faster than usual, gravel crunching under the heavy tires. He was going to have to break a few speed limits if he wanted to avoid a full day of good-natured ribbing from his fishing buddies. It was a small, mundane decision, an act of impatience.
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At the main intersection on Main Street, Patricia Barr was having a lovely morning. She sat comfortably in the wide, plush driver's seat of her pristine 1989 Oldsmobile, a vehicle she had owned since it was new and had maintained with meticulous care. She was humming along to a gentle country song on the radio, thinking about the pot roast she was going to make for dinner.
I'll need to pick up some carrots, she thought, her mind occupied by domestic planning. The traffic light ahead turned green. She eased her foot onto the accelerator, the big car gliding forward with a smooth grace.
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The light turned a taunting yellow just as Pete's truck approached the intersection. I can make it, he thought, his mind on the open road and the promise of a lake with his buddies. He pressed his foot on the accelerator, the old truck lurching forward. He made a sharp, aggressive right turn, his tires squealing in protest, cutting directly in front of a massive Oldsmobile.
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Patricia Barr let out a startled little yelp, her placid thoughts of pot roast evaporating in a flash of terrified adrenaline. Her foot, which had been gently pressing the accelerator, slammed down on the brake pedal with force. The old car, which had been a paragon of automotive reliability for the last thirty-five years, protested this sudden, violent deceleration. The tires screeched on the asphalt. The engine coughed, sputtered, and then, with a sad gurgle, it stalled. Patricia Barr sat in the driver's seat, her heart fluttering in her chest, directly in the middle of the town's most crucial chokepoint.
Oh, for heaven's sake, she thought, her hands trembling slightly on the steering wheel. That rude man in the truck. Rushing around like the world is on fire. She turned the key. The engine made a gutless, flooded sound but refused to restart. A single, stalled vehicle, a beautiful, beige icon of a bygone era of American manufacturing, began to cause a traffic backup of epic, small-town proportions.
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Several blocks away, City Councilman Ralph Hardwick sat fuming in the cool, leather-scented interior of his brand-new, top-of-the-line Ford Explorer. He was dressed in his best suit, a navy blue number that he had picked out specifically for his 11:00 AM campaign kickoff press conference on the courthouse steps. He glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. 10:55 AM. He was now trapped in a rapidly growing, inexplicable gridlock.
What is this? he thought, his professionally calm demeanor beginning to fray at the edges. A tractor parade? It's Monday morning!
His thoughts shifted from confidence to annoyance, then to a full-blown, simmering rage. This is what I'm talking about. Complete mismanagement. How can a town expect to attract new business when you can't even get across Main Street at 11 AM on a weekday? This is exactly why I'm running. To bring competence back to this town. His phone buzzed. It was a text from his campaign manager. "Where are you? Media is getting restless." His face began to turn a blotchy, angry red.
He finally arrived at the courthouse at 11:45 AM, nearly an hour late. He slammed the door of his Explorer and stormed toward the courthouse steps, his suit wrinkled and with an expression of fury. The small crowd of loyal supporters and the local media, including a bored-looking reporter from the Record Delta named Marcel Skinner, were visibly impatient, their faces slick with sweat in the hot morning sun.
As Ralph stormed to the podium, a few whispers went through the crowd. "He looks mad," a woman commented.
"Not a great start," her husband replied. "Did he run here?"
Hardwick, foregoing his carefully prepared, focus-group-tested remarks about "stable, experienced leadership," gripped the sides of the podium and launched into a bitter, angry speech. He blamed his tardiness on the "abysmal, incompetent, and frankly, dangerous traffic mismanagement of this town's current administration," an attack the crowd immediately, and correctly, interpreted as him throwing his own city council colleagues under the bus.
The press conference was a catastrophe, a political self-immolation that rebranded Ralph Hardwick not as a stable leader, but as a disorganized, angry, and hypocritical buffoon.
The crowd's murmurs grew louder. "Is he blaming the council?" someone asked, bewildered. "He's on the council."
"Wow," another person muttered, pulling out their phone to start recording. "This is a train wreck."
Marcel Skinner, the reporter, was furiously scribbling notes, a small predatory smile on his face.
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While Ralph Hardwick's political career was imploding downtown in a spectacular fireball of his own making, Chris was back in his bedroom, completely unaware of the chaos he had just unleashed upon the world. The house was quiet now that Pete was gone. He decided, in a fit of domestic responsibility, to tackle some laundry.
He came back into his bedroom after loading the washer and sat down in his gaming chair. A new System-generated quest appeared in his HUD.
[Quest: Organize Digital Files]
[Objective: Reduce desktop icon clutter by 50% or more.]
[Reward: 10 XP]
Easy XP, he thought, a satisfied smile on his face. He meticulously began to drag the hundreds of miscellaneous icons that littered his desktop into neat, orderly folders. Old game installers went into a folder labeled "Games." Random screenshots of funny glitches in Vexlorn went into a folder labeled "Screenshots." And the dozens of miscellaneous, unidentifiable files that had been cluttering his desktop for years went into an all-encompassing folder labeled "Stuff." He felt a surge of competence, of control.
The System rewarded him for cleaning up his own small, digital world with a satisfying ding and 10 XP, while the larger world outside descended into a traffic-snarled mess of his own accidental making.
Later that afternoon, bored and flush with the victory of a well-organized desktop, Chris logged onto the Upshur County Community Forum. The top thread, with over two hundred comments and a rapidly climbing view count, was titled: "VIDEO: RALPH HARDWICK'S HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD KICKOFF."
The thread was a brutal and hilarious public execution. It was filled with residents mocking the councilman's spectacular meltdown. Someone had already posted a clip of the angriest, most hypocritical part of his speech, and it was going viral locally.
Chris clicked the video and watched, a delighted grin spreading across his face. He saw Ralph Hardwick, his face red, his voice a furious shout, blaming the very town he was hoping to lead for his own tardiness.
"Wow," Chris said to his empty room, a short laugh escaping his lips. "That guy's campaign is already over."
He felt a detached sense of amusement at the local political drama. It was like watching a particularly juicy episode of a reality television show, a satisfying drama to pass the time. He had no idea that the entire chain of events—the Nudge for the keys, Pete's timely and slightly-too-fast departure, Patricia Barr's stalled car, the subsequent gridlock, and the complete implosion of a political campaign—was a direct result of his own small action.
He closed the browser, completely oblivious to his own invisible and clumsy hand shaping the mayoral race.