The Core: The Dark Enemy

6. I'd love to change the world

And no, it wasn't used for walking, since I had no legs, instead, it was used to pull open bathroom and restaurant doors.

The problem wasn't the begging, the heat, or the hours it would take to eventually reach my goal. I lasted five months simply because news got out about the guy who had tried to rob me, and people started talking and making a fuss. Soon, people who didn't like seeing me every day were lobbying to have the 'Right to panhandle' law repealed. When that failed, they made it so that I couldn't legally enter the street to collect donations.

Also, Walmart didn't like it that they had a potentially violent beggar sitting outside of their parking lot so they kindly asked me to go somewhere else. This is how I eventually ended up under a highway overpass next to the turn lane.

Someone would physically have to throw me money from their car window or to make sure that they were in my far lane in order to give anything to me since I couldn't wheel out to them with my powered wheelchair.

Then the health inspectors started to show up around my parent's house. Someone had filed a complaint, saying that my parents were slaving me out simply to make money.

It was around that point that I saw the handwriting on the wall and just turned in the towel.

Don't get me wrong, it was still doable. I could have achieved my goals, regardless of how long it took waiting under that hot overpass. The thing that got to me was that I would have to be completely selfish to achieve this. My elderly parents were struggling to make ends meet and my older sister had needs as well.

After five months I was able to save up quite a bit, but I couldn't turn a blind eye to the problems that my simulated family had to live through. I mean, I could have if I wanted to run the simulations like it as a video game or something not based in reality. Meditati had revealed earlier in the simulations that each of these lives that I was living was based in reality. I was living people's lives who were currently alive around the globe. It was a very sobering discovery when she told me.

That was one of the reasons why I kept going, taking simulation after simulation until the end.

After everything that I had been through living with disabilities, and after I calculated everything out, I just came to the inevitable conclusion that without help, I would be trapped there.

I did find some gold amidst the darkness of that simulation though. There were some truly wonderful Texan people who were like angels to me every day. Little old ladies and kind gentlemen who would go out of their way each day to drop off a bottle of water and a five-dollar bill for me.

This, in the end, set me off and just made me overflow with anger. I wasn't angry at them or anyone in particular, for all I knew the guy who tried to rob me was addicted to drugs or some other story and was just as much of a victim as I was.

No, I was angry for everyone.

So, I let that anger out. I figured that VR was the safest place to do it in, I wouldn't be able to crush any real cities and as long as I kept my AI away, I would be free to vent as much of the anger as I wanted and how I wanted.

That was the idea anyway.

Have you ever screamed at the top of your lungs only to find that it wasn't enough? That you felt like you needed to formulate your cry of rage into something with purpose? A lion could roar and could communicate so much to any listening being within miles, whether it was dominion over territory, the cry of deep hunger, or the promise of doom for its prey that it was hunting.

My mind had a perfect memory, and it was showing me every moment of injustice with clarity. I wanted to destroy everything that tore people's lives apart. From the drug plantations to the hidden dens that sold people into slavery.