bears with guns

2021-05-02

So the space bears had taken over most of the top floors of the World Bank Building where we lived.

It was fine.

They didn’t really bother us. They were cool. The only problem really, was the US military who set up sniper posts in the surrounding buildings and kept trying to shoot and kill all the bears instead of just letting them have the building. They weren’t hurting anybody. They didn’t have any place to go. I say just let them have the building. They were good neighbors. Minded their own business. Took care of the building. Let us do our thing.

Anyway, my cute neighbor downstairs called me over to help her with her computer. Turns out she was trying to submit some erotic fiction to a website, but she had to export the story information as yaml and upload it with the story in order to submit it.

For some reason, this involved going down to get something from the storage room on the 33rd floor. Have to install the YAML driver, I guess. Must have been saved on a floppy disk or something. 33rd was part of the disputed zone, and crawling with FDR’s goons. But I figured it would be fine because the bears would protect me.

So I went down a couple stories to the trenches. The floor here was mostly open, the walls blasted open. You could see soldiers in army fatigues in the neighboring buildings hanging out.

I saw a large panda bear posted in a little barricade, guarding the floor, watching the corner where the hallway wrapped around out of sight. He had that uniform space bear look to him: smooth like his fur was just skin. And the patterns of colors on his fur made perfect circles. And his body itself was composed of perfect spheres and rounded cylinders. He looked like a cartoon bear to be honest.

I asked him if he would open the hatch down to level 33 so I could get something from the storeroom. He slowly turned around to look at me, and when he did, a WWII soldier crept around the corner at the end of the hall and pointed his rifle at the bear.

I called out to warn the panda, but the bear got shot and slumped over. The soldier aimed his rifle at me. I put up my hands and called out. I saw the flash of the muzzle and the bullet whizzed past me. I dropped to the floor, protected by the panda’s barricade, but now shots were coming from the building across the street. Why were they shooting at me? I’m obviously not a space bear. I crawled back to the stairwell and felt bullets flying through the air close to my head, and felt the wooden walls splintering and shattering around me.

Each time I tried to climb up the stairs, I was pushed back by a barrage of fire. In fact, every time I tried to move at all, everything around me lit up. So I just stayed as still as I could and tried to breathe.