Playing games on a phone is fun,
but one girl takes it too far. At school, her
teacher yells at her for playing games when
she should be listening. At dinner, her
parents can't get her to talk because she's
buried in her screen. And the second the lights go
off, the phone comes back out, and she plays until
early in the morning. It gets to the point
where one day, she's playing while walking
home from school, and she runs right into a
sign, scraping up her forehead. Her mom has had
enough and te
lls her that she's wasting her
life staring at her screen. She then makes the girl
delete all her games. The girl reluctantly gets rid
of each game, except for one-- Taffy Tournament. For some reason, she
can't get it to erase, and the weird thing is she
never downloaded that game in the first place. She has no idea
where it came from. She decides to open it up
and see what it is like. It's the most fun game ever. Each round, she has to tap
matching colors of taffy before the mean old
dentist ca
n steal it. She plays and plays,
getting farther and farther in the game, until late
at night, she finally runs out of lives. Then the old dentist
appears on screen and asks her if she
wants to buy more lives, but instead of showing
how much it will cost, it says, "1 week
equals 5 lives." The girl thinks that is
weird, but she clicks on it and plays until
the sun comes up. The next morning, her
parents are in shock. The girl's forehead cut
is completely healed. She shrugs and says that
she must
be a fast healer, before heading off to school. She spends all day playing
Taffy Tournament under her desk and gets halfway
through the game. When she finally
loses all her lives, the dentist appears,
and this time, it says, "1 month equals 5 lives." She clicks it and
keeps playing, barely noticing that her hair
somehow grew a little longer. At dinner that night, she
tries to play the game, but her parents catch her
and take away her phone. She cries and pleads
with them, but they say no and put
the phone
in their bedside table. That night, the girl tosses
and turns in her bed. She's got to keep playing. She's got to beat the game. She sneaks into her parents'
room, grabs the phone, and rushes back to
her room to play. She gets 75% of the
way through the game before losing all her lives. This time, it says, "1
year equals 5 lives." She clicks it without
thinking and keeps playing. Then when she's 90% of the way
through, it asks for 10 years. Now the girl is a
little hesitant. Something
feels weird, but
she's so close to winning. She clicks on it
and keeps playing. But when her phone dies,
she sees her reflection in the darkness of her cellphone
screen, and she's all grown up. She nearly screams. This has to be a bad dream. She starts to cry and
then plugs in her phone and turns to the only thing
that will give her comfort-- the game. Pretty soon, she
forgets about everything and just focuses on
beating Taffy Tournament. It stops being fun. Now it's just something
she needs to
do. She makes it to the very
last level and loses. The dentist appears
on the screen. "100 years equals 5 lives." The girl stares at the screen. She can't click on it, but
she can't stop playing. The next morning,
the girl's parents are startled by an otherworldly
voice screaming, (WEAKLY) I won. I won. They rushed into the girl's room
and find an ancient old woman in their daughter's
pajamas holding the phone and smiling a large,
toothless grin. [laughing] [audio logo]
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