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Living on the Edge (or
Posted By: Marcus-626<wolfsavior@gmail.com>
Date: 1 August 2007, 1:13 am
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This was originally posted on Sector 7 at 1:17 AM on November 9th, 2004. It was submitted as a news article by yours truly whence he went by the simple alias of Shadow.
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Nine months of preparation and it all goes off without a hitch. Almost.
The plan was for me and my friend Nick to get down to my Gamestop as early as possible and be thee first two people in line to grab Halo 2 when those doors open. And, suffice to say, it worked, and we had quite a bit of extra surprises in store for us as well. Some good, some bad, but it all worked out for the better in the end.
Nick arrived at our house at 4:30 PM Sunday afternoon on November the 7th loaded with Mountain Dew, snacks, a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and a crafty sign that boasted the legend; "I may be a loser. I may have a crap job. But at least I get Halo 2!" For the next twelve hours, our boredom and growing insanity for wanting to play Halo 2 was stemmed by endless amounts of high kicking from the oh-so-sexy girls of Dead or Alive Ultimate. Around 9:30 or 10:00 in the evening, our night of game play was interrupted by my friend's news from MSN exclaiming the sky was alight with the Northern Lights. Sure enough, after scrambling out of our chairs, we beheld a spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis, lighting up the sky with green fire that dazzled the senses for a good hour and a half. November 8th had arrived & the Halo Gods seemed to be smiling upon us already.
I finally ended up crashing at around two in the morning. I never did find out if Nick managed to get a wink of sleep, or if he was too wired from excitement and caffeine to even achieve it. In either case, we were both awake by 6:00 AM and had started getting our gear together in the form of three large duffel bags full of supplies, blankets, and two lawn chairs. After downing some toast and mugs of cocoa we were off. My father was kind enough to drop us off at our final destination on his way to work, where we immediately set up Base Camp. It didn't take long for Steve, the store manager, to notice us and come out to tell us that "we ruled," plain and simple. We learned a short time later that he even contacted the regional Game Master and told him about us, and that said "GM" was going to come down too take our pictures so that we might actually get to be on the news. Sadly, the guy never showed up. Oh well. Around Noon is when the third member of our party showed up, another die-hard Haloic we got to know of as Kevin. I shared with him my chips. It was good.
A quarter of an hour later we met up with my favorite Gamestop employee, coincidentally also named Nick, who shall be referred to from now on as Nick². Things sort of became a double edged sword at this point… Nick²'s roommate Oliver had decided to tag along to observe the festivities. The man was a true genius at making any topic possible funny, even Lung Cancer. But, at the same time, both he and Nick² were smokers. Little by little the line grew, cigarette butts filled the entry way, and I was getting tired from laughing so hard at hearing so many jokes and from general sleep deprivation.
Mom dropped by on occasion with food from Jack in the Box and Ivar's Salmon House, who serve up the best damn fried clams on the west coast, I swear to God.
By the time 8:30 PM came around, it started to get cold. Really cold. Really. Damn. Cold.
Blankets were in short supply, and I'd opted to give Kevin mine, so I had to resort to using my leather coat as a makeshift leg warmer for a while. I went inside for a while to both catch up on some rest, away from the smoke, and to help my friends/the staff setup for Midnight. Somehow I ended up passing out on their balloon table for about an hour, because the next thing I knew Steve was helping me out and back into my chair. Time passed by slowly, but tensions and anxiety was high. Only a few short hours away until the greatest day in X-Box history. I found out, much to my surprise that we had made a few more friends; one of which answered to the alias of Frodo. (No, that wasn't his actual name.)
I didn't learn very much about Frodo except that he sure knew his way around a game of Black Jack. But I digress. At about a quarter to 11:00 PM one of our local radio stations showed up to hook us up with a DJ and some Halo multiplayer in the back of their van. Their visit was short lived when they realized they had no where to hook up all their equipment. The Red vs. Blue quote "Wow, sucks to be you" came to mind more than once.
Things progressed steadily from there until my plight, and my victory, came into play with only fifty minutes to go…
Gamestop needed an X-Box to show off Halo 2 during the time the customers came and left, and they were up a creek without a paddle because they had sold all their Boxes, new and used, over the past few days prior. This is when I came in. I had an X-Box; not just ANY X-Box, but a customized Halo 2 X-Box with the community famous image of the Master Chief looking out over the Earth from the rear of a Pelican.
I had to get it to 'em.
Now things started to turn sour…
After some hasty phone calls that had me inadvertently ruining my Mom's dinner, and waking my Dad up, I got word that my X-Box was going to be rushed down to me as soon as possible. By the time I hung up the phone, I wasn't feeling to hot... It was getting hard to think straight and focus on what was going on around me, so I decided to take a short walk and check out the line. It was on my return trip at about the half-way mark that I snapped. I was suddenly so dizzy, so disconnected and unaware that I keeled over and vomited spectacularly all over the entry way to Barnes & Noble. My pleas to Nick² to get me inside had to be ignored, on risk of a security breach, but he and my friend managed to get me to a safe zone where I immediately voided the rest of whatever I had in my system and proceeded to sob like a child who just endured the spanking of his life. If I had to give an explanation as to why all this happened; I'd have to blame the mixture of smoke, cold, and stress of the day.
After much concern and worry from my pals, I managed to collapse into my lawn chair until my Mom arrived with my X-Box almost thirty minutes later. It was now or never, this was my time to shine. And shine I did. With only twenty minutes left on the clock, I was escorted into the Gamestop where I was to help hook up my Box up to a giant, flat plasma screen TV. The next thing I heard almost made me start crying again.
STEVE: So, should we put his copy in?
My copy? MY COPY?!
The clerk at the counter handed me my wrapped Halo 2 Limited Edition, and, with trembling hands, I hastily tore off the cellophane. The cool metal underneath my fingertips was enough to convince me that the day's hardships were worth it. It didn't take long for those outside to realize what was going on, and what had just transpired between me and the staff shortly after my copy of Halo 2 was playing on that beautiful television. I don't think I've ever seen so many one fingered salutes aimed at me in my life!
But the fun wasn't over yet, oh no. Steve and the rest of the staff had two more surprises for me, ones that have me in debt to them for the rest of my natural life. Pulling me aside earlier, I was told that for all my hard work they were going to be giving me their Halo 2 display and a Halo 2 normal edition display box so I could mix-and-match my boxes whenever I so chose.
Tensions ran high and those outside looked like they were going to start rioting if 12:01 didn't get there soon. But finally those front doors were unlocked and opened, and they poured en masse ten-by-ten, over 500 of 'em. Nick was the first in the door but the second (to me) to get his copy of Halo 2's Limited Edition.
We'd done it. We'd beat the odds.
I'd racked up 16 hours out in the cold, 1 hour inside sleeping like a drunk and a near fatal asthma attack. Yet, out of all of it, I came out with the first copy of Halo 2 to be sold and played in the entire state. I made some new friends, and gained some great secondary rewards to boot.
Life was hard that night, but, Life was good.
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