Press Restart
A short story
by Aidan Sisk
Press Restart
Copyright Aidan Sisk 2017
Published by Aidan Sisk
Distributed by Smash Words
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Disclaimer
All events occurring and characters appearing in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real events that have occurred, or to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All work found herein is for entertainment purposes only.
For Thi,
my reason for never pressing restart
Consider the following: if you could live forever, would you?
What if when you turned eighteen years old, you could press restart on your life? In doing so, you would be able live your life out again, doing so each time you turn eighteen. However, you wouldn’t rewind time. Rather, you’d only reset your own life.
After you press restart, the world around you would continue to move forward. Some people in your life who have chosen not to press restart would grow old and die. And perhaps worst of all, all of your thoughts would disappear, leaving everything you’ve known for the last eighteen years behind.
Now, knowing this, would you still choose to live forever?
Nostalgia is a powerful force. It leaves us longing for what was. For many, it is the belief that what was will always be better than everything that is now and what will be. The memories of childhood and adolescence—a time of innocence and worry-free carelessness.
Fear, too, is a powerful force. It makes decisions for us whether they are the decisions we agree with or not. It paralyzes us and makes us helpless. Powerful, indeed.
These two factors, nostalgia and fear, are more than enough to persuade most people to press restart. They are powers that dictate and control actions, mood, and behaviour. Longing for what was, and afraid of what will be.
Imagine a world where this choice is a reality—each individual has this very real choice to make. Is it a decision you could make?
To make the decision of whether to press restart or not more stressful and difficult is the fact that each individual in this reality has just one month from their eighteenth birthday to either take the plunge or not. If one month after their eighteenth birthday the individual has not pressed restart, their life goes on. No consequence other than the possible feelings of regret and anxiety—though for some, this might be more than punishment enough.
With so many people pressing restart, this reality is an interesting place, the logistics and family dynamics completely changed. To raise a child is not as you know it. The population is drastically impacted and is faced with a high rate of poverty, and, with the small number of older individuals, knowledge and wisdom is more difficult to come by.
In this reality, the family dynamic is often not what you might already know. When someone presses restart, they are typically asking that their parents raise them all over again. While some parents have no problem doing so, others are reluctant. Regardless of how they feel about it, though, the child’s parents continue to age and raising a child becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, if the child presses restart more than once, the parents may die before the child is old enough to care for itself. As a result, the foster care system is beyond flooded with children who, with their history of selfishness, find themselves living their worst life yet.
At the same time, because of the number of people pressing restart, few people are dying from natural causes. And while many of them are not having children before they turn eighteen, some of them are. In order to escape their responsibility, many individuals press restart, abandoning their children and leaving them, like others before them, to be left in the foster care system as well.
The selfishness of pressing restart and children being left alone has resulted in a high poverty rate around the world. Without a proper childhood, children often grow up without the proper resources to become successful. As a result, they’re left to their own devices to survive in a world that offers very little for them. Irresponsible living also results in pressing restart again and again in the hopes that next time might be better. But it never is. It’s a never-ending cycle of disappointment, hardship and poverty.
Not only are family dynamics changed and poverty is at an incredibly high rate, but developed knowledge is hard to come by. When a person presses restart, they lose everything they have ever learned before doing so. Upon restarting, they need to relearn everything all over again. With the increased rate of individuals pressing restart, there are fewer and fewer older people left in the world. This means that the knowledge and wisdom people might gain over time no longer exists in most individuals. There are those that decided to move forward in life rather than pressing restart, but with how few of them that there are, knowledge and wisdom are far less common.
With the decision to press restart, regrets are erased, but fond memories are forgotten. It’s a seemingly impossible decision, but one that is made thousands of times a day throughout the world. And now, one more person must make the decision.
Kira was a quiet girl, often going through her life unnoticed and unseen, doing so by choice. It’s a decision she made long ago. She was never one for attention. However, there was one person who had seen her and seldom took his eyes off of her—Jim.
Jim had met Kira two years earlier at the start of their grade eleven year in school. Sitting near Kira in class, Jim felt something between the two of them. Looking over at the thin brunette, Jim could sense some kind of connection between himself and this girl he had never seen before. He did not know what it was, but it felt natural. It felt right.
It took Jim two weeks to muster the courage to talk to Kira, but he finally did at the end of school one day. Approaching her, Jim made small talk.
“Hey, uh, you’re in my math class, right?” he asked her, though they both knew the answer to Jim’s silly opening question. Kira pursed her lips as she tried not to smile in amusement.
“Yeah,” she replied, briefly looking up at him from her bag as she packed her belongings from her locker.
“Right,” Jim said, unsure what else to say. “Today’s lesson was tricky, huh?”
“It was alright,” Kira said with a shrug.
“Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t horrible, but it was… you know.”
“So, what’s up?” Kira asked, turning her attention from her locker and looking Jim in his eyes.
“Uh, what?”
“What’s up? No more small talk. What do you want to ask me?”
“Oh, I uh,” Jim stammered, thrown off by Kira’s forwardness.
“Yes?”
“Do you want to, uh, I mean—”
“Come over to my place tonight?” Kira asked, either unwilling to wait for Jim to say the words, or helping him out.
“Oh… yeah?” Jim replied, sounding uncertain.
“What? You don’t want to?”
“No! I mean, yeah, I do. I was just—”
“Come over at seven,” Kira instructed as she closed up her locker and began to walk away.
“Wait,” Jim called after her. “Where do you live?”
“Come on, Jim,” Kira said with a smile, “you know where I live.” She walked away once more, leaving Jim standing alone in confusion. But she was right. Jim did know where she lived.
Jim had obsessed over Kira every single day for the last two weeks since the moment he had first seen her. He had not followed her per se, but he had made a point of finding out where she lived, sometimes walking by at random points in the evening, seeing if he could catch a glimpse of her. One evening he had managed to do so, but she had also spotted him. He thought he had played it off well, as though he just happened to be passing by, but she knew better.
Clearly Kira hadn't been scared off. Then again, she was also clearly more forward than Jim was. And she knew his name. Jim could not believe it. There really was something about this girl.
That evening, 7:00pm came as Jim nervously approached Kira’s house. He had never been to a girl’s house before—not in this capacity, anyways. Was it a date? Were they just going to hang out? What if something more happened? Jim wouldn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what there was to do. Kira was far more confident than he was, and he found this intimidating. He had thought she was just a nice, quiet girl, only to find out that there was much more to her. Not necessarily a bad thing, Jim thought. He was just thrown off guard by it all.
Jim stood on the doorstep of Kira’s house before a large brown door. After several moments, he finally raised his fist to knock on the door. But before he could, the door opened. Kira stood on the other side, her bright smile welcoming Jim.
“Hey,” she greeted him, smiling widely.
“Hey,” he responded nervously, avoiding eye contact with Kira as he stood in place.
“Are you going to come in?” Kira asked before Jim fumbled through the doorway and into the house. Kira closed the large door.
“So, uh—”
“Don’t worry,” Kira interrupted, “my parents aren’t home. They’re gone all night.”
“Oh, okay,” Jim replied, feeling slightly less nervous, though his nerves stuck around for his time alone with Kira.
“Come on, I’ll show you my room,” Kira said, leading the way through the front entrance and up a large staircase to the second floor. Jim followed behind, unsure of what would happen next.
Kira and Jim arrived on the second floor, made their way down a short hallway and came to a door. Kira pushed it open and led Jim inside.
Jim looked around the bedroom. He had always pictured girls’ bedrooms a certain way. Bright pink walls with stuffed animals everywhere, clothes all about. But this room was not like that at all. It was fairly plain, actually. A twin bed in the far corner, a desk on the adjacent wall, and a dresser just to the side of the door.
“This is it,” Kira said, gesturing to the bedroom. She made her way over to the desk and took a seat on the chair in front of it. Jim slowly moved to the bed and sat on the edge of it, a nice smell of perfume in the air.
“It’s cool,” Jim told her as he looked around the room.
“It’s really not,” Kira responded with a chuckle. “But I don’t really need anything special. It does the trick for me. So, what took you so long to ask me to hang out?”
“Uh, I,” Jim stammered, once again shocked by Kira’s sudden forwardness.
“I’m just messing with you,” Kira said with a smile. “But really—how come we haven’t hung out sooner?”
“I, uh, I thought… I was too scared,” Jim admitted after a moment.
“Scared? Of me?”
“Well, you’re a girl—”
“Yes, I am.”
“Girls are scary!” Jim blurted out, followed by a slightly embarrassed laugh.
“Oh, come on, we are not,” Kira said with an innocent smile.
The conversation had quickly become more comfortable, especially for Jim, who didn’t even notice his nerves gradually disappearing. He had been correct when he felt the connection between himself and Kira the first day that he saw her. There was definitely something there between them.
Kira and Jim wound up talking for over three hours. They joked and laughed, poked fun at one another, and even casually flirted back and forth. But after a while, the conversation arrived at a serious topic.
“This might sound weird, but have you restarted before?” Jim asked. Kira knew exactly what he was talking about.
“No,” she replied. “My parents just had me sixteen years ago. This is my first one. What about you?”
“Same,” Jim replied.
This was one of many things Jim had learned that night that he and Kira had in common—they were both on their first life. Neither had been around before to press restart. In this world, that meant something. It was uncommon, to an extent. No past mistakes to be unaware of. No secrets to discover. Nothing to try to learn about yourself other than the life you’re living. A new existence. A real fresh start.
“Do you think you will when you turn eighteen?” Kira asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jim replied. “I haven’t thought about it too much, but I don’t know that I want to. There’s nothing from my sixteen years on this planet that makes me really want to do it again. Not yet, anyways.” But Jim was not being entirely truthful. His entire life he had despised the idea of restarting. He could not understand it, no matter how someone would try to justify it to him.
“I’m the same way,” Kira told Jim. “Maybe I’ll change my mind in a couple of years, but right now, I don’t think I would press restart.” Jim smiled, happy to hear that Kira felt similar to the way that he did.
“Cool,” Jim simply said. “You don’t meet a lot of people nowadays that aren’t completely set on restarting.”
“I know,” Kira said, looking Jim in his eyes. “It’s as if everyone is so set on restarting that they forget to live the life they’re in right now.” Jim did not even reply. He just smiled as he looked back at Kira. It was as if she had pulled the words right from his head.
The night ended soon after this conversation. Kira’s parents would be home soon, but Jim had to be going, anyways. It was getting late. But the connection had been established. There was no denying its existence now.
From that night on, Kira and Jim were inseparable. The connection Jim had felt with Kira was stronger than he ever could have imagined. It was as if they completed one another. What Jim was missing, Kira filled in. What Kira lacked, Jim made up for. Everything seemed perfect. Everything, that is, until Kira’s eighteenth birthday.
Kira and Jim had stopped in a park. Kira wanted a quiet birthday, so that’s what Jim was giving her. They had been out for a walk and decided to rest on a solid wooden bench on the side of the path on a grassy area.
Trees surrounded the pair, the leaves on the branches rustling in the breeze, the only sound in the park.
Nearby, across the path from the bench, was a garden. It was surrounded by a low brick wall, its bricks perfectly symmetrical, each brick a clean bright white. The bricks led up a pillar on which a clock hung below a white orb. At night, the orb would light up, providing a single soft glow in the dark evening air.
No more than a minute after the pair had sat down on the bench across from the garden, Kira dropped heavy news on Jim.
“I can’t believe you’re saying this now,” Jim said in disbelief as he looked into Kira’s eyes. She sat on the bench next to him. “I thought that we agreed that we’d never do that. You’ve never once mentioned in our nearly two years together anything about this.”
“I’ve just been thinking a lot about it lately,” Kira replied.
“But why?” Jim asked, still incredulous. “You want to forget about me—about everything that we have?”
“No,” Kira replied, her voice soft and quiet now. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Growing old… dying… everything.”
“But you’d have me.”
“I know, but—”
“There’s no ‘but.’ I just thought we would have each other for the rest of our lives. Now I
’m finding out you want to restart and do it all over again? To change things.”
“It’s not about changing things. Besides, you could do it too,” Kira said in consolation. “Your birthday is in a month and a half.”
“But I don’t want to do it,” Jim replied. “I want you.”
“You have me.”
“I won’t if you press restart.”
“We can find each other again.”
“How do you know that we’d find each other? Everything would be different. We may never meet. There’s no way to guarantee it. Besides, I’d have to wait years to have you again. I have you now, and I don’t want to change that.”
“I just—I always hear my parents talking about how much they regret not pressing restart when they were eighteen, and I don’t want to have that regret,” Kira said, her voice still quiet. The confidence that Jim had always seen in her was gone, now replaced by a possessive fear. Jim shook his head and sat in silence for a moment.
“This is your life,” Jim said, sounding somewhat frantic now. “Don’t listen to what others say. We made our decision ages ago.”
“I haven’t made mine,” Kira responded.
“Sure sounds like you have.”
“There’s still a month.”
“I don’t know what to say other than I don’t want you to do it,” Jim told Kira, now looking down at his hands in his lap. His mind was racing. They had always talked about how neither of them wanted to press restart when they turned eighteen. Now, suddenly, Kira was saying otherwise. He just couldn’t understand it.
“We could tell our parents to make sure that we meet—”
“They wouldn’t do that. They don’t care about us. They never have.”
“I don’t know what else to say, either,” Kira said.
“We should go,” Jim told her suddenly. He couldn’t have this conversation anymore.
The couple stood up from the bench and walked through the park in silence, returning the way they had come. They parted ways and made their way back to their respective homes.