Game over

I went to the beach once. I finally got tired of waiting for the beach to come to me, which beaches aren't generally known to do. If someone were to ask why I went and what I planned to do there, I would have replied with something resembling "Oh, you know, just to surf and sunbathe and enjoy myself" which was a lie, as I was going due to the laziness of beaches and their lack of effort in coming to me.
Luckily, that's not the important part of the story. This is.

I died.

Well, they told me that I was - for all intents and purposes - dead for over a minute. Being the terrible surfer that I am, the world was flipped upside down with only myself remaining the right way up. Gravity then decided that as long as the world was upside down, it might as well join in the fun, and so I was thrust upwards into the water where my head uncomfortably hit the sand at the top.

Not that this was in itself a major problem; my brain's prompt reaction of losing consciousness filled that category nicely. As everyone with a proficiency, degree or even a mild interest in common sense knows, forgetting your consciousness while above the water (remembering that our old friend Gravity is joining in the upside down fun) is not the smartest move in the world. It's also not quite the dumbest, but getting into that now would be a wild pointless tangent.

During the painfully long time it took for my body to work out why the lungs weren't doing their job, the lungs to reply that they didn't like filtering liquid (they often prefer gasses), my body to question then why they were not then using gas, and the lungs (exasparated by this time) pointing out that as much as they enjoy filtering gas, liquid seems to be popular today, I had drowned.

Here's where it gets interesting. I can still remember quite clearly what happened when I died.

I woke up, as if I'd just taken the most refreshing sleep in the history of the universe (and even slept in for a bit), my clothes were dry and warm, and my lungs were happy to once again filter their favourite state of matter. The first thing I noticed was not how I felt, but rather where I was. A cramped and worn out room greeted me, with a bare floor and bare walls with some of the paint cracking and peeling around the corners. In fact, if there was anyone else in the room I would have turned to them and remarked "Well, this room is a bit shitty, don't you think?" - but nobody else was in my close vicinity, so the statement was only a brief thought.

The only thing in the room besides myself was a very crappy-looking sign with a very worn-out button (one of those buttons you instantly know does something cool, the one with the plastic cover over the glowing red light) beside it. Just so I'm perfectly clear, it was the state of the sign that was poor. The sign itself was perhaps the most beautiful object I'd ever seen in my life, but then again it might not have been - I couldn't be sure. Written in awe-inspiring handwriting (I must have spent several minutes just looking at it in shock) that most definitely did not originate from man were eight words that have (all at the same time) changed my life, confirmed several facts such as the laughable pointlessness of the world, and given me a deep and profound respect for Mike Altman and his song "Suicide is Painless":


"Game Over.
Please press button to play again."