Stormfuhrer Read Online Free PDF Page A

down over his mouth and spoke in a whisper into the headset microphone.  “Testing, testing.”  The soldier beside him turned to look in his direction.  The others were distracted.  “Hello everyone.”  This time he spoke clearly.  The soldiers looked at him. “'Hello,' he says!  Welcome back Mauer.  You look like Hundescheiße !” All were either laughing or smiling.  Apparently, not every word would be translated.
    After much of the initial confusion, Hayes felt that he was starting to get a feel for the game.  An hour had passed, then another.  Apparently, keystroke combinations were needed to show emotions, like smiling or anger.  A small generic face appeared, in the bottom corner of the screen, when an emotion had been changed, the face reflecting the current emotion and then fading out.  And endless combinations existed between the keys, the gloves, and the mouse, causing actions and reactions, though it all seemed quite intuitive.  At one point, the soldier across from him asked a question that he didn’t quite catch due to the noise of the truck.  He felt that the best thing to do was simply to narrow his eyes in the direction of the opening in pretended exhaustion, but possibly also displaying nausea.  The soldiers laughed again and started passing another bottle.
    The events didn’t involve the immediate or constant drama of a first-person shooter.  Rather, things happened in real time.  One second equaled one second.  And no one shot anyone, at least not yet.  Also, no one seemed able to do anything beyond what could be done in the real world.  He himself couldn’t carry three objects in one hand nor jump any higher or farther than a person could have in real life.  Still, it was exciting, mostly because of the reactions in others that his avatar’s actions would cause. 
    There came a point at which he wanted to elicit more significant reactions from the others.  He had his character focus his eyes on the man in the seat diagonal from him.  With the mouse-ball pushed forward, he lean towards the seated figure.  He raised and closed his right gloved fist.  He saw the same fist on the screen, repeating the same exact actions.  He rotated his fist.  The fist on the screen  responded.  The soldier scowled again in his direction.  He lunged the fist forward, moving the mouse-ball only a few inches.  His whole body went with it as it launched toward the chin of the man.  The soldier saw it coming and jerked his head back, missing the punch but clinking his helmeted head against one of the steel braces that supported the truck’s tent enclosure.
    Faintly, “Vas war das?” and loudly in almost the same instant,“What was that?”  The man stared at him, confused.  The others watched in silence.  He chose to try it again, this time with the other arm.  Coming from the left side of his body, It reached the soldier but with greater difficulty.  The soldier was alert and deflected it with his right hand.  The man then stood up and grabbed Hayes by the head with both hands, pressing down, forcing his head to the floor of the truck bed.  He hammered down hard on the back of his neck with one hand.  Hayes’ character fell flat, the screen was lit up by the flash of a blurry light.  A second later and the screen went black.  He tried various keys, but nothing moved in the blackness of the screen. He exited his browser back to the desktop and reopened it, putting in the address over and over.  Nothing.  Finally, the need for sleep overtook him and he closed the browser, dragging himself to the couch.
    After a few hours of sleep, Richard Hayes awoke and placed the headphones back onto his head.  He tried numerous times to return to the game, but the black screen remained.
     
    Richard Hayes lay on the old couch.  He forced himself to wait a full thirty minutes between attempts to reopen the browser window at the walküre.allein website.  Staring from the couch at the