[Original Novella] Okay I Guess, Part 3 (the finale!)

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After constructing a log cabin and smoking the first round of venison from a deer that he hunted, skinned and gutted in the correct manner after first ensuring the animal was truly dead, Daniel could then turn his attention to his appearance.

After all, appearance is an important part of being a rap singer, or so Daniel assumed based on the busy looking album covers with a lot of photoshop stuff going on like sparkles on the letters that Daniel remembered a little bit about how to do using tools like the lasso and filter menu.

He decided he would go with a comfortable, warm winter hat. Something like a long pointed sleep cap but with a ball of poof on the end, sort of like Santa Claus, on account of the new snowfall which would only be cause for concern had he not made sure to smoke enough meat to last until warmer weather permitted hunting to resume.

It was perhaps a slightly fancy hat which some might consider ostentatious but Daniel felt it was defensible on the grounds that the same length and poofy material which made it fancy also made it more effective at insulating the wearer’s head against the cold.

Naturally mittens were also necessary. Daniel carefully considered which color before deciding they should be the same color as the cap, whatever that was. If the colors were different, he reasoned, it would distract people, splitting their attention between the mittens and the cap as their own independent focal points when the real point of it was always the entire outfit.

Daniel took a break from this thought exercise, vowing to return to and finish it as time and energy allowed, in order to take his phone out. It buzzed in his pocket, and although he did not want to be rude, it could be important.

It was just some guy named xxXX///\SaintDtripppleRNoScopeMLG2017///\XXxx inquiring whether the alarm clock Daniel had given three stars that morning had anything wrong with it, that he’d not rated it four stars.

Daniel answered that he doesn’t like to give perfect ratings to anything as it diminishes the meaning of it and doesn’t allow any flexibility should something along the same lines come along but that blows him away in some fashion he could not have anticipated.

He then hit send and rated the interaction three out of four stars. While he had the site open, it caught his attention that Jurassic Park could be purchased as a digital download for only a dollar and ninety nine cents, and that he could keep the file itself without any associated digital rights management software which might otherwise interfere with playing it back on a variety of different devices.

The original film, Daniel recalled, had some somewhat dodgy CGI, albeit judiciously used only where it would have been financially infeasible to utilize practical effects. Even the largest and most expensive practical effect in the film, the animatronic tyrannosaur upper body, needed a little bit of CGI doctoring to sell it.

The technology just wasn’t there in 1993 to do a lot of the things the director presumably wanted, but sequels which nailed the CGI failed to impress because the real selling point of the film was the first-time spectacle of seeing dinosaurs brought to life, the impact of which sharply declines after the first time.

Daniel nevertheless bought the film and scheduled it to download to his set top box in the apartment, because of the scene where the two raptors fight the tyrannosaur. Daniel was excited to watch that again, many years after the first time he watched it.

The events of the fight lead the viewer to believe at one point that the two raptors will be able to cooperate to take down the tyrannosaur. Instead the tyrannosaur emerges victorious, killing one of the raptors while the other flees.

The scene where the guy gets sucked between the gap in the raptor holding pens was the other reason Daniel purchased the download, on account of how wicked sick that part in particular was, so he began to grow excited to watch it again.

“Well, here we are at your apartment building” Rebecca correctly observed. “I’m sure you’ve got stuff you want to go get done.” Daniel admitted he was only planning to watch the original 1993 Jurassic Park and order a Meat City Pizza.

“I didn’t used to order from Meat City because there’s just so many better options for pizza in this neighborhood” he explained, “but they have this online pizza tracker thing that lets you follow the process of your pizza’s preparation and transportation in real time.

It’s also possible with their customization system to put together something resembling a mediterranean pizza pie with white sauce, spinach, kalamata olives, tomato pieces and so on. I like that combination of ingredients and cannot find it on the menus of local pizzerias, even though by and large their ingredients are of better quality.”

Rebecca remarked that she also enjoyed mediterranean flavors because of their simplicity, in terms of the number of ingredients in any one dish, and the nutritionally wholesome balance of chicken and fish to vegetables and leafy greens, such as spinach and lettuce.

She then expressed the opinion that Jurassic Park was a pretty good film, although she would have preferred that it included additional dinosaur species and represented velociraptors in a more scientifically sound manner.

Daniel showed her the deal on his phone where she could download the film, pointing out that there was no digital rights management software that would prevent her from watching it on any of the devices she owned. He then showed her the pizza customization tool on the Meat City website, and how to set it to produce a mediterranean pizza.

Armed with this knowledge, Rebecca drove off into the night, presumably to enjoy the same film and dinner Daniel planned to. The pizza arrived a little bit late but it turns out that doesn’t actually mean that the pizza is free, although the driver offered a coupon for Daniel’s choice of either jalapeno bacon breadsticks or the chicken parmesan bread bowl for free with the order of any medium to large pizza with two or more toppings.

After eating seven of the twelve pieces, Daniel paused Jurassic Park at the part where the kids fall asleep with Dr. Grant, then wake up to the apatosaurs grazing nearby. He carefully put each of the remaining slices into individual ziplock bags so that he could take them to work with him as lunch over the subsequent five days.

The ziplock bags served not just to partition the food, but crucially to ensure that it retained its original moisture, as that determined more than anything how much of the flavor would return when it was reheated later.

Daniel found himself nodding off by the point where the kids are in the kitchen being hunted by the two raptors. Not wanting to lose his place, Daniel minimized the video player to the system tray so that he was unlikely to accidentally close it the following night, when he wished to resume watching.

With that matter dealt with, he pulled the covers on top of himself in order to retain body heat as he slept. He did not go under the sheets as he sometimes did on colder nights because he’d once done so needlessly and woken up sweaty.

Daniel spent twenty six minutes contemplating existential questions, having allotted himself thirty minutes for that before sleep each night. In the remaining four minutes, he imagined different types of hamburger sandwich that he would like to eat and what kinds of seasonal promotions they might be a part of, depending where they are sold.

Daniel reflected on the fact that he often had many potentially profitable ideas just before sleep each night. None which were of any use to his employer or himself in his current situation, but he realized he should write them down somewhere in case the opportunity should later arise to make some money with them.

So he did write them down, in a notepad style application on his phone. Daniel then placed his phone on the charging mat on the tablet next to his bed so that it would be ready with a full battery the next morning, and fell asleep shortly after that.

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