I had gotten a job at an AMPM to get some money to pay rent. My parents had just kicked me out, and my roommate didn’t have a job, so it was up to me to pay rent for the both of us. Of course, working the night shift at AMPM didn’t pay much, so to save money, I would regularly go to the local junkyard to see if I could find some new clothes for myself and my roommate. I sounds nasty, but my roommate would take the clothes that I found and wash them in some dish soap in return for not paying rent. I mean, we couldn’t afford new clothes. And it’s not like we’re ever going to need dish soap, we didn’t have any plates to wash. My roommate and I only ate Cup Noodles with the same reused plastic fork every day, because we couldn’t afford anything else.
Anyway, one day I was looking in the junkyard for some new jeans, when I found a mysterious looking laptop lying in a pile of garbage. Normally I would have shrugged it off, knowing that it was probably broken, but something about this laptop made me curious. The laptop was like nothing I had ever seen before. The company name on the computer read “смерть” on it. I don’t know what that means, but I really didn't care. There was nothing else on the outside of the laptop, no barcodes or company copyrights, except for a little hyper-realistic looking sticker of a 1-up mushroom from Mario on the bottom.
I opened the laptop up, fairly certain that the screen would be cracked, or it just wouldn’t turn on. But to my surprise, it did turn on. It actually looked great, you could even say that it looked almost new. I was really excited about my awesome find and decided to take it over to my parents’ house to see how it runs. My parents were away on a cruise that week and the apartments that I lived in didn’t have internet. Anyway, I rode to my parents’ house on my bike and went inside, using the spare key that they keep underneath the mat. I quickly ran inside and turned the laptop on.
Before I could actually use the laptop, I had to type in a password. Well shit, how was I supposed to know the password? I became very disappointed and threw the computer on the ground. It hit the ground and I noticed that the little 1-up sticker on the back was beginning to peel off. So I did what any person would do and take the sticker off completely. But to my surprise, there was something written on the back of the sticker in red ink. It said: “01110011 01100001 01110100 01100001 01101110” on it. So I typed that into the password thing, and it worked! But the desktop itself was not what I was expecting. The operating system looked to be Windows 7, but the whole thing made me feel uncomfortable. The background was a choppy, very low quality image of Mario swinging Bowser from his tail from Super Mario 64.
There were seven desktop shortcuts. Six of them were text documents, and one was a TOR browser link. Every shortcut’s icon was changed to the same distorted image of Mario’s face. There was nothing on the taskbar. I clicked on the little Windows logo in the bottom left corner of the taskbar and clicked on All Programs. There were four programs installed onto the computer: Text Documents, the TOR browser, a calculator app, and an EXE file just titled: Mario. The first thing I decided to do was look at all six of the text documents on the desktop. The first one read: “Game Over,” the second one read: “Welcome to Hell,” the third one read: “Go to sleep,” the fourth one read: “I am God,” the fifth one read: “I am here....now,” and the sixth one read: “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven't you?” At this point I was feeling uneasy, but I was always the brave type, so I kept looking.
Next I decided to check out the calculator app. I wondered why out of all the things that could be on this computer, there was a calculator on it. I clicked it and the standard Windows 7 calculator popped up, except there was something wrong with it. It just had the number 666 on the bar where you type in the numbers. I tried to erase the numbers and nothing happened. I tried clicking on the other buttons and nothing happened. It wouldn’t let me do anything, so I closed the app. Now I was really unnerved. It was obvious that this computer had been hacked somehow. But I didn’t worry, it’s not like it had any of my information on it.
Next I clicked on the TOR link that was on the desktop. It brought me to a webpage titled: the-mario-program.onion/666. It started out as a blank red screen. I just sat there waiting for something to happen for two minutes and thirty seconds, when suddenly some black text appeared. It read, “Do you want to play with me?” There was an option of Yes and No. I chose no. But as soon as I clicked the no button, and error message popped up, saying “That’s invalid.” I pressed the X button on the error message and tried pressing No on the website a few more times. The same thing happened each time so I finally picked yes. Just then, a gruesome image of a man in a Mario costume cutting off a little girl’s head appeared. There was screaming coming from the computer’s speakers, even though I had the sound muted. Her eyes were looking at the camera as hyper-realistic blood came out of her neck.
I tried to close the computer, but the screen wouldn’t shut, no matter how hard I tried to close it. I threw the computer across the room, but I could still hear the violent screaming coming from the computer’s speakers. Finally, I went down to my parents’ garage and picked up a sledge hammer to smash the computer with. When I came back up, the screaming had stopped. I gathered up the courage to look at the screen one last time before smashing it. To my surprise, another error screen popped up, but instead of saying, “TOR has stopped working,” it said, “Go play my game.” I immediately knew what it was talking about. That game in the programs. I contemplated opening the file, but after what I had just witnessed, I knew that I had to destroy this computer.
I hit the computer with the hammer at least 30 times, but it wouldn’t even dent. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to destroy this thing. I knew I had to play the game. I loaded up the game. It started with a title screen that said 666. It also played a choppy version of Mario saying, “It’s a me, Mario,” from Super Mario 64. Then it cut to a title menu with only two options on it. There was Start, and Die. Of course I didn’t want to die, so I clicked start.
It started as me playing as Luigi walking through some kind of forest. I just walked through the forest for about 10 minutes when suddenly Mario popped out of one of the bushes and ripped my head off. Hyper-realistic blood sprayed everywhere as Mario looked at the screen with a demonic smile on his face. A text bubble appeared saying, “You shouldn’t have done that.” What did I do? I wondered. Oh well, no matter. I just need to get through this game.
It cut to the forest again, but this time I was playing as Toad. This time I only had to walk around for 30 seconds before Mario sprang out of a bush and ripped Toad's head off and ate it whole. “Yummy,” he said, his face covered in blood.
It cut one more time and this time I was playing as Bowser. This time I was walking through some kind of dungeon. I walked past a bunch of dead Koopa Troopas and Goombas that were ripped in half. Finally I got to that part where Mario jumps on a switch and drops Bowser into lava. I sat there waiting for Mario to come kill me for three minutes. Suddenly, Mario sprang out of the lava and cut my head off with a machete. Mario looked at me through the screen with his demonic smile and said, “Do you want to die?” I meant to click yes, but I was so scared that my hand flinched and I accidentally clicked no. Mario shrugged as another text bubble appeared that said, “Well, ok.” Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see the man in the Mario suit from the picture from the website. Except this time he was in a fire Mario suit, and he was holding something shiny in his hand. It was a fire ball! He threw it at my face, lighting my entire head on fire. I sat there screaming in agony as my skin scorched. I knew I didn’t have much more time to live. The last words I ever heard were, “Thank you for playing ‘The Mario Program!’”