Summer Assignment Stories
Story 1 - Damien is a young man that lives alone. He suffers from extreme social anxiety and so he always escaped reality using video games. One day, he has to prepare for his brother’s birthday party and when he goes outside to buy a gift, he notices more people that seem to be escaping reality in their own different ways. On the date of his brother’s birthday, he arrives at his parents house and is immediately surrounded by adults that keep asking him questions, making him even more anxious and stressed. He tries to avoid talking to people and tries to find ways to play some video games so he can distract himself a bit. Unfortunately he can’t and decides to leave the party, without saying a word to anyone. No one notices Damien is gone until the parents are cleaning the house and realize that Damien is not feeling well. Myke (Damien’s brother) goes to his room and sees a note left by his brother, explaining why he left and how he is feeling.
Story 2 - Kaden is a teenager reaching his adulthood. Even though his life is great, has a great family, caring friends and a lovely girlfriend, he suffers from depression. Everyday is gloomy for him, with constant fear of losing himself in dark thoughts, losing someone dear to him or doing something that might ruin his life. He always debates if it’s worth fighting to stay alive or if he should just end it all. One day in particular, Kaden is so lost in thought that even his friends can’t distract him or pull him out of that dark mindset and Kaden keeps shrugging it off. At the end of the day, he lays down at his bed looking at the ceiling just thinking to himself, falling asleep. He wakes up at 03:42 am with a phone call from his girlfriend. She says she is worried about him and wants to meet him and talk face to face, to which Kaden agrees and leaves the house. Once he arrives at the meeting place, his girlfriend wants to know what’s going through Kaden’s mind. He tries to deny that something is wrong but he is immediately stopped by his girlfriend. She explains that she had depression a few years back before she moved in, due to her parents divorce and not having any friends at all, she even admit to cutting herself, which makes Kaden look at her in a worrying way, almost bursting in tears. Kaden looks at the stars and explains to her why he has been feeling like this and why he is so negative all the time. He always had a shy personality, low self esteem and always hid his negative emotions, making him think less of himself. At this point, he starts crying and hugs himself. His girlfriend hugs him and tells him: “Everything is ok, just let it all out”.
Story 3 - Yamper is a young alien, about to finish alien school. For his final project he needs to examine a human being assigned to him and see how they react to certain situations and emotions. After arriving at earth, he locates his human being and immediately upon reaching his residence, the human being shows signs of extreme happiness and brightness. Yamper starts making random situations in his simulator, like an old woman fallen on the ground, to see how the human would react. During the beginning simulations, the human had always helped people and always stayed positive. Yamper decided to increase the difficulty and created a fake scenario where the human received a text message from work saying that he is fired. Upon reading the message the human looked a bit sad and disappointed but kept smiling and decided to look for work immediately. After a few other simulations Yamper was confused as to why the human never felt down and why he was still smiling. He decided to try the last challenge and upon clicking the button, the human received a call from his mother saying that his dad died. The human fell to his knees and started crying. Yamper finally saw the human cry but it didn’t take long. The human stopped crying and cleaned his face, took a deep breath and smiled once again. He called his mom and tried to help her through her pain. Confused once more, Yamper decided to finish the simulation and approached the human. He asked the human why he didn’t feel sad to the point of giving up, why was he still smiling after all the things he has been through. The human responds with: ”If you keep thinking about the bad things, more bad things will happen. We can’t stay sad forever, we need to live our lives to the fullest, it is a gift given to us after all.” The human chose to be happy because it also made others feel better. After this discussion with the human, Yamper finally understood how human emotion works and thanked the human for being part of the simulation to which the human didn’t know happened.
