The Cursorium

Year: 2045

Chris the Cursor galloped in the vast green undulating meadows of The Cursorium. Instead of admiring the vastly expanded beauty of the meadows, which were almost the same as the ancient standard Windows XP wallpaper, he continuously looked backward as if somebody had been following him. Seeing Parry the Pointer, who was his competitor in the race, still away, he slowed down a bit. A bright greenish light illuminated the landscape from all the four directions. Chris the Cursor raised his almost horizontal bar-shaped head to have a cursory glance at the wide panoramic view of the Cursorium. The finite extent of the land of meadows in all four directions always puzzled him but he never had the courage to cross over its edges far away. He wiped his tiny forehead drenched in his own sweat. The sweltering heat was produced either by the semiconductor junctions or because of his own mental state. The exact reason was not clear to him.

'Gee ... I will win this time, dear friend, you will lose.' Parry the Pointer came flying from behind and chuckled at his friend Chris. 'Chris, I always get defeated by you. You look like a long thin bar with a pair of hands and feet that look like small tentacles, an elongated humanoid bar.' Chris and Parry had been close friends since the beginning of their memories.

Chris the Cursor frowned at Parry the Pointer in fear.

'So what! You are also a cursor. Just take an arrow and tilt its head... tell me does your head ache? Since you keep it always tilted. ' Parry made a wide grin.

Chris's fear evaporated along with his sweat and he once again marched ahead onto the straight-lined racing track on the meadows of The Cursorium to compete with Parry the Pointer.

'I don't like body shaming. My arrow-shaped head doesn't ache. I like to fly with my tilted head. A feat you cannot achieve. This is the biggest point, Chris.'

'See, a Pointer is making a point.' Chris chuckled.

Parry ignored him before taking the lead in the race. However, he was running out of steam.

As if Chris heard his thoughts, 'So long? You were running only for 131 seconds.'

'I know Chris, but our Cursorium runs on a 2.4 THz computer, which makes time move so fast for us.'

'That's why I don't waste it in foolish arguments. I am on my way.' Chris zoomed leaving Parry the Pointer behind.

Chris had taken a winning lead in the race. He often looked backward and blinked for a millisecond to check how far he had come from Parry the Pointer.

A squealing sound, like a sudden breaking of tires on the road, screeched suddenly. Looking at the huge box-shaped structure right in front of him, Chris the Cursor jumped away and emerged on the next straight line located just below the previous straight line like those in a notebook on the meadows of The Cursorium.

Parry the Pointer followed Chris the Cursor to the next straight line. 'Watch your step. you were about to punch through Tom the TextBox'.

Parry the Pointer turned his arrow-tip shaped head towards Tom the TextBox and warned Chris the Cursor, 'Tom the TextBox has a rectangular tummy and once you bump into it, you will just keep blinking there. You cannot come out of its rectangular tummy without the help of our master- the User.'

'Thanks, dude, I was about to bump into him. Tom is also a strange creature. First, it does not move without commands of the User and then it has a large tummy where I often get stuck during work.' Chris fixed his eyes at the mustaches of Tom the TextBox though he was talking to Parry the Pointer.

Parry continued, 'And then you have to wait for the User to help you get out of the tummy of the TextBox. I never get stuck in its tummy. I am special. I cannot create so many characters on WordPages like you but I don't ask the help of the User either. In fact, I only take the User whereever he wants.'

Chris the Cursor enhanced the lead he had in the race. 'Stop your shit and please don't talk about WordPages now. we spent most of our lives on WordPages. See, I am much ahead of you. had it not been the rule that I can move only on straight lines, I would have already left you far behind.'

'But that is what I am supposed to do, take the User wherever he wants to take you or the TextBox on the WordPages,' Parry the Pointer said with a smile of big pride on his face.

Tom the TextBox covered a huge area on the straight-lined track. He could not keep quiet for long and joined the conversation between Chris and Parry. 'Come on Chris, why are you running away from me? Like Parry, I am also your friend. We all work in the beautiful land of WordPages. We toil the entire day, sometimes even at night. We get some free time only when the User logs out, then we can come to the meadows to have fun. Come on, Chris, write some beautiful poetry on my rectangular back.'

Seeing that Chris the Cursor was busy talking with Tom the TextBox, Parry the Pointer hurriedly flew ahead by jumping sideways and crossing over two straight lines on the green meadows of The Cursorium.

'This race is not your business Chris, go and write poetry as TextBox is asking.' Pointer tried some leg-pulling on Chris the Cursor.

'This is cheating. Why did you jump over two straight lines?' Chris the Cursor complained.

'I can jump and fly so I did.'

TextBox was not interested in the usual pestering between Chris the Cursor and Parry the Pointer.

'Hey guys, I am preparing for the Cursor Assembly meeting scheduled to happen soon. It seems there will be a big announcement.'

Chris the Cursor was not ready to accept defeat so soon at the hands of Parry the Pointer. He sprinted ahead moving his feet as fast as he could. The sound of his steps grew louder. After a while, he looked back at Parry and claimed proudly, 'You can jump, you can fly but you can't produce anything. I wrote all creative works, magnificent novels, innovative scientific formulae, groundbreaking software codes and historic court judgments.'

'Oh. What a grand talk about your achievement ... as if you have made all that yourself. It was always some User who did it. You are just a tool, dear Chris.'

'A pen is also a tool to write characters on paper like I do on WordPages but the pen never learns anything. It just cannot. But we cursors continuously learn. This is the aim behind our making by the Creationists.' Chris turned to Tom and said, 'we shall be there for the meeting in time. Is this meeting compulsory for all the residents of the Cursorium to attend?'

'Yes, it is, at least for us-.'

Parry the Pointer cut short Tom the TextBox's reply.

'- Dear Chris, don't tell me something I already know. When I am not busy doing the job of the User, I update myself. We have this vast Cursorium to explore and improve us... but leave it, the important thing for you is to know that race is always about going in a forward direction, dude. Looking back is only for humans to waste time analyzing the past.'

'I know that... but don't underestimate me, Parry. If the pen is mightier than a sword, then a Cursor is mightier than a nuclear bomb. '

Clanking sound.

Chris the Cursor tumbled over after hitting something on the ground of meadows, his face had hit the ground, the feet went up. Chris tumbled again and took a full roll.

'Ah...' Chris moaned.

Parry the Pointer stopped immediately and turned behind to understand what happened.

'Chris are you all right, how did you-'

'-I am all right,' Chris the Cursor said, shaking with pain, his eyes bewildered.

'There was something which got stuck in my feet, I just fell on the ground.'

'You were racing ahead in full throttle! that's why you went rolling over.'

'Yes, but what was that? Shouldn't we check what was this thing on otherwise unblemished vast green meadows of The Cursorium?'

Parry the Pointer lifted Chris the Cursor with his hands and flew back to the same spot on the straight-lined track where Chris the Cursor had tumbled over.

'See... There is a hole in the ground covered with mud. It elevated the rim of the hole with debris to hide it from outside.'

'I had never imagined that such holes could exist on our vast green meadows; it seems I can go inside this.' Chris the Cursor estimated the size of the hole by putting his head into it. His elongated bar-shaped body flexibly curved allowing him to bow his head down.

'No, don't! We have only a limited amount of computing power in our account. We cannot waste time.' Parry the Pointer stopped Chris the Cursor from entering the hole.

The User logged into the system.

In a flash, Chris the Cursor and Parry the Pointer disappeared from the green meadows and went back to their designated workplaces, Parry the Pointer at the center of the computer monitor and Chris the Cursor on the left corner of the first row of the straight line on the WordPages. Tom the TextBox waited for the call from the Pointer when it would take the TextBox to a designated place on the WordPages.

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