You’re not ashamed to admit it, you’re a simple type of fella living in a simple
type of town in the hinterlands of the U.S.
There’s nothing in this world you enjoy more than to get together with the townsfolk,
quaff a bucketful of ale, dance and be merry.
These parties go on from night until morning and the skies come alive with the most amazing
firework displays.
But it is during one of these colorful shindigs that something happens to you that will change
your life forever more.
You’re going to receive a ring, and with that ring you are going to hit the cities…you
are going to get into crazy battles and you’re going to risk life and limb.
That ring has power, and of course you desire power, like all men do.
Hell is about to break loose.
On another particular night of merry-making, a white-bearded friend of yours turns up to
the party.
His name is Alf and he looks as old as time, but he’s a decent guy even if he goes missing
from your life for long periods.
You’ve got your uncle at least, and while he also does disappearing-acts now and again,
he’s usually reliable.
So anyway, the party is in full flow when your uncle just gets up and announces he’s
taking off.
You might be old enough to fend for yourself these days, but since you’ve never had much
parental guidance in your life you don’t take this news well.
“I’m going on an adventure,” your uncle says, and the first thing you wonder is if
he’s just drunk or has shacked up with some woman somewhere.
And that’s it, not so much as a “Take care of yourself boy” … he just takes
off into thin air.
It would have been a real bummer of a night if Alf hadn’t come up to you and given you
a gift: A rather expensive-looking gold ring.
Man, that thing feels so powerful just holding it in your hands, and you’ll soon come to
know why.
The last thing Alf has to say to you kinda shocks you.
He tells you, “There’s nothing for you here.
Get out of this place and go find yourself in the world.”
You think, well, if everyone else is skipping off on adventures then why not me.
You get the guys together and take off in that old station wagon your uncle never used,
and you don’t look back.
It’s time to hit the cities, to those places you have heard about where crime is rife and
where people work 16-hours days in smoky factories.
You soon find out that you and a bunch of other hillbillies riding around in a beat
up old station wagon attracts attention.
You never realized just how much you stand out with your country clothes and strong accent…and
a car that has no right to be on the road.
At the first city you come to you’re at the stop lights and a bunch of men in hoodies
– their faces totally obscured but you swear you see devilish red eyes – order you to
get out your car.
Is this a car-jacking, you wonder, one of those things you heard about that happens
in the cities?
But you get out and you soon discover it’s not the beat up car they want but that ring
of yours.
Ah, you think, this thing must be worth a fortune.
Even though you’re scared out of your mind all you can think about is how much you could
get for the thing at a pawn shop.
You then ask yourself how those guys knew you had a ring.
Weird to say the least.
These guys start beating the hell out of your buddies and one of them goes for your ring.
Your reaction is to just slip the thing onto your finger and then the most amazing thing
happens.
You are taken to a place of pure ecstasy.
It is like nothing you’ve ever experienced, like the greatest feeling you’ve ever had.
No wonder those guys want the thing.
When you come out of this ecstasy those car-jackers are all strewn in the road as if they’ve
been shot down in a hail of bullets.
But that’s not what happened.
It was you, that did it.
With that ring.
A similar thing happens in a roadside bar the following night.
You’re shooting some pool with your buddies and minding your own business when this monster
of a man just starts attacking you for no good reason at all.
That ring is in your pocket again but you just know this guy wants it.
You slip it back on and BOOM, that troll of a guy is destroyed.
Your friends think that this is a pretty neat trick that you have, but the thing is, every
time you get this super-power it takes something out of you.
They are now looking at the ring when you take it out, ogling over it like dogs salivating
over an eight ounce piece of steak.
Oh, God, you think, they want it, too.
To make it worse, when you leave that bar and start walking to your car this skinny
little wretch that hasn’t aged well and has like six strands of comb-over hair, starts
trying to get friendly with you.
He sidles up to you and like a tweaker in the midst of psychosis he starts talking about
this precious thing he wants.
“I don’t have any drugs!” you bark at him, go harass someone else.
It’s not the last time you’ll see this emaciated creep of a man.
You’ll later meet a guy that knows a guy who told him that this man is called Cullum
and he used to be a stand-up person, but then one day he just hit the streets and wasn’t
seen for years.
Another casualty of the drug epidemic, you thought when the guy told you that.
You’re in bed that night at a cheap motel you found, and you can’t sleep for thinking
about what you should do with that ring.
You could pawn it – and you must say, the craftsmanship is second-to-none – but then
someone else would get the power you now have.
On the one hand you want to retain that power, and on the other, things could turn nasty
if someone without your unblemished ethics got hold of it.
It seems to you that a lot of bad folks know about it, which makes you paranoid enough
to believe you’re intertwined in some kind of government conspiracy.
Hmm, that probably means the FBI are after you, or even the CIA.
You know what’s right.
You take it outside and with a hammer you get from the car you just strike that thing
in the hope of destroying it, but that ends with you 20 feet across the road and ring
still in pristine condition.
It can’t be destroyed you quickly realize.
At that moment you swear you see you that tweaker guy with the comb-over skulking around
the car park.
You are sure you hear the words, “My precious” and in a moment of compassion you think, “That
guy needs some help.”
He looks tortured.
You’re wrestling with your thoughts the next day over a plate of grits and biscuits
when you see the most beautiful, perhaps thee most beautiful, trio of women walk past the
restaurant window.
It suddenly hits you.
Whenever you put that ring on and cause a lot of destruction you also disappear.
The dark thought crosses your mind that you could just follow those pretty women around
for a while.
“WHAT A CREEP!” you then quickly think, admonishing yourself.
You’re not a creep!
But if all that ring is good for is winning fights with rather unsavory characters then
what use is it.
You don’t want to be continually fighting.
Then again, you kinda like how it makes you feel.
And would it really be all that evil to use to your advantage?
I mean you’re definitely not the peeping tom sort, but what if you could sneak into
a bank and just help yourself to part of the vault?
All that money is federally insured, right?
At the very least you could help yourself to snacks from your favorite fast food joint-
those places make enough money as it is!
The possibilities are filling your head as you’re still sitting at your restaurant
booth when you reach for your big glass of OJ.
Distracted by the only slightly evil possibilities in your head, you knock the OJ over and wind
up with a giant stain on your crotch.
Great, now you look like you don’t know how to use a bathroom- well, good thing you
got yourself an invisibility ring, as you pop that bad by on and slink out of the restaurant
in invisible shame.
The next day shortly after you’ve made easy work of a Triad Mafia gang who also seemed
to want the ring, you bump into that tweaker guy again and this time he just outright attacks
you.
For a moment he gets his hands on the ring and mutters, “It’s mine.
My own.
My precious.”
“No, it’s not,” you reply as you swipe it from his malnourished hands.
“What is it with you and this ring?” you shout, and then suddenly out of nowhere your
old friend Alf appears.
He tells you that this guy Cullum had gotten addicted to the ring’s power and even killed
his buddy over it.
To your surprise, Alf informs you that all bad people want it because it can “dominate
all life.”
For thousands of years people have been dying over that ring and you need to get rid of
it.
That’s pretty heavy, you think.
Alf tells you that this isn’t going to be easy, since you have to take it back to the
place it was made, and that is a gold refinery a few miles outside of Detroit called Doom
Brothers.
One of the brothers called Simon is still alive and he’s been looking to get the ring
back.
Like…he really wants it back.
Alf tells you that the road to the refinery is fraught with danger, but if you don’t
destroy the ring it will pretty much lead to the end of all men.
He tells you that at Doom Brothers the workers have little to no labor rights and because
they work around the clock all of them are bitter.
Hard work and pitiful living conditions have pretty much dehumanized those poor souls,
and they won’t take kindly to you destroying the ring.
“Ah right,” you reply sarcastically, “Thanks a lot for handing it to me.
No pressure or anything…making me the savior of all mankind.”
One thing you find out is that when one of your buddies grabs the ring while you are
driving towards Detroit, it doesn’t give the car a cloak of invisibility but it turns
that old piece of junk into what looks like an expensive Mercedes driven by some government
official.
You aren’t happy about letting someone else wear the ring, but it is good to get through
some neighborhoods not looking like a washed-up Walton family lost on vacation.
You spend the last evening before you reach Doom Brothers watching TV news in a motel.
More war, you think, as you watch drone strikes and raging tanks and clashing soldiers.
You’ll be glad to get rid of the ring as you’re sure all that fighting in the end
is about power and precious things.
That reminds you, you haven’t seen Cullum in a while.
Maybe he’s off the scent, you think, but you’ll soon discover that he hasn’t given
up.
You decide that it’s best not just to walk up to Doom Brothers and ask Simon if you can
destroy his work of art, so you sneak around the back to where the smelting area is.
You watch as the flames tickle the air and smoke reaches the sky in thick plumes.
That’s where the ring will go, back into the belly of the beast.
It’s eerily quiet in some respects, and you’d expected to meet a lot more of those
overworked, disgruntled employees.
You get to the edge of the smelting pit and it looks like a volcano, both mesmerizing
and frightening at the same time.
Suddenly Cullum is behind you and he is gonna have a last shot at reclaiming the ring.
If you’re not careful you’re going to fall into that lava, and so you slip on the
ring.
Oh, it still feels good to have it on.
But Cullum can somehow see you even though you thought you’d be invisible to him.
That crazed man bites off your finger and both of you fall over the ledge of the pit.
Unfortunately for Cullum, he ends up in the lava and you get helped out by your buddy.
That was a close one, that’s for sure.
You dust yourself off and the first thing you realize is you want to be back with your
townsfolk, sipping on ale and eating homemade food under the shadow of the moon.
The middle of nowhere aint such a bad place to be when you’ve got your friends.
You remember something your uncle Alf once said to you: “He that breaks a thing to
find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.”
He was right about that.
Your finest hour was being reacquainted with the ones you had loved… and thought you
had lost.
If you enjoyed this hypothetical tale and want to know more about how you can save the
world, have a look at this video, “How to Defend Earth Against an Alien Invasion.”