Solitary Man
April 30, 2044: My name is Jackson Waldo Blake. I go by Jax. I'm 6'7, 245, 28 years old. I am in the Walpole, Massachusetts Penitentiary... for life... without possibility of parole.
I came home early one day. I saw my best friend Mike's car in the driveway and thought, "Cool! Mike's here. I'll have a beer with him."
I walked in and no one was in sight but I heard noise coming from the bedroom. Like the fool I was I still thought nothing of it, figured they were fixing that window that didn't close properly. I walked to the bedroom, opened the door, and found Mike and my wife, Belle, doing the nasty.
Mike was a cop. His pants were near the door with his weapon, well, his other weapon, holstered on his belt. I saw red, didn't think at all, picked up the weapon, shot him through the head, and shot my wife through the heart.
Soon as I fired the second shot I realized what an idiotic thing it was to do. I should have turned around, walked out, taken all the money from our bank accounts and hit the road. Oh well. Too late.
Justifiable homicide as far as I'm concerned but the jury called it double murder. I had a **** lawyer.
So here I've been for the past 4 1/2 years, and here I'll stay until they cart my dead body out of here.
Times have changed and Massachusetts always was a pretty liberal state. True, I'm in maximum security, but I get to work in the kitchen 8 hours a day, and get an hour of exercise in the yard or in the gym, and then I have time to myself from 7:00 until lights out at 10:00 every evening.
The food is mediocre, which I suppose is the best I could hope for. The cot I sleep on sucks, which is to be expected. The cell has a table and chair for my computer. And yes, they let me have a computer and an electronic reader, so my evenings aren't bad. I have very limited, very closely monitored internet use.
So I found this game on the web last week. Draft Day Sports College Basketball 2044. Looks interesting. I was a high school basketball star, and a starter at UMass-Lowell, well I started during my junior and senior years; I was a power forward. I've always loved college hoops. Anyway, this game is a game where you coach a college basketball team and try to do the best you can with it, maybe move up to a better team eventually, and then maybe an even better one. Looks deep; seems to have everything in the game that exists in real life. I got permission to buy it (We earn $1 an hour at our jobs, and can use it for most anything we want to, with permission. I always make sure to have some money saved up.).
There are a few ways to play the game and I decided to try the Promotion/Relegation thing. Looks like a fun way to play.
I'll tell you a little more starting tomorrow when my job starts, as head coach at my alma mater, UMass-Lowell, in Conference V, the lowest of the conferences.