THE F-114

The original draft was written by hand in pencil, as a generative writing assignment in 5th grade (yes, fifth grade). It was inspired by a pre-video-game arcade game I played on the Santa Monica pier. All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, ridiculous aerodyamics, etc. are as in the original.

You have been warned.

One day, I walked down to the pier, & went into the F-114 machine. Then I thought, "If I imagined hard enough, I would be in a real F-114!"

So I imagined hard, & I was in a real F-114! Then a voice from the speaker said, "Start all engines."

So I started them up, & then the same voice said "Take off."

So I reved up the engines, & took off! But then, there was a fleet of enemy aircrafts in front of me, so I started fighting them. I fought them all off. But then, I started going up, & went out of the Earths atmosphere & gravity field! Then the air intakes for the jets closed, & the F-114 ran entirely on rocket fuel. Now the jet was a rocket, & fortunately I had my seat belt on. So then I thought, "If I imagine hard enough, I would be back on the pier!"

So I imagined real hard, & I was back on the pier again.

• F-114 was a real arcade game, distributed by Centuri. It consisted of a swivelling chair facing a projection screen, and a joystick with a "fire" button on it. The screen displayed the image of a blue sky, with a white crosshairs projected where the player's "machine guns" were currently pointing. At random points on the screen, distant enemy aircraft would be projected; I remember these targets resembled the F-80 Shooting Star. If you pointed the crosshairs at them while the fire button was pressed, the aircraft picture would be replaced by an explosion picture and you'd earn a point. The game was timed and ended after about a minute.
• There was no aircraft called F-114 in real life, however. The highest the F numbers got up to was the F-111, before they started over with the F-4 and the F-5. (The exception was the Stealth Fighter, which came into the public eye over a decade after the arcade game. It was called the F-117. I have no idea why.)