Choose Your Own Adventure 3
23 Jul 2021Today’s prompt: “You are a peasant in 1890s Russia. There is no food. Revolution is in the air. The czarists offer meals for your allegiance. What do you do?”
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You are a peasant in 1890s Russia. There is no food. Revolution is in the air. The czarists offer meals for your allegiance. What do you do?
Pledge your allegiance to the czarists in exchange for food. Turn to page 285.
Death to the Czarists! Viva la revolution, or whatever that is in Russian! Turn to page 282.
I don’t want to go to Russia! Get me out of here! Turn to page 284.
I don’t want to time travel! Get me out of here! Turn to page 283.
Page 282
Your timing is really awful, you know that? It’s still the 1890s, well before the Russian Revolution of 1905, and that’s the one where the army supported Czar Nicholas II. He won’t be overthrown until the Russian Revolution of 1917.
So how did your little mini-coup that didn’t even make the history books go? Well, you’re a peasant. You and your friends don’t exactly have a lot of heavy artillery. But you do have an abundance of pitchforks. You all take your pitchforks and go to the nearest town and start killing off the bourgeoisie. Your revolt is quickly put down by the authorities.
There’s a saying: An army marches on its stomach. Well, prisoners in chains don’t march on their stomachs, because they don’t have that kind of opportunity for exercise. But that doesn’t mean hunger isn’t a worry for you. Yesterday you had about a quarter of a potato and a few boiled cabbage leaves. As you slowly die of starvation, you can only imagine what the Czar must get to eat every night. You bet he eats roast peacocks. What a prick.
Page 283
You are a journalist in present-day Russia. You have a very bad habit of writing true things about governmental corruption. Vladimir Putin is not a fan of your work.
You “accidentally” fall from a 5-story balcony.
Page 284
You are a member of the Lakota Sioux in Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890. Yesterday, the 7th Cavalry surrounded you. The army was taking all your tribe’s weapons away. An old man of the tribe named Black Coyote seems a little confused by what is happening. He doesn’t want to give up his gun.
“I paid a lot of money for this,” he says in his too-loud voice, for he is nearly deaf.
With this many white men among your tribe, with their horses, and their English words, there is much noise and much confusion. In the noise and the confusion, Black Coyote’s gun fires.
The white men turn their guns on you and all the members of your tribe. You try to fight back, but they’ve already taken your gun.
More than 250 men, women and children of your tribe die in the massacre.
Page 285
You eat so well for a while. Borscht! Pierogies! Cabbage soup! Rich rye bread! Plenty of porridge! Once, even a bit of chicken!
You are eating in your kitchen, candles illuminating a huge repast. An old woman walks past your house and turns, peering through your window. She stares at you, suspicion melting into envy melting into hatred.
When the revolution comes a few years later, you are strung up as a czarist collaborator.