This is not a rerun. This is not a reset. This is not a retcon. This is simply a rewrite. In other words, it replaces what already exists. Mainly because of continuity problems and quality issues. However, since the same things will happen in more or less the same way, as readers it's still up to you to choose which beginning of the story you like better.

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BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Gah, alarm clocks. What an evil invention. It always wakes you up right when your dreams start to get good.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Then again, they prevent you from being late to work. It's always good to be on time.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

...But right now, it's a weekend, so it's just a nuisance.

BEEP BEEP BEE- CRACK

...Fuck. Now it's probably broken. You need to stop doing that.

After you force the rest of your body to become somewhat awake, you take a quick look at the damage.
Yeah, looks broken alright. It's not like it's been smashed in by a bat, but you managed to crack the plastic screen, and now the LEDs inside dont' display anything meaningful.

Sigh. This is what you get for going to sleep late. Being woken up never feels nice, so your first reaction is to hit whoever or whatever woke you. Your parents didn't take very long to learn that they should stand a few feet away when they woke you for school when you were younger.

You sit up. Now that you've actually broken the alarm clock, you don't feel like sleeping anymore. Your hand kinda hurts, and...well, you've got better things to do on a weekend.

It takes you a few moments to muster the will to get up to brush your teeth, though. Even as you do, your mind is fogged by sleepiness. As you stumble back into your room, you can't help but get a sense that something's a bit off. Shaking it away as being an aftereffect from whatever dream you had that you've already forgotton, you throw on the same clothes you wore yesterday. If you're just going to be sitting around your apartment all day, like every weekend, there's no reason to bother getting new clothes, and it'd be a waste to dirty them when you don't need to, so this is fine.

Dragging yourself over to your computer, you plop right down. The buzzing feeling throughout your body fades, as you focus your eyes on the blue computer screen in front of you.

Blue. Yep, that's blue. With some gray text.

That's weird. You usually turn your monitor off. And you swear the last thing you did before sleeping was browse an online encyclopedia.

Blue background. Gray text.
Gray text. Blue background.

Oh.

It's a blue screen of death. Imagine that, it's been a while.

Just needs a hard shutdown and...
You press the power button to boot the machine back up.

Blue background. Gray text.

...Okay, let's try this again. Power off...Power on.

Blue background. Gray text.

....FFFFFFFffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-

The situation his you like a bucket of freezing cold water. Adrenaline surges through your bloodstream, erasing every trace of sleepiness that you had.

Your computer is dead.

Frantically, you search through all of your CD-Rs for something that can help. A Windows image. A linux boot disk. Hell, DOS is better than nothing.

And it's better than you found.

"Shit." You're without a computer. This leaves you with zero things to do.
Most people would have a couple alternatives. For example, television. It's not like you don't watch TV at all. The problem is, you don't own an actual television set. Your cable box is plugged directly into the TV tuner card on your computer. The idea was to save money, since your screen is plenty big enough to watch television on when you're at the distance you usually sit from it. However, it seems so silly when it means that something very minor can stop you from having anything at all to do on a weekend. Hell, it could be a single corrupted sector on your hard disk preventing Windows from booting properly. That's an easy fix if you've got the tools. However, you find yourself woefully inadequate in that department.

"Haaaaaah. This sucks."

It seems like you're going to need to actually leave your house. On a weekend. What a bother. You'd call a friend who actually has a system rescue CD to come and help, but lo and behold...Your phone service is Skype.

This leaves you with three options: you could go and blindly stuff, like new RAM or an operating system; you could buy a brand new computer; or you could buy a laptop.

...The first two options are out. If you randomly buy stuff, it's very easy to waste a lot of money. If you buy RAM and it turns out to be a problem with your operating system, then you'd need to pay for both. And then you'd be left with random stuff you have no use for, sitting there collecting dust. In another vein...buying a prebuilt computer is not within your dignity. Sure, a basic system is decently priced nowadays, but a basic system isn't what you need. That, and your friends will laugh at you. On the other hand, you really don't feel like building an entire new one from scratch either. Sometimes it's fun, but you don't want to deal with that right now. You're just not in the mood.

...So laptop it is. After you grab a backpack in case you need it to carry the thing home, as well as your wallet, you're off.

...

Fwooosh.

The sound of the pneumatic brakes on the bus awakens you from your half-awake state.

Ah, this is your stop. Okay, time to get off.

The walk from the bus stop to your apartment is...painful, to say the least. You really need to get a car, damnit. The bus may be cheap, but it's a pain in the ass.

Setting the box down, you reach into your pocket and fish around for your house key. If it was on a ring, it'd be easier, but since it's the only key you own, sometimes your lighter just gets in the way.

Once you find it, you slide it into the keyhole and turn. After pocketing the key once again, you pick up the box and step through the doorway.

...And land on your face.

Fuck. Damn, tripped going through the door again. That was a hell of a fall, though. Feels like you fell a good five or so feet.

Fearing that the laptop suffered a fall even worse than yours, due to leverage and whatnot, you crack the tape on the box and pull open the flaps. After pulling the laptop out and opening it up, it looks fine, for the most part. You managed to coax the store manager to sell you one of the display models for a discount, so it should still be charged.

Unwilling to wait any longer than necessary, you press the power button and boot the machine up.

Immediately your mood drops. It hasn't even gotten to the bios yet, but you can already tell that the display is horribly broken. There's lots of dead pixels, and the backlight doesn't seem to work for half of the screen.

Great. Just great.

The only thing left to do is...Go back to sleep. You'll worry about this when you're NOT tired as hell.

Simply setting the laptop down on the box it came in, you walk over to your bed.

It's gone. Weird. You swear it was here... Where is it?

You look up, and search around your room for where exactly your bed is.

Ah, that explains it. You're not in your room. You're in the middle of nowhere.

Wait, what!"

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5.07kb became 7.18kb. This should also fit in better with John's irritable attitude towards Gensokyo better than the original did. I'll do more later. Probably tomorrow.

Also, so as not to have a thread that only contains this rewriting, I'll also answer questions about the story at my discretion. I won't explain anything that will give away spoilers for stuff that hasn't happened yet, but I'll do my best to clear up anything that's already happened, to the best of my ability.

If you do ask questions, please use your sage. It doesn't make much sense to push this to the top for something like that.