BLOOMINGTON, Iowa — In a throwback to simpler times, local 11-year-old Bennie Fruppen has been relying entirely on Steam to stay alive.
“We tried to raise Bennie the modern way first. We fed him healthy food, clean water, made him go outside in the sun, that kind of thing. But he hated all of that. So eventually we just let him try living on Steam full-time. It’s been months now,” said father Thomas Fruppen, watching his son play Minecraft in a lightless room. “I gotta be honest, I don’t know how he does it.”
Historians have marveled at how successfully Fruppen mimics the societal norms of the 1800s.
“This child lives in the 21st century, but his entire existence is powered by the Steam Engine. He relies on it in his every waking moment, and without it he’d probably just wither away and die,” said Dr. Jerome Vega, professor of Victorian history at Harvard University. “See how he puts in 16+ hour days, using his tiny hands to work with wood and brick and steel, feeding the very machine that sustains him. He’s so incredibly dirty, cheeks sallow, hasn’t bathed in weeks, and if the stuff smeared on his skin isn’t coal, I’m not sure what it is. The accuracy is just remarkable.”
While critics claimed an 11-year-old shouldn’t live this way, Bennie Fruppen insisted that he was perfectly happy with his lifestyle.
“Ah got-a put in me work ev’ry day on this earf,” Fruppen said, before washing down his mouthful of Doritos with a chug of Red Bull. “Guess it’s just my lot in life.”
However, Fruppen was later rushed to the emergency room when it was revealed that he had a Twitch, which is a common symptom of childhood rickets.
