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It was a hot and sultry evening in Parkour Civilization, and summer was sinking her teeth into flesh. In the thick and psychological haze that had settled over the Noob Level of Parkour Civilization, the town was still. Neither noobs nor pros roamed its wide and fragmented alleyways, and silence hung heavy in the air.
Meanwhile, Evbo sat in his house.
It was one of those dreary days, the ones where you could have moved mountains with the energy it took to make a single one-block jump. Evbo's hunger had not gone down all day, and he feared greatly the pros who would come around in the mornings to feed him. So, he picked up his keys, his wallet, and his student ID, and he began to parkour down the street.
Where he was going, he wasn't sure. Each jump felt like a freefall, and through the knowledge that he held in his hands his entire life- and what a delicate thing a life is!- he took great caution with his footwork.
Evbo passed the house of a neighbor, not his closest but certainly close enough that the two were acquainted, and in the brief glance he gave it he noted that the door was open.
This gave him pause.
An open door, in Parkour Civilization? He had rarely seen anything of the sort, and when he had it had always been in the aftermath of someone's plummet into the abyss below the Noob Level. Had his neighbor chosen to jump for the beef? Though the pit in his stomach grew with every jump he made, Evbo approached the house.
In the house lay his neighbor, dead asleep.
Asleep, during the day, in Minecraft. Evbo looked to the sky, but on the horizon there was no thunderstorm, nothing to show that this would even be possible.
Evbo called out his neighbor's name. No response.
The pit in his stomach, which had begun to dissipate when first he saw his neighbor's face, grew as he realized the paradox of the situation. He stepped out the door of the house and looked directly across the street. The door of that house was open, too.
Carefully, Evbo crossed the street and peered into the house, seeing the same. Catty-corner to this house as he looked outside, he noticed another open door.
He didn't have to look in to know what was there, but he did so anyway. Sure enough, this other noob, who he had never before met, lay sleeping. With this confirmation, the pit in his stomach grew to a black hole, encompassing all but his skin until he was only a shell of himself, a shell that had been hollowed out and replaced with nothing but panic.
Evbo feared the pros. That didn't matter anymore. He needed to find one.
With hastier jumps than before, he approached the house store. It was deserted. Everywhere there could feasibly be a pro, there was nobody. Finally, only one option remained. Evbo journeyed to the outskirts of town, where he knew he would find somebody manning the border.
He jumped and jumped until his hunger bar went down just slightly. He hoped somebody would be there to feed him in the morning. The sun was getting lower now, the horizon stained the palest shade of pink.
By the time he reached the border, the sky was alight with strawberry and orange, and he could see that there was nobody there.
Somehow, the absence of the pros wasn't what intrigued him. No- it was what filled that void.
Where a pro would normally stand floated something that he had never seen, not in his entire life. A cooked steak, turning slowly as it bobbed up and down. Evbo looked around him in every direction as his heart- did he again have a heart?- pounded through his skin. With no pro in sight to prosecute him, he snatched it up, unseen.
Evbo opened his inventory, if just to see the word "steak" written out, emblazoned in 16-bit glory. He knew what he had, but he had never before seen the word written.
It was rare. It was beautiful. It was the only thing left on the entirety of the Noob Level. The only thing but him.
Night had started to fall now, but Evbo couldn't bear to return home. The crushing weight of the day, even before he had made his discovery, was heavier than a stack of cobblestone, heavier than obsidian. He knew that if he slept now he would never again wake.
Evbo took a look back at the town, then another out into the abyss. He could stay here, or he could leave, escape the oppressive system in its entirety. He would farm wheat and craft bread and he and his steak would have all the hunger bars they could ever want. He would do two-block jumps for the fun of it. The heel, or the Birkenstock.
Evbo chose the Birkenstock. He left town.
"It's hard to believe it would end like this," he muttered to his steak.
The steak said nothing back.
"It's always been so immortal. So solid and unchanging," he continued. "I know why I might have wanted to leave, but it was always so impossible."
As Evbo embarked on his journey, the steak became his only friend. Sunrise came, followed by morning, and Evbo was not awakened by the pros at his door. His parkour was done not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He was not perfect, but he was precise, enough so that he lived through it. He imagined the books he would write. Ink and feathers were a rarity, but he could now do all the parkour in the world to get them. This was bliss, perfection.
"I knew who I was yesterday," Evbo told the steak after long hours of parkour. "But I think I've changed since then. What do you think?"
"You've always wanted to move up in the system," said the steak. "But the oppression is still there. Escape has freed you."
The steak had just talked to him, but Evbo wasn't surprised. Somewhere, he had known all along.
"They always say the grass is greener on the other side," Evbo mused. He shook his head. "The view from the other side is spectacular."
"The grass is always greener," echoed the steak. "A lie told by the oppressors to squander the hope of the oppressed."
The two travelled throughout the day, and by the time night began to fall once more Parkour Civilization was gone. It was a strange feeling, not being able to see it for the first time.
"Do you ever wish you were a player?" Evbo asked the steak after a painful silence.
The steak took a moment to think. "I don't," it finally said.
"Why?"
"Being a player would be wonderful," said the steak with a deep, sorrowful sigh. "I want to breathe the harsh and stinging air, to feel the weightlessness of a jump and the pain of a fall. I want to make friends-"
"I'm your friend," said Evbo.
"You are," said the steak. "But it's not the same. I'm not really your friend. I'm not really anything. I'm just how your brain has chosen to cope with the agony of loneliness. I can't-"
"Stop." Evbo took in a sharp breath. "Keep going- answer the question. What else do you want?"
"Community," said the steak. "Humans can be harsh and rough; they can be terribly cruel. But...."
Evbo waited. He felt his lungs catch as they rose and fell. The steak continued.
"At the core there's almost always something worth saving."
"How come you don't wish you were a player?" Evbo brought the steak close to his face in the closest imitation he could of sincere eye contact.
"Guilt." The answer was simple. "I have never felt it. I do not want to. Do you feel guilt?"
"What?" Asked Evbo. "Why would I feel guilt?"
"For all this. Do you feel guilty that you are the only one left?"
"I didn't do this," Evbo protested. "What happened to them isn't my fault. Why would I feel guilty?"
The steak said nothing, and they lapsed into nothingness once more. Evbo and the steak travelled through the night, and it was not long before the moon sat low on the horizon. It was then that Evbo noticed he was taking damage.
"What's happening?" He asked the steak.
"Your hunger bar," said the steak. "It's gone."
"No- not when I've come so far! Not now; not ever!"
"Do you know what to do?" The steak kept a calm and even tone.
The prospect entered his mind. Evbo shook his head and tears came to his eyes. "Not like this. I can't. It can't end like this."
"It's okay," said the steak. "You can do it."
"Not if it's me," said Evbo. "Not when all this was my fault?"
"You know?"
"I know now," said Evbo. He took another half-heart of damage. Sobs wracked his body now, harder than before.
"It's okay," said the steak. "But nobody is coming to save you."
Nobody is coming to save you. Nobody is coming to save you. Nobody is coming to save you. The words echoed throughout the chasm of his mind.
"Nobody is coming to save me," he repeated, trancelike.
"Promise you'll remember me," said the steak.
"I can't do it," protested Evbo.
"Promise me you'll never forget," said the steak. "No one else is here to remember us. Go back or continue forth, and no one will know what happened in the space between. This chunk will never be loaded in again. Everything is more beautiful because it ends. We will never be lovelier than we are now. We will never be here again."
"I promise I'll remember. I'll never forget, not as long as you don't." His words were lapping over each other now, and his speech was garbled. The steak knew what he meant. It always knew what he meant. How could he do this? How could he kill the only person who had ever truly understood him? He took yet another half-heart of damage, and the tears came more forcefully now.
"Now do it," breathed the steak. "I forgive you."
"You forgive me?"
"For everything."
Evbo brought the steak to his mouth. "If you are unlovable," he murmured, "let me be the one to love you. If you are unbearable, let me be the one to bear you. If you are inhuman, let me be the one to feel you breathe." Pain coursed through his entire body as he felt another half-heart leave him.
He let his teeth feel the steak's skin, softly, tenderly. His tongue caressed its grill lines, and as he bit down juices flooded his mouth. A sob filled his mouth. It was the best thing he had ever tasted.
And the worst.
Evbo soon found he was unable to control himself. His tender, careful bites disappeared as he began to gorge himself, loud and gluttonous. Pieces of the steak flew everywhere, and Evbo made feeble grasps at the crumbs in the vain hope of saving some part of the steak.
It was only seconds before his steak was gone. His beloved- those dark-bright grills, that umber meat. The wave of flavors that had flooded his body and soul were gone within seconds. How could he live with himself? How could he not? All that pain, all that sacrifice, and this was the solace he got in return?
Evbo tried to sink to his knees as he cried, but the limitations of his player form were such that he found himself unable. Grief. Grief. Grief. It poured down from the sky, covering his skin and soaking into his bones. He was nothing, now, if not grief. He was made of grief.
"Guilt," said the steak in his mind. "I have never felt it. I do not want to."
He could see now that the steak was wrong. Guilt was not the culprit, the demon lurking in the shadows of the human mind. No; it was grief. Evbo became grief, and grief became him. He looked behind, then ahead, and found that they were the same, and what they were was grief. He could go as far as he pleased. He would never escape it. He looked at the stars and saw that they were dim.