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The laptop is cold when Avery opens it.
He doesn't think about that, not really. Laptops are always cold when you haven't touched them for a few hours, and it's November, and his apartment doesn't have great heating, and there are a thousand reasonable explanations for why the machine sitting on his desk feels like it's been stored somewhere underground. He doesn't think about it. He opens Minecraft instead, pulls up the world that was already installed when he bought the laptop from the storage locker, and thinks about recording something to post.
He needs content. That's the simple truth of it. His channel has seventeen subscribers, thirteen of whom are probably bots, and a single two-minute Skywars clip that he honestly thought was pretty good. He needs material. Something interesting. Something that'll make people watch.
He doesn't expect to find a mine.
Four hundred blocks from his base, carved into the stone like something that had always been there waiting, is a tunnel he did not build. He knows every inch of this world. He's walked it end to end in the weeks since he got the laptop. He knows where the caves are, where the ravines split open, where the ore clusters sit pretty in the dark. He knows this world the way you know the inside of your own bedroom, the shape of it familiar in your bones even when the lights are off.
He has never been in this tunnel.
The chest is in the middle of the mine, placed like it's obvious, like it was meant to be found. And inside the chest, wrapped in the digital space of a book-and-quill that Avery absolutely did not write, is a message.
Whatever you do at the crossroads, don't turn left.
Don't be fooled. It's listening. You can't outsmart it. It's listening to me. It's watching me. It isn't from this world.
At the crossroads, don't turn left.
At the crossroads, don't turn left.
At the crossroads,
don't.
turn.
left.
And at the very bottom, a cipher he can't solve. Not yet.
Avery reads it three times. He tells his camera it's creepy. He laughs a little, nervous, like laughing will dissolve the feeling that just settled into his stomach, cold and strange and insistent, like the laptop, like the mine, like this whole world that was already here when he arrived.
He doesn't know yet.
He doesn't know that somewhere in the code of those numbers, in the cipher that his viewers will eventually crack open like a geode to find something beautiful and terrible inside, someone was trying to save his life.
He doesn't know that the person who wrote that book sat in this exact world, his world, the world on this laptop, the world that came with the machine he bought for forty dollars from a storage locker, and wrote those words with shaking hands and a mind that was coming apart at the seams.
He doesn't know that the person who wrote that book already knew his name.
He doesn't know any of it yet.
All he knows is that the last line of the book, the one on the very last page, sandwiched between the cipher and the worn-down back cover, says: Run, Avery. It's here.
And that's his name.
And he did not write this book.
When Avery finally finds him, it's in a library that extends forever.
That's the only way to describe it. The shelves don't end. The ceiling is too high to make out. The books are in languages Avery doesn't recognize, written in scripts that spiral and twist like something alive, and scattered among them are books he does recognize, books placed by someone who was here before him, someone who left breadcrumbs the size of crafting tables and moss-stained footprints and quiet little clues like I was here, I was here, follow me.
"You're not a very hard guy to catch, you know, Avery."
The voice comes out of the chat log.
Avery stares at it. His heart does something strange, lurches sideways, tips off-center, like a spinning top that's been nudged.
"...Me?"
"Me."
"I found you," Avery types, and his hands are faster than his thoughts because what he means is something that doesn't have good words attached to it. Something more like: I've been in this world for thirteen hours. It's New Year's Eve and I'm sitting in my apartment talking to a laptop. I've been terrified and confused and I've cried twice when the camera wasn't pointing at my face and I kept going anyway, because I felt like I owed it to you, whoever you are, the person who put my name in a book and told me to run. And now you're here. You're actually here.
"Bet you did," the chat says.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
And that's the beginning of it. That quiet in the library, the two of them, text on a screen, but somehow more real than most conversations Avery has had in his life, talking about the King in Yellow and the gates and the thing that flooded Derek's mind with everything that ever was and ever will be.
Derek tells him what it was like. He tries to, anyway.
It floods your mind with knowledge. Everything that once was, everything that now is, everything that will be. Stuffed into your head. And through that, it shows you that everything you think you know, your whole reality, is a world that doesn't exist. And it crams all of that truth into a mind far too small to handle it.
Instantly.
And it hurts like a truck.
"That was behind the gates?"
"Yeah."
Avery doesn't say anything for a second. He just sits with that. The scale of it. The weight of what Derek has been carrying since September, alone in this world, alone with all the knowledge of the universe burning behind his eyes, unable to look away from the screen without his mind trying to collapse in on itself. Smoothies from the fridge, reached for blindly because he can't turn away. No sense of time. No way out.
Alone.
"Are you okay?" Avery asks. "Like. Right now. Are you okay?"
There's a pause. Long enough that Avery thinks maybe the chat has bugged out, maybe the world is glitching, maybe,
"I feel like my head's gonna explode if I look away from the screen. But as long as I don't do that, then... yeah. I'm okay."
Avery lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"There's no way I'm leaving you here," he says. Just like that. No deliberation. No weighing pros and cons. He's been in this world for thirteen hours looking for someone he's never met, and he found him, and that's the end of the conversation as far as Avery is concerned.
"You know there's no reason for you to get involved with this."
"That thing was in my world. I'm spending my frickin' New Year's Eve playing this game." He pauses. Types. Deletes it. Types it again: "You're gonna tell me to leave you here? After all that?"
"I know. And I appreciate it. But you're getting into something that isn't worth getting into."
"Why are you getting into it?"
"I'm already in it, Avery. I saw it. I can't look away from my screen. I might as well figure out something while I'm here."
"Okay, so let's figure it out together."
"You're putting yourself at risk for someone you don't even know."
Avery reads that. Reads it again. The words sit in the chat log like something plain and factual, and he thinks about all the times in the last five months that he's sat in front of this laptop thinking about who wrote that book. About whoever D3rLord3 is. About the person who looked into the eyes of something incomprehensible and surviving and used what it showed him, all of history, all of the future, everything, to leave a warning for a stranger named Avery who hadn't even found the mine yet.
"Yeah," he types. "I am. And it doesn't matter. You're a person. You looked out for me enough to warn me. And now I'm here. And I'm staying."
Derek doesn't respond for a moment.
Then: "So what do you suppose we do?"
And Avery laughs, laughs out loud, alone in his apartment on New Year's Eve with a library that shouldn't exist on his screen, because that's them, isn't it. That's already them. That's what they are: two people who have no business being in a world that doesn't exist, figuring it out one impossible step at a time.
"You're the guy who knows everything now," Avery says.
He thinks he can almost feel Derek smiling.
Here is what Avery doesn't say, in the twelve hours between the library and the cathedral:
I think you might be the most interesting person I've ever not-met.
Here is what Avery doesn't say, walking through the floating mountains with Derek's guidance threading through the chat like a lifeline:
I keep imagining what you look like. You have a knight skin. Gold armor, red plume on the helmet. You move through this world like you know it, like you've memorized it, and I keep thinking about what it was like to be you, alone in here, figuring it all out one step at a time.
Here is what Avery doesn't say, when Derek laughs at him, actually laughs, something warm and dry in the text of the chat, for not recognizing Conway's Game of Life:
Don't do that. Don't be funny. I already can't stop watching the way you move through these worlds. Don't make it worse.
Here is what Avery doesn't say, when Derek tells him his real name:
Derek. I'm going to call you that in my head every time I talk to you for the rest of my life.
"Derek is good too, if you'd like."
It comes out so casual. Like an afterthought. Like he's offering a minor correction. And Avery does something dangerous, which is he says "Got it. See you soon, Derek" and means it in a way that lands in the center of his chest and stays there.
What Avery does say, because he says everything too fast and too much and doesn't know how to stop himself:
"I'm not leaving you here. There's no way. You're a person, you saved my life, I've been in this world for thirteen hours looking for you, no. Absolutely not. No."
What Derek doesn't say back, because Derek has all the knowledge in the universe and is the smartest person Avery has ever not-met and understands, already, what is going to happen:
I know.
I know I know I know.
I know that you're going to refuse to go. I knew it from the moment I saw it, the King showed me your face, Avery, or not your face but the shape of you, the stubborn stupid wonderful shape of you, and I knew you'd come and I knew you'd stay and I knew I would have to find a way to get you to leave because if you stay here when I do this, it will take you too, and that is the one thing I cannot let happen.
I knew you before I met you.
I'm sorry.
"I need you to hurry, Avery. We don't have a lot of time."
The words are steady in the chat. Urgent but controlled. Derek is always controlled, it's one of the things Avery has figured out about him in the hours they've spent in this world together. He doesn't panic. He thinks. He plans. He sets backup traps he doesn't tell anyone about and solves cipher stacks with a pen and paper and finds invisible shulker boxes by watching the shadow they cast on the water below.
Everything Derek does is deliberate.
Everything.
"You've seen the tree, right? The big one on the disappearing mountains."
"Yeah."
"You need to get to the top. There's a giant pile of gold up there, okay? I couldn't get any before, but I need you to collect it and cover up all the doors you can find, like the book said. It'll take me too long to get there, so you have to do it."
And Avery trusts him.
That's the thing that will sit in Avery's chest for a long time afterward, the thing with thorns on it. He trusts Derek. He's known him for hours, less than a day, technically, in a world that shouldn't exist, communicating entirely through a Minecraft chat box, and he trusts him completely and immediately and without question. Because Derek is the person who wrote his name in a book. Because Derek is the person who found this impossible world and mapped it and survived it and thought of Avery, a stranger, before he thought of himself.
"I'm counting on you," Derek says.
"I won't let you down, Durrlord."
"Derek is good too, if you'd like."
And Avery climbs the tree. He climbs the whole tree, all the way to the top, moving fast because Derek said hurry and Derek said we don't have a lot of time and there is something in his voice, in the words, in the way they're arranged, that makes the urgency feel real and heavy.
There is no gold.
Avery stands at the top of the tree and looks around and there is nothing. No pile of gold. No glittering stack waiting to be collected. Just branches and air and the impossible mountains spreading out below him and the awful, slow crawl of understanding.
Derek knew there was no gold.
Derek knew because Derek knows everything now. Derek has all of history, all of the present, all of the future packed into a mind that's coming apart, and he sent Avery to climb a tree because he needed Avery to be somewhere else.
He needed Avery to be somewhere safe.
Avery doesn't climb back down slowly. He climbs back down like his heart is in his throat, like the world is tilting, like he has to run.
He finds Derek in the cathedral.
Derek, surrounded by something that presses at the edges of the screen, something dark and humming and wrong, something that isn't supposed to exist in a game, in a world, anywhere, and the chat is filled with words Avery barely processes because all he can see is Derek standing in the middle of it, invoking something ancient and terrible and doing it on purpose.
"You lied to me."
The words are out before Avery can stop them. Typed faster than thought, hands shaking, jaw tight. "There was nothing on that tree, Durrlord. What are you doing here? What is this?"
"Avery, I need you to leave now."
"I'm not leaving until you talk to me."
"I'm finishing the job, Avery."
And then Derek explains it. The plan. The only plan that works. The only way to stop the King from entering the physical world and taking Avery as his vessel, because Avery's mind is clean, Avery didn't see behind the gates, Avery is everything the King needs to cross over and rule and take apart the world brick by brick. The only way to stop it is to offer something else. Someone else. A mind already ruined. A vessel already broken.
If I force it to enter my mind, as it deteriorates, it'll go down with me.
"What'll happen to you?"
There's a silence. Long and terrible and shaped exactly like a chest that won't open and a path with no exit and a sixteen-hour video that cuts to black at exactly the wrong moment.
"I don't know."
"Don't lie to me."
"I said I don't know! My mind is gone anyway, Avery. It doesn't matter what's gonna happen to me. I can't look away from this computer without horrible pain. Soon I probably won't even be able to think at all. If you stay here, it'll merge with you too. That's exactly what it wants."
"I don't care," Avery says. He means it. He means it in the way you mean things when you're terrified and something has cracked open in your chest and you can see very clearly, with a clarity that's almost painful, that the person in front of you matters. "I'm not letting you do this. There has to be another way."
"There isn't."
"There has to be."
"Avery -”
"Please." He doesn't care that the camera is on. He stopped caring about the camera three hours ago. "Please, Derek. There has to be another way. Please."
And Derek is quiet.
For a moment Derek is just, quiet. And Avery wonders, in that quiet, what it's like to have all the knowledge in the universe and still not be able to change any of it. To see every possible path, every branching route, every door that opens and closes, and to know, with perfect clarity, that only one of them leads anywhere.
"Avery, you can't stay here. You have so much life to live."
"And I owe it to you."
"No, you do not. That is an insane thing to say. You don't even know me."
"You warned me, Derek!" The words come faster now, tripping over each other. "You're only part of this because it wanted me. It's not your fault you're here. I'm not letting you die for me. I am not -”
"Avery, if you don't go, we'll both die."
The world shudders. The cathedral shudders. Something in the walls is moving, pressing inward, and the chat log is filling with characters Avery can't read, symbols that spiral and collapse and reform, and the sound coming from his laptop speakers is the sound of something too large trying to fit itself into a space too small.
"It's okay," Derek says, quieter now. "You might not even remember me when you're out of here. Who knows how this place works."
Avery's vision blurs.
He didn't expect that. He didn't expect the word remember to land like that, like an open hand against a bruise, something that hurts in a way that tells you what you've been ignoring. He's known Derek for less than a day. He's known Derek through a chat box in a Minecraft world. He has never seen Derek's face, has never heard his voice, has never stood in the same room as him.
He will remember Derek for the rest of his life.
"Even if I don't," Avery says, and his voice is strange and thick and he hopes the camera isn't picking it up clearly, "my recording will."
"...That'll do."
"Now leave, Avery."
"No." He plants himself. In the game, his character stands still. In his apartment, Avery presses his palms flat against the desk and refuses. "I'm staying with you, Derek. You can't stop me, no matter what you say. You warned me. You saved me. If we're doing this, we're doing it together. I don't care."
There is a silence.
Then: "You're staying?"
"Yes."
"You won't leave?"
"No."
A longer silence. The world is coming apart at the edges. Something ancient and vast is pressing against the walls of the cathedral, and Avery's hands are shaking, and the chat log has gone still.
Then:
"Avery. What's in your inventory?"
"What?"
"What's in your inventory?"
Avery looks at his inventory. He starts to type, reaches for the keys,
And the world disappears.
- the void
The screen goes dark.
He's in the void. The absolute void, no ground, no sky, no walls, just falling and the soft sound of nothing, and Avery doesn't understand, Avery doesn't understand,
Derek pushed him.
He asked what was in his inventory, and Avery reached for the keys, and Derek used that second, that single, fractional, deliberate second, to push him into the void. To send him out. To save him.
Again.
Avery sits in front of his laptop screen with the Minecraft void on it and the chat empty and the world, the impossible world that doesn't exist, the world built by something ancient and terrible and waiting, silent, and he understands, slowly, like cold water rising, exactly what just happened.
Derek sent him away.
Derek planned it from the start. The gold on the tree, that was to buy time. And when Avery came back, when stubborn impossible Avery refused to leave the way Derek knew he would, Derek waited for the right moment and used it. Used the one moment when Avery's attention slipped.
Because Derek has all the knowledge in the universe. Because Derek could see every possible version of this, every branching path, and the only one where Avery walks out of here with his life is the one where Derek does it like this. Quietly. Between one word and the next. While Avery is still reaching for the keys.
"Don't think you failed," Derek had written, somewhere in the drive, in the letter Avery will find later. "When you read this, don't think you let me down. You didn't."
Avery closes his eyes.
The void hums around him.
In the cathedral, somewhere behind the screen, something is happening that he will never fully understand. A mind coming apart. A king swallowed whole by the collapse of something too full, too broken, too enormous to contain, dragged down into the deterioration of a human consciousness that tried to hold infinity and cracked at the seams. A trap only Derek could have set, because only Derek had the knowledge to see it coming, and only Derek would have chosen, deliberately, to become it.
He thinks about Derek, alone in this world since September.
He thinks about Derek, looking away from the screen and feeling his mind try to come apart, reaching into the fridge blind for another smoothie, watching the chat log scroll.
He thinks about Derek saying it hurts like a truck.
He thinks about Derek saying I knew you would find this place and post a video. The way he said it like it was obvious. Like Avery was always going to come. Like they were always going to end up here, in this library, in this cathedral, at the end of the world.
I knew you before I met you.
He thinks about the book. The book with his name on it that he did not write. The book that said Run, Avery. It's here in the place where the cipher cracked open, a last warning from someone who didn't even know him yet, who had nothing to go on except the vision a terrible god gave him before he ran for his life through an impossible hallway.
He knew my name.
He wrote my name.
Before he knew anything else about me, before I was anything other than a face in a future he couldn't control, the first thing Derek did with all the knowledge of the universe was make sure I'd be okay.
The folder has one more file.
Avery finds it later, in the Google Drive, nested at the bottom, a document that wasn't there before or that he missed or that appeared when the world went quiet, he doesn't know, it doesn't matter. What matters is that it's there, and it's from Derek, and the words are in Derek's handwriting even though it's just text on a screen.
You know, it's weird writing a final letter.
Almost as if I have to come to terms with whatever this is, which is something I find quite displeasurable.
But here I am.
Why did I even record all this? I don't know. Well. I do know. I just don't want to be forgotten.
God, my head hurts like hell. I can feel myself slipping as we become one, and my mind becomes a prison.
What a true shame it is. All the knowledge in the world, and no way to use it. That's how it should be, I suppose. We stumbled into a world we have no business in. This is just the cost.
Please don't think you failed, Avery.
When you read this, don't think you let me down. You didn't. And it's thanks to you and all that you did that millions live to see another day. And thanks to you, I got a chance to see all the beauty of the universe. Things I never knew were in the world, or could be.
A chance no human will ever get again.
I'm grateful that I saw it all, even if it was just for a little.
You're capable of great things, you'll do great things, so believe in yourself. And I don't just say that because I saw it. It doesn't take a god for me to figure that out. I know it because I know you.
Goodbye, my friend.
Whatever you do at the crossroads, keep going forward.
Or something like that.
I was never really good with endings.
Avery reads it twice.
He reads it a third time.
The word friend sits in the middle of the screen and Avery stares at it, this stupid impossible word that means so little and so much, this word that Derek chose, of all the words he could have used, with all the knowledge of the universe at his disposal, to describe the guy who spent his New Year's Eve stumbling through an impossible Minecraft world refusing to do the sensible thing and leave.
He was never really good with endings.
Neither is Avery.
Avery who is sitting in front of his laptop at some hour of the morning with the world outside his window gone quiet and a void still on his screen and a letter from someone he met for less than a day in a world that doesn't exist, and he is, he's,
He's going to be okay, eventually. He knows that. He's going to upload the video. He's going to keep going. Derek told him to keep going, told him he was capable of great things, told him to believe in himself, and Avery has never been good at doing what he's told but he's going to do this because it's the last thing Derek asked and you don't say no to someone who gave everything to make sure you survived.
But right now, in this moment, in the quiet of his apartment with the cursor blinking at the bottom of a letter written by someone with a ruined mind and infinite knowledge and the most precise, deliberate heart Avery has ever encountered,
Right now, he just lets it land.
I know it because I know you.
He knew him. In a world that doesn't exist, through a chat box, for less than one day, on New Year's Eve, Derek Hutchins knew him. Not because the King showed him. Not because the infinite knowledge told him so. Because they were both in the same impossible world trying to do the right thing and sometimes that's enough. Sometimes that's more than enough. Sometimes that's everything.
Avery closes his eyes.
The void hums on the screen.
Outside, somewhere distant, someone sets off a late firework, a leftover from midnight, from the year turning over without ceremony. A small bright thing in the dark.
Whatever you do at the crossroads, keep going forward.
viii. what remains
In the morning, Avery opens a new document.
He doesn't know what to title it. He tries a few things and deletes them. A World That Doesn't Exist. No. What D3rLord3 Left Behind. No. He tries I Don't Know Who This D3rLord3 Guy Is and stops halfway through because it's not true anymore. He knows exactly who D3rLord3 is. He knows Derek Hutchins the way you know a scar, by the shape of the absence, by the place where something was and isn't anymore.
He settles, eventually, for nothing. Just the footage. Just the hours of it, edited down, posted without a title for a few days before the chat tells him to call it something.
He keeps posting.
He keeps going forward.
Because that's what Derek asked. Because that's all there is to do. Because the crossroads is behind him now and the path goes forward and the world, the real world, the physical one, the one with bad heating and storage lockers and laptops with pre-installed Minecraft worlds, keeps turning.
He doesn't forget.
He was told he might not remember. Derek said it like a kindness, you might not even remember me when you're out of here, like forgetting would be a mercy.
Avery remembers everything.
He remembers the library. The way Derek wrote even under pressure, controlled and dry and occasionally, devastatingly funny. He remembers Derek laughing at him for not knowing Conway's Game of Life. He remembers Derek is good too, if you'd like, the casual offering of a name like a small door opened in a wall that had been solid until then.
He remembers I knew you before I met you.
He thinks about that more than he should. He thinks about what it must have been like, to see, in one overwhelming impossible flood of everything that ever was and would be, the face of a stranger. A YouTuber with seventeen subscribers and a slime skin and a laptop he bought from a storage locker. A nobody from nowhere who was going to stumble into an impossible world looking for answers.
And to write his name in a book anyway.
To leave the warning anyway.
To make sure, even at the very end, that Avery didn't die for it.
There's a word for that, Avery thinks. There are probably a lot of words. He doesn't use any of them, not in any video, not in any upload, not in the community post he makes two days later that shows him standing in front of the crossroads with his hands in his pockets.
He doesn't use any of the words.
He just keeps going forward.
The way Derek asked.
The way Derek would have wanted.
The way it was always going to go, because Derek saw it coming, and he made sure, with the last working pieces of a brilliant crumbling mind, that Avery got to see it too.
All of it.
Everything that was and is and will be.
Not because of the King.
Because of a book Avery did not write.
Because of a chest in a mine four hundred blocks from his base.
Because of a stranger who knew his name before he knew theirs, and spent the last thing they had making sure it wasn't the last thing of Avery's either.
Goodbye, my friend.
Whatever you do at the crossroads, keep going forward.
"I don't know who this D3rLord3 guy is, but if he left me this message, I feel like I owe it to him to at least figure out what happened."
He did.
He always did.