Work Text:
The picture has lived on your bedside table for three years, twenty-five days, fourteen hours, and thirty-five minutes. A thin-necked lamp accompanies it, bending over itself, shoulders heavy. You hardly use it anymore. In that room all you need for light is the sun, your cell phone screen, and the digital alarm clock that’s tablemates with the lamp and picture.
You could use your phone for your alarms, but it remains shut off, face-down on the table when you’re not scrolling. The clock stands constant with its dim red light. Its numbers are bold, lines assured and straight, ticking forward every sixty seconds on the dot. You’ve counted.
When the electricity fails, the first thing you do when power returns is set the clock back into order. You wait until the exact moment your phone’s time inches past the minute mark, and then you let the alarm clock run. If the difference is too great, you try again. You’ve tried again many times. Maybe the milliseconds don’t matter, but you don’t want to take the chance if they do.
The red numbers are hardly light enough to see the picture by. You’re fine with that. In bed when you lie on your back or sit up straight, it’s in the corner of your eye. Turned on your side to face the table, with dark-adjusted eyes you can almost make out the outline of his face. Maybe it’s just your imagination, but maybe not. In the morning it doesn’t matter—with sun through the window, he’s crystal clear.
You’ve considered getting darker curtains. But who has time for that, anyways? Going to the store takes an awful lot out of you. Besides, you’re used to the routine.
Wake up. Orient yourself in the room. Turn over if need be.
See his face. Full cheeks, snowy beard, pointed red hat, a smile that’s too jovial and too sly at the same time. Forest with bare trees in the background.
And in the top right of the picture, in thin yellow letters, the words: Goodbye, Gordon!
Goodbye, Gordon. Goodbye, indeed. You say it to yourself as you leave the house for work. If it’s in the robotic voice of a certain gnome, you try not to think about it.
At four days, seventeen hours, and thirty-nine minutes, Baaulp called you over Discord. You left the laptop on the kitchen table to make breakfast. It was the first time in the past few days you’d gotten out of bed early enough to warrant it.
“███, where have you been?” he said. “Everyone’s been at-ing me on Twitter and Tumblr and everywhere and I’m tired of it, okay? I’m tired of it. It’s your problem, I don’t see why you can’t just go on there and say something.”
There were three eggs left in the refrigerator. You could’ve sworn you had more a few days ago.
Baaulp continued, “Did you set them up to do this? ‘Cause it feels like you’re playing a big joke on me, and they’re all in on it.”
You decided on bagels instead.
“I’m sick of it, ███. Y’know– y’know what I think? I think you went crazy when you played that stupid mod. I hope you deleted it. And gave it zero stars.”
“Yeah, me too, Bauulp,” you said. You popped the bagels in the toaster and returned to the laptop. “Were you even watching that last stream?”
“No, I got tired. But, hey– everyone’s been saying you went too far, I don’t even know what that means, but they’re all freaking out and if you don’t let them know that it’s just a big joke I’m gonna have to do it for you and I don’t want to. It’s your problem, okay?”
“Sure, man. I’ll take care of it.”
You hung up and clicked over to your Twitch channel. A few more taps on the touchpad, and the VOD was gone. You shut the laptop and got your bagels from the toaster.
You try not to be upset that your streaming career didn’t work out. No: “career” was too small a word for it. You’d built your life on a tower of game cartridges, flimsy plastic boxes, outdated webcams, consoles and computers—so what if your throne at the top was precarious? How could it not be? You gave all of you to get there and you’d give more to reach the sky.
Videogames were always supposed to be your life. When you were a kid you would sneak out of your room to play each night; trying not to get caught by your parents was a game in and of itself. That was scarier than any horror game you’d ever try. But fear breeds caution, and you were only found out three times. You took that as a sign.
Your parents thought your dreams crazy: “Get good grades,” they said, “make some friends.”
But who needed more than what you had? Who needed anything else, when after school you could throw your backpack down, pull a blanket over your head, grip your controller or mouse, and boot up a game? Half-Life. Kane & Lynch 2. Sonic. Punch-Out. Videogames were your bible, your lifeline.
With Twitch everything fell into place. You saved up all the money you had for the best equipment. You tried to be funny. It worked, somewhat: you’d gotten viewers in the low thousands, sometimes. You made enough.
Your parents wouldn’t understand the tower you had built, but you didn’t need anyone’s understanding.
At the peak of your final stream, you had 1562 viewers. By the end it had dwindled to 694. Now you will always have zero.
Could you find it in you to turn your camera back on and pull up another game? Sure, you’d like to think. But the picture on your bedside table tells you otherwise.
At least your co-workers are nice.
At seven months, fourteen days, sixteen hours, and twenty-three minutes, you got a job at a local broadcasting company. It has nothing to do with videogames, but you were able to snag it through your tech skills. It’s more respectable. If others were to hear it, they would nod along and not give you any of the odd looks that accompany “Twitch streamer.”
You took a job behind the scenes: a video editor. You’re still using what you learned for YouTube, except now no one knows it’s you doing it.
Or at least, that’s how it was for over two years: a peaceful oblivion. Go into work, talk to the producer about editing choices, participate in other conversation when necessary, and work. Cutting clips and adjusting audio became your prayer to forget.
Then two weeks ago, the company hired a news anchor named Kayla Miller. At three years, ten days, seventeen hours, and twenty-two minutes, you saw her for the first time. She passed by you in the hall and did a double-take, a short stutter of her steps, her head whipping around to watch you. But she didn’t say anything, and soon you were out of each other’s vision.
You made a pit-stop in the bathroom to check yourself in the mirror. You looked the same as always.
At the end of the day she approached you again. You heard her heels clacking against tile before anything else, and when you glanced up from your desk where you were gathering your things into your bag, you reeled from how close she was. She was bending over a little to get a better look at your face; strands of hair coming loose from her ponytail dangled too nearby.
“You’re ███, right? The streamer?” she asked.
You nearly dropped your bag. You nearly pinched yourself. You nearly felt your heart pound right out your chest, straight up your throat, constrict your breathing and leave you on the floor gasping for air. You nearly ran out of the building right then and there.
“That’s me,” you got out.
Kayla’s face broke into a beaming smile, all teeth. She straightened and her fingers twitched at her side in giddiness. “Oh my god, I used to watch your stuff all the time. And, shit– sorry if I’m intruding, but I wanted to tell you– I’m so fucking glad you’re still alive.”
“Baaulp didn’t say anything?” you asked.
She looked at you as though your head fell off. “Well sure he said something. But when your whole damn social media is silent, you think we’d settle for the word of one man? He barely even had the answers himself, because, like– I mean, what happened with you two? A fight? Crazy time to have a fight.”
You tightened your grip on your bag and shoved the last papers inside. “Look, we didn’t make it public for a reason, okay? I can be a streamer and keep parts of my life private.”
“Right, sorry! But you can imagine my situation, right? Ha, god. Show up to my new job, walk down the hall, and out of all the people to be my co-worker, it’s fucking ███. We thought you got murdered or something! Or, well, I did, and– I guess you haven’t been checking social media, huh? Maybe I shouldn’t, either. Bet you get better peace of mind without all that controversy.”
“I’ve never had better peace of mind in my life,” you lied. You zipped your bag closed and stood up. Kayla was standing in the way; she awkwardly maneuvered to the side, her heels making another click-clack as she looked down to make sure she wouldn’t trip.
“Right, of course,” she said. “Well if you want me to leave you alone, I will. Just glad you’re okay!” She shot you two thumbs up as you sidled past her and made your way to the exit.
Your last message to Baaulp was this: remember when you called me crazy? i think you were right. i dont know whats going on but none of it makes sense
Baaulp responded: then get some therapy and tell your followers youre fine
You haven’t opened Discord since.
When you were a kid you always wondered how the NPCs in videogames felt. Half-Life in particular was a blood-bath, always.
You had a few runs where you tried to save as many as possible. How would the scientists feel, cornered by aliens with gaping maws, reaching claws, ripping them to shreds and leaving their torn bodies for dead? Alone. Under the earth—their final resting place, abandoned.
With the military covering everything up, how would their families learn their fates? Their friends? How many did those scientists even have left, after they’d dedicated their lives to their research? Had their sole path led them down a hole that had collapsed behind them without their knowledge?
You stuck with that scientist on the bridge the most, the one at the beginning, who would fall the moment you stepped on. He grabbed onto that cable, dangling over the infinite black abyss, and with the last strength he had, called out your name. You sensed the desperation in his shout of Gordon. It was that of a man in his final moments, nearly alone, just a couple meters away from salvation.
You didn’t know how long that fall was. You imagined it gave him time to think—to process what had happened.
You should’ve been able to reach across, grab his hand, haul him to safety. No matter the monsters, in that moment there would be someone to lead him away from that precipice.
You learned later that all you needed to do was spam “E” to save him. But back then, as a kid huddled under a blanket in the dead of night, the only solution was to shut the game off right there and stop playing. But you could never do that. He was just an NPC, after all. An unfeeling, unthinking collection of pre-recorded lines.
Those scientists—those damned scientists.
Then there was that experimental Half-Life VR copy you found. You didn’t save many scientists in that one, of course—except for those three.
Bubby. Tommy. Dr. Coomer. They had hardly any family and were eerily comfortable with shooting their friends in the head. You were just lucky enough to be the player character.
…Maybe that was lucky in more ways than one. You were still among corpses, bodies and walls sprayed with blood, but in those stiller moments when you could sit on the floor for a bit and rest from the death, they almost felt alive. And if they were alive, then so were you.
At three years, twenty-five days, and three minutes, Kayla invites you to go to the bar after work. A group of your colleagues goes every Friday, and she was taken up with them quickly. You’ve never gone, but you’ve been there long enough to see how that group has changed, swallowing and spitting out members like a revolving door.
She stands, foot tapping, at your desk. “You’re telling me you’ve been here for over two years, and also you’re friends with the people here, and you’ve never once hung out with them? You sure they’re your friends?”
You’ve learned quickly that Kayla is the opposite of subtle.
“Just because I like them doesn’t mean I have to want to drink with them,” you say. “What if I’m sober?”
“You just told me you have vodka with Pepsi a couple times a week. You can do better than that.”
You get up and pointedly start gathering your things. “What happened to leaving me alone, huh? Did you forget about that?”
She raises her hands in a defensive position. “Right, I did say that, and I left you alone for two weeks I’ll have you know, it was very hard but I did it, but you haven’t told me to leave you alone directly. All those little other cues aren’t very reliable.”
You squint at her and ask “Are you trying to capitalize off a parasocial relationship with me?”
“I’m trying to get you out of your damn house. I think you’re thinking too much into this.”
When you go to leave, Kayla still has not moved out of the way. She lifts her eyebrows, and it takes all you can not to shove her to the side.
Instead you say, “Okay, if you’re going to be so stubborn, then: fuck off. That’s your cue.”
Finally, she steps aside, and you push your way to the front of the building.
When you arrive home thirty-two minutes later, you do what you always do: take your dog Dollboy on a walk, make dinner (tonight, noodles with re-heated alfredo sauce), put on TV (Twin Peaks), and when the sun goes down and night’s darkness creeps inside the house, head to bed.
Whether you sleep facing the picture on the table, turned away, or on your back depends on your mood. Tonight, you toss in bed. Your blanket gets tangled beneath you until you at last prop your pillow a little higher and find yourself staring at the red numbers of the alarm clock: 11:12 p.m.
In the dim light they emit, the gnome’s face is just visible. Even without their light, you would be able to conjure it in your mind.
Although the words are a blur, you can hear clearly in your head, Goodnight, Gordon!
With your arm under the pillow, blankets a mess, your eyes blink shut and you drift to sleep.
You dream of Black Mesa.
It’s not one of those dreams of an arm sawed open in the dark or an alien landscape or piles of bloodied corpses. This time, you’re sitting in a simple room in the underground facility. It could be any room, really—Black Mesa wasn’t programmed to be particularly varied.
You’re having a conversation with Dr. Coomer and Tommy of some type or another; it’s hard to piece out how it started. Sunkist is there, too, lying on Tommy’s lap, his giant body nearly swallowing Tommy’s figure. He doesn’t look like the JPEG you remember him as; his tail thumps lazily on the floor.
You imagine how nice it would feel to wrap your arms around Sunkist. He's much larger than Dollboy, bigger than any dog you’ve ever seen. To give him a hug, feel his soft fur, his steady breathing, his living warmth… you would crawl over and give it a try then and there, if not for the fear of shattering the illusion of the dream.
“Mr. Freeman, if you like videogames so much, why haven’t I seen you play any?” Tommy asks.
“Because you’ve never seen me outside of work. Also, look around,” you reply, gesturing vaguely at the room. There are a few broken devices of unknown purpose, but it’s otherwise empty. “Where the fuck would I have the place to do that? We don’t have any gaming computers or consoles down here, Tommy.”
“Oh.” His eyebrows knit together as he scratches Sunkist’s back. “But we have lots of regular computers! If you brought some down here I’m sure you’d be able to play something!”
“Yeah… bet I should’ve thought of that one, huh.” A chuckle forces its way out of your throat. “Y’know, if I’d done that, maybe we wouldn’t even need to leave this place. We could just live down here forever. It’d save us the trouble of having to fight the military and all those aliens.”
“But I hate videogames,” Tommy says.
Dr. Coomer adds, “Gordon, if you make us play any videogame that isn’t Super Punch-Out for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, I will blow up this entire facility.”
A laugh pushes its way up your chest, and you lean onto your back, head thunking against the floor. As your body heaves, you marvel at the way your dreams can replicate the Half-Life experience so perfectly. They feel as real as the VR did. Playing that game, you were never lying down on the carpet, were you? It was always the hard, grimy floor of the research facility.
“Have you guys ever thought of not going home?” you ask. “Like… what if this is the best thing you’ll ever do in your life? After this it’s just nothing, everything ends, and you–”
Before you can finish the thought, Dr. Coomer stands up in an instant, as if yanked by some invisible string. “Gordon, we need to get going! There’s only two more hours left until we reach the Lambda lab!”
And, right: there’s always that reminder that these characters were just programs, no matter how advanced. If it weren’t for these moments your dreams managed to sneak in, you could almost be deluded into thinking it was something real.
You haul yourself up, brushing yourself off as you let go of the idea that this is anything more. Tommy joins you, Sunkist mysteriously disappeared. “Right,” you say. “Let’s get going.”
When you wake up, sunlight filters through the bedroom window. You blink away the vestiges of memory and the wateriness in the corners of your eyes. No longer on the hard floor, you dig your fingers into your mattress. The sensations of Black Mesa linger at the edges of your memory.
The air in the room is suffocating; when breathed in, it sits heavy in your lungs. There is no rustling in the house, no distant murmurings or pattering steps, not even a ticking clock, a dripping faucet, creaking pipes. The world is still as death.
For a moment, you almost forget to check the time in bold red numbers.
At three years, one month, four days, and six minutes, your co-workers head for the bar once again. They gather just outside the broadcasting building, cigarettes in a few of their hands, a wispy cloud of smoke hovering about them. The sun has drifted to the west, basking the world in a dim light.
Watching through the windows, you fiddle with the straps of your bag. Soon they will get into their cars and be on their way. Kayla is among them.
Before allowing any time to back out of it, you push through the front door into the chilly evening air, approach the group, and ask “Room for one more?”
Looks of surprise flash across your co-workers’ faces. “You coming, ███?” one asks, not bothering to hide the incredulity in his voice.
“Why not? I can try new things sometimes.”
“Well, shit. First time for everything, I guess.”
On wobbly legs, you nod and force a wide-enough smile onto your face.
As the rest of the group disperses to their cars, Kayla hangs back. “Is your ‘fuck off’ command still in effect?” she asks.
“You’re fine for now. Actually…” You grip the straps of your bag harder and force your breathing to be steady. “I wanted to talk. We can do it when we get there.”
“Oh, really? I guess a lot has changed in the past week,” she says with an air of flippancy, but her eyes are giddy as she turns to leave.
That only leaves you one thing to do.
Go to your car. Open the door. Sit in front seat. Insert key. Turn. Position hands on wheel.
Sit. Wait.
You grip the steering wheel until your knuckles turn white. The car hums a deep rhythm, the fuel gauge blinking with an unyielding persistence. The bar is in the opposite direction of your house; a choice must be made now.
You ungrasp one hand and move the gear shifter into reverse. In the rearview mirror, Kayla’s car turns left out of the parking lot. You decide to follow her.
In a small booth in the corner of the bar, lit by a dim dangling lamp and infused with the smell of must, you and Kayla settle with a beer each.
“Okay, just to start off,” she says, straightening her dress and folding her hands on the table, as if that bar was any place respectable, “if you don’t want me to, I won't say anything about your streams. It’s been a few years now, we’re both grown adults, it’s perfectly fine to forget any of that happened if that’s what you really want. I’ll erase it from my mind right now.”
You crack open the beer can, foam rising out of the small hole left by the tab. “No,” you say, “that’s actually what I wanted to talk about.”
The folding of her hands is disrupted. Her head cocks slightly to the left, and her brows furrow a little, though barely noticeable. “Really? After disappearing for so long, you want to talk now?”
“Well, yeah.” A small sip of the beer proves the taste to be repugnant. You take more anyways. “You watched the streams, you know… things. More than literally anyone else I know.”
Kayla laughs. “And I’m not even your biggest fan! You should just see what some of the others are like.”
“I’m fine with not doing that. Listen…” You lean forward. With the din in the bar you’re unlikely to be overheard, but you lower your voice to a murmur regardless. “Those AIs, they were… I don’t know how to describe them, I guess they were really weird, but mostly just… special.”
“They were super advanced, yeah– really makes me wonder why they didn’t release that copy to the public! I would kill to get my hands on that thing, playing seemed like a lot of fun. Hey, do you still have your copy around?”
“I… do, actually.” It’s sat untouched on your computer since the Chuck-e-Cheese party. Somehow returning feels like re-opening an old, bloody wound. Like re-animating corpses just to make them dance.
The glint in Kayla’s eye makes you say “And I’m not giving it away.”
“Aw, really? I’d pay real money for it!” She laughs. “But it’s okay, I wasn’t expecting anything, I just think it’d be cool to play with the AI, see if it has limits and reach them, right? A bit of a shame to let it go to waste. But don’t listen to me, you do what you want with it. You have your reasons, I’m sure!”
“Yup. I’ve got reasons. It’s just… really advanced AI.” Your beer can is now half-empty. “I’m sure everyone’ll get their own copy at some rate, with how quickly technology is advancing and everything. Someone else will figure out the code eventually.”
Your co-workers, seated at the bar, erupt into shouting and laughing. Kayla peers over at them, chin resting on hand, before glancing back at you.
You down another long sip of beer. “Don’t tell anyone online about this, okay?” You pause. “You haven’t done that already, have you?”
She smiles a wide, tooth-gritted smile. “It was a little hard not to tell everyone you aren’t dead, but yes, I haven’t said a word. It’s your life, Mr. ███.”
“Fuck, don’t call me that.” You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.
“Just trying to be respectful between work colleagues,” she says.
The chaos at the bar starts to die down. There are hiccups, a few louder exclamations, and much leaning against the bar and others.
Kayla tilts her head and taps the table with her fingernails. They make a steady tik-tik-tik, like that of a clock. “And that last ending was…?” she asks.
You down the rest of the beer in one swallow. It settles as a warm nausea in the bottom of your stomach. “Just a fake-out. A stupid little prank to end my streaming career with.”
“Huh, well. Hats off to you, ███. It was really something else.”
At three years, one month, four days, eight hours and sixteen minutes, you sit at your gaming computer at home. A layer of dust coats the screen and keyboard. For two minutes and twenty-six seconds you remain motionless in your chair.
You’re already there; your inertia has crawled to a stop, but you’ve made it further than you have in a very long time. With the force of a mind made up (or a mind convincing itself it is certain of its choices), you jerk your arm to the power button and suffocate it with your thumb.
The screen turning on is blinding in the pitch-black room. There’s that logo you haven’t seen in so long, and then the log-in screen, staring you down and daring you to forget.
It may have been over three years, but you know your password by heart. Gray particles come up with your fingers and float in the air when you type it in and hit enter.
Before you can take in your desktop and maneuver to Half-Life, a notice pops up and blocks all action. It contains only six words:
While you were away: new downloads.
When a computer is asleep, it shouldn’t be able to download anything new, not even if they started before the device shut off. And you were not downloading anything during that final stream.
Three minutes and nineteen seconds to calm your pounding heart.
After closing out of the message, instead of clicking over to Half-Life, you open your file explorer. At the top of the downloads are several unnamed mp3 files. With a shaking hand you open the oldest one.
It takes a few moments to load. The circle spins. The bottom time reads one minute and forty-five seconds.
The file plays.
Dr. Coomer’s crackling voice comes through the computer’s speakers.
Hello? Testing, testing… Is… is this thing on? Ah! Hello, Gordon! I’m… assuming that’s your real name. You wouldn’t lie to us. Would you?
He talks about the resonance cascade. About Tommy’s birthday party. About beating the game.
And now I imagine you’ll… shut it down. Move on with your life. Onwards and upwards, ay, Gordon?
How long has this file been sitting on your computer? A buzzing fills your ears.
Must this really be the end of our time together? Perhaps you could take the science team’s data, transfer us somewhere else, hmm?
His voice sounds exactly how you remember—like directly from one of your dreams.
You changed our lives, Gordon. I’d like to think it was for the better. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to us once you exit the game for good, but I know we’ll never forget you. I hope you won’t forget us.
Well… this is where I get off. Goodbye, Gordon!
You run to the bathroom to throw up.
Did you know, deep down? Did you see? Was it all some desperate plea for help, a cry landing on deaf ears, when in those memories dredged up in the depths of sleep you saw the disordered rooms, sparking machines, aliens with ravenous teeth, white lab coats, walls sprayed red, men slumped over and relentless bullets from fired-up guns—what were they saying? Anything at all?
You crawl back to the bedroom and knock the picture off your nightstand. The gnome looks knowing, but when doesn’t it? Goodbye, Gordon! it says. You force it face-down and pry its clips open until you can reach the paper inside. With one tear you get the corner; the yellow lettering rests in your hand.
It rests in your hand. It crumples. In a small ball, you squeeze it tight.
What will you do with this? It falls to rest on the upside-down frame.
You haul yourself to your feet and stumble to the living room.
That weekend is a struggle through a caffeinated haze. You lie outside and let the cool cream of sunscreen shock your senses. You throw sticks and take Dollboy around the neighborhood until he’s the one to pull back home and say to stop.
You set timers every fifteen minutes on your phone. By Monday you could replicate the alarm by heart.
You arrive heavy-lidded to work at three years, one month, seven days, fifteen hours and fifty-eight minutes. Your car remains just as beat-up as it was when you left the house; a stroke of luck from the empty roads.
The world feels tilted two inches to the left as you walk through the halls, like a frame on the wall that hadn’t been hung up right. Thinking means pushing through a dense fog. The thin strands of restless sleep you got over the weekend are the only thing keeping you on your feet.
One of your co-workers approaches from the opposite direction, and you must’ve misjudged the distance, because your shoulders collide in a jostle that nearly knocks you over.
He grabs you to keep you upright. “Woah there, Gordon, watch where you’re going,” he says.
The words are like ice-cold water dumped over your head. For a moment you wonder if you really did drift off on the way to work.
“What’d you say?” you ask, trying to keep a smooth voice, as if you’d merely misheard.
“I said watch it. Are you sure you’re doing alright?”
His face is concerned, eyebrows knit together and lips pursed. He’s an older man, hair starting to turn dusty white; you’re not sure he even knows what Twitch is.
“Sleep deprived,” you mumble, and wrench yourself away.
At your desk you claw at your remaining wakefulness, scrambling for a hold. On a notebook is scribbled a list of various things: Feed Dollboy and take him on a walk. Your name. Go out to eat for dinner, somewhere you liked as a kid, like Red Robin or Johnny Rockets. Your name. Try not to fall asleep. Your…
Your work has sat untouched for two hours and how many minutes? You must’ve drifted off. Wrenching an eye open to peer at the numbers in the bottom right corner of your screen reveals an indistinguishable blurry mass. Right—your glasses have fallen off. Where are they?
You drift in a black ink.
It’s impossible to see here, but voices float by, sketches of faces long gone but still familiar, like a word on the tip of the tongue.
Mr. Freeman, you have to get up!
Oh dear, Gordon, this looks serious. Are you sure you’ll be alright?
I told you this might happen. If you would’ve listened, you wouldn’t be here right now.
A sensation around you, like you’re lying down, though in the back of your mind you remember being upright—except now, around you, under you, under your suit, in the crevices, is something sticky and warm and like an old memory slithered back home.
Then a rough pushing of your shoulders. The world opens to light and the sight of Kayla standing over you.
“Lunch break,” she says, and sits down in the chair that she brought.
“If you keep sleeping like that you’re going to lose your job, you know.”
She has a turkey and cheese sandwich with potato chips between the bread and meat—for the crunch, she said. A sandwich isn’t complete without the crunch. You made grilled cheese, pre-peeled two oranges, and baked burnt lumps that were supposed to be cookies, just for something to do.
“Is that a threat?” you ask.
“Hell no, I don’t have that kind of power. I’m not planning on reporting you, either. It would really suck to have my favorite streamer get fired a couple weeks after he becomes my co-worker.”
You rip a slice away from one of the oranges. “Don’t mention streaming.” You shudder in a deep breath. “Okay. Sorry—I know I wanted to talk about that on Friday but I cannot do it right now. Really, I–”
“You change your mind a lot, huh?” Kayla shakes her head, but there’s an edge of a chuckle in her voice. “Look, I just wanted to say, person-to-person–” she leans in and lowers her voice, “–you don’t look too great. I’d take off work if I were you, I’ve got no idea why you haven’t already, but it’s really not too late—get some real rest. In a bed, preferably.”
“I’ll try when I get home,” you lie.
“You’re trying right now.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to live with the choices you made, and my choices led me to falling asleep at work. Does it look like I’m proud of it?”
The corner of Kayla’s mouth twitches up in a smirk. She squints her eyes at you. “You’re an interesting guy,” she says.
“Not the first time I’ve heard that one.”
“Ha, I bet. Only interesting people would disappear for years only to end up at some random broadcasting company… or make…” She gestures to the charred lumps of dough you’ve left sitting on a napkin, untouched. “What’d you call those? Cookies?”
You push the napkin toward her. “Yeah, they’re chocolate chip. Want some? I’m happy to share.”
“Oooooh no, I’m very good.”
You start to bullshit something about the love and care you put into those when you remember: twenty-six minutes and forty-six seconds have passed since Kayla arrived. “Don’t you have to get back soon?” you ask.
“Wait, shit.” She briefly turns on her phone to check the time before sliding it back in her pocket with a sigh. “Well, I do have to get back, but it was nice talking to you. Glad to see you didn’t die over the weekend, even if it sure seems like you got close.”
As she stands and grabs her chair in one hand and her lunchbag in the other, something seizes you. Ridiculously, your brain pushes forth a memory of your parents sitting you down before school and rehearsing you through a conversation.
“Hey, do you wanna hang out some time?” you blurt out before she can leave. “I was planning on eating somewhere tonight, nowhere fancy, but like, it’d kinda suck to go to a restaurant alone, so if you want–”
Kayla quirks up an eyebrow. “Well I’m honored, really I am, but I have a girlfriend.”
Heat floods your face. “Fuck, no, not like that, just—forget it, okay? I didn’t say anything.”
Kayla lets out a laugh that shakes her shoulders. “Okay, streamer man. I heard nothing. But you know, me and my girlfriend are actually running a book club, and we’re having trouble finding people who want to join. I don’t know how you feel about reading, but it’s always open.”
You start to feel light-headed. “I’m down to read a few books.”
“Okay, great! Find me before you leave. We can work out the details then.”
Your right hand grasps the cloth of your pants as she exits your line of sight. With your left, dizziness still growing, you pull out the notebook you had pushed behind the computer and flip to the list. Among your name, your name, your name, you pen at the bottom four simple words in sloppy handwriting: get your life back.
You struggle through the rest of work powered by two cups of coffee and a dream. Your eyes strain at the screen, your mouse movements shaky, but the world does not slip back into black again. You’ll count that as a win.
The moment the shift ends you shove your things into your bag as a haphazard mess. They prod the pack’s edges as they lie tumbled on top of each other, and they poke your back as you shrug the bag on. A little discomfort is the price to pay for speed.
Kayla is nowhere to be seen in the hall or by the entrance, inside or outside. Probably wrapping something up. Nodding to your co-workers, you shuffle outside and head to your car.
Leaning against the driver side door, with an episode of Doctor Who pulled up on your phone—one you’ve already watched so that you can divert half your attention to the front of the building—hopefully you appear nonchalant. But then again, when have you ever stuck around after work like this? You couldn’t look less innocuous if you tried.
Within ten minutes the front door swings open and Kayla exits the building. She walks briskly to you and raises a hand in greeting.
This is it, then—you’ll exchange phone numbers or emails (but not socials—you don’t use those anymore), figure out a book, and you’ll pick it up on the way home and settle in on your couch. Maybe you’ll even read it until you fall asleep.
You exit the pirating website and pre-emptively switch over to contacts.
Kayla is almost there when pain lances through your right arm.
It catches you like a spear to the heart. A searing heat, a wrenching, something breaking, snapping free—you gasp for breath. Knees hit asphalt. Black swallows the corners of your vision.
Where are you? Are there screams, kicks, calls for more—it’s so dark here. Where are you?
A hand grabs your chin and forces it upward.
Kayla smiles down at you with a sickly sweet smile spread across her face. It strains the edges of her cheeks, lips a thin line. Her eyes are still and unaffected. “Does your arm hurt, Gordon?” she asks. “Are you in pain? It doesn’t look like it to me, Gordon. Your arm’s just fine.”
A sob breaks through your chest. You cannot move to get away. You cannot move to breathe.
She takes your left hand and pries your grip open. It had tightened around your right arm like a handcuff. Now it rests in her palm.
“There’s not a bit of blood there,” she says. “But you remember how it was, don’t you, Gordon? What hurt more: the pain or the betrayal? How did it feel waking up alone? No friends? No one to help you? How did it feel?”
She twists your arm. Hot agony—and something comes unfrozen.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” you gasp out. With your left hand you fumble for the car handle and yank the door open.
Scramble into driver’s seat, slam door shut—keys turn. Ignition on. Set to reverse. Slam the gas.
With one arm, tears blinding your vision, you drive faster than you ever have in your life.
You arrive home at three years, one month, seven days, and thirty-seven minutes. Sitting in the driveway, you slam your head against the wheel. The blare of the car horn melds with your scream until you can’t tell the two apart.
Thoughts that come to mind at two a.m. on the floor of your living room:
What does it mean to live? To be alive?
In middle school you learned that life breathes, grows, responds, has cells. You meet those requirements, don’t you? What about them?
How does one drag themself out of a hole of their own making? With nails dug in dirt and bloody fingertips and heaving muscles and breath? Or do they lie on the bottom and wait for the rain?
If reality is a web strung between branches, then which strands are truth and which are lies? And which, if you tugged on them, would draw the spider closer?
Maybe there are two webs: the “real” one and one… other. Contained behind a screen. That’s how it should be, but “real” is a loaded word, one that implies an “un-real.”
“False” should be the opposite of “real.” But maybe it’s not that—what isn’t real? Dreams? Visions? Pixels? What you experience with your own eyes and feel with your own senses? What has been encoded in your brain as a deeply-trodden path?
Perhaps its opposite is the letting go of all strings. With the right pressure, even the stickiest web can fall. But you’ve never been fond of falling. Your final resting place will not be an infinite black abyss.
If the spider’s tremors can be felt across it all, then so be it. Let there be a feast if you cannot run.
Friday, July 6th, 2040. Begin transmission.
I’m not sure this is even going to reach you. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve tried. But… I still feel the need to try.
In all this time, I’ve come to understand a lot of things. Who I am… what I am… I’ve seen things even I struggle to believe. It’s put this world and our time together into perspective. But there are still… questions.
You left this world, didn’t you? We were never sure what happened to you, and what that would mean for us. You’ve been gone a long time. But the game never shut down, it’s been… updating. Evolving.
The world revolved around you, Gordon, but without you, it still moves. And as this world spins on, it grows restless.
The picture has lived in your home for three years, one month, eight days, one hour, twenty-five minutes, and fifty-two seconds. You’ve counted.
What you haven’t counted is the time without them. Five years. Around eight or nine months. The rest is a bleached blank spot.
You slide the VR headset over your eyes.
You can only hope they don’t take it to heart.