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There’s a flash of red that fills his vision.
Wifies skids backwards on his chair, which tips and almost falls over. He grabs the side of his table, breathing heavily while he steadies himself.
What..?
The computer monitor was uncomfortably bright in front of him, displaying the dirt texture of the server interface, words stretching across it:
Connection Lost
You are permanently banned from Unstable.
Reason: Death
Thank you for playing!
He slams his hands onto the desk- the skin on his palms tinge, but the sound is muffled by his headset.
He’s wearing a headset?
As he takes it off, the cushions brush against his ears. Hands shaking, he sets it down on the desk and reaches for his keyboard. Presses down on the spacebar, which clicks. Releases it and clicks again, again, and again.
He can feel the key under his finger. He can hear the clicking sound. It feels real. It’s real. This is real.
He pinches his arm. Scratches at it. He feels the stinging, feels a hand scratching- the keyboard clicking, the cold silica mouse, the smooth wooden desk, the pain in his arm- he’s awake, this is real, this is the reality he remembers.
But then.
The pressure plate clicking, the cool metal spyglass, the smooth quartz floor, and the overwhelming heat, explosions tearing his body apart-
That was also real?
No. He stares back up at the screen. It was a game. All just a game…
He rubs his eyes. He’s still dazed, as if waking from a dream. But it had felt as if he was there, real, feeling it all. He doesn’t remember how long he’s been sitting in that chair for.
It had been a game, before, right? During Clownpierce, Unstable was just another server where he’d log on to hang out with and help Parrot with things. Even back when they were building the End civilization, when he’d started to become invested, he remembers needing to log off, needing to sleep in real life. But then by the time they were deep in their battle against the mafia, he can’t even recall being away from his keyboard. But that was normal, right? To be dedicated to a Minecraft server.
But after- he was still at his desk, right? Still just playing.
It hadn’t felt like that. Wifies doesn’t think he’s been in his room for the past few months. He’s been in Paragon, keeping an eye on Parrot, making sure he doesn’t escape back into Unstable and get himself into any more danger, least of all get banned-
No, what was he even thinking? Danger? Minecraft is just a game. And if he was banned they could just play on some other server. What was all of that even for?
But even now his heart speeds up when he imagines Parrot facing down another foe that outskilled him, thinking about Parrot wandering the world without him by his side. It wasn’t life or death- but it had been, then.
He tentatively moves his mouse to click “Back to server list” and hovers his cursor over Unstable. The thousands of players online, are they all just playing, or have they been sucked in too?
He tabs out of Minecraft, and catches a glimpse of the date on his desktop. One corner of his mind does the mental math, but he ignores it- he doesn’t have the time to acknowledge that months must’ve already passed, doesn’t have the capability to process the implications that he’d been playing Minecraft non-stop for that time, doesn’t want to begin to question how he hadn’t died of starvation or dehydration.
Instead, he opens Discord. There’s thousands of pings and notifications, but there’s one thing he has to check: in his friends list, Parrot is online, listed as playing Minecraft. Online for… no. How many hours?
He presses call. As it rings, he exhales and leans back. Has he really just been playing Minecraft, for, what, the past few months?
No, did he ever see disconnect messages? Except for combat logs, he never saw others logging off. It was because it takes a long time to relog due to server capacity, but no, that didn’t make sense. New players logged into spawn constantly.
The call doesn’t go through. Wifies rings a few more times, and with no response, starts to send messages.
Parrot?
Are you there
Are you reading this?
I’m sorry
Can you log off and join my call?
Parrot are you there
Parrot?
Pick up
Parrot please pick up
He rings again. Still nothing. But then if he hadn’t seen all the messages to him then Parrot wouldn’t see this either. He’s trapped in the game, then.
No, this can’t be it. Is Parrot still inside? He would've just witnessed his friend blow to pieces in front of him, and it was a game but it had felt so real, it must be real to Parrot too, right? And it would all be because of Wifies, because he couldn’t distinguish between make-belief and reality, that Parrot would now be wandering, suffering, all for nothing. For a game.
There was something deeply wrong with this server, that blurs the line between real life and gameplay. It made him forget his actual life. Kept him trapped at his desk until the explosion knocked him back into his senses. And Parrot is still in there.
There’s only one way to reach him, right? He’ll snap back into reality just like Wifies if he’s banned off Unstable.
He switches to his alt, and pastes in the IP.
Taking a deep breath, Wifies puts his headset back on and sits up straight in his chair. He’s lost months of his real life to a Minecraft server, and he can’t let the same thing continue to happen to his friend.
Was he really about to go back in, after he had just woken up from this?
But Parrot. Parrot was still there, partially because of him.
He logs in, one goal in mind: to find and ban ParrotX2 from Unstable.