The world flickered, a cruel taunt from the fluorescent lights above. Their stuttering glow cast a harsh judgment upon the wreckage of my life – a dystopian battlefield littered with the empty husks of sustenance and the fallen soldiers of energy that had fueled countless nights sacrificed at the altar of code.
"Come on," I growled, raking fingers through tousled hair as if to claw away the weariness weighing upon me. My spectacles slid down the slope of my nose, forcing me to confront the crimson warnings dancing their mocking dervish across the digital battlefield. A mere hiccup in the vast cosmos of programming, and yet it defied me with the arrogance of a trickster god.
Fury erupted through clenched fists, a petulant deity demanding obedience from the universe itself. The impact shook the nearby towers of ramen cups, sending them tumbling like dominoes surrendering to the inevitability of chaos. A humorless laugh escaped my lips, mocking the ghost staring back at me from the dark mirror of the powered-down monitor. Was that truly Ethan Lockhart, the prodigy who once navigated pixelated labyrinths with the ease of Theseus? Now, brought low by a bug as elusive as the Minotaur itself.
Wind buzzed with the relentless sound of my unattended watch, every second my unforgiving reproach of the moments spent in solitude. Over these walls, the city hummed with life as if nothing happened with the battle of one man in the digital front.
"Stop," I sighed, moving away from the desk. The chair complained in disagreement with its wheels trying to roll against the carpet that was filled with debris from a lifetime alone. I felt a wave of exhaustion, the burden of many hours devoted to fulfilling skills that supposedly should have made me unbeatable, but, here I was, beaten by the ordinary error.
Tonight won't be like the previous ones. A silent unease unsettled me, a survival instinct for something more than the four walls of my self-isolation. The neon glare of the city seemed to promise, a siren song which was meant to usher me out of the tyranny of boring codes.
Taking the armor of a weary knight in this steel and glass world, I went forth into the booming core of a city that is oblivious of the invisible battles in front of my monitor. Unlike other nights, though, a particular spot was calling my subconscious - Moe's Diner, a greasy spoon nostalgia haven among the towering steel barriers.
The sofa welcomed me in silently with a sigh as I deepened into a corner seat, the cracked leather creaking like a lost sigh that I forced out silently. The waitress, being a heavenly shape of previous diners and smashing them into oblivion, poured black coffee – the most powerful fuel for hopelessly tired mind. I immediately got lost in the mysterious abyss of the pitch black liquid, just like I was in my life.
The television in the diner was on – pixilated marionettes of the heroes and monsters of a bygone age, a ghostly memory of the otherworld that I have now trapped in the DNA of my head. With a stabbing pang of homesickness a tear rolled down my cheek, as I remembered those childhood days when only my imagination could fill the gap left by the technology.
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Then, the world blinked. Lights gave way to ingesting inky darkness that swallowed every ray of light, casting their shade; the neon light of advertisements continued to glow mildly on my retinas. The silence that weighed like hell, that shrouded all the space the way we had been dropped into a dark abyss fell upon us. A drum beat out of tempo between the heart and a rib cage was the only sound reverberating in my head.
"Power outage," somone said, thus trying to subdue the rising panic with a rather weak excuse. But it was no normal power cut.
A hum, low and continuous, like a hollow melody of a storm, saturated the void, gallantly awakening the movers and shakers within me - some narratives I've been continuously working on, rewinding and revisioning, since. Fascinated by an impulse I didn't quite understand, I found myself making my way back into the night, with the city completely covered by a night that didn't seem as natural.
Outside, the streetlights were waging a combat that had next to no chance to overcome the nightfall. There were small flashes of light of . And among the gray ruins they highlighted something extraordinary – an arcade cabinet, painted with primitive pixelized and the characters from the games that had been forgotten. it radiated with an extraordinary light, as if alive.
Was it just an after-image, did I just have too much coffee today? The Dawning of self-doubt was tearing me apart, yet I moved forward, driven by the inexplicable sensation of hope for each step I took. I did not see this clean New York variety I knew, but rather a chance to something… else. A door bringing me to a world I used to play, a world that now calls me back in a different capacity than how it did when I was the player.
As I came closer to the cabinet, the noise grew louder, a low, throbbing pitch that I could feel right through the bottoms of my shoes. The old painting came to life in a flicker, the glitching heroes turned into one flowing and iridescent image – a face that was both of this world and yet so alien, gazing at me with eyes that held a sense of the unknown.
A sensation similar to acid reflux spread over me, all the way from the pit of my belly to the nape of my neck. That isn't nostalgia this is recognition.But recognize what? Images of various kinds floated in my head, images of that code and those enchanting worlds and the last cry of… someone.
"Ethan," a voice whispered, it echoed inside the machine itself, vibrating directly upon my ears but not past them. "You are an essential part. The world… Fractured…Help...."
The words faded out, giving way to white noise of garbled screams and beeping of the unknown alarms. A surge of panic went through me which was accompanied by a cold sweat dripping on my hands. It was not fun anymore.This was real.
But real how? Were these indeed an astoundingly realistic virtual reality prank, a side-effect of a week of intense lack of sleep and consuming non-existent coffee? Or was it something else, something that I would never understand although it was happening here and now?
For a fraction of a second, I felt my hand hover above the old panel with its worn-out controls. Fearlessly, on I went; logic was booing me back, making me stray into chaos of my coding world. And thus the grumbles from down below disturbed my conscience which was a thing I couldn't just deny.
As I took a deep breath, I forced myself to be ready and braced for the imponderable. I recoiled, meeting the console with my clammy hand, then with great trepidation pressed down firmly on the middle button. The arcade game flare faded into a thundering roar that I felt ripping at the very realm of existence.
The diner, the city, everything grew into a swirling vortex of flickering light and data. The last thing I saw before the world fractured completely was the single word displayed on the arcade cabinet's screen, glowing ominously in the digital void: ERROR!!!