Gray blinked. He didn’t remember the elevator’s light being so bright. The morning commute was worse today as well. The light peeking in through the skyscrapers felt like a burning lance. It reminded him of the Paladin’s holy abilities.

He saw his reflection in the cab walls. Red veins covered his eyelids. He touched them. They were squishy and warm. Almost like sacs of water. He felt no pain when he touched them, but they were connected to his temporary sensitivity to light.

This was the side-effect of extreme Link usage. Utilizing a headset for 16 or more hours with minimal breaks.

What he had was something called erythema blepharitis. Except, nobody called it that. Everyone just called it the burns. The burns were just one symptom of intense hours with headsets. Most of them had to do with eye injuries and inflammation. The worst symptom was hallucinations.

Most platforms would have harrowing tales of users that would hallucinate. Gray mostly saw them as online horror stories. Hallucinations were possible, but it wasn’t as extreme as someone seeing the entire world morph into digitals fractals. It was more subtle from what he heard. Seeing motes of light or finding something odd about mirrors.

Most modern headsets have alleviated the effects. Unless the user was foolish, like himself.

Gray thought back to the night before and his sudden urge to stay within Elrin. Now he looked like this. The doors to the elevators opened. He didn’t want to come back to the real world and as a result he made the real world worse.

In his company, employees were on a rolling schedule. Nobody had to come into the office every day of the week. It was just unfortunate that he had to come in on Monday. He scanned his card to get in through the glass doors and headed to his cubicle. He raised his hand over his eyes like a visor while he passed by the windows.

He sat down on his chair and took a deep breath. He hunched over his desk and ran his hand through his hair.

“Morning, Gray.”

“Um, hi.” Gray didn’t look up. Carol, one of the UI developers on the team was one of the members that always checked in with everyone. The best way to describe her was that her name fit her perfectly. She looked like Carol.

She was one of those that fostered camaraderie among the members that came in on Monday. In her words, ‘Team Monday was the fun group.’

“You alright?”

“Um…Well,” Gray turned around. There was no sense in hiding his eyes.

“Oooh. I thought you were more responsible,” Julie sighed. “But I understand. So many platforms out there. I was at the slots last night myself. Never got that triple diamond.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, but I’ll be back tonight,” There was a gambler’s flame in her eyes. “Well, I won’t bother you any longer. See you later.”

“See yah,” Gray said. Once again, he was alone at his desk. He took out his company’s tablet and saw his reflection on the screen. He looked better than last year. He wasn’t so pale, and his face looked fuller.

He also looked like he was stung by bees that hated eyelids.

***

“I don’t like the color of the cog wheel. The buttons on the UI should be black on a gray background.”

“What! We spent weeks deciding that it should be gray on a black background.”

“What if we made the cogwheel have a more minimalist shape? Make it thinner.”

Gray wanted to go home.

***

“Harry, we need to change the cogwheel again,” Gray said.

“Every week we change the design back and forth. I might as well tell the design team to keep both designs saved at this point,” Harry pursed his lips. “You got the burns.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Must have put in some real hours,” Harry smiled. Harry was a young black man in his twenties with bright green eyes. He was one of the artists that the team had. He always wore a button-up and blazer, but no tie.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Gray had only seen the man wear a tie once. It was during the previous end of year celebration. He wore a neon yellow tie with a bunch of pedestrian symbols walking across it.

“I’ll see you at lunch then,” Harry said.

“Yup. Sorry about the team’s indecisions.”

“It’s not your fault man,” Harry turned around. “Hey! We gotta change the cogwheel again.”

Gray heard the artists groan as he left.

***

“Um, hi.” Gray peeked into a cubicle that was built into a wall. A woman with glasses and a purple sweatshirt stared at him. Out from her shirt pocket, a small hamster popped out. It looked like a baby kangaroo within a parent’s pouch. The reflection in her glasses had lines of code. “I just wanted to tell you that I sent you the newest bug reports for the backend team to handle.”

The woman blew a bubble out of strawberry flavored gum and popped it. The hamster, following its mother, stared at him with big old eyes.

“Okay, bye.”

***

“Here’s your pencil, Jeremy.” Gray handed a balding man a mechanical pencil. One of the members of management always wore a perfectly ironed suit to work.

“Thank you, Gray. You’re one of the kids that’s an old soul. You’re not entertained by the fancy gadgets of the present. Boy, if you and me were friends we would have torn up the town in our youth. You know why I ask for a pencil? Because we had to write on paper. Real paper. My birth certificate wasn’t no digitized megabyte nonsense. Would you believe that we had to charge our phones every day? Not every week. Every day….”

The real reason Jeremy asked for a pencil was so that he could use the point to clean his fingernails.

***

Gray took out his homemade spaghetti out of the microwave. Even though he gallivanted through Elrin throughout the night, he still made time to make lunch for the next day. He sat on a circular table and opened the plastic bowl. Steam rose as he went to take his first bite.

“Here you go.” Harry set an ice pack down on the table. Gray looked up at him.

“What’s this for?”

“The eyes,” Harry tapped his eyelids. “Pressing something cold against your eyes lets the burns go away faster.”

“Oh,” Gray put his fork down and placed the ice pad against his right eye. He winced from the cold, but let it rest.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Go ahead.”

Harry pulled up a seat and brought a tuna sandwich out of a metal case. He brought a soda to wash down the meal. Both ate their lunch in silence.

Off at another table, Carol was playing a portable slot game called Lord Cat. Apparently popular due to all its characters being noble felines.

Gray regretted making spaghetti. Some of the noodles were still tough from not being properly cooked. Gray removed the ice pad away from his eye. He had a hazy gaze for a moment before it normalized. He touched his eyelid and found that the burns had already gone down.

“So, what were you doing?” Harry took a sip of his soda.

“Hmm?” Gray took a bite.

“Your eyes. You must have put in some crazy hours to get the burn veins. Any headset within the last ten years doesn’t give you stuff like that anymore.”

“I just played a game all night,” Gray said. Again, he was thinking about the spaghetti. He had one hand on his chin and stared at his bowl. Maybe before going home, he could buy some herbs and spices. Maybe oregano?

“What game?”

“Elrin Online. It’s an MMO, if you know what that is.”

“You play Elrin too, huh? I see, I see. You were probably grinding to reach level cap, right? Recently there was a power leveling tactic discovered. You need a friend at level cap to do it though. ”

“Oh…. I was actually making money to get housing stuff for my guild house.”

“Just for housing? Damn that’s crazy,” Harry laughed. “You hear how people come to MMOs for different reasons, but I never saw anyone put in hours like that for anything that wasn’t raiding.”

“Yeah,” Gray scratched his cheek. “My guild leader was really excited to get one.”

“If you’ll be on today, my name is Jericho Breaker. Send me a friend request. Assuming you play on the NA East server, right?” Harry wiped his lips with a napkin and tossed it into a disposal can.

“Yup, I’ll be sure to send you one. My name is Gray Esprit.”

“Cool! I’ll talk to you later then.”

Jericho Breaker. The name was cool. Gray applied the ice pad to his left eye. There was not going to be a 16-hour session today. He didn’t want to walk around like some fiend with red eyes. Besides, he needed to get oregano.

***

After sorting out his groceries, Gray took a long walk. He preferred the skybridges, so he could look across the horizon as the sun fell. He held the bag of groceries with his left hand and kept his right in his pocket. A nice breeze came by as he made his way down.

He wouldn’t have to come in tomorrow. No commute and he could practice cooking. He was enjoying cooking more than he thought he would.

The skybridge eventually dipped and led into Central Park. A few pigeons flew away towards their skyscraper nests. The park was covered in a warm glow from a retreating sun. A river that ran underneath the bridge at the entrances. It shimmered and Gray could see a koi fish swim upstream.

He stopped when he saw the fountain. Its weathered stone looked beautiful underneath a dusk sky. He smiled weakly and sat down. He set his groceries at his feet and took a deep breath. Just a moment to breathe and realize that he survived the first day of the week. A single step after a single step.

Was he proud of himself? He could not answer that. It always went back to that question that he asked himself on his darkest night.

Was it arrogant to want to keep living?

Gray closed his eyes. He still wasn’t sure. This was the worst part. Every time he thought he got better; he would just fall back down. He always felt like he was crawling out of a chasm.

Gray bathed in the last minute of sunlight that the day offered and walked back home in the dark.