I mentioned earlier, when I jumped the gun a little bit, about my admiration for Jessica. My desire to have her talk to me, give me attention, love me, right? Okay ya I thought so. Well here we go.

When I sat back down on my computer I was hurt, really hurt. I know why now but that revelation comes after diving a little further down my dark path of regret. Sometimes the lessons we learn take a little while and we hurt people to learn them. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair and I wish it wasn’t the case but this part just happened to work that way. Anyway in my hurt I scrolled back to my coding lines and as I studied it, reading each and every detail, I landed on a line that wasn’t there before.

jessica_taylor_friendship: true

jessica_taylor_relationship: true

I guess because I had interacted with her I had my “feelings” added to the code. After a moment I scrolled down to hers to see what she felt and saw the following;

lester_dunn_friendship: true

lester_dunn_relationship: false

I sat back. It wasn’t just a matter of attention or time anymore this was the way it was written. For all its wonder I didn’t anticipate the crushing blow reading the code would deal me. I felt lower than I had in a long time and it was for this reason I did what I did next. I sat up, bit my upper lip, and changed her relationship from Lester Dunn from false to true.

I sat back as if having made a chess move. Cautiously I brought my hand to my lip and bit my finger in a nervous gesture. I considered the implications - the weight of what I was doing - and after a minute I sat forward with the intention to change it back.

Honestly now, have I pulled any punches? I’ve let it be known that I’m socially awkward and that I can be a bad friend, even in my first test of friendship too. I don’t feel as though I’ve been unfair to my character or honesty so when I tell you that I had the intention to change it I hope you believe me. Mind you, whether you believe me or not doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t. I didn’t change it back. I didn’t change it back because as my fingers hovered over the keys, my phone buzzed.

I unlocked my phone to see a message from Jessica.

“Hey.”

My heart leapt into my throat again and I nervously glanced at the code, the words true illuminated on the black screen. I bit my lip again, harder this time, and answered back,

“Hey yourself.”

I shook my head violently as I clicked send, as if my eyes could erase the message like an etch-a-sketch. I was already half ready to apologize when she responded,

“Hey is for horses.”

I smiled an honest, heartfelt smile as she sent another message.

“I guess that only works in person, hay?”

I laughed out loud at that one and sent her another message back. After an hour or so of talking I was feeling more confident than ever before and when she asked to come over I said yes without thinking. She told me she’d leave shortly and as I read the message I frantically began running around my house trying to put things away. I was shoving things in closets when I realized that I needed to shower. I started panicking and then remembered the code. Quickly, I navigated to my line and with a few keystrokes changed my status from dirty to clean just as the doorbell rang.

I took a breath and headed down the stairs. I was sweating bullets as I began to descend but reassured myself that she liked me and for the first time I knew it to be true. It was absolute. There was no mystery, no question mark – the code told me so and as I thought about it, as the idea rolled through my mind I felt more and more confident with each step. It was an absolute, Jessica would date me. She wanted to.

When I reached the bottom step I had all but stopped worrying and when I swung the door open I found myself face to face with an 18 year old girl holding flowers. Except it wasn’t Jessica. It was Kappa.

“I’m not sure what I did wrong Lester but I was speaking to a nice lady at the store and she said flowers are all anybody wants when a mistake has been made, so here.” She thrust a large bouquet of flowers in my face as I took a half step back. Confused and a bit startled I took them.

“How did you pay for these?” I asked, looking over the flowers.

“Pay?” she asked, confused. I rolled my eyes exasperatedly and took her hand, leading her into the front hallway of the house.

“Yes, you know, paying for things? You need to spend money… err.. gold, currency for things, just like in Dunn,” I said, turning my hand over and over as if waiting for her to get it. Slowly, a look crawled across her face, half realization and half fear. I shook my head in exasperation and turned to the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jessica approaching through the windows on either side.

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“Who are you waiting for?” Kappa said, shaking the look off her face. “You seemed a bit disappointed to see me.” She sounded hurt by my frustration, once again showing a change in programming.

“Jessica,” I said without thinking. “She’s coming over and…” I turned to Kappa who was beaming.

“How did that happen? Did you talk to her? That’s a big step Lester, I’m so proud of you.” She threw her arms around me and gave me a strong hug which felt… strange. I half wanted to push her off, half wanted her to stay but ended up shimmying out of the hug.

“Ya we talked…” I said, my eyes casting along the ground in shame as I thought over what I had done. Innocently Kappa followed my gaze, as if to help me find whatever I had lost. When she didn’t see anything, she looked back up at me, confused, and studied my expression.

“You look sad and guilty Lester,” she said. Her year of programming had been in large part spent on facial recognition so that I could give her a look and she would know to mute; this was one of the negative side effects of that programming. Suddenly her face tightened into a slight frown as she realized what had happened.

“No,” she said, shaking her head slightly, but my face told the story my mouth was too afraid to.

“Listen, I wanted to know how…” I started to say but before I could finish... the doorbell rang. I turned nervously toward the front door, then back to Kappa who was clearly disappointed, her face drawn down to a point, framing her lips. I debated between her and the door and went to the door.

Jessica smiled wide when I opened the door and took a half step inside. The feeling I had at the bottom of the stairs was all but gone with Kappa a few feet from me and when Jessica went to take the flowers from my hand I nearly dropped them. She looked at them lovingly, the way I always dreamed she’d look at me and brought them to her face.

“How on earth did you get these in such short time?” she said, smiling as she breathed them in. Her face was filled with such elation that I nearly told her I had but Kappa spoke up first.

“He didn’t,” she said flatly in her accent before walking up and snatching them from Jessica’s hand. Jessica reeled back as Kappa turned to me and said in her most confident tone, “Lester, you know this is wrong.” For a moment it looked as though she wanted to say more. She opened her mouth but stopped herself and turned to the front door. With flowers in hand she left the house and exited to the street.

“Was that your cousin?” Jessica asked a look of surprise doubt on her face and a tone that finished the thought with cause she’s crazy but she changed the subject as quickly as she brought it up and said, “I doesn’t matter, I’m so happy I reached out to you.”

My eyes met hers and while everything about the moment felt right, everything inside me knew it was wrong. Her gaze was loving and interested, sincere and kind but hollow. There wasn’t a vacantness in her eyes but there was something about the moment that I knew was unearned, undeserved and I had taken her agency away when I changed her code. I took a long moment before talking, considering my actions, and what I came to was this:

I could see myself falling in love with this person. From everything I saw, everything I read, everything I knew, I could love her and that meant that even if I wasn’t the person she wanted to be with, I wanted her to be happy. Taking away her ability to say no, to not choose me was so wrong that all at once I felt sick. This time the sickness didn’t make me vomit because it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t excitement or nerves. It wasn’t the nervous energy I had before D&D, or when she texted me the first time; no it was the sick feeling you get when you realize that you’re the villain in someone else’s story.    

“I’m sorry Jessica.” I said and took a half-step back, “I was wrong in asking you to come here.”

She scoffed a little and took another step forward. “I asked you if I could come over,” she said playfully, and despite the want and yearning I had for her I maintained my distance.

“I know. I mean to say, I don’t like you that way.” As the words left my lips I could see her face change. It wasn’t like the breaking of a limb but rather as if realizing you left the stove on. It was a subtle wave of realization that washed over her followed by the flush of red to her cheeks. It was torture, for both of us. She nodded and bit her lip and laughed a bit, clearly at a loss for words and just as I went to speak the door opened to my parents and Marcus coming back from a morning of shopping.

She turned from me and pushed through them offering excuses, as my mom and dad, apologetic themselves, tried to step aside, moving the large bags they carried. She stepped outside and I followed, “Jessica,” I said in a tone that surprised myself as she went to her car and started it. I walked halfway, then stopped as I saw the tears running down her cheeks. As she drove away I felt the pain in my heart and the sickness in my stomach from what I had done. I stood outside in the summer breeze for a long time before turning around and heading inside.

“Lester?” Mom said from the kitchen as I entered the front door. I didn’t feel like talking but knew she was concerned about what had just happened.

“Ya,” I said, in a tone that made me wish I wasn’t Lester at all. This was me entering the house mom; Lester Dunn, your baby boy... or what was left of him - the bulk of him is still splayed out on the lawn where he died five minutes ago. She walked into the hallway and slowed in her approach as if coming towards a wild animal, nervous to scare it away.  

“Are you okay?” she asked in a tone that made me more embarrassed than reassured. Embarrassed because rather than asking what that was about or who that was, my mom’s first reaction was to check if I was okay. I walked towards her, feeling the lowest I had in perhaps ever, and hugged her again. The second time that morning.

“I don’t deserve you, momma,” I said through the thick of her sweater, her hand patting gently on my back as I did.

“Why don’t we sit down, have a cup of coffee and just relax?” she said in a tone that sounded so inviting I almost forgot why I was upset. “Your dad is taking a nap and Marcus is playing on your computer.”

My heart skipped a beat as I pulled back from her.

“What?” I asked through a drawn in breath.

“Marcus, he’s playing your game, you said he could any time he wanted?” Her words were barely out of her mouth before I was halfway up the stairs and barreling towards my room. Under my breath I was muttering ‘no’ in a continual loop as I reached the top step and launched myself into a run towards my bedroom. I body-checked the door open, filling the room with light, just as Marcus pressed the second click to launch Dunn. I leapt forward as the code began filling with thousands of lines of code, error after error being written and rewritten, line after line until…

…until I was no longer standing at my computer.

I was standing by a lone rock, next to a fallen tree in the world I had created. Dunn didn’t just become a reality; it became the whole world’s reality. The whole universe’s reality and everything I knew and loved was gone.