I’m sure at this point you’re already having your doubts about me. Look, I said from the get-go that I don’t expect you to believe me. It’s going to get weirder fast and I feel the need to address the idea of “A 14 year old kid who spends 6 years making a video game of the caliber and scope in which Dunn seems to be.” I know you probably have your doubts but what can I say? Some dogs can play piano, some people can solve Rubik’s cubes in seconds flat, I could build Dunn. The dude who made Stardew Valley did it on his own in like two years, was it really so hard to believe that I could do something on a much larger scale in 6?

Either way, for all the work I had put into Dunn; all the sleepless nights (and there were a LOT of them), all the missed family dinners and ignored parts of my life, it still wasn’t completed. Not until the AI problem was cracked. It was an impassable obstacle that I didn’t have any way around and it was easier to think about other things.

Had I been thinking about the AI problem, however, instead of the events that had transpired moments before, I almost certainly wouldn’t have turned left down another alleyway instead of right. I certainly wouldn’t have missed the broken glass and flashing lights down another side street and I absolutely wouldn’t have ignored the fallen police tape that was meant to block pedestrians from the crime scene I had just walked into. Stupid Zack.

By the time I looked up I realized I was standing before a broken PC, smashed in the alleyway between two tall apartment buildings. The city sounds came back to me like breaking through the surface of a swimming pool and all at once I could hear the police questioning people down a sharp corner, the soft chattering voices of a crowd and the snapping sound of photos being taken. I froze. Like a squirrel indecisive about continuing to cross the road once caught in the headlights of a passing car, I didn’t know whether to continue walking through or head back the way I had come. For a moment I tensed my shoulder waiting for the impending shout of a police officer but none came.

I nervously looked around as if I had already been caught to see that, despite this being an active crime scene, no one was actually here. I could hear a group of people around the bend and voices through the open door to the building next to me but it seemed like I was alone. With a sigh of relief I had started to back away, retracing the last few steps, when my shoe landed on something that threw my balance a bit. I turned quickly to see the face of a man; blood smeared and covered in glass, his lifeless hand beneath my reebok sneakers.

My face drained of colour and my jaw mouthed a scream that I couldn’t make. The pit of my stomach fell below the earth, beneath the city streets and underground passageways, past the core and out the other side to create another sinkhole on the other side of the world. I was frozen, truly frozen; a catatonic state that I probably would’ve stayed in had it not been for the soft beep that came from the broken PC in the alley.

Slowly and with my eyes still on the face of the dead man by my feet, I turned my head to the computer; my eyes clinging to the corpse until the last possible second, their deceptive kindness eager for me to memorize the horrible image. The PC, which looked totally destroyed, had flicked on somehow and a single green line of text had appeared. I couldn’t quite read it from my distance but being a man of feline-level curiosity I approached, hoping that I shared a cat’s level of intrigue and not its fate. The computer appeared to be an impressive rig at first glance but the more I studied it the more I was astonished.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Not only did it have all the absolute best pieces I recognized; the case, monitor and PSU, but the Graphics card and Processor were unlike anything I had ever seen. The GPU looked as though it had been stitched together, albeit with extreme precision, from two of the top cards on the market while the CPU was altogether something different. The Central Processing Unit is the brain of any computer and this brain looked super-human. When my eyes finished admiring the hardware they flashed to the screen and the single green line that appeared, which read;

CODE READY FOR UPLOAD, INSERT USB

It was written in a custom font, it wasn’t any software that I recognized and perhaps was designed by the owner of this beast. For a moment I considered the words, turning them over in my mind. The silence was broken by a loud voice from within the building through the open door next to me. Nervously I turned back to the dead man, his face unchanged, holding the last expression he’d ever make and slowly, nervously, I turned back to the PC.

I’d like to pretend I don’t know why I did what I did next. It would be quite innocent of me to claim something like, “I was totally off my rocker!” or “It was like moving without thought,” but if you’ve learned anything about me you know that neither of those would be true. The truth is that I very deliberately and quickly removed the USB I kept on my keychain from my pocket, plugged it into the PC and pressed enter. The small green loading bar popped up and began to fill as the thick drops of sweat that had been accumulating on my brow began to plunk down onto my shoes. The voices grew closer as I found myself muttering beneath my breath. “Come on, come on.”

The voices grew louder, two of them now, in deep discussion having cleared the building to my right. As they descended the stairs towards the alley - the alley where I stood stealing evidence from a crime scene - I saw a broken lamp smashed into the pavement next to me. With a raised eyebrow a thought dawned on me and I looked up for the first time. Three stories above me in the building that the voices came from, there was an obliterated apartment window. The computer it didn’t just appear to be have fallen but was instead thrown out of an apartment along with the dead man. Clothing, CD’s and blankets covered the fire escapes and clothes lines that connected the two buildings. As I studied the scene, my eyes fell to back to the broken window and a man who stood at it, looking down at me.

“Hey you! Stop!” the voice yelled down into the alleyway as the pit in my stomach leaped up into my throat, nearly strangling me. Quickly, I turned back down at the computer, the loading bar having been completed for god knows how long and in one move I swiped for my USB before racing out of the alleyway as fast as my feet would take me. As I rounded the end of the alley, I heard the voice again, this time presumably talking to the other officers who had just entered the crime scene as I left; “I just saw a kid…” was all I could hear above the beating of my own heart.

I stopped at the intersection where I had taken the wrong turn and had a moment of indecision before turning back to Claudia’s Tap House instead of the car. I ran to the back entrance which thankfully was still open and bolted inside, leaning on the door behind me. I caught my breath and entered the back of the bar, the table had been cleared and Jessica was nowhere in sight but I could hear a number of voices out front. As I approached from the back I saw the patrons crowded by the front window as the sirens wailed past. Blue and red lights of the cruisers illuminated the streets out front. With my heart beating fast enough to impress a humming bird I leaned into the bathroom, stumbled to the toilet and for the second time this evening vomited. One more and I’m pretty sure I get a free hat.