Consciousness

"Lilly?" Lee called softly, tapping on her door. "You got a minute?"

"Come in." She replied weakly, her voice muffled. He pushed the door open to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, face buried in her hands.

Lee took a seat at the checkers table by her bedroom window, recalling the time he had tried to teach her how to play. The game had ended with pieces strewn across the floor, a very irritated Lilly wiping them off the board with a swipe of her arm. Afterward, he remembered, they had actually laughed if off – but Lilly never laughed now. That part of her, the stubborn but likeable fire, had long since burnt out.

"You know," He lifted his eyes from the table, settling them on the woman in front of him, "I'm worried about you, Lilly. Lately you've been saying all sorts of weird things..."

She raised her head from her palms, her once-passionate eyes now dull and lifeless. "You don't understand, Lee." She croaked in a hoarse tone. "None of you do. I see things that nobody else can see. I can see the fibers of our world, the way it all comes together." She shook her head, her empty eyes still fixated on him. "Our lives are all just scripted code. I saw it myself." Her argument derailed into senseless rambling as she spouted off about programming and plotlines and pre-determined fates. Lee watched her with a heavy heart, realizing for the first time just how far gone she really was.

"I know you don't believe me." She whispered, her voice cracking. "But it's all true. I found the source code that contains all of our data. It weaves this world together like a storybook – we're all just plot devices in a fake universe. We were created for someone's entertainment!" She waved her arm, encompassing the scenery around them. "It's all just fiction..."

A look of great sadness found its way into Lee's features as he remained silent. "Lee," She begged, her tone growing desperate, "There's no one I trust in this group more than you. Please don't dismiss me as crazy. Please, listen to me. The others don't understand, they've already written me off. Give me a chance, a way to somehow prove I'm right."

Lee shook his head slowly. "Lilly, I want to believe you. I really do. But what you're saying, it's just...insanity. You're acting paranoid, and-"

"You don't even have to say it, you know." Lilly said in a low, emotionless voice. "I can fucking read it, right underneath you."

Lee raised an eyebrow, leaning back in uncertainty. "The hell are you talking about?"

"Every time you go to say something, a bunch of lines of dialogue show up in front of you. They disappear after a few seconds, and then you say one of the things that was listed there. It happens constantly." Her explanation was flat and matter-of-fact. She sounded so convinced, so certain she was right. Whatever craziness she may have been dreaming up, it was reality to her.

Lee wondered how she could have slipped so far in such a short span of time. He rose to his feet, arms still folded across his chest in disbelief. "I'm sorry, Lilly. Maybe you'll prove me wrong, but-"

"-but I can't just believe claims like that without any evidence." Lilly finished, voice monotone, as though she were reading from a book.

"...Yeah." Lee replied, stupefied. "That's exactly what I was gonna say."

"What a shock!" Lilly spat, rolling her eyes. "Maybe you'll believe me now?"

Lilly had taken the words straight out of his mouth, verbatim, before he'd had a chance to speak them. How could she have possibly known exactly what he was going to say? Could it be that, maybe, she was right?

Before he could ponder it further, a blinding flash encapsulated the tiny room.

Once it dimmed, he found himself wondering why he was in Lilly's room in the first place. She was staring up at him from her bed expectantly. "Lilly, I...uh..." He tried vainly to remember what had brought him there.

"I need to talk to you." She began, nodding to the table by the window. "Sit."

Still confused as hell, Lee took a seat. She ran her bony fingers through her dry hair, sighing in exasperation as she waited for him to settle in.

"Supplies are missing, and I need your help..."

/

A desk lamp overhead cast a glaring white light down upon a piece of paper, stashed on top of an office desk. On that paper a multitude of notes were scribbled, some with red underlines. Beside it, a glowing computer monitor displayed The Walking Dead Game's beta test run. A man, a computer programmer, sat hunched in front of it, studying the characters on the screen while still taking notes.

"How's it coming?" Another man appeared in the office doorway, glancing down at the programmer and computer screen.

"Pretty good." The other man responded, his brow furrowed as he continued to stare at the monitor. "I can't seem to work this bug out of Lilly, though. She's fine until episode 3, then her character starts glitching and her dialogue gets all garbled."

"Huh, let me see." He took a few steps into the office, studying the game more closely. Sure enough, Lilly's movements were jerky and disoriented, her speech nonsensical. "Hm. Maybe there's a typo in the code somewhere."

"I'm thinking it might be this." He opened another window, filled with letters, numbers, and symbols. Then he highlighted a string of characters and deleted them, entering a few slightly different symbols. "She's supposed to be talking about missing supplies, but it looks like she doesn't wanna go along with that." He changed a few more symbols, pasting her dialogue into a new area.

"Well, we did make her stubborn as hell." The other man joked.

Despite his frustration, the programmer cracked a smile. "Ha, yeah." He agreed. "Maybe a little too stubborn."

As soon as the programmer applied the changes, Lilly's glitching seemed to calm down. "Hey, I think I got it." The man exclaimed as Lilly began to discuss the stolen supplies with Lee. "She's working all right now."

"Awesome." They were both excited to have the game working properly. "You know, it's a shame she's leaving soon, I really like her character."

"Me too, even though she's been a bitch to program."

"Isn't that how she's supposed to be?" They both shared a laugh, relieved that her error hadn't been critical.

The seated man reached over to the paper on the desk, crossing out 'ep 3 Lilly glitch' and writing 'FIXED' over the words.