The date was
undefined.
It was not quite three in the morning,
but getting there.
Slowly.
The minutes inched by as they always did.
Tick,
tock,
tick-
...
Clayton laid back in the chair
and tapped his fingers on the armrests.
Blue light covered his face,
and those pixels made their way into his eyes,
and his brain said
wait,
wait,
wait.
Let's slow down and think about this.
His eyes laid upon one single number in a file of computer code.
"name": "minecraft:ender_pearl",
"weight": 20,
Clayton tapped his fingers on the keyboard four times.
The number was now 70.
The cursor continued to blink.
The cursor couldn't care less.
...
Time passed.
He leaned back to get the big picture
but all the text was jumbled
and he shook his head slowly.
He reached over for his can of sparkling water
and he gulped with his eyes wide
and it burned his throat a little.
The lights kept buzzing.
He let out a lime-flavored breath
and leaned back forward.
He pulled the mouse back a little
so that the cursor hovered over that unsuspecting little button
that said
"save".
He paused for a few seconds, and then-
An unexplainable chill.
He stood up and took his headphones off.
...
What time is it? I need some sleep.
He scratched his head.
He was still standing on the gray carpet.
He looked away from the monitor, the code.
He walked in a small circle
and again.
And then he noticed the foot of the stairs
and walked up
step by darkening step.
He was not sure whether he was dreaming or not.
Wake up, you idiot.
Another step.
Lost. I might be lost. I should ask somebody for help.
...
When he got to the top of the stairs,
he paused as he got jolted back into reality.
He looked around, dazed, like someone who had just awoken from a coma.
It was...
dark.
...
Yes, it was dark in the kitchen.
Clayton could not see the corners of the room,
and the further he looked, the darker everything got.
There were a couple of windows,
but the world outside was blackness,
so black that it could not be real.
He saw only his faint reflection in the window,
a shadow, unthinking, unfeeling.
He was a little scared of it.
Everything was silent.
...
Yes, it was silent in the house.
Clayton remembered that his parents and sister were sleeping like the rest of the world.
He tried to breathe as quietly as possible:
inhale, exhale, and again, and again, shhh.
If he ever stopped breathing, he would die,
but he did not realize that yet.
...
His ears could barely pick up his own breathing
and maybe the breathing of the A/C.
Or maybe that's just white noise in my brain.
Only you know that, Clayton, not me.
Clayton, why haven't you moved in a whole minute?
Tick,
tock,
tick,
tock.
A minute is a long time to be seeing and hearing, but not thinking.
Clayton?
...
And suddenly, his mind switched back on like a plane accelerating down the runway.
Why did I walk up here?
Code. Code. The code. The number, Clayton. Twenty. Seventy. Your cursor.
A pause.
Alright, Clayton,
said his brain.
I've been with you for your whole life,
and I know what's good for you,
and I know
that you should walk down the basement steps
and press the button that says
"cancel",
and you will be happy.
...
Instantly, a voice from... somewhere
said I disagree.
It said nobody will ever find out.
You can just use the datapack for practice and videos and fun.
You want to have fun, right?
Plus,
even if you used it in your speedruns,
nobody would ever find out.
And you could always say that you were just running for practice.
There is no risk
at all.
...
He listened to his breath for a few more seconds,
then made eye contact with his reflection in the window and furrowed his eyebrows.
Am I a good or bad person?
Good, right? Must be.
...
The earth was moving very fast.
Day was coming a few miles closer every second.
He didn't think about it.
He had never seen the sunrise before,
only knowing that it was bright when he woke up.
Tick, tock-
...
Darkness in the kitchen.
The brain said nothing more
and the mysterious voice said nothing more.
and now Clayton had to choose one or the other, one or the other.
Which? Cancel? Save?
Silence in the kitchen.
He didn't like silence.
Clayton! One or the other! Now!
said his reflection.
He looked away from the window.
...
Clayton turned back around
towards the yellow glow coming from behind the door of the basement
and he twisted the golden handle
and he stepped down the first stair.
Froze again. Nodded.
No, I'm right.
He closed the door behind him with a soft click.
Then, with one quiet step at a time,
he walked back down to that old monitor.
Yes, of course. Of course, you are a good person.
He sat down, smiled, and took another sip of the lime-flavored water.
...
Clayton did not hear the click.
He edited a few more files.
He clicked a few more buttons.
...
Huh, 3:17.
So he turned the lights off
and laid back on his couch
and he read a new fanfiction on his phone, just like he always did.
This one was about him and his friends going shopping in Miami.
Eventually, he went to sleep,
but the clocks did not.
Tick,
tock,
tick,
tock.