So, back to a random day in the middle of June 2022.
is this where it ends?
Is this just the sad epilogue about how his life would morph back into
an endless sea of days, where nothing happened yesterday
and nothing will happen tomorrow?
...
Over one year had passed since the apology.
Waiting 365 seconds without anything happening
is boring.
Waiting 365 days without anything happening
is... something else.
...
And here Clayton was, still the same person-
Well, mostly the same person.
The part of his brain that remembered things must have been turned off.
There was no other explanation for why he no longer thought about
duels, datapacks, and bathtubs.
And of course,
he would never think about those things again
because nothing would ever happen that would make him remember.
Yes,
nothing will happen tomorrow. Or today.
...
Well,
at least some things changed since May 2021,
in those 365 days.
He had his own house now,
his own perfect house with green-screen walls and smooth red roof tiles.
He was a millionaire, after all.
He fluffed up the pillow of his bed
in his room on the second floor.
...
The second change is that it was not yet midnight
and he could not remember the last time he had slept at three.
Those days of the dark basement were all in the past.
His family home was far away now. He didn't know what direction it was.
He never thought about the past.
...
The third change is that Clayton no longer felt sad.
And although there had not been many days worth remembering in the last 365 days,
he embraced his human programming and somehow felt alright-ish.
He didn't smile much either.
It was as if the part of his brain that felt emotions had been turned off.
There was no other explanation.
...
He did not read fanfictions anymore,
because nobody wrote them anymore,
because the crazy days of 2,500,000 subscribers in a month were over,
and now he was lucky to get a tenth of that.
He had stopped making those manhunt videos,
the ones that got him into the headlines and the record books.
And now when people thought of that famous, faceless YouTuber, Dream,
they wondered whatever happened to him?
...
Well,
at least Clayton would not go completely insane
because he still had a couple of friends
who he had been playing Minecraft with for all these years.
All these years.
...
His phone lay face-down on the bedside table.
He turned off the lights.
And now every part of his brain turned off, one by one,
as he closed his eyes in his nice, soft, millionaire bed,
covered by a thin blanket.
...
It's boring to be asleep, isn't it?
...
One and a half hours after he went to sleep,
his phone made a little noise.
It sounded like a
ping.
If only it had been louder.
And there more pings and more notifications piled up
in the silence of the night, but Clayton kept sleeping.
...
hey, its techno
can you chat?
i know its late but
i remember that you used to be the only person up at this time
but that was like a year ago so idk
so anyway just lemme know if you see this
cuz nobody else seems to be online now
...
alright
i dont have a choice
feels weird to say that
...
collected my thoughts, here u go
the cancer has gotten really bad, like really bad
like i cant move my legs and stuff
coughing hurts, feels like im only breathing with half a nostril
freezing
hate these wires hooked up to me bruh
so anyway i dont think im gonna be getting better
like i recorded the literal death video
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
i hate that i cant do anything
i thought i would be calm, stoic, cool
but im crumbling because i have this urge to remember everything ive ever done before im gone
i cant keep thinking about this
...
anyway minecraft am i right
it feels so far away now
feels fake, i just realized its all fake holy shit
but yeah uh congrats on being number one mcyt person
glad we could work together
i still remember that duel, that was fun right
minecraft tournaments and all
man that was good
thought this stuff cant happen to people like me
i thought technoblade never dies
...
i see a light above my bed
its dark
darker outside
this place feels so fake
idk how the world was ever warm
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
i just ran out of time, simple as that
a year ago i was gaming and taking showers in the middle of the night
and stuff
it was good a year ago
...
nothing more i can do
except spam the letter a with my shivering fingers on my phone lol
not sure if anything i ever did mattered anyway
i mean minecraft is just pixels
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
i probably saw sunlight for the last time in my life earlier
and i wasnt even paying attention
and idk
i have run out of ideas
im supposed to be this funny guy
it isnt working
im tired
...
ok well youre clearly not awake
idk why im even writing this
...
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa headache
gonna tell the doctors in a sec
let me know when you see this
ok
?
...
clocks
i hear clocks
thats probably it
...
And then Clayton's phone stopped vibrating.
...
And unbelievably, unexplainably,
Clayton slowly opened his eyes
just twenty minutes after the last message.
And Technoblade's little cartoon pig icon
still had a green dot next to it,
signaling that he was online, alive.
The dot would stay green for the next three hours.
...
At that moment, they were both awake in their dark rooms, on opposite sides of the United States.
And now you can breathe a sigh of relief,
because now these two similar people, with thousands of stories written about them,
can have a final chat and find some sort of peace,
right?
...
But.
Clayton was only half awake.
And when his eyes opened, he was not thinking about
his phone (which still lay face-down)
or the internet
or Technoblade
and certainly not the concept of death.
His throat felt dry. That was all he cared about.
...
A voice told Clayton to get a glass of water,
and so he got to his feet and opened the bedroom door.
And so he gripped the railing of his curving black marble staircase
as he slowly went down, step by step, eyes half-closed.
He opened the fridge. Reached for a can of lime sparkling water
because why not?
He popped the can open. Took a sip.
And if you were there, you would not see anything at all, but if you really listened,
you would hear breathing and maybe the light sparkling sound of the water.
The cold acidic taste burned his throat a little.
Lime. Familiar.
To be completely honest, Clayton had long forgotten which flavor he was drinking
when he edited that file 22 months before.
...
He climbed back up the stairs,
step by step,
which should have brought back a flood of memories,
but it did not because he was just
so tired.
...
And when he stumbled back to his room
with his throat no longer dry,
he yawned
and put the can down right next to his phone on the bedside table.
He crawled back into his bed.
He closed his eyes again.
...
Clayton didn't reach for his phone.
He didn't flip it over. Didn't see.
Back to sleep, bored. Maybe dreaming,
tick, tock.
...
Later that night, the dot turned from green to gray.
Some people cried in a fluorescent room
very, very far away.
Later that night, the dot turned back to green.
...
One final ping.
Our son, Alexander, also known as Technoblade, passed away peacefully this night at the age of 23. He battled four cancer for the last 10 months. Always a true fighter, he tried to stay optimistic and beat the odds until the very end. One of his last wishes was to tell all of his friends on this app how grateful he was to have known them in his incredible life. Please keep this private until an announcement has been made on his YouTube channel.
- The parents of Technoblade
...
But that one did not wake Clayton up either.
And so his brain stayed off as he continued to sleep in his millionaire bed.