Fifteen seconds later, Clayton was on the concrete, unconscious.
Four hours after that,
the doctors said that he would wake up
eventually.
...
There he was.
Under a thin blanket
in a white bed
in a hospital room.
But he did not see anything.
...
Every couple of minutes,
somebody would walk along the hallway outside the door
and then their footsteps would fade out.
But he did not hear anything.
...
Still sleeping.
His brain thought he had only opened the window fifteen seconds ago.
His brain thought he would wake up in his bed, staring at a power outlet.
But the idea of waking up felt far away:
the doctors grimaced when asked about it, mumbling something about concrete.
...
It's boring to be in a coma, isn't it?
...
Every night, the sun would set and rise again,
and each time it appeared, light filled the room
and the world started to do its thing again.
But Clayton did not move.
...
And he did not think.
And on a bedside table far away
sat a green can of lime-flavored water
which no longer sparkled.
...
Eventually, though, a few parts of his brain turned on.
It happened in the night, while the rest of the world slept, while the hospital room was dark.
...
He woke up inside an airport.
And he looked around.
...
It was all so realistic,
as smooth as the world's best computer,
with a quality that no game could ever match.
So, at first,
he thought it was real.
...
But under the blanket, his eyes were still closed,
and he did nothing but breathe, in, out, in-
But in the dream, there was an airport,
yes,
an airport.
The airport was silent.
...
The ceiling was so ridiculously high up
that it was impossible to throw a ball at, let alone think about touching.
It was slightly curved, glittering with blinding white lights.
The floor was pale gray and overly shiny.
Those blinding white lights reflected off of the floor
like constellations, and when Clayton's head moved,
the lights moved too.
...
For some reason, there were no shadows anywhere.
...
The walls were also ridiculously far away,
but at least you could touch them if you really wanted to.
They were also painted white, completely blank.
One of the four massive walls was made up of windows tightly knitted together,
reaching up to the ceiling. The windows were clean and clear
and whatever was behind them was impossibly
dark.
There was not just blackness outside.
There was nothing outside
and it was impossible to imagine any sort of sky, rain, or orange sunrise.
...
The wall with the windows had a section cut out,
reserved for rows of sliding glass doors
marked with yellow and black signs.
But they were pointless. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to look at.
The other three walls
each had a section cut out of them.
Those three passageways were lined with escalators
and bathrooms and thin, patterned carpets.
Familiar restaurants and shops seemed to go on forever.
...
It was too dark outside. Too bright inside.
Time did not exist in that place.
No people.
Except for that one man standing in the middle of it all,
in the world of shiny gray surfaces and smooth concrete edges.
...
He turned his head,
observing the grid of white tree-trunk-sized pillars holding up the ceiling,
the rows of check-in desks with motionless conveyor belts.
Blue signs with white letters, numbers, and arrows were scattered everywhere
and there was an occasional green leafy plant.
Solid shades of white, black, gray, blue, yellow, and green. That was it.
He stared at the ground.
Alone.
...
And it makes no sense,
but at some point, he just turned his head
and saw someone standing next to him.
This person was strange because he was the only thing in the dream that was blurry,
like an animated character in a live-action movie.
This person's face could not be seen
but there was some kind of dark pink haze following him around.
And Clayton knew exactly who this person was supposed to be,
and he smiled, letting out a sigh of relief
because he still thought it was all real.
...
"Hey, Techno."
There was no response from the pink figure but Clayton didn't care.
"So, how have things been with you?"
And still nothing, but he thought... no, he knew it was real.
...
"Okay, guess I'll go first then. Well,
things have been good with me.
Trying to come up with some new video ideas and-"
Clayton's face lit up.
"Remember the Mr. Beast challenge from, what, two weeks ago?
When we were on the same team and all?
That was really, really fun."
He kept smiling.
"What would you have done with the prize money if we had won it?"
A pause. No sound came from Technoblade, but it seemed like he moved a little.
Clayton shrugged and said something like
"Yeah, I dunno either but, uh, anyway."
...
He wished he had more things to bring up.
He wished he could say something special about winning tournaments
or fighting in that... duel.
That memory felt far, far away from the airport. That memory included the sun.
But it was a vague memory.
Most of what he remembered about the duel were things he had rewatched on YouTube
when he was bored, slouching back in his chair,
wanting to listen to the sound of his own voice and read the praise in the comment section.
Far away.
...
He glanced around the massive, shiny lobby again.
The blurry image of Technoblade shifted.
Silence, but
wait.
Clayton could barely hear crisp piano notes,
so quiet that he wasn't sure if he was just imagining it, but
huh, is that Minecraft music?
And he shuddered
because it brought back distant memories of sitting in front of a screen.
Far away. Another world.
...
Hmm, that window.
He wondered if he could start walking away from the airport.
Assuming there was ground outside. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe he would just fall forever.
And that empty black sky.
The thing that said your home is far from this place,
reminded him that grass was nowhere near, that chirping birds were nowhere near.
Like space. Nobody could hear him out there.
Colorful passageways with patterned carpets faded back into focus.
He decided that he wouldn't walk away from the airport after all.
...
Clayton blinked a few times,
remembering that there was a pink figure standing next to him.
He cursed at himself because he didn't know how much time had passed.
This was how he always messed it up in high school,
zoning out as people walked away from him quietly, trying not to wake him up.
He blinked again. Too sleepy.
...
"But I think we were always pretty good pals, right?"
And then he smiled as if a joke was being shared between friends,
but Technoblade did not smile back. Didn't move, actually.
"Either way,
I know we haven't talked much in the last year,
but I've been really busy,
so, uh...
and also, uh,
sorry for not seeing your messages last night."
He shrugged.
"I know I said that I would talk to you
tomorrow
but-"
...
"But it doesn't even matter, 'cause you're here,
and now we can talk about stuff, right?"
Clayton felt ecstatic.
"Anyway, finally meeting up in real life...
how cool is that?"
He paused
and decided that he might as well ask the question.
"Finally, huh. Ever read any of those fanfictions?"
...
He thought maybe it would prompt a reaction.
But... no, still no movement, still the pink cloud blurring that face.
Technoblade stared at one of those blue signs
that said something about gates.
...
"Oh, you're right. We can go check the rest of this place out if you want
and,
uh,
we could grab a bite from one of these places,
and we could sit somewhere, anywhere you want for a couple of hours,
and then we could just talk about everything that's been going on.
Or we could just explore every inch of this place,
and look at all the chairs, doors, corners, escalators, shops,
and everything.
While talking, and, hmm-"
...
Clayton rocked on his heels and stared at those shifting lights reflecting off the floor,
waiting for Technoblade to say something, anything.
But the Minecraft music started to suffocate his brain again,
and he had to start talking so that he wouldn't hear the music anymore.
"So, uh, let's just
get going. Where do you wanna go?"
...
And Technoblade said nothing.
His blurry head finally turned,
staring outside those massive windows
at nothing.
Nothing at all.
...
Clayton felt his throat tighten a little. He realized something.
"O-
okay, we'll just stay right here, then.
And, uh...
do you have anything to say?"
...
Shit. It's not real.
The real world and the fake world started to separate in his brain. Still, it was all hazy.
The dreamer and the dream stood there, facing away from each other, in that huge white space.
He wanted to say thanks,
thanks for inviting me to Minecraft Mondays,
getting me to where I am today,
being a funny channel.
He stared at the ground. It didn't matter.
...
During the silence, Clayton realized that Minecraft music wasn't playing anymore.
He looked back up, turning around,
realizing that Technoblade should not have been blurry.
Nothing changed. Nothing moved.
The solid colors and shiny surfaces
were starting to drive him crazy.
...
He tried to say one last thing.
This time, his voice sounded as if it didn't even belong to him.
"And, uh, when I heard that you had a t-"
He froze
and looked at that blurry, pink head,
without a face, without emotions, without thoughts.
And then he chuckled.
Terminal illness, huh?
The lights started falling from the ceiling,
each one letting out a deafening crash.
...
And then Clayton tried to smile
but the corners of his mouth would not reach high enough.
His eyes were wide and one of his eyelids quivered.
He tried to laugh, but it came out oddly high-pitched, more like a cough.
Wow.
And as he crazy-cough-laughed,
he stared at his tiny reflection next to a tiny pink blob
in that massive wall of glass, so far away.
...
And then the dream... dissolved
into another.