Heyo! @Jamriot is hosting a Writer's Jam this weekend, and my entry is below! This was a lot of fun to work on, and the quick turnaround meant that I couldn't second-guess myself as much as I usually do while writing. Hope you enjoy! The prompt I chose was headstone.

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Habit Coral

The game hadn’t been fun in six hours.

The setup alone had been a nightmare. Gilly spent the better part of two weeks pulling old cables and machines out of retirement, pairing them with newer pieces, forcing aluminum fossils that had already provided a lifetime of service to get back on the frontlines. They didn’t understand the newer generations, but they couldn’t be blamed. It was only the kindness - or the stubborn nostalgia - of strangers writing patches that even gave them a language they could mutually understand. Thanks to them, all of those bits and bytes with scattered agendas came to begrudging agreements.

One of the younger devices was a small black box plugged into the monitor. A red light on it blinked in an endless cycle, remembering all it had seen on the screen. It worked in silence, allowing Gilly’s keyboard to speak its mind, clacking and complaining as its keys were hammered in frustration. His motions were as impassioned as they were mechanical, following the same patterns for hours on end, losing the rhythm with only milliseconds shorn on each beat. 

Spray Bay boasted a maximum player count of twenty-four - a number that the minds at Sugar Brick Studios claimed was optimal for Kroma Surge’s “frantic, fast-paced Jetpack Paintball fun” - but at that moment, Gilly was the only resident. Set on a shore and dock between rolling hills, the open sea, and a dozen small floating islands, the palette was bright as the shimmering water and cool as a drink on the endless summer day the map was nestled in. In the decades since it had been discovered, the sun had never set, and the clouds hadn’t moved an inch. Though the wind could be heard, the grass didn’t sway and the ocean stayed a perfect blue sheet, free of ripples. Through all the thrills and angst the bay had seen, it remained as sharp and pristine as when it launched, setting sail to meet the masses.   

He leapt from island to island, seeing his day replayed in real time. The same path. The same movements. The same sound effects, lonely footsteps and huffs in the ocean breeze. 

And the same goal. 

Every few moments, he glanced back up at the highest island. It sat just far enough out of the way to give itself some plausible deniability, silently dismissing most player’s eyes. Curious adventurers always looked twice, though. With a touch of gumption, a key stroke at all the precise moments, and the boldness to politely decline just the right line in the game’s physics code, and it could be reached.

His character moved with the erratic nature of a floater, staying just at the corner of gravity’s eye, too quick for it to pull him right back down. He had his jetpack to that for that fleet-footedness, and his agility was even more impressive in light of the weapon he wielded: a gun whose shape had the small-town charisma of a pesticide sprayer but the tempting allure of a flamethrower. 

He raced towards the island, wreathed in blue and purple flowers. Thin and colorful as construction paper, their digital roots kept them still and stoic as signage. Their vigil kept them firmly planted at the foot of a hill whose peak rose above any other point he had ever visited on that map. 

The jet pack sputtered, hissing and coughing an apology as it ran dry a moment too soon. As his hero began to plummet, the island’s edge became his horizon. Angling the camera up as he fell back to the ground, the blue and purple pixels quickly disappeared from view. 

Gilly reached out to reset the recorder in the trained manner of a switchboard operator. His other hand, though, grabbed his phone with a desperation like death row. “11:56 P.M. - 08/31/23” flashed on screen before he refreshed the last page he was on. The Sugar Brick logo loaded in, and he hoped for a miracle… but when the rest of the page loaded in, there was no miracle in the wings, ready to grace his eyes in twelve-point font. Just underneath the logo was the same banner as had been there for a month, hanging with a grimness that would make a gallow proud: “REMINDER: Kroma Surge servers going offline at the start of September. Thank you for 19 amazing years!” 

He straightened in his chair as he threw the phone aside. Fatigue brawled with panic inside of him, pulling his focus down into its voracious mire, but he had just enough time for one more try.

With a single keystroke, and one whirring stock sound effect later, he was back at his original spawn point. His character fell back into place where millions of identical footsteps once tread, standing atop a grassy plane responsible enough to bear that weight for years with neither complaint nor scuff. At the start of his session, the uncanny nature of that abandoned play space had shaken him. Its monumental stillness, like an antique’s longing for a purpose that may have been long past, bothered him earlier, but by that point, his race against time had taken over. 

As he refueled his character’s jetpack by his base, the moment the day’s replay began in his head again, it was overlaid with memories. He remembered Burt’s character right by his own, years before, fully embodying his teaching mantra: learning theory without solid examples is useless.

The meter in the corner rapidly filled, and the sound of his voice, tightly packed with static as a microphone appeared over his character’s head, nudged its way to the front of his consciousness. Burt wiggled his gun towards the recharge station, telling a story about playtesters steering clear of the device early in development when it was barrel-shaped, assuming it would explode if shot. So, in an afternoon, he implemented a new model: one that was just a dial here and a blue light there away from being a gas pump. It fit the game’s silly tone, and sure enough, testers flocked to it. 

As soon as he was re-fueled, Gilly began skiing those paths again, thin and unforgiving as if they were on a fracture. Hopping from island to island, he imagined Burt at his side, bumping into him now and again as he continued his jet-powered tour. He recalled Burt explaining that players rarely looked up, leading him to leave a few stones hovering beneath every floating island, guiding their eyes upward to the next platform.

He reached the last island before the one he had been aching to reach. That was where the most evident fork in the road between his past self and the current moment arose, though. He charged onwards, though when he was with Burt, they had both stopped at the ledge. Burt explained that it was possible to reach the final island alone, but if another player shot a paintball rocket at his feet at just the right angle as he flew off the ledge…

In that moment, Gilly remembered the sudden surge of speed as his character grunted, damaged by the blast. Oh, did he fly, though. He flew further all those years prior than he did at that moment. As he reached the arc of his pitiful parabola, an invisible rainbow with a pot of gold sixty feet down instead of in the floral bed before his eyes, he remembered what the two spoke about back then when his character skidded through those flowers, kind enough to phase through them as to not disturb their valuable jobs as decor.

“What’s on the island?”

“Nothing, no purpose. It’s just for fun, Gil. It’s nice having a little slice of the game that’ll always be my own.”

The moment he started watching his character plummet, everything that had been welling up burst free.

"Dammit! God... dammit!"  His body tensed and curled, heat bursting from his chest and guts, flaring up through his limbs, collecting in the fingertips digging into his palms. 

He screwed his eyes shut, raising a hand to slam it down onto the desk. He let out a deep sigh, but releasing that breath felt like it only gave exhaust-filled air a chance to seep in, racing down his throat and filling his chest with tar.

He heard a jingle in the game. Soon after, there was a new message in the chat. 

MegaMailbox94: Hey lol what’s up

MegaMailbox94: I saw this map had someone on it and I never tried it

Gilly’s hands quivered as he typed. His eyes darted between the clock on his phone and the chat on screen, as if time would suddenly remember the nature of its lethal dose precision. He wondered how this stranger could have avoided that curfew.

JigJermCreates: Hey! How did you join? Isn’t the server going down?

MegaMailbox94: Yeah we got an hour

Gilly stared ahead blankly, his gaze caught somewhere between the monitor and the neon-blue glow of his keys. Then, it clicked. 

Sugar Brick was in Boston. They were an hour ahead. 

There was time.

JigJermCreates: Oh yeah I got my time zones mixed up! I didn’t think anyone would come in here, Spray Bay usually doesn’t get a lot of players

It didn’t help that, between the short warning and all his work on silicon life support, Gilly didn’t have much time left for any kind of recruiting.

MegaMailbox94: Lol no worries. I actually only started playing last year so I thought it’d be cool to see all the maps before it’s over

JigJermCreates: This one’s probably my fave, for sure

JigJermCreates: Hey, quick question: think you can help me get to that island over there with the purple flowers? I’ve been trying to reach it all day. I know you can get over there, I did it a few years ago after a patch but it took me forever. I’ve been recording and I want to see if I can get it one more time before shut down

MegaMailbox94: Yeah np

Gilly squinted as he looked out across the field, watching a speck emerge from the opposing team’s base. With his arrival, the map’s loneliness receded to its borders. Though Gilly knew the place would never see the color of a full server again, there was comfort in seeing it touched by two visitors one last time, a summer husk hosting its last hurrah.

Mailbox came to a stop in front of him, instantly snapping from a run cycle to an idle with his magnetic joints. They greeted one another with a nod and a few quick crouches. Gilly pointed up towards the second-to-last island. At a certain point, they knew words weren’t needed; their puppeteering was clear enough.

Gilly led the way, rocketing to the first platform. Mailbox imitated his movements, following an approximation of his path as an imprecise ghost. When the first leapt, the second did a moment later, a foot or so to the left or right of the blurry cloud he left in his wake. Hearing his character’s footsteps behind himself as he ascended the ladder of isles, the gymnast loneliness that Gilly wallowed in throughout that day began to melt. 

They had nearly finished the gauntlet. Their gaze was fixed on that cluster of flowers on the final island, and Gilly flexed his fingers, ready to put a close to what had occupied so much of his energy those past few days. 

JigJermCreates: I’m gonna back up a little, and then right when I’m about to hit the ledge, you’ve got to fire a rocket at my feet. Then I should get enough air

MegaMailbox94: Gotcha

MegaMailbox94: I’ll get it the first time, can’t be here too long lol

Faith and fireworks were all that he could rely on by that point. He carefully backed away as Mailbox stood by, ready to fire a missile packed with potential. The risk wound its bony fingers around his heart as he considered the consequences if he failed again. The moment he would never be able to live again, the space that would be locked away for ages on end.

He ran.

Lo-fi wind rushed past his head, overlapping the crunching of grass beneath his feet. Rushing towards the edge, he saw his companion readying his aim, concentration and calculations bouncing around the inside of his helmet. The blood in Gilly’s chest was inspired by that visual, moving in a panicked network as he waited for the rocket to fire. A part of him lost faith for a split-second, urging him to hit the brakes, to compensate for his new friend’s inevitable missed beat. 

He pushed down harder on the ‘W’ key.

Just before he hit the ledge, he saw a brilliant burst of orange. The rocket traveled too quickly for him to even see it before it exploded at his feet the moment they reached the air, and he was sent flying. He soared just a few feet higher than any time earlier in that day, but that was all he needed. The angles worked. Everything worked. As he began his descent, where he had once crashed and burned, he landed among the flowers.

Gilly held his hands above his keyboard for a few moments - a moment of caution was well-worth avoiding the risk of overcorrecting the landing. “Okay, okay,” he muttered to himself, glancing over to make sure the recorder was still on. Unwilling to take a chance on hardware that came with the tagline “Record the gameplay wows you highest!”, he was quick to start recording with his phone, propping it up against a nearby box. The quality wouldn’t be anywhere near perfect, but the authenticity would shine through. 

He ascended the island’s small hill, once again seeing what had been added in that small patch years before. In a small clearing was a humble headstone, still as the flowers just a few feet behind himself. He crouched down to read the etching, muttering aloud. “In memory of Burt, whose boundless creativity and design skills inspired us every day. A kind teacher, leader, and friend, he saw the beauty in simple fun. Though he left Sugar Brick shortly after Kroma Surge launched to pursue his dream to be a teacher, we always remembered him. We hope you will too.”

He slumped back in his chair, staring at the headstone. One last time before it all faded into the void was all he needed. Though the recordings wouldn’t be quite the same as living for a moment in his friend and mentor’s old playspace, they would do well enough. As he pondered, he heard a familiar ‘ping!’.

MegaMailbox94: Hey

MegaMailbox94: I’m going to run to check out a few more maps, but if you didn’t hear, some of the OGs at Sugar Brick left to make their own company and they want to try a spiritual successor kinda thing

MegaMailbox94: I hope they make it, I’d love to see what this place looks like with more people. I’ll keep an eye out for your name on there :) See ya!

With that, he disappeared. Gilly looked over at the time. Nearly 1:00 A.M. for himself, midnight in Boston. He kept his gaze squarely on that headstone, grateful that Burt’s stamp was on his little slice of the world he had poured his energy into. His old professor’s mark stayed right up until the end.

A few moments later, his character’s idle motions froze. Spray Bay disappeared from the screen afterwards, replaced with a small window: “Thank you for staying with us to the end! If you have any fond memories you’d like to share, please let us know on the Sugar Brick website.”   

Gilly turned the recorder off. Though he was too exhausted to do much but fall asleep after turning the monitor and computer off as well, he considered sharing his new memory. Maybe some of them would even remember Burt. He may even talk to whoever put the headstone in the game, cementing his little slice of the world. Across time and wires, he was sure that he wasn’t the only one who still remembered.