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Your internet has always been spotty. It’s never been enough to bother you—at least not enough to change providers. The price of switching outweighs the annoyance of a few lost videogame matches or cut-off calls.
It flickered on and off earlier in the day, flaking between solid connection and an unbreachable distance. The fifth time YouTube paused mid-video you nearly flung the phone across the room. You contained the urge—good job, you.
The internet had been settled for hours before you slipped on the VR headset earlier tonight. After two days home sick from work you figure you should try to make progress. You wouldn’t call it a reward—it’s too damn difficult for that—but you haven’t been back in weeks and the thought of waiting more feels like pulling teeth. So you booted up Half-Life.
For the past couple of hours you’ve been trekking through the sewers (thank god you don’t actually live in the game) with your ragtag, junk drawer team. It’s been agonizingly slow-going and one of the most overstimulating experiences of your life. Surviving feels like a miracle (and may actually be one with Father Grigori on your side).
You’re finally in an open area—one overrun with zombies and headcrabs, but you’ll take that over not being confined in small rooms and corridors anymore. Among broken wooden fences and chainlink gates, an NPC rebel who’s helped you gun down enemies shouts “Headcrabs!” and you turn just in time to see one of the little creatures fling itself at you, mouth gaping and legs outstretched.
“Oh, there’s–” you start.
The disconnect pings through your headpiece like a doorbell heralding a familiar frustration. And you are shot through with electricity.
Your limbs jolt and lock up—your voice catches and dies mid-shout. Your whole body seizes. Mental alarm bells flare and they feel like pain.
Usually when you lose internet the game freezes and a notification pops up: Connection to servers lost.
But the headcrab keeps coming. The man shoots a spray of bullets, and it falls to the ground; in its place, a zombie lumbers closer. No notification arrives.
Which can’t be right—you heard that sound, louder than anything around you, it practically buried into your ear—and when the noise pings there is no connection, no more game. You check the headset to see if you’re mistaken.
Or, you try to. Your arms remain by your side; not even a finger twitches. It’s not like when a chore needs to be done and the couch is too comfortable to resist. You just—can’t move.
The attempt to turn your head fails. So does lifting a leg. Or opening your mouth to ask for help. The muscles don’t strain at all; they’re perfectly frozen in stubborn stasis.
You try again. And again. You will them to move—move, useless fucking limbs, do something, you have a job and it’s not being fucking done and if you don’t get going something bad—something real bad will tear you apart. But they refuse and you want to scream until your throat bleeds raw.
Then the realization comes: you can’t breathe. Your chest doesn’t rise or fall, your lungs don’t pump—you can’t even gasp for air like a fish out of water or a kid holding on with head tilted back and fifteen feet to shore.
Fuck. Your head swims. Are your lungs collapsing? They feel constricted. You want to breathe—you want it, you want it, you need it, Jesus fuck if you don’t get it you’ll collapse—or maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll stand here, a dying body internally flailing and become a goddamn fixture because your legs won’t fucking move–
Gunfire still rattles and there are shouts and crunching footsteps but they’re faded against the ringing in your ears. A tightness in your chest throbs. It spreads to your limbs and they burn.
How are you still standing? How much longer can you hold on?
Stain and Xar have moved into your line of sight; Xar squints at you with distaste and Stain tilts his head. Good. Maybe they’ll see what’s happening and push you over or slap you or shoot you and your body will wake up and realize it needs to move. Air will rush into your lungs and you’ll laugh.
Stain leans in, peering at your face, and you almost cry at how close he is to figuring it out before the world becomes a crashing wave of blue and green.
It comes all at once. No more Stain. No more Xar. Just a wall of color that slams with the wrath of an ocean.
It crackles. It rushes past you, a hurricane gale taken to full force, but it’s not air. It has edges that scrape at your skin. Worse than sandpaper: a billion papercuts that’ll wear you down.
A shock of realization: are these pixels? The game itself crashing around you? Whatever it is it’s ragged and rubs you raw and it’s a miracle you haven’t been crushed and ragdolled into a mess. This is it: this is where you’ll die.
And it rushes inside your mouth, down the throat, and you’re choking, your muscles can move again and they constrict, try to expel, but they choke—you can’t cough them up, they fill lungs, dig in, they’re worse than water, they dig, they pierce—
You need to get above water, wherever that is, or else you’ll tumble under its weight and get dragged away and there’ll be nothing but a pixel sea forever—extending—infinite—and you’ll sink, one with the sand on the bottom, gone and forgotten—
And then it’s over.
Like a light switch flipped on the wave disappears and you’re back in the polluted-water-infested world, exactly where you were. Among the fallen corpses of headcrabs and zombies, ruined fences and the stench of sewer. Everything is still, but not completely frozen. A bird flutters in the distance. Distant gunshots. The stillness breathes, and—breath.
You suck in air—clean and smooth and delicious—and it’s medicine for your lungs. They’re no longer filled with whatever the fuck was there before. They accept the oxygen and you gulp it down greedily. Your feet are on solid ground. There is nothing around you but air.
There’s no time to process any of what happened before Christopher is pointing a gun at you and singing “Living in America.”
An attempt at moving an arm reveals that you’re unstuck. It feels almost too easy to bend an elbow and clench and release a fist. You press a hand to your forehead and squeeze your eyes shut. They’ve been burning from not being able to blink.
“You’ve really chilled out, Gorgon,” Xar comments. “You didn’t freak out for like, three to five minutes.”
It was only that long? It felt like an eternity.
Your relaxation can only last a moment. If “chilling out” is how they view it, then it wouldn’t make sense to demand more time to rest.
A hack explanation tumbles out: “I spun out of my shit– mental reset, and I just… I don’t know.”
You could tell them what happened. But how would you go about that? I was completely paralyzed to the point of not being able to breathe and then felt like I was simultaneously drowning and being torn apart? Something like that sounds completely supernatural.
It probably is. But don’t think about that. You won’t lose yourself down another rabbit hole leaving "obsidian seal” or “Valve development secrets” flooding your search history.
Whatever happened, it’s over now. Sensation of scraped skin and crushed lungs linger on your body, but the Food Suit is unchipped. A hand brought to your cheek brushes against skin that’s smooth as it always is.
Of course: this could’ve never happened to Gordon.
You have to press forward. After all, there’s a show to put on.
You’ve been to the beach once, as a kid. Your parents brought an umbrella, sensibly colored blue and black, and stabbed it in the sand; its canopy dominated the sky and shielded the sun. In chairs they lounged and cracked open beers as you waded into the Gulf.
The world had opened itself up in that moment, horizon laid bare. You remember a pastel-blue sky and wisps of clouds, and the beach, extending to infinity on both sides, became your world: simple and contained and endless all at once.
Waves rolled in soft and slow. Occasionally they rose to greater heights and tumbled down with a crash. Salty spray flew up, carried in the taste and smell of the wind.
You waded in. Shivers crept up your body as the water lapped higher up your legs, and then torso, reaching the chest. Along with the shock of new sensation was a thrill: swimming pools with their clear chlorinated bodies could never compare to the limitless possibilities of the Gulf of Mexico.
After ten minutes of jumping the waves, letting them carry you on their crests or ducking underneath when they got too high and indulging in complete coolness, you turned on your back on them to trudge to your parents and grab a packed peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
You didn’t see it coming; the warning signs of water rushing back and the soft roar of a wave were lost on you. One moment you were standing and the next, dragged under, tumbling, scraping against sand. An involuntary gasp for air and only liquid salt pushed its way in.
You, the water, and the sea floor became a blended blur. There was no end of one and beginning of another. There was only the sensation of drowning. Those moments under the sea with eyes squeezed shut and mouth crowded with salt, you had the thought: is this what it’s like to be one with the world?
And you couldn’t do it. You wouldn’t let that sea tear you apart and dissolve the boundaries of yourself.
With the flailing movements of a child you shoved your arms and legs around until they propelled you up, a bobbing head on the surface, and a flung arm in the sky carried the hope that someone would see.
Moments later—or maybe full minutes—you were grasped under the armpits. With a lifeguard’s tube pushed under your back, you were hauled to shore and lay on the sand, coughing up water until there was nothing left and you were too sore to continue. Your parents rubbed circles into your back and the lifeguard kneeled nearby with medical supplies at the ready.
You never returned. You’re not scared of water—fuck, no. You won’t let something as simple and essential as that hold you in an iron fist of fear. But the stretch of sand and waves holds no appeal. Maybe you were always meant to be a pool sort of guy, floating in clearly marked depths and rules laid out: no running, no diving before this point.
Solid ground and a handle on the environment is preferable, you’ve decided, and that is perfectly easy to find in your own house. One day out there, in a little microcosm of infinity contained by sky and sea, was enough.
The internet disconnects again.
This time it’s in a tunnel, running along the pungent stream of sewer waste. You’ve been trailing behind the others when mid-stride the lightning strike returns and you can no longer move a muscle.
You wish closing your eyes is an option—an endless black void is easier to slip away into, to forget all of this—but as soon as the thought arises you’re glad the disconnect didn’t happen mid-blink. At least like this you can see you’re still here, with friends (as antagonistic as they are), in your own body, and not in some foreign, unknowable space with no escape.
Still, you want to scream. Because why the fuck does the world have to be like this.
As the grasp of a tightening chest worsens, squeezing your heart and constricting your throat, the team continues on. They round a bend and disappear.
And they don’t come back. The moments tick on and panic starts to kick up a flurry in your mind: do they really not know you’re gone? Do they just not care? Maybe they decided they don’t need you at all and are better off taking this journey alone. Maybe they’ll leave you here forever.
A game without a player: this must be it. The reason you freeze while everyone else continues as if nothing happened. It doesn’t need you—they don’t need you—and you are merely looking in on a world that keeps turning and lives that keep living. If your legs never moved again and your lungs folded in, what would change? They have places to be. They march on.
You attempt the mental equivalent of taking deep breaths. You’ve gotten out of worse—you repeat this refrain as your buoy. There’s been worse. Even alone, you’ve survived everything thrown at you so far and it’s just a game and at the end of the day you can go home and crawl under a blanket with ice-cream and your dog and watch Doctor Who until sleep drags you under. You will go home. This is a fact. It has to be.
With black creeping at the edges of your vision, Xar’s ridiculously loud stomps grow in volume until the alien rounds the corner, coming back into view, a pointed glare directed at you. Behind him are the others: Stain, Christopher, Grigori. You can barely muster the realization that they’re back.
Warbled voices reach you: “He’s chilling out again. At this rate he’ll never arrive at wherever he’s going.”
“Give Brother Gordon time. It has been a long and weary journey and I, too, would like to ‘chill out.’”
I’m not– chill– you want to say. Or do you say it? The words are clear in your mind as if they’ve been put out into the world. But your vocal chords haven’t vibrated, your lips haven’t moved, no air has pushed them out—there’s nothing for you to breathe, let alone for those words to steal.
“He’s so quiet,” Stain says. “Usually he’s shouting all the time.”
“I would say this is much preferred, but he’s so chill it’s kind of freaky, it must be admitted.”
“Are you okay?” A hand waves in front of your face, a blur you can’t track. “Why aren’t you doing anything?”
“Probably needs some of that water. Told you we needed to find some.”
“Gorgon, you have too many problems for us to fix. I bet you want a great scientist like me to come along and make you un-chill. But I cannot make that happen unless you use your words. ‘Xar is the greatest scientist there is and he deserves to be on the news.’ Then I’ll fix your problems for no price at all.”
Fuck, no. Is Xar even more than just talk? Who knows what he might do to you. The urge to laugh tickles your throat and the failed reflex jolts panic through your mind. No laughing—not a whisper of it—your tight chest and constricted throat can’t allow it. You’ll slip closer to the end if you allow it.
When the blue-green wave returns, you finally let yourself drift in the raging shards of color and nothingness.
They don’t press much about the stillness. That should probably be a relief: no explaining needed.
The internet refuses to stay stable. Mostly it’s small stutters here and there, several close calls that almost leave you face-planting on the floor. They only last a few seconds each, but every time: jolt of electricity, full-body lock-up. Every moment free from paralysis is one you spend consciously taking every breath and savoring the ability to blink and roll your shoulders or wiggle your fingers.
There’s one solution: keep moving. Each step is a step closer to Darnold’s lab, which is a step closer to Nova Prospekt, which is a step closer to finding Dr. Coomer. You can tell him all of this.
The realization spreads through you as a giddy relief: Dr. Coomer. Good fucking God, you can actually talk to someone about this. You’ll have to get everyone else to go away somehow but after that you can sit down and you can talk. Finally you can talk.
Maybe he doesn’t need to learn about the gnome or the forest or Peppa Pig, and he probably won’t know how to fix the current problem, but he’ll understand what you mean when you say the internet keeps disconnecting and for some fucking reason I think I’m disconnecting with it. Jesus Christ he’ll understand.
“Come on, guys, we’re almost there,” you tell the team. You push to the front of the pack on shaky legs, arms trembling with anticipation, and try to determine where you’re going, because if you don’t you think you’ll start to cry then and there.
More headcrabs: a rocket shot from the sky crashes in front of you and they come crawling out. Guns haven’t been your friend this entire night, so you run in with fists swinging.
You take a desperate leap to grab at one of them and hopefully smash it against a stone wall—and mid-air comes that familiar ping and electric shock.
You slam against the ground, stomach taking the full brunt of it. With a whoosh the air flies out of you; pain radiates up arms and through your torso, combining with the tingling from the shock. Oxygen doesn’t flow back in. You wait, mouth helplessly hung open, and it passes the typical few frozen moments you’ve gotten used to.
Fuck, fuck—is it happening again? Maybe it’s not the internet at all. Maybe there’s something more, that’s followed you outside of those blue-green moments, and it’s latched onto you like a leech. A parasite, except instead of taking blood it chases breath, empty lungs, and fills them with something that’ll drain you dry.
Gunshots ring in your ears. Against your cheek is the hard ground—cold ground—rock imprints on your skin. The headcrabs fall, blood spurting from wounds and legs waving like turtles flipped over in their dying throes.
You can’t fucking do this. Not again. Not the torrent that tears invisible rips in your skin and tumbles your mind and fills every inhale you manage you take with shards of glass—there’s nowhere to swim to, to poke your head above water, there is no above, just blue, green, and pixels and waves that crash and crash and pound you into nothingness.
Your chest stutters and air tears ragged down your throat.
What would want to go after you like this? Why? What have you done to deserve it? But as soon as you think it you know the answer.
Maybe it really is some sort of divine punishment for the messed-up shit you’ve done. In this world, God is real, right? Would he accept a confession? Father Grigori’s nearby and has a straight connection to the man himself but he wouldn’t understand. He can’t know—none of them can. You won’t be the one to break them.
Stain crouches beside you and lowers his head until it’s nearly parallel with yours. “That’s a new way of breathing,” he comments.
And you’re—you’re breathing. He’s right. But it doesn’t feel right. Each inhale is a labor, air stuttering into lungs that can’t get enough. You need more. You can’t get more. You flounder like a fish out of water.
You need to move—fuck, you’re still on the ground, possibly stuck again, but a curl of the fingers proves they can grip the earth just fine. Somehow it’s not enough.
Any moment could mean locking up again—drowning again—you’re already drained, mind spinning, you need to move, lungs already can’t get enough and if they’re constricted entirely you might just die.
Is this what it’s like to die? It must be.
“I don’t think you’re doing it right,” Stain says.
You need to get up. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” you force out, the words more like a wheeze than speech. The world tilts in an airy spin as you stagger to your feet.
If the internet is back, if you’re free to move, then why does your chest feels crushed, heart thudding against ribcage? Any moment the pressure will expand and explode. It’s worse than before. Maybe the game has decided enough. Maybe the shards in your lungs were it worming inside you and now it’ll break free and use your corpse as its puppet.
Walking forward is impossible. You’re stuck even as you bend over with hands on knees and body heaving in pants.
A hand on the nearby wall to stabilize yourself, but tremors run up your arm. Your palm refuses to stay flat through the shaking.
You try to turn the collapse into a slide down the wall, but it doesn’t matter. Your knees crumple and elbows hit the ground, shooting pain and tingling up your arms. A roll over, a scramble to sitting position, and your back is supported.
Your head thunks against the wall. Probably the wall of your room. Hopefully. With how real everything is, nothing is certain anymore.
Your hands dart to your face. It’s there—lightless on your head, unnoticeable when navigating the game, but you bump against the hard surface of the headset and your vision jostles. Thank god it’s there.
You need to move and rest at the same time. If you don’t progress the game might catch up, grab you with its claws and drag you under as you lean here, or maybe it lies in wait ahead, preparing for your approach. If only you fucking knew which.
Stain squats nearby and cocks his head like a dog seeing a new object and trying to place its purpose. Like Dollboy. Dollboy’s just in the other room. You’d forgotten that—he’s right there, your dog is right there, not in some distant dimension. “Adjusting your glasses?” Stain asks.
“Yeah. That’s– that’s what I’m doing. They got– knocked around– feel weird–” The words sound high and strangled to your ears, ends deflating to a wheeze. You should stop talking. Everything might seem okay if you stop talking.
You want your fucking dog. The realization is a wave slamming down in and of itself. A breath shudders past your lips and you resist the urge to clutch arms around your torso. Dollboy, the sweet little guy: snow-white fur, triangle ears, tail a curl of fluff. You’d bring him onto your lap and tangle your fingers in his fur and he’d nudge your chin with his snout.
Fuck. As if those thoughts do any good when your arms remain empty. Or maybe they aren’t? Everything floats.
You squeeze your eyes shut. With careful navigation you might be able to feel the way to the door. You will yourself to move but only a finger twitches.
“It’s all good now?” Stain asks. Has he moved away? Xar was nearby earlier. He’s probably talking to Xar. “You almost fell into monsters. Those can kill you.”
You keep the door to the streaming room shut when playing VR. Too bad. It would be so easy to call out Dollboy’s name if not, and he’d come waddling in. Or, no– you left him in his crate so he wouldn’t get into something he’s not supposed to.
“Oh, you’re trying to sleep. That’s a good idea, I’m tired.”
And you can’t call his name anyway. Dollboy. It’d be nonsense to the others, but that probably doesn’t matter. It should be nonsense to Gordon, too. Gordon doesn’t have any pets. Gordon’s never heard of Dollboy. Get that into your stupid fucking head.
“You’re so quiet. Does that mean something good or bad? Are you upset? I’m sorry if I did something earlier, I don’t want to hold you guys back.”
You could take it off right now. Lift your hands and knock the headset off in one clean motion. It’d land in scratchy stained-red carpet and the way to the door would illuminate itself; you’d twist the handle and crawl through and–
Dark hallway. No lights. Twisting, unending– no breakoff, no dog at the end– the hallway dissolves, pitch-black, timeless, a void that stretches and devours and you’re there now, Jesus fucking Christ you’re there now, and lungs fill with sandy pixels, skin scratched raw, puncturing, screeching, dragging you down, and down, there’s no point flailing but you have to try, you’ll be stuck if you don’t try, but there’s nowhere to go, no way to plead for help, nowhere but here, endless, forever–
“Hey, that’s not sleeping! You’re not supposed to sleep like that! Wake up! Wake up!”
Hands jostle your shoulders; your neck wobbles back and forth, head thudding uselessly on the wall. Your eyes snap open. For a moment your heart pounds up your throat, but– there’s light. It’s so bright. You’re still by the river, in the sewers, its polluted sludge rolling by.
And Stain. He’s six inches from your face, practically in your lap. When did he get there?
“What are– what are you doing?” you get out. The words are still wheezy, but as you take in the surroundings, they flow easier. Your chest rises and falls, and your fingers twitch. You can look around. You’re not stuck.
You’re not… there. Of course. You force the deepest inhale you can manage. It was probably just the internet after all, not some active malicious ploy. You repeat the refrain just the internet until your heart stops hammering so hard you can feel it.
“You seemed like you were dying,” Stain says simply. He doesn’t move, eyes staring intensely into yours.
So it was pretty obvious, huh? One choppy laugh bursts from your mouth, and god it feels good to be able to do that. “Yeah, I guess– I don’t know, everything caught up to me, it’s been a stressful day. It’ll– it’ll get better, don’t worry about it, bud.”
Stain doesn’t seem convinced, eyebrows furrowed and mouth twisted in a frown. He leans back a little but doesn’t get off. “Uhhh… do you want a hug?” he asks.
“How do you even know what that is?” But as soon as the question comes out you know there’s no point in wondering. A nod and lifted arms indicate that yes, you want a hug, because if you can’t have Dollboy then the presence of someone else might suffice.
Stain feels real, almost disturbingly so: a heavy weight on your legs and against your chest. His shirt is raggedy and grimy, and you pinch a bit to rub it between your fingers. It feels like cloth.
Forehead resting on his shoulder, you close your eyes. Already a pounding heart and shaky breath start to smooth out. When was the last time you hugged someone like this? Hugged anyone at all? How long has it been since another… “human” might not be the right word. But with everything you’ve learned, everything that’s happened… it’s close enough.
Eyes squeeze tighter to stop tears from falling, wet and terrible on your cheeks.
You can’t stay this way for long. Soon the rest of the team will wonder what’s the hold-up, and you should keep moving, anyway. Darnold’s still waiting. Dr. Coomer’s still stuck in Nova Prospekt. You have even more questions than before, burning like a forest fire that’ll consume your mind if they linger too long. But in the moment, in the middle of everything… it feels nice.
You’ll look into changing internet providers tomorrow morning. Less of a paycheck for you, but you suppose that’s the price to pay.