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It takes Avery an embarrassing number of days after the new year begins to question how both he and Derek had the same computer at the same time. The paradox hadn’t registered until now that the very same laptop he found in a storage unit – that he spent all this time believing used to belong to Derek – logically has to be the same laptop that Derek was playing Minecraft on when they met last week. But he died
he died he died he died he died he died he died he died
in front of that laptop, and was immobilised for months prior. It’s probably still looking over his corpse, waiting for someone to smell the rot and find his body.
So how is it on Avery’s desk right now?
The only thing that gets him moving these days is the thought of learning more about Derek. When he’s not searching his name online for an obituary – or even just a photograph – he’s lying in the dark of his apartment, staring up at the ceiling and trying to picture a face he never knew. The laptop didn’t even register as a potential avenue of information until now. Avery can only imagine how quickly Derek would have thought to investigate it.
His legs are heavy as he heaves himself up to his desk. The bedroom is dark, and outside the door the rest of the apartment is probably gross and dusty as hell. It was already pretty bad on New Year’s Eve, when Avery had rationalised that it would be much easier to clean and get a fresh start on the first of the month, after he had found Derek safe and sound. Back then, Derek had been alive. Barely, but still…
Avery’s hands touch the keyboard lightly, nervously. His mind provides him with the image of touching the hands of a faceless corpse. Derek is as real to him as this laptop – this impossible laptop that cannot exist, and yet does exist. Avery can feel it beneath his fingertips. It means something to him that it doesn’t mean to anyone else in the world.
Beyond the Minecraft launcher, there’s nothing else on the desktop except a file that Avery placed himself last year. He doesn’t really need a laptop – not when he can do everything on his phone – so it only contains a few screenshots and Microsoft Paint doodles. He opens up the Explorer and scrolls through the list of other files:
Music
Videos
Documents
Pictures
A nauseating mixture of excitement and anxiety floods his system. Is he ready for this? This is the most comprehensive resource of information regarding Derek that he will ever have access to. Avery might never have gotten to know him, but with this, he can know about him – the music he listened to, the photographs he took, the things he wrote that nobody would have read otherwise. Finally, the bone-deep emptiness inside Avery’s heart will have a name; the hole in his life will have a shape. He will have something to grieve.
He clicks the first folder. Music. Derek seems – seemed – like the kind of person to prefer music without lyrics, maybe something with a strong rhythm that would help him focus? Or maybe jazz? Punchy synthesisers? Avery wants to experience every song in the best quality he can.
Taking a deep breath, he fits his headphones over his head and opens the folder.
Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely fuck all – not even a single mp3.
Okay, so maybe Derek didn’t listen to music. Maybe he had a subscription to Youtube Music or Spotify or something like that, even though he didn’t seem the type to be comfortable not owning what he paid for. Then again, how can Avery confidently say such a thing without ever really knowing him?
God, is he any better than the people commenting underneath the video that Wifies made? Just because he knows Derek’s name now, doesn’t mean he automatically understands him on a deeper level. Besides two conversations that were cut short each time, he has no more information than the people online do. He’s chasing a ghost that is constantly being remade like a game of telephone. For this reason, he has started fearing the internet. In the absence of an obituary, all information about Derek on there comes from people who never knew him – or, at least, never met him. They theorise about what he was like as if he’s something to be built up from scratch, instead of a person who died
died died died died died died died
without ever getting to grow any more. It’s not just the man he was that Avery will never get to know; it’s the man that he will never become.
Now, Avery feels sick with guilt. Derek sacrificed his life for the world, not just for him. It’s a disservice to his memory to imagine that, in an ideal life, they could have gotten to spend longer together, because Avery doesn’t even know if Derek would have liked him had they met in other circumstances. He certainly isn’t smart enough to be his intellectual match, and definitely not interesting enough to sustain Derek’s curiosity. The burning loneliness in Avery’s heart predates their first meeting, and serves only to reduce Derek to a role to play. He imagines that, if Derek had lived, he could have loved him – but this is exactly that: an imagination. There’s no basis in reality to suggest that Derek would have even wanted to know Avery beyond the situation they were forced into together.
No – the situation that Avery was forced into.
Derek went there willingly, like someone who loves him would.
Avery wishes for it so badly that it takes his breath away. It’s the perfect fantasy – the idea that somebody could know every little thing about him, all his flaws and fears and mistakes, and love him anyway. Projecting this onto Derek is cruel, much crueller even than those online who see him as nothing more than a character on a screen. Is it not enough that Derek died for him? Does Avery have to bastardise his memory, too? And for what? For the feeling that someone once could have loved him above all else?
Would it even change anything if Derek had?
The next folder – videos – is similarly empty. As is documents and – worst of all – pictures. There’s nothing here that gives Avery any information about who Derek was, not even a grocery list or blurry picture of his face.
All that remains is the Minecraft launcher. Avery hasn’t loaded into the world since New Year’s Eve, and doesn’t know what he’ll find. The last time he was in there, he made it all the way to the platform, failing at the last moment to save Derek’s life. He remembers being pushed off the cliff – his emotions secondary to the necessity of sacrifice – and then waking up back in front of the initial gates. He had been running – god, he’d been running faster than the game should ever had allowed – when he was abruptly disconnected. And he had known, then. He knew in that exact moment that Derek was gone.
One minute after midnight. That’s when Derek died.
As tempting as it is to rewatch the footage he recorded, Avery doesn’t know if he’s brave enough to relive meeting Derek in the library. He wants to reread his messages until they’re seared into his mind but he can’t bear to remember the feeling of relief, not when he knows how pointless it all was. Derek died
died died died died died died died
anyway. Avery spent fifteen hours trying to find him, and found him, and he died anyway.
He stares at the screen for a good ten seconds before processing what he’s seeing.
He’s in the very first mine, facing the chest in which Derek had left the book containing his initial warning. Whatever you do at the crossroads, don’t turn left. Only now, there is no left to turn. The chest contains a single honey block and the doors on the walls are gone. Avery mines in every direction but finds only the continuation of cobblestone.
Of course. The King in Yellow died. Avery still doesn’t think that Derek’s sacrifice was worth it, but at least this confirms that it wasn’t for nothing. The world underneath this one doesn’t exist anymore – or if it does, Avery cannot access it. He wonders if, when he dies, he’ll find himself back at those golden gates; if Derek will be the one to greet him and walk him into the infinity that borders his brief, meaningless existence. Is he really so selfish that he still won’t let him rest? Avery cannot keep projecting his loneliness onto a man who already gave him everything he had.
God, will anything ever be enough?
Avery hates himself for this. He’s got friends – not friends who cared that he wasn’t around on New Year’s Eve, but friends nonetheless. He’s got loving parents and siblings who send birthday cards. He’s on good terms with his coworkers and the kids he teaches to skateboard think he’s cool. There’s a lot of appreciation in this world directed his way, but it all… sort of… falls flat.
Avery wants so badly to be loved. Derek isn’t alive to stop him from pretending that he could be.
He takes the honey block from the chest and climbs up to the surface, walking aimlessly towards the direction of the small house that he built before he stumbled onto the mine. He takes the bed and any valuable supplies from inside, and says goodbye to the world he knows.
There’s so much else out there. This was Derek’s world before it was ever his.
No more than two hundred blocks out, he comes upon what must have been Derek’s house. At first, Avery’s instinct is to laugh – the roof is pretty embarrassing – but it sticks in his throat as he pictures Derek pillaring up to place block after block, crafting a safe place to sleep, back when Minecraft was still just a game and he had a real life to get back to. How long did he play on this world for before discovering the King? Long enough to expand his house by adding a second room and an automated sugar cane farm at the back, clearly.
Avery clicks on the lever and the iron door opens. Inside, Derek has chosen to place lanterns and chains on the ceiling instead of torches on the walls. If he had enough iron to craft all this, then perhaps the strip mine that led him to his death wasn’t his first attempt at gathering resources down below. His chests offer a similar perspective – there’s one entirely full of redstone and building materials, and another with a much larger variety of food than would be typical for someone still playing the first few days of the game. Avery wanders to the back of the house, where a furnace no longer burns.
Methodically, he takes some coal out of one of Derek’s chests and places it inside, setting the fire alight. What was it that Derek had said about how he’d survived for so long in front of his laptop – that he was living solely off smoothies in his mini fridge? Staring at the furnace, Avery imagines how different things could have been if only he’d known Derek’s address – if he could have made a difference in the real world by showing up to cook for him and wash his hair and hold his hand and convince him of a way out.
But no. The only thing present when Derek died was his laptop. This laptop – where the files are all empty and yet the Minecraft world is rendered in perfect accuracy.
Is this another trap laid by the King in Yellow? Maybe it was never necessary to replicate the laptop entirely – just enough to hook Avery and lure him into the world where he was supposed to die instead of Derek. It’s only now, once it’s all over, that Avery really needs access to Derek’s files outside of Minecraft. And why would anyone – let alone the King in Yellow – give him that?
Hasn’t Avery taken enough already?
So this really is it. All that remains of Derek is this Minecraft world – the King has scrubbed everything else from existence. All Avery will ever have is a furnace to keep alight, a honey block in his inventory, and the real world outside.
Beyond the house, the signs of Derek’s life lead in one general direction. There are a few chests placed along the same line, each containing various redstone materials and heading up to the top of a hill where he must have been experimenting with building… well, everything. Avery weaves through the exhibition of Derek’s curiosity, past an automatic chicken cooking machine and a series of doors that open when he hits hidden mechanisms, slowly taking in the information that he can glean from what he is seeing.
For every successful machine, there is one failure. If it were Avery, there would be hundreds of half-abandoned contraptions, but Derek seems to have focused on identifying and fixing his mistakes with a persistent kind of precision and confidence. Avery pictures him, sitting at his desk with a notebook, drawing out circuits and replicating them in redstone until the idea in his mind finally came to life on the screen.
God, Derek’s mind. Even before the King in Yellow, it was vast and beautiful. And now it is gone – not just gone as in dead, but gone as in poisoned, overtaken, dismantled. The only person left alive who could put Derek back together is Avery and even if he were to have access to all the pieces, he would be nowhere near capable enough to do him justice.
So how, then, can he mourn him with respect?
Avery clicks every lever and stands on every pressure plate he can find. He turns on every machine that he can figure out how to, lighting up a tiny section of this endless ghost town to prove that Derek made his mark here. His hands are shaking, his fingers clutching the mouse like it is emitting an electric current that keeps him from lifting them up.
That’s all it takes – that little moment. Avery holds down the button for too long and breaks a single block with his fist, disconnecting one of the circuits in front of him. He’s ruined it; ruined Derek’s legacy again.
Fuck. None of this means anything at all, does it? It’s all just a stupid game – and maybe it briefly meant something, but all purpose died alongside Derek. Avery doesn’t understand why he’s the one left behind. There’s no reason to it, absolutely no sense in the fact that the world decided to take someone who could do so much and save someone who will do so little. In gaining infinite knowledge, did Derek see that, too? How could he have been confronted with the sheer pointlessness of Avery’s entire life and choose to save him anyway?
Wanting desperately to run far enough away that he escapes his body, Avery jumps back down the hill. He sprints until Derek’s house is no longer visible in the distance behind him and all that stretches out in front of him are the hills and valleys of an unexplored land. If Derek had just gone this way instead, would he have ever found the King in Yellow’s domain? Would he still be alive in an ever-expanding world, a happier world where Avery did not exist to him?
Reaching the shoreline of a sea, Avery crafts a boat. The sun is beginning to set and he can hear the sound of mobs awakening from the darkness. Beyond him, the water stretches out all the way into the distance – it’s the biggest ocean he’s ever seen and offers the opportunity for mindless travel. Avery gets into the boat because it feels like he’s doing something, even if he doesn’t know where he’s going other than forwards.
As he sails, his life lays itself out in front of him, pathways written in waves that navigate his grief better than the stars above ever could. For so many years, he’s been waiting. Just… waiting for anything, jumping between quick hits of dopamine to avoid the knowledge that this long life is the shortest thing he will ever do, and he is drifting through it. He’s always said that he would take danger over boredom, but now…
He faced danger and lived through it. And he’s bored again, only this time, he can’t pretend that being bored is any different to being lonely. It’s all just the same thing repackaged – an avoidance of the inevitable. His life is a boulder rolling up a hill; he’s not the man pushing it, but the force of the push and the flattened ground below. Things always just happen to him, and he lets them, and now Derek is dead
Derek is dead Derek is dead Derek is dead Derek is dead Derek is dead Derek is dead Derek is dead
because Avery couldn’t stop it, just like he can’t stop anything that this world throws at him. Incapable and lonely – that’s what he is. This existence that Derek gifted him means nothing, and that hurts almost as much as the plain fact of his death. There is truly, genuinely, wholly, completely, categorically no point to someone like Avery existing. His existence heals none, hurts some, and matters so little to the majority. That numb, faceless majority who Derek died for – his existence for theirs, and for Avery’s, and –
He pushes away from the desk with such force that he ends up on the other side of the room. His hands fly to his face but instead of wiping the tears that spring to his eyes, he claws his fingernails down his cheeks, fresh skin hot with pain and pressure under his violent touch. He’s so pathetic that he probably doesn’t even actually miss Derek. How can he miss someone he never knew? No – it’s more selfish than that. Avery misses what Derek could have been, as though Derek’s important life is just the building blocks for Avery to find something worth living for. Derek could have hated him, for all Avery knows. He might have hated him.
He would have hated him.
He should have hated him.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have thought about him at all.
Shuffling his way back to the desk, Avery tries to disentangle what he wants Derek to be from what he knows about him. His feelings shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat right now – not when something as significant as Derek’s legacy and memory is on the line. Avery concentrates instead on the boundless and empty ocean, sailing out into a world that Derek never got to explore as the moon sinks behind him and the sky lightens ever so slightly.
And then it makes sense. What he has to do.
At last, the ocean eases into a beach just as the sun begins to rise. He’s got enough time before the light is at its most beautiful to craft some signs and make his way up to the highest visible point, upon which he can see the sheer amount of unchartered land. And yet, this is nothing compared to the size of the world in here – or the world out there. Avery might not care about it, but Derek did.
He knows that as surely as he knows Derek’s name.
So he takes out the honey block, placing it in view of the soft morning light. Next to it, he places a sign, hesitating just for a second before writing –
You are still real.
Who you were matters.