Douglas Moore dropped in his gaming chair and stretched, popping his shoulders as he checked the computer.

Today was the Day. The early access to Planesrunners, the brand-new Action RPG whose trailers had been on all channels for the last few weeks would be open to the public, after a marketing deluge. At least not a boring clone of the many games in the genre, it promised innovative gameplay, because you ran a team of three, instead of a single character as usual, switching focus between the characters, based on need. You needed serious APM – actions per minute – to play well, according to closed beta testers’ leaks, but that was what made it potentially interesting, of course. Dozens of classes to make your roster from – and of course, more would be available from various DLCs or season passes later on, after launch, that much was a given.

Moore launched the game store interface and looked at the download bar of his pre-order with a grimace. The window said twenty-eight minutes of waiting. So much for fiber. People were probably hammering the servers. He brought up his usual streaming site, looking to see if people were already in-game, but the only things around were the usual crowd of FPS shooters or strategy gamers. Unless he was interested in hot-tub softcore. So, he refocused on the download, ready to be bored.

Light flickered briefly in the room. Which was odd, as it was still daytime, and the setting sun shone through the windows behind him. He did not have his lights turned on, so why should there be any flickering of the room’s light?

The wait time jumped up. Over forty minutes. As Moore watched, it started to climb higher. Something had obviously stalled, so he decided to check if there was something wrong with the Internet link.

His hand didn’t move the mouse.

Moore couldn’t have felt more betrayed. When you decided that your hand moved, it moved; there was no discussion about it. This sudden paralysis was a cheater’s move by the world.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Nothing he tried worked. He couldn’t bring his other hand to the keyboard, he couldn’t turn. He tried to shout, hoping that maybe a neighbor could hear him, but nothing happened. Moore was simply glued on his chair, stuck frozen, looking at a computer screen.

The progression bar kept climbing. Two hours… two days?

What the fuck was going on?

Then the screen dimmed into economy mode, and Moore was facing a black screen, unable to move or act.

His first idea was that he’d suffered from some sort of stroke or something, but there was no pain, nothing. In fact, there was a distinct lack of any sensation. His back against the chair was missing. The hand still grasping the mouse was… like it wasn’t there. A puppet’s hand propped on his desk, a convincing fake left placed there.

The light outside dimmed again, this time more slowly than the previous flicker. Moore found himself somehow in blackness, the only light visible the red LED of the computer monitor, and the neon lines on his gaming mouse under his frozen grasp.

Light came back slowly, Moore still paralyzed in the chair. Suddenly the screen LED became black, and at the same time, the ergonomic mouse under his hand darkened. Did… the computer just shut down? Moore strained to listen to the desktop fan, but there was nothing. Not even the hum of the refrigerator, or the sometimes dance music coming out from a nearby home, or a car passing. Not a noise from the city outside the housing community his shared building belonged to.

The room darkened again, leaving him in total blackness this time. Moore waited, and the light came back shortly thereafter, tracing moving rectangles across the wall next to the desk. And for the first time, Moore realized what that meant. That black and light cycling was night and day. It had felt like maybe a half-dozen minutes, but that was an entire day as if time was speeding up.

The hand was visibly sagging. Lines stretched across the skin, making creases that slowly expanded as he watched.

Fuck, am I decomposing? That’s not just a small stroke, right? I died. I’m just stuck in my own corpse. There’s no paradise or afterlife. You just stay there until it’s all gone.

I wonder how long it will take for the neighbors to warn the cops and they find me. I should smell pretty ripe by now.

The black and light cycle was still speeding up, but the light was dimmer in each cycle. Moore could only speculate that his eyes were also decomposing, and would soon be gone.

Once there was no longer anything to see with, with even the black-and-day cycle gone, he started to speculate on how long it would take him to become mad.