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Bart is playing a video game. He is not having fun.
The omnipresent need to move is buzzing uncomfortably under his skin. His knees are bouncing as fast as he can move them. He doesn’t want to keep playing the game.
He finishes the level. He presses continue.
He keeps playing the game.
The air conditioning is blasting against the Alabama heat but it’s still too hot. Max must have turned down the AC, he thinks. He’s sweating like a pig.
There’s a dull panic rising in his chest, a fear from a life he was told to forget about. Another game he couldn’t stop playing. The endless pursuit of more and more stimulation until he’s gorged on shimmering morsels of nothing at all and completely empty. No substance. No escape.
He wants nothing more than to keep going, and he would do anything to stop.
And yet… there’s a kind of nostalgia to it. It’s returning home. Bart can almost imagine Dox offering encouragement over his shoulder. (Dox isn’t real.) The sickly feeling of empty distraction was once everything he knew. He’s yet to find a 20th century game that fills his brain up like the VR world did, but it’s a taste, and if he just keeps going...
Level complete. Continue.
The buzzing under his skin has intensified into a blaring alarm screaming at him to get up and run and run and run and DO SOMETHING. The bouncing of his knees becomes jerky and uncoordinated, jostling his hands, and he drops his controller. GAME OVER scrolls across the screen. He picks up the controller (no no no no) and (NO) presses restart.
Maybe his time in VR permanently damaged his brain. Maybe the allure of mindlessness will never let him go. Maybe he’ll keep playing this game forever and ever until he dies of starvation and they find his desiccated skeleton still holding a controller and they have a funeral and hardly anybody comes because that’s a super embarrassing way to die, and Wally stands up in front of everybody and says “He died as he lived, being so lazy he wouldn’t even get up to eat,” and everybody laughs, and the headlines read STUPID LITTLE BOY DIES PLAYING VIDEO GAMES with his picture underneath, and all the mothers around the world ban their children from playing video games and everybody is super bored all the time and-
Bart breathes in. When did he stop breathing? It’s these early levels. They’re too slow. He hates starting over.
A sudden rapping on his bedroom door, each as piercing as a gunshot, startles him into pausing his game.
“Bart? You alive in there?”
Bart holds his breath, stilling his legs for the first time in hours.
Max lets out a longsuffering sigh.
“If you ever decide to WAKE UP in there,” he starts, raising his voice, “I’m going out with my running club, and I’ll be back in an hour. We’re having dinner when I get back. Or breakfast, I suppose.”
Max is rolling his eyes. Bart can just about hear it. Max walks away from the door muttering something under his breath; “that child” or “what to do about him” or “you wouldn’t believe he’s descended from the great Barry Allen, really, pulling stunts like that, what a waste of potential” or something like that. It’s always something like that.
The front door of the house opens, shuts. Bart lets out the breath he’s been holding. He picks up his controller. He unpauses the game.
Bart realizes horribly that he’s starving. He’s also not hungry at all. His stomach is growling and his eyes don’t wanna focus and his body is screaming at him to move. It’s four in the afternoon and he’s been sitting in the same spot for nearly eight hours, doing nothing, thinking nothing, helping no one. What would Max say if he knew Bart wasn’t sleeping in? That he was letting himself get trapped in video games on purpose this time, that he was barely real again? His mind churns up images of Max taking him to a mechanic and having them pry him apart with crowbars and take a wrench to the bolts holding in his brain. “Figure out what’s wrong with him,” Max would say, and the mechanics would start pulling out wires and soldering things together inside of him until he turned into a mindless robo-boy who did his homework on time and showed up at the table at seven thirty sharp every morning in a suit and tie and never needed to be reminded to go normal speed.
That or Max would just take away his video games. A pang of fear shot through Bart at the thought. He couldn’t deal with that.
It’s too cold now. Wasn’t it roasting a moment ago? Max must’ve turned up the AC before he left.
How long ago did Max leave, anyways? Was it five minutes or is the hour almost gone? He should get up. He has a time limit now. He needs to get up before Max gets home. He’s gotta get up.
Bart’s back to the level he was on before he had to start over. His fingers are moving faster, and the game is taking up more of his brain. This is good. He’s thinking too much. He doesn’t wanna think.
The panic, slowly evolving from anxiety into fully fledged terror, starts expanding out from his stomach and creeping into his throat. The need to move is unsatisfied with the repetitive motions of the game and begins to fill up his arms with the buzzing. One line from one song has been playing in his head for hours and he thinks he might never be able to hear it again without screaming. His knees keep bouncing, over and over and over again. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.
His arm jerks up and presses the wrong button. GAME OVER. The reverie is broken. Clarity hits like shattered glass and he realizes the panic and shame and emptiness were far away and quiet before because now they’re slamming into him full force all at once and he screams as loud as he can until his throat (so dry, he hasn’t been drinking water, he’s so stupid-) gives out and he starts to feel his eyes well up. He jabs at the off button with sudden rage. It’s just a stupid game, he couldn’t just stop playing some stupid game-
In a moment, he’s out of the house and sprinting at top speed. He runs and imagines he can run right into the setting sun and merge with it, lightning burning into a pure golden beam.
He gets back home just in time for dinner. Max looks up from the salad he’s tossing with mild surprise.
“Thought you were still up in your room, Bart. Where have you been?”
“I got up way early this morning and ran to China so I wouldn’t have to hear you talk about your old people bridge group meeting,” Bart lies, feeling worse with every word. He pulls silverware out of the drawer and starts to set the table.
“Bart… we’ve talked about this.”
“I hafta tell you where I’m going if I’m gonna be gone for longer than an hour.” Bart recites, rolling his eyes.
Max sighs. He does that a lot around Bart. Max gives up on trying to impress upon him the importance of his one million rules for the moment and puts dinner on the table. Bart digs in ravenously.
“What were you doing all day in China, then?”
“I dunno,” Bart says, mouth half full.
Max raises his eyebrows, gives a half smile. “Good to know you’re being productive, at least.”