There is no Year

The son.

The son was in the TV room. The room was there still, in the house, its carpet’s color matching the chafe marks on his knees. The father and the mother were upstairs talking in voices the son could hear bleed through vents, ballooning. The son was sitting on the sofa in the center of a stain. A stain that had not been there when he sat down. A stain that matched another stain made somewhere else.

That morning the son had found his old video game system in the box beneath his bed—a thing he hadn’t used in years, a portal to old worlds defined by pixel, light, and color. For certain months of a certain year certain men had sat in certain rooms and typed on keyboards creating language that would then be stored and replicated on the plastic cartridges such as the one the son now had employed. This language fed into the son via his open undone eyes.

The son was pressing buttons.

In the game the son was represented by a figure. The son could cause the figure to move in one direction or another. The son could lead the figure to die. The son’s small fingers were fat with callus from where he’d spent countless hours in this system. The son could burn the pad of his left index finger with a lighter for several minutes and still not feel a thing. Certain sections of the game the son knew so well he could close his eyes and still complete them.

The son.

The son had groove marks in his armpits and around his shoulders and in his hair from where the ants had dug into him, where they’d searched for a way in, where they’d bit. The son would never know how much he’d bled. The son could have filled a shopping mall with platelets.

The son pressed the button that made the figure jump across the chasm. The son watched the sky above the figure become riddled with explosion, swathed with gray and green and yellow bits and blocks.

In the front face of the plastic game console there were three other outlets where three other players could plug in and control their own figure, but those three other outlets remained unfilled: three more eyes. The son watched the time allotted to complete some current objective ticking in increments toward zero. There was so much going on.

The son watched the figure fall through a section of block he’d believed stable, but in fact held nothing there. The figure fell down a lengthy corridor just wide enough to fit the figure’s breadth. The son had never seen this happen. The son had played and beat the game many, many times, had read magazines relaying the secrets the game contained, the unlocking patterns pressed by many thousands of other players playing the same version of this same game, the son had done it all, and yet he had not seen this. The sound the game made seemed to clip in and out.

The room the figure fell into was made of walls. There was nothing much about them. The walls went on and on. There was nothing for the son to make the man jump over. There were no balls of fire or enormous rabbits, no floating crystal that squirted liquid, and no moving splotch with eyes. The room was just a room. An endless room in one direction. And yet the son could not get more than a certain distance through the level. He kept dying, getting zapped or smeared or squashed. Most of the time he did not know what caused the zapping, smearing, squashing—it came from nowhere. He tried again and again and the game let him keep choosing to endlessly continue, whereas usually once you died a certain number of times you had to start over. Each time the son continued he reappeared inside the same unending room.

The son played the level for several hours, still not getting any further. The game’s music kept on with one corrupted tone that seemed to pan back and forth inside the son’s head. Sometimes there were little torches or bitmapped symbols that showed the figure was moving forward. The son had not eaten food and swallowed water at any point throughout the day—this was in the game’s design. The son made the figure do things to try to find a glitch inside the level. The son made the figure throw himself into the ceiling. The son made the figure duck down and up and down and up in patterns. He made the figure stand and squat and stand and squat and walk endlessly forward into a wall into which no matter how hard the son pressed the buttons he could not force the figure through.

The son stopped pressing buttons for a minute and looked at the screen. The son felt frustrated. He felt something click inside his boredom. The son pressed a series of many buttons into the control pad with his thumbs. He pressed the buttons in an order that was not intentional but still came out of him himself.

The sequence formed by the son’s button pressing caused a small black square across the screen. The black square covered over a certain section of the long room’s pixelated ceiling, around which the other pixels went slurred and glitchy. The son’s current score appeared deformed, though he could still read the last six digits, all still zeroes.

Something in the room around the son released an air. The figure representing the son inside the game went locked. No matter what buttons the son would press now the figure would not respond. The son pressed more buttons, feeling angry. He rapped his knuckles on the screen. Inside, briefly, he heard something knocking back. The TV began to hum. The screen felt warm—too warm. The son was looking at the figure. Above, the square spread rapidly across the screen, aiming to cover over all. The son saw the figure begin to wriggle. The figure turned his head toward the son. The figure was looking at the son now most directly and there was something written in his eyes—something carried in the figure all those hours—carried over in every replicated instance of his entire life

Inside the game the music paused out, nowhere. The figure’s mouth fell open, in an O.

Along the bottom of the screen, a scrolling text, each instance beeping:

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