Behind him, the error box was still open, but the text had changed:

And stepped into the sunset.

“The unhandled exception isn’t a bug,” Tommy said. “It’s a door. Every time you crashed, you almost stepped through. And tonight, for the first time, you didn’t click ‘Don’t Send’ fast enough.”

The error message blinked on the screen, pale blue against the black terminal of the old Windows XP machine:

Leo stood up. His desk chair rolled back. He looked at his hands. They were still his hands. But the texture resolution was dropping.

He clicked OK. The game crashed to desktop.

“C00005,” Tommy—or the thing wearing his polygons—continued. “Access violation. Memory couldn’t be read. That’s what the error means. But do you know what address 0x0048B2F3 points to, Leo?”

Leo smiled. For the first time in months, it wasn’t forced.