The fluorescent lights of DataFlow Solutions cast their usual sickly pallor across the eighth floor as Ethan Cross saved his work for the fourteenth time that day. Around him, the soft clicking of keyboards had gradually diminished as his coworkers packed up and headed home to families, friends, and lives that existed beyond these beige cubicle walls.
Ethan remained at his desk, not because he had more work to finish, but because going home meant acknowledging that this was his life now. Senior Software Developer, Level 2. Salary: $45,000 annually. Responsibilities: debugging code written by people who cared less about elegance than he did about showing up on time.
Three years ago, his name had been chanted by crowds of fifty thousand.
Cross! Cross! Cross!
The youngest player ever to win the Global Championship, taking down teams with twice his experience using nothing but raw talent and strategies that shouldn't have worked.
Now his biggest accomplishment of the day was fixing a memory leak in the coffee ordering system.
"Still here, Ethan?"
The voice belonged to Jennifer Kim, one of the few coworkers who bothered learning his name. She was nice enough—always offered to share her lunch when she brought leftovers, remembered to ask about his grandmother's health. Under different circumstances, he might have tried to become actual friends with her.
"Just finishing up," he replied, minimizing the code window he'd been staring at for the past twenty minutes. "You know how it is."
Jennifer adjusted the strap of her purse, a designer knockoff that probably cost more than Ethan spent on clothes in six months. "Actually, I don't. Most people try to leave work at work, you know? Have you given any thought to that hiking group I mentioned? We meet every Saturday morning at—"
"I'm not really the outdoors type," Ethan interrupted, offering the same polite smile he used for all social invitations. Jennifer meant well, but explaining why he couldn't afford hiking boots or weekend activities would only lead to more questions he didn't want to answer.
"Right, sorry. I just thought..." She paused, studying his face with the kind of concern that made Ethan want to find somewhere else to look. "When's the last time you did something just for fun?"
October 15th, 2026, he thought but didn't say. The day before everything fell apart.
"I have fun," he said instead. "I read. Watch old movies. You know, normal stuff."
Jennifer's expression suggested she knew he was lying, but she was too polite to push further. "Well, if you change your mind, the offer stands. We're always looking for new members."
After she left, Ethan sat alone in the empty office, listening to the building's HVAC system cycle through its evening routine. Through the windows, Neo Francisco's skyline glittered with holographic advertisements for products he'd never buy and services he'd never need. The city's reconstruction after the '27 earthquake had prioritized spectacle over substance, creating a facade of prosperity that masked the same old problems.
His phone buzzed with a text message from Dr. Sarah Kim, his grandmother's neurologist: Elena's responding well to this month's treatment. Next appointment scheduled for the 28th. Please confirm payment authorization.
Ethan closed his eyes and did the math he'd memorized months ago. Current bank balance: $1,247. Rent due in six days: $650. His grandmother's treatment: $15,000 per month, of which he could contribute $2,700. The math never changed, no matter how many times he recalculated it.
He typed back: Authorized. Thank you.
The elevator was empty during his descent to the parking garage, giving him eight floors to practice the expression he'd wear when he got home. Not too tired—that would worry Mrs. Chen, the elderly woman who lived across the hall and seemed to monitor his comings and goings with maternal concern. Not too cheerful either—false optimism was exhausting to maintain.
Somewhere in the middle. Neutral. Forgettable.
The parking garage smelled like motor oil and the homeless man who sometimes slept near the stairwell. Ethan's car, a 2019 Honda Civic with 180,000 miles and a passenger door that only opened from the inside, sat alone in the corner spot he'd claimed through three years of consistent early arrivals.
The engine turned over on the second try, which counted as a good day. Ethan had taught himself enough about car repair to handle basic maintenance, but the Civic was approaching the age where major components would start failing in sequence. Transmission, alternator, air conditioning—each represented a potential financial crisis that could destroy the careful balance he'd constructed around his grandmother's care.
Traffic on Highway 101 moved with the sluggish predictability of rush hour, giving Ethan time to think about everything he'd rather not think about. The medical bills that arrived with mathematical precision every month. The job interviews he'd stopped scheduling because they always ended with questions about the gap in his employment history. The messages from old teammates and rivals that he'd stopped reading because they reminded him of a version of himself he could no longer afford to be.
His phone, mounted on the dashboard with a clip that had cost $3.99 at a gas station, displayed the same three apps he checked every day: his bank account, his grandmother's medical portal, and a news aggregator he used to monitor the gaming industry he'd once dominated.
Tonight's headline made him brake harder than necessary: "Nexus Infinity Beta Launch Delayed Again - Developers Cite 'Technical Complications'"
The article was thin on details, which meant the real story was either too boring or too interesting for public consumption. Ethan had been following Nexus Infinity's development with the same morbid fascination he'd once reserved for watching his former teammates' careers flourish without him.
True neural interface gaming. Complete sensory immersion. The technology that could revolutionize human entertainment—or destroy what remained of people's connection to physical reality.
Dr. James Morrison, the project's lead developer, had been promising "full release within the year" for the past three years. Either he was the most optimistic engineer in history, or Nexus Infinity faced problems that couldn't be solved with more funding and longer development cycles.
Ethan's apartment building came into view: four stories of weather-stained concrete that had looked modern in 1987 and depressing ever since. The parking lot was half full, which meant most of his neighbors were home from jobs that probably paid better than his and definitely provided better health insurance.
Apartment 2B was exactly as he'd left it that morning: clean, organized, and devoid of personality. The furniture consisted of items rescued from thrift stores and carefully repaired. The entertainment center held a television from 2023 and a gaming console he hadn't turned on in six months. The walls were bare except for a single framed photograph of his family from before everything went wrong.
In the photo, taken at his championship celebration, Marcus Cross Sr. stood with his arm around his wife Catherine, both beaming with parental pride. Ethan, younger and impossibly confident, held his trophy like it was the first of many. They looked like people who believed the future held nothing but good things.
Ethan set the photo face-down, as he did every evening. Some routines were necessary for basic functioning. Others were just habits that hurt less than changing would.
Dinner was pasta with jarred sauce, eaten while reading programming forums on his laptop. The discussions were technical enough to keep his mind occupied but impersonal enough to avoid triggering memories of the community he'd lost. Anonymous usernames debating optimization techniques and sharing code snippets, never talking about anything that mattered.
One thread caught his attention: "Memory Management in Real-Time Strategy Games - Looking for Beta Testers"
The post came from someone called Crimson_Scholar, and the code samples demonstrated the kind of elegant problem-solving that Ethan had once taken for granted in competitive gaming. Whoever Crimson_Scholar was, they understood that good strategy required more than quick reflexes—it required systems thinking, pattern recognition, and the ability to adapt complex plans in real time.
Ethan found himself typing a response before his conscious mind decided to engage:
"Your memory allocation approach is solid, but you might see better performance with a dynamic buffer system that adjusts based on active unit count. I've attached a code sample that demonstrates the concept—feel free to modify as needed."
He included a twenty-line function that would improve Crimson_Scholar's algorithm by roughly 15% while maintaining backward compatibility with existing code. It was the kind of optimization that would take most programmers days to develop and test, presented as casually as commenting on the weather.
Ethan's finger hovered over the submit button for thirty seconds before he deleted the entire response. Engaging with other programmers meant risking questions about his background, his current work, his obvious overqualification for anonymous forum discussions.
Better to stay invisible. Always better to stay invisible.
He closed the laptop and prepared for bed, following the same routine he'd maintained for three years. Shower, brush teeth, set the alarm for 5:47 AM. Check his grandmother's medical portal one last time—no changes in her condition, no emergency alerts.
Tomorrow would be another day of deliberate mediocrity, another eight hours of fixing other people's mistakes while pretending he couldn't see the dozen better ways to solve every problem.
But tonight, for just a moment while reading Crimson_Scholar's elegant code, he'd remembered what it felt like to be good at something that mattered.