His robot needs a flamethrower. He’s been sitting there for far too long, absorbed in a stranger fiction than this. Worlds where I do not exist, absent of thought, free for distraction, and panderous to his tastes. Distant worlds right here in my home, where trades are made, fictional characters gain points, arrows are released into the ether, and digital swords slice their way through realized imagination. Interactions between robotic lips, affected by solitary tap-tapping, brought to action, enacted, by invisible ones and zeros. Diminutive numbers, connections more electric than mine, draw him in. Screens are colder than I, even when in use, but I am losing. Lost to a wired fiction that may or may not have a physical twin.

Real and unreal, huge expanses of space are compressed into worlds contained by a box. A universe in a shoebox, and the shoes are not my size. I have tried them on, only to realize they belong to other hers. His computer hums away, and warms the wall with its buzz, as I sink against it in lethargic attempts to feel the thrill of electric associations.

The keys clack, clack, clack, clack, in truncated, staccato bursts. A rhythm different from my own, not fluid. He hunts and pecks, pointing out commands to his on-screen double, where words and numerals are one. Fully awake, though exhausted, he travels out-of-body, through pixilated forests, castle grounds, and shires, while I walk through paper.

There are ill-matched things here too, in my mind, on my pages, and my screen. Parks of words, dark, metaphorical forested. My garden grew in a different, dappled light. I envy living digital sparks, from lit fountains, where the statuary remains, unmoved, immune to infection from the trapped dead. Fragrant white blossoms rise, small and strong, in the haunted darkling, a memorial to Midnight hikes, far too close to cliffs, and of possibility. Absent of electric surge, the waters seem still, but whirl violently subsurface, with a restless raging.

Yes, I am envious, but unafraid. I counted them up, you see, these fears, pacing the back of my mind. Difficult to pin down and unmask, they flit and flicker, transcending form and meaning, and compressed in such a small space.

But his robot needs a flamethrower.
Nefarious pirate