My apartment in Queens is a coffin of takeout boxes and blue light. I haven't left the room in three weeks. The only window I have is a 32-inch curved monitor, and on that monitor is the only thing that matters: the stream.

He calls himself "The Voyager." He travels through worlds that defy physics—forests of floating obsidian, cities built on the backs of cosmic whales, oceans of liquid gold. He is everything I am not: brave, curious, free.

At first, I was just a viewer. I watched him fight monsters and discover ruins. But then, I discovered the "Influence" feature. If I donated enough, I could suggest his next move.

"Go left," I would type, sending a thousand credits. "Open the chest," I would command, sending ten thousand.

I began to feel a kinship with him. I felt as if I were the architect of his destiny. I stopped going to work. I stopped answering the phone. My world shrank until it was exactly the size of the screen.

I started to hate the Voyager when he didn't follow my prompts. I would spend my entire savings to force him into dangerous situations, just to see the look of terror on his face. I wanted him to suffer as I did, in this suffocating, grey reality.

One night, the Voyager looked directly into the camera. He didn't look at the "audience"; he looked at *me*.

"I can see you, Sam," he said. His voice was a distorted echo. "I can see the room you're sitting in. I can see the dust on your keyboard. I can see the way you're shaking."

I froze. The screen began to ripple like water. A hand—a real, physical hand—reached out from the monitor and gripped my wrist. The grip was cold, like ice from a dead world.

"You wanted to be part of the adventure," the Voyager whispered, his face now inches from mine. "Now, you are."

He pulled.

I didn't even have time to scream before I was dragged through the glass. I landed on a floor of floating obsidian, under a sky of violet fire. I looked up and saw a giant, shimmering screen in the sky.

On that screen, I saw my apartment in Queens. And I saw a new viewer, a young man with tired eyes, typing into the chat:

"Go left," he commanded.

*** Objective Tensor Code: [M6:8, M3:7, N2:0.7, K1:0.6, TI:58.0, theta:225°] OTMES_v2: {S: "Alienation", P: "Obsession", V: "Reality", R: "0.1"}