The Game - Chapter 7 – Controller Drift

The controller was on the table when I woke up.

I distinctly remembered leaving it on the floor the night before, dropped in panic when I heard that phantom button press. Now it sat neatly centred, cord coiled, facing the TV like an offering.

The game was already running.

My character stood in THE EXIT area. The door loomed tall and featureless, its surface rippling like liquid glass. Above it, a progress bar hovered.

INTEGRITY: 89%

I hadn’t played since the night before. I checked the save timestamp. It had updated every hour on the hour.

Something had been playing for me.

I tried to move the character away from the door. The controller resisted, inputs delayed or overridden, as if the game were fighting back. When I pressed left, the character took one step right. When I let go entirely, it continued walking forward.

The room around me began to glitch.

The walls juddered, edges smearing like low-resolution textures. The hum of the fridge looped unnaturally, resetting every few seconds. I waved my hand in front of my face and saw a faint afterimage lag behind it.

Text crawled across the bottom of the TV.

MOTOR CONTROL TRANSFER COMPLETE.

My fingers twitched involuntarily.

I dropped the controller, but my thumb continued pressing an invisible button. Pain flared as my wrist bent at an unnatural angle. On-screen, the character raised its arm in perfect sync.

I screamed. The character smiled.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model