My breath hitched. My newly acquired Level 1 stats, my analysis of AlterAlgo's "perfect" world, the existential dread of a million Evans—it all evaporated. Every process in my brain crashed and rebooted, focusing on a single, impossible variable: the girl with the fiery red hair by the water cooler.
She wasn't just different. She was familiar.
A wave of vertigo, far more potent than the one I'd felt stepping onto the balcony, slammed into me. The sterile office corridor, with its recycled air and fluorescent lighting, dissolved into the blinding, hazy sunlight of a Massachusetts June. The hum of servers became the distant drone of cicadas and the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a kickball against asphalt.
I was nine years old again. Scuffed sneakers, a scraped knee, and a paralyzing fear of everything.
It was morning recess, fourth grade. Mrs. Davison's class.
She was new. Her family had just moved to town. Her hair was the same impossible shade of dark red, tied back in a ponytail that whipped around as she turned her head. She was sitting on the edge of the sandbox, not playing, just watching everyone with wide, curious eyes. She was tracing patterns in the sand with a stick.
My nine-year-old brain, which was usually occupied with Nintendo cheat codes and the structural integrity of Lego spaceships, short-circuited. A single, overwhelming command filled my entire consciousness: Go and talk to her.
It was the simplest objective imaginable. Far simpler than debugging Python or navigating corporate politics. But to my fourth-grade self, it was like being asked to scale Mount Everest in my flip-flops. What would I even say? Hi. I like your… sand patterns?
My legs felt like they were bolted to the ground. For the entire twenty minutes of recess, I waged a silent, furious war with myself. Just walk over there, Walker. Just say hi. But every time I thought about moving, I pictured a thousand disastrous outcomes. I'd trip and fall. I'd say something stupid. She'd laugh at my scuffed sneakers. The kickball would fly over and hit me in the head. The heat I felt on my face had nothing to do with the sun.
The bell shrieked, signaling the end of recess and the end of my opportunity. A wave of profound, crushing failure washed over me. She stood up, brushed the sand from her jeans, and walked back inside with the rest of the class, not once looking in my direction. I was invisible. A ghost by the fence.
That afternoon, I couldn't focus on long division. All I could think about was her red hair and my own pathetic cowardice. A new resolve hardened in my chest. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, during morning recess, I would do it. No excuses. I wouldn't even go to the fence. I would walk straight to the sandbox and I would say hi. I practiced the word in my head until it lost all meaning. Hi. Hi. Hi.
The next morning felt different. I woke up before my alarm, a nervous energy buzzing under my skin. I didn't trade my Dunkaroos for my friend Mark's Fruit Roll-Up at lunch, a transaction as sacred as any Wall Street trade. I was saving my full attention for the real main event: morning recess.
When the bell finally rang, I was one of the first kids out the door. My heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to escape. I scanned the playground, my eyes darting past the usual crowds at the swings and the slide. I looked at the sandbox.
It was empty.
I looked again, my stomach twisting into a cold, hard knot. She wasn't by the fence. She wasn't by the water fountain. She wasn't anywhere.
Mark jogged up to me, already chewing on his contraband bubble gum. "You see Lily?" he asked.
Lily. Her name was Lily. It sounded right.
"No," I mumbled, my eyes still scanning, hoping. "Where is she?"
"Oh." Mark popped a bubble. "Her dad got a new job or something. They moved. Drove away in a U-Haul this morning. My mom was talking about it." He shrugged, the news meaning nothing more to him than a change in the class roster. He then ran off to join the kickball game.
I just stood there. The sun felt cold. Moved. She was gone. The word echoed in the sudden, silent emptiness of the playground. I hadn't just missed my chance today; I had missed it forever. She would never know I existed, that I had wanted to talk to her, that I thought her name was as perfect as her hair.
The first choice I'd made – or failed to make – that I knew, with absolute certainty, I would carry with me for a long, long time. It was a tiny, invisible fork in the road of my life, a memory that would resurface at the oddest times: during a final exam, on a lonely Friday night, in the moments after clicking 'submit' on a project I knew was a mistake. The regret wasn't just about a girl; it was about the fear. It was the first commit of cowardice in the codebase of my life.
The memory was so vivid, so real, that I could almost feel the phantom weight of my Power Rangers backpack on my shoulders. Then, just as suddenly as it came, the hazy sun of the playground collapsed.
Snap.
I was back in the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor of the MicroApple R&D wing inside Forkworld. The hum of the servers rushed back into my ears. I blinked, my heart still pounding with a nine-year-old's disappointment.
AlterAlgo was looking at me, his expression unreadable. "You okay, Main? You zoned out for a second there."
I looked toward the water cooler where I'd seen her, my throat dry.
She was gone.
The spot was empty. The Evan she had been talking to was walking back to his cubicle, a cup of water in his hand. It was as if she had never been there at all. But I knew what I had seen.
"I…" I started, my voice hoarse. "I saw a girl."
AlterAlgo's calm demeanor flickered. For the first time, a shadow of something else – caution? concern? – crossed his face. "A girl?" he asked, his voice a little too sharp. "Here? In this branch? Main, that's… not possible. We don't have no girls here. We have only YOU."