Interaction [Dreamnotfound]

26 | Guilt

Yes I know I'm like an hour late I'm sorry ok-

-Cas

The keyboard was clicking as Dream's fingers flew across.

He wasn't coding like he had said he would, he was looking. Looking for a spare copy of this "game" he and George had made.

He was trying to distract himself so he didn't feel the guilt.

Dream hadn't meant to tackle Zak... it was just an instinct, honestly. But after what Zak had gone through, he shouldn't have attacked him, clearly.

He would like to believe that he couldn't have helped it, but his mind wouldn't stop with the "what if's". What if he had hurt Zak? What if Zak left because of him? What if Darryl hated him?
Dream felt the tears pricking at the back of his eyes, but he ignored them and tried to concentrate. Files upon files of data, games, websites, html code stared at him. All things he had made in his spare time.

Dream had been in online school for the majority of secondary school, which was a pretty hard thing to get into, considering how the government had wanted stricter education. He had started a year early, as soon as he got out of the Layout Center. That, of course, was years ago. Now, everyone was online schooled - nobody could go to school outside, did that even exist anymore?
But that wasn't the point. In online school, it made it so much easier to cheat, not prepare, that sort of stuff. So Dream had crammed for tests, failed Spanish, and somehow managed to graduate high school - all while teaching himself to code.

He had landed a job in the government for coding soon after, but didn't rise up the ranks, so instead of coding for Hemibots like he was supposed to do, most of his time was spent on useless projects such as these. Websites he would never use, pointless games, coding...

And the mysterious game he had coded with George.

Which he was trying to find at that very moment.

Would have been a good idea to organize by date, Dream thought to himself. The files were completely disorganized, and he had no way to quickly find the game file, so he was slowly sorting them.

By hand.

Dream sighed as he moved yet another empty game file into the trash. He was getting into the named games now, and he quickly sorted through them. Among Us, one read. Could that be it? Dream opened the file, but it was a single worker game, meaning only he had worked on it. It looked interesting, though. Dream saved the file to look at later.

He skipped through some more empty files, landing on one that read Minecraft. It rung a bell, and it seemed to have listed coworkers. Could this be the game? Dream moved his mouse, about to open it-

There was a knock on the door behind him. Dream hesitated, then turned around. "Come in..."
George walked in, closing the door behind him. "Want some lunch? I could make something..."
Dream nodded. "Yeah sure," he replied. Pushing himself away from the desk, he stood up-

Wait a moment. This was too much like a movie.

What if that was the file he had been looking for?

He couldn't risk it. Dream sat back down. "Hold on," he said, whirling his chair around to face his monitor. He slid the mouse over, opened the file...

The game code opened, as well as the start command. Dream took a deep breath and ran the command, staring at the screen, George silent behind him.

The launcher loaded, and different versions were displayed. It didn't look familiar, but who knew? Dream hesitated, and then clicked on the most recent version, 1.15.2. He opened the game and waited.

The game took a second, but loaded up, displaying the word "Mojang" against a plain white screen. Then, the game bar filled, launching "Minecraft".

Singleplayer. Multiplayer. Minecraft Realms. Options. Quit game.

Flavour with no seasoning.

Flavour with no seasoning?

Dream frowned at the screen, but George inhaled sharply. "Yankee with no brim!"

Dream stared. "Wh- what?"

George blushed. "I- nothing."

Dream, confused, decided to ignore that for the time being. All guilt forgotten, he clicked on "singleplayer"creating a new "world", whatever that was, and waited as it loaded.

The world formed, and a whole universe came into view.

It was grass, hills, just like he had seen when George was chasing him. A pine forest was to his left, a savannah to his right.

It was incredible.

George stared, unable to tear his eyes from the screen. Dream didn't blame him. It was so familiar, yet so distant...

Hesitantly, Dream moved his mouse around, observing his surroundings. Playing lightly with the keys, he he ran forwards, stopped, ran to a tree, and started breaking it.

George frowned. "What are you doing?"
Dream didn't answer. It was like instinct, he couldn't help it. He was already running for the savannah, a village in the distance. George just watched.
Dream reached the village, grabbed some wheat, made bread. He took some beds, towered up three blocks, hitting the giant iron monster that protected the villagers with their rectangular heads, and killed it with a stone axe he had somehow made. Then he was running again, heading to a nearby cave.

Iron was near the surface, so he grabbed it, along with some coal. He ventured deeper, and it didn't seem to go far, so he turned, he didn't even hear the hiss-

Boom.

The death message popped up on the screen. Dream stared. "What the hell!"
George started to laugh. "That's how everyone dies their first time!"
Smiling, Dream turned to George. "Wait, how do you know?"
George shrugged. "I dunno, I just- remember, I guess..."
Dream accepted the answer, staring at the screen. The whole game was coming back now, and with it, his time he had spent with George carefully coding the distinct properties of the game.

Dream pushed away from the screen. "Come on, we can play after lunch." George shook his head. "Wait..."
Dream let him take the seat, watching as George exited the game and started a new, creative world. It loaded, and he typed commands into the chat. /time set midnight. /summon minecraft:phantom. /gamemode survival.

There was a cry, and a giant blue bird...? Flew out of the sky, swooping down and taking a single heart of health from George's hotbar. George gasped. "Yeah, I remember this!"

Dream grinned, pausing the game. "Okay, I'll make lunch, come on." George smiled back, standing up and taking the lead as Dream turned off his pc. He opened the door-

And came face to face with Zak.

"I- oh, hi, Zak!" George mumbled awkwardly, his face rapidly turning red. Zak's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

George pushed past him, looking back for Dream, but Zak stepped in the room. "Dream, could we talk for a moment?"
Dream nodded, motioning for George to go on without him, and George slipped away. Dream crossed the room, closing the door.

Neither said a word.

All Dream could think was awkward awkward awkward-

But all Zak could think about was diamonds.