'What a waste. '

An imagined huff of breath, the illusion of indignance, a lightning-flash crackle of sense in the absence of sense.

'All that time spent planning, so much setup and fine tuning, hell even a trial run,

and still. '

Taste to someone with no tongue, sight to a blind man, a phantom limb snapping in agency it no longer possesses.

'And the game was over so

quick.

I thought this would last at least twice as long! '

Whining, it would be grief if it wasn 't so uninvested, and the detached disappointment of watching your selected horse lose on the race track.

I '

Wait '

What was I..?

'Is no part of this fault yours? '

another voice asks, and it 's a jolt right through the system.

It 's a hard reboot that feels like cold water splashed right into the hardware, a punch in the head for a cognitive reset, a shot of pure adrenaline after a crash.