[LOCATION: THE PERIPHERAL PLATEAU]

  [CURRENT TERRAIN: CHERRY MX SWITCHES] [ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: GAMER GUNK]

  "Run!" Kai yelled, his voice cracking against the roar of the static.

  They sprinted off the Mouse Pad, their boots thudding against the desk surface. Behind them, the Great Polish, the white wall of deletion had devoured the Mouse. The Altar of Input was gone. Clippy was gone. There was only the void, and it was hungry.

  Ahead of them rose the City of Keys. For Kai and Maya, it was a keyboard while the others in party, standing three inches tall relative to the hardware, it was a sprawling metropolis of black obsidian monoliths. The Space Bar key looked like a fallen skyscraper. The Enter key was a fortress.

  "We have to get to the top left!" Kai shouted, pointing toward the distant corner of the peripheral. "The empty socket! The Escape Node!"

  They reached the edge of the keyboard chassis, a steep cliff of gray plastic. "Up!" Grom roared. He grabbed Pigglesworth (who was still sticky with coffee) and hurled him up the ledge. Pigglesworth splatted against the plastic, stuck, and scrambled over the rim. Gideon boosted Maya and climbed up while Grom threw Kai.

  Kai landed on the upper deck. He stumbled, surprised by how far he drifted. Strange, Kai thought, looking at his hands. I feel floaty. Like I’m made of hollow plastic.

  Grom hauled himself up over the ledge. "I AM UP!" the Orc grunted. "BUT I FEEL WEAK. GRAVITY IS SUGGESTION HERE."

  "Don't think about physics!" Kai ordered. "Just run!"

  They stood on the edge of the Valley of QWERTY. From down here, the keyboard wasn't the sleek device it appeared to be from above. It was a graveyard of snacks past.

  The rows of keys formed long, dark canyons. The gaps between them were ten feet wide dangerous alleyways filled with the debris of 1000’s of gaming sessions. Giant, orange boulders of fossilized cheese dust (cheetos scraps) blocked their path. Twisted, translucent vines (cat hair) formed complex tripping hazards between the 'Ctrl' and 'Shift' towers.

  "What is this place?" Pigglesworth gasped, covering his nose with a velvet handkerchief. "It smells of... artificial cheese and shame."

  "It's the User's ecosystem," Kai grimaced, stepping over a crumb the size of a shield. "We're in the domain of a Gamer. Don't touch the orange dust.."

  "THE WALL!" Maya screamed.

  Behind them, the white void slammed into the side of the keyboard chassis. The plastic hissed as it began to un-render. "Move!" Kai ordered. "We have to cross the Number Row!"

  They plunged into the maze. The black towers blocked out the sky, casting long, rectangular shadows. High above, the white letters A, S, D, F glowed faintly like celestial runes.

  Suddenly, the sky between the keys turned a violent, blinding neon red. A low hum vibrated through the floorboards of the device.

  THROOOOOM.

  The light shifted. The red faded, replaced by a searing, radioactive green. Then a blinding blue.

  "Sorcery!" Gideon shielded his eyes.

  "It's the lighting profile!" Kai realized, squinting against the glare. "It's set to 'Breathing Mode'! The LEDs are cycling!"

  "Is it dangerous?" Pigglesworth asked.

  As if to answer, a wave of purple light surged up from beneath the 'Space Bar'. A moth that had been trapped between the keys was caught in the beam. It didn't burn; it Over-Saturated. The moth glowed so brightly it vibrated, then popped into a cloud of pixels.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Avoid the pulses!" Kai screamed. "The energy is raw unshielded photons! If the color hits you, it’ll scramble you!"

  They ran. The rhythm of the keyboard was a deadly disco. D..I..S..C..O DISCO DISCO Red... Green... Blue...

  They sprinted through the gaps while the light was dimming, diving into the shadows of the keycaps when the surge came. It was a 100 yard dash through a strobe light.

  "GO! GO! GO!" Kai slid under the 'Shift' key just as a wave of Cyan light blasted the corridor. Grom tackled Gideon behind the 'Caps Lock' tower. The light seared the air, smelling of ozone and burning plastic.

  "We are almost there!" Kai pointed. Ahead of them, past the 'Tab' key and the 'Tilde' key, was a gaping hole in the world. The Empty Socket. It looked like a volcanic crater. Inside, the cross-shaped stem of the switch waited, naked and exposed.

  They reached the base of the switch housing. It was a sheer vertical climb to get to the socket. They paused to catch their breath. The White Wall was consuming the Number Pad far behind them.

  "Do you hear that?" Maya whispered.

  The party froze. Underneath the mechanical hum of the RGB lights, there was another sound. It was deep. Rhythmic. Massive. Thump... Thump... Thump...

  "It sounds like a drum," Gideon said.

  "No," Kai said, pressing his ear against the plastic wall of the 'F1' key. "It sounds like a heartbeat. But it's too big."

  Pigglesworth sniffed the air. He frowned. "And the smell... the cheese dust is gone. I smell..." He struggled for the word. " Wet pavement? Fried fish?"

  Kai looked up. The "Sky" above the keyboard, usually the ceiling of the office, was flickering. For a second, the fluorescent lights glitched. In their place, Kai saw something gray. Something wet. He saw a dark, cloudy sky. He saw rain falling, but not digital rain. Real, messy, chaotic water.

  "The barrier is thin here," Kai realized. "The 'Great Polish' isn't just deleting the game. It's stripping the insulation. The Real World is leaking in."

  "Is the Real World... nice?" Grom asked, looking at the flickering gray sky.

  "It's loud," Kai said. "And it's expensive. And there's no respawn."

  "Sounds like Hard Mode," Grom grunted. "I like it."

  "The Wall is at the Arrow Keys!" Maya warned. "We have seconds!"

  "Climb!" Kai ordered.

  They scrambled up the side of the switch housing. It was slippery plastic, but they used the friction of the grime to find handholds. Grom hauled Pigglesworth up by his collar. Gideon boosted Maya. They rolled over the lip of the crater and landed inside the socket.

  In the center of the crater stood the Switch Stem. It was a black, cross-shaped pillar on a spring.

  "Deploying the Key!" Kai shouted. He opened his inventory. He selected the [Esc] Key. A giant, translucent blue hologram of the keycap appeared floating in the air above the stem. It was the size of a small house.

  "Aligning..." Kai muttered, waving his hands to rotate the hologram. "Snap to grid... steady..." The blue outline turned Green. "Placing!"

  ZAP. The massive black keycap materialized instantly out of thin air. It slammed onto the cross stem with a perfect, machine-precision CLACK. The [Esc] key was now seated.

  "We did it!" Pigglesworth cheered. "We are saved!"

  "Not yet!" Kai shouted. "We haven't pressed it! It's just sitting there!"

  He jumped onto the top of the key. He stomped. Nothing happened. The key didn't move down. "It's stiff!" Kai yelled. "It's a mechanical switch! It requires activation force!"

  "How much force?" Pigglesworth asked, bouncing uselessly on the black plastic.

  Kai’s Admin Vision flashed red. [OBJECT: CHERRY MX BLACK SWITCH] [PROPERTY: HEAVY LINEAR] [ACTUATION FORCE: 69 cN]

  "Sixty nine centinewtons!" Kai shouted. "It doesn't sound like much, but look at us! I felt it when we climbed up we're made of polygons and light! We don't have enough mass!"

  Kai looked behind them. The White Wall had reached the Space Bar. The world was vanishing. The roar of the static was deafening. The smell of London rain was getting stronger, mixing with the smell of burning code.

  "We need weight!" Kai screamed. "Everyone! Get on the Key! Pile on!"

  Grom, Gideon, Maya, and Pigglesworth scrambled onto the black plastic square. Kai hesitated for a fraction of a second. He looked at them. The Guildmaster, the Knight, the Noble, the Artist. A motley crew of glitches huddled together on a piece of plastic. We aren't real, Kai thought. But we're heavy enough to matter.

  "JUMP!" Kai screamed, throwing himself into the pile.

  They landed together. The key wiggled. It went down a millimeter. But the spring pushed them back up.

  "It is not enough!" Grom roared, his feet slipping on the smooth plastic. "WE LACK DENSITY!"

  The White Wall crested the edge of the crater. The end was here. And the key was still unpressed.

  [OBJECTIVE: PRESS THE BUTTON]