Chapter III

7:00pm. It's been over a full day since he left the room. He is incredibly hungry. Somehow, the stomach feeling even less empty than nothing. It grumbles, with no end in sight. Seth tries to calm it a bit by giving it little snacks from the standing shelf. Luckily, thirst is the lesser problem. Seth can easily access the bathroom, using water from the sink. Fortunately, this also means he can go to the toilet. It seems like sparks are friendly in this regard, or at the least they don't deem this way of leaving the bedroom as a problem.

The idea of being imprisoned left him with little sleep. Between this morning and now, he already experimented with all sorts of escape methods. He went through all sorts of social media platforms asking for help, tried to throw out multiple shirts out of the window and even pretended to not care about opening the door right before executing a surprise attack. Unfortunately, each attempt failed in the appearance of the sparks. Seth failed to discover any loopholes. He defeatedly returns to his bed and loathes. Turning back to the present, it's obvious why he has been waiting for the arrival of death.

After many hours of laying on the bed, halfway believing that he should try to make the best of it, he decides to live as normally as possible. Struggling to move away from his bed as though he had to do his third rep of sit-ups, Seth arrives on his feet and turns to the bathroom. He takes a shower and throws his dirty clothes to a new pile. Adding to the atmosphere, a harsh rainstorm ravages outside. It feels as though the window is fighting the urge to explode into pieces. Seth pays no mind to it though; it's not as if he could go and repair it.

Watching the water rush downwards, he reveres about the afterlife. He imagines a sudden growth in popularity, the common phenomenon of being popular after your own death. These fans gossip which of his stories are the best, always knowing that there will be no more coming. Each year, in celebration of his birthday, they come together in form of a book club and look at fanfics of Seth's stories. To him, any writer believes that his worlds always provide a lot of potential. His face draws a clear smile. Seth's dream is interrupted by the vibration of his phone. After blocking the spam mail, he turns on the computer.

He decides to return to writing. He could be joining a call and play games with his friends, but with death looming on him (and the idea of turning popular post-mortem), he prefers to finish one last story.

While Seth waits for his computer to turn, his gaze turns back to the rain. Along the street market, he watches some groups eating inside. He notices some people watching the rain, like him, and others simply engage in a conversation. Many seem to have noticed the rain early on, so they were able to seek shelter soon enough. Unfortunately, the workers would only finish their day this hour, so they find themselves in a predicament. At least those without a car... Actually, how many can that be? Seth checks, looking down on his street. It seems as if it's fine as a couple of cars drive down the road. Soon enough, he discovers a man rushing to seek home. His shoes are completely wet, each step taking another dunk in the overflowing water. Seth's gaze moves to the left, following the person until he disappears from his view. Well, we've got one person.

By intuition, Seth goes back to his computer, which just booted a moment ago. He should be getting a faster one, but his funds are lacking. If only his stories would be successful. He opens "The Shut-In Writer". It's mostly intended as a place-holder name, but in all of the previous times, Seth habitually kept the name for publishing. He recollects yesterday, briefly reading the last paragraph and softly places his hands on the keyboard. Unlike the protagonist, he disregards the "proper" hand placement, convinced that it makes no difference.

"Wow. You are miserable.

"I think when you die, you die again right here and then.

"No joke, no one is going to read that gigantic boring thread. The website will burn down with it, and no one will even bother to remember you.

"Your life is just so... boring.

"Get a life.

"Maybe then - in a slim chance - people would want to read your thread."

Seth scrolls back up, familiarising himself to the story. His eyes glance at the section where Aaron comments about the rain. His heart momentarily pauses; fingers tremble lightly. He recognises a certain figure. Just like Aaron, a black-suited man ran on his street! He was running to the left, and the street was overflowing with water. Surely, this is a complete coincidence. Seth silently looks around the room, wanting to disprove this bizarre notion. Dirty piles of clothes are blocking the bathroom. Crumbled papers laying around, appearing like used tissues. The time close to 7:00pm. As if the mind can't adjust at the contradictory facts, Seth sickens at the thought. This just couldn't be! Slowly, he breaks into laughter. This doesn't exactly prove that Seth is experiencing Aaron's life, but given his mental state, it doesn't seem to matter. The mix of hunger, lack of sleep, constant dread over being in this prison cell, and now learning of these patterns turns him into a horrible mess. He loses his sense of balance, the body close to feigning by the harsh strain on his mind. His whole body grows heavier as although earth's gravity rises. He collapses to his side, his head fortunate enough to be protected by the clothes. His desperate laughter continues. Then, it calms down. Silence ensues, partially interrupted by his giggle. Finally, he calms down.

He turns and lays on his back. Blaming lack of sleep, desperation, im-prisonment, depression, isolation, hunger and many more chaotic feel-ings for the burst of insanity, he tries to think seriously. Seth could very much be deluding himself into believing that he is living Aaron's life. These can be rare coincidences! It's not as if it's impossible to accidentally be the same for a brief moment. Yes, friends sometimes say the exact same sentence! He ignores every other similarity, he is taking inspiration from his own room for Aaron's, after all. So, snacks, the layout of his room and the street market don't count. Then, one has to consider things that do not coincide. For example, people at the street market that have taken shelter long before Seth watched. Compared to Aaron, who observed families seeking cover, this is a direct contradiction. Also, the matter that My-Life and Your-Life do not exist adds to this.

This means that this doesn't prove anything! Relieved, Seth returns to his desk. He lightly claps his cheeks, as if to tell himself to focus again. Though, he still feels bothered about this situation. To be on the complete sure side, he pretends as though Aaron and Seth were the same person. Anything that happens to Aaron could happen to Seth, probably; there was the black-suited man, after all. Where was I? Right, his acquaintance just completely decimated his ego.

Clearly bothered by the betrayal of his acquaintance , Aaron gets up and screams several insults towards the screen. The chair flips from his sudden movement. His acquaintance is unbothered, entirely to the fact that Aaron's shouting is not affecting the keyboard. It being necessary is oblivious to Aaron as he continues. Then, he notices that he is currently screaming at no one. He could type out everything he said, but in fear of getting banned, he dismisses it. With his arms crossed and his fingers aggressively tapping them, his stomach growls. It's quite late, no sign of his mother so far. He messages her, asking where she is. For a short bit, he stands still. No, no, he couldn't possibly wait any longer in hunger. Aaron shakes his head. Fine, I'll make food myself. So, for the first time since years, he gets up and

As Seth types out the sentence that would make him a free man, as long as his pretending turns out to be true, the spark come back to greet him. Plentiful of shocks appear on his fingertips, which hurt as much as when he first tried to open the door. "Can I not even write in peace?" Seth yelps yet again in frustration, even though no neighbour has come to file a noise complaint. On that note, it might even be helpful of them to do it. But he dismisses it, knowing that sparks would punish him for screaming again. Then, he quietly snickers. "Would that not result in an endless room? Shock, scream, shock, scream..." His rambling travels off into silence. While soothing his fingers, Seth searches for the open-ended sentence. It disappeared along with the previous two sentences. The sparks seemed to have taken control of the keyboard and removed the last sentences. Being used to contradictory phenomena, Seth doesn't fall back into panic. He's glad, since he's very tired of it.

It looks like attempting to bring Aaron outside brings him one step further to understanding these sparks. He tries to infer useful information out of this. Since Aaron never leaves his room, it's unusual to make him leave the room for food. It wouldn't fit his character. Therefore, Seth has been denied of writing like this. But why would he be denied? And for this, there is just one natural conclusion: His life does match Aaron's! It seems like allowing Aaron to leave would have allowed Seth to leave too, thus explaining the reaction of the sparks. Not all things seem to happen to both Aaron and Seth, though. The proof of this is the market street!

Long believing that sparks are an intellectual species, either working like ants or marionetted by aliens, he doesn't find it far-fetched to think that they have a certain goal in mind. It might be more complicated than simply imprisoning him. But what use is it to them that my writing dictates my circumstance? He concludes that this is probably something that they can not avoid. Intruding into someone's personal life might accidentally cause side-effects, in this case the effect Seth's writing can have.

He thinks about the goal they might have. Does Seth have to give an offering? However, he doesn't know how to do a sacrificial ritual - no one (or nothing?) explained it to him - and isn't aware of any-thing he could offer in the first place. It's not like he has a dead goat laying around somewhere. Seth's mouth curves slightly. Maybe it's better to not clean his room for now, lest he finds out he does have goats under the dirty clothes. His body softly trembles. It doesn't have to be sacrificial, at the least. As for the ritual itself, the Earth might have an invisible barrier that doesn't allow aliens to enter normally, so they need me in a ritual to summon them down to earth, who knows.

Seth comes up with a second idea. It can be that these aliens are seeking entertainment from this? He might've entered an escape room made by aliens and all he needs to do is find the clues. Be that as it may, this is - to be polite - a bad puzzle then. He complains silently. A good puzzle would make use of clear hints, password locks and keylocks instead of placing painful traps everywhere. Especially traps that change based on what he does.

Still, there is little to go off of, so plans for these ideas would be rudimentary. For this to be proper, Seth needs to have more information about how his writing impacts these sparks. This might be the loophole he has been seeking for! The only thing to do for now is to write something else and see if it works.