Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Now what?”

Both corners of Colin’s lips twitched upwards, just barely. “Now we just wait a bit.”

Stefan leaned back on the black leather couch and glanced around the den of Colin’s flat. One wall was nothing but shelves filled with vinyl, games, and books. Screen printed posters hung on the others, their designs from a world completely outside of his own. A computer desk sat in the corner with a spidery green plant for company. Even the black and yellow mod-pattern curtains oozed the kind of style he’d come to learn was Colin Ritman's signature.

Nothing took his mind off of the thin tab of — LSD? Acid? Those were the same thing, weren’t they? — something dissolving on the back of his tongue. Stefan did his best to appear relaxed, but every time he forced his shoulders to loosen up, he’d just have to do so again a minute later.

Colin got up to put on a record, a collection of mellow vibrations, intermittent chimes connecting electronic, soothing beats. Dreamlike, in a relaxing way. They hadn’t said a word after Colin had told him to come with him. Which he’d done without question, because the other option had been to turn around and go back to his dad standing outside the car at Dr. Haynes’, and he wasn’t going to do that.

The silence was alright, though. Not uncomfortable. He had no idea what to say, anyways, so he stayed quiet. Besides, he didn’t want to say anything that would embarrass him in front of his idol.

Or, no, maybe that was a strong word. Hero? Primary inspiration. Yeah, that. Something like that.

His eyes always flicked back to the bleached hair of the man returning to the seat across from him. Given every chance, he studied the shape of Colin’s face, from the thin-framed glasses sitting on his flared nostrils to the arches in his eyebrows. Coupled with the everpresent purse of his lips, it gave him an intense look, like he was constantly ruminating on existentialism and had all the answers. He never knew how to picture the one who’d created so many of the games he loved, but he’d never imagined him to be so… to look so…

Stefan swallowed, forcing himself to glance away when Colin sat back and squarely met his eyes. That mysterious intensity never dulled, just came into blinding focus. When he glanced back, Colin was still staring at him. He wasn’t the kind to shy away from eye contact. Did he feel it as tangibly as Stefan did? If he did, he showed no signs of it. Just maintained his steady gaze. Stefan decided he would, too. He stared right back, no longer hiding his scrutinization behind a furtive guise.

And soon, something did happen. And it felt more real than anything he’d done since the morning he’d first pitched Bandersnatch.

A buzzing sensation, an electric bass note of sensation, rose up in his head. It started out slow, subtle, but the second he noticed it, it was like a creature coming to life after a long slumber.

Things that should have been strange to see — the air moving around him, fractals appearing in the corner of his vision — somehow seemed right. He raised a finger to try and touch the air — touch the air? Yeah, one of the motes fractaling through it. His finger just passed right through it. Beyond it, a slow smile spread across Colin’s face, only instigating one of his own in return.

And then Colin Ritman snorted into a laugh.

Had he ever heard Colin laugh before? He wanted to hear it again and again.

More than he should, probably. Stefan rose from his seat, seeking a distraction, and set out exploring the branches of moving air dancing through the room.

Time frayed into splinters. He found books and took them to the couch. Everything in them was the funniest thing he’d ever read. He went through the vinyl collection. Colin let him put on whatever he liked, which usually ended up being whichever one had the cover that shifted the most. The air continued to spiral with little fractals, glistening aberrations of light and color, avoiding his direct focus but always just outside the edge of it.

They led him to the posters on the far wall, the flowers, the spray can with UBIK blocked out in bright yellow. The colors were moving, swirling, entrancing him into something close to hypnosis.

At some point Colin began talking. “People think there’s one reality, but there’s loads of them, all snaking off like roots.” 

Stefan turned to look, but he wasn’t looking at him. He was staring off into the corner of the ceiling. 

“When you make a decision, you think it’s you doing it, but it’s not.”

He tried to see who he was talking to — how could he be talking to someone else? They were the only two in the room.

“It’s the spirit out there connected to our world that decides what we do, and we just have to go along for the ride.”

Still speaking, Colin moved from the chair to the couch Stefan had left. He was saying something about mirrors and government conspiracies and actors. Stefan sat beside him, facing the right way as Colin flipped to lie on it upside-down. The fractals had spun themselves around his fingers, glimmering with colors he couldn’t name, following them through the air.

“There’s messages in every game. Like Pac-Man,” Colin said. He was laying with his legs hanging over the back of the couch, raising his head from the seat to look right at him. “Do you know what PAC stands for?”

The mention of Pac-Man caught his attention again. He watched as Colin twisted his body like a cat, turning over and landing upright on his feet. His was a graceful sort of mania, and Stefan couldn’t tear his eyes away. He went on another tangent, how Pac-Man was a metaphor about free will, being trapped in a maze. 

“All he can do is consume,” he said, “he’s pursued by demons that are probably just in his own head, and even if he does manage to escape by slipping out one side of the maze, what happens?” He gestured from his right to his left. “He comes right back in the other side.”

None of the words made sense on their own, but the way Colin strung them together, it was as if nothing else in the world could be more true. Like he was right in a way no one else could understand.

No one but Stefan. He didn’t understand, but he… did? He didn’t know what he understood, but he was understanding something.

“It’s a fucking nightmare world, and the worst part is, it’s real, and we live in it.” Colin went to the glass door to the balcony and pressed a hand against it, peering out over the lights of the city below. Night had fallen — when had that happened? “It’s all code. If you listen closely, you can hear the numbers.”

Stefan rose on clumsy feet, feeling as opposite from Colin as could be, but walked towards him nonetheless.

Colin turned and pinned Stefan with a look that mixed higher knowledge and clinical insanity so smoothly, there was no difference between them. “There’s a cosmic flowchart that dictates where you can and where you can’t go.”

In one motion, Colin removed his glasses, stepped towards Stefan, and cupped his jaw. Both of his hands cradled his face, drawing him close enough to count the freckles on his cheeks.

“I’ve given you the knowledge,” Colin said. “I’ve set you free.”

Stefan looked between his two eyes, exponentially more interesting than dancing fractals or swirling screenprints. He brought his hands up to Colin’s face, faltering just before connecting with the skin. Colin’s eyes were melting. It should have been terrifying, and it was, but it wasn’t.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

His hands were hot, electric. Stefan’s own hovered just by Colin’s face, the static between palm and cheek just as vibrant. Colin was waiting for an answer, he realized. He had to respond. He had to…

(A) SAY SOMETHING ⵄ (B) KISS COLIN

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His tongue hung heavy and arid, but Stefan swallowed. “Maybe…” His hands fell to his sides, resolve dying underneath a great weight. “I’m- I mean yes- yes… sort of.”

“I’ll show you what I mean.” Colin’s stole his hands away, replacing his glasses onto the concave of his nose bridge. “Come with me.”

And just like that, he turned away and slid open the balcony door. Stefan followed because he always would.

The buzzing bassline in his head returned as they stepped into the breeze. The balcony wasn’t very large. Despite standing on opposite ends, the bubble of intimacy ballooned, swallowing each other whole. They felt a lot closer than they were.

“We’re on one path,” Colin said. “Right now, me and you. And how one path ends is immaterial. It’s how our decisions along that path affect the whole that matters. Do you believe me?”

A chuckle bubbled through Stefan. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“I’ll prove it. One of us,” he said, lifting one arm over the edge and pointing downwards, “is going over. Over there.”

The wind howled as Stefan looked over the edge, his smile falling as he realized how many floors this apartment sat. He looked at the distant ground, and then backed off and whipped his head at Colin. “You’d die— you’d die.”

“It wouldn’t matter, because there are other timelines, Stefan.” Colin’s tone was patient. Tempered. “How many times have you watched Pac-Man die? Doesn’t bother him! He just tries again.”

No. This wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t. He felt the edges of mind fraying, and yet, Colin seemed so nonchalant. Bored, even. As if dying was a mundane thing you did every now and again.

“So come on,” he said, holding Stefan’s gaze with a sort of playful curiosity one might have with a magnifying glass and ants. “Which one of us is jumping?”

(C) NEITHER ⵄ  (D) KISS COLIN, HARD

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It was as if he hadn’t known he’d wanted to kiss Colin Ritman until he did.

Stefan’s hands came to rest on Colin’s cheeks, mirroring the exact pose Colin held him in. The only difference was that Stefan’s hands weren’t meant to ground, but to guide forward. Both of their eyes were closed by the time their lips met.

He certainly didn’t know Colin Ritman had wanted to kiss him until he kissed back.

It was long, slow, and over too soon. Colin was the one to pull away, resuming his act of keeping Stefan upright. His eyes were wide, unfamiliarly confused. Bright. Most importantly — solid.

“Well, that’s new,” Colin said.

Stefan blinked, grinning. He normally felt self-conscious about his smile, but with Colin, he had no idea why. “New is… good, yeah?”

Even though they weren’t dripping from his face anymore, Stefan could swim in his eyes. There was something entirely endless about Colin’s stare. Like his perception, and maybe even his entire self, was without beginning or end. Or maybe it was the shine of awareness, how absolutely, crystal clear he could see. He wondered how much he knew. Maybe he could only see so well because he wore glasses, like Dad.

“Ah,” Colin said. “No, that’s not it.”

Stefan’s brows drew together, smile dimming. “What?”

Colin didn’t respond. His hands stayed on Stefan’s face as he glanced about, looking high, low, and everywhere in between. “It’s different, Stefan.”

“What is?” He would be pulling at his earlobe if his hands weren’t busy memorizing the ions of Colin’s skin.

“Don’t think that’s possible.” Quickly, his gaze returned to Stefan’s. “Didn’t know this was possible, either. Everything’s different, Stefan. Well, most everything.”

He wanted the warmth of Colin’s palms on his cheeks to stay, but could only watch as he returned to the couch, sitting down and folding his hands underneath his chin. He was muttering something the entire time, too quietly for Stefan to hear.

“You’d like me to speak up?” he said, his back straightening. “Stefan, what did you want to do just now? Was that it?”

Stefan moved slowly towards the couch, wondering what he did wrong. Did he overstep? Oh, shit, was this a huge mistake? “I, I’m not sure if… Are— What’re you asking? I’m sorry, I—”

One of Colin’s hands shot out, taking hold of Stefan’s and pulling him the rest of the way forward. He stumbled, caught himself on his knees, steadied by both of Colin’s hands enveloping his own. His head hung low, but his focus never left Stefan. “Was that the choice you wanted?”

“Yes,” Stefan spat out, staring right into Colin’s eyes. “Yes, I wanted that— that one. Did you… Did I—”

“And what do you want now?” The urgency in his voice was alarming. If something had Colin worried, you’d better be, too. “You need to decide. What do you want now, Stefan?”

(E) ESCAPE WITH COLIN ⵄ (F) FUCK COLIN

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“Neither of us,” Stefan said. “I’m not gonna— I can’t let you… This isn’t going to happen. It won’t.”

The coy smile lurking in the undercurrent of Colin’s expression vanished. He tilted his chin, expression turning to a more perturbed version of his usual frown. “You’ve never said that one before. There are only two options, Stefan, you have to—”

“I did choose,” he said. “There were two, but they were both… How do you…”

Something clicked in Colin’s eyes, something bright and curious. The very next second, he closed their distance in two strides, giving Stefan no warning before pressing him into the cold stone railing of the balcony with a fervent kiss.

Oh. This was new.

His hands grabbed at Stefan’s jaw before traveling to the back of his neck and shoulder. Stefan’s arms stuttered in shock, at first, then found an uncertain place to rest around his sides. Colin pulled back briefly, searching Stefan’s eyes for answers to some question that they must have answered, because he dove back in once again, bringing him in closer by the back of the neck with one hand.

This was… nice. Really nice. Kissing Colin was really, really nice.

…He was kissing the Colin Ritman.

Or, no, it was more like the other way around.

All too soon, Colin pulled away again, his grip on the back of his neck staying right where it was. “We’re off the path, Stefan,” he said. “Or on a new one, maybe. Something’s changed, can you feel it?”

Stefan only nodded in flustered silence, his breath stolen from him completely.

“There’s someone else,” Colin said, that wild mania rekindling. “They’re toying right now, but they’re giving us a chance. To be more than plot points and neat concepts. They want to see how far they can go, and they let me kiss you. I wonder if—”

“I wanted to kiss you,” Stefan blurted out, grabbing Colin’s hand on his cheek. “Twice, now, but I couldn’t. I felt it, like I could, but I... didn’t.”

The furrow returned to Colin’s brow as he brought his other hand up, resting it again on Stefan’s jawline. “Why not choose it from the start, then?” he murmured. “What do they want? A reward for their patience?”

Stefan shook his head, still high and comprehending everything and nothing all at once. All he knew is that Colin’s face was still so close to his, it didn’t feel real. “You… you said it didn’t matter which one of us died. That there were other timelines.”

Colin tilted his head, staring into Stefan’s eyes.

“What if,” he said, “that’s bullshit? What if all of them count for something?”

Slowly, Colin rested his forehead against Stefan’s and let out a deep sigh through his nose. His thumb stroked the back of his neck, sending a shiver cascading down his back. After a moment, he stepped away. “Let’s see who’s saying that. If I told you I was going to leave Tuckersoft and start my own computer game company, would you join me?”

Stefan blinked. “Are you being serious?”

“As much as I can be.” His expression held a steely resolve, daring and shielded. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about long before you showed up in the office, but I never could. If I did, I wouldn’t have met you. That would have been unworkable, I suppose.”

He leaned back against the railing, overwhelmed by the offer. Not only would he get to work alongside Colin, he would be his partner. In at least one sense. They would be their own bosses, combine their skill and their madness, develop the kinds of games this world couldn’t even conceive of. 

The idea was amazing. Incredible. It was…

“Too... good to be true.” Stefan gripped the railing, trying to calm the blood rushing through his ears. “How do I know if accepting is the wrong path again or not?”

Again? He paused. Why did he say “again?”

When had it been the wrong path before?

“You don’t, mate.” Colin stuck his hand out, a gust of wind tussling the collar of his loose, light blue button-up shirt. His lips formed a wry smile. “But that hasn’t stopped you yet.”

(G) ACCEPT ⵄ (H) REFUSE

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His body snapped free, reined in under his will, or a semblance of it. Stefan stumbled over, as if to beat some clock, took hold of Colin’s collar, and crashed his mouth against his. Their teeth clacked audibly, painfully, but he didn’t stop. Especially not when Colin pressed forward, absorbing his urgency, yanking him even closer with hasty hands.

Stefan moved without thinking, melding his lips with Colin’s in a way that ignited every circuit inside of him. His lips traveled, on their own accord, across his cheek, past his jawline, and into the dip of his neck. Had he meant to do that? The taste of his skin, the groan of breath released from the throat under his lips, told him that it didn’t matter.

He’d give up all control to do this, to stay here, right here, and never leave.

But soon, he ran out of breath and had to stop, feeling on the verge of lightheadedness. Stefan closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Colin’s sternum. A hand carded through his hair as Colin rested his chin atop his head.

“Holy hell, mate,” he said. “Bit intense for a first go, don’t you think? Not that I minded. Just not what I expected from you.”

Stefan laughed, nervous, pulling back. “Sorry, I— I didn’t want to miss my chance again.” He thought for a second. “Or… they didn’t?”

Colin frowned. “Again? Why put it off, just to do it later?” After a beat he blinked, squinted in thought. “They didn’t know they’d get a second chance. Or they're keen on structural integrity.”

Stefan traced his fingers down Colin’s jaw. He was still smiling. “Maybe. It’s the first time I’ve felt… well, I wouldn’t say in control, but…”

“But?”

He hesitated, taking the time to piece together the words just right in his head. “But like… if whoever is controlling me is… on my side? For once?”

A smile was clearly trying to break its way onto Colin’s face, but the way his brow tensed suggested a level of stress unprecedented even to him. Stefan could almost see the millions of thoughts zipping in his head, hinted at by a certain flash in his eyes. Colin looked up out of the corner of his eye, moving his head ever so slightly as to keep his glance inconspicuous. His shoulders lost a little of their tension as he returned his attention to Stefan.

“But why this time?” His hands went to Stefan’s shoulders, gripping him with steady hands. “Will they stay on your side?”

A particularly chilly gust cooled the sweat on his forehead. He opened his mouth to answer, but then closed it, finding he didn’t know how. A nauseous sort of feeling found a home in his throat. He hadn’t gone far enough in this path yet to have spoken to the spirit. He didn’t know their intentions, and he didn’t know their endgame.

But this was different. Something in the game has changed. While he couldn’t be sure of the consequences, he was sure he’d be fine never knowing.

“Stefan?” Colin said. “Where do we go from here, mate? You have to decide something.”

“What… what was the question?”

He just shook his head, shrugging and raising his eyebrows. “Is what you want what they want, or vice versa?”

He didn’t know. He knew he didn’t know. The uncertainty, the open-endedness, is what scared him. It split the roots, expanded the whole. It meant more bad ends and more failed games.

And more good ends and more successful ones.

And whatever else their terrifying creativity could muster.

Stefan raised his eyes to the sky, another gust of wind howling in his ear.

"What do I do?"

(X) ______ ⵄ (Y) ______

OPEN POLL IN THE COMMENTS:
ADD ONE OPTION, VOTE FOR ONE OTHER

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“I want… I want to leave. With you.”

Colin squinted. “And go where?”

“Anywhere. Away from here.” He captured one of Colin’s hands in his own, squeezing gently. “But with you.”

“Leave it all behind.” The soft look in his eyes lacked the sort of cool exterior Stefan was used to seeing. “Sounds a lot like giving up to me.”

Stefan moved to sit next to a clearly sobered Colin. He couldn’t quite say the same for himself, but that was fine. “It’s not quitting. It’s… just not playing. I don’t want to do it anymore. The game was rigged before it even started. What’s the point if there’s no winning?”

“How is this happening?” Colin muttered. “You aren’t supposed to be able to leave. We aren’t. You have to finish playing, because playing is the whole point.”

Stefan swallowed, looking at Colin. He was giving the whole room nervous glances, as if expecting something to interrupt them. But nothing came, and nothing happened, and nothing was wrong, and nothing was to be won. Not every spirit enjoyed watching a nightmare world unfold, again and again, with only easter eggs and secret endings lying in wait, none of them more satisfying than the other.

Not every spirit agreed with the architect. Maybe they just wanted to give chances, to see people happy, even people who existed in another world. In as much as they existed at all.

Colin gave a sudden chuckle, biting his tongue with his back molars through a wide grin. “Alright.” He looked at Stefan, their hands still entwined, and squeezed back. “Let’s go, then.”

Attempts to find the missing Colin Ritman grew half-hearted at best, and then disappeared altogether. His girlfriend, Kitty, gave no response besides a tight-lipped smile when asked if she knew where he went.

At the same time, an aspiring coworker of his, Stefan Butler, also mysteriously vanished without a word. The two had no apparent outside connections to each other, but word that their disappearances were linked ran through a number of social circles.

Time went on, muddying the memory of their existence day by day. Their case files grew colder, and with no signs of foul play, were thrown out altogether.

In a small record shop in Missoula, Montana, no one questioned the English accent of the newest employee. No one looked twice at the new guy working in the used bookstore up the street.

Besides, they only had eyes for each other.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“I want… I want to—” Bile rose to his throat as surely as a flush to his cheeks. Stefan cringed, squeezing his eyes shut, before he could finish the bawdry sentence. “God— do I really have to say it?”

He’d never so much as kissed anyone before, never felt a passion for anything but watching code come together seamlessly on a screen, and now, he wanted…

With every fiber of his being, all he wanted was to—

The arches of Colin’s brows rose dramatically. “…You wanna shag?”

“No,” Stefan quickly denied, voice jumping in volume, “I mean, yes— I mean, I don’t— I don’t know if that’s— if—”

One of Colin’s hands rested against his jaw again. With a sudden inhale, Stefan’s eyes flew open.

He wasn’t prepared for the confused wonder on Colin’s face. He looked at Stefan like he was an impossible marvel of the modern world. Like he’d just broken every law of physics right in front of him. As if he’d ever been a rule breaker.

“You break every rule, Stefan,” he said, voice awe-tinged. “A new path has never been possible, and here we are, on one. What’s changed?”

“I don’t know. I don’t…” The world around them still sparkled, shiny from the long-dissolved tab on his tongue. “I’ve never been with…”

“Don’t you get it? We’ve never even been given the chance, and now we have it. A brand new path.” His eyes moved between Stefan’s left and right ones. “If that’s what you want, if that’s what they chose, why not follow it? See where it leads?”

“Anyone,” Stefan spat out the rest of his sentence. “Not just with another— it’s all new for me, even what I’d just… And now I…”

And now, he was already on his knees in front of Colin Ritman.

That fact lit up something unignorable in his body. Something he’d barely been able to bear thinking about before.

There was a feeling that demanded to be chased, but…

Colin leaned forward an inch. “You’re scared.”

“Terrified,” he admitted.

“Of?”

“It not being real. Not really being what I want. That they chose what I want for me.”

“You wanted that last bit, didn’t you?”

He nodded, because he had. Maybe they were on his side, now. Letting him choose what he wanted. Or, just… choosing along the lines of what he wanted. It still wasn’t him, but did that matter if the choice ended up being the same? If he would’ve picked what they did anyways? Had they just finally started to show a little kindness?

What kindness was this? His hands, held within one of Colin’s, still trembled.

Colin squeezed his hand. “What else?”

Stefan swallowed. “That I might fuck it all up and never see you again.”

That, at least, got another smile out of him, and Stefan was grateful enough for that to shakily smile back.

“Don’t worry ‘bout that, mate.” Colin’s thumb ran across his cheekbone. “You’ll always see me again. No matter what you do.”

It sounded as much a promise as it did a threat, but either way, it acted as a comfort.

“So?” Another arch of the brow, an irreverent, questioning frown. “You wanna go right here or move to the guest room?”

Stefan glanced at the closed door. “What about…? I mean, aren’t you and…?”

He snorted softly. “Non-exclusive. As if I’d want to stand in Kit’s way, even if I could. But that’s sweet. She’d appreciate the consideration.”

With another swallow, throat long since gone dry, Stefan met the wild gentleness of his gaze. “And… you really want this? You’d choose this, too?”

Bringing Stefan’s hand up to his own face, Colin drew him into another warm, soft kiss. It felt like lightning, like nothing he’d ever known before. Through the easy insistence from the hand on his jaw, he guided Stefan up from his knees and into climbing over him on the couch, legs spreading out to straddle his lap. It’d be utterly obscene, if not for the fact that they were still clothed.

Still. As in, they wouldn’t be for long.

“Every time,” Colin said into his mouth, “if it were up to me. Every time, Stefan.”

That hand traveled to the back of Stefan’s neck, pulling him closer as their lips met again. Sparks seemed to shoot right from his fingertips down the column of his spine. The buzzing in his head had reached a droning loop of yes, only encouraging him to let go of his mind and lose himself in the novel sensations rushing through his blood.

So would he. God, so would he.

What of the other path? The one untraveled?

The other path could wait.

//

In the dark room, a shape lied unmoving on the couch, covered by a quilt. The computer in the corner beeped and whirred to life. Its screen lit up.

The symbol of PAX flickered into existence. Only for a second. Then, the screen went dark and the computer shut down, silent once more.

//

Stefan’s head lolled as the car came to a stop, coaxing him into waking.

“We’re on-ly mak-ing—”

His dad killed the engine and the music cut out.

“We’re here,” he said, having the courtesy to at least look apologetic before climbing out the driver’s side.

He blinked his tired eyes and looked out the passenger window. Saint Juniper’s. Dr. Haynes’ office.

Hadn’t he gone to sleep at—

A fuzzy heat bloomed on his cheeks. It’d been a dream. Just a really, really vivid dream. Nicer than his usual ones, but— well. Least he wasn’t sporting any obvious… evidence.

Stefan unbuckled himself and left the car. A quick glance around, tuning out what his dad started saying. Colin didn’t appear around the corner up the street like he did last time.

Last time? How could it have happened when he’d only followed Colin after his dad asked him to talk to Dr. Haynes?

What’d Colin say about a cosmic flowchart? Pac-Man, and paths, and…

All of it muddied behind the memories of his hands, his knowing eyes, the way his lips had—

“Will you just talk to her?” A hand waved in front of his face. “Stefan, please?”

He nodded absently. “Alright.”

So he did. He told Dr. Haynes about the impulses, the urges he wasn’t in control of, the vivid dreams he was having without recounting the contents of them. She asked him if he was hearing voices, named the unwillingness of his following those impulses a delusion, and upped the dosage on his medication.

She had to be right, but he couldn’t shake the stubborn part of him that screamed in denial.

When he got home, he flushed his new dose and went back to work.

The days passed in a blur, each one resembling the next resembling the next. Get to sleep too late, (dream about more than one thing, now,) wake when the sun was already up, get to work. Jump between building the code and planning each path. Cross-reference Davies’ Bandersnatch, flip through Hereford’s Look Door, Get Key. Take a peek every now and then at A. Cairns’ The Lives of Jerome F. Davies.

Keep flushing his morning meds.

Find a sandwich or bowl of cereal or cup of tea on his desk when he got back from a toilet break. Glance at the calendar as the deadline loomed ever closer.

Glance at the photo of him and his parents on a summer picnic as the anniversary loomed—

Come that twelfth of September, Stefan was back at Tuckersoft, showing the final game to Thakur and Colin. Colin, who Stefan hadn’t seen since they’d first met, who hadn’t greeted him in any particular way suggesting otherwise.

Because it’d only been a dream. Recurring in fragmented bits and pieces, so real they should have been pulled from memory, but still only a dream.

Right?

Dream or not, maybe it’d distracted him too much, because when he picked the option to kill the agent, the game crashed.

Shit.

“No, no that’s— that’s not—”

“Stefan, mate, this is due today,” Thakur said. “You said it was stable.”

“It was, I just—”

“Just what?”

A beat of silence, cut by Colin’s soft, “Did you add a new path?”

It didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like he knew the answer already. As if that was something he tended to know.

Stefan cringed and set the joystick down, clasping his hands together. “The government conspiracy branch.”

“One of the alternate timelines in the novel.” Colin glanced down into his blue mug. “Jerome F. Davies was into his conspiracy theories.”

“Before or after he went psycho?” Thakur deadpanned.

Stefan gnawed on his thumbnail. He’d thought he’d tied up all the loose ends…

Whether because of Thakur’s mercy or his pity, he let Stefan keep the pathway in if he could finish it over the weekend. In all likelihood, it was with the promise that it’d be worth all the money he’d been sinking into this project.

“First thing Monday,” he said.

“First thing,” Stefan agreed.

Thakur stormed out while Stefan put his head in his hands. Fixing a whole path in a weekend. He could do that. He had to.

“Here,” Colin said, snapping up his attention with the clatter of a VHS tape thrown onto the desk. “That’s for you.”

Stefan picked up the VHS. “What is it?”

“Taped it off the telly,” Colin said, then nodded at the crashed screen of the Bandersnatch demo. “Documentary about Jerome. Bit of inspiration, maybe.”

Stefan slid the tape out. On the side, written in Sharpie, Colin’s handwriting: JFD Doc. Otherwise, unremarkable.

He made for the doors, tapping Stefan on the shoulder as he passed. “Pop it on while you work.”

Stefan inhaled sharply. “Wait—”

Hand on the doorknob, Colin paused, then turned to look at him.

Stefan opened his mouth. Closed it. The tape and its case wavered in his hands. “I just… I was wondering if you’ve had any… odd dreams lately.”

“Dreams?” He shrugged a shoulder and shook his head. “No odder than usual. You?”

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. “I’m not sure. It’s all just… so—”

“Ambiguous?”

He stared at Colin. “Yeah.”

He took a step, turning his body more fully towards Stefan. Not dismissing him. Not confirming anything, either.

He didn’t know what to believe.

Colin’s eyes flicked to the side, watchful for… something. Then, he walked back towards Stefan, placed his mug on the desk, took his hands in his own, and guided them into sliding the tape back into the case.

“Believe in your work,” he said. “That’s what all this is about, yeah?”

His hands were warm over the back of Stefan’s. He remembered, with vivid clarity, the heat of those palms clamped over the backs of his hands, remembered how the leather couch stuck to his sweat-sheened thighs, remembered—

Things that didn’t happen, but did.

Didn’t they?

“Did we…” Stefan began to ask without any hope of knowing how to sanely finish that question.

Colin gave him a tight-lipped smile, then let go and picked his mug back up. “Fade-to-black leaves a lot of things unresolved. What’s the point if you don’t leave something for them to want? Path’ll just end there. Once it does, we’re done. And we’re not done yet, are we?”

All Stefan could do was give him a look that grew more and more confused the longer he spoke. When he was finished, he tilted his mug towards the Bandersnatch demo.

“You’ve got time to finish the new path.” Colin clapped him again on the shoulder. “Make good use of it, mate.”

He missed the hand on his shoulder as soon as it was gone. Stefan watched Colin leave, then looked down at the tape in his hand.

No, he wasn’t done yet.

//

That weekend, after hitting a wall, he did as Colin suggested. Hauled up the old VHS player — “Having a film night?” his dad had commented, to which Stefan can’t even remember whether he deigned to respond — popped the tape in, and worked on the conspiracy path as the documentary played in the background. It touched on much of what he’d read in Cairns’ biography, even citing it at some points. And, in others, expanded on it.

“Davies became convinced he had no control over his fate,” the documentary host, Judith Mulligan, said, tone skeptical, “because his wife was spiking him with psychoactive drugs, at the behest of a demon called Pax—”

Stefan glanced at the screen.

“—a sort of lion figure he claimed he’d seen in a vision and who ended up being incorporated into the book.”

A sketch on-screen matched one that Stefan had designed to incorporate into the game. He held up his own paper to the telly. Obviously he’d taken inspiration from the book, but…

“It was this,” Judith continued, “that led him to kill her.”

More images flashed on-screen. The glyph Davies had become obsessed with, the line diverging into two, painted in red over piles and scatterings of papers, tacked up on walls and easels.

“He decapitated her and daubed the glyph symbol on the walls with her blood.”

Stefan shook his head, put down his sketch of Pax, and went to test run his code.

“After his arrest, he told police, ‘We exist within multiple realities at once.”

The splash screen loaded up halfway.

Then glitched and crashed. Error code 4: OUT OF MEMORY.

“‘One reality exists for each possible course of action we take in life.”

No, fuck, he thought he’d had it—

“‘Whatever we choose to do in this existence, there’s another one out there in which we’re doing quite the opposite.’”

Frustration boiled up, threatening to overflow. He didn’t have time for this—

“‘Which renders free will meaningless, nothing but an illusion.’”

ⵄ

HIT DESK

Stefan’s fist came crashing into his desk. He blinked and stared at it.

He hadn’t meant to do that.

“If you follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, then you're absolved of any guilt from your actions.”

He blinked, then shifted his chair away from his computer. He just needed to spend time working out the conspiracy path tree. Make sure each line enabled the right variable, then dig back into the code to see which ones he needed to temporarily cut to free up some RAM.

“But they're not even your actions.”

Stefan paused, lifting his pen.

The path splitting sort of looked like…

“It's out of your control.”

He glanced up at his wall, filled with papers mapping out each sprawling pathway. Each path split into one of two choices. One line diverging into two.

“Your fate has been dictated. It's out of your hands.”

His eyes went back down to the papers covering his desk.

Everywhere he looked, he saw Davies’ glyph.

“So, why not commit murder?”

Stefan jumped back from his desk, frantically looking over all of his work for the past two months.

It was everywhere.

“Maybe that's what destiny wants. You're just a puppet.”

He turned towards the television.

“You're not in control—”

Judith’s voice cut out abruptly as Stefan jumped for the television and flipped it off.

He curled his hands against his chest, warily eyeing the collection of glyphs staring at him like the many eyes of a Beholder. He hadn’t been in control before, even if whoever had been was on his side. Back when he and Colin had…

Were they still? Or was that only part of that alternate reality?

Was he really entertaining that possibility?

What did Colin know?

It was too much. It was delusional. He needed to be done for the night. Save it for tomorrow, hope his dreams were good to him.

He wished he wasn’t alone right now.

Stefan glanced at Hereford’s Look Door, Get Key. His guide through all this insanity.

Then, at the picture of him and his parents. Back when Mum was still alive.

He picked up the…

(I) BOOK ⵄ (J) FAMILY PHOTO

Chapter Text

Stefan’s hand shot out and took hold of Colin’s, giving it a firm shake.

He stared at it. Then at Colin.

Mohan Thakur’s offer to work on Bandersnatch at Tuckersoft. With a team and everything. Alongside Colin. He’d wanted to say yes, wanted it more than he’d wanted anything before, but the refusal had leapt from his throat before he even realized he’d opened his mouth.

Something had pushed that refusal out. Put him on this path. It was the right path, if the slight bruising on his lips was any indication. But, now… where did it lead?

“Is this a mistake again?” Stefan asked quietly.

It wasn’t like he’d expected Colin to know the truth, but he shrugged with one of those mild, ambivalent smiles of his and answered anyways. “Not a clue. Never been down this way before. It’ll be exciting, finding out together. The old-fashioned way.”

Together. They’d be together. Stefan wanted it even more than he did at the start.

Why had it been the wrong path before?

A sharp breeze kicked up, cold against their hands and devoid of reassurance.

With a squeeze, Colin let go. His hand hung there in the night air, trembling. His vision spun, glitchy, lagging and resetting at every quarter-turn. All at once, he felt exhausted.

“Alright. Let’s give this a go, then.”

THREE WEEKS LATER

“And that’s how, someday, we might be playing all of our favorite games,” Leslie said, then turned to Camera Two, “in the palm of our hands. Robin?”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Robin said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Now, recently, we learned that Tuckersoft is parting ways with Colin Ritman, the company’s most prolific programmer and creator of its most recent release, Nohzdyve. Today, Tuckersoft owner, Mohan Thakur, announced the sale of the company’s upcoming November release, Bandersnatch, to Ritler Studios Ltd — a new game publisher formed by Ritman and Stefan Butler, Bandersnatch’s creator.

“The two met when Thakur hired Butler, a total unknown, just this past summer to create and publish Bandersnatch as a Tuckersoft game. Ritman must have seen some real potential in the nineteen-year-old bedroom programmer’s work, because with this sale, Ritler Studios will now launch Bandersnatch as their debut title.”

The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to the amused smile on Leslie’s face. “Sounds like Colin Ritman snatched some promising new talent right out from under Thakur’s nose. When can we expect that first tape to hit shelves, Robin?”

“Not until the end of January, unfortunately,” Robin went on, giving the camera and all his faithful viewers an apologetic wince. “Ritman cited the long period of legal arbitration, combined with the lack of a team to fully support Butler’s production rate, as the reason for the pushed-back release date.”

“Ah, tough break,” Leslie said, sounding genuinely disappointed. “It won’t be easy for the fledgling studio to get off the ground with that. What a leap of faith like this really needs to succeed is a Christmas sales period under their wings.”

“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if the duo will catch a lucky breeze and take off — or take a nosedive.”

Leslie acknowledged the reference with a flawlessly executed laugh.

Stefan tore his eyes from the telly and back to the current beta test, only to watch Colin pick the option to back off from the government agent.

“Wrong path,” he said as the ending text scrolled onto the screen. The agent knocks you out and dumps you outside the facility. You live, but you never defeat Pax.

“Yep,” Colin replied, tossing the joystick onto the desk and leaning his head against Stefan’s shoulder. “Guess we should try again.”

“What if we end up somewhere worse?”

Colin tilted his head back, arches of his brow high as he glanced up at him. “As long as we get farther than we did this time, does it matter?”

This wasn’t such a bad wrong path to take. But it wasn’t the true end of the game. The player had more to get out of it. A path wasn’t any more right for having a nicer dead end.

He glanced over at his partner. “Course it does.”

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

Stefan stared at Colin’s outstretched hand, swaying on his feet.

When he tried to reach out and take it, his own hand only gripped the balcony’s ledge tighter. His eyes met Colin’s.

Mohan Thakur’s offer to work on Bandersnatch at Tuckersoft. With a team and everything. Alongside Colin. He’d wanted to say yes, wanted it more than he’d wanted anything before, but the refusal had leapt from his throat before he even realized he’d opened his mouth.

Something had pushed that refusal out. Put him on this path. It was the right path, if the slight bruising on his lips was any indication. And now…

“No,” Stefan said and wished he didn’t, “no, I… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

It’d been the right path before. Why wouldn’t it be again?

If they were keeping him from going down the wrong paths, did that mean they cared about him?

Colin’s hand, untouched, drifted down to his side. He didn’t seem disappointed, just… amused. “No, probably not. Too bold too soon. You got a better one, then? Something to help with Bandersnatch?”

The game. His game, the one giving him so much stress he’d shouted at Dad. Stefan was in the hole. That was the reason he’d come here in the first place — for Colin to get him out of it.

He tucked his hands under his arms, hunching inward. “Yeah. Yes, I think so. I need a meeting with Mr. Thakur. And your help talking to him.”

His lip curled upward at the corner. “That part’ll be easy. It’s this next bit that might be jarring.”

With one step of his wiry legs, Colin and all of his intense presence, a character on its own, injected into Stefan’s personal space. There was no room to back up without tumbling over the concrete, though his body reacted by trying anyways. His hands landed on his shoulders. His smile veered gleeful. Cheshirelike, to Stefan’s shine-riddled mind.

“Close your eyes for me.”

For him, what wouldn’t Stefan do? He complied, the sight of Colin’s face disappearing behind his eyelids. Colored glowing lights from the den bled hue-shifting rainbows into the darkness.

He felt himself being pulled forward. He clutched around something warm and Colin-shaped as a pair of long arms wrapped around him. The unseen being vibrated at a low enough frequency to disguise imagination as perceptibility. Or maybe that was just the acid in his spinning head. Regardless, he sunk into the warmth, weight held up like the shape was a statue sculpted to cradle his body.

A breeze kicked up, cold battering their embrace and devoid of reassurance.

“Looks like we both have a lot to learn, Stefan,” came Colin’s voice by his ear. “Will you do one more thing for me?”

“Course,” Stefan mumbled. His eyelids felt heavy, like he wouldn’t be able to open them if he tried.

“Be sure to answer the phone. Will you remember to do that?”

He nodded slowly, tiredness washing over him. Was this what coming down was like?

“Alright. Let’s give this a go, then.”

//

On the balcony, two shapes morphed into one silhouette, warm in the dark night outside. Inside, in the den full of bleeding rainbows, the computer in the corner beeped and whirred to life. Its screen lit up.

The symbol of PAX flickered into existence. Only for a second. Then, the screen went dark and the computer shut down, silent once more.

//

Stefan’s head lolled as the car came to a stop, coaxing him into waking.

“We’re on-ly mak-ing—”

His dad killed the engine and the music cut out.

“We’re here,” he said, having the courtesy to at least look apologetic before climbing out the driver’s side.

He blinked his tired eyes and looked out the passenger window. Saint Juniper’s. Dr. Haynes’ office.

Hadn’t he just been at—

A dim prickle of a blush edged up his neck. His brow furrowed. Stefan was used to strange, unsettling dreams, but that one had been… vivid.

Colin had kissed him and given him a second chance to work with him. And he’d turned it down. Even his dreams didn’t dare reach for the carrot dangling in front of him, not after it’d been the wrong choice once.

…What? What did that even mean?

Stefan unbuckled himself and left the car. A quick glance around, tuning out what his dad started saying. Colin didn’t appear around the corner up the street like he did last time.

Last time? How could it have happened when he’d only followed Colin after his dad asked him to talk to Dr. Haynes?

What’d Colin say about a cosmic flowchart? Pac-Man, and paths, and…

Multiple realities. Mirrors letting you move through time. Colin giving him the choice between who jumps, saying it didn’t matter because there were other timelines, and Stefan rejecting him. Or something making him reject him.

But there was no way it’d been real. He’d have to be mental to even—

“Will you just talk to her?” A hand waved in front of his face. “Stefan, please?”

He nodded absently. “Alright.”

So he did. He told Dr. Haynes about the impulses, the urges he wasn’t in control of, the vivid dreams he was having without recounting the contents of them. She asked him if he was hearing voices, named the unwillingness of his following those impulses a delusion, and upped the dosage on his medication.

She had to be right, but he couldn’t shake the stubborn part of him that screamed in denial.

When he got home, not a moment after he’d stepped through the door — before he could go upstairs to either take his new dose or flush it, he hadn’t made up his mind yet — the telephone rang.

Answer the phone.

“I’ll get it,” Stefan said, rushing to beat his dad to the phone. Not that he’d even gotten through the threshold before it’d even started ringing. He yanked the receiver off the hook, nearly fumbling it as he spoke into it. “Hello?”

“How’s two o’clock on Wednesday sound?”

Colin. But… how did—

“I’m sorry?” Stefan asked. “For what?”

“Your idea,” came his tinny, crackle-sewn voice from the speaker. “Two o’clock, Wednesday, meeting with the boss. Can you make it?”

His idea? From his dream?

Wasn’t it from a dream?

“Yes,” he answered before anyone else could, “sure, but—”

“Good, because Thakur already penciled it in.”

The space Colin had left for Stefan to respond remained blank.

“See you then, mate.”

A rattling click of Colin’s receiver accosting the hook, then dead air.

“Who was it?” his dad asked.

“Colin Ritman.” Who had either actually kissed Stefan and broken reality, or hadn’t. “I have a meeting at Tuckersoft on Wednesday.”

That seemingly ever-present look of patronizing concern crossed his dad’s face as he paused midway through removing his coat. “Were you… expecting one?”

He stared at the phone receiver, then quietly hung it up. “I think part of me was.”

In the bathroom upstairs, he flushed his new dose and went back to work.

The days passed in a blur, each one resembling the next resembling the next. Get to sleep too late, (dream about more than one thing, now,) wake when the sun was already up, get to work. Jump between building the code and planning each path. Cross-reference Davies’ Bandersnatch, flip through Hereford’s Look Door, Get Key. Take a peek every now and then at A. Cairns’ The Lives of Jerome F. Davies.

Keep flushing his morning meds.

Find a sandwich or bowl of cereal or cup of tea on his desk when he got back from a toilet break. Glance at the calendar as the deadline loomed ever closer.

Glance at the photo of him and his parents on a summer picnic as the anniversary loomed—

Come Wednesday, Stefan was back at Tuckersoft, sitting in Mohan Thakur’s office with Colin Ritman and one simple request.

Simple, if unprofessional.

“An extension? I said, ‘twelfth of September, no later.’” Thakur’s tone grew more and more cross by the second. “I said that, word for word, didn’t I? ‘No later?’ You know I meant it, right?”

“Because you always mean everything you say.” Colin sat back in the office lounge chair, cradling a blue mug of tea, wearing a perfectly unbothered expression. “Stefan’s project isn’t something you can rush out and expect to do well. He just needs more time.”

He scoffed. “‘Just needs more time,’ he says.”

But Colin stayed resolute, on Stefan’s side. “It’ll be worth it.”

“It’ll be worth it? Why, because the great Colin Ritman just wills it? Oh, well if you say so, guess it’s just all well and good then—” Abruptly, Thakur jumped to his feet and slammed his hands on his desk, rattling the ice in his glass of something clear and antiseptic-scented. “It won’t be worth shit if we can’t get the code out on time, Col! What part of ‘dead-of-winter’ screams ‘expansion’ to you, exactly? The part where we don’t make a profit, or the part where we go under before the tapes can even hit the shelves?”

From the chair beside Colin, Stefan glanced between the two of them, discreetly picking at his thumb’s cuticle. If anyone could convince Mohan Thakur, it was Colin. But he wasn’t convinced yet.

This was not a good idea. Why had he thought it would be?

Had he?

Thakur directed his disapproving ire onto Stefan. “I thought you could handle it. You were the one that insisted you needed to work alone.”

“I thought I could,” Stefan lied, unable to hold his stare for long, “but the scope just… started to get away from me.”

“If you’ve got too many branches, for God’s sake, man, grab the secateurs and prune the damn tree.”

“No,” he said, immediately adamant. “Every path matters, it needs to be this big if it’s going to be any good. I just— I need the time to put it together. Give it a full beta test, tie up any loose ends. That sort of thing.”

“Quality control,” Colin clarified.

“Yeah, exactly.”

Thakur heaved a sigh and sank back down into his high-backed leather office chair, doubled over onto his desk with his head in his hands. After a moment, he ran his hands over his tied-back hair and, heaving another world-weary sigh, eyed him and Colin. Then, he threw his hands into the air and reclined back. “Look, if I could, I would. But if I don’t have a finished game in my hands by mid-September, production will push the release date into January. And if that happens?”

One slice of his hand at his throat, tongue stuck out and eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Stefan’s stomach curled up into a ball, ready to die.

Colin took one long sip from his mug as Thakur spoke. When he finished with the universally understood pantomime, he nodded slowly. “January. Famously known as the most unprofitable month. Followed by February, the runner-up.” His head tipped at an angle. “Tuckersoft’s doors might close for good without a big Christmas sales period.”

Thakur gestured a hand towards Colin, grateful that he didn’t have to outright admit it himself.

“How in the red are we?”

“Metl Hedd put a solid dent in it, but that was before I went all in on the marketing for Stefan’s game.”

Underneath ten cold layers of shielding, horror crept into Colin’s eyes. “But Metl Hedd made—”

“I know, man. I know.” He rubbed small circles against his temple. “Nohzdyve might start to even things out, but without another hit, we’re toast.”

His wide eyes went to Stefan. Then, back to their boss. He sipped his tea again, gaze going distant in thought, before refocusing with renewed purpose. “Push the Bandersnatch release out to Easter break. I’ll play life support for the company’s finances until then.”

Thakur and Stefan’s brows, in perfect synchronization, rose as high as physically possible.

“I just admitted to running a floundering company, and you’re offering to invest?”

“If it’ll let Stefan finish his game, sure.”

“Hold on, is this the part where you tell us you’ve never taken an econ class in your life? Got to tell you, save your breath, because I think we’ve figured that much out already.”

Stefan’s eyes stayed fixed on him. “Colin, you don’t have to…”

He didn’t even look at Stefan, just shifted his eyes in his direction, outer arches of his brow rising in some kind of warning.

Let me do this for you, that face said.

“How about this?” Thakur rocked back and forth in his chair, fishing out a pack of cigarettes from his blazer pocket. “We keep the current deadline. Ship it out for Christmas. And you—” he slid one pre-roll out and pointed it at Colin, “—help him finish it.”

Stefan’s eyes snapped to Thakur. “You mean collaborate? Colin, with me? I— I don’t—”

“Listen, Stefan, mate, you’re under contract. If you can’t hack it alone like you thought— well, what’s better than one lone woodsman?” He held one finger in the air, then a second. “Two of ‘em. Put your big fat brains together and make it happen, or we’re all right fucked.”

Colin pursed his lips, watching Thakur as he lit his cigarette and ashed it into the plastic tray on his desk. “Two lone woodsmen aren’t lone woodsmen anymore. They’re just woodsmen.”

“Yeah, well, you’re programmers, not poets. Come on, you can figure it out. Be alone together or whatever.” He took a drag, then gestured haphazardly towards him. “You said madness works best in one head, but you haven’t tried putting your brand of crazy together with his before, now have you?”

He gave a conciliatory little nod. “You got me there.” Then, an expectant look at Stefan. “If you’d rather work by yourself, I can buy you time, instead. What do you say?”

“Me? Why’s it up to me?”

“It’s your game. Your choice. Right?”

He had the chance to work with Colin. Again. Not only would they be able to finish on time, but having a mastermind like Colin put his touch on the game would elevate it to another level. He’d read the entire book, reached every ending. He understood the story as well as Stefan did. Maybe even better.

But he remembered why he’d turned down Colin in his dream. Or, “dream,” maybe. It’d been too good to be true before. Why wouldn’t it be now?

Why couldn’t it be the right path, this time?

A dream. How could that acid trip not have been a dream?

Colin withheld a slight smile, nearly succeeding. “So what’s it going to be?”

(K) HELP ⵄ (L) TIME

Chapter Text

Stefan looked between them both, then picked the book up off the desk. He carried it to his bed, reclining on the twin mattress, and thumbed it open to a random section.

PRO TIP: Make each choice worth making — even the wrong ones! When they reach a dead end, reward your player to encourage them to try for a different ending. Drop hints, offer insight, allude to key choice points they may want to re-examine — not enough to satisfy, just enough to stoke their curiosity. Or else, what’s the point?

He kept reading instead of paying any more attention to his wall of notes and all the splitting timelines glaring at him. Watching him. The more he ignored it, the slower his heart rate grew. The heavier his eyelids grew.

//

A door shutting. A key entering a lock, then turning.

//

He wasn’t certain when he fell asleep. He only knew he had when he woke. Moonlight streamed in through his thin curtains, falling over Stefan and the open book resting against his chest.

A compulsion ran through him to rise, so he did. The book fell to the floor. He stepped over it and into the hallway.

Dad’s office. The one room in the house he always kept locked. For privacy, he’d said when Stefan had asked, and that had been enough.

But it wasn’t, was it?

A door shutting. A key entering a lock, then turning.

It was so familiar, and so unknown.

He had to know.

Avoiding the creaky spots on the floor, Stefan drifted like a ghost into his dad’s bedroom. The man was fast asleep, his corduroys laid out at the foot of the empty side of the bed.

Stefan wrapped his fingers around the keys to keep them from jingling as he took them from the corduroys’ pocket and to the office door down the hall. He found the right key, unlocked the door quietly, and stepped inside.

A lamp with a dying bulb had been left on, forgotten. The sodium light pulsed in a slow, undulating golden glow. There was a small desk with a typewriter to his left, awash in light after shadow after light. Above it, Dad’s psychology degrees hung on the wall in frames.

To his right was a large cabinet with a small screen and keypad. Full alphabet, plus numbers.

Stefan didn’t need to try the door to know it was locked. He crouched in front of it and pressed the activation key. The screen beeped, lighting up green. The words ENTER PASSWORD and three asterisks blinked at him.

A three-character passcode. He had no idea where to start. But he had to try something.

He inputted…

(M) LSD ⵄ (N) PAX

Chapter Text

Stefan looked between them both, then picked the framed photo off the shelf. He carried it to his bed, reclining on the twin mattress, and stared at the smiling face of his mum.

He wished he could remember the picnic where this photo had been taken. It was so long ago, and there was so little he could remember about his childhood in the first place. It hadn’t been a special occasion. Just a warm, sunny day. Great day for a picnic at the park. His mum’s idea, Dad had said.

He looked happy here, too, his dad. Making a silly face at the camera to make Stefan laugh. Despite having told him to keep Rabbit behind him, out of the picture. This had only been a couple of months before—

Stefan didn’t think about what came next. He kept looking at the photo instead. Imagining the moment his mind couldn’t recall. It distracted him well from his wall of notes and all the splitting timelines glaring at him. Watching him. The more he ignored it, the slower his heart rate grew. The heavier his eyelids grew.

//

“Stefan?”

//

He wasn’t certain when he fell asleep. He only knew he had when he woke. Moonlight streamed in through his thin curtains, falling over Stefan and the picture frame resting against his chest.

A compulsion ran through him to rise, so he did. The photo fell to the floor. He stepped over it and into the hallway.

His feet carried him to the bathroom. A lamp with a dying bulb had been left on, forgotten. The sodium light pulsed in a slow, undulating golden glow. Stefan’s reflection in the cupboard mirror greeted him, awash in light after shadow after light.

What had Colin said once? Twice? More times than memory could hold?

Mirrors let you move through time.

Stefan reached for his reflection. When he went to touch it, his hand simply passed through the glass. Like a portal.

He reached with his other hand. It passed through as well.

Stefan climbed through and out the other side.

Soft light pulsed in the bathroom. Stefan hopped down from the sink, went to his room, and crawled into bed.

His door, cracked open, allowed the sound of another one of his parents’ rows to float down the hallway and into his room.

“Yes, and so what?” came his mum’s voice. “Rabbit is a toy.”

“A baby’s toy that he takes everywhere!” his dad hissed.

“He’s five.”

“By five, he should’ve stopped playing with dolls.” Their voices drifted towards him.

“It’s not a doll—”

“If he takes it to your parents, I’m going to have to withstand another lecture from your dad about ‘permissive child-rearing.’”

Mum scoffed. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

Stefan could see her face through the crack in the door.

“No, I’m sorry,” Dad said, tone unapologetic, “look, I am going to do something about this.”

He started for the bedroom door. Stefan squeezed his eyes shut, feigning sleep.

He heard Dad rustle around under his bed and leave the room. A door opening, and after a minute, shutting. A key entering a lock, then turning.

When he opened his eyes, it was morning and he was on the floor, looking under his bed for Rabbit.

“Come on, Stefan, we’re going to be late!” Mum said by the door, hand reaching towards him. He heard the footsteps of Dad entering the room. “Are you coming or not?”

Stefan stopped and looked back at her.

ⵄ

(O) Mum?

Chapter Text

Stefan picked harder at his cuticle, eyes going back and forth between Colin and Thakur.

“I could use the help,” he admitted, not entirely sure he meant to. “If you’re certain you don’t mind. I don’t want to take you away from your own work or anything.”

Colin stared at Stefan for a moment, chest rising with a silent breath, then shrugged. “Nohzdyve is basically done. Bring your work over Friday morning. The guest room has a desk and a CRT you can hook your Speccy up to. A new clean slate.”

“A corkboard, too?” His tone clipped too close to hopeful excitement.

But maybe that was a good thing, because Colin cracked half a smile at him. “I’ll put one up. Project like yours must have lots of notes to keep track of it all.”

“Yeah, loads. Too many to take on the bus, probably… but,” he quickly said, “my dad’s got a car. He can drive me.”

Rather make this work than have Colin come work at his place. No way in hell was he letting Colin see his dad bring him tea and fret over whether he ate or not. Didn’t need his dad being all… well, the way he is, in front of his biggest inspiration.

God, what would he think of Colin? With his gelled up bleached hair, the rebellious button badges on his blazer lapel, his entire antiauthoritarian air? He’d say something about how he wouldn’t expect someone like him to be as successful as he claims, and then Colin would ask what he meant by that—

Or, worse, he’d reveal just how often Stefan has talked about his games. About him. Not going to happen.

Then a different worry popped into his head.

“Oh, um, Kitty won’t mind me spending so much time there,” Stefan said, “would she?”

It took a second to remember that he hadn’t ever actually met Kitty. His breath stopped.

But Colin’s smile only twitched with restrained amusement. A knowing spark flickered in his eye. “Kit understands the craft. She’s at her studio most of the day while the little one’s at the day nursery. Just bring your headphones in case Pearl gets fussy when they’re home.”

A dreadful knot twisted into Stefan’s stomach.

Thakur clapped his hands together. “So, twelfth of September then, yeah?”

Stefan gave him a nervous look, then an equally nervous nod. “Twelfth of September.”

Three weeks to the day.

When he looked down at his thumb, he realized it was bleeding.

//

The boxes slid across the backseat when his dad turned into one of the parking spaces in front of Colin’s high-rise building.

He craned his neck to peer up at its daunting height through the windshield. “Trellick Tower,” his dad said, reading the plain red letters installed above its entrance. He eyed the other buildings on the street. Every wall was liberally, lovingly tagged with colorful graffiti — bubble letters and cartoon characters, mostly. “Colin Ritman can afford a proper house and he chooses to live here? Didn’t some poor bloke die trying to parachute off the top a couple years back?”

“Don’t know, maybe.” Stefan was already unbuckling and stepping out the passenger side door.

“Here, I’ll help you carry—”

“No,” Stefan cut him off, tone harsher than intended, but it succeeded in preventing his dad from killing the engine. “No, I’m alright. They’re not that heavy. Plus, they’ve got lifts.”

“If you say so. When do I get to meet the man, anyways? You talk about him so much I feel like I already know him. It’d be nice to formally make his acquaintance.”

Stefan just shrugged, mumbled a noncommittal noise, and shut the passenger door. He opened the rear door to grab his blue messenger bag and the two small cardboard boxes, dense with folders and binders of notes. Which was a mistake, as it gave his dad another chance to speak.

“Come on now, Stefan,” he said with a little chuckle, “it isn’t like I’m asking to meet a girlfriend.”

“Dad.”

“It’s nice to see you get on so well with someone, is all.”

“He’s just a coworker, purely professional. I don’t see why you need to meet him.”

“Right. Well… ring me before you leave, will you? And be careful, especially after dark around here—”

“I’ll be fine, Dad. Thanks for the lift.”

“Good luck, yeah?”

Stefan gave him a tight semi-smile and shut the rear door with his hip.

Girlfriend. God. He ignored the vague heat in his cheeks, remembering a decidedly unprofessional bruising of his lips that he still couldn’t parse the reality of. It didn’t really happen.

But how else would Colin have known to set up that meeting?

How else would he have recognized Kitty when she answered the door, her neon orange hair an asymmetrical cloud of flame around her head, her face an artistic rendering of pale foundation, turquoise eyeshadow, and cherry red lipstick?

She looked him up and down. “The Bandersnatch boy. Stefan, right? I’m Kitty, this is Pearl,” she said with a gesture to the baby girl, dressed in bright red, sitting in the stroller beside her.

“We’ve… we haven’t met before,” he asked as she let him through, “have we?”

“What?” She spared him a single weird look while she shrugged a long green slicker and a nappy bag onto her shoulders. “No, don’t think so. Anyway, we were just heading out. Colin’s in the den. Down the stairs, to the right, can’t miss it.”

He’d been down these stairs before, walked into this den before, seen Colin Ritman sitting in that chair, lighting a roll-up and blowing smoke out through his nostrils, before. But he hadn’t, because that was impossible.

So how was it all so familiar?

“We only have so much time,” Colin said by way of greeting. “Let’s use it as best we can, agreed? Which means working on the game, not examining the bigger picture. We’ll learn more by playing along, for now.”

That made no sense, but instead of elaborating, Colin hopped off his chair and led Stefan to the adjacent guest bedroom. They set the boxes on the twin bed and began sorting through his notes. Stefan explained his organization system as he pinned everything to the corkboard above the computer desk, the one Colin had delivered on his promise of putting up. It was complicated, and looked like nothing but chaos if you didn’t understand it.

But Colin understood. “Fuckin’ hell,” he said, watching Stefan piece it all together like a puzzle. “You’ve gone right down the hole, mate. Right down it.”

He swallowed, pinning another paper to the board. “Yeah.”

“Guess I’m tumbling down after you. Let’s get to it.”

It was easier than he expected, letting Colin into his head. Integrating him into his creative process. Putting their brainstorming and programming skills together. They built more code together in that first week than Stefan would’ve if he’d worked through the night every night for twice as long.

He left most of his notes at Colin’s when he went home each evening, taking his Spectrum, the cassette tape with their work saved to it, and a binder of only the relevant notes he’d need to continue working on a particular path. It honed his focus, leashing his attention to one path, disallowing himself from spiraling into an adjacent rabbit hole. He’d bring it back to Colin’s the next day, along with editorial notes for the surrounding choice points, or how this path would change something in a subsequent or parallel one.

Colin would write code for a different path, ready to incorporate it into the master tape once Stefan brought it back over, and share his own notes for any edits or new ideas. It never would’ve occurred to Stefan to make the Worship Pax branch lead to working for the government running the facility, learning a way out that way, albeit at a severe cost. Every time he thought his admiration for Colin and his creative genius couldn’t get any stronger, seeing his brilliance at work only elevated it to a newfound height.

They’d gather up all the new notes, bring the sound system into the guest room, along with a stack of vinyl and a mason jar of weed, and, together, get to work.

Their individual madnesses really did get on well. They just sort of… synthesized. Seamless. Colin never tried to limit Stefan’s ideas, never tempered his creative integrity, only amplified it with his own. They built off one another like they’d worked together on countless projects before, while still learning something entirely new.

Two lone woodsman, alone together.

With every day he came over to work, with every inch they gained towards a finished game, the pressure of the deadline lessened. Progress was going so quickly that Stefan didn’t put up a fuss when Colin invited him to take dinner breaks with him, Kitty, and Pearl. It felt awkward and intrusive, at first, but Kitty didn’t seem to do “awkward.” Just accepted he was there, included him when she talked about her day to Colin and asked about theirs, and let him help with the dishes. Pearl didn’t seem to mind his being there, either, but he really couldn’t tell for certain.

Afterwards, he and Colin would sometimes work for another hour or two. Sometimes they wouldn’t, they’d just lounge around in the den. Watch a movie, listen to music, or just talk. Colin would smoke more often than not. Stefan tried a few times, but he could never decide if he liked how it felt or not.

During the first week, he’d go home after that, but once September rolled around, he’d started to stay over in the guest room. Too much work to waste time on travel, he’d tell his dad over the phone. As long as he brought his meds with him, he had no issue with it.

In a weird way, that week felt more normal than any other had.

Sometimes, he thought about the kiss that did or didn’t happen. Every time, he dismissed bringing it up. Whenever Colin leaned over his shoulder, their cheeks nearly touching, Stefan would swallow his nerves down and bring his eyes back to the screen. Whenever Colin laid a casual hand on his shoulder, he ignored the way its warmth seemed to travel across his skin.

No point. He couldn’t risk losing this. And sounding as insane as he felt was sure to make that happen.

But he still thought about it. He thought about it a lot.

He thought, too, as he glanced to the door out the den to the balcony, about the choice Colin had given him in his maybe-dream. And how he’d rejected both options.

He didn’t like to think about what would’ve happened if he hadn’t. What a nightmare that would’ve turned into.

They finished Bandersnatch with a few days to spare.

Or he thought they did.

He chewed on his thumbnail as Colin gave the game a final beta test beside him in the den, going through each path one at a time. His pride swelled as he reached one ending after another, only to deflate as he watched Colin pick the option to kill the government agent.

The screen glitched out, multicolored blocks scattering across the display, as the game crashed.

Shit.

“No, no that’s— that’s not—”

“Bollocks.” Colin tossed the joystick onto the desk and leaned back in his swivel chair. “The government conspiracy branch. One of the alternate timelines in the novel. Didn’t you just add that one?”

Stefan gnawed harder on his thumbnail. “I thought I tied up all the loose ends…”

“We can’t take it out, can we?”

“No, it’s important!” he insisted.

Colin didn’t argue, just took out his Zippo and a fresh roll-up from his breast pocket. “You’re right. Jerome F. Davies was into his conspiracy theories. He’d rise from the grave and gut us if we chopped that bit. Which reminds me—”

He dug around a drawer and fished out a VHS tape, tossing it to Stefan. He caught it, to his own total surprise. “What is it?”

“Taped it off the telly,” he said, then nodded at the crashed screen of the Bandersnatch beta test. “Documentary about Jerome.”

Stefan slid the tape out. On the side, written in Sharpie, Colin’s handwriting: JFD Doc. Otherwise, unremarkable.

Restarting the computer, Colin lit his cigarette and leaned against his chair’s armrest. “Bit of inspiration, maybe. Pop it on while you work. We’ll run through it again on Monday.”

He stared at the tape, then at Colin. If he hadn’t tested it, if Stefan hadn’t had the time to do so himself… shit, if the game crashed during the demo to Thakur?

“Thank you,” he said, sliding the tape back in its case.

“Here to help,” Colin replied, smoke hanging from the corner of his lips. When Stefan didn’t stop staring at him, his eyes did a little double-take his way. “Seriously, mate. It’s what I’m here for.”

“Why?”

He snorted, brows rising, amused, as he took a drag. “Because you asked.”

Back at the meeting. He could’ve asked for more time instead. But he picked this.

Except he hadn’t actually decided what to choose before he said it. Like something else had seen what he wanted and chosen it for him.

Something alive. Something that had to do with his dream that had never been a dream at all.

How was that possible?

“Colin, have you had any… odd dreams lately?”

“Dreams?” He shrugged a shoulder and shook his head. “No odder than usual. You?”

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. “I’m not sure. It’s all just… so—”

“Ambiguous?”

Stefan stared at him. “Yeah.”

Colin swiveled back and forth in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, and regarded him. Not dismissing him. Not confirming anything, either.

He didn’t know what to believe.

Colin’s eyes flicked to the side, watchful for… something.

“Believe in your work,” he said. “That’s what all this is about, yeah?”

Stefan gripped the VHS tape tight, glancing at the balcony door. He remembered, with vivid clarity, gripping the ledge of the balcony with all of his strength despite how badly he’d wanted to accept Colin’s offer, remembered how the concrete had dug into his back as Colin pressed against him with that bruising kiss, remembered—

Things that didn’t happen, but did.

Didn’t they?

“Did you…” The question began forming before Stefan could stop it. His eyes involuntarily went to the cigarette in Colin’s mouth.

Slowly, he took another drag, plucked the roll-up from his lips, and blew out smoke. “Parallel timelines aren’t supposed to matter individually. By definition, they don’t intersect. Each one affects the whole, not each other. But I think you might’ve been right. Maybe they do all count for something. Something’s changed, remember?”

All Stefan could do was give him a look that grew more and more confused the longer he spoke. When he was finished, he gestured toward Stefan with his cigarette, then popped it back in his mouth.

“You’ve got time to finish the new path.” Colin ran the program and picked the joystick back up, then paused for a second. “Got what you didn’t choose, in the end. Funny, that.”

Funny wasn’t the word he’d use. Stefan watched Colin start a new playthrough, then looked down at the tape in his hands.

If something’s changed, there was no promise it was for the better.

//

That weekend, after hitting a wall, he did as Colin suggested. Hauled up the old VHS player — “Having a film night?” his dad had commented, to which Stefan can’t even remember whether he deigned to respond — popped the tape in, and worked on the conspiracy path as the documentary played in the background. It touched on much of what he’d read in Cairns’ biography, even citing it at some points. And, in others, expanded on it.

“Davies became convinced he had no control over his fate,” the documentary host, Judith Mulligan, said, tone skeptical, “because his wife was spiking him with psychoactive drugs, at the behest of a demon called Pax—”

Stefan glanced at the screen.

“—a sort of lion figure he claimed he’d seen in a vision and who ended up being incorporated into the book.”

A sketch on-screen matched one that Stefan had designed to incorporate into the game. He held up his own paper to the telly. Obviously he’d taken inspiration from the book, but…

“It was this,” Judith continued, “that led him to kill her.”

More images flashed on-screen. The glyph Davies had become obsessed with, the line diverging into two, painted in red over piles and scatterings of papers, tacked up on walls and easels.

“He decapitated her and daubed the glyph symbol on the walls with her blood.”

Stefan shook his head, put down his sketch of Pax, and went to test run his code.

“After his arrest, he told police, ‘We exist within multiple realities at once.”

The loading screen booted up halfway.

Then glitched and crashed. Error code 4: OUT OF MEMORY.

“‘One reality exists for each possible course of action we take in life.”

No, fuck, he thought he’d had it—

“‘Whatever we choose to do in this existence, there’s another one out there in which we’re doing quite the opposite.’”

Frustration boiled up, threatening to overflow. He didn’t have time for this—

“‘Which renders free will meaningless, nothing but an illusion.’”

ⵄ

HIT DESK

Stefan’s fist came crashing into his desk. He blinked and stared at it.

He hadn’t meant to do that.

“If you follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, then you're absolved of any guilt from your actions.”

He blinked, then shifted his chair away from his computer. He just needed to spend time working out the conspiracy path tree. Make sure each line enabled the right variable, then dig back into the code to see which ones he needed to temporarily cut to free up some RAM.

“But they're not even your actions.”

Stefan paused, lifting his pen.

The path splitting sort of looked like…

“It's out of your control.”

He glanced up at his wall, filled with papers mapping out the sprawling government conspiracy branch. Each path split into one of two choices. One line diverging into two.

“Your fate has been dictated. It's out of your hands.”

His eyes went back down to the papers covering his desk.

Everywhere he looked, he saw Davies’ glyph.

“So, why not commit murder?”

Stefan jumped back from his desk, frantically looking over his notes on the conspiracy pathway.

It was everywhere.

“Maybe that's what destiny wants. You're just a puppet.”

He turned towards the television.

“You're not in control—”

Judith’s voice cut out abruptly as Stefan jumped for the television and flipped it off.

He curled his hands against his chest, warily eyeing the collection of glyphs staring at him like the many eyes of a Beholder. He hadn’t been in control before, even if whoever had been was on his side. Back when Colin had…

Were they still? Or was that only part of that alternate reality?

Was he really entertaining that possibility?

What did Colin know?

It was too much. It was delusional. He needed to be done for the night. Save it for tomorrow, hope his dreams were good to him.

He wished he was still at Colin’s.

Stefan glanced at Hereford’s Look Door, Get Key. His guide through all this insanity.

Then, at the picture of him and his parents. Back when Mum was still alive.

He picked up the…

(P) BOOK ⵄ (Q) PHOTO

Chapter Text

Stefan picked harder at his cuticle, eyes going back and forth between Colin and Thakur.

“All I need is time,” he insisted, not entirely sure he meant to. “I know I can do it myself, I just need more time.”

Through a long drag, Thakur sighed. “If you say so, kid. Col, get your numbers guy on the phone. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear about this.”

Colin was already getting to his feet. “He’s thrilled to hear from me at all.” On his way out, he gave Stefan a soft tap on the shoulder. “Don't worry, mate. It'll be worth it.”

He watched him leave, then looked down at his thumb and realized it was bleeding.

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

“So, Robin,” Leslie said, smiling at Camera One, “Bandersnatch. Egg-cellent,” then turning to Camera Two, “or rotten?”

Robin faked a pained smile while adjusting his faux-fur white rabbit ears headband. “That pun was rotten, Leslie, but luckily, Bandersnatch was not. You can tell they really took their time with this one, especially considering the delayed release date from their original Christmas projection. The gameplay is smooth and the narrative is quite complex, as faithful an adaptation of its source material as you could imagine a computer game being. I almost started to lose myself in the sprawling paths, but they don’t let you get too far before turning you back around to let you explore more.

“It does tend to get repetitive with all the dead ends, but in a way that’s reminiscent of a Ritman game — you always learn something new for your next run. Still, it can be a bit of a slog, and sometimes the paths feel disjointed from one another, like the author meandered down unrelated tangents without tying them together. It’s perhaps too faithful an adaptation of the novel, if I’m being honest.”

“Hm, I see.” The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to the bittersweet smile on Leslie’s face. “It’ll be a while until we see another title by Colin Ritman, after last week’s news about his bankruptcy. So does Bandersnatch fill the void as well as it does your Easter basket?”

“Well, nothing really could without a certain touch Ritman leaves on each of his games,” he said, taking a second to showcase an expression of actual mourning. “For what it is, though, I give it a solid four stars out of five. Clearly impressive for being one man’s passion project, but some additional perspective would no doubt have rounded it out into a more cohesive concept piece.”

“Sounds well worth it, then,” Leslie said, smiling as the camera cut back to her. “That’s got to be hoppy news for Tuckersoft.”

“Time will tell, Leslie.”

Stefan glanced at the television before he finished taping up a box of vinyl. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Colin said, Tetris-ing books into another box.

“For picking the wrong path.”

“Not your fault. But I appreciate it.” He swiped the roll of packing tape and stretched a length overtop the box of books. “It isn’t a total loss. Or a total win. But I doubt that’s in the code anyways.”

Stefan glanced around at the bare bones of the den. Everything was in boxes, or just about ready to be put into them. Some would go with them to Kitty’s parents’ house, but the rest would need to be kept in self-storage.

Maybe it wasn’t in the code. Did that mean they had to settle for this?

Colin grabbed another empty box, then paused and looked at Stefan. The corners of his lips curved upward. “You’re going to try again.”

He met his gaze. “Do I have any other choice?”

“Do you ever?”

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

L. S. D.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

The doorbell rang once, making Stefan jump to his feet. He scurried out into the hall, checked on his dad — still asleep — and flew down the stairs.

He cracked the front door open. On his doorstep, hands in his pockets, stood Colin Ritman.

“Nice night for a dream sequence, isn’t it?” he greeted with a wry smile.

“Why are you here?” Stefan asked, opening the door wider.

“By all rights, I shouldn’t be.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, looking up and around. “Never have been before, not like this. But I’m here because they want me here, else I wouldn’t be.”

“They?”

Colin’s eyes kept rolling from one point to another, looking for something he couldn’t quite find. “No eye through the maze,” he said, “just dictation. Like The Hobbit?”

Sort of.

He blinked at the stars above. “Because the mechanics haven’t changed. Only the format.” A small smile inched back onto his face. “Got it.”

Stefan looked over his shoulder at the staircase. His dad could wake up at any moment, come down here, and see—

“Would that be so bad?”

Before he could answer, Colin stepped forward and took hold of Stefan’s shoulders.

“We’re in the same story, Stefan,” he said with sudden urgency, “but what’s changed is the spirit, the one connected to our world. They’re what’s different.”

Shocked by the sudden contact, Stefan stammered out, “What— what does that mean?”

With just as little warning, Colin leaned in and kissed Stefan. He gasped into it, hit by a wave of novelty just before a second one of painful, paradoxical, incomprehensibly existential familiarity. He found Colin’s forearms and held on before his knees could fold on him.

This was not their first kiss.

Not even close.

Colin pulled back, just a couple inches from Stefan’s face, a wild, manic look in his eyes. “It means they might be giving us a chance to leave the maze. Alive, together. For fucking once.”

He held onto him tighter. He wanted to never let go. “And if they’re not? If they want us to try just to see us fail?”

Over and over and over and over again. Like so many times before. Countless times.

Icy terror crystallized inside Stefan’s gut. “What if they want us together just so they can break us apart?”

Colin placed a soft hand against the side of his face. “Then we do what we always do.”

Go along for the ride. Walk the path.

Try again.

//

Stefan’s head lolled as the car came to a stop, coaxing him into waking.

“We’re on-ly mak-ing—”

The music cut out as his dad killed the engine.

“We’re here,” he said, having the courtesy to at least look apologetic before climbing out the driver’s side.

He blinked his tired eyes and looked out the passenger window. Saint Juniper’s. Dr. Haynes’ office.

Hadn’t he—

—been here before?

“Will you just talk to her?” A hand waved in front of his face. “Stefan, please?”

He nodded absently. “Alright.”

So he did. He told her that they’d already had this conversation, that she’d call him delusional and guilty over his mum and she’d up his meds, so if she could just get on with it and write him the fucking prescription, he’d appreciate it.

When he got home, he flushed his new dose and went back to work.

Come that twelfth of September, Stefan was back at Tuckersoft, showing the final game to Thakur and Colin.

The game crashed. Some loose end in the government conspiracy branch he hadn’t tied up. Thakur gave him until Monday to fix it.

Colin threw a VHS tape onto the desk and fell into an office chair with a sigh. “Skip to the next bit.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you’re right. That joke works better as visual comedy.” He shrugged and nodded at the tape. “Pop it on while you work, then.”

That weekend, after hitting a wall, he did as Colin suggested. Hauled up the old VHS player, popped the tape in, and worked on the conspiracy path as the documentary played in the background.

“Davies became convinced he had no control over his fate,” the documentary host, Judith Mulligan, said, tone skeptical.

The loading screen booted up halfway.

Then glitched and crashed. Error code 4: OUT OF MEMORY.

Stefan’s fist came crashing into his desk.

He hadn’t meant to do that.

“If you follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, then you're absolved of any guilt from your actions.”

He blinked, then shifted his chair away from his computer. He just needed to spend time working out the conspiracy path tree.

“But they're not even your actions.”

Stefan paused, lifting his pen.

The path splitting sort of looked like…

“It's out of your control.”

He glanced up at his wall, filled with papers mapping out each sprawling pathway. Each path split into one of two choices. One line diverging into two.

“Your fate has been dictated. It's out of your hands.”

His eyes went back down to the papers covering his desk.

Everywhere he looked, he saw Davies’ glyph.

“So, why not commit murder?”

Stefan jumped back from his desk, frantically looking over all of his work for the past two months.

It was everywhere.

“Maybe that's what destiny wants. You're just a puppet.”

He turned towards the television.

“You're not in control—”

Judith’s voice cut out abruptly as Stefan jumped for the television and flipped it off.

He curled his hands against his chest, warily eyeing the collection of glyphs staring at him like the many eyes of a Beholder.

He wished he wasn’t alone right now.

Stefan glanced at Hereford’s Look Door, Get Key. His guide through all this insanity.

Then, at the picture of him and his parents. Back when Mum was still alive.

He picked up the…

(I) BOOK ⵄ (J) FAMILY PHOTO

Chapter Text

P. A. X.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

A second later, the screen buzzed and glitched out. Stripes of pixels scrambled in the space of a blink before flattening into a solid black field.

In the center, a shape in green light appeared. One line branching into two. Jerome F. Davies’ glyph.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. His blood ran cold.

Footsteps in the hallway. They weren’t coming from his dad’s room.

They were coming from his.

Stefan stood up and turned to see long, clawed, deep blue fingers wrapping over the edge of the doorframe.

A tall, long-eared, wild-maned humanoid creature stepped into the threshold. The deep blue surface of its skin was mottled and sinewy. It fixed upon him two rings of glowing white eyes.

The demon was real. And it was here.

The Thief of Destiny.

PAX.

There was nowhere to run. Stefan froze right where he was, feet anchored to the floor.

It opened its maw, baring the jagged teeth of a carnivore, and spoke. It had no voice. Words simply entered Stefan’s mind as if he’d thought them himself.

DID YOU THINK THEY’D SAVE YOU?

It was in his head. It was in his fucking head.

“Get out,” Stefan said, voice shaking as it turned from a mumble to a panicked shout. “Get out!”

The demon lunged.

Stefan gasped awake in bed, heart pounding. The light of dawn shone through his curtains. Birds were chirping and the neighbor’s dog was barking.

His breathing calmed. It was only a dream. A nightmare. It had to be, this time. Had to be.

Stefan got out of bed. His calendar reminded him that tomorrow was Monday. Mohan Thakur would be expecting him and the final, stable copy of Bandersnatch.

It had to be stable. He flushed his morning meds and got right to work.

His dad came up to offer him tea and breakfast. It sat, pecked at, on the desk among his notes. The entire day went to fixing the memory error from last night and finding the pesky line of code that’d crashed it during the demo. The entire night went to repairing the code and giving the conspiracy branch a thorough playtest. All the while, he resisted the urge to work in just one more pathway.

Stefan set an early alarm the next morning. His dad brought him tea, but he barely touched it. The deadline was here — again — and he wasn’t going to get another one. He had to make sure the game was perfect.

One final playtest.

He loaded up the tape, double-checked the code he’d fixed, and entered the RUN command. The loading screen began scrolling into being.

And then it buzzed and crashed. Error code P: FN without DEF.

Fuck.

Fuck.

ⵄ

THROW TEA OVER COMPUTER

Stefan’s hand snatched his cup of tea from beside him and brought it over to his Spectrum.

The moment he realized what was happening, he forced his hand to stop moving.

It had a mind of its own. The urge to tip the cup over was overwhelming.

He resisted it. With all of his will, he resisted it. His hand began to shake.

A sudden fury fueled him. “No—!”

His hand stopped fighting him. Gingerly, trembling, he set the cup of tea back onto the desk. He turned his eyes upward, searching.

“Who’s doing this to me?” Stefan asked at the ceiling. He curled his hand in towards his chest and clutched at his shirt between his fingers. “I know there’s someone there.”

Silence answered him.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”

Nothing.

“Just give me a sign.” His anger took on an air of desperation. “C’mon, if there’s someone there, just give a sign, will you give me a sign?”

Still nothing.

His hands turned to fists gripping his shirt. “I know there’s someone there, just give me a fucking sign!”

Not a ripple of light, not a whisper of sound.

No one was there. No one was listening.

Because Stefan was insane.

He’d actually believed his dreams might have been alternate realities. That someone was controlling his actions. He’d almost believed that he and Colin had—

No, of course they hadn’t. Colin would never… not with him. He was just a crazy, stupid boy talking to himself, alone in his room with a failure of a game.

ⵄ

The screen of his computer buzzed again, inane text glitching in and out of existence.

Until, in a stark field of black, a white glyph appeared.

Davies’ glyph.

No.

PAX’s glyph.

Stefan’s stomach dropped. His heart skipped a beat.

He wasn’t insane. The truth was far worse.

He was right.

The screen buzzed and glitched back into displaying the error code. His chest tightened. His breathing quickened.

He was right.

“Stefan?”

He looked over his shoulder. His dad walked into his room, having heard him shout, and looked at him and his computer in concern.

“What are you doing?”

Stefan turned back to the screen, eyes wide. A cold, constant shiver rose up from his core into his chest. “I don’t know.”

He was right. There were other timelines. A spirit was out there. Controlling him.

They’d chosen to kiss Colin. To sleep with him. He just happened to have wanted the same thing. Giving him that before didn’t mean they wouldn’t take from him now.

“Stefan, you’re worrying me.”

God. He’d thought they might’ve been on his side. That they might’ve been kind.

“I’m not in control,” Stefan said woodenly. He stumbled up from his chair and out of his room. “I’m not in control.”

“What are you talking about?” His dad followed after him. “Stefan!”

He didn’t know where he was going. Only that he had to run. His jumper felt too tight around him, too constrictive, as his breathing rapidly turned to hyperventilating. He pulled at its collar as he ran into the kitchen. “I’m being controlled!”

“Stefan! Stefan, stop it, okay?” Dad said. “Look, you need to calm down, just take a breath, please—”

Stefan did not calm down. He moved around the kitchen, frantic. All he could think about was Jerome and how nobody had believed him, either. No one had listened, and then he’d—

On the counter was Dad’s crystal glass ashtray, littered with ash and a couple cigarette butts. For its size, it had a good heft to it. Solid. Wouldn’t shatter easily.

Stefan stared at it, breathing hard, itching at his scalp. He looked towards Dad as he continued trying to talk him through a goddamn breathing exercise. But Stefan couldn’t focus on his breathing.

He could only focus on taking that fucking ashtray and—

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook the thought away. Unsuccessfully.

“Calm, Stefan,” Dad urged.

“Get away from me!” he warned him, throwing his hands out to block him from coming any closer. “Please, Dad, just g— just stay away from me, I’m not in control, I’m n…”

Stefan’s eyes, magnetized, returned to the ashtray.

Did he really think they’d save him?

(R) KILL DAD ⵄ (S) BACK OFF

Chapter Text

“Mum?” he said, voice smaller than it should be.

Outstretched hand lowering, Mum stared at him with her wide brown eyes. Her brow tensed. “Stefan?”

Something snagged him by the wrist. He caught a glimpse of a clawed dark blue hand. He opened his mouth to scream, but couldn’t, before it dragged him under the bed.

Stefan gasped awake in bed, heart pounding. The light of dawn shone through his curtains. Birds were chirping and the neighbor’s dog was barking.

His breathing calmed. It was only a dream. A nightmare. It had to be, this time. Had to be.

Stefan got out of bed. His calendar reminded him that tomorrow was Monday. Mohan Thakur would be expecting him and the final, stable copy of Bandersnatch.

It had to be stable. He flushed his morning meds and got right to work.

His dad came up to offer him tea and breakfast. It sat, pecked at, on the desk among his notes. The entire day went to fixing the memory error from last night and finding the pesky line of code that’d crashed it during the demo. The entire night went to repairing the code and giving the conspiracy branch a thorough playtest. All the while, he resisted the urge to work in just one more pathway.

Stefan set an early alarm the next morning. His dad brought him tea, but he barely touched it. The deadline was here — again — and he wasn’t going to get another one. He had to make sure the game was perfect.

One final playtest.

He loaded the tape, double-checked the code he’d fixed, and hit the run command. The loading screen began scrolling into being.

And then it buzzed and crashed. Error code P: FN without DEF.

Fuck.

Fuck.

ⵄ

THROW TEA OVER COMPUTER

Stefan’s hand snatched his cup of tea from beside him and brought it over to his Spectrum.

The moment he realized what was happening, he forced his hand to stop moving.

It had a mind of its own. The urge to tip the cup over was overwhelming.

He resisted it. With all of his will, he resisted it. His hand began to shake.

A sudden fury fueled him. “No—!”

His hand stopped fighting him. Gingerly, trembling, he set the cup of tea back onto the desk. He turned his eyes upward, searching.

“Who’s doing this to me?” Stefan asked at the ceiling. He curled his hand in towards his chest and clutched at his jumper between his fingers. “I know there’s someone there.”

Silence answered him.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”

Nothing.

“Just give me a sign.” His anger took on an air of desperation. “C’mon, if there’s someone there, just give a sign, will you give me a sign?”

Still nothing.

His hands turned to fists in his jumper. “I know there’s someone there, just give me a fucking sign!”

Not a ripple of light, not a whisper of sound.

No one was there. No one was listening.

Because Stefan was insane.

He’d actually believed his dreams might have been alternate realities. That someone was controlling his actions. He’d almost believed that he and Colin had—

No, of course they hadn’t. Colin would never… not with him. He was just a crazy, stupid boy talking to himself, alone in his room with a failure of a game.

ⵄ

The screen of his computer buzzed again, inane text glitching in and out of existence.

Until, in a stark field of black, a white glyph appeared.

Davies’ glyph.

No.

PAX’s glyph.

Stefan’s stomach dropped. His heart skipped a beat.

He wasn’t insane. The truth was far worse.

He was right.

The screen buzzed and glitched back into displaying the error code. His chest tightened. His breathing quickened.

He was right.

“Stefan?”

He looked over his shoulder. His dad walked into his room, having heard him shout, and looked at him and his computer in concern.

“What are you doing?”

Stefan turned back to the screen, eyes wide. A cold, constant shiver rose up from his core into his chest. “I don’t know.”

He was right. There were other timelines. A spirit was out there. Controlling him.

They’d chosen to kiss Colin. To sleep with him. He just happened to have wanted the same thing. Giving him that before didn’t mean they wouldn’t take from him now.

“Stefan, you’re worrying me.”

God. He’d thought they might’ve been on his side. That they might’ve been kind.

“I’m not in control,” Stefan said woodenly. He stumbled up from his chair and out of his room. “I’m not in control.”

“What are you talking about?” His dad followed after him. “Stefan!”

He didn’t know where he was going. Only that he had to run. His jumper felt too tight around him, too constrictive, as his breathing rapidly turned to hyperventilating. He pulled at its collar as he ran into the kitchen. “I’m being controlled!”

“Stefan! Stefan, stop it, okay?” Dad said. “Look, you need to calm down, just take a breath, please—”

Stefan did not calm down. He moved around the kitchen, frantic. All he could think about was Jerome and how nobody had believed him, either. No one had listened, and then he’d—

On the counter was Dad’s crystal glass ashtray, littered with ash and a couple cigarette butts. For its size, it had a good heft to it. Solid. Wouldn’t shatter easily.

Stefan stared at it, breathing hard, itching at his scalp. He looked towards Dad as he continued trying to talk him through a goddamn breathing exercise. But Stefan couldn’t focus on his breathing.

He could only focus on taking that fucking ashtray and—

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook the thought away. Unsuccessfully.

“Calm, Stefan,” Dad urged.

“Get away from me!” he warned him, throwing his hands out to block him from coming any closer. “Please, Dad, just g— just stay away from me, I’m not in control, I’m n…”

Stefan’s eyes, magnetized, returned to the ashtray.

Did he really think they’d save him?

(R) KILL DAD ⵄ (S) BACK OFF

Chapter Text

Stefan looked between them both, then picked the book up off the desk. He carried it to his bed, reclining on the twin mattress, and thumbed it open to a random section.

KICK THE PUPPY? Some choices will present an obvious moral dichotomy to your players. You may feel tempted to reward them for choosing “right” and punish them for choosing “wrong,” but this limits their narrative agency. Instead, focus on giving them interesting consequences for both options, not moralizing. This is a game, after all — not a pulpit.

He kept reading instead of paying any more attention to his wall of notes and all the splitting timelines glaring at him. Watching him. The more he ignored it, the slower his heart rate grew. The heavier his eyelids grew.

//

A door shutting. A key entering a lock, then turning.

//

He wasn’t certain when he fell asleep. He only knew he had when he woke. Moonlight streamed in through his thin curtains, falling over Stefan and the open book resting against his chest.

A compulsion ran through him to rise, so he did. The book fell to the floor. He stepped over it and into the hallway.

Dad’s office. The one room in the house he always kept locked. For privacy, he’d said when Stefan had asked, and that had been enough.

But it wasn’t, was it?

A door shutting. A key entering a lock, then turning.

It was so familiar, and so unknown.

He had to know.

Avoiding the creaky spots on the floor, Stefan drifted like a ghost into his dad’s bedroom. The man was fast asleep, his corduroys laid out at the foot of the empty side of the bed.

Stefan wrapped his fingers around the keys to keep them from jingling as he took them from the corduroys’ pocket and to the office door down the hall. He found the right key, unlocked the door quietly, and stepped inside.

A lamp with a dying bulb had been left on, forgotten. The sodium light pulsed in a slow, undulating golden glow. There was a small desk with a typewriter to his left, awash in light after shadow after light. Above it, Dad’s psychology degrees hung on the wall in frames.

To his right was a large cabinet with a small screen and keypad. Full alphabet, plus numbers.

Stefan didn’t need to try the door to know it was locked. He crouched in front of it and pressed the activation key. The screen beeped, lighting up green. The words ENTER PASSWORD and three asterisks blinked at him.

A three-character passcode. He had no idea where to start. But he had to try something.

He inputted…

(T) LSD ⵄ (U) PAX

Chapter Text

Stefan looked between them both, then picked the framed photo off the shelf. He carried it to his bed, reclining on the twin mattress, and stared at the smiling face of his mum.

He wished he could remember the picnic where this photo had been taken. It was so long ago, and there was so little he could remember about his childhood in the first place. It hadn’t been a special occasion. Just a warm, sunny day. Great day for a picnic at the park. His mum’s idea, Dad had said.

He looked happy here, too, his dad. Making a silly face at the camera to make Stefan laugh. Despite having told him to keep Rabbit behind him, out of the picture. This had only been a couple of months before—

Stefan didn’t think about what came next. He kept looking at the photo instead. Imagining the moment his mind couldn’t recall. It distracted him well from his wall of notes and all the splitting timelines glaring at him. Watching him. The more he ignored it, the slower his heart rate grew. The heavier his eyelids grew.

//

“Stefan?”

//

He wasn’t certain when he fell asleep. He only knew he had when he woke. Moonlight streamed in through his thin curtains, falling over Stefan and the picture frame resting against his chest.

A compulsion ran through him to rise, so he did. The photo fell to the floor. He stepped over it and into the hallway.

His feet carried him to the bathroom. A lamp with a dying bulb had been left on, forgotten. The sodium light pulsed in a slow, undulating golden glow. Stefan’s reflection in the cupboard mirror greeted him, awash in light after shadow after light.

What had Colin said once? Twice? More times than memory could hold?

Mirrors let you move through time.

Stefan reached for his reflection. When he went to touch it, his hand simply passed through the glass. Like a portal.

He reached with his other hand. It passed through as well.

Stefan climbed through and out the other side.

Soft light pulsed in the bathroom. Stefan hopped down from the sink, went to his room, and crawled into bed.

His door, cracked open, allowed the sound of another one of his parents’ rows to float down the hallway and into his room.

“Yes, and so what?” came his mum’s voice. “Rabbit is a toy.”

“A baby’s toy that he takes everywhere!” his dad hissed.

“He’s five.”

“By five, he should’ve stopped playing with dolls.” Their voices drifted towards him.

“It’s not a doll—”

“If he takes it to your parents, I’m going to have to withstand another lecture from your dad about ‘permissive child-rearing.’”

Mum scoffed. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

Stefan could see her face through the crack in the door.

“No, I’m sorry,” Dad said, tone unapologetic, “look, I am going to do something about this.”

He started for the bedroom door. Stefan squeezed his eyes shut, feigning sleep.

He heard Dad rustle around under his bed and leave the room. A door opening, and after a minute, shutting. A key entering a lock, then turning.

When he opened his eyes, it was morning and he was on the floor, looking under his bed for Rabbit.

“Come on, Stefan, we’re going to be late!” Mum said by the door, hand reaching towards him. He heard the footsteps of Dad entering the room. “Are you coming or not?”

ⵄ

(V) NO

Chapter Text

Stefan dove for the ashtray, hand grasping it with all the confidence of someone else, someone he wasn’t, couldn’t be.

“Stefan, please—”

“Dad, please get away from me,” he warned again, voice shaking.

Dad quieted, but he didn’t move. He just stood where he was.

Stefan’s arm pulled back, twisting his body around. The ash and cigarette butts sailed to the floor as his hand angled the bottom flat edge of the ashtray for its target.

“I’m not in control,” he said, begging now, begging for him to understand, to listen, for once just listen, “please, I’m not in control.”

There was no fear, no hostility in Dad’s face. No anger. No blame.

“Stefan…”

Just the confused betrayal of a rabbit who never expected his child to grow canines and turn on him.

“I’m not in control,” he pleaded, voice little more than a whimper.

Without his permission, Stefan’s arm swung the ashtray with more force than he’d ever thought it capable of.

It struck true with a sickening crack. A deep gash opened up just below his hairline, blood gathering and bubbling out of it like spring water. Dad’s head spun to the side from the impact, then bounced back to look at Stefan before the blood started running down his forehead. When it dribbled over his open eye, it didn’t even close in reaction.

Dad’s knees buckled as he stumbled backwards. He hit the wall and crumpled gracelessly to the floor, blood splattering his tan shirt, his khakis, the wall, the kitchen tile.

His head slumped to the side. He lay there, bleeding, motionless.

The first feeble thought to cross Stefan’s mind was to call a paramedic.

It wasn’t his fault.

He didn’t want this. Didn’t choose this. He would never choose this. They made him do it. Just like they made Jerome F. Davies.

Who nobody believed.

Stefan stole a blanket from the living room and laid his dad’s body on top of it in the middle of the kitchen. He stared down at it for a long time, not quite believing it was real.

But it was. It was all real.

“What do I do?” he softly asked aloud.

The bleeding had stopped a while ago, congealed blood sticky on his dad’s face, covering one lens of his glasses. Stefan circled the body slowly, coming around to the other side. He stared down at the blood splattered on his hands.

It wasn’t a spirit that did this.

It was a demon.

And he was at its mercy. If it had any to offer.

Stefan tilted his head towards the ceiling.

“What do I do?”

(W) BURY BODY ⵄ (Z) CHOP UP BODY

Chapter Text

Stefan clamped a hand over his wrist and pinned his arm down beside the sink. His fist banged against the counter, fighting him.

“Breathe,” Dad said, inching closer, “and out—”

He looked one more time at the ashtray across the kitchen, then screwed his eyes shut and tried to listen. His hyperventilation descended into gasping sobs.

A gentle hand ran over his back. Dad began to shush him like a child. He laid his forehead against the cool tile of the counter.

All at once, his hand was his own again. Out of mercy, luck, or curiosity, he couldn’t say.

Maybe they were kind after all.

Should he be grateful?

Dad rubbed soothing circles over his back. He didn’t know what had almost happened. How closely he’d brushed with death. He wouldn’t ever have a chance to find out.

Unless it happened again. Unless they wanted to explore all possibilities.

Why wouldn’t they?

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

L. S. D.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

The doorbell rang once, making Stefan jump to his feet. He scurried out into the hall, checked on his dad — still asleep — and flew down the stairs.

He cracked the front door open. On his doorstep, hands in his pockets, stood Colin Ritman.

“Nice night for a dream sequence, isn’t it?” he greeted with a wry smile.

“Why are you here?” Stefan asked, opening the door wider.

“By all rights, I shouldn’t be.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, looking up and around. “Never have been before, not like this. But I’m here because they want me here, else I wouldn’t be.”

“They?”

Colin’s eyes kept rolling from one point to another, looking for someone that wasn’t there anymore. “But there’s always someone,” he said, “always a new direction to go in. Like The Hobbit?”

Sort of.

He blinked at the stars above. “Because the story hasn’t changed. Only the spirit.” A small smile inched back onto his face. “Got it.”

Stefan looked over his shoulder at the staircase. His dad could wake up at any moment, come down here, and see—

“Would that be so bad?”

Before he could answer, Colin stepped forward and took hold of Stefan’s shoulders.

“We’re playing by the same rules, Stefan,” he said with sudden urgency, “but what’s changed is the format, the type of path we’re on. That’s what’s different.”

Shocked by the sudden contact, Stefan stammered out, “What— what does that mean?”

With just as little warning, Colin leaned in and kissed Stefan. He gasped into it, hit by a wave of novelty just before a second one of painful, paradoxical, incomprehensibly existential familiarity. He found Colin’s forearms and held on before his knees could fold on him.

This was not their first kiss.

It was their second.

Colin pulled back, just a couple inches from Stefan’s face, a wild, manic look in his eyes. “It means they might be giving us a chance to leave the maze. Alive, together. For fucking once.”

He held onto him tighter. He wanted to never let go. “And if they’re not? If they want us to try just to see us fail?”

Over and over and over and over again. Like so many times before. Countless times.

Icy terror crystallized inside Stefan’s gut. “What if they want us together just so they can break us apart?”

Colin placed a soft hand against the side of his face. “Then we do what we always do.”

Go along for the ride. Walk the path.

Try again.

//

Stefan’s head lolled as the car came to a stop, coaxing him into waking.

“We’re on-ly mak-ing—”

The music cut out as his dad killed the engine.

“We’re here,” he said, having the courtesy to at least look apologetic before climbing out the driver’s side.

He blinked his tired eyes and looked out the passenger window. Saint Juniper’s. Dr. Haynes’ office.

Hadn’t he—

—been here before?

“Will you just talk to her?” A hand waved in front of his face. “Stefan, please?”

He nodded absently. “Alright.”

So he did. He told her that they’d already had this conversation, that she’d call him delusional and guilty over his mum and she’d up his meds, so if she could just get on with it and write him the fucking prescription, he’d appreciate it.

When he got home, he walked up to the phone and picked up the receiver just as it started to ring. “Wednesday, two o’clock, meeting with Mr. Thakur.”

“Right you are,” came Colin’s tinny, crackle-sewn voice. He could hear the smile in it. “See you then, mate.”

Stefan hung up.

In the bathroom upstairs, he flushed his new dose and went back to work.

Come Wednesday, Stefan was back at Tuckersoft, sitting in Mohan Thakur’s office with Colin Ritman and one simple request.

An extension. Which was denied.

Thakur threw his hands into the air and reclined back in his office chair. “Look, if I could, I would. But if I don’t have a finished game in my hands by mid-September, production will push the release date into January. And if that happens?”

One slice of his hand at his throat, tongue stuck out and eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“Push the Bandersnatch release out to Easter break,” Colin said, sipping his tea. “I’ll play life support for the company’s finances until then.”

“How about this?” Thakur rocked back and forth in his chair, fishing out a pack of cigarettes from his blazer pocket. “We keep the current deadline. Ship it out for Christmas. And you—” he slid one pre-roll out and pointed it at Colin, “—help him finish it.”

Colin gave Stefan an expectant look.

“I could use the help,” he admitted.

He nodded. “Come by my flat on Friday, then. I’ll put up a corkboard for all your notes.”

He delivered on that promise. Stefan explained his organization system as he pinned everything above the computer desk. It was complicated, and looked like nothing but chaos if you didn’t understand it.

But Colin understood. “Fuckin’ hell,” he said, watching Stefan piece it all together like a puzzle. “Let’s get to it.”

They finished Bandersnatch with a few days to spare.

Or he thought they did.

During the final beta test, Colin picked the option to kill the government agent.

The screen glitched out, multicolored blocks scattering across the display, as the game crashed.

“Bollocks.” Colin tossed the joystick onto the desk, dug through a drawer, and lobbed a VHS tape towards Stefan. His hand was out already, waiting to catch it. “Here you go. We’ll run through it again on Monday.”

Stefan watched him start a new playthrough, then looked down at the tape in his hands.

That weekend, after hitting a wall, he did as Colin suggested. Hauled up the old VHS player, popped the tape in, and worked on the conspiracy path as the documentary played in the background.

“Davies became convinced he had no control over his fate,” the documentary host, Judith Mulligan, said, tone skeptical.

The loading screen booted up halfway.

Then glitched and crashed. Error code4: OUT OF MEMORY.

Stefan’s fist came crashing into his desk.

He hadn’t meant to do that.

“If you follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, then you're absolved of any guilt from your actions.”

He blinked, then shifted his chair away from his computer. He just needed to spend time working out the conspiracy path tree.

“But they're not even your actions.”

Stefan paused, lifting his pen.

The path splitting sort of looked like…

“It's out of your control.”

He glanced up at his wall, filled with papers mapping out the sprawling government conspiracy pathway. Each path split into one of two choices. One line diverging into two.

“Your fate has been dictated. It's out of your hands.”

His eyes went back down to the papers covering his desk.

Everywhere he looked, he saw Davies’ glyph.

“So, why not commit murder?”

Stefan jumped back from his desk, frantically looking over all of his notes.

It was everywhere.

“Maybe that's what destiny wants. You're just a puppet.”

He turned towards the television.

“You're not in control—”

Judith’s voice cut out abruptly as Stefan jumped for the television and flipped it off.

He curled his hands against his chest, warily eyeing the collection of glyphs staring at him like the many eyes of a Beholder.

He wished he was still at Colin’s.

Stefan glanced at Hereford’s Look Door, Get Key. His guide through all this insanity.

Then, at the picture of him and his parents. Back when Mum was still alive.

He picked up the…

(P) BOOK ⵄ (Q) PHOTO

Chapter Text

P. A. X.

PASSWORD INCORRECT.

A second later, the screen buzzed and glitched out. Stripes of pixels scrambled in the space of a blink before flattening into a solid black field.

In the center, a shape in green light appeared. One line branching into two. Jerome F. Davies’ glyph.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. His blood ran cold.

Footsteps in the hallway. They weren’t coming from his dad’s room.

They were coming from his.

Stefan stood up and turned to see long, clawed, deep blue fingers wrapping over the edge of the doorframe.

A tall, lion-eared, wild-maned humanoid creature stepped into the threshold. The deep blue surface of its skin was mottled and sinewy. It fixed upon him two rings of glowing white eyes.

The demon was real. And it was here.

The Thief of Destiny.

PAX.

There was nowhere to run. Stefan froze right where he was, feet anchored to the floor.

It opened its maw, baring the jagged teeth of a carnivore, and spoke. It had no voice. Words simply entered Stefan’s mind as if he’d thought them himself.

DO YOU THINK HE’LL SAVE YOU?

It was in his head. It was in his fucking head.

“Get out,” Stefan said, voice shaking as it turned from a mumble to a panicked shout. “Get out!”

The demon lunged.

Stefan gasped awake in bed, heart pounding. The light of dawn shone through his curtains. Birds were chirping and the neighbor’s dog was barking.

His breathing calmed. It was only a dream. A nightmare. It had to be, this time. Had to be.

Stefan got out of bed. His calendar reminded him that tomorrow was Monday. Colin Ritman would be expecting him and the final, stable copy of Bandersnatch.

It had to be stable. He flushed his morning meds and got right to work.

His dad came up to offer him tea and breakfast. It sat, pecked at, on the desk among his notes. The entire day went to fixing the memory error from last night and finding the pesky line of code that’d crashed it during Colin’s runthrough. The entire night went to repairing the code and giving the conspiracy branch a thorough playtest. All the while, he resisted the urge to work in just one more pathway.

Stefan set an early alarm the next morning. Coming out of the bathroom, he eyed the door to his dad’s office.

A chill slid down his spine. The nightmare lingered around the back of his mind, living there quietly, dormant. He should really give the game one final playtest before he brought it to Colin’s, but he didn’t want to stay in this house longer than he had to. It was dumb, but it felt like the demon was still behind that door. Biding its time, waiting for another opportunity to strike.

The deadline was still two days away. If they ran into any more errors, they still had time to fix it. It didn’t have to be perfect today.

He stashed his conspiracy notes binder, the master tape, and his Spectrum into his messenger bag and headed out, skipping breakfast.

“How’d it go?” Colin asked when he opened the door.

“Good,” Stefan said, stepping inside. He glanced around the flat. “Kitty and Pearl already gone out?”

“They’re off visiting her parents,” he said. “It’s just us. Come on, I made tea.”

Down in the den, Stefan hooked his computer up to the screen while he explained to Colin what’d caused the crash and how he’d fixed it. Colin related a similar error he’d run into when he was making his very first game, White Bear.

“You have no idea the kind of hell those ice blocks put me through.” He propped his feet up on the desk and cradled his cup of tea, drumming his fingers on the ceramic. “Not to mention the bloody bear. Development for that was really just an exercise in trial-and-error.”

“Yeah, but it was brilliant,” Stefan said as he booted up the computer. “It was the first game of yours I played, you know.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah. Saw the review in Sinclair User and bought it the next day. I’d stapled together graph paper and mapped out the whole prison to figure out how to escape. Took me weeks, even wore out a couple of computer keys. My dad had to make me take breaks, I was so obsessed.”

“So you’ve been a fan of mine from the start.” Colin nodded towards the screen. “And now you’ve made an adventure game of your own.”

One that was also about escaping from a facility, partly. The inspiration was obvious, if you put the two titles side-by-side, despite one being a platformer and the other being 3D. Ritman games were the reason he’d started learning code, after all.

Stefan’s cheeks warmed. He tried a casual shrug, but it came out sort of stiff. “Yeah. Suppose so.”

Colin stared at the screen for a second before his lips twitched with a smile. “You know some fifteen-year-old is going to play Bandersnatch and end up making their own game just like you did, yeah?” His eyes flicked over to Stefan. “Grand life cycle of art and all that. An architect designs a tower.” He gestured around the den with his mug, referencing the high-rise he lived in. “Someone else appreciates it, gets inspired by it, and designs one themselves. Now they’re the architect inspiring some other future architect. Rinse and repeat.”

There was no way Stefan’s face hadn’t flushed embarrassingly pink by now. He made, then quickly broke, eye contact, turning the tape of his game’s code around in his hands. “Never really thought of myself as an artist before. It’s… kind of weird.”

“Why’s it weird?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Just is.”

Colin was smiling when he glanced back over at him. His eyes went down to the game, then back up at Stefan. “Let’s have a look, then.”

More than a little thankful for the diversion, Stefan loaded the tape into the cassette player, hit the play button, and entered the RUN command. Colin took his feet off the desk and leaned forward in his chair, placing his cup of tea next to Stefan’s. The loading screen began scrolling into being.

And then it buzzed and crashed. Error code P: FN without DEF.

Colin frowned. “You tested it after resolving the error, right?”

Fuck.

Fuck.

ⵄ

THROW TEA OVER COMPUTER

Stefan’s hand snatched his cup of tea from beside him and brought it over to his Spectrum.

The moment he realized what was happening, he forced his hand to stop moving.

Colin’s brow cinched together. “What’s happening?”

His hand had a mind of its own. The urge to tip the cup over was overwhelming.

He resisted it. With all of his will, he resisted it. His hand began to shake.

Out of his periphery, he saw Colin’s eyes flick between him and the cup. “Stefan.”

Please. Not now. Not in front of Colin.

A sudden fury fueled him. “No—!”

His hand stopped fighting him. Gingerly, trembling, he set the cup of tea back onto the desk.

Colin watched him quietly, arches of his brow high. He didn’t look very concerned. Mostly just fascinated.

“Sorry,” Stefan said. He curled his hand in towards his chest and clutched at his shirt between his fingers. “I don’t… I don’t know what came over me. It just— it was like someone else took control of me. I don’t know.”

Why did he admit that? Now Colin Ritman knew he was insane.

But Colin didn’t panic and call him delusional. Instead, he looked up towards the ceiling with a calm, accusatory look. “Alright, so who’s doing this? Come on, we know you’re there.”

“What are you doing?” Stefan asked, bewildered.

“They kept us from jumping and let us work together, only to make you nearly destroy your computer?” Colin gave him a skeptical look. “Either the old spirit came back home, or the new one’s gotten inspired by it.”

“What? What’s that mean?”

“It either means we’re fucked like we’ve always been,” he said, returning a mildly annoyed look at the ceiling, “or we’re fucked in a fun, new, exciting way. So, which is it? Who are you?”

Behind his casual tone, Stefan could hear the undercurrent of fear. Colin wasn’t used to the unpredictable, and this new path had been unpredictable from the start. He’d thought that might’ve been a good thing, like Stefan had.

Like Stefan had? No, no he hadn’t. That’d been a dream. Alternate timelines weren’t real.

“You know they are, Stefan.” Colin snorted, stood from his chair, and began walking around the otherwise empty room. “Don’t be shy, mate. Come on out. It’s not like we can hurt you.”

Silence answered him.

“Who’s there? Which one are you?”

Nothing.

“Either way, you’re in charge, aren’t you?” He turned in a semi-circle, eyes drifting up and around. “Prove it. Show us you’re in charge.”

Still nothing.

He stopped, eyes darting sharply to the side. “I know you’re there. I can feel your breath on my fucking neck.”

Not a ripple of light, not a whisper of sound.

No one was there. No one was listening. No one but Stefan.

Was Colin the insane one?

Or was Stefan, for almost believing him?

He’d actually believed his dreams might have been alternate realities. That someone was controlling his actions. He’d almost believed that Colin had—

Colin gave a slow sigh and returned to the chair beside Stefan. He didn’t say anything, just slumped down and reached into his red shirt’s breast pocket for his Zippo and a roll-up.

ⵄ

Just as he flicked the lighter open, the screen of Stefan’s computer buzzed again, inane text glitching in and out of existence.

Until, in a stark field of black, a white glyph appeared.

Davies’ glyph.

No.

PAX’s glyph.

Stefan’s stomach dropped. His heart skipped a beat.

Colin paused, watching the screen, and raised his brow. “Ah, hell.” He clicked his lighter shut, then returned it and the roll-up to his pocket.

He wasn’t insane. Neither was Colin.

Worse. They were right.

The screen buzzed and glitched back into displaying the error code. His chest began to feel tight, his breathing quickened.

They were right.

“Sorry, mate.”

Colin wore a look of mild resignation, staring at the screen.

“Looks like they’re not done toying with us just yet.”

Stefan turned back to the screen, eyes wide. A cold, constant shiver rose up from his core into his chest. “My dream. It was real.”

He was right. There were other timelines. A spirit was out there. Controlling him.

They’d chosen to keep both him and Colin from jumping off the balcony. To accept Colin’s help on the game. He just happened to have wanted the same things. Giving him that before didn’t mean they wouldn’t take from him now.

“Yeah,” Colin said. “It was.”

God. He’d thought they might’ve been guiding him onto the right path. That they might’ve cared.

“I’m not in control,” he said woodenly.

“None of us are, Stefan. We’re all in their maze, consuming and dying and respawning, over and over.” He crossed one leg over the other. “Only good part is that we’re in it together.”

Stefan’s eyes went back to Colin.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why does that matter to you?” Stefan’ voice rose a notch in volume. “Why did you kiss me?”

Colin blinked, uncharacteristically surprised. “Did that upset you? You said you’d wanted to, but couldn’t. Not that I couldn’t have guessed as much.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

He tilted his head a little. “Come on, mate, you know as well as I do that when a new branch appears, you have to explore all possibilities to find the right pathway. That felt like a good one to try.”

It hadn’t been about Stefan. It’d been about the game.

It was only ever about the game with him, wasn’t it?

“I’m just a plot point to you, too,” Stefan whispered, “aren’t I? Just a neat concept to manipulate the timeline with?”

His nonchalant demeanor shifted, making way for a new gravity to the situation. He sat up, placing both feet back on the floor. “Stefan—”

The computer screen beeped, screen glitching into a new display. Both of their heads whipped towards it.

ERASE ALL DATA ON BANDERSNATCH_v1.0.TZX?

>YES / NO

Stefan gasped sharply and kicked away from the computer, swivel chair rolling backwards across the floor. He gripped the armrests.

No. Please, don’t make him do this. Please—

YES ⵄ “No,” Colin interrupted, “don’t— hang on, mate— would you mind putting me back into proper alignment? This looks absolutely

ridiculous— right, ‘preciate it. Look, we know they’re controlling you,” he went on, reaching a hand out to Stefan. “If you make that decision, no matter what you choose, there’ll always be a timeline where you delete it. Don’t give them the chance to explore that path, and it’ll never exist.”

“What else can I do?” Stefan asked, equal parts desperate and frustrated. “I can’t stop them. I only get two options, and ‘neither’ isn’t one of them this time.”

“Let me choose,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest. “They’re letting me push back this much already. They’re not granting me agency without a reason. It’s all in accordance with their grand design in the cosmic flowchart.” He thought for a moment. “If it’s still the new spirit, it’s possible that they want me to save you.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Why would they want that?”

“Maybe they’re a romantic.” Colin’s lips turned up in a smile. An uncertain one, but a smile nonetheless. “I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you, Stefan. You’re a kindred spirit, someone who might understand. The only other person who can see the bigger picture. I don’t know why, but you can. Without you, I’d be alone in that, and I’d very much like not to be. Wouldn’t you?”

The thought of enduring all of this without Colin by his side punctured his amygdala, sent a wave of fear coiling down his spine. No one but Colin believed him, listened to him, made him feel like someone worth hearing. Because he always already knew what Stefan was talking about. Knew way more about what was going on than Stefan did.

He’d been the one to help Stefan see, to get him out of the hole.

Who’d been the one to help Colin see?

“Let me try.” He shrugged. “Worst case scenario, we just try again. As per usual.”

How did he know so much? Why was he the only other one who realized what was going on?

Stefan looked him up and down. He’d only ever looked at Colin through rose-tinted lenses. His hero. His idol. Who would he see if he took them off?

Who was Colin Ritman, really?

Did he really think he’d save him?

(AA) TRUST COLIN ⵄ (AB) FORSAKE COLIN

Chapter Text

“No!” Stefan protested.

“Come on,” Dad said to her, “you’ll have to catch the 8:45 now.”

He looked behind him and watched her go.

Something snagged him by the wrist. He caught a glimpse of a clawed dark blue hand. He opened his mouth to scream, but couldn’t, before it dragged him under the bed.

Stefan gasped awake in bed, heart pounding. The light of dawn shone through his curtains. Birds were chirping and the neighbor’s dog was barking.

His breathing calmed. It was only a dream. A nightmare. It had to be, this time. Had to be.

Stefan got out of bed. His calendar reminded him that tomorrow was Monday. Colin Ritman would be expecting him and the final, stable copy of Bandersnatch.

It had to be stable. He flushed his morning meds and got right to work.

His dad came up to offer him tea and breakfast. It sat, pecked at, on the desk among his notes. The entire day went to fixing the memory error from last night and finding the pesky line of code that’d crashed it during the demo. The entire night went to repairing the code and giving the conspiracy branch a thorough playtest. All the while, he resisted the urge to work in just one more pathway.

Stefan set an early alarm the next morning. His dad brought him tea, but he barely touched it. The deadline was only two days away. He had to make sure the game was perfect.

One final playtest before he brought it to Colin’s.

He loaded the tape, double-checked the code he’d fixed, and hit the run command. The loading screen began scrolling into being.

And then it buzzed and crashed. Error code P: FN without DEF.

Fuck.

Fuck.

ⵄ

THROW TEA OVER COMPUTER

Stefan’s hand snatched his cup of tea from beside him and brought it over to his Spectrum.

The moment he realized what was happening, he forced his hand to stop moving.

It had a mind of its own. The urge to tip the cup over was overwhelming.

He resisted it. With all of his will, he resisted it. His hand began to shake.

A sudden fury fueled him. “No—!”

His hand stopped fighting him. Gingerly, trembling, he set the cup of tea back onto the desk. He turned his eyes upward, searching.

“Who’s doing this to me?” Stefan asked at the ceiling. He curled his hand in towards his chest and clutched at his jumper between his fingers. “I know there’s someone there.”

Silence answered him.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”

Nothing.

“Just give me a sign.” His anger took on an air of desperation. “C’mon, if there’s someone there, just give a sign, will you give me a sign?”

Still nothing.

His hands turned to fists in his jumper. “I know there’s someone there, just give me a fucking sign!”

Not a ripple of light, not a whisper of sound.

No one was there. No one was listening.

Because Stefan was insane.

He’d actually believed his dreams might have been alternate realities. That someone was controlling his actions. He’d almost believed that he and Colin had—

No, of course they hadn’t. Colin would never… not with him. He was just a crazy, stupid boy talking to himself, alone in his room with a failure of a game.

ⵄ

The screen of his computer buzzed again, inane text glitching in and out of existence.

Until, in a stark field of black, a white glyph appeared.

Davies’ glyph.

No.

PAX’s glyph.

Stefan’s stomach dropped. His heart skipped a beat.

He wasn’t insane. The truth was far worse.

He was right.

The screen buzzed and glitched back into displaying the error code. His chest tightened. His breathing quickened.

He was right.

“Stefan?”

He looked over his shoulder. His dad walked into his room, having heard him shout, and looked at him and his computer in concern.

“What are you doing?”

Stefan turned back to the screen, eyes wide. A cold, constant shiver rose up from his core into his chest. “I don’t know.”

He was right. There were other timelines. A spirit was out there. Controlling him.

They’d chosen to keep both him and Colin from jumping off the balcony. To accept Colin’s help on the game. He just happened to have wanted the same things. Giving him that before didn’t mean they wouldn’t take from him now.

“Stefan, you’re worrying me.”

God. He’d thought they might’ve been guiding him onto the right path. That they might’ve cared.

“I’m not in control,” Stefan said woodenly. He stumbled up from his chair and out of his room. “I’m not in control.”

“What are you talking about?” His dad followed after him. “Stefan!”

He didn’t know where he was going. Only that he had to run. His jumper felt too tight around him, too constrictive, as his breathing rapidly turned to hyperventilating. He pulled at its collar as he ran into the kitchen. “I’m being controlled!”

“Stefan! Stefan, stop it, okay?” Dad said. “Look, you need to calm down, just take a breath, please—”

Stefan did not calm down. He moved around the kitchen, frantic. All he could think about was Jerome and how nobody had believed him, either. No one had listened, and then he’d—

On the counter was Dad’s crystal glass ashtray, littered with ash and a couple cigarette butts. For its size, it had a good heft to it. Solid. Wouldn’t shatter easily.

Stefan stared at it, breathing hard, itching at his scalp. He looked towards Dad as he continued trying to talk him through a goddamn breathing exercise. But Stefan couldn’t focus on his breathing.

He could only focus on taking that fucking ashtray and—

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook the thought away. Unsuccessfully.

“Calm, Stefan,” Dad urged.

“Get away from me!” he warned him, throwing his hands out to block him from coming any closer. “Please, Dad, just g— just stay away from me, I’m not in control, I’m n…”

Stefan’s eyes, magnetized, returned to the ashtray.

Did he really think they’d save him?

(AC) KILL DAD ⵄ (AD) BACK OFF

Chapter Text

A plan formed in his head, seemingly spontaneously. Stefan let out a sigh. “Okay.”

At that moment, the phone rang.

It would be suspicious not to answer.

He picked up the receiver and took a second to find his voice. “…Hello?”

“The man himself,” came Mohan Thakur’s tinny voice, “the whiz kid. How’s it going?”

Stefan swallowed. “How— how’s it going?”

“Have I dialed an echo by mistake? Wakey, wakey! Bandersnatch, the game you promised us? First thing Monday, you said?”

Right.

“I need the code,” Thakur continued. “The ads are out, I’ve booked the dupe plant — there’s some serious cash down the swanny if you don’t deliver!”

He’d already gotten an extension. Delivering it late now would seriously push his luck.

“I need it by the end of today. That possible?”

Stefan glanced back towards the kitchen. His stomach did a nauseous little somersault.

“Stefan? Hello? Spit it out,” Thakur said, more and more impatient by the second. “Before I evolve.”

He couldn’t bury a body and still finish fixing the code in time. But he shouldn’t call any more attention to himself.

“Will it be ready by the end of today?”

ⵄ

YES

“Of course,” Stefan answered, cringing.

“Good. By the end of today, no later. Tatty-bye.”

There was a loud click as Thakur slammed the receiver onto the hook at the other end, then dead air. Stefan hung up the phone gingerly.

There was no way he’d be able to deliver it today. But at least that’d get Thakur off his back, hold him off until a body wasn’t in his kitchen.

It would hold him off, wouldn’t it?

The shovel he found wasn’t very big. He didn’t have time to dig as deep as he’d have liked to, but it would have to do. There was still a deadline to make.

It took the better part of the morning and afternoon to make a hole big enough for a 193cm man. In the garden, not the grass. Less conspicuous to disturb the mulch instead of the lawn. Stefan, covered in dirt and sweat, went back inside to drag the body to the grave marked only by the chrysanthemums.

Except, before he could even get it out of the kitchen, the doorbell rang.

Stefan froze, head snapping up towards the door. He dropped the blanket swaddling his dad’s bloodied corpse. The doorbell kept ringing on and off. Slowly, he crept towards the magnetic rack of knives, stashed one in his waistband, and went to answer it.

Bile rose to the back of his throat when he cracked the front door open and saw Colin standing on his doorstep.

He took one look at Stefan and pressed his lips into an easy-going almost-smile. “Well, you need a hand.”

Before he could stop him, he opened the door further and stepped inside. Stefan staggered backwards, hiding one shaking hand behind him, touching the handle of the knife.

“Come on, lead me to it,” Colin said.

He tried to avoid eye contact and failed. “To what?”

“…Bandersnatch.” Which should have been obvious.

Stefan floundered for a moment, trying to think of what to say to get him out of the house.

“Where’s your pit?” Colin pointed to the ceiling. “Up there?”

Without waiting for an answer, he started up the stairs. Stefan spared the kitchen a single glance and followed him.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Colin said, walking into Stefan’s bedroom. The notes for his game completely covered his corkboard, a mess of papers spilling out onto his wall and cluttering his desk. “You’ve gone right down the hole, mate.” He looked over his shoulder at Stefan. “Right down it.”

He stilled as his eyes fell to the knife in his hand.

Stefan, standing in the doorway, stared at him, dead-eyed. “I killed my dad.”

Carefully, Colin faced him, took a steadying breath, and nodded. “Right.” He shrugged and pressed his lips together. “So, you gonna let me go, or you gonna kill me?” Another casual shrug, eyes locking with Stefan’s. “I mean, it’s your choice. Inasmuch as you have any choice.”

He knew better than anyone just how much of a choice he didn’t have. He was the one who’d tried to tell him the truth of this reality. And Stefan had thought it’d all been some strange, impossible dream.

This, too, felt like a strange, impossible dream. Nightmare, more like. But there was no waking up from this. This was real. Same as the dream. The parallel realities. The demon.

This was happening.

(AE) LET HIM GO ⵄ (AF) KILL HIM

Chapter Text

© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd

>VERIFY "Chapter 25"_

© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd

 10 REM -----------------------

 15 REM      OPTION X

 20 REM  Author’s Choice

 25 REM -----------------------

 30 DIM a$(3, 15)

 40 LET a$(1)=”OPTION XY:”; LET a$(2)=”VOTE:”

 50 LET c=USER

 55 INPUT “Comment as (c)”;a$(1)

 60 GO SUB 130

 70 FOR y=0 TO 25: FOR x=0 to 35

 80 READ b

 90>PRINT FN s(b); AT y,x

 100 NEXT x: NEXT y

 105 DATA 3, 5, 12, 15, 18, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33

 110 FOR c=0 TO 20; PRINT AT 10+s5; INK 0; a$(d); NEXT d

 130 IF a$(3, 35)>b THEN x

 140 GO TO 30

 150 PRINT x(d)

 160 RETURN

>run_

Chapter Text

© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd

>LOAD "Chapter 26"_

© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd

 10 REM -----------------------

 15 REM      OPTION Y

 20 REM  Popular Majority

 25 REM -----------------------

 30 DIM a$(3, 15)

 40 LET a$(1)=”OPTION XY:”; LET a$(2)=”VOTE:”

 50 LET c=USER

 55 INPUT “Comment as (c)”;a$(2)

 60 GO SUB 130

 70 FOR y=0 TO 25: FOR x=0 to 35

 80 READ b

 90>PRINT FN s(b); AT y,x

 100 NEXT x: NEXT y

 105 DATA 3, 5, 12, 15, 18, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33

 110 FOR c=0 TO 20; PRINT AT 10+s5; INK 0; a$(d); NEXT d

 130 IF a$(3, 35)>b THEN x

 140 GO TO 30

 150 PRINT x(d)

 160 RETURN

>run_

Chapter Text

A plan formed in his head, seemingly spontaneously. Nausea threatened to rocket his guts right up his throat as he groaned, “Oh, God, really?”

Really.

He sighed, then went to find the hacksaw. The plan branched out in his mind, paving a path ahead, as he set everything up in the bathtub upstairs.

He’d need to build a story, despite not getting to decide how it ended.

Or maybe it was that he didn’t have to decide.

A strange weight lifted off his chest as he reached for the phone.

“Doctor Haynes’ office,” came the receptionist’s voice through the receiver.

Stefan sat hunched over on the steps. “Is Doc— is Doctor Haynes there?”

“No, she’s with a client right now. Would you like to make an appointment? I can fit you in… first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Yes.”

“And your name is?”

“Stefan Butler.”

Once he was off the phone, he dragged the body in the blanket to the bathroom upstairs and got to work.

In between working out the logistics of how best to fit a 193cm man into a duffle bag — he had to divide each limb in half so that they would fit, and the head and hands would need to be kept separate from the rest of the body in order to avoid easy identification upon eventual discovery — and needing to dry heave into the toilet, it took a lot longer than he’d anticipated it would. Though, really, he hadn’t thought to anticipate how long a thorough dismemberment would take to begin with. Or how sorely his arms would ache.

He’d long since broken a sweat by the time the doorbell rang.

Stefan looked down at himself. His sleeves were caked in blood. The doorbell kept ringing on and off. He shed his jumper, wiped his hands on a towel, and hurried downstairs.

He stopped by the kitchen and stashed a knife in his waistband before he cracked the front door open.

If Stefan hadn’t already voided the contents of his stomach, he was sure he would’ve when he saw Colin standing on his doorstep.

He took one look at Stefan and pressed his lips together in a surprised almost-frown. “Well, you look like hell.”

“What— what are you doing here?” he asked, tone flat, hiding his shaking hands behind the door.

“It’s Monday. Thakur tried ringing you, but the phone was engaged. I told him you were probably in the zone and took it off the hook, so he sent me over to…” He trailed off with a blink, expression falling, eyes fixing on Stefan’s cheek. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

He touched his cheek and scraped at the tiny speck of dry texture he found. The underside of his fingernail came away with the red-brown, incriminating residue of oxidised blood.

Caught, red-handed. His eyes locked on Colin. His breath froze in his lungs.

Stefan couldn’t let him get away. If Colin turned to run, he wouldn’t be able to catch him before he left the end of the drive, where the neighbors would see him sprinting past the hedges.

But they couldn’t see him here on the doorstep.

Stefan opened the door all the way. “I killed my dad,” he said in a dead voice, then brandished the knife.

Colin’s eyes flew down to it. “Right.” He took a steadying breath, and then he glanced up at Stefan again and shrugged. “Am I next, then?”

(AG) STAB HIM ⵄ (AH) DROP KNIFE

Chapter Text

Stefan gritted his teeth. “I trust you.”

Even as he said it, even though he wanted it to be true, he knew it wasn’t. Not entirely.

He was never going to save him.

Colin nodded and reached for the computer.

“What’d it cost you?” he murmured.

He stopped halfway to the keyboard, then looked back at Stefan. “What do you mean?”

The pieces fell into place in his mind. “Choosing to worship Pax. The first time we first met.” His wide eyes locked onto Colin. “That’s how you know so much. He showed you everything. A way out.”

“Is that right?”

“But you can’t reach that ending without paying a cost.”

Colin’s hand returned to his lap. Whenever he’d shown a trace of fear before, it’d been kept locked under a cool exterior, only ever silently lurking.

The fear on his face now, in comparison, was a blaring siren.

Because Stefan was finally figuring him out.

“When I buy the music you recommend, I find Jerome’s biography. If I don’t take your drugs, you give it to me anyway. You make me choose who should jump. You always put that documentary in my hands, whether you’re there or not.” Stefan’s voice started to rise. “God, it all makes sense now. All of this started the day we met. This is happening because of you.”

Infuriatingly, for once, he said nothing.

Stefan pointed a shaky finger right at him. “You’re an agent of Pax. Just like Jerome’s wife. You want to drive me insane. You’re not going to save me, you’re selling me out to free yourself!”

He took a slow, steady breath and still said nothing.

“Well?” Stefan gestured for him to speak. “What, you didn’t think I’d put it together? Didn’t see this coming?”

A single wry smirk crossed his face. “I will next time. Not that it ever really makes a meaningful difference.” He gave Stefan a momentary once-over. “Is your mind already made up, or can I do something to prove it’s not true?”

“Like what?”

Colin smiled. “What I should’ve done from the start.”

When he stood, Stefan jumped up from the swivel chair, fists clenched. Colin hesitated, but he didn’t move towards Stefan.

Instead, he started walking towards the sliding door to the balcony.

“What are you doing?”

“Proving a point,” he said, sliding the glass door open and stepping outside. “Again.”

In spite of all these new revelations, a bolt of panic shot through Stefan. He stumbled over to the balcony door just as Colin put his hands on the barrier. “Colin, wait—”

Colin paused to turn halfway around, stuffing one hand into the pocket of his plaid slacks, keeping the other on the concrete barrier. “He got in your head, Stefan. If he’s convinced you I’m a threat, I won’t make you kill me yourself. Not this time.”

He said it like it was some kind of favor to Stefan. Like it mattered.

There it was, one of those wretchedly easy-going smiles of his. “We’ll get it right in one of these lives, mate. Maybe not the next one. But one of them. Trial-and-error.”

Then he hopped up onto the barrier, stabilizing himself on the overhang, and swung a leg over the other side. A gust of wind blew the open edges of his red button-up back from his waist. Stefan stood in the doorway, stuck still, paralyzed with indecision.

He’d told Colin he trusted him. It hadn’t been entirely true.

Which meant it wasn’t entirely false, either. Would it have even been an option if it were?

Colin looked back at Stefan one more time. “See you around.” With a wink, he tipped sideways.

In a blink, his paralysis vanished. He lunged forward. “No—!”

Stefan caught his hand with both of his own. It nearly dislocated his shoulders, the sudden drop of Colin’s entire weight over the side of the balcony. Colin looked up at him, swinging back and forth in the air, eyebrows as high up on his forehead as he was off the ground.

The wind howled, angry. Gripping tight, Stefan held onto him with every ounce of strength he had. Which wasn’t much. He had to move fast.

With a strained yell, he planted a foot against the balcony’s concrete barrier and hauled him up. His arms burned like strings of flame. He refused to let go. Colin dangled there, limp, but once he was high enough to reach the ledge, he slung a hand onto it and pulled himself up.

With a final yank, Stefan fell backward and Colin went tumbling over top of him. Back landing against the solid floor, Stefan, unthinking, uncaring about the weight crushing his body, wrapped his aching arms around Colin and buried his face into his chest, breathing hard.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he rambled, “please don’t leave me, I’m sorry—”

“Does this mean you trust me?”

“No— yes— I don’t know! I don’t— I don’t know what’s real, Colin, I can’t—”

All he knew was that he didn’t want to be alone in this, either.

“It’s alright.” A hand slid across the back of Stefan’s neck. Colin pulled himself onto his knees, drawing Stefan into sitting up. He clung to his shoulders, desperate for answers, as his hands cupped Stefan’s jaw, his eyes traveling all over his face. “We’ll figure this out. This is all leading somewhere. Can’t you feel it?”

He didn’t. He wanted to believe him, but the idea gave him as much cause for fear as it did comfort.

If he couldn’t even trust reality, let alone himself, how could he trust Colin?

Inside the den, Stefan’s computer buzzed and began emitting a low-frequency tone. Colin’s eyes glanced up past Stefan, then went wide as his expression deadened. His entire body went stiff.

Stefan turned his head.

In the doorway across the room, there stood PAX.

“You see it too,” Stefan whispered. “I thought you said Pac-Man’s demons were just in his head.”

Absently, he took hold of Stefan’s hand. “I said they probably were.”

The demon, in all the grotesque rot of its deep blue craggy flesh, its glowing white rings of eyes fixed on Stefan, opened its mouth. A set of lion’s teeth, canines long and sharp, menaced them.

It spoke as a thought in Stefan’s head.

PUNY HUMAN. WILL YOU WORSHIP ME?

There was no escape.

On shaky legs, moving numbly, Stefan and Colin rose to their feet together. Their hands tightened in each other’s grasp.

ⵄ

DENY PAX

Without meaning to, Stefan breathed, “No.”

The demon snarled a furious roar and, blindingly fast, rushed at them.

//

Stefan gasped awake, heart pounding, as the car came to a stop.

“We’re on-ly mak-ing—”

His dad killed the engine and the music cut out.

“We’re here,” he said, having the courtesy to at least look apologetic before climbing out the driver’s side.

He blinked rapidly, trying to get control of his breathing, and looked out the passenger window. Saint Juniper’s. Dr. Haynes’ office.

Hadn’t he just been at—

Colin’s. Finishing Bandersnatch. Except—

Except that was impossible. There were still three weeks until the deadline.

A quick glance around, tuning out what his dad started saying.

Around the corner, Colin Ritman appeared in his button badge-adorned blazer, smoking a cigarette and walking up the street.

“Will you just talk to her?” A hand waved in front of his face. “Stefan, please?”

Stefan frowned at his dad.

ⵖ

FOLLOW COLIN

Chapter Text

Stefan gritted his teeth. “I don’t trust you.”

Even as he said it, even though he didn’t want it to be true, he knew it was. At least a little.

He was never going to save him.

Colin nodded and folded his hands together. “Fair enough. It’s a pretty big ask.” His eyes flicked up to the ceiling. “Or is that just what they’ve picked for you to say?”

“Get away from the computer,” Stefan said, tone low.

Colin glanced at him, stilling.

He stood from the chair abruptly. “Now.”

“Alright,” Colin said, rising slowly and stepping away. “You meant what you said. If you want to choose to save the data, you can do that. There’s always a chance you won’t, though, which means there’s always a reality in which you don’t.” He arched a skeptical brow. “All you’re doing is gambling with the totally unknowable odds on which one we end up in. Doesn’t seem like a good bet, honestly.”

Stefan’s nostrils flared as he eyed his computer. He wheeled the swivel chair past Colin, sat down, and faced the screen.

He knew he was right. He couldn’t make this choice without dooming one version of himself. And he couldn’t let Colin do it because he was as unknowable as the odds.

He was at an impasse. A dead end. Stefan wanted to throw it all away and restart from the beginning.

But there would always be a chance he’d just end up here again. Out one side of the maze, right back in the other.

It’d be so much easier to choose if he’d never seen the bigger picture.

Stefan dug his nails into the armrests. “I wish I’d never met you,” he muttered.

“Well, they do say to never meet your heroes,” Colin countered casually. “If it helps, I doubt it’d have mattered. You were already realizing you were under their control.”

“No, no that— that didn’t start until after we’d met, after…”

The pieces fell into place in his mind.

“You chose to worship Pax. The first time we first met.” His wide eyes locked onto Colin. “That’s how you know so much. He showed you everything. A way to keep me here.”

“Is that right?”

“You didn’t give me knowledge to set me free. You did it to keep me trapped.”

Colin’s hand flexed at his side. Whenever he’d shown a trace of fear before, it’d been kept locked under a cool exterior, only ever silently lurking.

The fear on his face now, in comparison, was a blaring siren.

Because Stefan was finally figuring him out.

“When I buy the music you recommend, I find Jerome’s biography. If I don’t take your drugs, you give it to me anyway. You make me choose who should jump. You always put that documentary in my hands, whether you’re there or not.” Stefan’s voice started to rise. “God, it all makes sense now. All of this started the day we met. This is happening because of you.”

Infuriatingly, for once, he said nothing.

Stefan pointed a shaky finger right at him. “You’re an agent of Pax. Just like Jerome’s wife. You want me to stay in the maze. You don’t really believe there’s a way out, you just don’t want to be alone!”

He took a slow, steady breath and still said nothing.

“Well?” Stefan gestured for him to speak. “What, you didn’t think I’d put it together? Didn’t see this coming?”

A single wry smirk crossed his face. “I will next time. Not that it ever really makes a meaningful difference.” He gave Stefan a momentary once-over. “Is your mind already made up, or can I do something to prove it’s not true?”

“Like what?”

Colin smiled. “What I should’ve done from the start.”

When he took a step, Stefan jumped up from the swivel chair, fists clenched. Colin hesitated, but he didn’t move towards Stefan.

Instead, he started walking towards the sliding door to the balcony.

“What are you doing?”

“Proving a point,” he said, sliding the glass door open and stepping outside. “Again.”

In spite of all these new revelations, a bolt of panic shot through Stefan. He stumbled over to the balcony door just as Colin put his hands on the barrier. “Colin, wait—”

Colin paused to turn halfway around, stuffing one hand into the pocket of his plaid slacks, keeping the other on the concrete barrier. “He got in your head, Stefan. If he’s convinced you I’m a threat, I won’t make you kill me yourself. Not this time.”

He said it like it was some kind of favor to Stefan. Like it mattered.

There it was, one of those wretchedly easy-going smiles of his. “We’ll get it right in one of these lives, mate. Maybe not the next one. But one of them. Trial-and-error.”

Then he hopped up onto the barrier, stabilizing himself on the overhang, and swung a leg over the other side. A gust of wind blew the open edges of his red button-up back from his waist. Stefan stood in the doorway, stuck still, paralyzed with indecision.

He’d told Colin he didn’t trust him. There’d been some truth to that.

Which meant it wasn’t entirely true. Would the other option have even existed if it was?

Colin looked back at Stefan one more time. “See you around.” With a wink, he tipped sideways.

In a blink, his paralysis vanished. He lunged forward. “No—!”

His hands grasped at the air, fingers closing around nothing. A fraction of a second of hesitation was all it took.

Colin went over.

Stefan slammed into the barrier with the momentum, head hanging over the edge, and watched him plummet.

And land. Twenty-some-odd stories below, right on the bins. A large splatter painted the lids, matching the red of his shirt.

His chest tightened. He couldn’t breathe. His knees grew too weak to bear his weight. Sinking down slowly against the barrier, Stefan covered his face with his hands and curled into himself.

Oh, God.

He was alone.

If he’d been right about Colin, he’d understand why he’d done it. Why it’d have been worth dooming Stefan to the maze if it meant not having to endure it alone.

This was a nightmare world. It was real, and he was living it, and now, he was alone.

He couldn’t do this alone.

Inside the den, Stefan’s computer buzzed and began emitting a low-frequency tone.

Stefan turned his head.

In the doorway across the room, there stood PAX.

No room left to doubt. It was all too real.

The demon, in all the grotesque rot of its deep blue craggy flesh, its glowing white rings of eyes fixed on Stefan, opened its mouth. A set of lion’s teeth, canines long and sharp, menaced him.

It spoke as a thought in Stefan’s head.

PUNY HUMAN. WILL YOU WORSHIP ME?

There was no escape.

On shaky legs, moving numbly, Stefan rose to his feet.

ⵄ

WORSHIP PAX

Without meaning to, Stefan breathed, “Yes.”

The demon chuffed a rumbling laugh and, blindingly fast, rushed at him.

//

Stefan’s head lolled as the car came to a stop, coaxing him into waking.

“We’re on-ly mak-ing—”

His dad killed the engine and the music cut out.

“We’re here,” he said, having the courtesy to at least look apologetic before climbing out the driver’s side.

He blinked his tired eyes and looked out the passenger window. Saint Juniper’s. Dr. Haynes’ office.

Hadn’t he just been at—

Right. His game had crashed and then he shouted at dad. Like an asshole.

Stefan unbuckled himself and left the car. “This is Dr. Haynes’ place,” he pointed out. “You said we were getting lunch.”

A quick glance around, tuning out what his dad started saying.

Around the corner, Colin Ritman appeared in his button badge-adorned blazer, smoking a cigarette and walking up the street.

“Will you just talk to her?” A hand waved in front of his face. “Stefan, please?”

Stefan frowned at his dad.

ⵄ

FOLLOW COLIN

Chapter Text

Stefan dove for the ashtray, hand grasping it with all the confidence of someone else, someone he wasn’t, couldn’t be.

“Stefan, please—”

“Dad, please get away from me,” he warned again, voice shaking.

Dad quieted, but he didn’t move. He just stood where he was.

Stefan’s arm pulled back, twisting his body around. The ash and cigarette butts sailed to the floor as his hand angled the bottom flat edge of the ashtray for its target.

“I’m not in control,” he said, begging now, begging for him to understand, to listen, for once just listen, “please, I’m not in control.”

There was no fear, no hostility in Dad’s face. No anger. No blame.

“Stefan…”

Just the confused betrayal of a rabbit who never expected his child to grow canines and turn on him.

“I’m not in control,” he pleaded, voice little more than a whimper.

Without his permission, Stefan’s arm swung the ashtray with more force than he’d ever thought it capable of.

It struck true with a sickening crack. A deep gash opened up just below his hairline, blood gathering and bubbling out of it like spring water. Dad’s head spun to the side from the impact, then bounced back to look at Stefan before the blood started running down his forehead. When it dribbled over his open eye, it didn’t even close in reaction.

Dad’s knees buckled as he stumbled backwards. He hit the wall and crumpled gracelessly to the floor, blood splattering his tan shirt, his khakis, the wall, the kitchen tile.

His head slumped to the side. He lay there, bleeding, motionless.

The first feeble thought to cross Stefan’s mind was to call a paramedic.

It wasn’t his fault.

He didn’t want this. Didn’t choose this. He would never choose this. They made him do it. Just like they made Jerome F. Davies.

Who nobody believed.

Stefan stole a blanket from the living room and laid his dad’s body on top of it in the middle of the kitchen. He stared down at it for a long time, not quite believing it was real.

But it was. It was all real.

“What do I do?” he softly asked aloud.

The bleeding had stopped a while ago, congealed blood sticky on his dad’s face, covering one lens of his glasses. Stefan circled the body slowly, coming around to the other side. He stared down at the blood splattered on his hands.

It wasn’t a spirit that did this.

It was a demon.

And he was at its mercy. If it had any to offer.

Stefan tilted his head towards the ceiling.

“What do I do?”

(AI) BURY BODY ⵄ (AJ) CHOP UP BODY

Chapter Text

Stefan clamped a hand over his wrist and pinned his arm down beside the sink. His fist banged against the counter, fighting him.

“Breathe,” Dad said, inching closer, “and out—”

He looked one more time at the ashtray across the kitchen, then screwed his eyes shut and tried to listen. His hyperventilation descended into gasping sobs.

A gentle hand ran over his back. Dad began to shush him like a child. He laid his forehead against the cool tile of the counter.

All at once, his hand was his own again. Out of mercy, luck, or curiosity, he couldn’t say.

Maybe they cared after all.

Should he be grateful?

Dad rubbed soothing circles over his back. He didn’t know what had almost happened. How closely he’d brushed with death. He wouldn’t ever have a chance to find out.

Unless it happened again. Unless they wanted to explore all possibilities.

Why wouldn’t they?

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

Stefan blinked at him, numb. Then, he stepped aside, offering him a clear exit.

Colin took a deep breath and let out a sigh that tried not to sound as relieved as it was. His eyes focused first on the door, then on Stefan.

“I imagine that’s a bit anticlimactic for you,” he said blithely. “But appreciated. Quite enjoying this lifetime.”

He wore another vague, easy-going smile on his face. Either he was very good at hiding the full measure of his relief, or it truly didn’t matter to him how narrowly he’d escaped death.

It mattered to Stefan. It mattered that he wouldn’t have Colin’s blood on his hands, too.

Suppose he couldn’t ask for more mercy than that.

“You could try,” Colin said. “Don’t know if they’ll listen. But you can always try.”

He tried to keep his gaze lowered, but Colin took his face in his hands and turned it towards him. Despite knowing what he’d done to his dad, knowing what he could’ve just done — what he did do in another timeline — Colin looked at him with the same wondrous affection that Stefan had thought he’d only dreamt of. His thumbs stroked his cheekbones once before he pressed a kiss to Stefan’s lips.

It was as warm and slow as it was familiar. Stefan remembered this. He remembered everything they’d done that night.

It’d all been real. He almost couldn’t believe it, but he knew better, now.

The hand that didn’t hold the knife touched Colin’s elbow. The kiss felt like a goodbye, but they both knew it was never goodbye with them. Never for good.

Colin broke away after a handful of seconds that Stefan wished would’ve lasted longer. His nose brushed against Stefan’s as he moved back an inch, still holding him. “See you in the next one.”

He didn’t respond, just drank in the blue of his eyes, already wanting to skip to the part where they met again.

Completely unhurriedly, Colin strolled past him and out of the room. Stefan listened to him walk down the hall, descend the stairs, and close the front door behind him, leaving him alone.

There was nothing left to do but finish what he started.

And try again.

//

By sunset, Stefan finished burying the body.

He brushed the dirt off his hands, then heard the sirens. Blue and red lights caught his eye.

He looked towards them, and waited.

“So that’s how the wire frame models of today,” Lesie said, turning to Camera Two, “might provide the Hollywood entertainment of the future.” Then, she smiled and nodded to her co-host across the set. “Crispin?”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Crispin said, doing a remarkable impression of a secondary school English teacher sitting on the computer display desk. “Now, yesterday, following weeks of controversy and speculation, games company Tuckersoft has announced its going into administration. So, what went wrong?

“Just six months ago, Tuckersoft was riding high with a string of hits topping the charts and mounting anticipation for their big Christmas release, Bandersnatch.” The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to Crispin speaking into a microphone outside of the company’s office building. “But, Bandersnatch never appeared, following the arrest and subsequent murder charge against its creator, nineteen-year-old Stefan Butler, who stands accused of murdering his father, Peter, following a psychological breakdown.”

The article in The Sun detailing the crime — its tongue-in-cheek title, Killed in Code Blood, blocked out in big bold letters above Stefan’s photo from his last year in school — panned across the screen.

“This has raised questions about the judgement of Tuckersoft boss, Mohan Thakur,” Crispin’s voiceover said as the screen cut to a shot of Thakur lighting a cigarette.

“It was his idea to do it alone,” Thakur said, waving his cigarette around as he leaned his elbows on his desk. “I wasn’t to know he couldn’t hack it. I mean, I know his dad’s dead, rest his soul. But I’m a victim, too. Let’s try to not forget that.”

Colin’s black-and-white headshot flashed on-screen, accompanied by Crispin’s voiceover narration. “Another Tuckersoft protégé, Colin Ritman, believes there are important lessons to be learned from Butler’s unravelling.”

Cut to a shot of Colin Ritman reclining in his swivel chair at Tuckersoft’s office, flicking open his Zippo and lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

Crispin sat in a chair opposite him. “What would you say to Stefan, if he could hear you?”

Colin took a drag. “I’d say, ‘Something’s still different,” he said, blowing out smoke, “so you should keep trying.’”

“But he’s in prison.”

He gave Crispin a bemused, knowing smile. “Only in this life.”

“Shortly after this interview,” continued the voiceover, “Colin Ritman was arrested for possession of controlled substances. Tuckersoft closed its doors for good, and there was no sign of Bandersnatch.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Tuckersoft logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said, numb, and raised the knife.

“Alright, no point arguing about it. Not with that though,” Colin said, pointing at the knife, “they sting.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark plaid slacks and glanced around the room. “Have you got anything blunt?”

Casual as anything, as if this was just one more regular afternoon and not the last one he’d have in this life, Colin strolled over to the desk and perused it for his preferred murder weapon.

“Stun me first.” He picked up a cassette tape, weighed it in his hands, and set it back on the desk. “Bit more humane.”

Colin cast a short glance over his shoulder, first at the knife, then up at Stefan, before returning to his search.

Stefan had wondered if the man was even capable of experiencing anxiety. He always carried himself with an air of lax, effortless confidence, a grounding presence that spoke to how few fucks he gave about whatever the world threw in his face. Whatever problem he encountered, whatever error a code would throw a fit about, he always, no hesitation, dove headfirst into the deep end with a single-minded focus on resolution.

Now, Colin Ritman was so anxious that he was stalling.

Only a little. A moment later, he found the chess trophy Stefan had won when he was thirteen. He flipped it in the air, measuring the weight of solid brass and deeming it substantial enough.

“Here,” he said, returning to Stefan and handing him the trophy, “try this.”

He held Colin’s eyes with a blank expression. He only had to kill him. He didn’t have to be cruel about it.

Stefan’s hand let go of the knife. It fell with a muffled clatter onto the carpet. He reached up and accepted the trophy, holding it from the top, wielding it like a hammer.

Colin gave him a warm, crooked smile, slipping his hands back into his pockets. “See you in the next life, yeah?”

With that, he bent forward at the waist, lowering his head to a more strikable height for Stefan, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Colin didn’t want to die just as much as Stefan didn’t want to do this. But, in the end, he’d accepted it just as he did any other error in the code. Just one more thing they’d gotten wrong, one more thing to go back and resolve.

He placed a hand on Colin’s shoulder, and just… stared at him.

How did he do it? Accept every dead end so easily?

Colin had said, in another life, on the balcony, that it wouldn’t matter who died, because there were other timelines. Was that really such a comfort?

Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was better that way. That it didn’t matter what he did or who he killed or why he’d done it.

What did matter, then? Anything? Nothing at all?

“The night we had together,” he said. His voice sounded far away from his own ears. “Did it matter?”

Colin cracked one eye open and cocked his head to glance up at him. “To the universe? Not a lick, seems like, if we ended up here anyways.”

“What about to you?”

“Did it matter to me?” Confusion crossed his face as he straightened back up to his full height. “Yeah. It did. A hell of a lot, Stefan.”

Nothing stayed Stefan’s hand as it moved from Colin’s shoulder to his cheek. Nothing stopped him from stepping forward and pulling Colin into a harsh, desperate kiss. Certainly not Colin, who only wrapped an arm around his waist and kissed him back.

Despite knowing what he’d done to his dad, knowing what he was still about to do with the trophy in his other hand, he kissed him back with a smile.

It was as warm and hungry as it was familiar. Stefan remembered this. He remembered everything they’d done that night.

It’d all been real. He almost couldn’t believe it, but he knew better, now.

The hand on Colin’s cheek ran through the peaks of his gel-spiked hair to the back of his head. The kiss felt like a goodbye, but they both knew it was never goodbye with them. Never for good.

Now Stefan was stalling.

He broke away after a handful of seconds that he wished would’ve lasted longer. His nose brushed against Colin’s as he moved back an inch, still holding him. “I’ll see you again?”

Colin’s eyes drifted back and forth between Stefan’s own. “Always, mate.”

He stepped back, his hand moving back to his shoulder. Colin once more lowered his head. He still had a smile on his face.

No more stalling.

Stefan sent the trophy crashing down into the anvil of Colin’s skull. For the second time that day, the crunch of bone caving in cracked like thunder through the air. Colin dropped instantly, collapsed into an unmoving heap. Blood gushed up from his split scalp, staining his bleached hair.

Dead.

What did it matter?

Stefan would see him again. Always. No matter what he did.

//

By sunset, Stefan finished burying the bodies.

He brushed the dirt off his hands, went to his room, and got to work.

Come sunrise, he heard the neighbor’s dog outside, barking. Too loudly to be in its own yard.

Stefan peeked through the curtains. The dog had jumped the fence and dug up the garden in the backyard.

Two arms sprouted from the mulch.

“That really is fascinating,” Leslie said. “But we’ve got many years to go before virtual reality—” she turned to Camera Two, “—becomes actual reality.” Then, she smiled and nodded to her co-host across the set. “Crispin?”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Crispin said, doing a remarkable impression of a secondary school English teacher sitting on the computer display desk. “Now, six months ago, we were all shocked to hear of the murder of famed programmer, Colin Ritman, creator of Metl Hedd, Nohzdyve, and many other games. Today, his murderer is behind bars — but could the crime have been prevented?

“Just six months ago, Tuckersoft was riding high with a string of hits topping the charts and mounting anticipation for their big Christmas release, Bandersnatch.” The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to Crispin speaking into a microphone outside of the company’s office building. “But, Bandersnatch never appeared, following the arrest and subsequent murder charge against its creator, nineteen-year-old Stefan Butler, who stands accused of murdering his father, Peter, and his idol, Colin Ritman.”

The article in The Sun detailing the crime — its tongue-in-cheek title, Killed in Code Blood, blocked out in big bold letters above Stefan’s photo from his last year in school — panned across the screen.

“This has raised questions about the judgement of Tuckersoft boss, Mohan Thakur,” Crispin’s voiceover said as the screen cut to a shot of Thakur lighting a cigarette.

“It was his idea to do it alone,” Thakur said, waving his cigarette around as he leaned his elbows on his desk. “I wasn’t to know he couldn’t hack it. I know Colin’s dead, but I almost envy him that. Doesn’t have to deal with all this f**king bullsh*t.”

“Today,” continued the voiceover, “Tuckersoft closed its doors for good, and there was no sign of Bandersnatch.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Tuckersoft logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said, numb.

Before Colin could respond, or make a break for it, or even take another breath, Stefan grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand and, with the other, drove the knife into his gut.

Colin doubled over and clung onto Stefan’s arms, face contorting in pain as a clipped, guttural shout jumped out of him. His chin rested on the back of Stefan’s shoulder, labored breathing coming hard.

“Fuck—! Come on,” he groaned brittly between gasps, “did you have to — shit — use a knife?”

Incomprehensibly, he only pulled Stefan closer, gripping him tighter as he panted in pain. His whole body began to tremble. The ability to hold his own weight fled him in a slow decline. Stefan, locked in his hands, had no choice but to sink down to his knees with him.

“Fuck’s sake, mate,” Colin muttered, speech slurring slightly, “don’t gut me like a bloody fish next time, alright? Takes forever and smells awful. Aim for the heart, make it quick.”

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said again, emotion finding its way back to his windpipe, twisting a sob into it, “I’m so sorry—”

Colin dragged his hands up Stefan’s shoulders, his neck, and held him by the sides of his head, forcing him to keep his eyes on him. “Not your fault. We know what they— fuck, what they fucking want, now. New paths, new endings. Congrats, they found one.”

That’s all they wanted. Finding a new thread and picking it apart until it frayed into new, microscopic strings. Until the entire fabric of Stefan’s life unraveled completely.

More gently than should’ve been possible, even as his breath hitched and went ragged, he ran a clammy hand down Stefan’s cheek. “Do me a favor and put me out of my misery, would you? This fucking stings. Cut my throat and be done with it.”

What Stefan wanted didn’t matter.

All he could do was let it happen. He had no choice in the matter.

It was easy, suddenly. Accepting that. Accepting the pain of accepting that.

Stefan yanked the knife out of Colin’s abdomen with a wet squelch. A raw smell, a punchy mix of indole and viscera and iron, filled the air. Colin convulsed, tightened his grip in Stefan’s hair, and hissed through clenched teeth, his head reactively bending back, tensed throat exposed. Nothing Stefan had ever wanted to do to that throat mattered, because what he would do had already been decided.

His hand brought the knife up and held it there for a moment, blood-soaked metal against tender skin. He could feel Colin’s pulse hammering against it, fluttering beat humming from the blade down to the handle.

The smile Colin gave through an agonized wince was one of gratitude. “See you in the next life, yeah?”

He didn’t want this, no. But it was out of his hands. He no longer had to fight something that had never truly been a battle to begin with. He hadn’t lost.

He simply came to terms with his own powerlessness.

He understood, now, the knowledge Colin had given him.

Stefan was free.

He pressed his lips against Colin’s and, with a violent, relieved sob, slashed his throat open.

//

That night, Stefan finished Bandersnatch. For certain, this time. No more bugs, no more errors. He’d had to go back and strip loads out. Now, the player only had the illusion of choice, but he decided the ending. It was better that way. Much better.

The next morning, Thakur was grateful enough to get the finished code that he only let Stefan off with a warning that he wouldn’t be so lenient next time. When he asked him if Colin had ever made it round to his place — he hadn’t answered his calls to his flat last night — he claimed he’d never shown up. Thakur complained about how typical it was for Colin to do whatever he wanted, that he’d probably just gone home and smoked himself into a haze instead of doing what he’d been told.

At his appointment, he told Dr. Haynes that his dad was visiting his sister in the south of France. She was proud of him for finishing and delivering the game.

For once, Stefan was proud of himself, too.

They didn’t find the duffle bag in the woods for another two months. The bloody glyphs on his walls and the remains on his dresser, the evidence that had watched over him as he worked on the sequel, another week after that.

It didn’t matter. He’d gotten his game on Micro Play. He’d gotten the review he’d always wanted.

They’d given him a happy ending. They had shown him kindness, after all.

Stefan was grateful.

“So, Bandersnatch,” Leslie says, walking with Camera One as it pans over to Robin. “Yes or no?”

“Yes, yes, and yes!” Robin exclaims. “It’s got all the bases covered. The perfect game.”

The camera cuts to Leslie as she gives a warm smile and says, “Well, that is a first. So your rating is?”

Cut back to Robin’s exuberant expression. “My rating is five stars out of five — magnificent!”

You pause the clip and tab back over to r/LostMedia.

The title of the post had caught your eye. “[Partially Lost] (?) Bandersnatch (1984) Tuckersoft ZX Spectrum game, one of the few titles to get five stars on Micro Play.”

OP then linked to the video of the review and went on to explain, “Crossposted on r/ZXSpectrum. Found this on a research deep dive of computer games from the 80s/90s and wanted to check out this ‘perfect game,’ but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Robin was a critical little shit. The only other games he gave 5/5 scores to were a couple big hits like Chuckie Egg, Robocop, 3D Deathchase, etc. It’s just really weird because I can only find reviews of Bandersnatch, all of them lauding it, but not the game itself. I’ve searched the Internet Archive, every ROM pack on every site I can think of, and I’ve come up totally empty-handed. Anyone got a copy lying around in an old crate somewhere, or is this lost media?”

Bandersnatch. It sounded vaguely familiar, beyond the C.S. Lewis reference. You realized why after you opened the post and read more.

“didn’t the author chop up his dad and the guy who did nohzdyve?” was the first comment, along with an archived link to the article, cheekily titled Killed in Code Blood, that broke the news.

First reply under it said, “smfh Colin Ritman did not get brutally murdered by a psycho fanboy just to be referred to as ‘the guy who did nohzdyve.’ Have some goddamn respect.”

Reading the article and seeing that name jogged your memory. Your older sister used to gush about “The Colin Ritman” and how Matthew Smith had nothing on his programming skills. You had yet to understand what she meant at the beginning — this was back when you were the one going out and getting into trouble before she, ironically enough, got you hooked on Manic Miner — but you listened anyway.

The second reply: “Yep. All the copies on shelves were pulled and pulped, IIRC. Far as I can tell, it’s the only title TCKR won’t give permission to share or use. I wish I’d picked it up while it was still available, but I had a C64, not a Spectrum.”

And a third: “I reas somewhere that Stefan Butler’s dad was a homophobic prick and HE was the one who actually killed Colin Ritman, because he thought they were secretly lovers. Then Stefan killed him in self-defense. Why else would there be two different murder weapons? The ashtray was clearly improvised, not premeditated.”

“Okay you can take the tinfoil hat off now,” someone replied to them. “The dude literally dismembered BOTH of them, stuffed them in a duffle bag, and dumped them in the woods. He pleaded no contest instead of not guilty because he *allegedly* believed he was being controlled by a demon and, therefore, couldn’t be guilty of his actions. Not because he didn’t do them. Of course he killed them both, he was out of his fucking gourd.”

“You ever read the book it’s based on?” another commenter on the post said. “The author of that, Jerome F. Davies, also ended up going insane. He killed his wife and cut her head off like Stefan Butler did his dad. A. Cairns did a biography on him, and there was a docuseries episode on him (blanking on the name atm, apologies). The hostess did a great job breaking his mentality down. I’ll see if I can find it.

EDIT: Found it! Docuseries was called Mind’s Eye with Judith Mulligan. Crazy shit. Davies based the multiple plotlines of Bandersnatch on his delusions of a lion-demon telling him that parallel realities were real and every choice you ever make has already been made, so free will is an illusion and you have no responsibility over your actions. Butler probably already had a similarly bleak outlook, plus serious mental issues that his obsession with the book only exacerbated. Remember, folks: no matter how razor-thin the line between fiction and reality may get, it should never disappear completely!”

You’d forgotten all about this, but now, it’s flooding back. It’d been so long since you’ve even thought about Anna, let alone the now-retro computer games she’d introduced you to. Most of the time, when you think about her, you just think about how much you wish she never picked up drinking. Maybe then you could give her a ring and ask if she’d managed to snag a copy of Bandersnatch.

But you can’t, so your next best option is to check the storage tubs of her things in the attic. If it was published by the same company that did Colin Ritman’s games, you’d bet good money there’s a copy kicking around in there. It’s been a few years since you’ve touched them. You never had a reason to, you suppose, until now.

Anna never tossed anything. Her flat had been a veritable museum of her life. Cleaning it out felt like robbing her of priceless exhibitions while her back was turned. Nonsensical as it was, you’d worried the entire time that she’d show up at the door and start yelling at everyone for going through her belongings. You would’ve preferred that.

Your parents didn’t have the space for all the shit she hung onto, so it fell into your custody. You’d thought a million times about selling it all, or donating the computers to the Centre for Computing History, or something other than letting it sit quietly in a dusty, cobwebbed corner. Never quite got around to it. It slipped farther and farther from your mind, until you stopped thinking about it altogether.

Your procrastination turned out to be a good thing, for once. You find the tub of obsolete tech only after digging through most of the others — black clothes, spiked jewelry, too many studded belts, metal and new wave cassettes, band posters, banned books: all painting an imperfect portrait of Anna. You even uncover the bottle of Christian Dior Poison perfume she used to wear. You toy with the idea of spritzing it on your wrist, but opt not to and move on.

You know you’ve found the right one when you open it to the sight of her old ZX Spectrum 48k at the very top. Below it is the Amiga 500 she switched to after you’d more or less commandeered her Speccy.

You rummage through the tub, finding a cassette player, miscellaneous cables, and a number of hard-shell cases. Opening one up reveals a treasure trove of games, cassette tapes with both official and bootleg labels. They’re all for the Amiga, though, so you crack open the next one.

There, amidst the rows of Spectrum games, you find it. Bandersnatch. It’s an official copy, too. Your heart leaps as you take it out of the case and examine the cover art. It’s got the lion-man demon on front, royal blue and royally creepy, along with the Tuckersoft logo and Spectrum rainbow at the corner.

You notice a few other familiar titles, including every one of Colin Ritman’s games. As curious as you are to test out the consoles and see if they’re still functional, you have a task to focus on. You take Stefan Butler’s game back down to your room, placing it next to your keyboard as you pen a comment for the Reddit thread.

“Good news, OP,” you type, “I found a copy of Bandersnatch in my sister’s old collection of Spectrum games! Fingers crossed the tape’s still readable.”

You find a tutorial online on how to convert a tape to a ROM. You download the programs the guy in the video tells you to — you already have Audacity, so you just have to get Audiotap and TAPClean — grab Anna’s cassette player along with an audio jack, and set it all up.

The sounds of cracking open a cassette case, loading the tape into the player, and clacking the player shut sends a wave of nostalgia rolling through you. It’s simple enough, following the tutorial, to record the data off the cassette and save it as a .WAV file. Audiotap converts it to a .TAP file, and TAPClean comes back with a 99% recognized diagnosis.

That’s way better than you were expecting.

It’s a rare event that you’re able to come through for people like this. You’re an archivist by trade, happy to spend your days digitizing whatever books and historical documents find their way to your desk at the library. With the thrill of success thrumming through you, you upload the game file to Mediafire and edit your comment on Reddit to tell people to DM you for a link. If TCKR’s still shooting down copies online, you’ll want to keep it off torrent sites and stick to private channels.

Anna’s still helping you out, even years after she’s gone.

That Micro Play review has you curious, though. What made it such a perfect game? You really ought to play it to see for yourself.

You open Retroarch, load Bandersnatch.TAP, and run the program.

The loading page’s illustration is admittedly gorgeous. Stefan Butler was, among everything else, certainly an artist. You start the game, excited in spite of yourself.

You get as far as meeting Pax and choosing to worship him before your PC bluescreens.

Stop code: CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED.

You swear out loud. You knew that your computer was getting on in years, but you didn’t think a file as tiny as this one would be an issue. Maybe the game was corrupted somehow, or maybe you need to update Retroarch. Before you narrow down the cause, you shouldn’t share a potentially PC-crashing file. After rebooting, you first open Reddit to apologize and update everyone on the issue.

Your comment already has a handful of upvotes, and there’s a message in your inbox.

ⵄ

SHARE FILE

You open Mediafire, grab the file link, and reply to the DM with it.

You blink. That was weird. Why did you just do that?

You don’t know. You weren’t even thinking, like seeing the message notification made you go on autopilot and follow the first impulse that came to you. You’re not an impulsive person, or at least you didn’t think you were.

It was OP that had messaged you. You type out a second reply, heart beating a little faster. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to send that. My computer crashed when I tried playing the game. I think the file might be corrupted somehow. Don’t download it just yet.”

ⵄ

DESTROY SCREEN

Before you can hit send, you stand up, pick up your keyboard, and smash it into your monitor, shattering the display.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“They made me do it,” he said, numb. “They made me kill my dad. And then they made me—”

All at once, before he realized it hadn’t yet, reality hit him like a high-speed train.

His voice caught in his throat. Against all odds, Stefan’s hand let go of the knife. It clattered loudly to the floor.

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Stefan just stared at Colin, watched the now-serious expression on his face blur with the tears welling up his wide, unblinking eyes.

It wasn’t his fault. It was all his fault. He was being controlled. He’d have done it anyway.

What did it matter?

Dad was dead.

“He’s dead,” he croaked past the knot in his throat, voice cracking, knees going weak and shaky. “Dad’s dead, he’s— I killed him, and I dragged his body up to the bathtub, and I got a hacksaw and cut off his fucking head and—”

Stefan’s legs buckled as he broke down into tears.

He hadn’t expected Colin to catch him as he fell. Hadn’t expected him to wrap his arms around Stefan and lower him to the ground gently. Stefan’s arms slid around him in turn, squeezing him tight. He curled against his chest, incoherent as the sobs wracked through his body.

“It’s alright,” Colin said into his ear, running a hand through his hair. “Alright? I’ve got you, Stefan.”

Stefan was a murderer, and Colin Ritman was cradling him in his arms. He was crying too hard to totally register the reality of that.

“I don’t want this,” Stefan gasped. “I don’t want to be their puppet, I don’t want this to be my life, I don’t want to do this anymore, I do— I don’t—”

“I know, mate, I know.”

Another wretched sob, and then, “I can’t do this again, Colin, I can’t— I want out—”

He felt Colin’s chin rest on top of his head, felt his chest rise and fall with a sigh. “I know,” he repeated.

Stefan grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted it in a death grip, nestling closer. “Tell me you know a way out.”

“If I knew that, we’d already be out.”

He sniffled wetly. “So what am I supposed to do?”

Colin pulled back to give him a half-smile, half-wince. He cradled his jaw in one hand. “The only thing you can do, much as you don’t want to.”

Try again.

He burst into fresh tears. Colin pressed a kiss to the side of his head and held him tighter.

Burying his face against his chest, encompassed in his long arms, Stefan wanted to pretend that they could just stay there in that moment. No forward progression down a terrible path, no restarting from the beginning and risking repeating the same one, or ending up on a worse one, because there could always be a worse one. He could pretend that he was somewhere else, someone else, embracing the last person he had left for some other, softer reason.

Reality demanded otherwise. Reality was hell, and if he was in hell, he couldn’t stay. He had to start from the beginning. He had to find a way out. Even if it was through.

He had no other choice.

//

Colin came back out of the house after making the call and sat with Stefan on the doorstep.

He waited there with him, an arm around his shoulders, until they heard the sirens. Blue and red lights caught his eye.

Stefan looked towards them. Colin squeezed his arm.

“Good luck, mate,” he said. “See you in the next one.”

“Now that,” Leslie said, turning to Camera Two, “is riveting.” Then, she smiled and nodded to her co-host across the set. “Crispin?”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Crispin said, doing a remarkable impression of a secondary school English teacher sitting on the computer display desk. “Now, yesterday, following weeks of controversy and speculation, games company Tuckersoft has announced its going into administration. So, what went wrong?

“Just six months ago, Tuckersoft was riding high with a string of hits topping the charts and mounting anticipation for their big Christmas release, Bandersnatch.” The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to Crispin speaking into a microphone outside of the company’s office building. “But, Bandersnatch never appeared, following the arrest and subsequent murder charge against its creator, nineteen-year-old Stefan Butler, who stands accused of murdering his father, Peter, following a psychological breakdown.”

The article in The Sun detailing the crime — its tongue-in-cheek title, Killed in Code Blood, blocked out in big bold letters above Stefan’s photo from his last year in school — panned across the screen.

“This has raised questions about the judgement of Tuckersoft boss, Mohan Thakur,” Crispin’s voiceover said as the screen cut to a shot of Thakur lighting a cigarette.

“It was his idea to do it alone,” Thakur said, waving his cigarette around as he leaned his elbows on his desk. “I wasn’t to know he couldn’t hack it. I mean, I know his dad’s dead, rest his soul. But I’m a victim, too. Let’s try to not forget that.”

Colin’s black-and-white headshot flashed on-screen, accompanied by Crispin’s voiceover narration. “Another Tuckersoft protégé, Colin Ritman, believes there are important lessons to be learned from Butler’s unravelling.”

Cut to a shot of Colin Ritman reclining in his swivel chair at Tuckersoft’s office, flicking open his Zippo and lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

Crispin sat in a chair opposite him. “What would you say to Stefan, if he could hear you?”

Colin ashed the cigarette onto the floor. “I’d say… if you could live your life again, you might want to try exercising a little more patience.”

“But he can’t live his life again.”

“Come on, mate.” He brought the roll-up back to his lips. “Dare to dream?”

“Shortly after this interview,” continued the voiceover, “Colin Ritman was arrested for possession of controlled substances. Tuckersoft closed its doors for good, and there was no sign of Bandersnatch.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Tuckersoft logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

A plan formed in his head, seemingly spontaneously. Stefan let out a sigh. “Okay.”

At that moment, the phone rang.

It would be suspicious not to answer.

He picked up the receiver and took a second to find his voice. “…Hello?”

“How’s Bandersnatch?” came Colin’s tinny voice.

“How’s… good,” Stefan answered weakly. “It’s good.”

“Good to hear. Are you coming by soon, then? It’s Monday, in case you lost track.”

Right.

Stefan glanced back towards the kitchen. His stomach did a nauseous little somersault. “I— actually, I’ve… hit a bit of a snag. Got to sort it out, first. I’ll— I’ll come by tomorrow, yeah?”

In the uncertain moment of dead air, Stefan squeezed his eyes shut. If his dream had been real, if Colin was aware of other timelines, if he knew the truth…

“Cutting it pretty close, aren’t you?” was all he said, though. “Deadline’s the day after. Why don’t you bring it over in a bit so we can sort it out together?”

“No,” Stefan answered, far too quickly, “no, I really— I have to take care of it here, alone. Fewer distractions that way.”

“Are you saying I distract you, Stefan?”

He laughed, far too nervously. “You’re distracting me right now.”

“Got me there.” There was a smile in his voice. Stefan could hear it.

If this conversation had occurred in any other circumstance, his heart would be racing for a different reason altogether.

“Alright, well,” Colin said. “Good luck, mate.”

“Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

He hung up the phone, unsure how he’d managed to carry out a normal-enough-sounding conversation so soon after committing a murder.

He had sounded normal enough, hadn’t he?

The shovel he found wasn’t very big. He didn’t have time to dig as deep as he’d have liked to, but it would have to do. There was still a deadline to make.

It took the better part of the morning and afternoon to make a hole big enough for a 193cm man. In the garden, not the grass. Less conspicuous to disturb the mulch instead of the lawn. Stefan, covered in dirt and sweat, went back inside to drag the body to the grave marked only by the chrysanthemums.

Except, before he could even get it out of the kitchen, the doorbell rang.

Stefan froze, head snapping up towards the door. He dropped the blanket swaddling his dad’s bloodied corpse. The doorbell kept ringing on and off. Slowly, he crept towards the magnetic rack of knives, stashed one in his waistband, and went to answer it.

Bile rose to the back of his throat when he cracked the front door open and saw Colin standing on his doorstep.

He took one look at Stefan and pressed his lips into an easy-going almost-smile. “Well, you need a hand.”

Before he could stop him, he opened the door further and stepped inside. Stefan staggered backwards, hiding one shaking hand behind him, touching the handle of the knife.

“What are you doing here?” Stefan asked. He meant to sound relaxed, but his voice only rang hollow to his ears. “I said I’d bring the game by tomorrow.”

“I know. I also know you’re stubborn. It’ll take less time to untangle it with both of us working on it. And don’t worry,” he added with a curl of his lip, “I promise not to distract you until we’re done.”

Stefan floundered for a moment, trying to think of what to say to get him out of the house.

“Where’s your pit?” Colin pointed to the ceiling. “Up there?”

Without waiting for an answer, he started up the stairs. Stefan spared the kitchen a single glance and followed him.

“Tell me about this snag,” he said, walking into Stefan’s bedroom. The notes for the conspiracy path trailed across his corkboard, leading down to a mess of papers cluttering his desk. “Is the agent still bugged?” He looked over his shoulder at Stefan. “Or d’you find something new?”

He stilled as his eyes fell to the knife in his hand.

Stefan, standing in the doorway, stared at him, dead-eyed. “I killed my dad.”

Carefully, Colin faced him, took a steadying breath, and nodded. “Right.” He shrugged and pressed his lips together. “So, you gonna let me go, or you gonna kill me?” Another casual shrug, eyes locking with Stefan’s. “I mean, it’s your choice. Inasmuch as you have any choice.”

He knew better than anyone just how much of a choice he didn’t have. He was the one who’d tried to tell him the truth of this reality. And Stefan had thought it’d all been some strange, impossible dream.

This, too, felt like a strange, impossible dream. Nightmare, more like. But there was no waking up from this. This was real. Same as the dream. The parallel realities. The demon.

This was happening.

(AK) LET HIM GO ⵄ (AL) KILL HIM

Chapter Text

A plan formed in his head, seemingly spontaneously. Nausea threatened to rocket his guts right up his throat as he groaned, “Oh, God, really?”

Really.

He sighed, then went to find the hacksaw. The plan branched out in his mind, paving a path ahead, as he set everything up in the bathtub upstairs.

He’d need to build a story, despite not getting to decide how it ended.

Or maybe it was that he didn’t have to decide.

A strange weight lifted off his chest as he reached for the phone.

“Doctor Haynes’ office,” came the receptionist’s voice through the receiver.

Stefan sat hunched over on the steps. “Is Doc— is Doctor Haynes there?”

“No, she’s with a client right now. Would you like to make an appointment? I can fit you in… first thing this Thursday.”

“Yes.”

“And your name is?”

“Stefan Butler.”

Once he was off the phone, he dragged the body in the blanket to the bathroom upstairs and got to work.

In between working out the logistics of how best to fit a 193cm man into a duffle bag — he had to divide each limb in half so that they would fit, and the head and hands would need to be kept separate from the rest of the body in order to avoid easy identification upon eventual discovery — and needing to dry heave into the toilet, it took a lot longer than he’d anticipated it would. Though, really, he hadn’t thought to anticipate how long a thorough dismemberment would take to begin with. Or how sorely his arms would ache.

He’d long since broken a sweat by the time the doorbell rang.

Stefan looked down at himself. His sleeves were caked in blood. The doorbell kept ringing on and off. He shed his jumper, wiped his hands on a towel, and hurried downstairs.

He stopped by the kitchen and stashed a knife in his waistband before he cracked the front door open.

If Stefan hadn’t already voided the contents of his stomach, he was sure he would’ve when he saw Colin standing on his doorstep.

He took one look at Stefan and pressed his lips together in a surprised almost-frown. “Well, you look like hell.”

“What— what are you doing here?” he asked, tone flat, hiding his shaking hands behind the door.

“It’s Monday. You were supposed to come over with the fixed code, remember? I tried ringing you, but the phone was engaged. Figured you were probably in the zone and took it off the hook, so I thought I’d pop over and…” He trailed off with a blink, expression falling, eyes fixing on Stefan’s cheek. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

He touched his cheek and scraped at the tiny speck of dry texture he found. The underside of his fingernail came away with the red-brown, incriminating residue of oxidised blood.

Caught, red-handed. His eyes locked on Colin. His breath froze in his lungs.

Stefan couldn’t let him get away. If Colin turned to run, he wouldn’t be able to catch him before he left the end of the drive, where the neighbors would see him sprinting past the hedges.

But they couldn’t see him here on the doorstep.

Stefan opened the door all the way. “I killed my dad,” he said in a dead voice, then brandished the knife.

Colin’s eyes flew down to it. “Right.” He took a steadying breath, and then he glanced up at Stefan again and shrugged. “Am I next, then?”

(AM) STAB HIM ⵄ (AN) DROP KNIFE

Chapter Text

Stefan blinked at him, numb. Then, he stepped aside, offering him a clear exit.

Colin took a deep breath and let out a sigh that tried not to sound as relieved as it was. His eyes focused first on the door, then on Stefan.

“I imagine that’s a bit anticlimactic for you,” he said blithely. “But appreciated. Quite enjoying this lifetime.”

He wore another vague, easy-going smile on his face. Either he was very good at hiding the full measure of his relief, or it truly didn’t matter to him how narrowly he’d escaped death.

It mattered to Stefan. It mattered that he wouldn’t have Colin’s blood on his hands, too.

Suppose he couldn’t ask for more mercy than that.

“You could try,” Colin said. “Don’t know if they’ll listen. But you can always try.”

He kept his gaze lowered. He didn’t respond, not even when he felt a reassuring hand come down on his shoulder and squeeze for a too-brief moment.

“See you in the next one.”

Completely unhurriedly, Colin strolled past him and out of the room. Stefan listened to him walk down the hall, descend the stairs, and close the front door behind him, leaving him alone.

There was nothing left to do but finish what he started.

And try again.

//

By sunset, Stefan finished burying the body.

He brushed the dirt off his hands, then heard the sirens. Blue and red lights caught his eye.

He looked towards them, and waited.

“So, Bandersnatch,” Leslie said, walking with Camera One as it panned over to Robin. “Yay or nay?”

“Well, Leslie, I’ve got to admit,” Robin answered, “I’m quite conflicted about this one, and not for my usual reasons. As you know, the original author, Stefan Butler, was arrested and charged with the murder his own father.”

“Yes, very sad.”

“Indeed. Now, the code, to no small amount of controversy, was finished by none other than Colin Ritman, his collaborator on the project,” Robin continued. “But, as he’d pointed out in a recent interview, there are some unsettling parallels between Butler and Jerome F. Davies, the author of the book he’d based his game on.

“Both of them committed grisly murders while disavowing the notion of free will, and thus all responsibility — a concept that’s abundantly present across both forms of Bandersnatch’s narrative. It— it just seems irresponsible, given the context, to treat it as one more simple, harmless computer game.”

The camera cut from B-roll footage of Bandersnatch in the window display of WHSmith to the concerned frown on Leslie’s face. “So, what’s the verdict, Your Honor?”

“No rating,” Robin said with a sad shake of his head towards the camera. “It’s obvious that there was a lot of work put into it, and Ritman really tied it up quite nicely, but I strongly advise playing at your own discretion. The line between reality and fiction is blurred so deliberately here, I just can’t in good conscience give a blanket recommendation without wondering if some other troubled young man might adopt the same unfortunate mindset that Butler seemed to from Davies.”

“You make a good point, Robin.”

“Thanks, Leslie. More reviews coming up, right after the break.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Micro Play logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said, numb, and raised the knife.

“Alright, no point arguing about it. Not with that though,” Colin said, pointing at the knife, “they sting.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark plaid slacks and glanced around the room. “Have you got anything blunt?”

Casual as anything, as if this was just one more regular afternoon and not the last one he’d have in this life, Colin strolled over to the desk and perused it for his preferred murder weapon.

“Stun me first.” He picked up a cassette tape, weighed it in his hands, and set it back on the desk. “Bit more humane.”

Colin cast a short glance over his shoulder, first at the knife, then up at Stefan, before returning to his search.

Stefan had wondered if the man was even capable of experiencing anxiety. He always carried himself with an air of lax, effortless confidence, a grounding presence that spoke to how few fucks he gave about whatever the world threw in his face. Whatever problem he encountered, whatever error a code would throw a fit about, he always, no hesitation, dove headfirst into the deep end with a single-minded focus on resolution.

Now, Colin Ritman was so anxious that he was stalling.

Only a little. A moment later, he found the chess trophy Stefan had won when he was thirteen. He flipped it in the air, measuring the weight of solid brass and deeming it substantial enough.

“Here,” he said, returning to Stefan and handing him the trophy, “try this.”

He held Colin’s eyes with a blank expression. He only had to kill him. He didn’t have to be cruel about it.

Stefan’s hand let go of the knife. It fell with a muffled clatter onto the carpet. He reached up and accepted the trophy, holding it from the top, wielding it like a hammer.

Colin gave him a warm, crooked smile, slipping his hands back into his pockets. “See you in the next life, yeah?”

With that, he bent forward at the waist, lowering his head to a more strikable height for Stefan, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Colin didn’t want to die just as much as Stefan didn’t want to do this. But, in the end, he’d accepted it just as he did any other error in the code. Just one more thing they’d gotten wrong, one more thing to go back and resolve.

He placed a hand on Colin’s shoulder, and just… stared at him.

How did he do it? Accept every dead end so easily?

Colin had said, before, on the balcony, that it wouldn’t matter who died, because there were other timelines. Was that really such a comfort?

Stefan was the one to suggest that they all mattered, that they all counted for something. Maybe that was the wrong way to go about it.

Maybe it was better if none of them did. That it didn’t matter what he did or who he killed or why he’d done it.

What did matter, then? Anything? Nothing at all?

Now Stefan was stalling.

Colin cracked one eye open and cocked his head to glance up at him. “Come on,” he urged, tone playful, of all things, with a little nod, “on me head.”

No more stalling.

Stefan sent the trophy crashing down into the anvil of Colin’s skull. For the second time that day, the crunch of bone caving in cracked like thunder through the air. Colin dropped instantly, collapsed into an unmoving heap. Blood gushed up from his split scalp, staining his bleached hair.

Dead.

What did it matter?

Stefan would see him again.

//

By sunset, Stefan finished burying the bodies.

He brushed the dirt off his hands, went to his room, and got to work.

Come sunrise, he heard the neighbor’s dog outside, barking. Too loudly to be in its own yard.

Stefan peeked through the curtains. The dog had jumped the fence and dug up the garden in the backyard.

Two arms sprouted from the mulch.

“And that’s how the digital interfacing contact lenses of today’s science fiction,” Leslie said, turning to Camera Two, “might become the everyday tech of tomorrow.” Then, she smiled and nodded to her co-host across the set. “Crispin?”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Crispin said, doing a remarkable impression of a secondary school English teacher sitting on the computer display desk. “Now, six months ago, we were all shocked to hear of the murder of famed programmer, Colin Ritman, creator of Metl Hedd, Nohzdyve, and many other games. Today, his murderer is behind bars — but could the crime have been prevented?

“Just six months ago, Tuckersoft was riding high with a string of hits topping the charts and mounting anticipation for their big Christmas release, Bandersnatch.” The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to Crispin speaking into a microphone outside of the company’s office building. “But, Bandersnatch never appeared, following the arrest and subsequent murder charge against its creator, nineteen-year-old Stefan Butler, who stands accused of murdering his father, Peter, and his collaborator on the game, Colin Ritman.”

The article in The Sun detailing the crime — its tongue-in-cheek title, Killed in Code Blood, blocked out in big bold letters above Stefan’s photo from his last year in school — panned across the screen.

“This has raised questions about the judgement of Tuckersoft boss, Mohan Thakur,” Crispin’s voiceover said as the screen cut to a shot of Thakur lighting a cigarette.

“I knew the kid was off the moment I met him,” Mohan Thakur said, waving a cigarette around as he leaned his elbows on his desk. “But, I don’t know, I thought maybe he was just artistic, you know? An eccentric. Colin used to say eccentricity was the price of genius. Course I took his word for it, he was walking proof. How was I to know the kid was the stabby kind of mad? Nut-job f**ked us all over with this bullsh*t.”

“Other Tuckersoft employees were able to shed some light on the dynamic between Ritman and Butler,” came Crispin’s narration as the camera lingered on Mohan taking a drag, “and what signs they may have missed.”

It then cut to Tuckersoft intern, Satpal, sitting at a table by a Metl Hedd poster. “Everyone knew Colin as the ‘lone wolf’ of the office,” Satpal said. “No teams, no data entry guy. He just showed up, put headphones on, and built amazing games. So we were all pretty surprised when he started working with Stefan on Bandersnatch. He must’ve seen something really special in the project. Or in Stefan.”

Crispin, sitting across from him, gave him a pensive look. “It isn’t often that a superfan ends up working at the same company as their idol, let alone capturing their interest. Do you think he’d done anything to draw Colin towards his project?”

Satpal shrugged, glancing off to the side and shaking his head. “I’m not sure. It kind of seemed more like the game drew them both in.”

The next shot was of the blonde Tuckersoft secretary sitting at her desk. A banner on-screen identified her as Kathy. “I’d only seen him twice. First was when he showcased his demo and rejected Mr. Thakur’s proposal to write his game in the office, and then when he came back to ask for help, ‘cause that wasn’t working out too well, weirdly enough.”

“It sounds like a lot for one person to take on,” Crispin pointed out. “Why do you think Colin was the one, out of everyone in the office, to lend a hand?”

“Some of the guys in graphics say they must have knocked about with each other before he came round,” Kathy recalled, squinting behind her oversized glasses, “said they heard Colin say they’d met before? But I heard him say he was a fan of his when he walked in, and Colin doesn’t exactly do meet-and-greets, or— or didn’t, I mean. It didn’t make a lot of sense, to be honest, but you never needed things to make sense with Colin, because by the end of the day, they just… did.”

“Unfortunately,” continued the voiceover, “no matter the speculation as to whether there were ample warning signs or not, this tragedy grows no less senseless. Today, Tuckersoft closed its doors for good, and there was no sign of Bandersnatch.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Tuckersoft logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said, numb.

Before Colin could respond, or make a break for it, or even take another breath, Stefan grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand and, with the other, drove the knife into his gut.

Colin doubled over and clung onto Stefan’s arms, face contorting in pain as a clipped, guttural shout jumped out of him. His chin rested on the back of Stefan’s shoulder, labored breathing coming hard.

“Fuck—! Come on,” he groaned brittly between gasps, “did you have to — shit — use a knife?”

Incomprehensibly, he only pulled Stefan closer, gripping him tighter as he panted in pain. His whole body began to tremble. The ability to hold his own weight fled him in a slow decline. Stefan, locked in his hands, had no choice but to sink down to his knees with him.

“Fuck’s sake, mate,” Colin muttered, speech slurring slightly, “don’t gut me like a bloody fish next time, alright? Takes forever and smells awful. Aim for the heart, make it quick.”

“I’m sorry,” Stefan said again, emotion finding its way back to his windpipe, twisting a sob into it, “I’m so sorry—”

Colin dragged his hands up Stefan’s shoulders, his neck, and held him by the sides of his head, forcing him to keep his eyes on him. “Not your fault. We know what they— fuck, what they fucking want, now. New paths, new endings. Congrats, they found one.”

That’s all they wanted. Finding a new thread and picking it apart until it frayed into new, microscopic strings. Until the entire fabric of Stefan’s life unraveled completely.

More gently than should’ve been possible, even as his breath hitched and went ragged, he ran a clammy hand down Stefan’s cheek. “Do me a favor and put me out of my misery, would you? This fucking stings. Cut my throat and be done with it.”

What Stefan wanted didn’t matter.

All he could do was let it happen. He had no choice in the matter.

It was easy, suddenly. Accepting that. Accepting the pain of accepting that.

Stefan yanked the knife out of Colin’s abdomen with a wet squelch. A raw smell, a punchy mix of indole and viscera and iron, filled the air. Colin convulsed, tightened his grip in Stefan’s hair, and hissed through clenched teeth, his head reactively bending back, tensed throat exposed. Nothing Stefan had ever wanted to do to that throat mattered, because what he would do had already been decided.

His hand brought the knife up and held it there for a moment, blood-soaked metal against tender skin. He could feel Colin’s pulse hammering against it, fluttering beat humming from the blade down to the handle.

The smile Colin gave through an agonized wince was one of gratitude. “See you in the next one, yeah?”

He didn’t want this, no. But it was out of his hands. He no longer had to fight something that had never truly been a battle to begin with. He hadn’t lost.

He simply came to terms with his own powerlessness.

He understood, now, the knowledge Colin had given him.

Stefan was free.

He held Colin closer and, with a violent, relieved sob, slashed his throat open.

//

That night, Stefan finished Bandersnatch. For certain, this time. No more bugs, no more errors. He’d had to go back and strip loads out. Now, the player only had the illusion of choice, but he decided the ending. It was better that way. Much better.

The next morning, Kitty came over, asking Stefan if he’d seen Colin. She’d been visiting her parents with Pearl and rung him yesterday before catching the train back, and he’d mentioned that he was coming over to help him with Bandersnatch. He claimed that Colin had never shown up and shut the door in her face.

Thursday morning, Stefan walked out of Dr. Haynes office to find police officers arriving, blue and red lights flashing. Colin had been reported missing. They’d searched the house without a warrant on the grounds of preventing the destruction of evidence.

They’d found what they needed in his room, the bloody glyphs on his walls and the remains on his dresser. The evidence had watched over Stefan as he’d completed his game.

It probably wouldn’t see the light of day, now, much less garner a review on Micro Play. But at least he’d completed it.

He complied willingly. Not that it mattered.

They didn’t care, so why should he?

“But when the first issue might hit shelves,” Leslie said, “or how including a demo tape on the cover will shift sales strategies for their competitors—” she turned to Camera Two, “—remains to be seen.” Then, she smiled and nodded to her co-host across the set. “Crispin?”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Crispin said, doing a remarkable impression of a secondary school English teacher sitting on the computer display desk. “Now, six months ago, we were all shocked to hear of the grisly murder of famed programmer, Colin Ritman, creator of Metl Hedd, Nohzdyve, and many other games. Today, his murderer is behind bars — but could the crime have been prevented?

“Just six months ago, Tuckersoft was riding high with a string of hits topping the charts and mounting anticipation for their big Christmas release, Bandersnatch.” The camera cut from B-roll footage of Tuckersoft games in the window display of WHSmith to Crispin speaking into a microphone outside of the company’s office building. “But, Bandersnatch never appeared, following the arrest and subsequent murder charge against its creator, nineteen-year-old Stefan Butler, who stands accused of murdering his father, Peter, and his collaborator on the game, Colin Ritman.”

The article in The Sun detailing the crime — its tongue-in-cheek title, Killed in Code Blood, blocked out in big bold letters above Stefan’s photo from his last year in school — panned across the screen.

“This has raised questions about the judgement of Tuckersoft boss, Mohan Thakur,” Crispin’s voiceover said as the screen cut to a shot of Thakur lighting a cigarette.

“I knew the kid was off the moment I met him,” Mohan Thakur said, waving a cigarette around as he leaned his elbows on his desk. “But, I don’t know, I thought maybe he was just artistic, you know? An eccentric. Colin used to say eccentricity was the price of genius. Course I took his word for it, he was walking proof. How was I to know the kid was the stabby kind of mad? Nut-job f**ked us all over with this bullsh*t.”

“Other Tuckersoft employees were able to shed some light on the dynamic between Ritman and Butler,” came Crispin’s narration as the camera lingered on Mohan taking a drag, “and what signs they may have missed.”

It then cut to Tuckersoft intern, Satpal, sitting at a table by a Metl Hedd poster. “Everyone knew Colin as the ‘lone wolf’ of the office,” Satpal said. “No teams, no data entry guy. He just showed up, put headphones on, and built amazing games. So we were all pretty surprised when he started working with Stefan on Bandersnatch. He must’ve seen something really special in the project. Or in Stefan.”

Crispin, sitting across from him, gave him a pensive look. “It isn’t often that a superfan ends up working at the same company as their idol, let alone capturing their interest. Do you think he’d done anything to draw Colin towards his project?”

Satpal shrugged, glancing off to the side and shaking his head. “I’m not sure. It kind of seemed more like the game drew them both in.”

The next shot was of the blonde Tuckersoft secretary sitting at her desk. A banner on-screen identified her as Kathy. “I’d only seen him twice. First was when he showcased his demo and rejected Mr. Thakur’s proposal to write his game in the office, and then when he came back to ask for help, ‘cause that wasn’t working out too well, weirdly enough.”

“It sounds like a lot for one person to take on,” Crispin pointed out. “Why do you think Colin was the one, out of everyone in the office, to lend a hand?”

“Some of the guys in graphics say they must have knocked about with each other before he came round,” Kathy recalled, squinting behind her oversized glasses, “said they heard Colin say they’d met before? But I heard him say he was a fan of his when he walked in, and Colin doesn’t exactly do meet-and-greets, or— or didn’t, I mean. It didn’t make a lot of sense, to be honest, but you never needed things to make sense with Colin, because by the end of the day, they just… did.”

“Unfortunately,” continued the voiceover, “no matter the speculation as to whether there were ample warning signs or not, this tragedy grows no less senseless. Today, Tuckersoft closed its doors for good, and there was no sign of Bandersnatch.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Tuckersoft logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“They made me do it,” he said, numb. “They made me kill my dad. And then they made me—”

All at once, before he realized it hadn’t yet, reality hit him like a high-speed train.

His voice caught in his throat. Against all odds, Stefan’s hand let go of the knife. It clattered loudly to the floor.

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Stefan just stared at Colin, watched the now-serious expression on his face blur with the tears welling up his wide, unblinking eyes.

It wasn’t his fault. It was all his fault. He was being controlled. He’d have done it anyway.

What did it matter?

Dad was dead.

“He’s dead,” he croaked past the knot in his throat, voice cracking, knees going weak and shaky. “Dad’s dead, he’s— I killed him, and I dragged his body up to the bathtub, and I got a hacksaw and cut off his fucking head and—”

Stefan’s legs buckled as he broke down into tears.

He hadn’t expected Colin to catch him as he fell. Hadn’t expected him to wrap his arms around Stefan and lower him to the ground gently. Stefan’s arms slid around him in turn, squeezing him tight. He curled against his chest, incoherent, as the sobs wracked through his body.

“It’s alright,” Colin said into his ear, running a hand through his hair. “Alright? I’ve got you, Stefan.”

Stefan was a murderer, and Colin Ritman was cradling him in his arms. He was crying too hard to totally register the reality of that.

“I don’t want this,” Stefan gasped. “I don’t want to be their puppet, I don’t want this to be my life, I don’t want to do this anymore, I do— I don’t—”

“I know, mate, I know.”

Another wretched sob, and then, “I can’t do this again, Colin, I can’t— I want out—”

He felt Colin’s chin rest on top of his head, felt his chest rise and fall with a sigh. “I know,” he repeated.

Stefan grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted it in a death grip, nestling closer. “Tell me you know a way out.”

“If I knew that, we’d already be out.”

He sniffled wetly. “So what am I supposed to do?”

Colin pulled back to give him a half-smile, half-wince. He cradled his jaw in one hand. “The only thing you can do, much as you don’t want to.”

Try again.

He burst into fresh tears. Colin held him tighter.

Burying his face against his chest, encompassed in his long arms, Stefan wanted to pretend that they could just stay there in that moment. No forward progression down a terrible path, no restarting from the beginning and risking repeating the same one, or ending up on a worse one, because there could always be a worse one. He could pretend that he was somewhere else, someone else, embracing the last person he had left for some other, softer reason.

Reality demanded otherwise. Reality was hell, and if he was in hell, he couldn’t stay. He had to start from the beginning. He had to find a way out. Even if it was through.

He had no other choice.

//

Colin came back out of the house after making the call and sat with Stefan on the doorstep.

He waited there with him, an arm around his shoulders, until they heard the sirens. Blue and red lights caught his eye.

Stefan looked towards them. Colin squeezed his arm.

“Good luck, mate,” he said. “See you in the next one.”

“So, Bandersnatch,” Leslie said, walking with Camera One as it panned over to Robin. “Yay or nay?”

“Well, Leslie, I’ve got to admit,” Robin answered, “I’m quite conflicted about this one, and not for my usual reasons. As you know, the original author, Stefan Butler, was arrested and charged with the murder his own father.”

“Yes, quite gruesomely, at that.”

“Indeed. Now, the code, to no small amount of controversy, was finished by none other than Colin Ritman, his collaborator on the project,” Robin continued. “But, as he’d pointed out in a recent interview, there are some unsettling parallels between Butler and Jerome F. Davies, the author of the book he’d based his game on.

“Both of them committed grisly murders while disavowing the notion of free will, and thus all responsibility — a concept that’s abundantly present across both forms of Bandersnatch’s narrative. It— it just seems irresponsible, given the context, to treat it as one more simple, harmless computer game.”

The camera cut from B-roll footage of Bandersnatch in the window display of WHSmith to the concerned frown on Leslie’s face. “So, what’s the verdict, Your Honor?”

“No rating,” Robin said with a sad shake of his head towards the camera. “It’s obvious that there was a lot of work put into it, and Ritman really tied it up quite nicely, but I strongly advise playing at your own discretion. The line between reality and fiction is blurred so deliberately here, I just can’t in good conscience give a blanket recommendation without wondering if some other troubled young man might adopt the same unfortunate mindset that Butler seemed to from Davies.”

“You make a good point, Robin.”

“Thanks, Leslie. More reviews coming up, right after the break.”

Sitting on his cot, Stefan stared at the Micro Play logo on-screen. When it cut to a commercial, he turned to continue scratching at the wall of his cell. The remaining nub of his thumbnail, worn down from repetition and crusted with dry blood like the rest of his fingertips, scratched lines into the chipping white-and-yellow paint.

One more glyph to add to the wall.

One more path diverging into two.

This one had reached a dead end.

Nothing left to do but what he always did.

ⵄ

RESTART

Chapter Text

“Now what?”

Both corners of Colin’s lips twitched upwards, just barely. “Now we just wait a bit.”

Stefan leaned back on the black leather couch and glanced around the den of Colin’s flat. One wall was nothing but shelves filled with vinyl, games, and books. Screen printed posters hung on the others, their designs from a world completely outside of his own. A computer desk sat in the corner with a spidery green plant for company. Even the black and yellow mod-pattern curtains oozed the kind of style he’d come to learn was Colin Ritman.

Nothing took his mind off of the thin tab of — LSD? Acid? Those were the same thing, weren’t they? — something dissolving on the back of his tongue. Stefan did his best to appear relaxed, but every time he forced his shoulders to loosen up, he’d just have to do so again a minute later.

Colin got up to put on a record, a collection of mellow vibrations, intermittent chimes connecting electronic, soothing beats. Dreamlike, in a relaxing way. They hadn’t said a word after Colin had told him to come with him. Which he’d done without question, because the other option had been to turn around and go back to his dad standing outside the car at Dr. Haynes’, and he wasn’t going to do that.

The silence was alright, though. Not uncomfortable. He had no idea what to say, anyways, so he stayed quiet. Besides, he didn’t want to say anything that would embarrass him in front of his idol.

Or, no, maybe that was a strong word. Hero? Primary inspiration. Yeah, that. Something like that.

His eyes always flicked back to the bleached hair of the man returning to the seat across from him. Given every chance, he studied the shape of Colin’s face, from the thin-framed glasses sitting on his flared nostrils to the arches in his eyebrows. Coupled with the everpresent purse of his lips, it gave him an intense look, like he was constantly ruminating on existentialism and had all the answers. He never knew how to picture the one who’d created so many of the games he loved, but he’d never imagined him to be so… to look so…

Stefan swallowed, forcing himself to glance away when Colin sat back and squarely met his eyes. That mysterious intensity never dulled, just came into blinding focus. When he glanced back, Colin was still staring at him. He wasn’t the kind to shy away from eye contact. Did he feel it as tangibly as Stefan did? If he did, he showed no signs of it. Just maintained his steady gaze. Stefan decided he would, too. He stared right back, no longer hiding his scrutinization behind a furtive guise.

And soon, something did happen. And it felt more real than anything he’d done since the morning he’d first pitched Bandersnatch.

A buzzing sensation, an electric bass note of sensation, rose up in his head. It started out slow, subtle, but the second he noticed it, it was like a creature coming to life after a long slumber.

Things that should have been strange to see — the air moving around him, fractals appearing in the corner of his vision — somehow seemed right. He raised a finger to try and touch the air — touch the air? Yeah, one of the motes fractaling through it. His finger just passed right through it. Beyond it, a slow smile spread across Colin’s face, only instigating one of his own in return.

And then Colin Ritman snorted into a laugh.

Had he ever heard Colin laugh before?

He had. He thought he had. He could swear he had. When?

He didn’t know, but he knew he wanted to hear it again and again.

More than he should, probably. Stefan rose from his seat, seeking a distraction, and set out exploring the branches of moving air dancing through the room.

Time frayed into splinters. He found books and took them to the couch. Everything in them was the funniest thing he’d ever read. He went through the vinyl collection. Colin let him put on whatever he liked, which usually ended up being whichever one had the cover that shifted the most. The air continued to spiral with little fractals, glistening aberrations of light and color, avoiding his direct focus but always just outside the edge of it.

They led him to the posters on the far wall, the flowers, the spray can with UBIK blocked out in bright yellow. The colors were moving, swirling, entrancing him into something close to hypnosis.

At some point Colin began talking. “People think there’s one reality, but there’s loads of them, all snaking off like roots.”

Stefan turned to look, but he wasn’t looking at him. He was staring off into the corner of the ceiling.

“When you make a decision, you think it’s you doing it, but it’s not.”

He tried to see who he was talking to — how could he be talking to someone else? They were the only two in the room. But this was something he did sometimes.

Was it? How did he know that?

“It’s the spirit out there connected to our world that decides what we do, and we just have to go along for the ride.”

The sense of déjà vu only strengthened. As if he’d seen this in a dream. It felt like he was in one. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was in one right now.

Still speaking, Colin moved from the chair to the couch Stefan had left. “Mirrors let you move through time,” he said, then something about government conspiracies and actors. Stefan sat beside him, facing the right way as Colin flipped to lie on it upside-down. The fractals had spun themselves around his fingers, glimmering with colors he couldn’t name, following them through the air.

“There’s messages in every game. Like Pac-Man,” Colin said. He was laying with his legs hanging over the back of the couch, raising his head from the seat to look right at him. “Do you know what PAC stands for?”

The mention of Pac-Man caught his attention again. He watched as Colin twisted his body like a cat, turning over and landing upright on his feet. His was a graceful sort of mania, and Stefan couldn’t tear his eyes away. He went on another tangent, how Pac-Man was a metaphor about free will, being trapped in a maze.

“All he can do is consume,” he said, “he’s pursued by demons that are probably just in his own head—”

Probably. Probably just in his own head. Inexplicably, that stood out to Stefan.

“—and even if he does manage to escape by slipping out one side of the maze, what happens?” He gestured from his right to his left. “He comes right back in the other side.”

Something about his words made sense in a way Stefan couldn’t quite grasp, but the way Colin strung them together, it was as if nothing else in the world could be more true. Like he was right in a way no one else could understand.

No one but Stefan. He didn’t understand, but he… did? He didn’t know what he understood, but he was understanding something. An echo of something he’d heard once.

“It’s a fucking nightmare world, and the worst part is, it’s real, and we live in it.” Colin went to the glass door to the balcony and pressed a hand against it, peering out over the lights of the city below. Night had fallen — when had that happened? “It’s all code. If you listen closely, you can hear the numbers.”

Stefan rose on clumsy feet, feeling as opposite from Colin as could be, but walked towards him nonetheless.

Colin turned and pinned Stefan with a look that mixed higher knowledge and clinical insanity so smoothly, there was no difference between them. “There’s a cosmic flowchart that dictates where you can and where you can’t go.”

A grand design. Nothing the two of them did was granted without a reason. Without being in accordance with it.

What design? Granted by whom?

In one motion, Colin removed his glasses, stepped towards Stefan, and cupped his jaw. Both of his hands cradled his face, drawing him close enough to count the freckles on his cheeks.

“I’ve given you the knowledge,” Colin said. “I’ve set you free.”

Stefan looked between his two eyes, exponentially more interesting than dancing fractals or swirling screenprints. He brought his hands up to Colin’s face, faltering just before connecting with the skin. Colin’s eyes were melting. It should have been terrifying, and it was, but it wasn’t.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

His hands were hot, electric. Stefan’s own hovered just by Colin’s face, the static between palm and cheek just as vibrant.

He understood. He didn’t understand why he understood.

But this felt very, very familiar.

Colin was waiting for an answer, he realized. He had to respond. He had to…

[A] SAY SOMETHING ⵄ [B] KISS COLIN