[CONTENT ADVISORY (from the author)]
This book includes themes of death, grief, trauma, religious trauma, family rejection, queer identity struggles, non-consensual outing, homophobic language, vehicular accidents, injury, emergency medical scenes, mental health struggles, non-graphic references to self-harm and suicidal ideation, and emotionally intense or reality-breaking themes.
Reader discretion is advised. Please take care while reading.
This advisory is provided outside the story's narrative and is offered with care for the reader.
[User Detected: GRAY_TEAGAN_K]
[Booting: Emotions.exe]
For Mark and Michael —
You gave me more than seven minutes.
You gave me the time to become myself.
[The Application {Emotions.exe} Is Unresponsive. Force Quit? Y/N]
[Error 404: DESCRIPTION_BOOK Not Found][Analyzing story]
[Reconstructing from recovered data...]
At 11:45 AM on September 25th, the system crashes. Two users remain active in the wreckage — looping, fragmenting, refusing to terminate. Seven minutes of recovered data. One question the system cannot process:
love() → return pending
[CRITICAL ERROR: System Fracture Detected]
[Signal Detected]
[Characters found: Eli Navarro, Rowan Lake]
Time is linear. Feelings are merely bugs I haven't patched. Then time stops behaving, and so does a boy who makes even less sense than the glitches do. Seven minutes feels both like too much time and yet not enough.
I am chasing... something. Dreams, meaning, motion. Then I met someone—HAL 9000, if he wore glasses you could use as a magnifying glass. Someone who kills meaning with data, and for the first time I stop running. Seven minutes is barely enough time to get to know someone, and yet, somehow, it is.
[All user signal lost]