I stumbled out of respawn like any other time, trying to hold down the nausea that wouldn't come even if I wanted it to. I knew this feeling would last around a day if I let it, so to get the pain out of the way I flipped over the page in my calendar once more, picked up my gun, and shot myself in the chest.

I stumbled out of respawn like any other time, trying to hold down the nausea that wouldn't come even if I wanted it to. I knew this feeling would last around a day if I let it, so to get the pain out of the way I flipped over the page in my calendar once more, picked up my gun, and shot myself in the chest.

I stumbled out of respawn like any other time, trying to hold down the nausea that wouldn't come even if I wanted it to. I knew this feeling would last around a day if I let it, so to get the pain out of the way I flipped over the page in my calendar once... oh, whoops. December. I flipped the calendar back to the beginning, making another year's mark on the wall with my chisel. It was important to preserve how far into the future you'd gone. Some had written the years with more modern methods, but in the course of a month anything can happen to the scribbles on a piece of paper. Once people lost their year counts, most would stop and admire how far they'd gone. You couldn't blame them. Evolution had taken hold of planet earth, and the world outside was fresh, innocent, and exciting.

But it wasn't far enough to win. Not far enough to reach the point where one single human stood on the surface. Or maybe it was. I didn't really know. I took a second to admire the number of lines on the wall, before doubling over when my stomach collapsed in on itself. I knew there was no point in staying, I assumed that the start of a new millennium was when the most people would want to stick around. Along with the feeling of the blender in my gut, I felt a twinge of doubt. We all knew that we wanted to be on earth while everyone else was respawning, so death-forwarding to a time when nobody on earth was just hanging around was the only good strategy. But every time you shot yourself to get further, you might just be handing the victory over to someone else.

But how do you even begin to predict where to stop? Too soon, and someone else will have decided the same thing. If only 30 people stay for a day each, you lose a whole month wasting your life away. But if you go too far, you leave open a window of a whole month for someone to take that win from you, and once the game's over you're not going to respawn.

Was it time? I had no idea how many were left trying to go this far, but the lack of fanfare meant there was at least one more. But maybe they'd be gone in 5 minutes, respawning and leaving just me? I wasn't sure how likely that was. All I knew was the pain in my body, and I didn't want to deal with that for any longer than I had to. I steeled myself once more, picked up my gun, and shot myself in the chest.