Arkay sighed as he patiently waited for the massive file to save on his little computer. While the multiverse had seemed to solve the issue of space travel and moving between universes, it turned out that computer processing power and internet connection speeds were still stuck in the past. Every time Arkay had asked his supervisors about it, they’d muttered something about how the Decay Lords had to remain somewhat low-tech, then never explained any further.
At least the work was done for today. Mostly just checking over lists and fixing typos. Simple work, but enough to keep Arkay preoccupied. He needed distractions right now, to distract him from his own sadness.
More importantly, now that work was over, Arkay could check his contact app, check if he had any messages and see if any of his friends were online. To his dismay though, no one was around and he had no unread messages. Just a few posts on the main forum that didn’t mean anything to Arkay.
For some reason, this upset Arkay more than it should have. He wanted to talk to someone, but he was there on his own, in his little apartment. Arkay didn’t want to admit it, but he was feeling lonely, in a multitude of ways. What Arkay really wanted though was to speak to his best friend, Retvik.
Retvik however had been offline the entire time. Either offline or set to “invisible”, so other people couldn’t see if he was online or not. Not even Arkay. This was highly troublesome because Arkay kinda needed to know if Retvik was online or not so they could have video calls. Sure, Arkay had the option to send messages, but every message Arkay had sent had been replied to… hours and hours later.
Every single message only got a response whenever Arkay was asleep. And even then, Retvik’s messages were short and basic, generally stating that he was doing alright but he was tired. This genuinely made Arkay worried, as he basically couldn’t contact Retvik in real time. The more troublesome worry though was that Arkay didn’t know if Retvik was being genuine. Was he REALLY just caught up in work and stuff and unable to talk? Or was something else going on and these were just stock messages being sent to Arkay?
Heck, the paranoid voice in Arkay’s mind was suggesting that it wasn’t even Retvik sending those messages. It could have been anyone, sending Arkay vague messages just to keep him hooked, stuck and hopeful.
With a shake of his head, Arkay tried to push that idea from his mind. While that scenario was probable, it was mostly unlikely. Retvik was just probably busy. After all, he was doing Decay Lord training stuff, it was a lot of hard work.
Sighing deeply, Arkay quickly typed a small message and sent it to Retvik, just to see how he was doing, then got up from his computer. After a hard day’s work, Arkay needed something to eat. And he was pretty damn sure there was a block of cheese and some bread in the fridge…