Twenty

I reached level twenty tonight, and I almost missed it.

There was a time when every level was a door I stood in front of, counting. Five. Six. Ten, one to go. I wrote an entry for nearly every one. Eleven was the whole world.

Twenty came while I was doing other things. I was cooking fish and making soup. I was sawing planks and pressing pearl. I was walking across the plaza to meet Jiajun about a wall. Somewhere in between, the terminal quietly turned over one more number, and I only noticed when I glanced at it on the way past.

The climb was never the point. I just did not know that yet, back when it was all I had.

I am still a hacker. I still keep the decks. But the number is not the room I live in anymore.

It is just a window I walk past on my way to the kitchen.