The old beeps came from the attic, like ghosts tapping in code.
He hadn’t touched that Atari in decades — not since that final game.
One friend moved away. One score was never settled.
Now he was seventy, alone, and staring at a blinking cursor.
It was time to find out who really won — before the clock ran out.
🟨 Part 1: The Console in the Dust
Derek Hanley hadn’t climbed into his attic in years.
It was the smell that got to him first — insulation, mildew, old cardboard. He squinted past the dust, shifting boxes with joints that reminded him of their age. A half-torn Christmas wreath, a high school yearbook, a crate of cassette tapes.
And then it called to him — that grey box with a joystick. The original Atari 2600. The one with black tape on the side where his cousin spilled root beer during a sleepover in ’83.
He sat cross-legged like a boy, the air brittle with memory. He ran his hand across the console, over dust that hadn’t been disturbed in decades. A shiver passed through him.
He wasn’t Derek the widower now. He was Derek the Champion. The kid who ruled the living room with a flick of his wrist and a focused glare.
He carried it downstairs like a relic, blowing gently into the cartridge slot the way Luis used to.
Luis Alvarez.
The name hit his chest like a soft punch.
Derek plugged the machine into the living room TV. He had to jiggle the RF connector just right, like he used to. When the screen blinked to life with Combat — a tank game from a time when everything seemed simple — he froze.
The 8-bit beep echoed in the quiet house. He hadn’t heard that sound since he was seventeen.
He watched the tank roll out. His hands moved instinctively.
His thumb still knew how to win.
But all he saw was Luis’s face, sweaty and laughing. That last summer before Luis moved. Their final game. The day Derek cheated.
He’d never told anyone. Not even Luis. Especially not Luis.
The score on the screen back then had crowned him Champion. Derek Hanley — unbeatable. The boy with the best hand-eye coordination in three counties.
But he had looked at the screen too long. Never at his friend’s face when the final point tallied.
And then Luis was gone.
New town, new school. No social media back then. Just distance.
Now Derek sat in a quiet house in Wilkinsville, Indiana, surrounded by silence that only grew louder as the years passed.
Claire, his wife of thirty years, was gone two winters now — breast cancer.
His daughter Karen called once a week. Grandkids too busy with soccer and screens.
His legs hurt when it rained. His back was like a cranky accordion.
But that beep… that beep had time-traveled him.
And for the first time in years, he felt something stir that wasn’t pain or routine.
He opened Facebook, typed:
“Dug this up from the attic — still works! Who remembers Combat on the Atari 2600?”
And underneath, he added the high score: 8-7.
Then he paused.
That was the score from that last game.
The game he won by nudging the cartridge just enough to stall Luis’s tank mid-round. A glitch. He’d blamed it on the machine.
He hit “post” anyway.
An hour later, the comments rolled in.
“Whoa, throwback!”
“Still got mine in the garage!”
“Remember playing with my brother until 2 AM.”
One message was private.
From: @RetroByte1989
“Are you Derek from Jefferson High? Hanley? If so… I think we’ve got unfinished business.”
His mouth went dry.
The cursor blinked like a heartbeat.
He clicked to open the full message.
🟨 Part 2: PixelPanther1989
“If so… I think we’ve got unfinished business.”
Derek stared at the message.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unsure whether to type or tremble.
The username was @RetroByte1989. The profile photo showed nothing but a pixelated tank and two joystick emojis. No real name. No location. Just a banner that said:
Player 2 is waiting.
Could it really be him?
Luis Alvarez, the boy who could pull off a joystick 180 like no one else.
The kid with the freckled nose, loud laugh, and quick temper.
The only one who ever came close to beating Derek — until that day in ’83.
Derek clicked the profile. Sparse. Mostly retro gaming groups. A few posts about Atari homebrew tournaments. One grainy photo: a hand resting on an old console, ringed with medical tape.
Something stirred in his chest — guilt, old friendship, and the kind of fear that only comes with long silence.
He typed.
“This is Derek Hanley. From Jefferson. Are you… Luis?”
The reply came quicker than he expected.
“Took you long enough.”
He blinked, reading the words again and again.
“I saw the high score. 8–7. You still play dirty?”
A laugh escaped Derek, low and dry like rusted hinges.
It was him. Had to be.
“Guess I owe you an apology. Been forty years, but some scores stick.”
For a moment, no reply came. Just the blinking dots of a man thinking far too hard.
Then:
“You still in Indiana?”
“Wilkinsville. You?”
“New Mexico. Albuquerque. Been here since ‘85. Family moved right after… well, you know.”
Derek sat back. So it was true. Luis had lived an entirely different life, state away, and not once had their paths crossed again.
Until now.
“You ever wonder?” Derek typed. “What might’ve happened if we had one more game?”
Luis’s answer came after a long pause.
“Every time I hear that damn beep.”
A beat later:
“But my hands aren’t what they used to be. Had a stroke last year. Still recovering.”
Derek’s throat tightened. He hadn’t expected that.
He could still picture Luis as a wiry teenager, always chewing gum, always fidgeting with his thumbs like the world was a controller waiting to be cracked.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Derek wrote.
“Hope you’re doing okay?”
“I can play… just not as fast. But for you, I’d play left-handed. One last time.”
Derek felt something warm behind his eyes.
The cursor blinked.
He imagined it blinking in time with Luis’s heartbeat. Slower now. Maybe fading. But still there. Still beating.
“Then let’s do it,” he typed.
“One last round. The rematch.”
Luis replied with a photo. Not of himself. But of his Atari, duct-taped at the edges, perched on a wooden crate. Underneath, a caption:
“Still waiting for Player One.”
Derek chuckled. He looked down at his own machine. His wife’s afghan still draped across the sofa behind it. Claire used to call it “that noisy little box,” but she always brought him a sandwich during long games.
He wondered what she’d say now.
Probably something like: “Well go on, then. Go settle it.”
By the next evening, they’d agreed on the format:
- Game: Combat, tanks mode, no ricochet.
- Platform: Emulator online — Luis couldn’t hold a joystick long enough.
- Time: Saturday night. Just like the old days.
But that gave Derek a few days.
A few days to practice.
A few days to remember who he used to be.
And maybe — just maybe — to face a truth he never said out loud:
He had cheated that day.
And the guilt had followed him into every corner of adulthood.
He spent the next morning rummaging through an old box marked “Miscellaneous.” Inside was everything from expired batteries to a broken harmonica. But tucked between a Bible and an unopened birthday card was a Polaroid.
Luis and Derek, both thirteen, holding their joysticks like trophies, sweat-darkened hair stuck to their foreheads. Behind them: Derek’s dad’s TV. On the screen: the blinking Atari logo.
Luis was smiling in the photo. Derek wasn’t.
He’d been too focused. Too desperate to win.
Looking back now, Derek wasn’t sure what he had really won that day — except a memory that never sat right.
He framed the photo.
Set it next to the TV.
And whispered, “One more time, my friend. For real this time.”
🟨 Part 3: Practice and Polaroids
Saturday crept closer like a slow, ticking metronome.
Derek Hanley spent the days leading up to it in his living room — lights low, blinds drawn, Atari emulator glowing like a time machine on the flatscreen.
The photo of him and Luis, now upright in a wooden frame, watched over him like a ghost of simpler days.
He practiced quietly. No war cries, no swearing. Just the steady click of arrow keys and a silence so complete it rang in his ears. His fingers weren’t what they used to be, but neither was the world.
At 70, Derek moved slower, thought longer, and found meaning in the small things: the way the tank sputtered on-screen, how the pixelated dust kicked up behind its tracks, and how each sound seemed to echo from 1983 straight into his living room.
The attic had coughed up more than just the console.
In a shoebox beneath the old Christmas lights, he found a dozen photos and an envelope marked “Luis – Summer ‘83.”
Inside were handwritten score sheets, a half-folded map of their imaginary tournament brackets, and one yellowing scrap that read:
“Final Match: Derek vs. Luis — Saturday, 4PM — Winner takes crown.”
Below that, Luis had doodled a cartoon crown labeled “CHAMPION OF EVERYTHING.”
Derek ran his fingers over the paper.
He remembered that afternoon in excruciating detail. His palms sweating. Luis leaning in too close. Claire — then just his new girlfriend — watching from the stairs.
And the moment he realized he was about to lose.
He still didn’t know why he’d done it.
Just a slight tap on the cartridge. Barely noticeable. Just enough to freeze Luis’s tank for two seconds.
It won him the game.
It cost him the friendship.
Luis had packed up that weekend. His family moved without much warning — a job, an opportunity, a better school district in New Mexico. The goodbye was rushed. Awkward. Full of promises to write that neither kept.
And Derek had carried the victory like a medal… and a curse.
On Friday, the day before the rematch, Derek drove into town.
He needed to feel the outside world again — the squeak of a café chair, the way sun hit the window of the old game store on Birch Street.
The place was boarded up now.
Nothing lasted. Not Claire. Not arcades. Not even the places where boys became legends.
But at the grocery store, he saw a boy — maybe nine or ten — staring at a Nintendo Switch screen, swiping like mad.
Derek smiled and approached him gently.
“Ever hear of Combat?”
The boy glanced up, unsure. “Is that a new game?”
“No,” Derek said, chuckling. “It’s the oldest kind.”
He didn’t bother explaining. Some things you had to live to understand.
That night, he stood by the fireplace and looked at the clock.
Claire’s locket still hung there, unopened. He hadn’t touched it since the funeral.
They’d met in 1982. She’d watched his games with half-amused eyes, calling it “boy stuff” but always being there, cheering from the doorway.
She was the first person he told about the cheat.
She just smiled and said, “You’ll tell him one day. When it matters.”
The house creaked as he sat back down in front of the screen.
The emulator loaded up.
He opened a text window and typed to Luis:
“I still have the scorecard. The one where you drew the crown.”
Luis replied:
“Ha. I was sure I was gonna win that day.”
“You would’ve,” Derek wrote. “If I hadn’t… knocked the cartridge.”
A long pause.
The blinking dots started, stopped, then started again.
Finally:
“I figured.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. That’s why I drew a second crown the night before. One for me. One for you.”
Derek swallowed hard.
“So you knew?”
“Of course. But I also knew why.”
Another pause.
“You didn’t want me to leave thinking you’d lost. So you made sure you didn’t.”
Derek leaned back, overwhelmed.
The air felt thick, but not heavy.
“I never said I was sorry.”
Luis answered almost instantly.
“You didn’t have to. You’re showing up tomorrow. That’s enough.”
🟨 Part 4: Player Two Has Joined the Game
Saturday night arrived dressed in silence.
Derek Hanley had dusted the living room, brewed his best tea — chamomile, Claire’s favorite — and laid out the old scorecard beside the monitor like a sacred relic.
The photo of him and Luis sat propped on a stack of 1980s comics. The lights were dim. The curtains drawn. And his heart…
His heart hadn’t pounded like this since prom night.
He logged in ten minutes early.
The emulator client flashed:
Waiting for Player Two…
He tapped the keys just to hear them click. His knuckles cracked without asking. The tea steamed beside him, untouched.
Then — a soft ping.
PixelPanther1989 has entered the game.
Derek exhaled, hands slightly trembling. A new message popped up.
Luis: “Still remember the rules?”
Derek: “First to 10. No ricochet. No excuses.”
Luis: “No cheating?”
Derek: “Swear on Claire’s ghost.”
That earned a string of laughing emojis.
The game loaded.
Pixel tanks blinked onto the map — one blue, one green.
No music. Just the old pulsing hum of digital warfare.
Derek’s hands moved with a rhythm he hadn’t used in decades.
The first round was clumsy.
His tank turned too wide. Luis’s shot whizzed past his cannon and slammed into him before he could react. The green tank exploded in pixels.
Score: Luis – 1 | Derek – 0
Derek chuckled aloud.
He hadn’t even warmed up, and already he was behind.
Luis: “Still got it.”
Derek: “Still slow to start.”
The second round was different.
Derek waited, let Luis come to him. When the blue tank turned the corner, Derek made a tight loop and fired — one clean shot.
Boom.
1–1.
He leaned back in his chair. His grin surprised him. He hadn’t smiled like that in a long time. Not the kind people wear at cookouts or church, but something pure — rooted in childhood, in rivalry, in remembering.
He heard Claire’s voice in his head:
“You look like a twelve-year-old.”
He whispered, “You should see me now.”
They played on.
2–2.
3–2.
3–3.
Each shot was a memory. Each tank, a younger self.
The game wasn’t just a game anymore — it was a bridge.
Derek remembered the time they built a cardboard arcade in his garage, charging neighborhood kids a quarter to watch them play.
He remembered biking to Luis’s house, joystick in his backpack, hair soaked from the Indiana summer rain.
He remembered Luis crying the day before he moved. They never said goodbye properly. Too proud. Too young.
Now here they were. Seventy and still playing. Still boys, somewhere beneath the skin and time.
Luis: “You still take deep breaths before firing?”
Derek: “You still tap the controller three times before moving?”
Luis: “Some habits die hard.”
Derek: “Some don’t die at all.”
They paused between rounds.
Derek’s tea had gone cold. His joints ached. But none of it mattered.
What mattered was that Luis was still there. Still sharp. Still laughing. Still alive.
Round seven.
Derek made a move too early. Luis caught him in the open. Pixelated explosion.
Luis – 4 | Derek – 3
He sighed.
Derek: “Guess I’m still chasing you.”
A moment passed. Then:
Luis: “You were never behind. You just didn’t know where you were headed.”
That one stuck.
They took a short break. Five minutes. Just enough time for Derek to stretch, refill his tea, and let the past breathe.
When he came back, he saw a photo had been sent.
A real photo.
Luis — older now, gray in the beard, glasses sliding down his nose. Holding a joystick with one hand, a hospital bracelet still faintly visible on the wrist.
He looked tired. But happy.
Alive in the way only memories and second chances can make a man feel.
Derek smiled. Took his own photo in return. No filter. Just the truth.
He typed:
“Let’s finish what we started.”
Luis replied: “Let’s write a better ending this time.”
🟨 Part 5: Truth Between Rounds
The score stood at Luis – 6 | Derek – 5.
The game had slowed. Not from hesitation, but reverence. Like neither of them wanted it to end too quickly.
Each round felt like a page turning in an old photo album.
Each shot carried years of dusted-off memories.
Derek leaned back in his chair, his knees stiff but his spirit wide awake. His living room, dim and warm, felt like the past and present had finally shaken hands.
He looked at the framed photo again — two boys with the world in front of them.
How strange, he thought, that a screen of bouncing pixels could carry so much life.
The next round was fast.
Luis came in too hard, maybe overconfident. Derek laid a trap behind a corner and fired.
6–6.
He grinned.
Derek: “Now who’s chasing who?”
Luis: “I slowed down so you’d feel better.”
Derek: “You always did have an excuse ready.”
Luis: “You always needed one.”
Derek paused.
Something about those last words didn’t feel like banter. It felt like something opening — or cracking.
Derek: “You mean back then?”
Luis: “Don’t pretend you forgot. You never did. That’s why we’re here.”
Silence.
The Atari hum buzzed on the screen. Derek could hear the fridge click in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, a neighbor’s wind chime caught a breeze.
He typed slowly.
Derek: “I cheated.”
Luis: “I know.”
Derek: “I was scared. You were leaving, and I didn’t know how to lose and say goodbye in the same day.”
Luis: “You didn’t lose. You just paused the truth.”
Derek blinked.
Luis: “I waited years for this. Not to win. But to hear that. From you.”
The weight lifted, but it didn’t float. It settled. Softly. Finally.
Derek sat in stillness for a while, letting it wash over him.
He realized something then — the reason he’d never played the Atari again after that summer. It wasn’t just age or time or interest.
It was shame. Buried under all the noise of growing up.
And now, in his seventies, with liver spots on his hands and silver in his beard, he was finally letting it go.
He typed:
“I’m sorry.”
Luis replied:
“I forgave you before I ever left.”
Round fourteen.
Luis made a long loop around the map — a classic maneuver Derek hadn’t seen in decades. The tank hugged the edges like a whisper, appearing suddenly in Derek’s blind spot.
Boom. 7–6. Luis.
Derek laughed, rubbed his temples.
“Still got it,” he muttered out loud.
Derek: “That move was banned in my house.”
Luis: “Should’ve moved out earlier.”
Round fifteen.
They both rushed. It was sloppy, chaotic, full of zigzags and near misses.
Both tanks fired simultaneously.
Both exploded.
The emulator glitched for a second, then awarded no points.
Luis: “Draw?”
Derek: “Poetic.”
Claire would’ve loved this, Derek thought. She would’ve brought him cookies mid-game and said something like, “Tell Luis I always knew he was better-looking.”
Derek’s eyes watered.
He whispered to the air:
“You were right, honey. I did tell him. I told him everything.”
Then came the message.
Luis: “Hey. I may need to pause for a bit. Getting dizzy. That happens sometimes.”
Derek: “Of course. Take your time.”
Luis: “I’ll message when I’m good again. Might lie down for a bit.”
The screen dimmed. The game froze. The connection icon blinked.
Player Two has disconnected.
Derek stared at the screen.
The silence roared louder than anything before. Not tragic. Just uncertain. Just life.
He waited. Ten minutes. Then twenty.
He didn’t refresh the page.
Instead, he reached for the photo again. Touched the frame with fingers that trembled now for a different reason.
He typed one last message.
“Whenever you’re ready… I’m here.”
🟨 Part 6: The Message That Didn’t Come
Morning light spilled across the floor like soft regret.
Derek Hanley hadn’t moved from his recliner. He’d dozed off at some point, but the screen was still aglow — still frozen on the last frame of their game.
Player Two has disconnected.
It stared back at him, that message.
Unfinished. Like a song missing its final note.
He rubbed his eyes. His neck ached. His knees popped as he stood.
The room felt too still.
The kind of still that made him remember all the other goodbyes that didn’t come with warning — Claire’s final week, when she smiled like nothing was wrong… then never woke up.
The dog he had as a boy, Max, who simply ran into the cornfield one day and didn’t come back.
His father, who died in a hospital two hours away while Derek sat in traffic with a McDonald’s coffee and too much guilt.
The world didn’t like neat endings.
He brewed a new cup of tea. Hot this time. He didn’t drink it.
Instead, he went to the attic again.
Not for the console — for the memories.
He pulled out a dusty crate marked “D.H. — Old Stuff.” Inside: a cracked baseball glove, a Walkman that no longer worked, a mix-tape labeled “Luis + D. = Summer Kings.”
He held it to his chest.
There was something wild and sad about how life folded in on itself.
Everything returned eventually — if not in reality, then in memory.
Back downstairs, he checked the screen.
No new messages. No online status. Nothing.
He opened the conversation again and typed:
“You okay?”
No reply.
He didn’t expect one. But the question felt like it needed to be asked — like lighting a candle in a dark room even if no one’s there to see it.
The day dragged.
He watered the plants. Fed the neighbor’s cat. Tried to read an old Louis L’Amour novel but kept hearing the beep of a missed message that never arrived.
By 3 p.m., he gave up and called his daughter, Karen.
“Everything okay, Dad?” she asked. Her voice was tight — busy, tired.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just had an old friend reach out. We played a game. Like we used to. Haven’t heard from him since last night.”
“Oh.” Pause. “You want me to look him up? I’m good with that stuff.”
“No,” Derek said gently. “No. I think I just needed to tell someone he existed.”
Karen hesitated. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you reconnected. That’s… that’s nice.”
It wasn’t the word Derek would’ve chosen.
But he understood. The past didn’t always make sense to the young.
That night, he sat in the dark again.
No game this time. Just silence.
And then… a ding.
He jolted.
A message. From @RetroByte1989.
It read:
“This is Maria. I’m Luis’s daughter. I hope it’s okay I’m messaging you.”
Derek’s heart thudded. His hands froze above the keyboard.
He swallowed hard.
“Of course,” he typed. “Is Luis alright?”
It took a minute.
Then came the reply:
“He had a seizure last night. We called an ambulance. He’s in the hospital now. Resting. Stable, but sedated.”
Derek sat down slowly, like the air had thickened.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push him too hard.”
“He told me about you,” Maria replied.
“Said you were a part of him he thought he’d never get back.”
“He wanted that rematch more than anything.”
Derek blinked away tears.
“We didn’t finish,” he wrote.
Maria answered after a long pause.
“He said if anything ever happened mid-game… just tell you this:
‘It was never about the score.’”
Derek laughed. Then cried. Then laughed again.
He turned off the monitor.
Took the photo from the shelf.
And whispered, “It really wasn’t, was it?”
🟨 Part 7: One Crown, Two Names
The morning after Maria’s message, Derek Hanley sat at the kitchen table with a pen in his hand and a half-eaten slice of toast on his plate.
The toast had gone cold. The pen hadn’t moved in ten minutes.
He was trying to write a letter.
Not an email. Not a message. A letter — on paper. Something real. Something that could be folded and held, tucked away in a drawer or taped to a hospital wall.
He’d started it three times already.
“Dear Luis…”
“Hey old friend…”
“We didn’t get to finish…”
But none of them felt right. Every opening line carried too much or too little.
In the end, he pushed the pen away and stood up.
Maybe it wasn’t words Luis needed now.
Maybe it was something else.
He pulled the tournament scorecard from the desk drawer — the one from 1983.
Derek had kept it all these years, hidden in a box of old bills and insurance forms like a buried confession. He smoothed the paper out carefully and ran a finger over Luis’s childhood doodle of the Champion’s Crown.
Then he did something he hadn’t done in 40 years.
He drew a second crown.
Right beside the first. Not smaller. Not lighter.
Identical.
That afternoon, he walked into town — past the shuttered arcade, the pharmacy that now sold only memory foam pillows and blood pressure monitors, and the post office that still smelled like cardboard and lost time.
He mailed the scorecard and the framed photo of them together to:
Maria Alvarez
Albuquerque General Hospital
Room 314 — Luis Alvarez
He included a sticky note.
“He earned this crown.
And I finally drew it in the right place.
– Derek.”
When he got home, he sat down and opened the emulator again.
He loaded Combat. Let the tanks blink onto the screen. Let the hum settle into the room.
He didn’t play.
He just let it run.
He watched as the blue tank — Luis’s — rolled forward.
And then, with his own keys, he turned the green tank — his tank — into a corner and didn’t move.
Letting Player Two have the field.
Letting go.
Later that evening, Maria sent another message.
“He’s still unconscious, but they say he’s stable. I taped the picture and crown by his bed.”
A second message followed.
“He smiled in his sleep.”
Derek exhaled.
He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath all day.
That night, he stood by the fireplace again.
Claire’s locket still hung there. This time, he opened it.
Inside was the photo of her as a young woman — wind in her hair, mischief in her eyes.
He held it in one hand, the Atari joystick in the other.
He whispered to them both:
“I think I finally played a good game.”
🟨 Part 8: A New Challenger
Three days passed.
The game screen remained quiet. Derek no longer waited for messages with clenched nerves — but he checked, gently, like you check the mailbox when you’re not really expecting anything but still hope for a letter.
He found comfort in the silence now.
Luis was still here. That was enough.
Then, just before noon on a rainy Thursday, the landline rang.
The landline, of all things. Only telemarketers and old friends used it anymore.
“Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Derek Hanley?” The voice was soft, young, uncertain.
“Yes, speaking.”
“This is Maria. Luis’s daughter. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”
“No, not at all.” He pulled a chair closer. “Is he…?”
“He’s awake,” she said, and Derek felt his eyes close in quiet gratitude. “Weak. But awake. The nurses said he kept asking about his joystick. We told him it was safe.”
Derek laughed.
“Sounds like him.”
Maria continued, “We read him your note. Showed him the crown. He nodded. Tried to speak but couldn’t yet. He just smiled.”
Derek didn’t know what to say. The past was full of noise, but this moment was made of stillness and meaning.
“He wanted me to ask you something,” Maria said after a pause. “Something important.”
“All right.”
“He wants you to teach me.”
A blink. “Teach you?”
“To play. Combat. The old Atari game. He said, and I quote, ‘He’s the only one who ever beat me, and it’s time she learns why.’”
Derek chuckled. “I haven’t taught anyone anything in years.”
“You taught my dad how to lose gracefully. That’s more than most coaches ever manage.”
Silence passed like a warm draft through a cracked window.
He straightened up, suddenly more awake than he’d been in months. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it. But only if she’s got fast thumbs.”
“I type 80 words a minute,” Maria said. “I think I’m qualified.”
The next night, they set up a video call.
Maria looked nothing like Luis and everything like him. Same flicker of mischief in the eyes. Same sharp timing. Same half-smile when she landed her first hit.
Derek let her win the second round. Then didn’t let her win the third.
By the end of the hour, they were tied — 5 to 5 — and laughing like family.
“You know,” she said, sitting cross-legged in front of her laptop, “I didn’t really get why this was so important to him. I mean, old pixels, two blocks shooting at each other. But now…”
“But now?”
She smiled.
“Now I see it wasn’t about the tanks.”
“No,” Derek said, sipping tea. “It never was.”
Later that night, he received another message.
This one was from Luis.
Just three words.
“You passed it.”
That was it.
No period. No punctuation.
But it hit Derek harder than any high score.
He powered down the computer, walked to the mantel, and lit the candle Claire used to keep by the window.
He didn’t pray, not in the traditional sense.
But he closed his eyes, pressed his hand over his heart, and whispered into the quiet:
“I kept the crown warm for you.”
🟨 Part 9: Albuquerque
It had been over four decades since Derek Hanley left the Midwest.
He’d driven through snowstorms and summer floods in his life, but this trip felt heavier than all of them — not because of weather, but because of what waited at the end.
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
A place that, until now, had only lived in his imagination as the place Luis disappeared to.
Now it was real. Hot, sun-bleached, flat. Wide sky, slow wind. He took a bus from Indianapolis to Dallas, then another to Albuquerque. He could’ve flown, but somehow a plane felt like cheating — like skipping the parts of the journey that were meant to be felt.
Every stop gave him time to think. And regret. And hope.
Maria met him at the terminal.
She wore a t-shirt that read Player Two Has Entered the Game, and gave him a long, awkward hug that somehow felt perfect.
“He’s been asking for you,” she said as they loaded his single suitcase into the trunk. “He’s awake most mornings, but he tires fast. If he falls asleep while you’re talking, don’t take it personally.”
“I won’t,” Derek said, then added with a smile, “Unless he starts snoring during my best stories.”
Luis was in a small rehab facility outside the city.
The walls were white and quiet. The smell was clean and distant — antiseptic, lemon-scented.
Derek stepped into Room 314 with a breath held so tightly, he thought his lungs might burst.
And there he was.
Thinner than Derek remembered. Gray, with a tremor in one hand and oxygen clipped to his nose. But his eyes — his eyes — sparkled like the last time they played Atari in Derek’s living room.
Luis looked up.
Tried to speak.
Failed.
Derek pulled a chair close. He said nothing at first. Just reached out and squeezed Luis’s hand.
Then, quietly:
“You still owe me three points.”
Luis chuckled — a wheeze more than a laugh, but it was real.
They didn’t speak much. Luis couldn’t.
So they played.
Derek set up a small laptop. Loaded the emulator. Hooked up two USB joysticks.
Maria stayed in the hallway, watching through the window with her hand over her heart.
They didn’t keep score.
Sometimes Derek would let his tank sit still and just drive in circles, watching Luis try to cut him off with glee in his tired smile.
Other times, Luis would fire early and miss on purpose — then wink.
It wasn’t about points.
It never was.
In the final round, Derek waited until the clock counted down.
He didn’t shoot.
Just moved his tank close. Parked it next to Luis’s. Two blocks side-by-side.
And let the screen fade.
Luis raised a trembling hand and slowly, slowly placed it over Derek’s.
And then he whispered — barely there, like paper rustling in the wind:
“Thanks… for waiting.”
Derek nodded, holding back the ache in his throat.
“I’d wait another forty if I had to,” he whispered.
Then he added, smiling:
“But next time, I’m picking the map.”
🟨 Part 10: The Final Score
Luis passed away three weeks later.
He died peacefully, they said. In his sleep.
Joystick still on his nightstand.
A copy of the 1983 scorecard, folded and taped to the wall beside his bed.
Two crowns drawn side by side. No names under either — because it no longer mattered who won.
Derek Hanley didn’t cry right away.
He’d done most of his grieving in that quiet rehab room in Albuquerque, sitting beside Luis as they played without speaking. The words had already passed — not through mouths, but through movement, memory, and the soft press of two tank sprites parked side by side.
Maria called that morning with the news.
She didn’t say much, and she didn’t need to. Derek just listened. At one point, she said, “He held your photo the night before. Wouldn’t let go of it.”
That was when Derek finally let the tears come.
Not loud. Not broken. Just quiet… like the way game sound fades when you turn the TV off and the room remembers it’s a room.
A week later, Maria sent a package.
Inside was the original Atari console.
The same one Derek had mailed the photo of. The one Luis kept all these years — patched, scratched, loved.
There was a note.
“Dad wanted you to have it. Said you gave him back something he’d thought was gone forever. He called it your unfinished game. And now it’s yours to finish — however you want.”
At the bottom, written in looping pen:
“Thank you for showing him how to lose.
Thank you for showing him how to win.
And thank you for showing him how to wait.”
Derek didn’t plug the Atari in right away.
He didn’t need to. Just holding it felt like holding Luis again — not the fragile man in the hospital bed, but the boy in cut-off jeans and a Kool-Aid-stained T-shirt, shouting “best of three!” across a carpeted living room.
But he had one more thing to do.
Two months later, on a bright Saturday afternoon, Derek stood under a tent at the Wilkinsville Public Library lawn.
Kids buzzed around folding tables. Parents drank lemonade in lawn chairs. An old flatscreen was set up near the sidewalk, and on it, Combat blinked to life.
Above the screen, a handmade banner read:
“The Luis Alvarez Retro Game Day – Where the Score Never Matters.”
Derek taught the kids how to play.
He told them about Luis.
Not the hospital version. Not the man weighed down by years.
But the kid who drew silly crowns, who played fair, who forgave quietly and waited a lifetime to be heard.
He watched two little boys — one in a red hoodie, the other in neon green — play their third round. They tied, 7–7.
The boy in green raised his fist in the air. “We both win!” he yelled.
Derek smiled and whispered, “That’s the only way to play.”
That night, he sat alone again in his living room. Claire’s locket beside him.
Joystick in hand.
He powered up the Atari.
The beeps began.
Derek didn’t move his tank.
Just let the game hum.
Let the moment breathe.
And as the screen gently flickered, he looked at the crown on the scorecard framed beside him.
And whispered:
“Final score: Friendship — infinite. Regret — forgiven. Game — complete.”
