The Fence (2027)

A boy clings to the outfield fence, dreaming of a world that won’t see him—until one imagined moment lets him matter.

EVOLVΞ is an ongoing story told out of order. Each vignette stands alone, but together they form something greater.

The boy pressed his forehead to the chain-link fence, its warm-rust biting into his skin, branding his thoughts in tiny diamonds.
His fingers wound tight through the wire.
Knuckles pale.
The fence held him there—an exclamation formed in quiet devotion.

Out on the diamond, the game pulsed with sunlit choreography—
cleats stirring golden dust—
bats cracking with captivating promise.
Every motion felt like magic—even if every play was a door he knew he couldn’t walk through.

He stood there, still as held breath—watching, wanting.

“Hey, kid.”

The voice snapped the thread. He flinched. And he turned, holding his breath.
Coach Vince loomed beside him, clipboard in one hand, his ubiquitous whistle catching light like a lucky charm that wasn’t even necessary. Everything about him was effortless. He may as well have been the boy’s opposite.

"Got yourself a front-row seat, huh?"

The boy nodded, swallowing a thumping heartbeat through the dust. "Yeah. I... I like watching."

Coach Vince chuckled, the kind of chuckle that wraps itself in good-nature, but leaves a nasty bruise. “Heart’s good,” he said, eyes scanning the field. “But heart doesn’t get you on base.”

The boy didn’t fully grasp it, but the attention sparked a fragile, trembling hope.
Coach Vince was talking to him like a player. For the briefest of seconds, he belonged.

“I’ve seen you in PE.”

The silence suddenly tightened around every nerve in the boy’s body.

“Some kids… just aren’t cut out for the game.”

The boy looked down, ashamed of the words still hanging in the air.
He hated that he’d let himself believe, just for a second, that there might be something in him worth wanting.

Coach leaned in. “Tell you what. How about being our bat boy? Keep the dugout clean. Hand out orange slices. Gatorade.”

The boy hesitated, caught in a fragile what if…
Maybe it’d be enough. To be near it. To orbit it.
But then, reality landed: the pity, the demotion.
The offer closed with all the grace of a door locking from the outside.

“I’m g-good,” the boy mumbled.

Coach didn’t flinch. He shrugged like none of this mattered to him either way. But he stayed there for some reason. “Just think about it. Life gives you moments to take a swing. This could be yours.”

That was too much. The boy was used to be treated like a failure, but not like this.

Tears punched the corners of the boy’s eyes before he could stop them.

“Hey, hey.”
The look on Coach’s face—that look—was devastating to the both of them.
“No crying in baseball, alright?”
He tried to chuckle, but the sound collapsed in the awkward of the moment.
Something in the boy’s face had shaken him.

“I’m gonna catch you later, kid,” he said—already turning.
Much too fast.
Like maybe, if he moved quickly enough, he could outrun what just happened.

The whistle kept tapping gently against his chest as he walked away.
Tap. Tap. Tap.

And the boy just stood there, watching it go.
Coach would forget.
That lucky charm would help him bury it like it never mattered.

But the boy—
The boy would carry this moment for years. Maybe his whole life—
Folded tight inside his chest,
like a paper cut that would never heal.

The boy stayed. Because he had no choice.
Nothing inside or out worked anymore.
His blurred vision caught flashes of players high-fiving and laughing.
Their world moved forward. Even when his didn’t.
He finally turned. Legs heavy.
Gravel popped beneath his sneakers as he shuffled across the lot.
Head low. Chest knotted.
What slipped away wasn’t a game.
It was a dream—
the flicker that once made everything feel possible.

His mom’s car idled at the curb. She offered him a smile that made him feel even worse.

“You okay, Muffin? You look a little puffy.”

He didn’t answer.

At home, he slipped past hallway glances and into his room…
door shutting with… a held breath.

The quiet took him.
He sat.
Waited.

No one knocked.
No one asked.
No one urged him to beam back to life.

Sometimes, he wondered if he even wanted them to.
But now? He finally had his peace.

Then…
He reached under the bed.
Fingers brushed the frame like ritual.
And he pulled out the headset.

It wasn’t escape.
It wasn’t triumph.

Just the last place left
where he still got to choose who he was.

Its familiar heft grounded him.
He adjusted it like armor—
fragile, but holy.

It couldn’t stop a feather. But it protected what mattered—
even if he couldn’t name where it lived inside him
or how far down it went.

And by now, it didn’t matter.
The hum bloomed around him.
The real world fell away.

With a click and a spin, he was in.

{ His Cathedral: } Big League Showdown.
The crowd roared—
and his name was stitched into the sound.

He stepped from the dugout,
cleats digging into imagined dirt.

The stadium didn’t exist.
Still, the sun crowned his shoulders like a blessing.

The code gods scripted this moment.
Just another line in the simulation:
fate, quietly disguised as freedom.

HARRIS curved across his back—bold as prophecy.

He was the hero,
pixel-born,
destined to rise.

Even if—outside the headset—
no one believed.

“And now,” the announcer called, “Harris steps up to the plate…”

He gripped the bat.
His eyes locked on the pitcher.
A hush fell over the stadium—
like fifty thousand people believed in him all at once.

Coach Vince couldn’t take this.
Not today.
Not anymore.

And when the pitch came—
fast.
perfect.
everything.

He had trained.
He was ready.

He swung.

—

Here, there was no fence.
No clipboard.
No misread intentions.

Here, he mattered.

Here, he was infinite.

Somewhere, in the quiet beyond the headset,
a sad, lonely boy exhaled.
He wasn’t saved.
But here—

[ He was Seen. ]

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ACT I. 12,000 BC | 3,000 BC | 50 AD | ACT II. 1984 | 2020 | 2033 ACT III. [ REDACTED ] (for now)

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EVOLVΞ | [ 2D ]

[ Every moment—past or future—is happening now. ]
An ongoing story told out of order. Each vignette stands alone,
but together they form something greater.
EVOLVΞ is a shifting mosaic of memory and possibility,
revealing itself piece by piece...

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