Save Game Without Turning Off the Console

Eloy lowered the pine sword until the tip brushed the rough weave of the ochre rug.

Corcho didn't attack. He kept all four paws rigidly in the air, balancing his back with the heavy clumsiness of a flipped van. Between his square fangs, a pixelated tongue peeked out, dry as a dishcloth in the sun, while the red bar over his chest flickered with the hysterical urgency of a Casio watch alarm.

"If you're going to scratch his belly, do it like you mean it." Grandma Consuelo let out without lifting her eyes from the knitting needles. "Because Uncle Ramón was already enough of a half-measures guy when it was his turn to paint the patio gate."

"It's not that easy, Grandma. It weighs as much as two sacks of cement and its hostility bar is maxed out."

"Bad student excuses."

Eloy let out a snort and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. The beginner's chainmail pinched the skin at his flank, stiff as a cheap plastic tablecloth folded too many times. He knelt between two pressed leather vertebrae that crunched under his weight with a hollow snap, similar to a stepped-on shoebox.

Corcho let out a husky whine, a low-frequency sound that made the air vibrate with a smell of sawdust and cheap kibble.

A step away from the beast's snout, almost buried under a crumbling pile of dog treats, a metallic object shone that didn't belong to the castle's digital architecture.

[Dented Aluminum Bowl] Quartermaster accessory, Weight: 0.3 kg. Circular container with a chewed-up rim and a dent in the base produced by an accidental kick in the summer of 2005. Contains microscopic remains of chicken and rice and an indestructible layer of lime.

Eloy stretched out his arm and brushed aside three synthetic bones. The bowl was cold. At the bottom, engraved in the worn metal, three capital letters flickered in burnt white:

E-M-P-T-Y

"You have to drop the points, Eloy," Consuelo said. The wooden stool on which she floated descended a handspan, letting the fringes of her shawl brush the floor. "All of them. The agility ones, the temper ones, and the ones you earned by banging your head against the hallway columns."

"They're almost four thousand," he protested, patting the pockets of his denim jacket. "It took me God and country to reach level three without a broken texture snapping my neck. If I lose them, I'm a rag doll again."

"And what do you want to be iron for if you're going to be alone?"

Eloy didn't answer.

He looked down at his sneakers. His left shoelace was untied again, with the frayed tip stepped on under his heel.

"Your mother told me you quit indoor soccer," she commented suddenly, in a flat, neutral tone, changing the subject like someone discussing the weather report.

"It was very cold in the Salesians' sports hall."

"You always have cold feet."

"Well, the tiles were freezing, Grandma."

"Little gentleman nonsense."

Silence.

The giant, invisible television holding up the sky's dome emitted a crackle of static, casting a cyan-blue shadow over Corcho's snout. The beast half-closed its polygonal eyes, recognizing the clinking of the bowl as Eloy dragged it a few inches across the rug.

It was the same noise every afternoon at a quarter past eight.

Eloy sheathed the pine sword on his back, feeling the knobby wood press against his shoulder blades through the mesh. He raised his right hand toward the floating menu shimmering at eye level. The cursor blinked over the golden figure of accumulated experience: 3,850 EXP.

If he pressed accept, the bar would drop to zero with no chance of turning back. Zero armor, zero jump bonus, zero glory.

He dragged the icon with a trembling thumb and dumped it over the plate.

A cascade of yellowish sparks, dense as crunchy corn kernels, burst from the air and bounced against the dented metal with a dry clatter. Each spark shaved a digit off his personal counter. Eloy felt a physical loosening in his shoulders, as if a school backpack loaded with wet encyclopedias had been suddenly yanked off him.

Corcho didn't wait for the bottom to fill up. He turned around with a clumsy, heavy movement, planted his front paws on the rug, and shoved his square snout right into the bowl.

He licked the light with desperate relish, swallowing the numbers and statistics in wide tongue-swirls, spinning the plate against the floor with that shrill screech that used to drive everyone crazy in the old house's kitchen.

The red alert bar flickered one last time, shifted to a pale freshly-cut-grass green, and vanished into thin air.

Corcho lifted his head, took two heavy steps forward, and rested his damp chin on Eloy's thigh, soaking his jeans with a warm patch that smelled of river and ancient rain.

Saving the game never meant defeating the boss, but accepting to come back home empty-handed yet clean.

"See how quick that was," Consuelo murmured, putting her needles away in her pocket with a muffled chime. "When you're not being stubborn, you almost look smart."

"He even ate the stamina bonus, Grandma."

"Good for him. He was too skinny."

The dog let out a deep sigh, closed his eyes, and dropped onto Eloy's feet like a warm wool rug.

Then, the fifty-hertz magnetic hum abruptly ceased.

The air grew harsh and thick.

Eloy opened his eyes sprawled on the living-room carpet, next to the vinyl armchair.

The streetlight seeped through the blinds onto the open pizza box, its cardboard edges squashed and stained with cold grease. In front of him, in the alcove of the cabinet, the twenty-one-inch Sanyo television displayed a black, mute screen, with the red led blinking in standby mode.

There was no plastic armor or cyan blue sky.

Just the chill of the floor seeping through the seam of his jacket and, resting upon his worn sneakers, the dense and unmistakable pressure of a warm weight that cast no shadow.