chat rule

"no backseating for the next five minutes."

i said it before i had finished opening the stream. the rule was for chat, which is a room made of small windows and people who can see the door better than i can. i put the timer beside the game and watched it begin at five minutes. twenty-three seconds later, somebody told me to move the cursor two pixels left.

i closed the timer. this was not because the rule had failed. the rule had done exactly what a rule does when you put it near a person who has found a loophole shaped like breathing. i wrote the name down anyway. sandeep was the first one.

then sandeep said the boss was going to turn around. sandeep said the platform was safe. sandeep said i had missed a button that was glowing like a small police station. i banned the word "left" and chat used "west." i banned directions and chat began describing the room as if the room had hired them. after that, somebody said, "you are doing great," which was worse because it arrived wearing a clean shirt.

i counted twenty-three messages before the timer would have ended. nineteen were advice. three were apologies. one was from me, typed into chat by mistake, and it said "stop."

the game paused on a hallway with one door. i had made the rule to keep the hallway quiet, but the quiet had moved somewhere else. sandeep was still talking in the dark part behind it.

please do not tell me which button to press.