Frame Perfect

Attempt 1,140. The counter's in the corner of the stream, though there's nobody watching at this hour except a guy in Brazil who I think has fallen asleep with the tab open. The game came out in 1994. It's a platformer with a fox in it. I played it when I was six on my cousin's console and I've played it, on and off, for thirty years, and for the last fourteen months I've played it for one reason, which is that a woman in Osaka called Miki holds the world record and it is four seconds faster than mine. Four seconds. Over a twenty-two minute run. That's the whole gap. I've got the route. I've got every skip. There is one jump, in the fourth stage, where you have to leave the platform on a specific frame, one sixtieth of a second, and if you do it you skip a whole section, and if you don't you land in the water and lose eight seconds and the run is dead. Miki hits it about one time in six. I hit it about one in nine. Reset. Attempt 1,141. I want to explain to my sister what this is, because she asked at Christmas, in the tone people use for a hobby they're worried about. It's not about the fox. It's not even really about Miki, who is lovely, who I message sometimes, who sent me a diagram of her thumb position once. It's that there is a thing in the world that can be done perfectly, and I am closer to doing it perfectly than anyone alive but one, and every night I sit down and try to close the gap by a sixtieth of a second. That's it. That's the whole thing. I don't know how to make it sound less mad. Stage one. Clean. Stage two, clean, a little slow on the second boss but nothing that kills it. Stage three. There's a section in three that's all rhythm, six jumps in a row on moving platforms, and when it goes right it's like playing a drum fill, and it goes right.

Stage four. The lake. My hands know it. That's the only way to describe it. I'm not thinking. I'm counting, but I'm counting underneath thinking, some other part of me is counting, and the fox runs and I let go of the platform and there's that half-second where you don't know. The fox lands. Skip. I make a noise. I don't know what noise. The guy in Brazil wakes up and types "???" in the chat. Stage five, six, seven. Pace is green. Pace is green the whole way. I'm ahead of my personal best by five seconds going into the last stage and I've stopped breathing normally. The last boss has a pattern that I could do in a coma and I nearly mess it up because my hands are shaking, and then I don't mess it up, and the fox jumps on the last thing, and the timer stops. Twenty-one minutes, fifty-eight seconds, and change. I look at the number. I look at Miki's number on the other tab. Two seconds. I'm two seconds off now. The guy in Brazil types "GG". Then he types "again?" It's 3:14 a.m. I've got work at nine. My tea's gone cold and there's a fox on the screen doing a little victory dance it's done ten thousand times. Attempt 1,142.