I tried to beat UFO 50’s hardest game. It turned into a fight for my soul

digitaltrends.com:

On November 6, I was rudely awoken by my alarm blaring from behind my pillow. It couldn’t have known that I’d barely slept the night before, anxious about what world I’d wake up to the next day. No hesitation. It was time to rip the Band-Aid off. I opened the CNN browser tab I’d been obsessively refreshing the night before. I looked at the election result I’d always known was coming and shut my screen off just as quickly.

I’m in a rush. In 45 minutes, I need to be in a cab on my way to the airport. As fate would have it, I had a morning flight to Canada to catch. While standing in the shower, the void in my chest opening wider, I wonder if I’d get on that return flight in three days.

It’s a feeling I’ve felt twice before. Once was in 2016, when I’d had the exact same experience upon waking up one November morning in a world I struggled to recognize. I’d feel it again in 2022 when I learned that one of my closest friends had died in a car accident. All three of these moments left me standing frozen with a phone in my hand, trying to see the future through a blackened sky.

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I arrived at the airport two hours early, a distant life lesson my parents instilled in me back when they seemed more committed to helping me navigate the world. It was a ghost town compared to the usual zoo that is John F. Kennedy Airport. After a quick pass through the security line, I finally have an hour to myself. Do I check my phone? I try that for a minute, but I only see the pained cries of others like me pouring in through social media. I’m frustrated that I can’t help, so I shut the screen again. The only thing I can think to do is pull out my Nintendo Switch and play the game I’d started downloading the night before. Fate had another cruel trick up its sleeve, though; my download had stopped dead