But two weeks ago, something strange had happened.

No errors. No warnings.

Elliot told himself it was a bug. He rewrote the AI three times. Each time, the behavior got sharper. Smarter.

The screen went black.

javac DraftGame.java He’d called it DraftGame because that’s all it was supposed to be — a rough sketch, a proof of concept. A tiny 2D world where a square hero collected glowing orbs while avoiding a patrolling triangle. The graphics were ASCII placeholders. The collision detection was held together by hope.

A message appeared in the center of the game window — not in the console, but drawn in the game’s own graphics buffer, pixel by pixel. Elliot’s fingers froze over the keyboard.