HAL9001

Introduction
This story is only a mere retelling of an event that happened to me this past summer, during the height of the COVID craze. As such, I'll be making some references of events that had occurred that time. This story will be pretty short, probably not even scratching moderate length pasta. It's also my third pasta, as I had ran out of motivation and ideas for my second journal type one.
Part 1
It was a warm July evening. I had been working the entire day, helping my parents around the house with chores and the like. I thought that with lockdown order given to my state, I could finally be able to kick back and relax, wasting my day away sleeping or chatting with some of my friends on Discord. This was not the case, however, as my parents can't seem to grasp the idea of their son finally getting some rest, but I digress. As I sat down on my reclining chair browsing through the endless wall of texts that is Discord, I suddenly came upon the thought that I was incredibly lonely and bored.
Ever since COVID -19 struck my state I haven't been able to go to school. School was the only place I could ever talk to my friends, as I never was the type to go hang out with them over at their place. As a result, I was never able to forge as a strong a bonds with them when compared to their other friends. I still however had strong bonds to them. 
Since this boredom has started sorta drive me nuts, I decided to play a game. But what game is there to play? I had many games on my PC, but I have gotten burned out and lost motivation in most of them, which is why I don't play games as much as I used to. I then saw the Minecraft grass block, and I thought, "Why not?" I haven't played Minecraft in years, last I opened the game was back in middle school when I was trying to finish up a castle I had been building with my friends in our private server. Right now though, I was far too bored out of my mind to do anything else, so I opened up the game.
As the game booted up, I was welcomed to the menu screen, as well as the iconic Minecraft menu music. Hearing the music relaxed my mind, and I began reminiscing past memories of hot summer nights where I laughed and played with my friends in the game. Yearning for some more nostalgia, I decided to play in the private server my friends and I had created. I soon realized however, that something was odd. My friends, much like me, had long stopped playing Minecraft. So why is it that the server said there was someone in it?
Part 2
"Perhaps one of my friends also had the same nostalgic yearning I had and decided to play the game again." I thought. Even though it has only been a month since I had last seen my friends in person, I had already started to terribly miss them. And so, I hopped into the server. It took awhile for the world to load in, but once it did, I immediately checked the server list. I wanted to see which one of my friends was in the game. What popped up was my username "DanielTheWeeb" and one other player by the name of "HAL9001." They quickly noticed that I joined, and teleported to me.
HAL9001: Daniel! It's been so long, what's up?
DanielTheWeeb: Uh... do I know you?
HAL9001: Of course you do, it's me, Fischer! Hal Fischer!
Seeing the name "Hal Fischer" rang a bell in my mind. The name seemed really familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint it exactly. It was then that it snapped in my mind, Hal was a friend who used to play the game with me and my other friends. Among our entire friend group though, we were probably the closest of all. We all liked Minecraft back then, but Hal was different. He didn't like Minecraft, he loved it. I remembered how he would play the game for hours on end even everyone else had logged off. He loved cars too. Back in elementary school, he would talk a lot about cars with us during lunch time.
Unfortunately though, at the start of middle school, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in the brain. Luckily for him though, some scientists in Germany had told him and his family that they had discovered an experimental treatment for his cancer, and thus wanted to see if it worked on him. The scientists told them the treatment would be completely free, and since Hal's family was never in a good spot financially, they accepted it. We kept in touch with him while he was there through the game, which he would play even more often than before. 
Eventually though, we all lost interest in the game, and thus stopped playing it. Even Hal lost interest too, as he stopped being online as frequently, and eventually stopped altogether. My friends eventually would stop keeping in touch with Hal, as they moved on to other things. I however kept in touch with him, talking to him every week over the phone about the things happening in my life. This continued on until one day when he stopped responding to my calls altogether. I was worried at first that something happened to him, but my friends told me he was fine and had just lost his phone. 
But that didn't matter to me right now. Hal was back, and that's the most important part. We talked and reminisced of the old times we had together, and I had so much fun, I completely forgot about the time. It was 3 hours past midnight now, and while I don't particularly have a curfew, I knew my parents would be annoyed if I woke up too late. So I told Hal goodbye, and logged off.
Part 3 
I woke up early the next day to finish up my chores so I can have some more time to play the game with Hal. I was probably the happiest I could ever be in my entire life. As I was preparing for my next chore though, I got a call from Aaron, one of my friends. He wanted to talk to me about a game I borrowed from him the week prior to the quarantine. The conversation eventually changed into catching up on current events and such. It was then that I decided to talk to him about Hal, and how he had returned.
Daniel: Hey, remember Hal?
Aaron: Hal? Who's that?
Daniel: Hal Fischer, you know, the guy we used to hang out with?
Aaron: Oh, uh... about Hal...
Aaron paused for an uncomfortably amount of time, and from what I could hear from the background noise, he seemed to be extremely guilty about something. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he spoke again.
Aaron: Yeah uh... about Hal? He's dead.
Daniel: WHAT?!?!
Aaron: The cancer he had spread too far and too fast, and the experimental treatment had no effect.
Daniel: Why didn't you guys tell me before?
Aaron: We knew you two were close, and so we didn't want you to feel too heartbroken about it. You were kinda moody back then, and we were afraid of pushing you over the ledge. Looking back now , that was probably the biggest mistake we made.
I ended the call after he said that. I couldn't believe it. One of the closest friends I ever had died, and nobody told me it simply because they they thought I would be too depressed. I lost interest in doing anything for the rest of the day. I was too overcome with grief, and I had felt that my friends had betrayed me. It was then though, did I realize something. If Hal had died all those years before, who was it that I was playing with?
Category:Creepypasta