She had a 6 a.m. shift and a rule: stop at midnight. At 12:04 she promised herself the next one was the last, the way she had at 11:20 and would again at 1:15. Her ranked placement sat two wins from Gold. The queue said forty seconds. There were three cans left on the nightstand and no plan for the fourth.

Game forty-one ended at 3:12 and she lost it, which meant she could not stop, because stopping on a loss was not stopping, it was quitting. She got Gold at 4:40 and felt almost nothing. In the bathroom mirror at 5:30 she practised the face she would use when her supervisor asked how her weekend went.