Roy Hibbert walked through the indistinct foggy realm, searching for anything that would give meaning to his presence in this place. There didn’t seem to be any floor or ground before his feat; underneath him, as above him, stretched an endless field of pinpoints of lights that had to be distant stars. But if he was currently in the void of space, where did the fog come from?
After another minute of walking, where no progress seemed to be made, Roy noticed something new materialize in front of him, as if to alleviate his ennui: a large, flat expanse of asphalt, its surface curling with more of that mysterious mist, as well a basketball hoop and a basketball.
Happy to finally have something to do, Roy picked up the ball and dribbled towards the rim with a spin move. The shot missed badly, so Roy ran back over to the ball for another attempt. However, his second shot, a normal layup, also ricocheted harshly off the backboard, and when Roy attempted to grab the rebound to go right back up with another attempt, it was like the ball and his hands contained magnets of opposing polarity; the ball veered away from his hands to bounce away across the court.
Roy tried and tried to make the ball go in the basket, but neither dunk, nor layup, nor jumpshot would go in. The ball would bounce at odd angles and change direction mid-flight, and Roy could never catch it after these misses. Roy was becoming more frustrated by the minute, wondering what was going on that he could not even make one shot.
Suddenly, Roy felt a sharp pain on the top of his head, as if something had been dropped on it. Looking around, Roy saw on the ground a ring made out of some unidentifiable shiny metal; it looked like the letter “O” or the number zero and was about half the size of his palm. As he held it in his hands and examined it, he heard the clang of another one landing near by. Looking up at the stars, he was immediately caught in the nose by a falling zero; dropping the one in his hands, he clutched his face in pain.
The shower of zeroes grew more intense, and the air was filled with the pinging sound of them hitting the asphalt and bouncing off each other. Roy sheltered his head with the basketball and crouched to reduce his surface area, but he couldn’t prevent the raining digits from hitting him. They were piling up now, accumulating like snow.
Realizing he was in danger of getting buried, Roy stood up again, but the zeroes were now falling in a blizzard, and the pain of them hitting his body was becoming overwhelming. They were up to his knees now, and he couldn’t move; he could only stand and watch in growing fear as the accumulated zeroes slowly crawled up his body. He knew what the zeroes signified now, and the thought of it filled him with sick shame.
“Help me,” he croaked, but when he opened his mouth, zeroes began to pile in. He couldn’t breathe; he was suffocating. He closed his eyes and waited for death to take him.