Itscreeches. A distorted blurt of static that stabs straight into my ear and yanks me upright like I’ve been shot. I smack the screen. It won’t shut up. I have to hold the power button for a full five seconds before it flickers off, hissing like a kicked feralcat.
“What the actual hell?”
I sit there on my couch—hair a rat’s nest, synth-wine headache pounding like I swallowed a timpani—and stare at the screen.
Something’s wrong.
The interface is… off. The colors are too cold, fonts slightly misaligned like the UI got drunk and decided aesthetics were optional. I tap the home key. It flashes a few times, then throws me a spinning wheel of death and a string of characters I don’t recognize.
I tap again.
Nothing.
I tap harder.
Still nothing.
By the time I manage to brute-force a boot override, I’m sweating. This isn’t just a crash. It feelsintentional. Like the file last night bit into the system and chewed its way through.
The moment the dashboard opens, my messages flicker. Then vanish. Not deleted. Not unread. Justgone.
Poof.
I sit back and whisper, “Okay. That’s new.”
The AI assistant doesn’t respond.
I try the backup menu. Tap into my cloud archive.
Error.
Error.
SECURE PATH UNAVAILABLE
I push harder. Pull up the broadcast logs. Nothing after the algae segment shows. No backups. No auto-capture. No mirror stream. Not even the damn parrot clip.
I try sending a ping to Bryn in IT.
Error. Message not delivered.
I try again.
Same result.
I start to sweat.
And that’s when the lights flicker.
All of them. The kitchen strip, the ambient floor glows, the temperature status bar on the fridge—all blink out, then shudder back on in a half-powered hum.
No storm outside.
No rolling blackouts scheduled.
I walk to the wall console and slap the manual override. The AI chirps weakly.
“Diagnostics unavailable.”
