The night stretched on, deep and heavy, while Raghav lay awake beneath the thin blanket, eyes fixed on the dark ceiling. The familiar silence of his apartment no longer brought comfort—it magnified the storm raging inside his mind. Sleep was impossible; the weight of what had happened pressed down too heavily. His heart thundered like a trapped bird, and his thoughts swirled in a relentless, chaotic whirl.
The image of the blank white page on his laptop, the sudden, dazzling obedience of the screen to his will, kept repeating in his mind like a mantra. It was real. It had happened. The power inside him wasn't a trick of exhaustion or a hallucination born from boredom. It was terrifyingly genuine.
Yet, the shadow of the dream lingered, pulling tendrils of dread through his thoughts. The red sky, the ruined city, Priya's fear-stricken, aged face, and those grotesque monsters all hovered on the edge of memory—blurred, fragmented, tantalizingly out of reach. The sharp claw of unease tightened in his gut every time he tried to grasp the missing pieces. What was the message? How were the dream and his awakening power connected? Two impossible pieces of the same broken puzzle.
His breath caught as the digital clock beside his bed blinked 3:17 AM. Finally conceding defeat with sleep, he pushed off the covers, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. A strange mixture of cold fear and wild excitement bubbled beneath his skin as he rose, silent and determined.
He moved to his laptop with the quiet urgency of a man seeking answers to shape his fate alone. The familiar hum of the old machine starting up broke the total silence, its soft glow a lone lighthouse guiding him through the dark sea of uncertainty.
Once fully awake, he bypassed distractions and opened the same stark text document from hours before—his digital battleground. He whispered commands softly in his mind: Type Hello. The cursor blinked, unresponsive. Delete this line. Still nothing.
A cold wave of doubt rippled through him. Had the power been a lucky accident, a one-time fluke? The familiar tightness returned to his chest, a headache stirring behind his eyes.
He closed his eyes, summoning the raw anger and desperation of the office meltdown. Force it, he told himself.
He focused, letting the frustration build, deliberately stoking the flames. Not just at the stubborn laptop, but at his boring job, his endless bills, the vague, shapeless terror of the dream, the unfairness of his entire mundane life. He poured all that restless, burning energy, that raw, boiling frustration, into the thought:
TYPE: "This is not a dream. This is real."
Instantly, words exploded onto the screen, appearing faster than any human could type. They weren't just typed; they slammed onto the page, bold and clear, almost glowing with an unseen energy:
THIS IS NOT A DREAM. THIS IS REAL.
Raghav gasped, a sharp, choked sound. A dizzying mix of triumph and fear, a wild, exhilarating rush, flooded through him. It worked again! The raw emotion, the pure will, was the key. It wasn't about the words themselves, but the force behind them.
He sat there for a long moment, just staring at the glowing words, his own words, written by his mind alone.
He kept experimenting, his exhaustion forgotten, replaced by a feverish need to explore. He tried to open a web browser.
Open Internet.
The browser icon on his desktop flashed once, then clicked open with a soft, quick sound. He tried to search for something – anything – related to strange powers.
Search for: "mind control computer technology."
The search bar filled instantly with his mental command, and results flashed on the screen, a torrent of links about science fiction, hoaxes, and crazy conspiracy theories. His power wasn't just about spreadsheets; it was about the entire computer, the whole digital world.
He spent the rest of the night, ignoring the growing pale light outside his window, trying more and more things. He opened his photo editor. He willed an old picture of his family to brighten, and the colors intensified, becoming vibrant and clear.
He tried to crop a corner, and a perfect rectangle of the image instantly disappeared. He even tried to delete a small, unimportant file he had on his desktop, and it vanished into the recycling bin with a quiet digital whoosh, as if it had never been there.
He realized he could not only control different applications but also interact with the very operating system itself. This was bigger than he had ever thought possible. The possibilities stretched out, vast and unexplored.
The sun was fully up now, casting long shadows across his small apartment. A new day had begun, but not for sleeping. He knew he had to call in sick.
He couldn't go to work, not with this buzzing in his head, not with this incredible, terrifying secret burning within him. He grabbed his old phone and, with a slightly shaky voice that he hoped sounded like illness, told his manager he had a bad fever.
His manager, busy and distracted as always, barely questioned him, mumbling a quick "Get well soon." Raghav hung up, feeling a strange mix of relief and a tiny, almost unnoticeable pang of guilt.
He grabbed some leftover rice and curry from last night's dinner, eating it cold and quickly, barely tasting the spices. He couldn't waste time. He had to understand more, push the boundaries of this unbelievable ability.
All day long, the world outside his window faded away, replaced by the glowing screen and the intricate dance of his mind and the machine.
He connected to online forums, not by typing, but by willing links to open and pages to scroll, his eyes darting across the text.
He began to search for obscure theories, for anything that might explain what was happening to him, keywords forming silently in his mind and instantly appearing in search bars. He found scattered, wild references to "psychic interfaces," "digital empathy," and "technopathy."
It was all fringe stuff, the kind of articles dismissed by mainstream science, but some of it felt eerily, terrifyingly close to his own experience.
He discovered that he could even download files by simply focusing on a download button and willing the transfer to complete. The progress bar zipped to 100% in an instant, files appearing on his hard drive as if conjured from thin air.
As evening approached again, and the sounds of the city grew louder outside, he pushed his limits further. He tried to access a locked system setting on his laptop, a part of the computer usually protected by strong passwords.
He felt a strong mental resistance, a pushback, like hitting an invisible wall. But he didn't give up. He channeled all his will, all his frustration at not being able to understand this power fully, and slowly, with immense effort, the small lock icon on the setting flickered, then dissolved.
The settings panel opened, a hidden door swinging wide, revealing deeper controls. He realized his power could override even basic digital security, given enough mental force.
He spent hours more, completely lost in this new world of mind-control, a world where his will was law. He felt a strange warmth, a tingling current that ran from his mind, down his arms, and into the very air around his laptop.
It was like his thoughts were tangible, physical things, reaching out and reshaping the digital landscape itself. This wasn't just a trick; it was a deep, fundamental connection, a part of him that had woken up.
Finally, the sheer exhaustion began to win. His eyes burned, strained from hours of staring at the screen. His head throbbed, not with a headache, but with the pure mental strain of hours of intense, continuous focus. He knew he had to sleep.
He had to go to the office tomorrow, his fragile normal life unraveling too fast.
He closed his laptop with a soft click, the screen's darkness suddenly feeling heavy, final. He stumbled to bed, falling onto his mattress, his body utterly drained. His life, the quiet, predictable routine he had built around mere survival, was gone.
It had ended yesterday, shattered by a dream and a moment of impossible power. He was no longer just a regular man. He was something new, something powerful, something potentially dangerous. The world had shattered in his dream, and now his own reality had splintered too. The game had changed, irrevocably. And he was, whether he liked it or not, a player.