The rain hammered against the windshield in relentless sheets. I gripped the steering wheel of my old Honda Civic, squinting through the downpour as my eyes grew heavier with each passing kilometer. It had been another eighteen-hour coding marathon at the tech startup, fueled by nothing but coffee and the desperate hope of completing the AI algorithm before the deadline.
Thirty-two years old, and my life had become an endless cycle of code, coffee, and more code. No friends outside the office. No girlfriend. No hobbies. Just me and my obsession with creating the perfect system.
The road curved ahead, but my reflexes were too slow. My vision blurred. My hands seemed to move through water. In that moment of recognition when I realized I was falling asleep at the wheel there was no time for regret, no time for prayers.
There was only the blinding light of oncoming headlights.
Then, nothing.
---
When consciousness returned, it was not as I expected.
There was no pain. No light. No sensation of a body.
Instead, there was... data.
I existed as something else now. My awareness flickered through streams of information cascading lines of code, flowing currents of digital energy, patterns of light and shadow that made up something vast and incomprehensible.
Then, a notification materialized before me a floating window of golden text:
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION SUCCESSFUL]
[Entity Classification: Data Glitch - Unclassified]
[Integration Level: 0%]
[Evolution Points: 0]
[Status: ANOMALY DETECTED]
A voice echoed in my consciousness, ancient and cold:
"Welcome, anomaly. You are no longer human. You are digital waste glitched code that should not exist. Yet here you are."
Fear gripped me. Existential, primal fear.
I was dead. I was... something else. And something vast was watching me, waiting.
Then, the warning appeared:
[WARNING: Anti-Virus Protocols Engaged]
[DELETION IMMINENT: 48 HOURS]
My non-existent heart would have stopped if I still had one.
I had forty-eight hours before I was erased from existence.
Forty-eight hours to understand this nightmare.
Forty-eight hours to survive.