The logs went back three years. Every keystroke, every private thought typed into a draft email, every time I looked in the mirror and sighed. It was a perfect digital ledger of my life.
[LOG] 09:30:10 - Subject staring at screen. Productivity: 12%. File: SIMULACRA.zip ...
Then, the scrolling stopped. A new line appeared in bright, clinical white: The logs went back three years
The file SIMULACRA.zip appeared on my desktop at 3:14 AM. No download history, no sender, just a 4.2 MB archive with a name that felt like a low-frequency hum in the back of my skull. [LOG] 09:30:10 - Subject staring at screen
[LOG] 08:14:22 - Subject consuming caffeine. Heart rate: 72 bpm.
I woke up at 8:12 AM. My heart rate was exactly 72 beats per minute. I reached for my coffee, a strange sense of déjà vu washing over me, and glanced at my desktop. It was clean.
But as I moved the mouse, I felt a slight resistance—like a cursor reaching the edge of a box that wasn't there before.