When William Shard arrived home and he immediately powered up his computer, ignoring the blinking answering machine and the pile of unopened mail. The familiar hum of the fans was comforting. He had to see if he could close that final gap and achieve the perfect prediction.

  He had barely slept for the past few days, fuelled by caffeine and a relentless drive to finalize the algorithm he had been working on for so long. He was so close, he could feel it. Just a few more tweaks, a few more lines of code, and he might crack the code completely.

  Hours passed. The only sounds in the small apartment were the rhythmic tapping of keys and the whirring of the computer. He lost himself in the work, the intricate dance of variables and equations, the elegant logic of the code. He was chasing perfection, a flawless model that could predict the stock market's every move.

  Finally, as dawn painted the sky with the first hints of light, he had it. He'd rewritten a key section of the algorithm, incorporating a new variable he had previously overlooked. This was it. He initiated the final simulation, his heart pounding in his chest.

  As the simulation ran, a strange hum began to emanate from his computer, growing louder with each passing second. The screen flickered, displaying not the usual graphs and charts but a swirling vortex of colours, a chaotic dance of light and shadow.

  Then a massive power surge ripped through his apartment. The lights exploded, plunging the room into darkness. William cried out, shielding his eyes from a blinding flash of light that seemed to emanate from the computer screen itself. He felt a strange pulling sensation, as if he were being stretched, pulled apart at the seams.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable crash. But instead of the darkness he expected, he saw patterns, not on the screen but in his mind. Complex, shifting patterns resembling a forest yet eerily similar to the code he had just written. He was falling, tumbling through a kaleidoscope of colours, shapes, and numbers that defied logic and reason.

  When he opened his eyes, his apartment had vanished, replaced by an unfamiliar landscape. Instead of his desk, his computer, and his overflowing bookshelves, he stood on rough, uneven ground, damp earth mingling with decaying leaves. The air felt different, cooler, carrying the scents of damp earth, pine needles, and something indefinable, like a mix of wildflowers, a fragrance both foreign and strangely familiar. He was in a forest, the one that had invaded his mind only moments before.

  He looked around, his heart pounding like a drum, a frantic rhythm against the sudden silence. Thick ancient trees blotted out most of the light, their branches intertwined overhead like gnarled fingers. The only illumination came from a faint, ethereal glow that seemed to emanate from the forest itself, casting long, dancing shadows that writhed and shifted with a life of their own.

  “Okay, William, this is just a weird dream. Stay rational,” he mumbled, shaking his head as confusion piled upon confusion. “Data-driven algorithms don’t generally lead to whimsical forest experiences. Maybe I’m just dreaming, or better yet, maybe I’ve finally achieved sentience with my algorithm, and my computer decided to run off into the woods for a vacation, pulling me along…”

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  Panic clawed at him, extinguishing the thrill of his earlier triumph. This wasn't a dream. It felt too real, too visceral, too detailed. The rough bark of a nearby tree scraped against his hand as he reached out to steady himself, the sensation jarringly real. The dampness of the moss beneath his fingers, the earthy scent of the forest floor, and the strange, almost musical hum vibrating in the air, it was all too tangible, too present, to be a figment of his imagination.

  “What... where?” he stammered, his voice barely a whisper, swallowed by the towering trees.

  He tried to recall what had happened. The casino, the poker game, the confrontation with Harrison, the algorithm, the dizziness… Could he have been drugged? Kidnapped? But why? And how did he end up in a forest that looked like something out of a fantasy novel, a scene from one of the countless books he'd devoured in his youth?

  “Was Harrison behind this? Surely the man isn’t harbouring resentment so deep that he’d resort to kidnapping? Or has he just sunk to pulling the ultimate prank on his most loathsome employee? Classic Harrison. Perhaps next, he’d put on a wizard’s hat and steal my wallet,” William muttered dryly, attempting to inject some self-deprecating humour into his situation.

  Then he remembered the power surge. It had happened right as he was finalizing the code that night back in his office, putting the finishing touches on the algorithm. His computer had crashed, the screen filled with a blinding light and strange swirling patterns that seemed to defy the laws of physics, patterns that looked remarkably like portals from sci-fi movies. The patterns were strangely familiar, echoing the ethereal glow that now permeated the forest around him.

  A terrifying thought struck him, a notion so outlandish, so impossible, that he almost dismissed it out of hand. Could the algorithm have done this? Could it have somehow interacted with something else, beyond the realm of data and code, something ancient and unknown, to rip him from his reality and deposit him here in this strange, magical world? It seemed impossible, and yet, as he looked around at the bewildering forest, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had stumbled upon a truth far stranger than any fiction he'd ever read.

  “I must have finally cracked under the pressure.” he said, almost laughing bitterly. “Goodbye reality, hello magical forest. Next on the agenda: a dragon named Roderick to explain how my algorithm has awakened, but it wasn’t supposed to lead to... whatever this is.”

  He looked down at his hands, turning them over, examining them as if they belonged to someone else. They were still his hands, clad in the slightly-too-tight suit he'd worn to the casino to try and impress a boss who obviously hated him. Everything felt real, tangible, yet utterly unbelievable.

  "This can't be happening," he whispered, the words swallowed by the vast, silent forest, lost in the rustling leaves and the gentle creaking of ancient trees. He was a data analyst, a man of logic and reason, a creature of the rational world. This was not logical. This was not reasonable. This was... magic?

  A twig snapped nearby, the sharp sound cutting through the silence like a knife. William jumped, his heart leaping into his throat. He was not alone. He could feel it, a presence in the shadows, watching him, a silent observer hidden in the depths of the forest.

  He was stranded in a strange, magical world, armed with nothing but his wits, his slightly-too-tight suit, and an innate ability to see patterns. And for the first time in his life, William Shard was utterly and completely terrified. Not of the unknown, but of the dawning realization that the biggest pattern he could see right now, the most significant data point in this new reality, told him that whatever had brought him here probably was not done with him yet. His journey had just begun.