Version 1.01.0

  The Static

  Tuesday, October 4th

  There's a moment, I'll get to it, where I'm sitting in a beige HR conference room, getting fired for something I didn't do, and reality just... stops cooperating.

  Static where there shouldn't be static. Patterns where there should be paint. A voice in my head saying words that don't make sense yet.

  That moment changes everything. And reality only gets less cooperative from there.

  Let's start with the coffee maker.

  * * *

  The coffee maker was mocking me.

  I know that sounds paranoid. I know that household appliances don't have feelings, let alone the capacity for targeted psychological warfare. But at 6:47 AM on a Tuesday, standing in my kitchen in the underwear and oversized t-shirt I'd slept in, watching the Breville drip out exactly three-quarters of a cup before making a sound like a dying seal and giving up entirely... I was willing to believe in appliance sentience. Malevolent appliance sentience.

  "Come on," I muttered, pressing buttons that did nothing. "I will literally pay you money. I will give you whatever voltage you want. Just... please."

  The coffee maker responded by displaying an error code I'd never seen before. E7. What the hell was E7? I'd owned this thing for two years and it had never once shown me an E7.

  I grabbed my phone and Googled "Breville E7 error" while simultaneously trying to remember if I had any energy drinks in the apartment. The search results were not encouraging. Apparently E7 meant the internal heating element had failed, which meant Amazon shopping and 2 day delivery. Unless it gets delayed again. And then it might as well be a lifetime without coffee. I ground my teeth as I forced down the lukewarm mud that was some combination of too much and not enough coffee and water.

  Deep breath. It was fine. I'd grab coffee on the way to work. It won't cut too much time from my project. The Meridian project was due Friday, and I'd planned on being to work early, again, for the 2nd time this week. I resolved myself to not worry about being an hour early today. I'd just skip lunch.

  With one last wistful glance I abandoned the traitorous appliance and headed for the shower.

  * * *

  My apartment was what real estate listings would call "modern and minimalist" and what my mother would call "depressing." Twelve hundred square feet of clean lines and neutral colors, not a 'Live Laugh Love' sign or family photo in sight. I'd moved in three years ago and somehow never gotten around to making it look like a human being lived here. The walls were still the same millennial grey the previous tenant had painted them. The furniture was all stuff I'd ordered online in a single afternoon, a matching set from West Elm that looked nice in photos and felt like sitting on attractive cardboard.

  The only signs that anyone actually lived here were embarrassingly specific: two wine glasses in the cabinet (Kate, my one friend at Holloway Design, and I had a standing Friday tradition, and she was the only person I ever had over), a raggedy cream blanket thrown over the back of the couch that I'd had since college, and the desk in the corner that saw more hours than my bed. Kate had claimed the left cushion years ago..."the good one," she called it, even though they were identical...and sometimes I'd find myself sitting on the right side out of habit even when I was alone.

  Kate said it looked like a hotel room. "Not even a nice hotel," she'd clarified. "Like a business hotel. The kind with a sad little desk and individually wrapped cups. I bet you don't even get a robe."

  She wasn't wrong. But at least I had my two wine glasses and my cozy blanket.

  I'd meant to do something about it. Make art, maybe, if I could find the time. Plants. Evidence of a personality. But there was always a deadline, always a project that needed just a few more hours, and by the time I got home each night I was too tired to do anything but microwave something sad and collapse on my attractive cardboard couch and pretend to like whatever sitcom was on.

  The shower was hot, at least. One appliance in this place that still did its job. I stood under the spray longer than I should have, letting the water pound the tension out of my shoulders, trying to psych myself up for the day ahead.

  Meridian was a branding overhaul for a mid-sized tech company that made software nobody understood and even less people found useful. Their old logo looked like it had been designed in 1997 by someone's nephew, and their "brand identity" consisted of using the same shade of corporate blue on everything and calling it a day. My job was to drag them into the current decade without scaring their board of directors, who were apparently allergic to anything that looked "too modern."

  It was exactly the kind of project I was good at. I'd been particularly proud of the new color palette and logo. The palette was a navy to copper gradient with just enough shimmer to make it pop, and the logo was a gorgeous pared-down simplification of their previous disaster. Familiar enough that clients wouldn't be overwhelmed (here's looking at you, Cracker Barrel), but modern enough to drag the brand into this decade. Sophisticated but approachable. The kind of work clients never consciously appreciated but always responded well to. That was my gift: taking something mediocre and making it quietly excellent while making everyone in the meeting think it was entirely their idea. Finding the sweet spot between "fresh" and "familiar." I'd been working on it for six weeks, and the final presentation was in two days.

  Two days. I could survive anything for two days.

  I got out of the shower, dried off, and stared at my closet. The contents were mostly black, gray, and navy, with occasional forays into "dark green" and "slightly different black." Kate said I dressed like I was in witness protection. I said I dressed like someone who didn't want to think about clothes at 7 AM, which was basically the same thing.

  I picked black pants and a gray blouse, because today felt like a black-pants-gray-blouse kind of day. Added small earrings. Checked myself in the mirror and decided I looked professional enough to not get fired.

  Ha.

  * * *

  The commute was the usual nightmare. I lived in the kind of neighborhood that was technically walkable to public transit but practically required a car because the bus only came every forty minutes and the nearest subway stop was a mile away. So I drove, like everyone else in this city, sitting in traffic and listening to audiobooks about protagonists who actually had people and events worth writing about in their lives.

  The embarrassingly risque chapter began a little too loudly and I quickly turned the volume down as I imagined what a faerie king might look like. His proud muscled shoulders and arms wrapped around my... A horn startled me out of my fantasy. How long had that light been green.

  The guy in the Prius next to me gave me a look as they passed gesturing wildly. I gave him one back. Whatever dude. I read a book where the main character called a guy a twatwaffle and that's what this guy was. A 7:42 am raw twatwaffle.

  By the time I pulled into the Holloway parking garage, I'd finished the chapter and my coffee. The Faerie King had just revealed his betrayal, and Aurora was standing in the ruins of everything she'd believed in. Allister, the shadow fae, and my personal otp, was nowhere to be found...probably off brooding in a tower somewhere instead of, I don't know, communicating like a normal person. I turned it off before I could start yelling at fictional characters in a parking garage. Two more chapters until I found out if he redeemed himself. Two chapters I did not have time for this morning. I always felt awkward listening to it at work. Like, imagining my headphones gave out right in the middle of the climax... of the story and instead the sound blasted from my iPhone for the whole office to hear. I rubbed at my eyes as I hustled into the building shaking off thoughts of fantasy.

  The office was on the fourth floor of a building that looked exactly like every other building in the business district, glass and steel and aggressive corporate synergy. Holloway Design had been there for fifteen years, which in this industry made it practically ancient. On behalf of Holloway I specialized in branding, web design, the occasional print campaign for clients who still believed in print. Nothing revolutionary, but solid work. Dependable work.

  I'd been there for seven years. Started as a junior designer, worked my way up to Senior Creative Director. It wasn't my dream job; my dream job involved a lot more creative freedom and a lot less explaining to clients why their logo couldn't be "bigger but also more subtle"; maybe somewhere with a massively overpriced rodent themed park. But it paid well and I was good at it. That had to count for something.

  The elevator opened on four, and I stepped into the familiar chaos of a creative office pretending to be professional. Open floor plan, because apparently no one in management had ever heard of the concept of "needing to concentrate", or more realistically, needing to unwedge one's dress pants from one's own crack without being seen. Exposed brick accent wall with adjoining moss wall, because we were creative but not too creative. A break room with an espresso machine that actually worked, which almost made up for everything else.

  "Morning, Sam," came a voice from my left as I passed the moss wall. A woman was misting it with the kind of tenderness usually reserved for newborns, and she waved when she caught my eye.

  That was Priya, our office manager, who somehow always beat everyone to work despite having a forty-minute commute and twin toddlers. I suspected she was secretly a robot, or hated her family. Who could tell?

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Morning. The coffee machine at my place died, so I'm going to be mainlining espresso all day. Fair warning."

  "Noted. Oh, Daniel was looking for you earlier."

  I stopped walking. "Daniel? He's not usually in this early."

  "Yeah, he came by like twenty minutes ago. Seemed kind of urgent."

  Fantastic. Daniel Park was technically my direct report, a junior designer I'd been assigned to mentor six months ago. I'd fought for that assignment, actually, told Greg Harrison Jr. myself that Daniel had raw talent and just needed someone to shape it. I'd seen something in his portfolio that reminded me of myself at that age: hungry, a little rough around the edges, but with an eye for detail that you couldn't teach.

  And he was talented. I'd give him that. Good instincts. Quick learner. I'd spent hours with him after work, walking through the fundamentals I wished someone had taught me. How to read a client. When to push back and when to fold. The difference between a good idea and a presentable one. He'd soaked it all up like a sponge, and I'd felt genuinely proud watching him grow.

  But something had shifted lately. Nothing I could point to specifically, just... a vibe. The way he'd started hovering a little too close during presentations, positioning himself in the client's eyeline, answering questions that had been directed at me. How he'd begun CC'ing higher-ups on emails where he "caught" minor issues with my work (typos, version discrepancies), things any normal person would just mention in passing. The questions about my file organization that felt a little too detailed to be casual curiosity.

  Small things. Probably nothing. Probably just ambition outpacing patience, which happened to everyone eventually.

  Probably.

  "Did he say what it was about?"

  Priya shrugged. "Nope. Just asked when you usually got in."

  "Great. Thanks."

  I headed to my desk, which was in the corner by the window, one of the few perks of seniority. Daniel's desk was across the floor, and I could see him there now, typing something with an intensity that seemed performative. He glanced up as I sat down, and for just a second, something flickered across his face.

  If I'd been less caffeinated and more paranoid, I might have thought it was suspicious. I raised a hand to wave and he motioned that he was on the phone pointing to his in ear headphones. I mouthed, "We'll catch up later" and he nodded as he turned back to his project.

  But I had two days until Meridian and no time for whatever interpersonal drama Daniel was cooking up. I'd deal with him later. Probably just some young kid catching the feels for his mentor. It happened. I'd let him down easy.

  * * *

  The morning passed in a blur of emails and revisions. The Meridian presentation was in good shape, but "good shape" wasn't the same as "done," and I kept finding small things to tweak. A font weight that felt slightly off. A color that looked perfect on my monitor but would probably project wrong on our projector. The kind of microscopic details that no one would notice except me, and that I couldn't stop noticing.

  Around 10:30, my phone buzzed with a text from Kate.

  Kate: lunch today? need to vent about the Morrison account

  Me: yes please. 12:30?

  Kate: perfect. that Thai place?

  Me: you read my mind

  I smiled and went back to obsessing over kerning. Kate Frank was the closest thing I had to a best friend, which said more about my social life than I wanted to examine. We'd started at Holloway the same year and bonded over a shared hatred of a client who'd made us redesign his restaurant logo eleven times before going with the first version anyway. She was warmer than me, more social, the kind of person who remembered birthdays and organized office happy hours. I was... not that. But somehow we'd clicked anyway. She always joked that she forced me to be her friend.

  At 11:15, my desk phone rang. The internal line.

  "Samantha Marion."

  "Sam, hi. It's Rebecca from HR." Her voice was pleasant in that sickeningly sweet HR way. "Do you have a few minutes to come chat? Conference room B."

  Something cold settled in my stomach. Conference room B was where they did performance reviews. And layoffs. And conversations that started with "This isn't about your work" and ended with security escorting you out.

  "Sure," I said, because what else could I say? "I'll be right there."

  I hung up and sat very still for a moment, trying to convince myself this was probably nothing. Maybe they wanted my input on a new hire. Maybe there was some administrative thing I'd forgotten to sign. Maybe...

  Daniel caught my eye from across the room. He was watching me with that same flicker of something I couldn't name. When he saw me looking, he quickly turned back to his screen.

  The cold feeling got colder.

  * * *

  Conference room B was sad-beige-baby beige. Beige walls, beige table, beige chairs that were probably supposed to be "ergonomic" but mostly just made your ass hurt. There were motivational posters on the walls, the kind with pictures of mountains and words like "EXCELLENCE" and "TEAMWORK" that made you feel vaguely insulted just by existing.

  Rebecca was already there when I walked in. So was Greg Holloway Jr., son of the founder, technically my boss's boss. He was mid-fifties, silver-haired, with the perpetually constipated expression of a man who'd inherited a company and spent every day since trying to prove he deserved it. His catch phrase was, "I'm a different kind of CEO."

  Neither of them stood up when I entered. Neither of them smiled.

  "Sam. Please, sit down."

  I sat.

  "Thank you for coming on such short notice," Rebecca said, in a tone that suggested I'd had a choice. "We wanted to discuss something that's come to our attention."

  "Okay." My voice came out steady, which surprised me given that my heart was trying to escape through my throat. "What's going on?"

  Greg and Rebecca exchanged a look. The kind of look that said they'd rehearsed this conversation and were now executing it according to plan.

  "It's come to our attention," Greg said, "that there have been some irregularities with your recent project files."

  "Irregularities?"

  "Specifically, regarding the Meridian account." He folded his hands on the table, and I noticed for the first time that there was a folder in front of him. Manila, unmarked. "Files that appear to have originated from an external source."

  The cold feeling had spread to my whole body now. I felt frozen, paralyzed, like I was watching this happen to someone else from very far away.

  "I don't understand."

  "Let me be more direct." Greg opened the folder and slid a printed page across the table toward me. "This is a design file that was found on your work computer. Metadata indicates it was created weeks ago by a designer at Vertex Communications. A company whose new soon-to-be branding, as I'm sure you're aware, bears a striking resemblance to the work you've been presenting as your own for the Meridian project."

  I looked at the printout. It was one of my logos, the one I'd stayed late three nights in a row to perfect. The one I was proudest of. The one that was going to anchor the whole presentation.

  Except the metadata said it wasn't mine.

  "This is insane," I heard myself say. "I created this. I have version history, I have..."

  "The data doesn't lie, Sam." Rebecca's voice was gentle in a way that made me want to scream. "We've had IT look into it. Vertex announced their new brand yesterday. They claim to have been working on this for months."

  "Then someone stole my idea. Someone..." The words died in my throat as the pieces clicked together. Daniel. Hovering in meetings. CC'ing emails. Asking questions about my file organization. "Oh my god."

  "Sam..."

  "It was Daniel." I was standing now, though I didn't remember getting up. "Daniel Park. He's been... I don't know how, but he did this. He must've taken my roughs weeks ago. He's been acting strange... I thought it was just a weird crush."

  "Sam." Greg's voice cut through my spiral like a knife. "We've already spoken with Daniel. He was actually the one who brought this to our attention. He noticed the design on X yesterday and felt obligated to report this to prevent an incident with Meridian on Friday. He has additional documentation saying you've been using AI to generate the vast majority of your designs."

  The room tilted.

  Daniel had reported it. Daniel had reported it. Because of course he had. He'd set the trap and then walked me right into it and made himself look like a hero in the process.

  "He's lying." My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Thin. Far away. "He's... you have to see that he's lying. I have proof. Sketches. Timestamps."

  "What we see," Greg said, "is evidence. What we're hearing from you is accusations without proof."

  "I can get proof. Just give me time to..."

  "I'm afraid that's not possible." Rebecca stood up, smoothing her blazer with the practiced motion of someone who'd delivered bad news many times before. "Given the severity of the allegations, we're going to have to ask you to surrender your company credentials immediately. You'll be escorted to your desk to collect your personal belongings."

  "You're firing me."

  "We're placing you on administrative leave pending a full investigation." Greg's mouth twitched in something that might have been discomfort or might have been satisfaction. Hard to tell with him. "But I'll be honest with you, Sam. The evidence is compelling. And Holloway Design takes intellectual property theft very seriously. We also operate on a no AI assisted design model here. Now, it's fine for some people but our clients pay top dollar to guarantee that their designs are unique and traditional."

  I should have argued. I should have demanded a lawyer, or a union rep, or something. But I couldn't make my mouth form words anymore. The ringing in my ears was too loud.

  That was when I noticed the wall.

  * * *

  I don't know how to describe what happened next in a way that makes sense. Mostly because it didn't make sense. Still doesn't. But I'll try.

  Greg and Rebecca were still talking, something about "next steps" and "remaining professional" and other HR euphemisms for "your life is ruined," but I'd stopped hearing them. The ringing in my ears had drowned everything else out, and my eyes had drifted to the wall behind Greg's head.

  Beige. Like everything else in this room. But there was something else there too. Something I'd never noticed before.

  Static.

  It was faint at first. Like the visual noise you see when you look at a blank wall too long, or when you're tired, or when you've been staring at screens all day. Just... fuzz. The kind of thing you blink away and forget about.

  Except I couldn't blink it away.

  The longer I stared, the more pronounced it became. Not random anymore. Structured. Like there was a pattern underneath the chaos, something I could almost see if I just...

  I leaned forward. The ringing got louder. My head was pounding, pressure building behind my eyes like something was trying to get out. But I couldn't look away. The static was resolving into something. Lines. Symbols. A language I didn't know but somehow recognized, like a word on the tip of my tongue that you can't quite...

  LEVEL UP.

  The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Clear as a bell, genderless and calm, spoken directly into the center of my brain.

  I jerked back so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. The static vanished. The pressure released. Reality snapped back into focus like a rubber band. I felt something wet drip down my upper lip and I tried to catch it.

  "...listening? Sam?"

  Greg and Rebecca were staring at me. They'd both moved back slightly, the way you do when someone you're talking to suddenly starts acting unhinged.

  "I..." I blinked. Looked at the wall. Beige. Just beige. "Sorry, I just... what?"

  "I said we'll have someone escort you to collect your things." Rebecca's pleasant HR mask had slipped slightly, revealing something more like concern. Or possibly fear. She handed me a tissue from the convenient box that she was holding under the table.

  "Fine." The word came out automatic, a reflex. I was absolutely not fine. I had just hallucinated a voice in my head announcing that I'd "leveled up" like I was a character in a goddamn video game. "I'm fine. Just..." I took the tissue to my nose, noticing the blood. "...this is a lot to process."

  "I understand." She didn't, but that was okay. Neither did I. "Take your time."

  I stood up on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. When had I sat back down. Or had I fallen? The room was normal now. Synergistically beige and completely devoid of mysterious static or disembodied voices. But my heart was still pounding, and the echo of those two words was still bouncing around my skull. My head ached and I could feel the impending migraine as my stomach rolled protesting the sheer amount of caffeine and lack of solids to accompany it.

  Level up.

  What the fuck? Did I just have a stroke? I kept the tissue pressed to my nose as I tried to force my brain to process anything. To concentrate on anything other than the pain and the internal screaming.