The next morning, the dream, though fragmented, clung to Raghav like a damp shroud. It wasn't gone completely, just blurry, a shadow over his usual routine. The sheer terror of it had been overwhelming, but the details, like quicksilver, slipped through his fingers the moment he tried to grasp them.
He remembered a searing, undeniable truth: it had been a warning. But a warning of what? Why couldn't his mind hold onto the images of destruction, the red sky, Priya's face? He tried to shake his head, to clear the unsettling images, but a faint echo of Priya's terrified voice remained, a phantom whisper in his mind.
He spent his quick shower and hurried breakfast trying to remember, desperate for clarity. What was that? Why did it feel so real? And why can't I remember it clearly? The questions buzzed, a persistent, annoying fly, impossible to swat away.
On the bus, the constant jostle and honking usually made his thoughts drift. Today, they kept returning to the feeling of dread, the flashes of crumbling buildings and that impossible red sky. It felt wrong, like a piece of reality that didn't fit, a puzzle piece from a nightmare shoved into his ordinary day.
He arrived at the office feeling more tired and distracted than usual, the lingering mystery of the dream clouding his focus, making him irritable. The air in the office felt heavier than usual. Not hot. Not cold. Just… heavier. Still, like the building itself was holding its breath.
Raghav sat at his desk, shoulders stiff, eyes fixed on the spreadsheet that glared back at him. Rows. Columns. Numbers. Formulas. All of it bleeding together after hours of repetition. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, unmoving.
The headache behind his eyes was dull but constant, like a pressure building slowly with no release. It felt tied to the restless questions about the dream, a physical manifestation of his mental turmoil. He rubbed his temples, hoping to push it away, but his mind kept replaying the lingering feeling of terror, the sense of impending doom from the forgotten nightmare.
Then he felt it. A strange, undeniable tingling crawled along his fingertips, starting subtly, then growing stronger. Electric. Almost like static, but deeper—beneath the skin, resonating with the frantic energy of his troubled mind. It wasn't just his fingertips; it climbed his hands, up his wrists, a faint, humming current spreading through his forearms, making his muscles twitch involuntarily.
He frowned and looked down at his hands, turning them over and back. Perfectly normal. No shaking. No discoloration. He flexed his fingers. The sensation didn't stop. In fact, it grew, a low thrumming under his skin, pushing against his very bones.
He stared at the screen again—his spreadsheet, a chaotic mess of incorrect figures he couldn't make sense of, a harsh symbol of his tedious life and his rising frustration. The dull ache in his head intensified, his thoughts about the dream swirled, the sheer mind-numbing repetition of his work pressed down on him—it all boiled over, a sudden, blinding wave of pure, raw frustration in his mind.
It wasn't a thought, it was a silent, desperate scream:
I wish this stupid data would just fix itself. I wish this whole day would just disappear!
The moment that thought, sharp and clear and desperate, formed, the screen didn't just flicker. It exploded with activity. Not a simple shift, but a violent, immediate, impossible transformation.
The rows didn't just shift; they snapped into new alignments with unbelievable, brutal speed. Colors flashed. Numbers spun. Columns realigned, totals recalculated themselves in a dizzying blur, and complex formulas corrected, neatly and instantly—all without him touching the mouse or typing a single thing. The data, moments ago a scattered, defiant mess, became perfect, pristine, gleaming with an impossible order, as if commanded by an invisible, almighty hand.
Raghav gasped, a strangled sound catching in his throat. He sat up straighter, rigid with shock, fingers now frozen mid-air above the keyboard, eyes wide with a mixture of pure terror and dizzying disbelief.
Was that a macro? A hidden function? Some internal tool running without his knowledge?
No. He hadn't clicked anything. He was absolutely, terrifyingly sure of it. This was too fast, too perfect, too… responsive. His heart picked up speed, hammering against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird trying to break free. He glanced around the office, his head snapping side to side.
Nobody noticed. Colleagues typed away at their own stations, oblivious. Phones rang. Someone coughed. A printer whirred. Everything looked normal. But something definitely wasn't. Something was profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
He leaned forward again, his mind racing, a cold dread mixing with a strange, undeniable thrill. His gaze locked onto a different section of the spreadsheet, a block of text, a dense paragraph of corporate jargon. He focused, narrowing his thoughts to a single, sharp word, testing the impossible, whispering it in his mind:
Shrink.
The text immediately, dramatically, compressed. The letters squeezed together, becoming impossibly small, the font shrinking until it was too tiny to read, as if obeying a silent, absolute command. His pulse quickened, a frantic throb in his temples. His chest tightened, his lungs suddenly starved for air. He blinked hard, then whispered, almost desperately, in his mind, feeling the raw edge of fear and awe:
Normal size.
The font returned. Exactly. Instantly. A clean, precise snap back to its original dimensions.
Raghav slowly pulled his hands back from the keyboard, his chair scraping softly on the floor, a tiny sound in the ringing silence of his own head. This wasn't fatigue. This wasn't a shortcut or a system bug. He had just thought something—a simple, desperate thought—and the system had obeyed.
He sat very still, barely breathing, as the intense buzz in his fingers slowly faded, leaving an eerie quiet in its wake. The air felt colder now, chilling his skin. Or maybe his skin had simply gone cold, a deep, unsettling chill that went bone-deep. He wiped his damp palms on his trousers and looked around again, a frantic sweep of his eyes, searching for any sign, any reaction.
Everyone else continued, unaware, trapped in their mundane world. No hidden cameras pointed at him. No eyes watched from a dark corner. It was like the universe had quietly, imperceptibly, peeled back its curtain—and only he had seen through to the impossible.
The next few minutes passed in a haze of unreality. He opened tabs. Closed them. Pretended to scroll through emails. Every now and then, he would glance back at the spreadsheet, testing tiny, whispered commands in his head.
Highlight. Bold. Undo. Clear.
Each command followed thought like a shadow.
It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a bug.
It was real.
By 3:00 p.m., he felt like the world around him had slowed while something inside him had sped up, irrevocably changed, irreversibly set on a new path. His coworkers were still typing, still chatting about project deadlines and chai breaks, their voices muffled and distant. But Raghav was somewhere else entirely. He was sitting at the edge of something he couldn't define, a new, terrifying world opening up, just for him. The buzz in his hands had faded, but the feeling remained—an invisible wire between him and the machine, a silent, powerful connection. He stared into the monitor, almost afraid to blink, afraid the spell would break.
Was it just this device?
Was it tied to the office system?
Or was it something inside him, a power he had never known he possessed, a dormant ability now violently awakened?
The digital world had always been separate, a realm only accessible through physical tools—keyboards, mice, complex commands. But now, that boundary felt thin. Soft. Like he had stepped over it without meaning to, into a place where his very thoughts held absolute power.
He stood up, his legs feeling strangely unsteady, and went to the break room, pouring himself a glass of water with hands that visibly shook. No one noticed his tremor. No one asked why he looked so pale, or why he stood staring blankly at the floor for a full minute before slowly walking back to his desk.
Back at his desk, he took a deep, shuddering breath and made a decision, a silent, firm vow: He wouldn't tell anyone. Not yet. Not until he understood what this was. If it was dangerous. If it had limits. If it had rules. He would test it. Quietly. Carefully. But not now. Not here.
By day's end, he barely remembered packing his bag. He walked out with the crowd, heart racing, mind spinning. Outside, the city roared with life—honking horns, crying children, thick smog. But Raghav heard only one thing in the hollow space of his mind:
I didn't touch the keyboard. And yet—the machine had listened.