Time was a thief that never slept. It trickled through my fingers in quiet moments, stole my mornings, my nights, my life—until all that remained were numbers on a screen. Some say time heals all wounds; some say it waits for no one. But in the buzzing fluorescent haze of this office, time didn't heal. It trapped.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like a swarm of irritable bees, casting a jaundiced glow over the office floor. I stared at the screen, my eyes dry, my spine groaning from hours hunched in a cheap, unforgiving swivel chair.
Reports. Emails. Spreadsheets. Deadlines. Every keystroke felt like a scream from an unseen monster, dragging me deeper into monotony.
Beyond the glass walls, Chennai's skyline stretched like a jagged heartbeat—glass towers and neon signs stabbing into the night. They said the city never slept, but from this desk, it looked like a city addicted to insomnia, blinking, humming, leaking light into suffocating darkness.
I tugged at the stiff collar of my white shirt, trying to breathe through the fabric, feeling the bead of sweat inch down my temple. My name—Aravindan "Arav" Subramaniam—mattered less here than the endless rows of data I churned out. Life had become an algorithm, a spreadsheet with no margins, no breaks, no mercy.
"Good night, Arav."
A voice. Soft. Almost kind. Almost cruel in its reminder that someone else had a life beyond these walls.
I barely lifted my head. Vikram, my colleague, was already packed up, briefcase swinging like a red banner in the sickly light, his fiery hair a small rebellion against the monotony.
"Finally," I muttered, a whisper swallowed by the hum of the AC.
His footsteps faded down the corridor. The office was empty. My monitors reflected nothing but my own pale, exhausted face and the endless streams of data that no one would ever read.
I should be home. Should be somewhere that felt like life. Instead, my stomach grumbled in protest, a sharp reminder of my ulcer and another night of roadside stall food. The mounting power bills, the ceaseless responsibilities—everything was a headache I couldn't escape.
And yet, here I remained. Trapped. A corporate drone, a number, a ghost wandering the fluorescent maze of VKR & Associates—one of Chennai's "prestigious" IT firms where rebellion died under the weight of deadlines and KPI charts.
I leaned back, closing my eyes for just a second, willing the world to pause, if only for a heartbeat. To feel human. To feel alive.
Then… something shifted.
At first, it was subtle—a flicker in the corner of my eye, like heat wavering off asphalt on a blistering Chennai afternoon. I squinted, trying to dismiss it as a trick of the light. But the fluorescent bulbs overhead buzzed louder, their flicker no longer random—it pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
The air itself felt different, heavier, vibrating against my skin in a way that set my nerves on fire.
And then it came into view.
Not just light—a sphere of pure, raw energy, hovering about two meters above my desk. At first, it was small, a trembling orb of iridescent white, edges crackling with sparks of violet and gold. And yet, even in its delicate form, it hummed with an intensity that made my teeth chatter and my stomach curl.
The space around it… shifted. My very perception of the room warped. Walls bent slightly at the corners, shadows stretched and flickered.
I blinked, rubbed my eyes, convinced I was seeing some early-stage hallucination of psychological collapse.
"Great… now I'm going to need a psychologist too," I muttered to myself, though my voice felt hollow, swallowed by the strange vibrational hum.
I opened and closed my eyes. The orb didn't vanish.
It pulsed. It… lived. Twisting and shivering like a heartbeat, it drew me in. My instincts screamed to look away. My body refused.
Something primal tugged at my mind. A connection—not just to light or air, but to something far deeper, something impossible.
Then it exploded.
Not a gentle expansion—an eruption. Glass shattered, monitors exploded into fire and sparks, papers scattered like autumn leaves in a violent storm. The air conditioner screamed as vents twisted and ripped free from the ceiling. My chair tipped violently, and the floor beneath my feet trembled as though the room itself were breathing.
This wasn't light. This wasn't energy as I knew it. It was alive. It moved like a predator, licking walls, swallowing cubicles whole. Rubber-like, bending, twisting, devouring everything in its path.
I screamed, half in terror, half in awe. But the sound didn't reach my ears. Waves of light, sound, matter—they vanished as they touched it. My laptop… my files… my life, disintegrated into nothingness before my eyes.
I wanted to run. But I couldn't move.
Then… I felt it.
It touched me—not on the skin, but deeper. Through mind, through soul, through whatever tether held my consciousness to reality.
Warmth surged through me, sharp and electrifying, coursing not just through my body, but through something more than physical.
Visions exploded behind my eyelids—shapes, colors, emotions, knowledge I couldn't name. My mind spun, struggling to comprehend the incomprehensible. And then, silence.
My consciousness… cut off.
And then—
Darkness.
...
When I opened my eyes, the world was no longer the same.
The office was gone. Not burned, not bombed, not even partially destroyed—obliterated. As if some invisible blade had sliced the entire floor clean from existence. Concrete and steel had folded in on themselves, glass had become a sea of glittering shards strewn across the floor, and the cubicles I had spent years suffocating in were reduced to indistinguishable rubble.
Smoke curled upward like serpents, slithering between the jagged skeleton of the ceiling above, where chunks of plaster dangled like broken teeth. Streetlights from the world outside filtered through the holes, fractured beams cutting through the dust, painting the ruin in trembling shafts of gold.
The silence was heavy. Too heavy. It wasn't the silence of peace—it was the silence after screaming, the silence when life had already fled. Somewhere in the distance, faint sirens wailed, muted and unreal, as though they belonged to another reality.
And me?
I was lying in the middle of it all, bruised, bleeding, a worthless scrap of flesh left behind. My chest rose and fell shallowly, each breath a battle. A jagged piece of concrete had pinned my legs, and though my eyes could see them, I could not feel them. Panic surged in my throat, bitter and metallic.
This… this was death.
"I'm dead," I whispered, though no one was there to hear. "No... worse. I'm dying. Slowly."
The thought coiled inside my skull, merciless.
So this is how it ends. Years wasted under fluorescent lights, spreadsheets and deadlines, overtime that stole the life from me drop by drop—and this is the payoff? Crushed under stone, nameless, forgotten, just another casualty on tomorrow's headlines?
God, I was pathetic. I dreamed once—remember that? To write, to travel, to actually live. But I traded it all away for safety, for the promise of a steady paycheck and a pension I was never destined to see. Was it worth it? To grind, to bow, to fade quietly in some anonymous corporate graveyard?
No. Not like this. Not like this.
My vision blurred, and I felt my consciousness slipping again, the cold jaws of oblivion reaching for me.
And then—
I felt it again.
That energy. The same pulse that had swallowed the office whole. It was inside me now—not pressing from outside, not suffocating me, but flowing through me. Warmth, unbearable yet intoxicating, spreading through my veins like liquid fire.
It wasn't just energy. It was alive. Patient. Watching me. Waiting.
Guiding.
---
Instinct overtook fear.
I lifted my trembling hands, feeling the cold grit of rubble beneath my fingertips. The energy stirred instantly, swirling around me like liquid light, wrapping me in a cocoon of invisible power. It hummed in tune with my heartbeat, pulsing in rhythm with my breaths, responding to my will before I even understood it.
I thought of the office—the dull hum of fluorescent tubes, the coffee-stained desks, the whirring of the ancient air conditioner, the droning of keyboards and printers. The endless monotony I had cursed every day.
And then, without knowing why, I pushed.
---
The world convulsed.
Time itself snapped taut like a string pulled too far.
A violent shudder rippled outward from my body, a backward surge that clawed at reality itself. The ruins twisted, bent, and began to reform.
Tendrils of light stitched broken steel and shattered concrete. Dust retracted into the walls. Papers crumpled in reverse, unfolding mid-air before sliding neatly back into place on desks. Shards of glass leapt from the ground, rejoining their frames with crystalline chimes. Computer monitors flickered, once dead, now alive, their artificial glow spreading across the space like resurrected ghosts.
It was chaos in reverse—loud, violent, and yet breathtaking. The roar of destruction unmade was a symphony unlike anything human ears were meant to hear, and in that deafening storm of rewinding reality, I felt... powerful. Godlike.
And then—
I opened my eyes again.
The office was intact.
Fluorescent lights buzzed above. Desks stood straight. The smell of stale coffee lingered, annoyingly normal. The clock on the wall ticked, merciless as ever.
"Good night, Arav," a voice called.
I turned.
Vikram, my colleague, was walking toward the exit, his briefcase swinging like a red banner in the pale light. His face was the same, his tone casual, his footsteps unhurried.
But my stomach twisted.
Because I had seen this. Exactly this. His wave, his crooked smile, the way his shoes squeaked against the polished tiles.
Deja vu. No... not deja vu.
"Did I just..." I muttered, clutching my chest where the warmth still pulsed. "Travel through time? or am I getting mentally screwed and hallucinating?"
The office looked the same. Everyone around me looked the same. But I wasn't the same.
As I focused, I could still feel it.
That energy.
Deep inside me, that energy still lived.
Alice. Breathing. Waiting.
Like it had chosen me.