The fluorescent hum of the university lab was something Aisha had grown used to. It wasn't exactly soothing—too sharp, too artificial—but it was constant, and constancy had a way of becoming comforting. The rows of screens blinked with graphs and streams of code, the kind of clutter only a tech club could understand. Outside the tall glass windows, dusk had fallen across the city, painting the sky in tired streaks of violet and gray.
Most of the other students had left hours ago, hurrying off to dinner dates, clubs, or whatever social worlds they belonged to. Aisha stayed behind, alone in the glow of the monitors, adjusting the parameters on her latest project.
"Come on," she muttered, tapping the Enter key with more force than necessary. The numbers danced briefly on the screen, then spat out another error.
She exhaled, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. It wasn't unusual for her prototypes to misbehave. That was the nature of invention: chaos, trial and error. What frustrated her wasn't the failure but the purpose behind the machine.
The "Perception Analyzer"—that was the project's official name—was meant to measure facial symmetry, skin texture, pupil dilation, and dozens of other subtle markers. In simpler terms, it was a beauty scanner. A program that could assign a number to attractiveness with scientific precision.
It wasn't even her idea. The tech club president had pitched it as a way to "understand bias in algorithms" and "see if machines reflected human prejudice." But most of the members had taken it as a joke, a fun tool to rate celebrities and friends. Only Aisha had stared at the machine and thought: What if this number defined your entire life?
That thought had gripped her harder than she wanted to admit.
She had always been… ordinary. Not ugly, not dazzling—just average. In a world obsessed with filters and flawless faces on every billboard, "average" sometimes felt like invisibility. Her roommates spent hours perfecting makeup tutorials, chasing the illusion of perfection. Aisha spent hers in the lab, chasing data instead.
The screen flickered again. The machine's scanner—a sleek oval lens—glowed faintly, waiting for an input. She leaned closer, brushing a loose strand of hair from her cheek. She wasn't the type to take selfies, let alone rate herself. But tonight, curiosity gnawed at her.
What number would I get?
Her reflection ghosted across the dark glass of the scanner. Tired eyes. Thin lips. A face that never turned heads on the street. She wasn't fishing for compliments—she knew what she looked like.
Still, her finger hovered over the activation switch.
Before she could press it, the lab door creaked open.
"Aisha? Still here?"
It was Devon, one of the club's seniors. He leaned against the doorframe, the kind of guy who carried himself like the world had already approved of him. And why wouldn't it? Tall, athletic, easy smile—he had the kind of face the scanner would rank sky-high without hesitation.
"Still here," Aisha echoed, a little defensive. She minimized her error logs so he wouldn't see the mess on her screen.
Devon chuckled. "You know, nobody's grading this project. It's just for fun. Don't burn yourself out."
She bit the inside of her cheek. Just for fun. That was exactly the problem. Nobody else took it seriously. They didn't think about what it meant to quantify beauty, to turn something subjective into an algorithm. To her, it wasn't just a game—it was a warning.
"I'll pack up soon," she said.
He gave her a lazy salute and left, humming some pop tune on his way out. The door shut behind him, leaving the lab in its mechanical hum again.
Aisha stared at the scanner.
"Just for fun," she repeated softly, and pressed the switch.
The machine whirred to life. The lens glowed, scanning her face with a sweep of pale blue light. Numbers flickered across the screen—cheekbone ratios, pupil contrast, hairline symmetry. The data compiled in a fraction of a second.
Then the number appeared.
47.2
She blinked. Out of a hundred.
The machine judged her below average. Ordinary.
Her stomach tightened. She told herself it didn't matter. It was just a faulty prototype, an experiment. But the number burned into her brain anyway, as sharp and humiliating as if someone had announced it through a megaphone.
"Forty-seven point two," she whispered, testing the weight of it.
As if on cue, the screen glitched. The numbers scrambled, spiking and collapsing wildly. Aisha frowned, reaching for the console. That wasn't normal—her code wasn't supposed to do this.
She typed in a command to abort, but the scanner's glow deepened, flooding the room in eerie blue light. The air thickened, static prickling across her arms.
"What the—?"
The screen's hum rose to a shriek. Sparks leapt from the console. Panic surged through her as she tried to yank the power cord, but the machine's light snapped around her like a net.
Her breath caught. Her chest tightened. The world tilted sideways.
The last thing she saw before everything went white was her reflection in the scanner—her face, ordinary and forgettable, dissolving into static.