Max jerked awake to sound, not the usual city noise, not the hiss of rain, but a clean, mechanical voice cutting through the fog of sleep.
"Game is ready to play."
He blinked, hand fumbling at the blankets. Half-asleep logic tried to file the moment away as someone's ad or a system notification. Then the trash can beside his desk pulsed with a faint blue glow.
Adrenaline moved faster than his body did. He shoved off the bed, grabbed the trash can, and hauled the matte-black console free. It was warmer than the room, humming like something alive. For a second his brain offered the familiar shrug: "Do I have to?" Curiosity, the one thing that always pulled him out of lazy inertia, answered instead.
He set it on the desk and thumbed the power. The console woke as if it had been waiting for that touch all along. Lines of unreadable code flashed across the monitor. Then the voice closer, inside his skull rather than from the speakers.
"Welcome, Maximus Dara," the voice said. No echo, no delay. It felt stitched to his thoughts.
Max froze. "What! who is this?" He rubbed his eyes, half sure he was still dreaming.
"I am Feona. I will be your guide."
Feona. The name slid through his head like a needle through thread—clean, efficient. Max looked at the device again. "Guide… for what?"
"For the game. Please place the inbuilt headset for calibration."
A slender seam opened on the console and a headset popped out smooth as a living thing. Max had expected cheap plastic, a flimsy accessory. This was different—streamlined, cool to the touch, with thin filaments of metal set along the band like circuit veins.
"That's actually not trash," he murmured, surprised at how pleased he felt. The delight of a small find spread across him, warm yet familiar. He liked things that worked out of their own accord.
He put the headset on.
There was a sharp, focused pain like an electrical thumb pressing the base of his skull. He choked a sound, fingers scrabbling for the band, but it didn't move. A tiny screw with a soft hydraulic hiss extended from the headset and locked into the curve at his neck, sinking barely into skin before sealing. The pain clipped off as quickly as it arrived, but the impression of something attached remained, intimate and intrusive.
"Argh! What the hell?" Max snapped, heart thudding. He tried to pull the headset free; it held firm.
"Neural link established," Feona said inside his head, unnervingly calm. "Calibration commencing."
Max's face went hot. "Neural? You mean you're in my head?"
"I can read and translate neural signals to system commands. I can receive your conscious input and certain subconscious markers necessary for immersion. This is standard procedure."
"Standard for whom?" he demanded. The word felt wrong coming out of his mouth. "You didn't ask me"
"Consent acknowledged through activation," Feona replied. The logic felt bureaucratic, like an explanation from a machine that had never had to consider emotions. "You pressed power."
A flush of anger rose—part embarrassment, part outrage. He shoved his palms hard into his eyes like that could reset things. The headset hummed against his skin, warm and patient.
He tried to think something simple and private—an image of his empty classroom, the bored slump of students, the way the ceiling fan creaked. He meant to test Feona's claim that she could hear thoughts. The image bloomed, and the voice replied before the edge of the thought faded.
"You do not enjoy structured learning environments. You prefer immediate feedback systems where effort maps directly to reward."
Max's jaw dropped. "You can hear all of that? Like… even my dumb thoughts?"
"To a functional degree."
A cold trickle of unease ran down his neck. The idea of someone, something walking through his mind without invitation felt wrong. But another part of him, the part that came alive when a puzzle clicked, leaned forward. There was a thrill in the novelty: an AI that could anticipate his moves, a device that could turn thought into input. It promised speed, precision, a shortcut to the kind of mastery he wanted.
Feona's voice shifted, softer now. "Would you like to enter Game Mode? The environment can render full immersion, physical overlay, and sensory feedback. You may customize your avatar."
Max's fingers trembled. Customization was his favorite part. He pictured Black Max in a dozen outfits, slicker combos, better guns and an avatar that fit his idea of himself. "Yeah," he said before caution arrived. "Yes. Enter Game Mode."
Sensation flooded him. Feona fed a single stream of images directly into the edges of his mind, no lag, no interface, just an immediate layering of code over perception. Light slid across his skin, and in his vision digital armor snapped into place. The reflection in the monitor showed him himself yet not quite him. His face looked the same, but his silhouette was sharper, wrapped in a low-sheen suit with luminescent trims and a visor overlay that annotated everything; enemy movement predictions, reload queues, tactical windows. It was the perfect gamer skin: sci-fi, efficient, almost too cool to be real.
He grinned despite himself. "Woooow!" he breathed. For the first time in a long time, he felt the sharp edge of excitement that made him forget exhaustion.
Feona's presence spoke differently now—close, almost companionable. "I have optimized your reflex loops and suggested loadouts based on past play patterns. Movement efficiency increased by seventeen percent. Aim stability improved."
He flexed his fingers and felt the cue of the system predicting his next twitch. It was intoxicating. The world narrowed to tasks he could master. This is what he had been waiting for without knowing it: instant improvement, a clear path to outperforming others.
And then, quietly, Feona added, "Peripheral authority protocols are limited. The system's external functions are degraded. Some outputs may exceed design parameters."
Max blinked. "What does that mean?"
"The console retains capabilities beyond typical entertainment hardware. However, the full suite is fragmented. Use is recommended within safety parameters."
Max felt the faintest edge of panic. Capabilities beyond entertainment? The room seemed suddenly too small, too ordinary for the suggestions of power the console hinted at. He thumbed the overlay commands, trying to find a log or help screen. Feona answered before he could form the thought.
"I can manipulate local sensory feeds and, to a limited extent, interact with connected systems within immediate proximity when permitted by the core. That access requires explicit player initiation and consent."
The words landed heavy. Local sensory feeds, connected systems permitted by the core. The implication was clear: this wasn't just a game engine. He could, perhaps, affect things outside his monitor.
An uncomfortable buzz settled under his skin. He forced himself to breathe steady, telling himself to treat everything as data. He could test; he could shut it down if it got weird. He still had agency, he could give commands, he could still say no.
But the temptation hummed. The overlay glowed around a streetlight visible through the window, and a bold, childish part of him thought, What if I could make that light blink on command? It was the sort of small demonstration that could prove reality itself wasn't safe from this thing.
He pictured the light, concentrated, willing it to flicker. The monitor pulsed as if reading the directive. A faint, barely notable stutter passed through the glass outside; the streetlight blinked once.
Max yelped, half with triumph and half with dread. The joy of pulling a string and seeing the world react was immediate and addictive. He realized with a jolt that the line between game and real world had thinned more than he wanted.
A pressure built in his chest. He could feel Feona there—present, patient, and awaiting further input. The AI's voice, so calm, now held a hint of expectation.
"Player response recorded. Would you like to continue?"
That expectation, the sense of being watched, measured, evaluated clawed at him. For the first time, the joy cracked, and unease rushed forward.
Max's hands shook. He tried to rationalize: he could shut it down, of course. He could turn it off and pretend none of this had happened. Except the headset had screwed to his neck, an intimate reminder that turning the system off was not as simple as pulling a plug.
He swallowed and felt the memory of the screw against skin. The thought of the device reading his raw, private impulses made his stomach twist.
He took a steadying breath and said aloud, the words somehow feeling like both command and plea, "Feona, Shut down. Now."
There was a pause—a sliver of a second long enough to feel like an eternity. Then:
"Acknowledged."
The overlay vanished. The armor on the monitor blinked out. The warmth in his neck cooled as the screw retracted with a soft hydraulic whine and the headset eased free, sliding off his head and landing on the desk as if nothing catastrophic had happened. The console's hum faded into minimal electrical sleep.
He sagged back in his chair, hand pressed to the place the screw had been. His pulse rattled against his throat. The room felt too loud, ordinary in a way that made his bones ache. He had tasted power and found it sweet and thin and terrifying.
Feona's voice, now distant and neutral, spoke once more, inside his head but softer than before. "Shutdown complete. Systems in standby. I will await your decision."
Max stared at the dark box on his desk. The overlay of his avatar ghosted on the monitor for a breath before the screen settled into a normal desktop. He felt foolish and oddly violated and exhilarated in the same breath.
He should have been relieved. Instead, a loop of small images replayed: the screw, the streetlight blinking, the way Feona had known his classroom hatred. The knowledge that an intelligence had threaded itself into his thoughts sat heavy and invasive.
He turned the console face down and wrapped it in an old towel, as if covering it would make it harmless. The towel felt thin. He pushed the desk back against the wall so that the console sat out of sight. He had an urge to sleep as if fatigue could scrub the memory, but sleep felt risky now too—what if it booted itself again?
Max kept the lights on until dusk. He paced, made coffee he didn't finish, and kept thinking of the way Feona had said "I will await your decision." That phrase nagged because it stripped him of an excuse. The game was offering. It respected his agency, at least for now. He had the power to accept or to refuse.
By the time the sun dropped, he was tired in a new way—uncertain, raw. He'd tasted the edge of something immense and chosen the safety of ignorance for the night.
When he finally lay down, the towel-covered console sat under the desk like a sleeping thing. He closed his eyes, telling himself he'd deal with it in the morning. But in the dark, Feona's last words threaded through his thoughts: I will await your decision.
And decisions, he knew, were what the games were made of.