Cordell’s day dragged on, thick with the weight of monotony. At 29, his life had already slipped into a suffocating routine, so suffused with repetition that it felt as though he were merely observing it from a distance. Sitting in his small, dimly lit apartment, he stared at his flickering monitor, the rows of logs on screen blending into a blur. His eyes glazed over as they scanned through IDs that held no significance.

  Work had become an endless cycle of tasks to check off, nothing more, nothing less. The clicks of his keyboard were mechanical, each one echoing the hollow rhythm of a life that had long lost its spark. Nothing about his job felt real anymore; it was a collection of meaningless actions performed on autopilot, drifting through the motions without thought, without feeling.

  His phone buzzed on the desk. Another message from his manager: an urgent request. Cordell didn’t even bother reading it completely. He knew the drill; handle it himself, quickly and efficiently, like always. But no recognition, no rewards. He was better than the internal staff, but that didn’t matter. The company would continue to pay him what they deemed necessary, and he’d continue to work without complaint.

  His apartment was a place of quiet resignation. A small kitchen. A bed that didn’t offer the comfort it once had. The walls, blank and unmoving, reflected the emptiness within him. His bookshelves sagged under the weight of stories he no longer had the energy to explore. The turntable still spun most nights, playing vinyl records he knew by heart.

  The music remained, his last ritual, his one tether to something beautiful, but even beauty no longer felt like a reason to keep going. It soothed the hours, filled the silence, but did little to convince him that life was worth enduring.

  There was a time when he wanted more, more friends, more experiences, more purpose, but that time had passed. He had given up on those wishes long ago. Now, his world was just a blur of days and nights, indistinguishable from one another. The same routine. The same thoughts. The same loneliness.

  Another long day, another empty evening. His phone buzzed again, and for a brief moment, he considered ignoring it. But he couldn’t. His life was now a series of unspoken expectations, and he had to meet them. No choice, no escape.

  Something about the emptiness that filled the room that night made Cordell reflect on the inevitable. He had never been one to act impulsively, but tonight, it was different. There was no anger, no outburst, just a quiet realization. The thought had been floating around for a while, but tonight, it felt like a solution. Why continue ?

  The decision wasn’t made in a fit of rage or sorrow. He wasn’t running from something. He was just done. Just merely stepping off the treadmill of existence. The pressure, the silence, the failure to break free from the cycle,none of it mattered anymore.

  He got up from his chair, moving toward his room with a sense of detachment, as if everything had already been decided long ago. His mind was clear. He didn’t feel fear, nor did he feel relief. Only the cold certainty that this was the end.

  He knelt by the bed, reaching beneath it to retrieve a small, dust covered cardboard box. Inside, the pills were still where he had placed them months earlier, lined up, counted, planned. He had done his research. There would be no pain. No struggle. Just sleep.

  He filled a glass of water from the kitchen and returned to his chair, the one place in the world that had ever felt like his. Music played softly in the background, a melancholic vinyl spinning on the turntable. He didn’t cry. He didn’t smile. He simply existed for a few more minutes, breathing in the last notes of something beautiful.

  Then, one by one, he swallowed the pills. The motion was slow, deliberate. The taste was bitter, chemical, but he didn’t grimace. He leaned back into his chair, head tilted toward the ceiling, eyes drifting shut as the music played its final notes behind him.

  There was no pain.

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  No tunnel of light.

  No flashes of memory.

  Just a sudden loss of consciousness, like a stage fading to black.

  Silence settled, deep and absolute.

  And then, something else.

  A hum.

  Not sound, but sensation. A low vibration that trembled at the edge of thought, like distant machinery coming online. It spread through the void, pulsing softly, insistently, cutting through the stillness of death.

  Then came the shift.

  Weightlessness.

  A current pulling him, tugging at the edges of his awareness. Before he could name the feeling, before he could will himself to resist or accept it, a jolt coursed through his mind.

  His consciousness snapped into place, sudden, raw, alert.

  And when his eyes opened, he was somewhere else.

  Cordell blinked, his vision swimming as reality came into focus. Cold concrete pressed against his back, damp and gritty. The air stank of oil, mold, and something acrid he couldn’t quite place. Overhead, broken neon signs buzzed erratically, their fractured glow spilling into the alley like sickly veins of light.

  He was lying behind a row of overflowing dumpsters, their metal sides rusted and streaked with grime. Flies hovered in lazy circles above rotting refuse. Nearby, old pipes hissed with bursts of escaping steam that twisted upward in ghostly, vaporous tendrils, disappearing into the still, stifling air of the alley.

  Cordell pushed himself upright with a grunt, his limbs unsteady, head pounding with disoriented pressure. A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes, and his thoughts moved like molasses. He took in his surroundings with slow, uneven blinks. Above him loomed concrete walls stained by time, cluttered with corroded vents and flickering neons casting pale light over the alley.

  From the street beyond came the low growl of passing vehicles, the distant murmur of voices, announcements echoing off metal and stone. It was English, clear, automated, emotionless. Everything looked familiar in pieces, but stitched together, it felt like a different world entirely. This wasn’t his apartment.

  This wasn’t … quite exactly his world.

  But then… where was this place?

  Before he could process anything, a small, holographic interface flickered to life in the corner of his vision, as if it had always been there. A message appeared:

  "Welcome, User Cordell Wayland. System Integrated. You are now registered."

  Cordell blinked. The floating interface glowed softly in his peripheral vision, utterly alien yet disturbingly intuitive.

  “What the hell is this?” he muttered aloud. “System? Registered for what?”

  He tried to reach out, mentally or physically, he wasn’t sure to interact with it.

  “Can you hear me?”

  No response.

  “What do you mean ‘registered’?”

  Silence. The system remained inert, indifferent. Its calm glow pulsed once.

  Then, the interface shifted.

  "Permission requested: Initiate baseline user analysis."

  "Purpose: Skill recognition, trait detection, memory integration."

  "Confirm: YES / NO"

  Cordell hesitated. None of this made sense, but his mind felt strangely excited to this new layer of reality, as if refusing would be harder than accepting.

  “…Yes,” he said quietly.

  The interface brightened.

  "Acknowledged. Beginning user analysis…"

  Lines of data scrolled rapidly across the translucent screen. He felt a subtle pressure in his skull, like a headache forming behind his eyes, but cold, detached. Not painful. Just… invasive.

  "Scan complete."

  "87 skills recognised that meet the minimum requirement."

  "1 Trait detected."

  Another line appeared immediately after:

  Cordell stared as the list scrolled faster than he could read. Everything he’d ever dabbled in, coding, cooking, electronics, even archery, flashed across the display. Some were ranked laughably low. Others, surprisingly high. He couldn’t keep up.

  Before he could say anything else, the interface shifted once more.

  "Proceeding to memory integration."

  "Request: Embed cognitive tags and sensory linkage for enhanced recall and execution of known skills."

  "Estimated time: 4.2 seconds."

  Cordell didn’t even have time to protest.

  The sensation turned sharp. Like invisible needles threading through the folds of his brain, mapping and burning with precise, surgical pain. His limbs jerked. His jaw clenched. He gasped as a searing heat bloomed inside his skull, flooding his senses with an unbearable intensity.

  Then, he passed out cold.

  And the words flashed:

  "Integration complete."