The last thing I expected when my dumpster fire of a cat decided to redecorate me and my desk with my tea was to wake up as someone else’s baby. But let me backtrack—this all started with a solar flare and three terabytes of paranoia.

  Picture this: a totally normal Saturday night. While my peers were out getting blackout drunk and making life choices they’d Instagram-regret later, I was living my best life—alone. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t some friendless hermit (thanks for the concern). I just preferred my chaos in manageable doses, like “quietly downloading apocalyptic paranoia” instead of “karaoke with strangers who think ‘Wonderwall’ is a personality.”

  Enter the real star of this disaster: a solar flare. Not just any flare, mind you. Oh no. The internet—bless its hysterical heart—had decided this one would be the Big One. The kind that’d fry the grid, nuke TikTok, and send us all back to bartering turnips and arguing over whose turn it is to die of dysentery. Were the claims exaggerated? Obviously. But hey, why let facts ruin a perfectly good panic spiral?

  So, being the rational engineering student I was (read: broke and delusional), I did what any sane person would do. No, not therapy. Prepping. Bunkers? Pfft. Stockpiling beans? Amateur hour. I went full digital magpie—hoarding every scrap of knowledge I could pirate. Wikipedia? Downloaded. Wikihow’s How to Skin a Squirrel With a Spork? Saved. Quantum physics textbooks? Sure, why not. I barely passed thermodynamics, but hey, post-apocalyptic me would totally nail string theory between foraging for acorns.

  By day six, my laptop resembled a digital doomsday bunker. Medicine? Check. Blueprints for a potato-powered radio? Obviously. Shakespeare’s complete works? Look, if society collapses, I refuse to let humanity die without someone dramatically soliloquizing over a campfire. Priorities, people.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Cue Wsikha, my furry little agent of chaos. There I was, hunched over my laptop like Gollum with a caffeine addiction, when she pranced in, knocked my tea into next Tuesday, and—poof! —suddenly I’m getting intimate with the concept of ego death. Thanks, cat. The room spun, my body decided to imitate a melting wax figure, and bam—I’m floating in a void that felt like a bad DMT trip sponsored by IKEA.

  Imagine living in a world where your eyesight’s set to “144p,” every sound is either a foghorn or a whisper from the void, and your entire sense of self is basically,” What’s a ‘me’? Are we soup?” For two years, I floated through this developmental purgatory—drooling through “milestones,” flailing at suspicious ceiling fans, and slowly downloading the” Human Experience” firmware updates. Oh, and let’s not forget the pi?ata of humiliation that is needing someone else to wipe your face.

  Then came the mirror.

  One day, the nice lady who’d been hauling me around like a sentient burrito plopped me in front of this shiny rectangle. And there it was: some random toddler staring back. ”Cute kid,” I thought, right before the little gremlin copied my wave. Wait. I waved. He waved. I frowned. He frowned. Cue the mental record scratch: ”Oh. Oh no. That’s ME. But also… not?”

  Memories detonated like a flashbang—Luke. Engineering. The tea. The cat’s betrayal. The survival guides I’d never get to use because apparently the universe thought” reincarnated baby” was a better plot twist than, I don’t know, literally anything else.I tried to yell, but all that came out was a gurgle. Then—blackout.

  Cool. Coolcoolcool. So we’re doing this, universe?