"What was that...?" Gray muttered and ran a hand through his ruffled blond hair. At the same time, his blue eyes swept across his surroundings, taking them in.

A small room, mostly barren. Cracked white paint, yellow light drifting in through the bedside window from a streetlamp outside... The sort of place that wasn't uncommon for a university student.

Right. This was his room, the studio apartment that he was renting while attending university.

Gray sat up and clutched his head. "A dream? Was that it?"

What he saw seemed too vivid to be just a dream. Too real. And the person at the end...

"No. It was definitely just a dream." Gray nodded and then glanced off to the side.

An old digital alarm clock sat on the bedside table beneath the window. Something that had come along as part of his apartment. And the red numbers on the clock told him that it was still far too early for him to be awake.

Gray frowned and muttered, "Only one o'clock, huh?"

He had already been planning to get up at five to put finishing touches on his senior seminar project. If he went back to sleep now, he would only get four hours of rest and probably end up more tired than if he just stayed up.

Gray sighed and then tossed his curtains aside to get out of bed. Rubbing his bleary eyes, he made his way over to the light switch and flicked them on.

The dark room became fully illuminated. And because of that, Gray also became a bit more awake. Enough, at least, to fully examine his surroundings.

As expected, nothing was out of the ordinary. Just the usual sight of his bare bones studio apartment.

A basket on the ground for his used clothes. A standing hanger for his shirts. A black nylon backpack with various textbooks nearby. A plastic folding table and chair combo that he used both to eat and to study. A laptop on said table, along with a smartphone. And then miscellaneous papers scribbled with code flow diagrams, scattered across the table and floor.

Of to the corner, there was the tiny kitchen area consisting of a sink and a refrigerator. To another corner, there was the door leading to the bathroom with a toilet and a cramped shower. And then there was the door leading outside.

Gray stifled a yawn and then stumbled over to the kitchen area. Rummaging around in the pantry cabinet beneath the sink, he pulled out a coffee maker, a filter, and some ground coffee beans.

After filling the coffee pot with water from the sink, he set it up to make some coffee and then made his way over to the table.

Gray scooped up the papers on the ground and then sat down at the table. Turning on his laptop, Gray leaned back and started rifling through the diagrams. "Let's see... how much is left?"

He was making a custom assembly code compiler for his final project, but there were kinks in getting it to work right. Something about the interaction between virtual and physical memory on his computer's operating system causing it to mess up. But early last night he had an epiphany about using his phone as the intermediary step in the compilation process before translating that to code on the virtual machine.

Gray flipped through the papers and then nodded. "It... should be doable."

He had memorized the architecture of both the virtual machine, his laptop, and the Cyborg OS, so he didn't need to worry about it. The only thing he needed to do was write the code.

...Which would take a while considering he needed to write a couple thousand lines.

Gray sighed and then set the papers aside, shifting his focus to his laptop. "Might as well get started."

He rummaged around for his phone's usb cable and connected it to his laptop. After that, he placed his fingers on the keyboard, opened up Bisual Studio Code and-

xxx

-his phone went off.

Gray blinked and glanced down at his phone.

An alarm set for 6:30 AM. A prompt asking him to snooze or dismiss the alarm.

"Huh?" He blinked again and took a look around. When he did, he realized that he was holding a cup of coffee, the room was lit up by the morning sun, and his laptop was showing a message saying the code compilation was a success.

"That's... different." Gray glanced at his cup of coffee and then took a sip.

It was warm, so that meant it wasn't long since he made it.

Realizing that, he frowned. "Was I more tired than I thought...?"

His project was complete. And scrolling through the log, it seemed like everything was fine. Not only that, but he also had finished typing up the report that he was supposed to present to his professor as well.

"...Odd."

He didn't like it. Gray didn't know what he had made and he couldn't remember how it was made either.

That wasn't to say he didn't understand it. Scrolling through the project files, he understood everything he saw. Enough to explain it if asked. But still...

"Next time, I'll just sleep in."

Right. The next time he woke up in the middle of the night like that, he would just sleep in.

He hated having missing pieces in his memory. There were already enough things that he could barely remember...

Gray shook his head and decisively stood up. "Enough of that." He walked over to his clothes hangar and grabbed a light gray dress shirt. Pairing that with some black slacks from his basket, Gray walked into his bathroom to get ready for the day.

And as he did, he failed to notice it.

A faint screen flicker on his laptop, along with a matching one on his phone. Shortly after that, streams of characters raced along the screens, flowing from the laptop to the phone.

Symbols never before seen in human history.