As the clicking grew louder, Elias noticed his monitor flickering. The pixels began to rearrange themselves, forming shapes that weren't part of his operating system. They looked like constellations, shifting and swirling across the dark screen.
He put on his headphones and pressed play. For the first three minutes, there was nothing but the faint hiss of static. He was about to close the file when the sound changed. It wasn't a voice, but a rhythmic clicking—like a typewriter, but faster, more organic. As the clicking grew louder, Elias noticed his
He tried to delete the file, but the system returned an error: File in use by 'System_Consciousness'. As the clicking grew louder