Outside my window, every streetlight for as far as I could see flickered once — then went dark.
I double-clicked.
I clicked it.
But the “Calibration” button was blinking. Soft amber. Not red. Not green. Almost inviting.
Twenty years old.
The screen went black for three seconds. Then white. Then a single line of text appeared:
Corridor opening. Stand by.
The program opened in a window that looked like Windows 2000 had a baby with a control panel from a cold war bunker. Sliders, meters, frequency dials, and a waveform display labeled . At the bottom, a status bar read: