He reached for his phone to call someone—anyone—but the screen was already glowing.
Jason tried to close the player. The mouse cursor moved on its own—dragging the volume to 100%, then fullscreen. His keyboard lights flickered in a binary pattern he almost recognized as Sanskrit characters.
The screen went black. Then, a single white character:
Jason leaned forward, the cheap plastic of his chair groaning. The character pulsed once, twice—then bled sideways, resolving not into the 1988 Neo-Tokyo he expected, but into a live-action shot: a hospital corridor, greenish fluorescent lights, the year "2016" stamped on a corner locker.