On her desk, the small robot she hadn’t even built yet sat fully formed. No bigger than a domino, six legs of bent paperclip wire, a single LED eye glowing infrared. It turned toward her. It lifted one leg. Then another.

Instead, she opened the laptop again. The simulation was still running. A new component had appeared in the library:

The library’s emergency lights buzzed. Across the room, a laptop screen went black. A phone died. Mira’s own tablet dropped to 2% battery—then held there, frozen.