u/Ancient_Worm

I can also read and give feedback on your writing if needed. Not really sure where to post to get feedback.

Chapter 1 – The File

My name is James. I'm a junior accountant. By the time you finish this I'll have accidentally ended several lives. I didn't mean to. That probably doesn't help.

The first thing I did every morning wasn’t brush my teeth or check my phone - it was opening The Pirate Bay to see what new freebies were waiting for me. Not because I needed anything, just… habit, I guess.
Most days there was nothing new. Still checked anyway, just in case.
“Top 100” - same as yesterday, except for a couple of newly leaked films, mostly low budget horrors, nothing worth the time or precious disk space.
“Top video (48h)” - New episodes of Love Island, how that trash ended up in the top video section every time was depressing. Oh nice, a new episode of The Rookie. Jackpot. That’ll kill at least forty minutes later tonight.
I leaned back in my chair, letting myself enjoy the small win. I’d learned to take those whenever I could.
Next stop: “Others (48h)”. My favourite section. That’s where the weird stuff lived.
Some of my best finds had come from here - a 1968 copy of The Anarchist Cookbook - interesting read but I didn’t really plan to make any bombs any time soon. A random Japanese comic series that somehow ate an entire weekend, even a surprisingly virus-free copy of Microsoft Office 2024. Handy.
Most of it was useless. Still, it was fun to download it and take a look. You never really knew what you might find.
I needed to be at work in forty-five minutes. Fifteen to shower and get ready. Five to grab a coffee - black, no sugar, in case you’re curious. Twenty to walk to the office.
That gave me five minutes to keep scrolling. Maybe I’d find one more banger before I left - something ready for when I got back home tonight.
I scrolled a little further and something caught my eye. A strange file name. Just a bunch of symbols:
“ʍ λ ч ∞ Σ Π”

What the… what is this? Someone trying to be mysterious? Really funny.
What did I do next? Obviously… I clicked it.
The torrent page opened.
Same weird title, and in the description? More symbols.
Scrolling down, I saw there was only one seeder. Not ideal… but I’d be at work all day anyway, so it would have plenty of time to download.
“Oh shi-”
I’d spoken too soon. The file size was huge. 987 gigabytes.
A full 2-hour movie in HD was, what, three or four gigabytes? Even a brand-new PC game barely hit a hundred gig.
What the hell was this file?
Either way, I needed it. No doubt it was riddled with viruses, but you know what they say - curiosity killed the cat.
Well, this cat’s got nine lives.
I clicked download, turned off my monitor, and headed to the shower.

Chapter 2 - Work

“You’re late,”
I wasn’t, but arguing wasn’t worth the effort.
“Morning to you too,” I muttered, dropping into my chair.
Lisa was already watching me from across the desk, “Worlds Best Accountant” mug in hand, it’s like she’d been sat waiting for me. She wasn’t my boss; you wouldn’t know that though from the way she acted.
“You know you’re supposed to be logged in by nine, it’s 3 days until month end and we still have the sync issues from the Dutch payment systems to deal with” she added.
I looked down at the clock, 8:58.
Right.
I logged in. Slowly.
“Cutting it close,” she said.
“Living dangerously,” I replied.
She didn’t laugh. Of course she didn’t.
I pulled up a spreadsheet and got to work. Same as always. Numbers in, numbers out. Copy, paste, repeat.
The job wasn’t hard. That was the problem. I could probably do it half asleep and no one would notice.
I glanced at the clock again.
9:07. Great.
987 gigabytes. However many hours my broadband decided to take. It would either be done by the time I got home, or I'd be staring at 47% and a single seeder having second thoughts.
I copied another row of transactions and told myself to stop thinking about it.
I didn't stop thinking about it.
A few thousand lines of transactions later, the day was finally coming to an end. 4:47, not bad.
I took my empty water cups to the trash and popped to the toilet. A great way to kill another 10 minutes.
“We don’t pay you to tidy your desk and take toilet trips, you know.”
“YOU don’t pay me at all, Lisa. The company does, and as far as I’m aware you haven’t found the 20 million to buy it yet, have you?”
Sometimes I just had to remind her she wasn’t my boss, especially if it was less than 5 minutes until home time.
She didn’t respond, I picked up my bag and headed out. Freedom.

Chapter 3 - Home

You can probably guess the first thing I did when I got home. Didn’t even stop to take my shoes off - straight to the PC.
I was hoping for at least 20%, I wasn’t expecting any miracles. I’m not that lucky. And with only one seeder and my shitty internet 20% was already pushing it.
I turned on my monitor as I kicked my shoes off into the corner of the room, next to the pile of clothes that I kept telling myself I would put in the wash next time I stand up. It was a lie, obviously. I knew it, the socks knew it, and now the room felt like it was also judging me for it.
“I’ll do that today,” I promised myself, and the socks.
The screen flickered for a second before the download bar appeared.
It was at 100%.
Complete.
Finished.
I frowned and double checked the file size - I was half asleep when I clicked download this morning. Yup, 987 Gigabytes. Confirmed.
I opened the folder to check what files were inside. I was surprised to see just one file. One big file. Something wasn’t right
I expected there to be multiple folders - video files, game files, pictures… something.
I didn’t recognise the file extension, mainly because it was more of those strange symbols from earlier. I’m not a computer genius, but I knew enough to know that whatever this was, it wasn’t something common. Not something my computer would recognise or be able to actually run.
Naturally, I right clicked the singular file and selected scan. No way I was running this without checking it first. Curious? definitely. Stupid? I’d like to think not.
The scan bar shot across the screen so fast I almost missed it. Done. Finished. Less than four seconds, start to finish. I read the result twice, just to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.
“0 threats found.”
A 987GB scan in less than four seconds? That couldn’t be right… could it?
But it said 0 threats. So it was fine. Right? Maybe I’d just stumbled onto the most efficient compression algorithm in history. If I was the first one to find it, I’d never have to worry about a junior accountant salary again.
Eight years of data auditing had taught me one thing - when something doesn't add up, you don't ignore it. You dig. You find the discrepancy. You follow it all the way down.
I knew I shouldn't. I did it anyway. Story of my life.
I double clicked the file.

Chapter 4 – the game begins

The room filled with static. Not the kind you brush off, but the kind that sits in your teeth.
I felt it before I heard it. A cold detachment, like the gap between dreaming and awake, except every single hair on my body had already picked a side. My skin prickled head to toe.
Then the fans kicked in.
Not the usual background hum I'd learned to sleep through, this was something else entirely. The kind of frequency that skips your ears and goes straight for the inside of your skull. It wasn't noise anymore. It was pressure. I threw myself forward and grabbed the power cord.
"WHAT THE-"

The blue-white spark found my fingertip before I found the plug. Instant. The numbness swallowed my hand and kept going, all the way to my elbow, like someone had unplugged that arm from the rest of me.
Then nothing. Fans off. Static gone. Just a dark screen and a ringing silence so complete my ears popped trying to fill it.
You absolute idiot. I sat back, cradling my arm. You knew it was a virus. You clicked it anyway.
I stared at the blank monitor and did the mental arithmetic on how much a replacement was going to cost me. Not great. Not catastrophic. Just the right amount of painful to feel completely deserved.
That's when I noticed the green.
Faint. A rectangle. Barely there - like a light left on in a room three floors down.
I reached for the mouse with my good hand. Nothing happened on screen. I tried the keyboard. Still nothing. I sat back and just watched it.
It was definitely getting brighter.

NEW USER INITIATED

The letters didn’t just appear. They carved themselves one by one into the green void, with a sound like something between an old typewriter and a text message chirp.

USER IDENTIFIED

My heart skipped a half beat. I hadn’t typed a thing.

NAME: James
AGE: 24
Occupation: Accountant (Junior)

“How…” I whispered, the sound died rapidly in the coldness of the room.
Logic. Find the logic. Virus. Had to be. It scraped my accounts, my browser data, pulled my name from somewhere. I had everything on this machine - NatWest, crypto, the lot. Not exactly life-changing numbers, but they were my not-life-changing numbers and I'd very much like to keep them.
I tried the power button. Nothing.
CTRL ALT DELETE. Nothing.
I tried both twice more, achieving nothing twice more.

DO NOT DISCONNECT. THE SYSTEM IS DECOMPRESSING.

I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling.
"Great," I said, to no one. "Great stuff."

I’m just looking for peoples opinions and feedback on my first draft, I have never released anything before so I’m a little nervous.

My book is a sci-fi/tech novella(?), will finish around 28k words I think.

Any opinions or advice welcome

Thanks