🦊Fops News

The air was cool and clean. The AC hummed a low, steady note. It was late Sunday night.

The room was lit by a soft, warm web of light. It came from the string lights by his bed. The three screens on his desk cast a faint, cool glow on his face. They were the only other light.

His desktop was a black mesh box. A soft white glow breathed from inside. The front was dark walnut. A good machine. He shifted. The chair groaned under him. A deep creak. A loud squeak. A long rattle. The tech was good. The chair? …

On the desk sat a VR headset. Next to it, a precision screwdriver. The guts of IMU sensors were laid out on the desk. He looked at the center screen. The fall schedule. Intro to Hacking. Security+. Solid words. They felt like the tools on his desk. A system has a flaw. A lock has a key. You find the clean way in. He was not worried.

His gaze fell to the last line. Statistics for Data Science. The words were different. Soft. And heavy.

He remembered the Discord call. Voices in a wire. Little green circles. He remembered the feeling he got from their words. A different kind of hard. A problem without a clean way in. One of them had dropped it. The other said she was smart enough to avoid it entirely. The call moved on. Games. Jokes. But the feeling stayed.

His eyes left the screen. The warm light caught a guitar’s neck. Three of them stood in a row. Silent. The amp was a black block under the desk. In the corner, the power rack stood tall. A black frame for a different work. A simple work. Lift the weight. Put it down.

He hadn’t needed the class. He had picked it himself. Why? For the challenge? To prove something? Or for his ego? He did not know. He just had the class. And the low, tight feeling of a bad choice.

Across the room, under his bed, an empty PC tower held spare parts. Next to it, a sewing machine. A folded sim rig. More systems. More clean problems. The fixie bike was a sharp shape in the corner. All things with rules. Things you could learn.

He looked back at the screen. At the words. He was kicking himself. For a choice he did not have to make.

He leaned back. The chair gave a long, loud rattle. A broken sound in the cool, humming room. Tomorrow was Monday.