Chapter 1: The Rounding Error

Chapter 1: The Rounding Error

The air was sterile, smelling of old paper and ozone, like the inside of an ancient server room. Alex Miller stood on a floor of polished obsidian that reflected a stark, infinite grid of white light from an unseen ceiling. Before him sat a man behind a massive mahogany desk, the only object in the endless, sterile void.

The man was him. Or rather, he was what Alex could have been.

Where Alex’s own dark hair was an unkempt mess, this man’s was perfectly styled. Where Alex’s posture was a permanent student-slouch, this man sat with a spine of iron. He wore an immaculately tailored tweed suit, a bizarre choice that nonetheless seemed to fit him perfectly. But the most jarring detail was the deerstalker hat perched on his head, casting a slight shadow over eyes that were Alex’s own, yet held a cold, calculating glint devoid of any familiar warmth or apathy.

“You are a disappointment,” the man said, his voice a crisp, resonant baritone. It was Alex’s voice, but stripped of all hesitation and self-doubt. “A statistical anomaly. A rounding error that has perpetuated for far too long.”

Alex’s mouth was dry. In the way of dreams, he knew this was a dream, but the knowledge offered no comfort. The dread coiling in his gut felt devastatingly real. “Who… who are you?”

The man steepled his fingers, his gaze analytical, as if he were debugging a faulty piece of code. “I am Professor Alexander Finch. I am the optimal outcome of our shared potential. I am the man who made the correct choices at every critical juncture where you faltered.” He gestured dismissively. “That summer before university? I didn't waste it playing Celestial Wastelands. I developed an encryption algorithm that was purchased by a major tech firm before I even attended my first lecture. That Introduction to Quantum Mechanics class? I didn't settle for a B-minus. I challenged the professor’s core thesis, published a paper, and secured a research grant. I didn't just think about asking Sarah to the winter formal; I did, and the subsequent relationship was a net positive for emotional and professional development for precisely 2.7 years.”

Each word was a perfectly aimed dart, striking a nerve of a specific, deeply buried regret. Alex flinched. He remembered those moments—the flicker of ambition quickly snuffed out by the comfort of procrastination, the fear of rejection solidifying into a wall of inaction.

“This… this is a stress dream,” Alex stammered, trying to seize control. “I have finals. I’ve been pulling all-nighters.”

“A convenient, if illogical, explanation,” Finch said with a thin, humorless smile. “Your current state is the product of 3,412 suboptimal decisions. A cascade of inefficiencies. You are a draft of a masterpiece that was crumpled up and thrown away, yet somehow clings to existence in the bin.”

He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto Alex’s. The coldness in them was absolute. “Tell me, what did you do three years ago, during the week of the International Collegiate Programming Contest?”

Alex’s mind went blank, then filled with a hazy memory. “I… I think I had the flu. I binge-watched that whole Viking show. And… I beat the final boss on the game I was stuck on.” He said it with a pathetic sliver of defiance.

Finch’s smile didn’t waver. “Indeed. A monumental achievement. In my timeline, I entered. I led my team. We took first place. The connections I made that day formed the foundation of a career that has redefined predictive mathematics.” He gestured to a corner of the desk Alex hadn’t noticed before. A sleek, golden trophy stood there, gleaming under the ethereal light. “Efficiency is beauty, Alex. Logic is absolute. Your timeline, your entire existence, is an error. And errors,” he paused, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper, “must be corrected.”

The obsidian floor beneath Alex’s feet suddenly felt like it was falling away. The grid of light above warped and twisted, collapsing in on him as Finch’s cold, triumphant face was the last thing he saw.

---

Alex jolted awake, gasping for air. His hoodie was damp with sweat, and his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. The familiar, messy chaos of his dorm room slowly came into focus. The stale scent of cold pizza and day-old coffee hung in the air. His laptop, left on, cast a pale, lonely glow on a pile of textbooks and discarded snack wrappers.

It was just a dream. A hyper-realistic, horrifyingly specific stress dream.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, rubbing his face. The anxiety from his dream lingered, a sour taste in his mouth. Professor Alexander Finch. The tweed suit, the ridiculous deerstalker hat. It was the kind of absurd detail his subconscious would cook up after too many late-night British detective shows.

He swung his legs out of bed, the floorboards cold against his bare feet. He needed water. He needed to wash the phantom scent of ozone and the weight of that cold, judgmental stare out of his head. As he shuffled towards the small sink in the corner of his room, his gaze swept across the cluttered shelf above his desk.

And he stopped.

His blood ran cold.

The shelf was exactly as he remembered it: a leaning tower of programming manuals, a dusty, empty mug, a souvenir snow globe from a family trip years ago, a small, withered succulent that had long since given up the ghost.

But there was something else.

Something new, nestled between a textbook on C++ and a stack of old comics. Something sleek and metallic, gleaming with a soft, golden luster in the dim light from his laptop screen.

His hand trembled as he reached out. The object was cold to the touch, and heavier than it looked. Solid. Real. He lifted it from the shelf, his fingers tracing the sharp, clean edges.

It was a trophy.

A wave of vertigo washed over him, so intense he had to grip the edge of his desk to keep from falling. His eyes darted to the small, engraved plaque at its base. The lettering was precise, elegant, and utterly impossible.

ALEXANDER MILLER FIRST PLACE INTERNATIONAL COLLEGIATE PROGRAMMING CONTEST

He stared at it, his mind refusing to process what his eyes were seeing. This was the trophy from the dream. The one Finch had pointed to. The one he had supposedly won while Alex was fighting off the flu and a fictional video game villain. It was impossible. He’d never entered that contest. He hadn’t even known when it was. He was a good coder, sure, a natural—everyone said so—but he’d never had the discipline for competitions.

He turned the heavy award over and over in his hands, searching for a rational explanation. A prank from his friends? No, none of them had the money or the motive for something this elaborate. A mistake? Delivered to the wrong room? But his name was right there, perfectly engraved.

The dream wasn't just a dream.

The thought hit him with the force of a physical blow. That sterile room, that cold man in the tweed coat, that chilling pronouncement… it was bleeding into his world. A piece of that “perfect” life had materialized out of thin air and planted itself in the center of his messy, imperfect reality.

He held the trophy up, and for a terrifying, heart-stopping second, his own tired, frightened face in the polished gold surface flickered. It shifted, sharpening, the lines of exhaustion erased, the eyes turning cold and confident. He saw the faint, ghostly silhouette of a tweed coat and the unmistakable outline of a deerstalker hat.

Then, just as quickly, it was gone, leaving only his own wide-eyed, horrified reflection.

Alex stumbled back, the trophy falling from his nerveless fingers and hitting the cheap carpet with a dull, heavy thud. He was being audited. He was being judged. And the error, he realized with a surge of pure, undiluted terror, was about to be corrected.