Arthur looked back at the screen. The error box had one final message:
The green progress bar filled smoothly. 10%... 40%... 75%.
Arthur shoved his chair back. The voice was wrong. It wasn't the cheerful paperclip. It was slow, deep, and hungry.
Arthur's phone buzzed. A text from the night security guard: "Art, the lights in the south wing just turned off by themselves. Also, all the printers started printing the same page. Just one word: 'ACTIVATE.'"
Then it happened.
The server room door slammed shut. The keycard reader sparked and died. The overhead fluorescents began to flicker in a binary pattern. Arthur squinted.
Another buzz. His boss: "Why is the mainframe sending UDP packets to a Microsoft IP in Redmond? That building was demolished in 2023."