Jonathan Grace didn't expect death to come between a YouTube theory and a debug log.
It was a Saturday night. His desk was a mess of pizza crusts, sticky notes, and a half-finished bottle of beer. Two monitors glowed in the dark like portals to different universes. On one, a Python debugger stubbornly displayed an unresolved encryption loop. On the other, the SuperCarlinBrothers delved into a theory about Dumbledore's grand master plan.
"No way he planned all that," Jonathan muttered, half-smiling as he typed. "He couldn't even handle Tom Riddle's diary."
He leaned back, rubbed his eyes, and took a swig from his drink. The bottle tipped over.
Beer spilled.
Jonathan cursed.
The liquid spread rapidly, oozing toward the power strip and exposed auxiliary board he had been tinkering with. Without thinking, he reached down to yank the loose wire.
His hand slipped. Wet fingers grazed the socket.
Zzzzap.
A searing jolt. Pain. Light.
Muscles seized. His body locked up like a corrupted file freezing a system. Every nerve fired at once—sharp, hot, blinding. He tried to scream, but his throat didn't cooperate. He couldn't even tell if he was breathing.
In that moment, a thousand memories scattered like shattered glass. Anime intros. Lines of code. His mom's laugh. Keyboard clicks. Laughter from a friend he hadn't talked to in years. The color blue from his favorite desktop wallpaper.
And then—
Silence.
Not the silence of a quiet room, but an absence. Like the world had shut off. No buzzing fans. No internal monologue. No heartbeat. No self.
Just—nothing.
Until awareness returned.
Soft. Weightless. Floating.
No pain now. No body, either. Just… presence. As if he were a point of consciousness suspended in warm static.
Am I dead?
No voice answered. No light at the end of a tunnel. No judgment, no afterlife PowerPoint.
Only darkness.
And somewhere deep inside that darkness—a vibration. A current. An unexplainable sense of something just beyond perception.
Something waiting.