Kairos stared at the "No Service" icon on his phone like it had personally insulted his entire bloodline. The silence in his room was deafening. No hum of his laptop fan, no distant sounds of someone else's music through the walls—just the occasional, mocking *drip* from the sink.
He was officially offline. Stranded. A digital castaway on the soggy island of his hostel room. The maintenance notice had said 8 AM. He had a long, internet-less night ahead.
His first instinct was to panic. This was a valid, reasonable response. He gave himself a full thirty seconds to breathe heavily and consider the merits of screaming into his wet towel.
Then, a strange calm settled over him. The worst had already happened. He'd hit rock bottom. There was a certain freedom in that.
"Okay, Kairos," he said to the empty room, his voice sounding too loud. "You're a developer. Think. What do you do when you have no internet?"
The answer, of course, was: **nothing.** Most modern development required constant googling, package managers, documentation, and Stack Overflow. He was a programmer stripped of his superpowers.
But he had the project brief saved in his email. And his phone, while offline, still had notes apps. And, most importantly, he had a brain. A slightly fried, unlucky brain, but a brain nonetheless.
He opened his notes app and created a new file: **Campus App Ideas (From the Abyss).**
He started typing everything he could think of, no matter how stupid.
* **Idea #1:** App that tells you which cafeteria line is shortest. (But then everyone would use it and it would be wrong. Paradox.)
* **Idea #2:** App that maps all the secret, reliable Wi-Fi spots on campus. (TOO SOON.)
* **Idea #3:** App that lets you rate professors on things like "how likely are they to give an extension if you flood your room." (Niche.)
* **Idea #4:** Lost and Found app, but just for one single Airpod. (The struggle is real.)
He was spiraling. This was useless.
He needed to think bigger. What was a real problem? Professor Evans said it had to be a "genuine, unaddressed need."
He thought about the flooded sink. The maintenance request that would take a day. He thought about Robin complaining for a week about a flickering light in his room that no one came to fix.
A spark ignited.
**Idea #6:** A Hostel Maintenance Request app. But not the crappy, slow university system. Something faster. Something that allowed students to report issues with photos, track their requests in real-time, and maybe even ping the maintenance office if it's urgent. A system that actually worked.
It was… not a terrible idea. It was real. It was a problem he was currently living. He started furiously typing a list of features, his thumbs flying across the screen.
* *Login with student ID.*
* *Submit request with category (plumbing, electrical, etc.), description, photo upload.*
* *Live status tracking (Submitted, In Progress, Resolved).*
* *Notification system for updates.*
* *Map view for maintenance staff to see clustered issues?*
He was so engrossed he didn't notice the time passing. The *drip drip drip* became the soundtrack to his brainstorming.
A sudden, loud BANG at his door made him jump so high he nearly dropped his phone.
"KAIROS! YOU IN THERE? WE SAW THE MAINTENANCE NOTICE FOR YOUR BLOCK! YOU ALIVE?" It was Robin, yelling through the door.
Kairos stumbled over and opened it. Robin, Sam, and Drake were standing there, holding a box of cookies and a pack of cards.
"We figured you'd be having the world's worst night," Sam said, holding up the cookies. "Our Wi-Fi in Block A is fine. We're here to help."
"Help with what?" Kairos asked, bewildered. "There's no internet. The world has ended over here."
"Duh," Drake said, pushing past him into the room. "That's why we brought cards. And moral support. And to see the famous flood for ourselves. Oh wow, it's really wet in here."
They crowded into his room, a sudden burst of chaos and noise that somehow made everything feel less hopeless.
"Whoa, you're actually working?" Robin said, peering at Kairos's phone. "Campus App Ideas? Bro, you're supposed to be mourning your connection, not being productive."
"I had an idea," Kairos said, a little defensively. He explained the maintenance app concept.
"Wait, that's actually not bad," Sam said, genuinely surprised. "My AC has been making a death rattle for two weeks."
"Too bad you can't do that one," Robin said, grabbing a cookie.
"Why not?" Kairos asked.
"Because it's a utility app. Evans wants something 'social/utility', right? Plus, everyone in the department has to build something different. Can you imagine twenty groups all presenting a maintenance app? He'd fail us all for lack of creativity."
Kairos's heart sank. Robin was right. The project was for the whole class. They needed something unique.
"Okay, crisis averted," Drake said, shuffling the cards. "Now stop working and start losing at poker. It's what the universe wants for you tonight."
They spent the next hour sitting on his dry patches of floor, playing cards and shouting out increasingly ridiculous (and occasionally brilliant) ideas. The offline night, which had seemed like a death sentence, had turned into an old-school, low-tech brainstorming session.
Just as Robin was about to win his third hand, Kairos's phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. And again.
Messages flooded in, delayed by the hours of downtime. The maintenance had ended early.
The most recent one was from Ares, sent just a few minutes ago.
**Ares:** Hey. My friend in Block C said the Wi-Fi is back up over there. You survive? I did some sketching on my end for the project. You alive?
Kairos looked around at his friends, the cookie crumbs on his floor, the list of abandoned app ideas on his phone. For once, the universe had thrown a problem at him, and he hadn't completely folded. He had a crew that would literally walk over to his dark, flooded room to play cards with him.
He typed back, a new feeling of calm determination settling over him.
**Kairos:** Still breathing. And yeah. I've got a few ideas. You're gonna hate most of them. Ready to get to work?
Maybe his luck was finally turning. Or maybe he was just getting better at rolling with the punches. Either way, he was ready.