Two hours later it was 8:30, and the cup of previously steaming tea was sitting on a coaster while its drinker opened up her news app. The pursuit of a programming degree had already turned fruitful, letting James be employed from home while still being an undergraduate. That, combined with her scholarship, had let her move off-campus and invest in luxuries like her tablet. Most would have opted for a new computer, but her old one still worked perfectly fine, and she enjoyed reading too much. Reading on a tablet didn’t reduce her experience, and so came about her first luxury purchase. She allowed herself to frivolously spend money on it only after saving a good amount of what she calculated she would need for her fifth year of college.

While the work wasn’t exactly what she would consider fun (there was a reason she was double majoring), James had to admit that making money was good. And that programming jobs certainly made a lot of it. Enough that she would even need to consider working a few years in programming before going back to finish her veterinary degree. After all, funding it herself would be hard otherwise. It wasn’t like her parents were pitching in at all.

Putting those thoughts out of her mind, James started reading about the happenings of the day. In many ways, the news app replaced her need for human interaction. It told her all the facts, without too much bias, and void of all small talk. Granted, you could argue that some of the smaller articles filled that particular purpose, but she always skipped those.

Clicking on a video, she watched the hosts speculate about a new phenomenon that had already been documented twice, once in the middle of Australia and another time at the southern edge of France bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Apparently small swaths of land had cut off contact with the outside world. The hosts were skeptical this wasn’t a conspiracy theory, and even theorized it could be a top-secret military operation. This had happened overnight, and since no world leaders had commented on it, they were both leaning towards it being a sanctioned military outing. James scoffed a little to herself, people would believe anything they put on the internet, and put it out of mind, clicking on another video, this one totally serious, about kittens.

After wasting more time than she’d like to admit wondering why her apartment didn’t allow pets, James gingerly stretched out her small frame just covering the three-seater couch. Grabbing a piece of toast and buttering it liberally, she made sure she downloaded all her professor’s slides for the day and went to her computer to log into her classes.

The one other thing that had made her choose this college, aside from the scholarship of course, was that it offered an easy solution to her social anxiety. All of the lectures were both broadcasted and recorded, and if she ever had an in-person lab, she could apply to be in a small class of ten people. Other colleges had offered similar scholarships, but none had similar advantages, making her choice quite easy. The only downside was the location, a rainy college town right at the Oregon and Washington border. While she didn’t like people, James did like walks, and rain wasn’t exactly conducive to that. But you can’t have everything, and the rain did make people more likely to stay home and not bother others. Glancing outside, it didn’t seem like rain was in the forecast, so she figured a jog would be fitting to celebrate.

8:55AM and she was ready to start taking notes, waiting for the professor to start the broadcast. Instead, she got a blue light worming its way across her eyes. Swatting at it absentmindedly, it continued to stay there, as a small humming grew louder. Starting to feel the familiar feeling of getting overwhelmed, James put aside her computer and tried taking deep breaths like her psychologist said. The light stayed there, but the humming stayed steady. Suddenly, the blue dot flickered from the top right of her perception and was replaced with typed out, blocky letters:

System integration has begun!

James got a sinking feeling in her stomach, the familiar bitter feeling of disappointment returning in full force. It seems she couldn’t even be a veterinarian. You couldn’t treat animals if you were seeing things that weren’t there.