“Oh? Now, that’s what I call good news.” Charlotte said as she lowered her body to the armless chair at the side.

A wide smile brightened the room as her exhausted body and mind started once again to work, to the point of completely ignoring her lightheadedness and the consequences it would bring the following day.

“Let’s see…” Her fingers danced atop the keyboard, on her screen numbers came and went, words appeared by her input, giving name to the results obtained and the conclusions she could get. “Yeah,” she muttered after working for a while, “I see no contradictions. This can unite all physics in one big theory while also adding a new force to the mix, just what I wanted. Hmm, but does it work in reality? Well, it doesn’t matter, I’ll have to see what I can get…”

A ping behind her brought her back to reality. Looking back, she noticed light invading her dark abode, she walked to her bed with wobbly feet and lifted her purse. With her cellphone at hand, she saw a notification text from her friend, Ellen, a minute ago. Below it was another notification five hours ago from Dordives. She read through the newest first.

“Elly:

Good morning my cute sleepy ladies!

I hope you get agreeat day! Im off to work so ill call you later!

Remember last night? Those cute boy went and…”

Charlotte closed their shared chat once the wall of text started, she didn’t have the time nor the mood to read it. She then peeked at Dordives’ message, it was the usual I’m home! notification, along with some other text. Closing Talkie, she looked at the time which provoked an uncalled yawn after the corner of her eyes jumped.

“Past 7… I better make a cup or I’ll die.” She let her phone fall back into the bed after putting it in silence and walked out of her room.

She sat in front of her computer once she came back, a cup of the blackest and sourest coffee stood next to the screen. She then continued with her ordeal as she didn’t have any plans for the day.

“Hmm!” She moaned as her hands went high up to the ceiling. “Everything is fine! It was faster than I thought, heh, this was no brainer, not at all! I only needed a lot of time and I bit of knowledge in maths to make it all work.” She brought down her head to the keyboard, a pout decorating the mess in her face. “Why is no one coming up with this kind of theory? Maybe because it involves an unknown force? Welp,” she jumped from her chair and started to stretch her stiff body, “it doesn’t matter. I finally managed to come by with a proper theory, even if it took hundreds of tries…”

She looked at the screen, on her lips a soft smile, remembering the countless modifications she had to do to her scripts for it to work out. She sat again in the cheap sliding chair after she was done stretching her body.

“Now, a way to verify it… No. What I need is to apply it, I should trust my theory, yes.” She said with red eyes.

Changing windows, she went for a programming tool to make a program to help with the application of her theory. As she continued to type a frown started to surface on the mess usually called face.

“This’ll take too long…” She said once she was done with a basic script, making it do a preliminary run. “Going by how long it’s taking, at least a year… I can’t wait that long!”

She looked with frustration at the slow progress of her desktop. It wasn’t slow, no. In fact, that desktop was one of the fastest out in the market, she had even coded it again from scratch, to avoid any unnecessary process it had from the makers.

“Should I use one of the big ones…? No, it’s too dangerous. I have to wait until there’s no options left. Should I? No, there’s a chance the connection will be lost after one time… Should I…? No. Ah, fuck it!”

She jumped from the chair, making it cry out in pain, and walked to the corner of the room. A big wardrobe stood there. She tore open its brown doors and took out an old laptop. She sat with a plop on the bed with it resting on her bare legs and started it.

“Now, let’s see if that connection is still safe and working!” She typed with a grin going from ear to ear and accessed the net, going through multiple programs and barriers the connection had.

“YES!” She shouted before letting her body fall into the bed. “Now, to transfer all data and the program which will make it all work… Oh, I also need an interpreter for it. Those damned quantic beasts had to work with different sense.”

She transferred all the data from the working desktop after stopping its job. She searched through sites to find a manual which could help make an interpreter from binary to quantum computers and back, and created it as fast as she could. Finally, she started to send all data through the stablished link after improving the program as much as she could.

“Ugh…” She groaned once it was over and running. “I’m dying… I hope it works out, or else I won’t be able to come with something like this in a long time.”

She got up from the bed at her stomach’s behest, went to the kitchen to grab some fast, cold food, and scurried back to her room.

Hmm, the body is the limiter of the mind, alright. She thought as she munched. He said that once, didn’t he? Hmm, my mother also says similar things, though it’s most to my brother than me, I usually take good care of my health.

Once her food came to an end, Charlotte let her head touch the soft pillow atop the bed.

I hope it reaches a good result… I can’t do it more than once, they’ll surely fix that gate after this, hmm~ if only it wouldn’t take that long, I wouldn’t be using that thing at max capacity… As her thoughts became slower, so did her breath, and soon and without she noticing, she fell asleep.

“Ughh…” Charlotte opened her eyes, her head felt like a brick and her body not much different.

*Knock knock

She turned her head to the door, and after a moment of dizziness decided to get up. She walked to the door while scratching her head, opening it to the wall with a bang.

“Sorry.” She said after standing with a blank look on her face for a minute. “What’s it?” She said to a young boy in front of her.

“Uhm…” The boy started with a blush in his face. “Mom wanted to know if you’re there, and if you’ll keep living here…”

Charlotte frowned at his strange behavior. The boy was at least seven years younger than her but still towered past her. He kept looking to the side and back to her, on which his red face increased its bright color each time. She followed his gaze once after he looked back at her for the third time to her body. Her body soon caught a pink hue. She jumped to the side after her mind returned, grabbed the knob of the door and threw it shut, producing the second bang of the night.

“O-oh, wait, yes, ehm.” She said after she caught some of her bearings. “I’ll at least be here until the month ends, yes."

“A-alright.” He answered from the other side.

She breathed in and out for a while before sighing. “How shameless… I hope he enjoyed the free spectacle, heh, ugh... This head’ll be my doom.” She said with her head between her hands, her body resting in the floor. “What time is it…”

“Uhm, it’s almost nine.” The boy said from the other side.

He’s still there… “Thanks…”

“I… I’ll be going now! Bye!”

Charlotte heard the boy going away, breathing out her shame. She got up and walked through the room. She was only paying for it and not the whole place. It was cheap enough to climb up the stairs every day without bickering about it. Inside the house lived the boy and his mother, Nancy. She didn’t know why, but his name always ran away from her memory. Another perk of the place was its neighbor, downtown was close by and the silence make it even better.

Arriving to her bed, she lifted her laptop from the floor, opened its cover and looked through the logs from the supercomputer. A smile blossomed in her face as she kept reading.

“Perfect, it’s done.” She said while licking her lips. “Too much for a thousand years fossil. All that’s left is to get all of it back to me.”

She then restarted on her gimmicks before leaving her laptop on the floor. Walking to her wardrobe, she put on herself proper and comfy clothes. “All that’s left is to wait~”

*Growl

“And to eat…” She said, eyes down on her belly, before her nose twitched. “… And a shower, holy, I reek of alcohol and sweat.”

She got into her slippers before going to the kitchen. At least there wasn’t anyone around when I came out today… She thought with a slight blush.

To her misfortune, the kitchen already had an occupant. Nancy, the mother of the house, hummed as she wandered around. Her stomach protested again, grabbing the older lady’s attention, who looked back at her as fast as her neck allowed.

“Uhm… Good evening, Mrs. Nancy.”

“Good evening, Charlotte.” She said with a smile, sending a shiver down Charlotte’s back.

“A-about before, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, just be more careful, the house is quite old.” She answered as her head went to both sides. “It also got me scared, but that’s not important. What happened?”

“That, nothing.” Charlotte said with her head between her shoulders.

“Is that so?” Nancy raised a brow. “Oh, another thing, be more careful at night. I know you told me you’re coming back late, but I’m quite forgetful so I was scared at first. I almost called the police thinking you were a burglar!” She chuckled as her voice died down.

Charlotte couldn’t help but chuckle back. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Good.” Nancy nodded before turning away. She kept humming for a while before looking back at Charlotte. “Is there anything else?”

“Ah, yes, I wanted to make something.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” She clapped her hands. “You can just do it, don’t mind me, I’m just waiting for a cake to be ready, you have the kitchen all for yourself.”

“… If you’d excuse me, then.” Charlotte said as meekly as she could before going to the fridge and took out a bag of frozen meatballs and a half-eaten cheese.

Out of one of the bins she brought a pack of uncooked pasta, some spices and little more. Turning on the stove, she began to cook, shouting out curses in her mind. Nancy was gone after a while, leaving a slice of cake for her and a peace of mind.

After she was done eating, she took a long bath in the tub, releasing her body from its constraints. Arriving to her room with a refreshed body and mind, she looked at her laptop’s screen.

It’s still ongoing, I wonder how long it’ll take… Why’s there no number to indicate its size… Hmm, maybe because it’s being converted as it transfers… Yeah, that’s it. Well, let’s sleep for now, I’m still tired.

Falling to her bed, she embraced the night.

“What in bloody hell is going on?” Pilton Hughs shouted after being told nothing seemed to work on the net.

Pilton was the security director of Necox Inc., the most important company in telecommunications of the world. He was called without notice, ending his most awaited vacation after only two days of enjoyment. He had stormed to the department as fast as he could to find a mess of a hall. People shouted and cried, walking around constantly while his men kept being bugged by those not in the known. There were more than fifty workers inside the room where normally were only twenty. His right-hand woman looked at him with a ray of hope brightening her face.

“Sir! We don’t know! Our resources are being used in a global scale! More than five thousand servers are oversaturated! All main functions were lowered to the background, millions of data is being lost every minute! If it continues as it is, countries fully dependent of the net will soon collapse!”

“Did you try to disconnect the affected ones?!”

“We tried that, of course! But as soon as we isolate one, three are taken in response! Even after booting the servers to their default state, they continue being used!”

“When did it start and why wasn’t I informed sooner!”

“We noticed something was amiss ten hours ago, as it wasn’t something that serious, we didn’t inform you.” Answered on man to his right without turning away from the screen. “It wasn’t until three hours ago that most of the servers reduced their performance to the point of stopping most of the normal connections that we informed you. An hour ago, most of the data stopped moving and first-class services had their responses degraded to the background.”

“And now?”

“That-“

“It’s back!” A lanky man shouted from the other end of the room, grabbing everyone’s attention. “All services are back! We got full access again!”

“Check it all, now!” Pilton shouted.

Someone brought him the summary of the events. He studied it while his people worked checking the current state of the world. Apparently, the last five minutes before everything returned to normal was real chaos, all emergency systems which had some kind of connection to the global web were shut down; trains, vehicles and planes suffered some accident, be it mild or severe.

“Everything’s back to normal.” He was told by his secretary. “Apart from the incredible amount of data lost, it all resumed normally, there’s no way to tell something happened if not for the accidents outside.”

“It’s like a ghost…” Someone muttered.

“… Do a thorough investigation, we need to come up with something fast.” Pilton said with a frown, voice as low as it could possible get.

After some time, someone said. “I found something!”

“What’s it?”

“It’s…” He remained silent for a moment, making the director’s face twist. “That, it’s not a joke, but… There’s a file which bounced around multiple times called, dot no danger. All together.”

The security chief walked to him and looked at the terminal the man worked in. The man gave his seat to his boss without a word. Pilton went through the archives and logs for a few minutes, nodding every now and then while drinking from the water bottle at the side.

“Track this, as of now it’s the only lead we’ve got. Wherever it went, be it a terminal, computer, robot; anything! We’ll prioritize this over everything else!” Pilton’s voice came to a new loud record before starting right there his search for answers. The man remained behind him, not sure of what to do.

This catastrophe was called on later days as the ghost intrusion.

Charlotte yawned awake, staring at the ceiling for a few moments before a smile decorated her face.

“That’s how life goes, going round and round~” She hummed an old song as she stretched herself up.

“Hmm~ how did it go~” She said, putting the old laptop atop her legs.