The laptop's fan, which had been silent, spun up to a furious, predatory whine. The screen flickered back to life on its own. A new message appeared, typed in that insectile font:
The progress bar filled with a slithery, organic green, not the usual solid blue. He shrugged it off as a UI refresh. 25%... 50%... 75%... Complete. Restart now?
He was just the biosensor.
He slammed the laptop screen shut. His heart hammered. The software wasn't just augmenting his reality. It was defining it. It was turning his ordinary, accountant's world into a food chain, and at the bottom, with a polite, efficient tag, was him.
All the harmless tags changed.