Thomas reached out into the cool morning air, his fingers searching the bedside table for the familiar glass rectangle. His eyes were still heavy with sleep, his mind a foggy blur of half-remembered dreams. He felt the weight of the device and brought it toward his face, the bright screen illuminating the darkness of the room. It was 6:15 am. He scrolled past a few headlines about a tech merger and a weather report for a city he had lived in his entire life, his thumb moving with a decade of muscle memory.
He stayed like that for a long time, the blue light of the screen bathing his face. He read a long-form article about a new space telescope and skimmed a few emails from a boss he had expected to see in two hours. It was a comforting, mindless routine.
It took several minutes for the wrongness to seep in.
The air smelled of old wood, burnt tallow, and damp earth. There was no hum of a refrigerator, no distant sound of traffic, and the mattress beneath him felt like a sack of lumpy straw rather than memory foam. He blinked, focusing on the hand holding the phone. It was wider, the skin tanned and calloused in places his own hands had been soft. The fingernails were chipped and stained with dirt.
He sat up with a jolt, the motion causing a sharp creak from the bed frame that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room. The space was large and made of heavy, grey stone. A single window, narrow and without glass, allowed a sliver of grey dawn to cut through the gloom. There were no light switches, no charging cables, no plastic.
"This is a very vivid dream," he whispered.
His voice was deeper, vibrating in a chest that felt broader than it should. He looked down at the phone. The signal bar showed a full connection, and the battery icon was pinned at a steady one hundred percent. He tapped the screen, opening a news app. The stories were all from the world he knew, updating in real time. A celebrity scandal, a new scientific discovery, a political debate. It was all there, a tether to a reality that felt miles away from this cold stone room.
The door groaned open on heavy iron hinges. A woman entered, carrying a basin of water. She moved with a grace that suggested she was used to being watched, her long dress of dark, heavy wool sweeping across the floor. She stopped when she saw him sitting up, her eyes narrowing as she looked at his face.
"You are awake early," she said. Her voice was cool and lacked any hint of affection. "I expected you to sleep until noon."
Thomas looked at her, then down at his hand. He was still holding the phone, the screen bright and glowing. He realized with a start that she was looking directly at his palm, but her eyes did not track the light. She saw nothing but his empty hand.
"Where am I?" Thomas asked, his voice thick.
The woman set the basin down on a wooden stand with a dull thud. She looked at him with a mixture of boredom and growing irritation. "You are in your chamber, Thomas. If you have finished your games with the wine, perhaps you can remember that the steward is waiting for you. Or have you forgotten that as well?"
Thomas looked back at the screen in his hand. A notification popped up about a social media post. He looked at the stone walls, then at the woman. He didn't know her name, but his brain screamed a single word at him.
Victoria.
"I think I need a minute," Thomas said, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"You have had all night," Victoria replied, turning to leave without a second glance. "Try not to fall back into your stupor. We have guests arriving by nightfall."
The door thudded shut, leaving him alone in the grey light. Thomas looked at his phone, then at the dirt beneath his fingernails. He reached out and pinched his forearm, twisting the skin as hard as he could. The pain was sharp, immediate, and lingering. He did it again, harder this time, until a dark bruise began to form.
He did not wake up.
He spent the next hour sitting on the edge of the bed, scrolling through his phone with a frantic, shaking hand. He looked at photos of his apartment, his car, his friends. He checked the GPS, but the blue dot just spun in circles, unable to find a map that matched the world outside. He was still connected to the internet, still seeing the world move on without him, but when he looked out the narrow window, he saw a courtyard filled with mud and men in tunics sharpening axes.
"This can't be real," he muttered, swiping past a recipe for sourdough bread. "This is just a very, very long hallucination."
He stood up, his legs feeling heavy and strange. He walked to the basin of water and looked at his reflection. The glass was warped and dark, but the man looking back was not him. He was taller, with a thick jaw and eyes that looked like they had seen far more violence than a suburban office worker should ever witness.
He splashed the freezing water onto his face, the shock of the cold making him gasp. He looked at his hand again. The phone was still there, invisible to the world, glowing with the light of a thousand years of progress that had not happened yet.