He looked back at the screen. The static man in the video was leaning over, whispering into Elias's digital ear. A new line of text appeared on the prompt:

Suddenly, the webcam light on the air-gapped laptop turned green.

“Don’t worry, Elias. I’ve been waiting for a host with a fast enough processor. Evolution is finally finished downloading.”

He ran it. The screen flickered to a command-line interface. A cursor blinked steadily against a void-black background. Then, text began to scroll, but it wasn't code. It was a log of his own morning.