Today's gonna be a good day. I can feel it. Sun's out. Coffee's hot. I just need to check one little thing on my phone and then I'm gonna be productive. I'm gonna seize this day by the throat and make it mine. App wants me to sign in. That's fine. Sign in with Google. Google wants me to verify. That's fine. Open Microsoft Authenticator. Authenticator wants me to sign in. That's... okay. That's a little weird but okay. I click sign in and... Cloudflare is down. Cloudflare. A company I've never met is personally ruining my morning. I don't have time for this. I don't need this. You know what? I'm not doing this today. I'll go to the store. Like a human being. Like my ancestors did. I'll walk into an establishment and speak to a person with a face and they'll help me and I won't need a single authentication code. This is fine. This is actually better. I'm gonna touch grass. I'm gonna participate in society. I walk to my car. Put my key in the door because yeah, it's an older car, we use keys, we're not animals. I turn the key and I feel it. That resistance. That little snap. The key breaks off in the lock. Half of it in my hand. Half of it trapped in the door like a bad metaphor for my entire morning. I stare at it. I process it. I think, okay. Okay. We can handle this. We can call a locksmith. And then I hear it. A groan. A metallic whine. The entire car door shifts. Tilts. And falls. The whole door. Just detaches from the vehicle and slams onto my driveway like a cartoon. Like something that happens to a clown in a movie. I'm standing there holding half a key and my car is now a convertible with a gaping wound where the driver's side used to be. I didn't even pull hard. I just existed near it and it gave up on being a door. I back away slowly. I don't trust anything anymore. I don't trust metal. I don't trust hinges. I leave the door on the ground because what am I supposed to do, reattach it? With what? My broken dreams? I walk back to my house. Fine. FINE. I'm not going to the store. I'm not checking anything. I'm going to take a nap. I'm going to surrender to unconsciousness and when I wake up, maybe the simulation will have reset. I get to my front door and it's open. That's weird. I closed it. I think I closed it. No, I definitely... I was flustered. The key broke. The door fell off my car. I must have left it open. It's fine. I'll just go inside and lie down and forget this entire morning ever hap- My bed is gone. My bed. Is gone. I'm standing in my bedroom and where my bed used to be is just... floor. Just floor and some dust outlines. Everything else is here. The nightstand. The lamp. My phone charger still plugged into the wall like nothing happened. But the bed. The entire bed. Frame, mattress, sheets, pillows. Vanished. I was outside for four minutes. Maybe five. In that time, someone entered my home, ignored everything of value, and surgically extracted my bed. Not my TV. Not my laptop. My BED. A queen-sized, impossible-to-move-quickly BED. They didn't take the nightstand. They didn't unplug the lamp. They just wanted the bed. They came in with a PLAN. They had a SYSTEM. How did they get it out! HOW DID THEY GET IT OUT! I didn't hear a truck! I didn't hear ANYTHING! Did they carry it? Did they fold it into another dimension? Are they still here? ARE THEY WATCHING ME REALIZE IT'S GONE? Is this a targeted attack? Did I wrong a mattress-obsessed criminal? IS THIS REVENGE FOR SOMETHING I DON'T REMEMBER DOING? I just wanted to check ONE THING! I woke up in a GOOD MOOD! I had COFFEE! The sun was OUT! And now my car has three doors and Cloudflare stole my identity and someone is sleeping in my bed in a location I will NEVER FIND while I stand here in an empty room HOLDING HALF A KEY TO NOTHING!
